Isha forest flower nov 2014

Volume - 2 / Issue - 11 `15 Annual Subscription `180 November 2014
Effervescence
Effervescence of nectar seeking bird
Effervescence of a truant school boy
Effervescence of a stung Romeo
Effervescence of fish, flower and fiend
Beyond good and evil there is life
To live and to know life and deeper life
Is touched only by the effervescent
The effervescent one will transcend
the Inertia of Death.
Deathless is he who knows
Effervescence without purpose.
Grace & Blessings

Dear Readers,
The numerous benefits of yoga on our health are a widely recognized fact today. But what exactly does
it actually take to achieve perfect health on all levels? And how does yoga work on the human system
to establish these prerequisites? In our article “The Mechanics of Health,” Sadhguru breaks down the
technicalities in a way that only he can.
Naturally, the quality of our yogic practice is the key to its effectiveness. Therefore, in our Lead Article
“Vibrant Sadhana, Vibrant Life,” Sadhguru offers valuable leads about how to rekindle and enhance our
sadhana and optimize the benefits for ourselves and our surroundings.
How we breathe is a crucial factor in any yogic practice. This month’s Hatha Yoga article, “Breathe Easy,”
is all about the interplay of breath, posture, and body.
It is no secret that our state of mind greatly impacts our health and wellbeing. Then how to avoid becoming
bitter and frustrated? Our article “The Joy of Being Alive” brings you Sadhguru’s view on the main causes
of frustration in today’s world, and how to change one’s perspective in order to change one’s life.
“Devotion and Playfulness” recapitulates the essence of Leela, and with this article, we conclude our
popular Leela series. But this is not the end of Sadhguru’s storytelling in Forest Flower. From the next
issue, we will immerse ourselves into the world of Mahabharat!
The snippet “Live Simple – Eat Simple” contains Sadhguru’s observations on how to transform eating from
the mere ingestion of food or a social activity to a conscious process. Our “Roasted Vegetables” recipe is
a great way to delight in the natural, full flavor and nutrition of garden-fresh veggies. Enjoy!
The Editorial Team
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forestflower@ishafoundation.org
2
ISHA FOREST FLOWER November 2014

CONTENTS
Lead Article
Vibrant Sadhana, Vibrant Life
Sadhguru on Making Your Sadhana Grow 4
Musings
The Joy of Being Alive
Sadhguru on How to Avoid Becoming Bitter and Frustrated 7
Leela Series
The path of the playful – part LXI:
The Essence of Leela: Devotion and Playfulness 10
In Conversation with the Mystic
The Mechanics of Health
Dr. Devi Shetty in Conversation with Sadhguru 12
Isha Hatha Yoga
Part 11: Breathe Easy 16
Upcoming Programs and Events
Isha Yoga – Program Highlights 18
Isha Recipe
This Month: Roasted Vegetables 20
Live Simple – Eat Simple 21
Zen Speaks
Yixuan of Linji 23
November 2014 ISHA FOREST FLOWER 3

Vibrant Sadhana, Vibrant Life
Sadhguru on Making Your Sadhana Grow
The following is an excerpt from a darshan with
Sadhguru on 18 September 2014 at the Isha Yoga
Center, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Questioner: When I first came to the Inner
Engineering program, I came with such madness
for you and the whole process. But over time, the
madness has been waning. Can you explain this,
Sadhguru?
Sadhguru: It takes a lot of discipline to maintain
this madness. If this madness has not touched you;
if life – the process of life and that which is the
source of life – has not overwhelmed you in some
way, it means you have never lived. You have
existed, but you have not lived.
When you first came to the Isha Yoga or the
Inner Engineering program, the process was a
bigger experience for you than anything you
had ever known. I have not waned – you have
waned. I am still the same, still exuding the same
SADHGURU
thing. Initially, the process overwhelmed you in
the sense that it took away what you consider
as “myself.” Look carefully what it is that you
consider as “myself.” Your personality is actually
just a bundle of likes and dislikes.
Essentially, the difference between your personality
and that of the person who is sitting next to you are
your likes and dislikes – this makes you “different
kind of people.” “Your kind of people” means
both of you like the same things. In the process
of living, most people slowly push themselves to
a corner where they hardly like anything. If you
hardly like anything, you will become angry and
bitter. If you do not like anything at all except
yourself, you will become insane. Even medically,
the first sign of insanity is you start thinking no
one is okay except you.
We brought you the madness and magic of
spiritual process. Do not choose medically certified
madness instead. When the doctors check you,
4 ISHA FOREST FLOWER November 2014

