He has played a major role in my life.
I am going to narrate the story of my spiritual journey and how Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev played an important role. It is impossible for me to not to talk about both Osho and Sadhguru, if I have to talk about my own spiritual journey.
I love Sadhguru as much as I love every human being, because I have discovered love and enlightenment as the true nature of every human being. But I do have many disagreements with Sadhguru’s many statements though. That doesn’t in anyway imply that I hate him. But mistaking disagreement as hatred and reacting to it with hatred is the serious problem that many Indians have today.
Here is a post that I shared on my Facebook profile four years before:
For about 6 months starting from April 2014 to September 2014, many things happened that I could have never imagined in my life. I will narrate them in this answer.
I hope this answer will be inspiring and helpful for everyone, regardless of whether they are devotees of Sadhguru or critics of Sadhguru. If you can be really open to read the story of another human being, then I am sure you will like this.
I have been getting many comments from Isha followers asking me to get a ‘life’… So, I want to give you a taste of my life with photographs and descriptions.
I have gone through much psychological suffering in my life. But now when I look back, I see that every moment of suffering was a blessing in disguise. As a child, I used to be very intelligent but always felt like I was deprived of love. My parents got married very early when my mother was only 19 years old. Due to my father’s job I lived in a place far away from my home town. So I certainly missed my hometown where I always used to be surrounded by my uncles, grand parents etc. My parents at that age were not really experienced to bring up a mischievous child like me and also there were no elders like my grand parents to assist them. This always happens in many families, especially if the parents are married too early and move to a different place far away from the elderly people who are experienced in bringing up children. Parents always bring up the second child in a better away, simply because they now avoid the mistakes they did when they brought up the first child.
My father’s nature of job was such that he would get transferred once in a year. So, I lived a life in which I couldn’t make any friends in the long term at all. I studied my LKG and UKG in a school in Kadapakkam (in Chennai to Pondicherry ECR road), 1st standard in Presentation convent, Tirunelveli, my native place and 2nd standard in Colachel, Kanyakumari district. My life was totally fine until this period. But after that, my life started to become a hell.
See the following picture:
This place is a small village called ‘pudaiyur’ near Tittagudi, Tamil Nadu. What you see in the map represents a distance of about 2 square kilometers. Near the red circle in the picture, there was an office called Tamil Nadu Palmgur Federation. It was closed down many years before. When I was 8 years old, my father got transferred here. I still can’t forget the night when I landed in this place, which was actually a grave yard. Even if you have to drink a cup of tea, you have to walk for one kilometre! There were only a few people living near the office and the nights I spent there were usually very terrifying. I had no friends here and I grew up in this place for 4 years, spending time in nature. But I missed a regular childhood that a kid usually enjoys. I had to travel about 80 kilometres (to and fro in total) to school. I used to stop lorries for lift and most of the my precious evenings and mornings were wasted in travelling in the bus.
This is when I started reading Ramakrishna Paramhamsa. I was just 9 years old then. Things like samadhi fascinated me. I understood that spiritual enlightenment is the real subject matter of religion. I was very devotional, used to sing and chant devotional songs and make idols using clay. Later I also got a Tamil book published by the son of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (Tirumalai Krishnamacharya - Wikipedia). I understood the meaning of ashtanga yoga. I used to try asanas, pranayamas and meditations when I was about 9–10 years old. I had all the time in the world during holidays to meditate. So I pretty much spent the youngest years of my life meditating in a graveyard (almost).
The school that I went there was the worst school that I have ever went. It was a matriculation school that gave zero importance to health and hygiene. I always got first rank in school for all those four years. But I was totally unhappy about the school. I insisted my father to change my school and make me stay and study in my grandma’s place in Tirunelveli, but he never agreed. One day in my fifth standard, I ran away from my home to Chennai. It was a long story which made my parents to search for me in my school during midnight. The next day, all of my classmates were beaten and threatened to reveal whatever they knew regarding what happened the previous day. In the mean time, I was caught by one of my father’s friends in Paris corner bus stand in Chennai. I was brought home by my uncle. My father used to beat me a lot and I used to hate him.
I really wanted to change my school and also leave that graveyard. But the only solution seemed to be to run away. When the school just opened in seventh standard, one day in the morning I told my mom that I wanted to go out to the bazaar to read news paper. I took the watch that was newly presented by my uncle, went to the main road and stopped a lorry which was travelling southwards. I gave the driver Rs.20 and asked him to drop at Trichy. In Trichy I tried to sell my watch, claiming that my parents left me by mistake and that I needed money to get home. They thought that I stole that watch somewhere and threatened that they were going to call the police. I began to weep. Then the hotel owner made me to eat, dropped me in the bus stand and gave money to reach Tirunelveli. I reached my grandma’s house in the evening and everyone was shocked seeing me. I said, ‘grandma, I want to study here. I want a better school’.
In the next few days, I started my 7th standard in a new school. This new school had everything that I had dreamed of. It was a heaven! There was a big library, a vast play ground, a small temple, lot of trees, intelligent teachers, lots of opportunities to express one’s talent etc. The name of this new school was Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal Golden Jubilee Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli District: Sri Jayendra Golden Jubilee School
Those days were colorful days. We wore a cream color shirt and dark green pants. The classmates here were a lot more intelligent than the ones I had in previous school. The name of the principal is Usha Raman. The word ‘Usha’ means dawn. It would be correct to say that only after meeting my school principal, certain knowledge dawned on me.
But there was one problem. Seeing the life style and knowledge of my class mates, I felt inferior. They had excellent sports skills, many people spoke a very good English and there were excellent singers. I couldn’t even take the first rank in this school. In the first exam, I took 7th rank!
