How can flirtation lead to devotion? What do dhyana and love have in common? How can one find true and lasting fulfillment? In the last “Full Moon Flirtations” satsang, on Thaipusam (18 January 2022), Sadhguru answered all these questions and more.
Sadhguru: In the eight limbs of Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga, the last three limbs are dharana, dhyana, and samadhi. That is if you approach it with your awareness. If you approach the same aspects emotionally, there is flirtation, love affair, and devotion. Dharana means there are two, and there is an active interaction between the two – this is flirtation. When you flirt, you have to be careful about what you say, your body language, and how you sit and stand. Everything has to be measured because one wrong move, and it is over. Generally, a flirtation is brief because someone will inevitably take a wrong step.
A love affair is more enduring, and there are less rules and conditions. It is like dhyana. One has dissolved into the other. What was two has become one in some way. If that happens on the emotional level, we call it love. Dhyana also means to become vulnerable, which is true with a love affair too. There is no safety because you become completely vulnerable and available. You are at the discretion of another. There is the joy of union, but there is also the pain of someone walking all over you. Most lovers are blissful only in the beginning. After that, it is an aching joy, in many ways.
Samadhi means that both have dissolved. The same is true with devotion. The basis of your experience and everything that you are is you, not the other. If you dissolve this, everything is dissolved. The other is also gone. Everything becomes one.
When people move from love to devotion, they suddenly look like they are crazy. You see a lot of “crazies” here in the Isha Yoga Center. Even if you put them to work day and night seven days a week, they are still happy. This is the nature of devotion. The outside does not determine who you are anymore. Transactions of life do not determine what you are. So, twelve months of flirtation is enough. It is not that I was flirting with you. Whether I know you or not, whether I have seen your face or not, I am devoted to you. My whole life is about you. It is you who was flirting with me.
It is time to drop the flirtation and move to the next stages of life, which may be riskier but more profound. This profoundness of life will not come without risking the surface. This is the nature of life. For something profound to happen to you, you do not have to grow a halo around your head, nor do you need to be special. You just have to be human. Your life is not limited to the framework of your body and mind – it is everywhere. If you close your mouth and hold your nose for two minutes, you will understand that life is happening in a much larger way. If you are here just as life, profound things will happen.
In Yoga, Uttarayana[1] is known as Kaivalya Pada. In the Northern Hemisphere, particularly from Makara Sankranti or Pongal[2] onwards, life gets exuberant, and without knowing, so do human beings. If they are conscious, it will happen in a wonderful way. When things happen to the planet, they will happen to you even more because you are the most sensitive part of this planet. You are actually far more sensitive than a beautiful flower. The reason you do not experience this is because you have mental diarrhea. This is because right now our education system focuses solely upon the intellect. There are different dimensions of intelligence within us.
[1] Northern run of the Sun in relation to the Earth
[2] Traditional harvest festival in mid-January
At one time, when I was about nineteen years of age and my father had just given up on me becoming a medical doctor, they sent me to Bangalore where my extended family was involved in the silk industry – weaving, dyeing, printing, and all kinds of things – hoping I will like it.
I am willing to look at everything, so I went there to see this place where they were handweaving silk. There, this probably illiterate guy was working on the handloom. I have a very keen sense of sight, but I just sat there trying to figure out what he was doing. As he was working, first a flower appeared on the weave, then a peacock, and then a parrot. There was no printed design anywhere, no paper or computer. Just like that, this guy was creating patterns in perfect geometry.
So, thought is not the only intelligence. Thought is a rudimentary intelligence because it is absolutely dependent upon the limited data that you have gathered. By making permutations and combinations of the same data, you think you are going into newer dimensions of life, but you are actually just recycling the same things. Recycling is good when it comes to anything physical because all physical aspects of life are limited. But being human means that you are something more than the physical. That dimension need not be recycled. It must be stepping into something new at every moment of your life.
If you recycle, it means you have become a stagnant life. Once you stagnate, you will stink. Doing the same things over and over again is never going to fulfill you. Fulfillment will happen to you not because you have reached some peak and there is no other place to go; fulfillment will happen to you because you are constantly stepping into new terrain. The English word “fulfillment” may evoke a wrong connotation. Dhanya does not mean you have hit the ceiling; it simply means you have become boundless. You are fulfilled if you are constantly evolving, not because you have reached a certain place and stopped there.
Everything physical has to be limited. That is the nature of physicality. I am not just talking about your body. Everything that you handle is physical. It is sensible to always keep it to the minimum and recycle it. But when it comes to consciousness, it is not a recycle – it is a constant exploration. If you step into new terrain every moment, then you are fulfilled.
