The Ultimate Outlaw
Why do I invoke Adiyogi so recurrently? It is a question I am often asked. The answer to that is simple.
It is not because I want to anthropomorphize the divine. It is not because I want to introduce some devious mode of pagan worship. It is not because I want to usher in some new Eastern cult.
I invoke him because he is vital to our times.
And he is vital because there is nothing more important in the world right now than raising human consciousness. We have the tools and technologies in our hands with which we can make this world a paradise, or turn it into living hell, or obliterate it altogether because of our own capabilities. In other words, we have reached a point where if we do not raise human consciousness, our intelligence and capability is going to work against us. We are racing rapidly towards self-sabotage.
It is not the uneducated who are threatening the life of this planet today; it is those who are educated, technologically capable and who consider themselves civilized who are doing the necessary work of uprooting all of humanity and the world. We have enough nuclear weaponry today to destroy this planet many times over.
We also have an economic engine that we are desperately trying to drive at a faster pace. We know it spells destruction. But we are in a compulsive mode, and cannot stop the momentum. We really do not need another nuclear explosion to annihilate life on this planet. Just a successful economy can do it quite effectively!
How did we get ourselves into this mess?
We got here because we developed our intellect at the expense of our interiority. We made the mistake of believing this the intellect was synonymous with our entire mentalscape. Right now, we use the single faculty of the intellect and mistake it for everything, forgetting that the mind is much more than that. The Eastern culture spoke, in fact, of sixteen faculties of the mind of which the intellect is only one. It divided these into four basic categories: the discerning dimension or intellect (buddhi); the accumulative aspect or memory (manas); the identity aspects (ahankara); and awareness (Chitta), which is beyond both intellect and memory.
The intellect has received enough bad press. It is routinely disparaged by religious traditions. It is not my intention to add to that disparagement. The intellect is not the problem. It has, in fact, contributed hugely to human culture and civilization. It is a wonderful tool - a scapal that can cut through any object, an incredible instrument for discernment, dissection and analysis, crucial to human survival.
The problem is that the intellect has assumed disproportionate importance. We have shackled it to our identity, ahankara. Once the intellect is identified - with gender, class culture or race - it is no longer a useful tool. It is like using a sticky knife: if you cut onions with a knife and use the same sticky knife to cut cake the next day, everything will taste like onions!
An identified intellect leaves you with a completely distorted experience of reality. The human struggle is just this: you are unwilling to shake off the bits and pieces of knowledge you have acquired because these give you some sense of security and identity. For a tiny bit of knowledge, you are giving up the cosmos!
Additionally, in isolation from other faculties of the mind, the intellect is a disaster. For while the other dimensions of the mind enhance, the intellect can only divide. It does not allow you to simply be with anything completely.
As a human being, you are just an infinitesimal extension of this planet - and not even a separate extension! Even now, you have to breathe, you have to eat, you have to drink - you are constantly connected to the rest of existence. Without the ongoing transaction you could not exist for a moment. You are a mere pop - up and one day you will pop out. The body knows that. But the intellect chooses not to. It cuts you off from this reality and gives you a virtual identity that doesn't really exist. This is what the tradition called 'maya' - a make-believe world, a state of self-delusion.
When you go by the intellect alone, you dissect. But the nature of conciousness is inclusion. Conciousness is one big embrace of the universe. If that experience does not happen to an empowered intellect, that intellect is going to destroy the world. In the East, there are several proverbs that say that when people show symptoms of an overactive intellect, they are heading towards total destruction.
Take the example of the human family. There was a time when a hundred or more people could live together as one unit. Over time, it came down to four. Now often even parents have to live separately! There is nothing intrinsically right or wrong about this. It is just symptomatic of the growing significance of the intellectual dimension in modern life: it is essentially divisive. And if you go further, you will become schizophrenic, because the intellect will also divide the self into different parts! In today's world, there is much effort towards unity, but if you try to stitch the world together with a knife, it will only leave everything in tatters.