When I was in 8th standard, my parents moved to Sankarnagar and I started to live with my parents. Slowly, my inferiority complex began to grow. I started to get bullied by my friends.
9th standard… A very important year. During 9th standard, I managed to get the first rank! I participated in a lot of competitions like speech, poetry writing etc. I won a lot of prizes. But I felt that I was not good enough when it comes to social skills. I didn’t know how to make friends. Sometimes I started to think that nobody liked me in this world. I used to cry in lonely classrooms. A great deal of psychological suffering started to engulf my mind.
I kept winning in various competitions in the mean time. In fact, through out my life, I won prizes in speech and poetry writing:
I started writing a lot of poetry in Tamil about love and God. But what I lacked was love. It seemed to me that no one loved me. I wanted friends more than anything else in my life.
One day one of our family friends who was also a teacher in that school told my mom that was I called to school because they want to give me some scholarship. I went to school. I noticed some of my other friends gathered there. No one wanted to talk to me or say ‘hi’. The problem was with me though. I was very shy and insecure. So eventually, people stopped giving any attention to me because I didn’t know how to talk with friends. That evening I felt really depressed. I roamed here and there with a miserable and painful mind. Then I went inside a lonely classroom and began to scribble in some pieces of papers. I wrote things like, ‘I want to die’, ‘I am the worst creature in this world’, ‘no one likes me’ etc.
In the mean time, the function started in the ground and I could hear what was spoken in the stage. When the time to give awards came, my school principal said that they were going to give four awards that year. The first two were for the people who got the first mark in 10th and 12th. I heard her saying that the third award went to one of my friends who excelled in sports. And the fourth award is now being announced. The announcement went some thing like this: “ Now we are going to give scholarship for a student who is good in extracurricular activities like speech, poetry, essay writing and also good in studies. It is Shanmugam”… Now I started to cry even loudly, ‘Oh my God. what a stupid and miserable creature I am…They are giving an award to me and I am crying like a mad guy in a lonely classroom.’
My school principal Usha madam showed a good interest on me and regarded me as the most intelligent student in class. But I was doing stupid things, suffering my own misery. In 10th standard, I fell in love with a girl. She was beautiful, soft, gentle, kind, intelligent and seemed to be like a God or an angel. It was not love though, I know that now. It was a combination of many things:
1)I thought that falling in love was an ideal quality.
2) She was beautiful.
3) I liked her and her company.
4) I needed her love and was addicted to her presence and speech.
I really went crazy this time. I started to think about her all the time. I wrote a poem which indirectly expressed my love and gave it to her on July 16th, 1998. She understood and slowly started avoiding me. She stopped talking to me in a few days. (Yeah, I know it was too young to fall in love).
I wrote hundreds of poems about here that I still have. I wrote poems even in exam papers. It was a one-sided longing and a need to be loved, rather than a true relationship based on mutual understanding. Soon my school teachers and parents came to know about it. I went crazier every day. One day I cut my hand with blade; I actually made a few deep cuts in my left hand and was taken to a psychiatrist. I was given pills. One day I swallowed some 8–10 pills hoping that I would die but I just slept for a whole day and the doctor had said to my parents that I would be fine. Another day, I ate powdered rat poison but nothing happened to me. Either the rat poison was fake or rat poison doesn’t really kill a human being.
It was my tenth standard by the way. So everyone was worried about me. After a few months, I was taken to another psychiatrist again and was admitted in the hospital for over a week. My face got swollen and ugly as a side effect of the tablets I was taking. My school principal who was hopeful about me told me this one day when I went to her house. It was a beautiful night and she was conversing with me in the front yard of her house. She said, “You need to understand the difference between love and desire. Desire can destroy a person but love can never destroy a person. What you have is desire; that is why it is destroying you. I am not asking you to forget her. But pray to God that this desire should become true love. Because true love cares. Even if she marries a different person and is happy with that person, a true love can accept this. “
What she said was true; This was my first spiritual teaching. And I indeed became capable of being truly in love with her after a couple of decades. Yes.. Now I love her as much as I love every human being in the world and I am happy for her. She is married to some one else and I haven’t heard anything about her for the last 12- 16 years. But this genuine feeling of love doesn’t want to possess anybody.
But back then, I was not matured enough to understand it. I still continued to think about her.. I even meditated on her. I saw her in everything I saw. She was a living God for me. In other words, this feeling of mine was actually totally irrational madness towards another human being.
I also had a special relationship with God himself those days. I used to play dice with God, quarrel with him etc. I also wrote poems worshiping God and asking him that my wish should come true. I began to prepare myself to meet those standards which would make me a qualified person to marry her.
When things went really bad, I understood very well that I would fail in the exams if I wrote my SSLC exam that year. Because I had studied absolutely nothing..But people pressured me and asked me to at least pass the tenth standard. My uncle and aunt were advising me to somehow write the exams that year. It was already January 1999. So I quarreled with my parents and went to a village called Pappankulam in Tirunelveli where my grand parents (father’s parents) used to live. I told them very clearly, ‘I am not going to write my SSLC exams this year; Let it go for now. May be next year I will go to a different school and finish it!’
One day my school principal called my parents and narrated an incident. She had gone to the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram (Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal) to ask about me. According to what my principal had narrated, Shankaracharya had told her, ‘I already know why you came here. It is about a boy in your school right? He will not write exams this year. But he will write it next year and will bring good name to his school’. He gave her some kumkum to give to me and my parents.
