Discover which yogic practices help you best to become intense in the most vital sense. Sadhguru also explains why fierceness is on the surface, whereas intensity comes from the very source of life.
Question: Sadhguru, what is the difference between intensity and fierceness?
Sadhguru: It is very difficult to make out the difference between intensity and fierceness. The fire that lights up your house and the fire that destroys it do not look different, but they are very different. Being fierce is an attitude – intensity is of life. Fierceness is a certain intensity of emotion. When we talk about intensity here, we are not talking about intensity of emotion but about intensity of life energies within you. They are two different things, but they may look the same for one who is observing from outside.
Intensity is a cool fire. It is important to be intense but cool. Fierceness can come from provocation, but you cannot become intense through provocation. Intensity has to be earned with a tremendous amount of sadhana. To simply sit here and burn like a volcano takes a certain amount of maturity of life forces. If it is cornered, just a cat becomes fierce – I am not even talking about a tiger.
Intensity of life energy enhances life. Fierceness will burn you out. If you stay in anger for ten minutes, you will see that. If you experience any kind of fierceness in you, it will burn you out. But intensity of the life force is not like that. Once your energies are intense, you are simply on all the time. Nourishment, sleep, nothing matters to you. Life and ecstasy are on 24x7. Fierceness is not like that – if you keep it up for ten minutes, it finishes you off. Because one is an emotion, while the other is on the level of your vital energies, which is a different dimension altogether.
You might have experienced some sense of intensity for a short while after your Shakti Chalana Kriya or Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, where you were intense and energized in a big way, but very cool and calm. If you are doing your Kriya every day, it slowly builds up. That is the importance of the sadhana. If you are doing it on and off, you will not build it up. If you are on every day, and after some time, you look back and see how you were five years ago – you cannot believe you existed in such a despicable way.
Suddenly, life is at a completely different level altogether. It is not that you will become gentler and kinder. The very volume of life within you will be bigger. It is not something that can be described in words or that someone else can gauge. In your experience, you clearly know that the volume of life happening within you has become far bigger than it used to be. It will not be a gentle stream but a roar.
I do not want you to live and die like a trickle. You must erupt like a volcano. A volcano may look fierce from outside, but it is not fierce. A volcano is a volcano because it has gotten in touch with the core. Its heat is not kicked up but natural. A volcano is cooking for centuries and millennia. Only once in a way does it throw up a little bit. When it throws up, everyone could benefit, but because of excessive population, it seems to be a disaster. It is not. The world is much richer because of the volcanic ash. A volcano is a good thing. It is a phenomenon.
The Velliangiri mountains[1] are volcanic, but they have cooled off. They have matured in such a way that they need not spew anymore. Velliangiri is disseminating its energy in a completely different way. It need not spew anymore because now it is in total control. Fierceness can come to you anytime with provocation. If someone pokes you in the ribs, you will become fierce. That does not take anything. It is a life-dissipating process. Intensity of life has to be earned over a period of time, and it is a life-enhancing process.
[1] Mountain range around the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