So the crucial ingredient missing in the world today is what yoga calls chitta - the deepest dimension of the mind, intelligence unsullied by memory, which connects you to the very basis of creation. Chitta is awareness. Awareness not as alertness; it is Aliveness; it is a profound intelligence that lies beyond the intellect, beyond memory, beyond judgement, beyond karma, beyond all divisions. It is the intelligence of existence itself, the very cosmos in the living mind. In the yogic tradition, it is said that once you distance yourself from the compulsions of your genetic and karmic software, as well as the vested interests and identifications of your intellect, you are in touch with chitta, an unclouded conciousness.
Now, your life returns to the way it has always intended to be - radiantly alive, fresh, immaculate. Even the divine has no choice but to serve you. You have now enslaved Shiva!
Adiyogi becomes hugely significant in such a context because in this area there is no one on this planet who has explored and revealed as much as he has. In terms of creating the most extensive and sophisticated system of human self-understanding - 112 methods by which human beings can explore and reach their fullest potential - there is no one whose contribution exceeds his.
Adiyogi knew life by becoming one with it - not cerebrally, but experientially. A yogi is one who has experienced union with the whole of existence. What Adiyogi represents, therefore, is knowing, not knowledge. Knowledge is intellectual accumulation; it is information gathered and processed in bits and pieces. Knowing on the other hand, is neither intellectual nor accumulative.
If you pass by a flowering plant and you know the chemistry of its fragrance, that is one dimension of knowledge, if you know the experience and ecstacy of that fragrance, that is another dimension of knowledge. But if you become the fragrance, that is knowing. That is also aliveness.
A knowing that is hundred percent experiential. A hundred percent alive. A hundred percent here and now. This is what Adiyogi represents. And that is why despite multiple attempts to appropriate him, he cannot be domesticated by any sect or scripture, dogma or doctrine.
Nature has set some laws for human beings. Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored. In that sense, yoga is a science for those who seek to be outlaws. And that is what Adiyogi represents: the ultimate outlaw.
Excerpt from Adiyogi : The Source of Yoga.
Image courtesy - Isha Foundation.
It is not because I want to anthropomorphize the divine. It is not because I want to introduce some devious mode of pagan worship. It is not because I want to usher in some new Eastern cult.
I invoke him because he is vital to our times.
And he is vital because there is nothing more important in the world right now than raising human consciousness. We have the tools and technologies in our hands with which we can make this world a paradise, or turn it into living hell, or obliterate it altogether because of our own capabilities. In other words, we have reached a point where if we do not raise human consciousness, our intelligence and capability is going to work against us. We are racing rapidly towards self-sabotage.
It is not the uneducated who are threatening the life of this planet today; it is those who are educated, technologically capable and who consider themselves civilized who are doing the necessary work of uprooting all of humanity and the world. We have enough nuclear weaponry today to destroy this planet many times over.
We also have an economic engine that we are desperately trying to drive at a faster pace. We know it spells destruction. But we are in a compulsive mode, and cannot stop the momentum. We really do not need another nuclear explosion to annihilate life on this planet. Just a successful economy can do it quite effectively!
How did we get ourselves into this mess?
We got here because we developed our intellect at the expense of our interiority. We made the mistake of believing this the intellect was synonymous with our entire mentalscape. Right now, we use the single faculty of the intellect and mistake it for everything, forgetting that the mind is much more than that. The Eastern culture spoke, in fact, of sixteen faculties of the mind of which the intellect is only one. It divided these into four basic categories: the discerning dimension or intellect (buddhi); the accumulative aspect or memory (manas); the identity aspects (ahankara); and awareness (Chitta), which is beyond both intellect and memory.
The intellect has received enough bad press. It is routinely disparaged by religious traditions. It is not my intention to add to that disparagement. The intellect is not the problem. It has, in fact, contributed hugely to human culture and civilization. It is a wonderful tool - a scapal that can cut through any object, an incredible instrument for discernment, dissection and analysis, crucial to human survival.
