What is Life Without Intoxication?

Namaskaram Sadhguru, Since BSP, my hatha yoga practices are so intense. After every posture, I feel intoxication and even when I do Shambhavi, I feel the same. What is happening?

T ell me, what is life without intoxication? What is life without awareness? The only reason you know you are alive is that you are somewhat aware. The basis of your existence is awareness. If you kill your awareness, you have taken away life itself. If you are dry and aware, it is still good because you could see things, but if you can be totally intoxicated and still be aware, isn’t it wonderful? That is what Bhava Spandana is – to get you intoxicated but fully conscious, no hangover. If you want, you can switch it off; if you want, you can switch it on. This is nice and it doesn’t cost anything. You can be on endlessly – for twenty-four hours you can be drunk, and for twenty-four hours you can be fully conscious.

Most people can sing and dance only when they drink – this is the fact of the world because it is intoxication which loosens up a human being from the rigidity that they have become in their minds. If you know how to be drunk on life itself, if you know how to be intoxicated by divine – not wine – then you have an endless supply. Wine comes only in bottles; it gets over. But this is an endless supply and it keeps you fully aware. This is called amrita, which the pineal gland is supposed to generate. In hatha yoga, there are practices to get you there. I used to conduct a two-day hatha yoga program. Friday evening, they would assemble and Sunday evening, it would close. By Saturday afternoon, more than seventy percent of the participants were totally drunk and rolling around all over the place. No Bhava Spandana, just teaching hatha yoga. That is what it should do, but that will need a different dimension of understanding of the system.

Bhava Spandana need not happen in a program. But because people are so horribly constipated in their thought and emotion, you have to knead them forcefully in one place where there is no escape. It is very important that there is no escape because people have been escaping their whole lives. Do you think they will spare these three days? How many opportunities have they had in their life to connect with another life? Every day, there are a million opportunities, but they won’t do it. How do you trust these people if they have an exit door? So, it is sealed from every direction, and then suddenly they wake up – there is a way to go beyond this physicality and know life in some other way.

Bhava Spandana is not a three-day flirtation with you, it has the fundamentals to make your life absolutely intoxicating every moment of your life. It is very simple. As far as my knowledge goes, never before in recent history has something so powerful been offered so simply. It is too simple! Maybe your back is hurting a bit, that is because you have not done enough hatha yoga. Otherwise, the methodology is too simple, almost childish. That is why it is so brilliant.

Bhava Spandana Program, an advanced residential program at the Isha Yoga Center