you must be 100% normal. When you close your
eyes, you must be mad. If they check you and
certify you as mad, it is not good. But as you
make the process of like and dislike very strong,
you are going towards certification.
This madness that drew you here is the magic
of life. As a human being, you cannot fly like a
bird; you cannot run like a tiger; you cannot even
hop like a grasshopper – in that sense, you are a
crippled creature. But this crippled creature can
close eyes and go to another dimension of life.
Because there is consciousness, we can touch you
with another dimension of life, which is not just
life but the source of life. Due to lack of words,
because it cannot be defined within the limitations
of logic, we call this state “madness.”
If you had a profound experience and someone asked
you to define it, you could not, because it would
defy all definitions. You are guilty of systematically
destroying it over a period of time. This is the
technology of destroying the magic: The first thing
is you start making judgments – what is good, what
is bad, what you like, what you don’t like. When you
were a child, everything was magical. As you grew
up, you have destroyed it with stupid definitions of
likes and dislikes about everything. Again and again,
you have made the same mistake. If you want to
correct it, you can correct it now.
Sit with me today the same way you did on the
first day. Even now, I am the same – nothing has
changed. It is just that only those who can keep their
nose clean can breathe easy. The air is not getting
crummy – you just got to blow out the stuff that got
stuck in the airway. That is all it takes. You will be
amazed as you were amazed then, when you first
came to the program and suddenly everything lit up.
The lighting is not from outside. It is just that there
is someone here who made you willing to blow your
nose. And you did. On that day, if I told you to sit in
a certain way, you did so. But now you are selective.
If you do one thing, you do not do the other, and
vice versa. Therefore, sadhana has vanished. One
thing about sadhana is, it is not a device that you
can build – it is a device that you can make use of.
There are so many devices like this in your life.
You definitely cannot build a watch for yourself,
can you? Even if I give you 10 years, you cannot
build a watch that shows the time. But probably,
in 10 minutes, you can learn how to use a watch,
no matter how complex it is. The same goes for
almost every little thing. Can you make your own
spectacles? The whole world would get distorted.
The way we teach, the sadhana always comes with
the Inner Engineering process as a basis. We have
never taught Shambhavi or Shoonya meditation
alone. To teach Shambhavi, we spend seven days
with you. To teach Shoonya meditation, we spend
four days with you. But now because you have
become a “senior” meditator, you think these things
are not needed for you. You think responsibility
is for the new people – not for you who has been
here for years. Once you think that this limitless
responsibility is for those guys who have just come
to the class, you messed it up. Without this basis,
without removing the soot from your mind, the
process would not have worked the way it first did.
Now once again, you have limited yourself through
your thought process and your emotions. That day,
when you sat there as the “mother to the world” and
you closed your eyes, Shambhavi was an explosion.
Now you cannot stand the person who is sitting
next to you. If you do Shambhavi in such a state,
all you will know is breathlessness. Therefore,
every time before you do Shambhavi, give yourself
a crash course of Inner Engineering for two or three
minutes and implement it each day. Even today, it
will work. Or another option is, if it was such magic,
you definitely remember how you sat with me on
that day. Just sit like that with me right now. In
the next 10 minutes, I will still have you trembling
with nameless ecstasies, even today, because the
fundamentals have not changed.
Your mind is stuffed up – too many opinions,
too many ideas, too many likes and dislikes.
Fundamentally, what we taught you in Inner
Engineering or Isha Yoga is to sit here in an
unprejudiced way, without an opinion about