So, in January 1999, I was taken to Coimbatore to my father’s brother’s house. Dhyanalinga in Isha Foundation was completed during this time. But I didn’t know anything about it even though I was in Coimbatore during this time. I worked various jobs: Was a courier guy in professional couriers for 15 days, a laborer in a lottery shop for a month and was also selling our own home made products (herbal products) for a couple of months.
My parents decided to make me stay and study in Papankulam, a small village close to western ghats, which was also the native place of my father. The village is very beautiful:
(I have written more about it here: Shanmugam P's answer to Why Tirunelveli people have more affection towards their native?)
I was rejected admission in Paramakalyani High School Alwarkurichi, questioning the reason for discontinuing my Xth std last year. We had told them that I had brain fever but the head master didn’t believe it. Later on, I got admission in a Tamil medium school which is Sri Kailasam Memorial High school, Thirumalaiappapuram. This school was completely different. The experience of living in a village was different too. I used to get up at 5:30 am in the morning, take my bicycle and go to this river:
I used to hear the song of SPB, ‘nama shivaya nama shivaya om namashivaya’ played in a nearby temple everyday as I rode my bicycle. Going to river at 5:30 AM on full moon days and on winters and rainy seasons were different and wonderful experiences..
There is a small statue of Ganesha in the bank of the river:
I used to roam everywhere in my bicycle, walk in the fields, take bath in small ponds and rivers, sleep on a rock and inside a temple car, sit in front of the old Shiva temple there and write poems all day, meditate under peepal or fig trees near the temples, sit in front of my house and watch the people of the village playing dice, discussing news and politics and chat in front of the Ganesha temple opposite to my father’s elder brother’s house, serve people in the village restaurant maintained by my father’s younger brother and enjoy every beauty that a village life has to offer.
I had good friends in school here. I used to go to school everyday by riding a bicycle for about 7 kilometres, passing through many beautiful villages, an orchard of jamun trees, Pottalpudur darga etc. In the evening, I rode the bicycle again with a group of friends for 7 kms. We sometimes took rest in the orchard of jamun trees on the way. There were rocks to sit on and we used chat while eating the jamun fruits that had fallen down because of the wind. I wrote poems almost every week in various traditional meters in Tamil. I took second rank in the school and won prizes in elocution and poetry writing.
I had one problem though. The English teachers who were teaching English didn’t really know English. I knew better English than them. They also used to hit the students with a bamboo stick with no mercy or compassion until the student falls down on the floor and cries for life with excruciating pain. This seemed very cruel to me. One day I didn’t complete the science home work and was waiting in the queue to get beaten. The science teacher also taught English for some classes. When he gave me two severe blows, I thought that I didn’t deserve all that. It was extremely painful and a student is getting treated as a criminal here. When he was about to give the third blow, I caught hold of the stick and told him, ‘sir, you are not even qualified to teach me, how can you beat me? You are not even teaching properly’. He got angry and asked my classmates to throw my bag out of the window and asked me to get out. I was taken to the headmaster. After a lot of investigations, questions, arguments etc, I apologized to the head master and those teachers and begged them to forgive me.
But since then there was a cold war between me and those two teachers. They were indirectly against every thing I did and complained about me a lot to the head master. But there was also a Tamil teacher who was the sister of my head master and who loved my poems. She used to help me a lot financially. I am extremely grateful to her for helping me and saving me from many troubles. My mother tongue Tamil was my savior here.
Once I disobeyed my English teacher and he slapped me. I stood still and told him, ‘slap me in this cheek too sir but I am not going to obey you’. (He was asking me to bring my father’s brother to school when the headmaster himself had said that it was not necessary). Towards the end of the year, he created many problems for me. He used to say, ‘let me see how you are going to write exams this year. I will make sure that it doesn’t happen’. Once I prepared my own question paper in mathematics with some interesting ideas and conducted a test for all of my classmates. It was not a test conducted by teachers but by friends with mutual understanding. So not even one person copied in that test because everyone were truly interested in evaluating where they stand. But this English teacher tried to stop this test by complaining it to the head master. But the headmaster gave permission for the test because my Maths teacher recommended it. His interference with my life continued for that whole year.
During the last two months, my Tamil teacher Mrs.Dhanalakshmi asked me to stay in a small house (which was a minihostel with 5 students) opposite to my school as she didn’t want me to waste time in travelling. I ate the free lunch at school and my Tamil teacher gave me money to eat in the mornings and the evenings.I successfully wrote the exams that year, scored 467 out of 500 with a centum in Mathematics and came as school second that year. My mark was higher then the first mark scored by the school in Alwarkurichi which had rejected me earlier.
I am extremely grateful both to Usha madam and Mrs. Dhanalakshmi, my Tamil teacher. I dedicated my first book to them:
I don’t have a picture of my Tamil teacher but here is Usha madam:
During the holidays, I wrote a lot of poems. They sometimes had a spiritual touch, talking about impermanence, liberation etc but most of the poems were about love. I was pretty familiar with the idea of liberation or enlightenment. One of the best speeches I gave was a speech regarding Ramanakrishna Paramhamsa at school. If you know Tamil, you can enjoy my poems here:
என் தமிழ்க் கவிதைகள் - பி.சண்முகம் - YouTube
Here is a sample:
Here is a verse from a Tamil poem that I wrote those days:
விழைவும் வெறுப்பும் புலன்மயக்கம் ஐந்தும்
பிழைசேர் மலக்கழிவு மூன்றும் – கழைவதும்
ஞான விழிதிறந்து பார்ப்பதும் வேண்டும்நீ
தானம்செய் தாயே இரங்கி.
Translation : I want to get rid of my aversion and attachments, illusions created by five senses and the three malas: anava, karma and maya. I want to see with an enlightened eye. Dear mother, with compassion, please give me these as charities.