The problem is that the intellect has assumed disproportionate importance. We have shackled it to our identity, ahankara. Once the intellect is identified - with gender, class culture or race - it is no longer a useful tool. It is like using a sticky knife: if you cut onions with a knife and use the same sticky knife to cut cake the next day, everything will taste like onions!
An identified intellect leaves you with a completely distorted experience of reality. The human struggle is just this: you are unwilling to shake off the bits and pieces of knowledge you have acquired because these give you some sense of security and identity. For a tiny bit of knowledge, you are giving up the cosmos!
As a human being, you are just an infinitesimal extension of this planet - and not even a separate extension! Even now, you have to breathe, you have to eat, you have to drink - you are constantly connected to the rest of existence. Without the ongoing transaction you could not exist for a moment. You are a mere pop - up and one day you will pop out. The body knows that. But the intellect chooses not to. It cuts you off from this reality and gives you a virtual identity that doesn't really exist. This is what the tradition called 'maya' - a make-believe world, a state of self-delusion.
When you go by the intellect alone, you dissect. But the nature of conciousness is inclusion. Conciousness is one big embrace of the universe. If that experience does not happen to an empowered intellect, that intellect is going to destroy the world. In the East, there are several proverbs that say that when people show symptoms of an overactive intellect, they are heading towards total destruction.
Take the example of the human family. There was a time when a hundred or more people could live together as one unit. Over time, it came down to four. Now often even parents have to live separately! There is nothing intrinsically right or wrong about this. It is just symptomatic of the growing significance of the intellectual dimension in modern life: it is essentially divisive. And if you go further, you will become schizophrenic, because the intellect will also divide the self into different parts! In today's world, there is much effort towards unity, but if you try to stitch the world together with a knife, it will only leave everything in tatters.
So the crucial ingredient missing in the world today is what yoga calls chitta - the deepest dimension of the mind, intelligence unsullied by memory, which connects you to the very basis of creation. Chitta is awareness. Awareness not as alertness; it is Aliveness; it is a profound intelligence that lies beyond the intellect, beyond memory, beyond judgement, beyond karma, beyond all divisions. It is the intelligence of existence itself, the very cosmos in the living mind. In the yogic tradition, it is said that once you distance yourself from the compulsions of your genetic and karmic software, as well as the vested interests and identifications of your intellect, you are in touch with chitta, an unclouded conciousness.
Now, your life returns to the way it has always intended to be - radiantly alive, fresh, immaculate. Even the divine has no choice but to serve you. You have now enslaved Shiva!
Adiyogi becomes hugely significant in such a context because in this area there is no one on this planet who has explored and revealed as much as he has. In terms of creating the most extensive and sophisticated system of human self-understanding - 112 methods by which human beings can explore and reach their fullest potential - there is no one whose contribution exceeds his.
Adiyogi knew life by becoming one with it - not cerebrally, but experientially. A yogi is one who has experienced union with the whole of existence. What Adiyogi represents, therefore, is knowing, not knowledge. Knowledge is intellectual accumulation; it is information gathered and processed in bits and pieces. Knowing on the other hand, is neither intellectual nor accumulative.
If you pass by a flowering plant and you know the chemistry of its fragrance, that is one dimension of knowledge, if you know the experience and ecstacy of that fragrance, that is another dimension of knowledge. But if you become the fragrance, that is knowing. That is also aliveness.
A knowing that is hundred percent experiential. A hundred percent alive. A hundred percent here and now. This is what Adiyogi represents. And that is why despite multiple attempts to appropriate him, he cannot be domesticated by any sect or scripture, dogma or doctrine.
Nature has set some laws for human beings. Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored. In that sense, yoga is a science for those who seek to be outlaws. And that is what Adiyogi represents: the ultimate outlaw.
Excerpt from Adiyogi : The Source of Yoga.
Image courtesy - Isha Foundation.
😅✌️😊 Different one.. Best one
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