anything – simply willing to look at life the way it
is. Whether it is limitless responsibility, seeing the
inevitability of what is now, being a mother to the
world, not being the body and the mind – these
are the tools as to how to become unprejudiced.
The whole process is towards being able to be just
a piece of life, not some other nonsense that you
are trying to make yourself believe to be. If you
sit here as a piece of life, you will experience that
madness even today.
However, if you sit here as a firmly established man
or woman, American or Indian, I cannot do anything
with you. I do not wish to do anything with you
because it is a waste of time. If you are stuck with
limited identifications, there is nothing to do with
you in terms of spiritual process. We cannot make
you explode with a different dimension within
yourself. That is only possible if psychologically,
emotionally, energy-wise, you have pulled down the
boundaries. And this is what the Inner Engineering
process did for you. If you have reversed the whole
process, it is time you take the program again. Those
of you who feel that initially, you had a blast of
an experience, and slowly it has waned away, go
back to where it worked for you. Get back to Inner
Engineering. Do not just go and sit in the back –
enroll yourself for the program again. Go through it
like it is the first time.
Even today, if I go and sit in an Inner Engineering
program, I am bursting within myself. It is not that
I have to sit there to experience this, but in spite
of that – I must have taught a thousand programs
or more – the moment I uttered a few things – in
English language; not some mantra – everything
within me will fly. And it should for you too if you
sit with absolute openness. Do not think about how
to become open – just give yourself a crash course of
Inner Engineering every day, three minutes before
you start your practice. You will see the sadhana
will grow. Sadhana is a device that will grow unless
you killed it. Shambhavi Mahamudra for example, if
you have practiced it for eight to ten years, by now
it must be a bomb – not exploding you alone but
also whoever is around you. The very atmosphere
around you should crackle if you have allowed it to
grow. If you are working towards killing it, it does
not actually die, but it pretends to die.
Now, as you sit here, give yourself a crash course
of Inner Engineering. Focus on one aspect –
whatever appeals to you most – whether it is
responsibility, being a mother to the world,
or something else. Just do that now. Without
preparing the soil, even the best seed will not
grow. We prepared the soil and sowed the seed,
and it burst forth. Now you have to maintain the
quality of the soil and water it every day.
Do not think that if you did it once on the initiation
day, it must keep growing. It does not work like
that. But you cannot kill it entirely. If you make
yourself willing now, it will work right now. You
do not even have to wait until you do Shambhavi
tomorrow morning. You can make yourself alive
right now by doing the preparation and giving
yourself a crash course of Inner Engineering. Right
away, things will start happening within you.
Inspired to renew your Inner Engineering
experience or participate in the program for
the first time? For upcoming programs dates,
please see the Program Highlights on page 18
or visit ishayoga.org.
Inner Engineering – the peak of wellbeing
is a three to seven day intensive program
that provides tools to re-engineer one’s self
through the inner science of yoga. The
program includes the transmission of the
Shambhavi Mahamudra – an energy practice
of immeasurable transformative power – that
cultivates your body, mind, emotion, and
energy, ultimately aligning you with the
powerful flow of the fundamental life force.

The Joy of Being Alive
Sadhguru on How to Avoid Becoming Bitter and Frustrated
The following is an excerpt from a darshan
with Sadhguru at the Isha Yoga Center on
17 September 2014.
Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. I see many
people who are cynical, bitter, and frustrated. They
feel life has defeated them, and they resign. How
do we avoid becoming like that, especially later on
in life? And how do we help others to come out of
this way of seeing everything as a problem instead
of an opportunity?
Sadhguru: Being cynical, being depressed, and
losing interest in what happens around them –
these things largely occur because they have failed
at something. And it is very easy to fail in the
current social pattern. If you look at life in any
economically developed country, a normal person
cannot succeed – you must be quite insane to do so.
This is not exactly the case yet in India, but we are
going in that direction. Essentially, economy is a
process of sustenance for human beings. But today,
it has acquired a heavenly aura. The commercial
forces have created a situation where economy is
the most important thing in your life.
There was a time when, suppose there was an
economic slowdown in a society or a nation,
everyone would advise to save, not to spend too
much. But today, governments advise to spend – get
a loan and do shopping. You cannot spend what you
do not have – it is as simple as that. But most modern
societies do not understand this. People have six
credit cards and think they can use all of them as
much as they want before life catches up with them.
As students, they already have a quarter million
“student loan.” Then immediately, they must buy a
car – they have a car loan. Then they have to get a
house – 30-year mortgage. If you mortgage your life
for 30 years, I think you lost your sense – you have
no sense about life at all.
When human beings were hunters and gatherers,
they were completely free. If they made a kill on
one day, the next 15 days, they ate from it and just
lived – maybe beat a drum that was made out of
the skin of the animal and danced around a fire, or
used their hands to create something else. But food
was insecure then – these wild animals are quick.
Many times, they did not get a kill and everyone