This poem is a part of ‘நாமகள் அந்தாதி’ (andhati for Goddess Saraswathi). It has about 26 poems and each verse begins with the same word which was the end of the previous verse. (andhati style).
I enjoyed my holidays by doing a lot of spiritual contemplation. I didn’t know that another curse awaited me… It was going to be a horror story.
The school I studied in didn’t have 11th and 12th standards. I was planning to do a diploma. My father suggested to study Diploma in Chemical technology in Chennai. He said that I can get job easily in Sterlite or Spic in Tuticorin, which is very close to my place. I was concerned about the money. I knew that my father was not in a position to promptly send money for my meals and expenses every month. But my father assured me that it was not going to be a problem.
That was the only year (2000) when there was both entrance exam and counselling for diploma. I got 19th rank in the whole state of Tamil Nadu. I chose Polytechnic college of Chemical technology, Tharamani, Chennai.
At the time of admission, the principal said to me and my father in an unfriendly tone, “there will be ragging in hostel and nothing can be done about it, ok?” (In Tamil: hostelna ragging irrukkunga, engalala edhuvum seyya mudiyadhu’).
But the ragging was not like the ones I used to see in Tamil movies. It was a slavery. The seniors asked us to wash their clothes, finish their drawing assignments, buy food and drinks for them, give them money etc. They entered our rooms and took whatever they liked. They used to wake us up in midnight, slap us and snatch money from us. There was no use in complaining to anyone. Because seniors threatened, ‘if anyone complains, we will make sure that he doesn’t complete his education here.’.
These people were actually good people in their own native towns. But the group think in the hostel made them to act like animals. It became a norm. This is the danger of group think. There were many times when I was beaten, robbed and made to go to shops more than 10 times a day. First year students used to sleep in grasslands in the campus amidst mosquitoes until 10 pm, because going early to the hostel means that you will experience hell.
I went through this living hell and a prison life for one year. My father could not afford to make me stay in an individual room. I wouldn’t have hostel’s mess that way and would have to pay a lot for eating out. But in the middle of the third semester, a quarrel happened between second year and third year students. I was not at all involved in that, but people also included my name because I had written a song about the ragging in the hostel. Just because I wrote a song, I was considered as someone who contributed to this fight and I was permanently debarred from the hostel.
But I had no where to go. I began to live in the hostel without the knowledge of the security. There was a big hole in the wall near the back of the hostel. I used to enter the hostel only at 10 pm through that hole and sleep in one of my friend’s rooms, get up at 5: am, get ready and go out of the hostel through the same hole. I was living in streets the rest of the time. I had no money to buy food. But my friends brought chappatis and bread from mess (without the knowledge of the people in charge), by putting them in their pockets. Sometimes I had to eat just plain rice. This continued for 10 days until I got caught. My father didn’t trust me when I said that I was innocent. Finally I stayed in a room with some friends. It was good for me though. Staying out of the hostel and its prison like environment allowed me to explore life in a rich way. I have written a long poem about the hostel life and the horror story that happened there.
During the next few months, I started analyzing my own behavior. I started to look in and explore my mind to see what exactly I was doing wrong. Because there was a burning dissatisfaction about the way things are and I felt like I don’t live the life I deserved. I still didn’t forget the girl who I fell in love with during 10th standard. I used to have a notebook. Whatever I wanted to speak to her, I wrote them down in that notebook everyday. In the hostel, I used that note book as a pillow. I lived with her in my dreams. I wanted to make myself a qualified person to marry her. I thought she deserved a happy life and to give her that I must be successful in the first place. I wanted to become a poet but I lacked the discipline to send my poems to the magazines.
I often felt like an orphan those days.I felt I was deprived of what I deserved. Here are some pics of those days:
(first from the right side)
(I am standing at the back and laughing).
Let me narrate from a blog post that I wrote describing my journey:
I lived away from my parents when I was studying in a polytechnic college in Chennai. I initially stayed in a hostel but due to pathological ragging that was done by seniors in the hostel, I moved to a room shared with other students. I faced a lot of issues during those times but I have just made the long story short. I had chosen to study chemical technology but unfortunately in a few months I realized that it was not the subject I wanted to study. So, for the first year and a half, I did not score well in the exams.
In the fourth semester I took a decision. I decided to dedicate myself to studies, accomplishing my goals and showing ultimate devotion to God to earn his grace. I also tried to be morally perfect in every aspect. If God chooses to show his grace to people who are moral and devotional, then it should happen to me. So, I pushed myself to the extreme. The life for the 6 months was very intense and I gave my 100% in everything, in every moment of life.
During mid December of that year, I started to walk 2 kilometres in the morning at 4 am everyday to a nearby temple and pray for about an hour. Then I would walk back to my room. I did the same thing in the evening and I continued this for a month.
Here is the gist of my prayers: “Dear God.. you know me very well and you are aware of what I can do and what I cannot do. I am trying all I could do to change myself, work hard and also be a good person. But I have difficulty in controlling my impulses and exercising self-control. Why did you create me like this, with this kind of genetics? Please show me the way.. I don’t know what else to do. I have what you have given me as my available resources.. You gave me this body, you gave me these tendencies.. How can I alone be responsible to correct those tendencies and be a good, kind, hardworking person? You gave me the environment and genetic factors that made me neurotic, selfish and irresponsible. I tried my best and I am not able to change that. Is it fair if you punish me for something that I don’t have full control over? Please be kind and help me”..
