Rigidity of mind and body
SADHGURU: A MASTER’S GRACE IS NEEDED TO MAKE THE SPIRITUAL PATH SIMPLE
DURING the practice of yogasanas, you realise how physically rigid you are.
It takes a little more awareness to become aware of the rigidity in one’s mind and emotions. Somebody who is rigid in their thoughts and emotions believes they are perfect because they do not allow room for any other way of looking, thinking or feeling. When you meet this person, you think they are pig-headed, but they think they are perfect.
Similarly, there can be rigidity when it comes to energy levels. For someone whose energy is fluid, on the very first day of the simplest kriya, the energy will start moving and transforming. Whereas for another person, even after practising it for a long time, nothing seems to happen. This simply depends on how malleable the energies are. The rigidity in all these dimensions isn’t really separate, it is all interconnected. The rigidity in one dimension manifests itself into the others.
On Patanjali’s path, yoga is a system where it does not matter what kind of a fool you are, what level of unawareness you are in, what kind of karmic bondages you have – there is still a way for you. If you are willing to at least to bend your body, you have already broken one karma. If your forehead touches your knee, you have broken a physical karma. This is not a joke; it is an achievement for a person who has never done it before. This simple limitation would have increased as time goes by. A day will come when you are totally rigid, both physically and mentally.
This is happening to everybody. Look at your own life and see how flexible you were at the age of 10, both physically and mentally. At the age of 20, the flexibility is considerably less and at the age of 30, most of it has gone. Not only physically, mental rigidity has also set in very severely. Life is just a regression for most people. They are not growing, they are going backwards.
Even with the few assets they have, they don’t grow. They just go backwards. Whatever advantage you were born with, you have not enhanced it, you have only taken it backwards.
The path is simple, but because of you, your personality, it has become complicated. The path by itself is not complicated. The complexities one encounters on the spiritual path are not because of the path. The complexities are there because of the mess that is your mind. The path is simple, but because you are there, it becomes complicated. Nothing moves within you. You become rigid, as if rigor mortis has set in. You need a master’s grace to quell the madness of your mind. If you allow the master’s grace, then the path is simple, as the path is the destination. If you simply sit here now, everything will pulsate with the existence and your whole being will pulsate with the existence.
You kept your energies suppressed to such an extent that the mind has become oppressive and it suppresses life to the point where nothing moves except what is needed to support the ego. Your energies are moving only to the extent that is convenient for your ego. The moment energy rises within you, everything is dissolved. The ego knows it very well. That is why it has kept it suppressed. If you don’t have any energy, then the ego will become weak. When all the energy is cut off, the ego will feel weak and it does not like that. It just allows the amount of energy which supports and feeds it well. If the energy becomes too much, the ego will be shattered. If kundalini begins to rise, everything will be shattered and nothing will be left. You will be just a force merging with everything around you.
■ Ranked among the 50 most | influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. He was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, India’s highest civilian award, in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.