went hungry. So people developed agriculture.
In agriculture, you have to do certain things on a
particular day, not two days later. Some compulsions
came with that, but it was still okay.
In India, depending upon what food grains you
grew – I am not talking about cash crops – you
worked hard for 50 to 100 days in a year, and the
rest of the time was a series of festivals. Every
village had its own festivals to which people from
the surrounding villages came. Every wedding was
at least five days of celebration. Work for sustenance
was only 50 to 100 days in a year. Today, once you
have a 30-year mortgage, it is almost 365 days.
Whether you like it or not, you have to go, and not
everyone is geared up for this – they will lose their
mind after sometime.
Now, they also have to pay health insurance and
grave insurance. When they are alive and healthy,
people are paying in installments for their funeral.
Unless you are going to leave in a beautiful way
that will be very useful for everyone around you –
why are you bothered about how your funeral will
be handled when you fall dead? I understand and
appreciate if you do not want to be a nuisance to
someone else, but what does it matter how they will
bury or burn you or feed you to the dogs? This kind
of concern is going to take away your aliveness.
Another aspect is that you constantly have to do
things like a machine, not out of passion. The whole
society expects you to be a machine. You are not
waking up in the morning because you want to
make a difference in something today, not because
what you do is meaningful, not because you want
to do it – it is all about making a living. Making a
living takes very little. It only becomes a problem
when you want to live like someone else. If you just
want to live, it is very simple – every human being
is capable of this.
Making a living only becomes complicated when
you want to live like someone else, when you want
to have the things that your neighbor has. Today,
the whole economic model on the planet is just
about that, and this keeps increasing the suicide
rates, the numbers of cynical, frustrated people, and
the numbers of broken minds. That is because there
is no ease in life – you always have to do something.
If you do not go to school, if you do not go to
work, something bad will happen. And you cannot
suddenly change the course of your life and do
something else. Everyone is trying to compel you to
do the same things all through your life. Affluence
is not going to bring freedom to people – it is going
to tie them up in knots.
Once I was driving in an upscale area of Washington
DC, where many significant companies have their
offices. There were around 150 to 200 men and
women on the sidewalk, all well dressed and
obviously well employed. It was lunch time, but
they were not sitting in some nice place but buying
hot dogs or whatever on the street. When I stopped
at a traffic light, I saw no one was even talking to
each other. All of them were holding something
wrapped in paper and biting into it like hungry
dogs. Human beings are supposed to eat with a little
more aesthetics.
One thing is, this food is made in such a way that it is
not fit to be touched by your hands. It is wrapped and
probably, your hands are never clean for whatever
reason, and you are allergic to every bacterium in
the universe, though the number of microorganisms
in your body is 10 times the number of human cells
in your body. The microorganisms have a ten-to-one
majority compared to what you call “myself.”
Apart from that, the food is designed in such
a way that without opening your mouth like a
hippopotamus, you cannot take it in, because it is so
big. I have never ventured into getting anything like
that for myself because it is not made for me. These
are all well-to-do, largely young people who are
working in some sought-after job. But this is how
they eat, standing on the street side. Probably every
day, their lunch is like this. If this is how you treat
yourself, if this is how you treat the food that you
eat, if this is how you treat the water that you drink,
if this is how you treat the air that you breathe, if
this is how you treat all life around you, how can
you be well? You cannot be well.

The only thing is you drive a more expensive car
than your neighbor – that is the only wellness you
know. You cannot know the joy of just being alive.
When you do not know the joy of being alive, the
thrill of driving a better car than your neighbor will
slowly wear out, and you will become frustrated.
As you grow old, you will grumble at everything.
You will become irritable and stupid – you will
not become wise. Look at the grandfathers today –
they are definitely not wise. Most of them are not
an image of wisdom but of irritability, cynicism,
frustration, and depression. Or they completely lost
their memory and their mind, because it has always
been all about economy.
There was a time when as life came to an end,
they always had something that someone could
inherit – not anymore. Modern life means, their
savings come to an end when they still have some
life left in them. All their life, their whole mindset
has been about how many dollars or rupees they
have and what they are earning. When that is
gone, naturally, they become cynical, frustrated,
and depressed.
Whether the world is going to rejig its
life or not – it is time you rejig your life.
The most valuable thing in your life is life
itself – everything else is just accessories.
Where I live, what I drive, what I wear, what I eat –
these are all accessories. I am alive right now – this is
the biggest joy. Whether you live like this or that is
not the point – do you know the joy of being alive?
If you do not know this, what is the point? What is
the point of living in a palace and being miserable?
Once, many years ago, I went to the US Embassy
in Chennai, and when I came out of the building,
there was a young boy from Andhra Pradesh sitting
on the street and bitterly crying, like something
serious was lost and this was the end of life. I went
up to him and asked, “What happened to you?” It
turned out he had applied for a visa to the United
States and it got rejected. This was the end for him.
He is imprisoned in this large country called India.
He cannot go to the United States. Anyway, half of
those who were born and who live there are unable
to bear it, but this young boy is broken-hearted
because he cannot go there.
No matter what level of economic comfort you
achieve, if you do not know the joy of your existence,
everything else will mock you and make you more
and more miserable. When you are poor, at least
you have the hope that one day when you make
it, everything is going to be okay. Once affluence
spreads across society, you realize this is not it, and
a deep sense of frustration arises.
Everything becomes fake – if you smile, it is a fake
smile; if you laugh, it is a fake laugh; if you say
you are “wonderful,” you do not really mean it.
The whole society becomes a charm school where
everyone learns to say the right things, but there is
nothing right about it. This is not only about one
country – this will happen to everyone. Even in this
country, the affluent segments of society become
like that.
If you think there is something more important in
this life than you being alive right now, you are
bound to end up frustrated and bitter. How quickly
you get there is only a question of time and life
situations. You must let it sink deep into you, that
the biggest joy in your life is that you are alive right
now. If you know this every moment of your life, if
you check and see, “I’m still alive – great!” – what
more do you want? There may be a little concern
whether you will get dinner or not, but still – I
would rather be hungry and alive than stuffed and
dead. What is your choice?
November 2014 ISHA FOREST FLOWER
9