I literally used to have a mental conversation with God everyday in the temple. In the mean time, I started analyzing my thoughts and behaviors seriously. Every time I behaved in a negative way, I sat and analyzed what went wrong. I made my thought process conscious and engaged in a deep contemplation every day.
In the mean time I started to wonder how much control an individual has over one’s behavior. Consider the following facts:
- People with low levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter produced by the nervous system, are predisposed to show impulsive activity and emotional aggression.
- People who have high levels of testosterone are more likely to show aggressive behavior.
- A brain tumor caused an individual to be sexually abusive towards girls. Once the tumor was removed, he became normal.
These psychological findings show that a person’s behaviour is highly influenced by hereditary factors, hormonal levels, other biological factors and the environment. They can even affect self control. So, somebody’s moral behaviour is not completely under his or her control.
“So, If God created me like this, is it fair for the God to punish me for the behaviour that is simply the result of my biology? Also, what kind of God he is if he chooses to favour the people who prays to him? I am willing to change and trying my best, so what is stopping from God to help me?”
I used to put these questions to God when I prayed. I reasoned with him a lot and I told him I really had no idea what to do more than what I was doing then. Whatever the problem was, I asked God to fix it. If it seemed impossible for any reason, I asked him to take my life and give me eternal peace.
When it came to studies, I made sure I dedicated a few hours each day. I pushed myself too hard and started to bite off more than I could chew, in all aspects. I remained alert about my thought patterns and behaviors and constantly monitored myself. I could manage all this until the end of the semester. After that, there was no way I could continue doing what I was doing. The grip that I had over myself began to loosen and I started losing my self control.
I did really well in the exams that semester. I had got the third highest score among my peers. But I had expected to come first. I did all I could do for this. I obviously worked harder than others but I still couldn’t reach my goal. My ideal self appeared to be so far away. I felt restless, anxious and unhappy.
In the next 6 months, I experienced a tremendous fear of loss. I started to get thoughts like, ‘what if I lost everything I have, What if I become a beggar?’…. I didn’t resist those thoughts, instead I waited to see what those thoughts are up to. Whatever bad situation that I imagined, I made myself mentally strong to face it. I told myself ‘I can face anything in my life!’… One of my favorite proverbs those days was ‘Hope for the best but prepare for the worst’..
I gradually started questioning everything in my life.. What is the purpose of this life after all? Why should I continue to live? Everything seemed to be meaningless. My rational mind started to question the existence of God. When I dug deeper into my mind, it seemed as if nothing had any purpose. There seemed to be no way to fulfill the expectations of mind. I thought I would rather die instead of having to suffer with my immature, neurotic and unpredictable personality.
Then I thought, ‘If I have decided to end this life now, then I have a freedom of doing anything I like… I can die at any minute when it seems to be impossible to live any longer.’… The idea that death is an open choice all the time gave me a sudden sense of freedom and peace. ‘Let me let this life going and see what happens’ I thought.
Introduction to the books of Osho
I got a membership in a nearby library later that year, in my fifth semester. That is where I saw a book by Osho. I had heard about him before but had no idea who he was and what he taught. So, I borrowed that book and began to read.
The first thing that caught my attention was what he said about meditation. He said that trying to concentrate and fighting with thoughts generate more and more thoughts as a result. He made very clear that meditation was not concentration. He suggested a new technique for meditation which was to witness my thoughts non-judgmentally, as an observer. He taught to observe my thoughts as if I had nothing to do with them. I was kind of already doing this and I felt it very easy and doable.
Next, he said that God is not a person. There is no personal God. ‘That is what I thought’, I said to myself. He told that there is Godliness, which is the very essence of life, which is the very essence of who I am.
Third, He made very clear what ego is. One of the things that both shocked me and sounded true was the fact that even trying to be humble can be a subtle way for ego to show superiority over others. We tend to think we are more humble than others and that kind of gives us a humble ego. He made me aware that ego tries to find meaning in everything and attaches itself to it. It makes me to define myself with concepts and always makes me in a constant pursuit of enhancing itself. It maintains a story, the story of ‘me’ and makes us constantly to be identified with it and protect it all the time. He also revealed that cutting of the identification with this self-concept created by ego is enlightenment. It is just realizing our own nature which is hidden behind the veil of ego. That is what Buddha realized under Bodhi tree. That is what Ramakrishna found in Samadhi. That is what every individual is searching for. That true nature of yours is what people actually call God. God is not somebody who is sitting in the heaven, watching you and granting your true nature. Everybody has a potential to realize their true nature.
I realized that a new door was opened for me. A new possibility of attaining complete fulfilment in my life has been just revealed to me. I found it to be refreshing, exciting and illuminating. I continued to read many books of Osho and became addicted to it. In one of his books, he revealed his own story of enlightenment and how it happened to him.
.I noticed a style in Osho. Osho had a tendency to exaggerate things. When he narrated an event that happened in the life of somebody who was enlightened, he often made his own screenplay and dialogues and made the story very dramatic. So, If somebody copies and rephrases what he said, it will be very obvious to people who have read many books of Osho’s discourses.
Also, he said many times that what he talks in his discourses is not at all important. His discourse is simply a device to silence our minds and make us receptive to his presence. Once we are receptive and available to his presence, then it can directly work on the seekers to progress in the path. He insisted more on a silent transmission than the content of his talks.
He also insisted that enlightenment should not be seen as a goal. That is a subtle way of ego entering through the backdoor. Enlightenment is not an achievement; it is simply uncovering our true nature. Everybody has the potential for it. But a desire for enlightenment can also be a hindrance in getting it.
