FEATURE STORY

Why Naga Can Be Your Key to a Long and Healthy Life

Sadhguru speaks for the first time about the core qualities of the newly consecrated Naga, and how it can enhance not only one’s life but even one’s lifespan. This ties right into the three essential aspects that every human being consciously or unconsciously strives for. To find out more, read this excerpt from Sadhguru’s talk during the Naga Pratishtha at the Isha Yoga Center, Bengaluru.

Sadhguru: Naga is a living deity. One can use it as an access point to perceive, experience, and know other aspects of life, both within and without. Because as they are, human faculties are of a limited nature. What we can see, hear, perceive, and understand has limitations. And there is always a longing within a human being to go beyond those limitations. The whole Naga culture has come from that longing. This is not just in one religion or one place. Across the world, there has not been a single civilization that did not use snakes as access to deeper dimensions of life.

What is a Wonderful Life for You?

You are offering this copper or brass snake to enhance your lifespan. Because life is a lease. You are on lease. The body is on lease; it will go. Your husband, wife, children, home, property, bank account – everything is on lease. Generally, people’s idea of a wonderful life is that they have a husband, wife, children, home, money; they eat several times a day, and they even have a few ailments, a little blood pressure and diabetes – that is a wonderful life for them. You need to redefine what a wonderful life is.

If your life is extended, what will you do with it? Will you buy more clothes, more shoes, more cars, more homes, more property? Will you eat more food? Or maybe these days, will you get a new wife or husband? One important aspect of accessing Naga is to make the survival process very simple. If you just raise the bar of survival, do not think you are living a wonderful life. You may be living in a palace, but you are doing the same stupid things.

Naga is a living deity. One can use it as an access point to perceive, experience, and know other aspects of life, both within and without.

You can call it life, but it is actually time. Time is a small manifestation of the timeless, infinite space. Time is simply going away – whether you sit, stand, or sleep. It is definitely the most precious thing in your life. If you get extra time, what will you do with it? Because what is the point of bringing profound aspects to your life if you are going to do the same silly things forever? There are three key aspects to our life.

Three Intrinsic Goals in Life

1: Pleasantness

One is pleasantness of life. That is, as you sit here, your experience of life is pleasant. Maybe you are wet, maybe you are cold, maybe your legs are hurting, maybe your back is hurting, maybe some small rocks are poking you from below, but as a life, you are pleasant within yourself. This is your business. If you leave it to the pebbles, if you leave it to people, if you leave it to other things whether you are pleasant or not, you are already finished before your life is over. If you allow something else to determine whether you are pleasant or unpleasant within yourself right now, your life is already over.

Pleasantness of life should be 100 percent your making. There may be people around you who create unpleasantness – they are quality control. They are checking if it is really working or not. So, pleasantness of life is entirely your business. Suppose you are just happy all the time. Especially if you are joyful every moment of your life, you will feel silly to be alive. “I’m happy, but what about it?” That is when you seek trouble. You seek something hard to do.

2: Profoundness

Actually, you are not looking for trouble – you want something profound to happen. When nothing profound happens, the only way is to poke yourself somehow. Maybe get married, maybe start a new business – do something to poke yourself a little bit. Pain always makes human beings feel profound, unfortunately. Very few people know a profound sense of peace, love, joy, or ecstasy within themselves. Their peace, joy, and love come and go. But their pain is profound.

If a very profound sense of peace descends on you, you do not need anything else.

Let us say I just poke you with a pin – it goes to the very core of who you are because that is the nature of pain. Unfortunately, most human beings understand pain as profoundness. No – profoundness can happen in joy, profoundness can happen in ecstasy, profoundness can happen in love, profoundness above all can happen in peace. If a very profound sense of peace descends on you, you do not need anything else. For most people, the most profound peace they ever experience happens only when they rest in peace.

3: Impactfulness

Profoundness needs some guidance, help, and access. You need someone to find access; otherwise, profoundness may not happen. But pleasantness is totally your business. When it comes to life, all of us have to do one thing or the other. Now, when we do something, we want it to be impactful. You cannot help that as a human being.

If you attempt to be impactful without having a profound experience within yourself, you will start doing silly things; maybe start a war, maybe kill someone. When you have no profound experience within you to naturally be impactful, you will do all kinds of crazy things to be impactful. Sometimes it may be adventure which will kill you. Sometimes it is adventure which kills other people or causes terrible things in the world. Trying to be impactful without a profound experience of life causes damage to the planet, to people’s lives, and other life around us.

Snake Worship Around the World

One of the many examples of someone who was profoundly impactful was Emperor Ashoka. After he converted to Buddhism, he wanted to physically see Shakyamuni Buddha, who was already gone. So he sought Mahakalo, a snake deity. He put a cobra upon his throne as an emperor. Then, it is said, he had a live experience of seeing Buddha. He used the snake as an access to experience whatever he wanted to. In the vedic tradition, Naga and Sun worship are also related.

Fortunately, in this part of the world, particularly in Bharat, we have still kept the Naga culture alive.

And in Egypt, there was a snake god called Mehen, which essentially means “the coiled up one.” With the head in the center and coiling around it, it symbolizes the making of the solar system. Since it is still in a coil, it means the solar system is in its primordial formative state. After the solar system is formed, the planets have cleared the debris of creation, and they have found their own orbit. But before they arranged themselves in this manner, the planets were in a coil, slowly spreading out from the core. That is what Mehen symbolizes. The coiled-up snake god Mehen and the sun god Ra are directly related.

Of course, there were many Medusa temples in Europe. They were systematically demolished during the crusades. In Istanbul, Turkey, there is a large mosque[1] that used to be a cathedral before and later, during the Islamic invasions, it got converted into a mosque. Beneath that, there is the Basilica Cistern[2], which used to be the fresh water supply for the entire city. It is a massive structure that you can walk into, with bridges to go around. An unfortunate thing you see there is that a huge head of Medusa is used as the base of a pillar. Medusa’s head is intentionally placed upside down because if it was kept the right way, people would worship it. Medusa had snakes as hair, and she was very much part of the oracle culture in Europe.

[1] Hagia Sophia

[2] Built in the 6^th century by Roman Emperor Justinian, along with the Hagia Sophia

Many centuries later, the witch hunts happened. It is estimated that nearly 6 million women were massacred in a period of about 150 to 200 years, which is a huge number for the population at that time. That many women were slaughtered because they had access to certain possibilities. They had capabilities to see, know, and predict something. If individuals evolve different capabilities and can see things, then you cannot sell that one big God who is supposed to be all powerful.

Fortunately, in this part of the world, particularly in Bharat, we have still kept the Naga culture alive. But it has been over 800 years since a Naga was consecrated in this way. So, all of you being here and being part of it, is fantastic.