Leela Series
The path of the playful –
Part LXI
The Essence of Leela: Devotion and Playfulness
With the following article, in which Sadhguru distills the essence of Leela, we conclude this series…
only to move on to Mahabharat from the next issue!
Sadhguru: Whatever we could do in these seven days
does not really do justice to a man like Krishna. You
cannot contain him in seven days. But in some way,
I think you got the drift of how intensely passionate
he was about everything that he did. In every
situation – whether as a child, a youth, a warrior,
a statesman, a person who strived to establish a
certain balance in society, a teacher, or when people
looked at him as a divine incarnation – there was
not a moment of slackness in his life. He was on,
full-force, all the time. Those who manage to keep
themselves on all the time, for whatever reason,
invariably begin to grow into a bigger possibility.
Whether we focus on awareness, devotion, action,
or our energies – ultimately, we see how to keep this
life that you are on all the time. If it is on all the
time, it will take you to the ultimate nature.
How to keep it on? Though Krishna spoke about
all the four fundamental ways1 in his teaching, he
highlighted the path of devotion – not because he
thought that it is better than awareness, action, or
kriya, but because he saw a large number of people
are more capable of emotion than anything else. If
you look at your life in terms of wellbeing, let’s say
today your business is doing well, your job is going
fine, everything is working out reasonably well, but
some emotional issue comes up and your life goes
down in your experience. On the other hand, let’s
say today your job or business has not been going
too well, but you come home and on an emotional
level, everything is good – then the emotional aspect
glosses over everything else.
For most people, emotions are a ruling factor. They
can attain peak intensity much easier through
emotions than through any other aspect of life.
What the path of emotion, devotion or passion
demands is a certain abandon. Like Francis Bacon
said, “It is impossible to love and to be wise.” If you
want to be smart, correct and all of that, it will never
happen. Those who want to fall in love should be
willing to make a fool of themselves. You should not
mind being vulnerable. It is this which scares people
off. It is not that otherwise, you are not vulnerable.
It is just that when you fall in love, you are willing
to be vulnerable. No matter how well protected you
are, you are anyway vulnerable to life events. In
love, you are willingly walking into it.
The advantage is – it does not take any great amount
of learning, understanding, or sadhana to walk the
path of passion. All it takes is a one-pointed love
affair, which is unchanging for any reason. Now
you are used to these kinds of love affairs where if
you get the necessary takeaway, your love affair is
on. The moment you think you do not get it, it is
off. That is not a love affair – that is commerce. If
you are doing commerce in Dalal Street2, it is okay.
But if you are doing commerce within yourself, it
is very destructive. It takes away life. Usually, so-called
spiritual people say money will take away life,
1 Karma (action), Gnana (awareness), Bhakti (devotion), Kriya (energies)
2 Location of the Bombay Stock Exchange and other financial institutions
10