He has contradicted himself many times and has openly admitted it. Life is full of contradictions. So, there is no way to explain about reality in a completely logical way. Sometimes it is natural for his statements to seem like contradictions. But whenever somebody asked about a contradiction, he often explained it to prove that in fact there was no contradiction.
Osho was very creative in his way of talking. His talks were filled with anecdotes, jokes, harsh criticisms against many popular people, repetitive statements and sometimes pointless gossip. He gave commentaries on Upanishads, Bhagwad Gita, Buddhist texts, Zen, Sikhism, Christian mysticism, Sufism and many more. He made very clear that all these paths lead to the same goal and explained the true essence of these paths.
Witnessing – Phase 1
As soon as I started reading Osho, I have also begun to put his witnessing meditation into practise. His witnessing meditation is an age old technique which is called Sakshi Bhav in Vedanta, Shikantaza in Zen and Sati (Mindfulness) in Buddhism. In the recent years, science has found substantial evidence for the role of mindfulness meditation in decreasing stress and increasing well being.
Soon, I went to my native place for my semester holidays and I got enough solitude to practice witnessing. A month earlier, I was practicing his other meditations like dynamic meditation, gibberish meditation and more. I created my own therapy based on his various meditation techniques and I do believe that it resolved a lot of unconscious issues.
As I progressed in my witnessing meditation, I started feeling calmer and peaceful. The thought process gradually slowed down. I continued to do it every day with great involvement. One day, when I was staring at the ceiling witnessing my thoughts, there was a brief moment of stillness with no thoughts. There was an absolute clarity and peace of mind that I had never encountered before. For the first time, I realized that I can exist without thoughts. It gave me a clear and firm knowledge that thoughts are not me.
(This happened when I was in my mom’s sister’s house in Tuticorin. Many people in the West mistake this an enlightenment because there is a clear change. But this is only a glimpse).
This was like a Eureka moment. An immediate excitement followed that gave me a new strength and peace which continued for the next six months. I went back to college for the final semester, which is the happiest period that I had in the entire three years. This momentary realization was a confirmation that there is something indestructible. I interpreted it as a glimpse of my essential nature. Osho used to call this Satori.
After this, I was able to concentrate on a single task for hours and be immersed in it. Recently, as I began to learn psychology, I realized that there is a name for this. It is called ‘flow’. Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. These states were very common and occurring everyday when I was immersed in a task. During those states, there was no feeling of my individual existence. It was as if I had disappeared.. There was just pure awareness, focus and a sense of being alive.
I felt that the complete flowering of enlightenment is very near. But I also remembered Osho saying that there will be many beautiful moments that you will pass through. Don’t make any of those moments your home. Just keep going. You may feel that you have arrived but it is not necessarily so.
I talked to one of my close friends regarding this and I started to explain him about the beauty of meditation. I also told him that I felt like I might be enlightened soon. But I was wrong. After about six months, the initial excitement of this Eureka moment faded. But the feeling that there is something indestructible and everyday occurrence of flow continued and never stopped.
As I continued to read Osho’s books, I felt very unfortunate that there was no enlightened master like Osho at present time that I could meet and ask my questions. I felt that if there was someone like him around, then he could guide me on my spiritual path.
Encounter the enlightened – The First Satsang With Sadhguru
In January 2003, I saw a wall post regarding a satsang at Marina beach, Chennai. It was titled ‘Encounter the enlightened’ in Tamil with the photograph of a man with a long beard. He looked like Osho. I saw the name ‘Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’ printed in the wall post. It was to be held on January 22, 2003. As soon as I saw it, I made up my mind to go there.
It was a beautiful evening at Marina beach with thousands of people gathered. Sadhguru spoke about many things which were similar to what Osho had said about enlightenment. He spoke in Tamil flavored with Kannada accent, sounding like the dialect of actor Rajinikanth. Most of his views were matching with the views of Osho. When he gave us instructions for a guided meditation, he asked everyone to focus in the middle of one’s eyebrows. I remember him saying ‘Just keep a slight focus in between your eyebrows, but don’t concentrate’. This instantly reminded me of Osho. ‘So, there is someone here who is enlightened’, I told myself. But it seemed almost impossible to approach him as he was already quite popular.
He spoke about his foundation called Isha Foundation based in Coimbatore which conducts Yoga programs all over the state. At the end of the satsang, his book ‘Encounter the enlightened’ in Tamil was on sale. But I had no money to buy it. I returned home with mixed feelings; A happiness on having seen another modern day enlightened Guru and a disappointment for not being able to buy that book.
After finishing my course in Polytechnic, I noticed a weekly article in Anantha Vikatan authored by Sadhguru, with a title in Tamil that translates to ‘Desire for everything!’.. This again reminded me of Osho’s advice saying that we should not repress our desires. At the same time, another clean shaved guy with the name Nithyananda showed up with his own article in Kumudham which introduced him as another enlightened modern day Guru! But for some reason, he didn’t quite appear enlightened to me, may be because he didn’t have any beard J..
My Career in BPO and My First Isha Yoga program
After spending a few months at home reading books by Osho and searching for a job, I started working. After working in two different companies in various profiles, I finally got a job with good salary in a call center in Chennai. I started earning money, made new friendships, faced a lot of ups and downs and changed four different companies in about 5 years time. I had stopped reading spiritual books and went ahead with life. Finally, I saw an announcement for Isha Yoga program which was to be conducted in Anna University for two weeks. (or one week, I don’t remember). I enrolled in the program with my friend.
