Q: Namaskaram. I have seen snakes depicted everywhere in the Isha Yoga Center. But in Christian theologies, I think the snake is considered to be an agent of Satan. Why so?
The Fruit of Knowledge – Evil of Divine?
Sadhguru: If you go by the story, Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, were a dumb couple. They did not know what to do with each other. Then the snake came and made them eat the fruit of knowledge. Would you say that someone who makes you eat the fruit of knowledge is evil or divine?
By eating this fruit of knowledge, life got initiated on this planet. The whole life process became possible only because of the snake tempting Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge and share it with Adam. Only one who is against the fundamental processes of life can and will say the snake is an agent of the devil. One who initiates life has to be an agent of the Divine. So, here, we always saw the snake as an agent of the Divine. There is no temple in India without a snake, indicating that it is an agent of the Divine.
The Surprising Relation to Spiritual Growth
Wherever the spiritual process involves the movement of energy, there, the serpent becomes very significant. The basic form of un-manifest energy in the human system is represented as a serpent in the form of kundalini. In a way, the whole system of Yoga is about coaxing the serpent to rise and move. The essence of the yogic process is when this energy, which remains largely un-manifest in the human system, finds full expression, and reaches its highest peak. Hence, it should not be surprising that Patanjali, who is held as the father of modern yogic sciences, is represented with a snake’s body and a human head.
The symbolism is very clear – whether you want to awaken the fundamental nature in you and take it to its highest point, or you want to have a cascade of that energy from elsewhere – both ways, the nature of the serpent and this energy are very closely connected and related. The same applies to almost every aspect that is dormant in a human being. Humans are not yet beings – they are work in progress or regress.
What a Cobra Can Teach You
A human is a becoming, not a yet being; they need to become. Only because humans are incomplete projects, they have the freedom to shape themselves. If you were “mission accomplished,” there would be nothing to do, but you are an incomplete project. For this project to come to a fruitful completion, you need to tap into this energy which is symbolized, represented, and manifested in the form of a serpent.
This energy can find expression as a serpent, either by awakening it or by being able to receive a shower of it. Either way, if you do not handle it right, what you could consider as the making of a human being is bound to be distorted. We have seen people where kundalini went bad beyond correction in this lifetime because they did not handle this energy in the right sense.
To bring an understanding to the nature of the serpent, it has always been a part of certain sects of Yoga that an aspirant acquaints himself with a cobra in his full potency, beauty, grace, and – not with the fangs pulled out. The idea is to learn the ways of the cobra so that you learn to handle the nature of your energy in the right sense. By being with, observing, and imbibing the nature of a serpent, you come to a deep understanding of how to handle your own energies. Their behavior and their character are so very similar.
When a Cobra Becomes a Deadly Weapon
Those who come from certain parts of India may have heard stories like this: if you do something to a cobra, it will remember for 12 years, come after you, and bite you. That's a very unfair thing to say about the cobra, but why and from where this legend has originated is – if you do certain things, if you acquaint the snake, or the cobra particularly, with the flavor of energy of a certain person and create a certain situation, wherever he may be, he will go and bite him – only him.
There is a cult like this in India where if we want a particular person to be bitten by a snake, they will usually steal that person’s unwashed undergarments. If an unwashed undergarment is stolen from the house, people will try to block every hole in their house, or they will travel. They do not want to be around because someone may employ a snake to bite them by making it acquainted with their physical energy. A snake can be programmed to go and bite a person wherever they may be. Once they do a certain ritual and process, it will go in search of the person.
This negative usage is always more dramatic; that is why it draws more attention. But there are also positive ways of using this energy. It can be used in so many beautiful ways for one’s wellbeing and development. Snake worship is not unique to India alone – almost every civilization has done it. Only in the last 2000 years, these things have been obliterated in other societies; otherwise, it was everywhere. They say even Moses set up a snake temple. The serpent and human life are closely connected.
Snakes – More Closely Related to Us Than We Think?
You know you have a reptilian brain in your head. In the evolution of the physical form, your nearest neighbor is the orangutan or the chimpanzee. In the evolutionary process of the being, the snake and the cow play a very important role. When we utter the word “snake,” most people only think of a venomous creature, so the first reaction is to kill it. A snake is the only animal in India that gets a funeral. Not even a cow gets a funeral. But if a snake dies, it gets a funeral, because in terms of life energies, they are close to a human being. There are various aspects to it, but the important thing is that we do not think of a serpent as a venomous creature. We are thinking of a creature who is energetically so sensitive and whose perception is so keen that snakes know things that you cannot imagine.