but this is not so. What takes away life is when there
is no passion in your life and no effervescence in
your emotion. This makes it safe, but the safer you
try to make it, the more death-oriented you become,
because the safest thing in the world is to be dead. If
you are alive, anything may happen.
Only the one who does not judge things as good
or bad, for whom whatever happens is fine, is a
true devotee. That is a true lover. No matter what
happens, he or she is still one-pointed. It may look
stupid to people who are calculating. Those who are
calculating will live in comfort, but they will never
know the bliss of existence. Those who are not
calculating, who are living with passion, know the
bliss of existence. If you are always calculating how
much you put in and get back, you will only know
comfort, not the joy of life.
These seven days of Leela were for you to come to
a little more passion about life within you. This is
not the last day. Leela has to begin now. Leela does
not mean imitating Krishna – that would be stupid.
Krishna never imitated anyone, nor should you.
Leela means you bring playfulness into your life the
way you know it.
Being playful has always been seen as irresponsible.
They would have told you this when you were a
child, and probably, you do the same thing to your
children too. If they are playful, you think it is
irresponsible. But the most responsible way to live is
to be playful with life. It is absolutely irresponsible
to walk around with a long face. Being playful is
being responsible. Only when you are playful, you
can be responsive to life. When you are serious, life
around you does not exist for you – it is only about
you and your nonsense. You can truly respond to
everything in the world only if you are playful.
Otherwise, just the burden of it will kill you.
Playfulness is not a philosophy that you have to
develop, in the sense of “I’m going to be playful.”
The whole existence is a dance of energy. The
forces that create this existence are always playful.
Creation has always been described as God’s play
in this culture. “God’s play” does not mean God is
playing with your life and creating misery for you.
The forces of creation are constantly at play. If they
stop playing, you are finished. Only when all the
basic forces within the body play with full vigor,
you feel nice.
Playfulness is not your attitude – it is the attitude of
the Creator and the creation. If you are in tune with
creation and Creator, being playful is natural. Only
when you get enslaved by the process of your mind –
your thoughts, opinions, ideologies, rights and
wrongs, and moralities, you lose your playfulness.
All playfulness is gone because you have been
ignoring the larger creation and become too attached
to the petty creations of your mind. If you were in
line with life, if you were in line with creation and
Creator, you would naturally be playful.
Only those who are playful can truly tackle problems
in the world and do their best without being affected
by it. If you try to grapple with problems without
the necessary playfulness in you, it will eat you up.
That is why so many people with good intentions
have been swallowed by the situations in which
they existed. You can only handle it if you are truly
playful – otherwise, everything will be trouble.
For a beginner on the spiritual path who is not yet
accomplished, activity is necessary. And if you do
not make it playful, activity is killing – no matter
what type of activity it is.
If you maintain a few hours of playfulness in a day
about what you are doing, even your physical body
will start functioning so much better. Your sleep
quota will come down, and meditation will become
a natural process. When you are playful, you are not
entangled with the things you do. Once you are not
entangled with them, you do not accumulate karma.
Then the process of living becomes liberating. With
the activity that you perform, you are no more
doing karma – you are doing yoga. Once you are
doing yoga through the day, life becomes effortless.
11

The Mechanics of Health
Devi Shetty in Conversation with Sadhguru
In another edition of “In Conversation with the Mystic,” prominent heart surgeon
Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty met Sadhguru in Bangalore on 28 June 2014 to discuss the
“Mechanics of Health.” Here is an excerpt of their conversation.
Five Levels of Coherence
Devi Shetty: Today’s topic is “Mechanics of Health.”
As a heart surgeon, I can say, the heart has attracted
a lot of undue importance. Actually, it is the mind
which is the boss – the heart is a slave. For me, the
heart is a dumb pump – if you put in five liters, it will
pump out five liters. It doesn’t have any intelligent
function and it is one of the easiest organs of the body
to reproduce mechanically. So most of my questions
will be about the mind because that is what I’m very
fascinated about, especially its capacity to heal. Do
you believe that the mind has a big impact on the
way the healing process happens?
Sadhguru: When we say “Mechanics of Health,”
no individual cell in the body can be ignored. And
not only what is happening in the body – what is
happening around us can also not be ignored. When
you just stand on one of the Bangalore streets,
the way the automobiles are honking and roaring
and struggling and pushing each other, you don’t
have the right mechanics of health. You will need
hospitals for half the population at some point.
People won’t check into hotels – they will check
into hospitals. It is only a question of time. Instead
of 5000 beds, you will need 50,000 beds. The way
we are living, the way we have structured our cities,
the way we are structuring our lives, the mechanics
of health are not to be seen anywhere.
It is a known fact today that in this cosmos, in
every manifestation of creation, whether it is
super-large or ultra-small, there is a correlation
and coherence between every sub-atomic particle
that is instantaneous and enduring. If I touch this
body here, what happens in it reverberates with
12