I had a good time over the whole program. We were given detailed information about Isha and its activities for social welfare. I also came to know more about Dhyanalinga, which is said to give you the same effect that you will get in the presence of an enlightened guru. They said that if one sat in front of Dhyanalinga and closed his eyes, he would automatically become meditative. According to Sadhguru, the Dhyanalinga has all the seven chakras that a human being has. It has been consecrated in such a way that the energy and peace that radiates from Dhyanalinga is the same as the energy and peace radiated in the presence of someone who is enlightened. We were taught a kriya called shambhavi mahamudra, which had to be practiced twice a day. At the end of the Isha Yoga program, I immediately enrolled for the upcoming next level program called Bhava Spandana. It was a three day residential program in Isha Yoga centre, Coimbatore.
I arrived in Isha Yoga centre in the evening on the first day of Bhava Spandana. We were asked to submit our mobile phones, bags and money as there will not be any contact with the outside world for three days. I went to the dome of Dhyanalinga for the first time and meditated for fifteen minutes. To be honest, I just felt a normal relaxed state and stillness and nothing much in the presence of Dhyanalinga. The atmosphere was definitely conducive for meditation but I felt nothing more than how I would usually feel when I meditated in my home or room. May be I was not receptive enough or maybe the effects of the linga are overrated… But usually, according to Sadhguru and Osho, trying to figure out such things with our rational mind is not going to work. Their usual argument is, our logic cannot figure out something that is beyond logic. But I had an immense trust on Sadhguru. So, I was confident that I was on the right way.
I felt very insecure on the first night of Bhava Spandana. I felt like I had been disconnected from the outside world. But the next morning, the insecurity disappeared. I participated in all the meditations in BSP with 100% intensity. Some of the meditations involved action and were similar to the concept of dynamic meditation by Osho. The feelings of oneness and peace I felt there was not new to me since I had already experienced that with my witnessing meditation. But the three days were very beautiful and the overall experience was good.
After the BSP program, I came back to Chennai and my regular routine started again. A lot of things happened in my life then which gave me extreme suffering. I used to become emotionally dependent on certain people that I liked a lot; If the people I liked didn’t give me the same attention to me, it made me to suffer and become anxious. That was exactly what was happening in those days. It took a few months for me to become alright again.
Exploring Spirituality further
I had bought two books by Sadhguru, ‘Encounter the enlightened’ and ‘Mystic’s musings’. The book Mytic’s Musings was about many things that any rational person would never want to believe in. But I had no problem with that because of the trust I had in Sadhguru. I always remembered what Sadhguru said, ‘Don’t believe me or disbelieve me! Don’t come to a conclusion about anything by yourself. Be ready to say I don’t know and be a seeker’… Osho has said the same thing many times. It has always been my own approach to life too. I finished reading those two books and watched a lot of videos of Sadhguru’s talks.
I continued my meditations and I had many peak experiences. Peak experiences were described by psychologist Abraham Moslow as “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter”. In the mean time, I read the teachings of Ramana Mahirishi. I also came to know about Eckhart tolle and his awakening experience. I read three of his books, ‘The Power of now’, ‘A New Earth’ and ‘The Stillness speaks’.
I came across the teachings of another Indian guru named Poonjaji. Soon I discovered that there are many people who claim to be enlightened, especially in the west. Some of them I read about were Gangaji, Andrew Cohen, Ramesh Balsekar, Mooji, Joan Tollifson etc. I read their testimonies about the awakening experiences. Are each of one of them really enlightened or they just had some peak experiences and glimpses of their reality? There seemed to be no way to find out. Can we really draw a single line called ‘Enlightenment’ in someone’s life which is the ultimate line after which there is no progress further? Is everyone who claims to enlightened talk about that same line? I emailed a couple of these people and got answers too. They said that their enlightenment was a gradual process and not something that occurred in the single moment as Osho described. They also didn’t have a totally thoughtless mind, ability to leave the body at will or memories of previous incarnation. Did Osho exaggerate the effects of enlightenment by saying that there would be no thoughts or did these people just conclude that they were enlightened with no basis to support their claim? I had no answers to these questions.
I had already integrated Karma Yoga, Gnana Yoga and Bhakthi yoga in my life and made my life itself a sadhana. Every moment was an opportunity for me to explore the depths of unconsciousness and clear out the clouds which were hiding my own reality. The concepts of Advaita taught me ‘acceptance’. I learnt to accept the life as it is.
My Marriage and the life after
I got married in December 2008. The first two years of my marriage were spent in a lot of conflicts and quarrels between me and my wife. I became addicted to alcohol and started drinking twice or thrice a week. I started learning about PHP programming, chess tactics, astronomy, photoshop and many other things. Photography became my new hobby. Nothing much happened in my life those days. I used to go to Ramana Mahirishi’s ashram in Tiruvannamalai with my wife whenever I got a chance and spend time in meditation.
Two years later, I moved to my own native place, Tirunelveli and got a job there. I spent my time in learning, writing articles and trying out new things on the internet. New interests always popped up and got me going. The moments of flow helped me to stay on focus.
After another two years, I moved to Coimbatore. I started exploring places nearby. I climbed mountains and hills on weekends and took pictures. I enjoyed trekking in various places of Nilgiris. I had stopped drinking alcohol and started experimenting with cannabis. It seemed to be a magic herb. It enhanced my creativity, focus and compassion. We had no kids and there were no big responsibilities. I used to visit Isha Yoga centre occasionally but wasn’t thinking much about enlightenment or spirituality. I didn’t think anything about the future or the past. Living in the present moment was quite satisfying but there was still something incomplete in me which was yearning for fulfillment.
On May 5, 2014, I climbed the Velliangiri mountains. It is a holy mountain near Coimbatore. Isha Yoga centre is right at the foot of the mountains. Sadhguru himself had spent time there and he had said that many enlightened people left their bodies there and their energy can be still felt in the mountains. There was no one to accompany me to trek the mountain so I went all by myself. I started walking uphills at about 7:30 AM and reached the summit by 1:30. The mountain is very steep and difficult to climb. The view from the top is amazing. I had the darshan of the linga in the summit, took rest for about 30 minutes and started walking downhill. I took many photographs and finally reached the bottom at about 7:30 PM. The experience was wonderful.
The Major ‘Transformation’ –
The trip to Velliangiri mountains triggered the seeker in me and I decided to go deep in meditation as much as I could. I started paying attention to every moment, every thought and every sensation. I made very clear to me that whatever I observe, perceive, think, experience and know is not me. I witnessed all the passing emotions and moods as a passive observer.
I went to Isha yoga centre every week, took bath in Theerthakund and meditated for an hour. I spent almost half of the day there. In the office, my nature of job was to talk to the customers over the phone during the whole night and answer their questions. I became deeply involved in the present moment and enjoyed my work. I soon stopped thinking about many things in the external world. I noticed my thoughts slowing down leaving a peaceful, clear stillness in the large gaps between each thought. Very soon, I started feeling intense euphoria at times which lasted for hours. The quality of my work increased, the clarity in my voice and speech increased and I started to feel waves of bliss in my head. It was like a cool breeze flowing in my head.
Soon, I stopped my interactions with other people. It was not my conscious decision but happened automatically. I couldn’t believe that all these things were happening to me. I didn’t feel any intense negative emotion or anxiety but almost the whole day at my work was filled with bliss and peace. Soon, the psychological boundaries between me and the world started to disappear. I started getting a lot of attention and I was pretty sure that something tremendous was happening.
I went to attend Sadhguru’s darshan that happened in the Isha ashram on June 18th and 19th , 2014. I felt one with the whole universe during the entire satsang. The feeling of oneness with the world was then continuous. Whatever I did seemed to happen without much of my conscious will. Everything I did was spontaneous like a river flowing down the hills. The doer in me seemed to have completely disappeared and everything seemed to be happening out of cosmic will instead of my own will.
It was a huge blessing. Every day at work, I felt tremendously happy and satisfied. For the first time in my life, I felt complete and fulfilled. I wondered, ‘Is it really possible for me to suffer ever again?’… I felt like the king of the whole world.
I went to another satsang that was held on July 12, 2014 (Guru Purnima day). I remember getting on the bus feeling so light as if I had no weight on the body. Everything seemed to be so transparent. During the entire satsang, I was immersed in my Self. That night while I was lying on my bed, there was a sudden clarity. It seemed that my search was over. There was nothing else to achieve and nothing more to do to make me complete.
The above narration is my story until the day on which my seeking was over. Here are some pics during my trekking trips in the beginning of the year 2014, trip to Velliangiri hills and pics taken right after the transformation. Full details here: Nilgiris Photography - By Shanmugam
I delighted in being in the nature, roaming in the nature and immersing myself in the nature. But the trip to Velliangiri hills was incomparable. It was one of the most beautiful places on the earth. Here are some pics, just to give you a taste of my experience there:
I used to be a huge fan of Sadhguru. When my wife was pregnant, I was expecting a baby girl and wanted to name her Bhairavi (in the name of Linga Bharavi). But we got a son and named him Lingesh. He was born on Osho’s birthday which is Dec 11th.
I also got a Linga tattoo in my hand, as a remembrance of Dhyana Linga:
I used to share his blog articles actively in Facebook:
I defended him all the time and got angry on people who were speaking ill of him. The first post that I wrote in my blog Shanmugam's Blog was a poem that I wrote in praise of Isha and Linga Bhairavi:
But, I strongly disagree on many things Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev has said. Can you love someone and also disagree with him at the same time? You can… Why? Disagreement doesn’t mean that you hate the person you disagree with. Sadhguru himself has said that you should surround yourself with people who disagree with you.
But this is not understood by people who are calling themselves as meditators. They try to convince me to agree with him on everything. For the past two years, all that these people from Isha volunteers say about my blog is that my blog is bullshit and I am frustrated with my life, completely lost and a miserable human being. I have tried explaining to them that this behavior is quite blind.
Ever since I wrote a post titled ‘Journey of the seeker’, personal attacks and abuses came flooding in from Sadhguru’s devotees. As I started responding to these attacks by making them to question more of Sadhguru’s claims, I was labelled as a hater and an idiot. Then I noticed that this is how they usually behave and react to any criticism about Sadhguru. And many times, I have been asked to ‘get a life’…:)
Dear Isha friends,
If you are really listening to Sadhguru, then you will have no problem with the fact that I am disagreeing with Sadhguru. And I am also saying that most of what he says is misleading because I found that as true in my experience. And you are reading the words of a person who was once depressed and totally unhappy in life, but was later reborn as a blissful, joyful person who has found his liberation. Liberation was a problem of life and death for me. I knocked enough on the doors of reality, crying for life and shedding tears, with an intense longing from the bottom of my heart to get rid of my bondage, and it indeed happened. I live every moment as if it is a miracle. So, when people ask me to get a ‘life’ and say that I am ‘frustrated’ or have a vengeance against Sadhguru, it feels like a joke. I am more dissatisfied by the blind, cultish behavior of these followers.
To address this cultish behavior, I have some videos and posts. Check the below links:
Is Isha Foundation Becoming a Destructive Cult? - YouTube
Is Isha Foundation a Cult? Is Sadhguru Jaggi Va...
Update: 1st August, 2018
Today Facebook reminded me of a post that I shared a couple of years before.I think I should include it too:
Footnotes