the rest of the cosmos. This is not philosophy; this
is not some esoteric language – this is the language
of modern physics. When this is the situation,
how much coherence we have within the system
determines many things.
The human system or an organism of any kind can be
coherent on many levels. Let us look at the five basic
levels of coherence. One aspect is geometric and
mathematical coherence. In yoga, we pay attention
to how we sit, because if you achieve geometric and
mathematical coherence, things you never thought
existed will become a reality for you. It is like going
and adjusting your antenna – what was a blank
screen turns into the world pouring itself into your
sitting room – just because of geometric coherence.
The next is bio-chemical coherence, which you,
as doctors, are dealing with on a daily basis and
are trying to manipulate with pharmaceuticals and
traditional medicines.
The next is energy or electromagnetic and
electrical coherence within the system and with
the surrounding atmosphere. Then come quantum
coherence, and finally consciousness. These
different levels of coherence are not separate from
one another. It is just that modern science fragments
everything and studies it separately. When you as a
cardiac surgeon say the heart is a dumb thing and
you want to look at the mind, you understand that
what we do in the mind is going to happen in the
heart. Coherence is not only about the mind, but
definitely, every thought that you generate, every
fluctuation that happens on the level of your mind
reverberates through every cell in the body. Which
part of your body gets affected could be largely
genetic, what you inherit from somebody, or you get
it from the streets of Bangalore City.
Health and Yoga
Devi Shetty: Sadhguru, the common man’s
impression is a surgeon is one who cuts and
stitches… But from a very early stage of my career, I
have always insisted that my junior surgeons, before
they start to actually get into cardiac surgery, should
attend painting and drawing classes. Essentially,
we need to train the younger generation as artists.
When a surgeon has a bent of mind of an artist and
he is doing an operation, what comes out at the end
of the operation is something very beautiful. Do
you believe in this concept that surgeons should be
trained like an artist and behave like an artist, that
they should be creative?
Sadhguru: I feel that’s one small step. To achieve a
certain level of coherence, surgeons should become
yogis. They should have such a level of coherence
not only with the patient but with everything
around them, with the whole atmosphere, because
every part of our body has been manufactured from
inside. We have the intelligence and the competence
to create a heart, a brain, a liver, kidneys –
everything. For whatever reasons, it has gone bad.
When it has gone bad, philosophies and logic won’t
do. We want a solution. If we want a solution, is
it a comprehensive solution or only an immediate
solution? Are we only trying to extend life or do we
want life to be nourished and flourishing?
When I say surgeons should be yogis, it does not
mean that you must move to the mountains. The
word “yoga” means union or coherence between
the limited and the unlimited, the physical and the
non-physical. The reason why you think everything
may be preordained is because there are no answers
in the physical world. When you open a human
body and look at the complicated machine that it
is, no matter how many thousand times you have
looked at somebody’s heart beating, you must still
be apprehensive, knowing that you are playing with
somebody’s life. One small mistake, and there will
be great consequences for this person’s life, for the
family, the social surroundings, and other aspects.
Considering this, I would say if you invest one
year (not even fulltime) of sadhana to establish
coherence – not just emotionally, psychologically,
and bio-chemically but in the most fundamental
way existentially, in terms of consciousness, in terms
of the quantum leap between physical and non-physical
– then, depending on how much coherence
13

you are able to achieve, at least 25% of your surgeries
could be cancelled. I think it is worthwhile that
every doctor invests in this direction.
Unfortunately, most people won’t do anything
sensible until you fix a date for their bypass surgery.
Then they panic and come to us. A large number
of people have bypassed a bypass surgery simply
by doing certain fundamental things right with
themselves. One thing is taking charge of the five
elements – water, air, earth, fire, and space – within
the system and outside the system. Seventy-two
percent of our body is water, twelve percent is
earth, six percent is air, four percent is fire – the rest
is space. The technology of yoga is rooted in bhuta
shuddhi, the cleansing of the five elements.
People will listen to you more than to me because
they come to you when they are sick. If they do a few
simple things and they see that this is not some kind
of mumbo-jumbo, we will be doing a tremendous
service to a whole lot of people.
The Importance of Touch
Devi Shetty: When I look at the younger generation
of doctors… Today, the medical science has reached
a level where we really do not have to touch the
patient. When I see a patient in my office, he would
have undergone all kinds of tests. All the images
are displayed; the history is written; everything is
planned. Technically, I can see the reports and tell
the patient, “Okay, you need a bypass.” or “You need
valve replacement.” But I always make it a point to
take my stethoscope, put it on the chest, listen to the
heart, look at the patient’s eyes, put my hand around
his shoulders, touch the patient, and then explain
to them what is going on and talk to the family. I
personally feel that touch has more healing power
than anything else what we have invented. Do you
believe in that?
Sadhguru: Yes, in the sense what the young doctors
may not know is, tomorrow someone will come up
with a new software that will read all these tests and
come out with a diagnosis by itself. You can load the
whole medical textbook into it. You won’t need a
doctor. No touch.
Devi Shetty: Exactly.
Sadhguru: What is not understood is – yes, one part
of us is mechanical, but there are other dimensions.
When the mechanical part goes wrong, most of the
time, it is because we have not tended to the other
dimensions. There are substantial studies where
for example, two monkeys are living together as
a couple. If you put one in isolation, this monkey
develops heart problems, plaque in the arteries, and
this kind of stuff. They would not have to waste
these monkeys’ life to find this out. A whole lot of
human beings are going through the same thing on
a daily basis. What is lacking is, essentially, their
life is not touched by anything. Physical touch is
just one manifestation.
It need not necessarily be a relationship – you can be
touched by so many things. How many decades ago
have you watched a sunrise or sunset or moonrise?
When was the last time you waited for a flower to
bloom? When was the last time you paid attention to
a butterfly, a leaf, a flower, or another human being?
You don’t like faces – you like Facebook. Contact
with life – whether it is human-, animal-, plant-life
or just the elements around you – is lacking. How
many people take a moment to even look at the food
that they are going to consume with a little bit of
involvement? Are they touched by it? No. At last,
when things have gone bad, a doctor, or in the end,
the undertaker has to touch them.
Rejuvenation through Yoga
Does touch have relevance? Tremendous relevance.
Touch need not always be physical – it can be in
so many different ways. If you are not touched by
life, you are not a living life but a progressively
dying life. It is common medical knowledge that
the number of cells in your body is more than the
number of stars in the Milky Way. Every day, over
60 billion cells in your body are dying and the same
number of new cells are being born. That means
every second, 700,000 cells are dying and 700,000
14

new cells are born in your body. Leave the old
cells – if you just take charge of these new 700,000
cells that are coming up in your body every second,
if you have some influence as to how these fresh cells
are born and you create and structure them properly,
your heart, your brain – everything should get fixed.
This is the level of opportunity you have – you can
rejuvenate your life second-to-second. But this does
not happen because you are totally oblivious to life.
Most of the time, your thoughts and emotions are
dominating everything.
The Right Perspective
Thoughts and emotions are nothing but a
psychological drama – they have no existential
relevance. A thousand people can sit here and live in
a thousand different worlds right now – that means
no one is in reality. You do not experience life –
you are only thinking and reacting to situations
around you. Today morning, the sun came up on
time. You may think, “so what,” but if the sun does
not come up tomorrow morning, life on this planet
will largely seize to exist after some time. But the
sun did come up on time this morning. None of the
planets in this solar system collided today. In the
whole universe, in this endless cosmos, everything
is going great. But you have one nasty little thought
crawling in your head, and you think it’s a bad
day. You have completely lost perspective on life.
It is a kind of madness. Once you lose perspective
as to who you are and what your space and status
in this existence is, you are sick. Even if no doctor
diagnoses you yet, the process is already on.
One day, it will manifest to a point where his
instruments or his touch will tell him that you
are sick, and he will give you a prescription or
surgery. You are working hard towards it.
Upcoming Episodes:
1 Nov 2014
Shekhar Kapur in Conversation
with Sadhguru
8, 15, 22, 29 Nov 2014
Kailash series
15

HATHA YOGA
In this series, Sadhguru
discusses various aspects
that can significantly
impact the quality of
your yogic practice.
Part 11:
Breathe Easy
Questioner: Sadhguru, people who come to the yoga
class with experience in aerobics or other types of
exercise tend to breathe through their mouth while
doing asanas. Does it make a difference whether
we breathe through the nose or mouth? And why
should we breathe slightly deeper than normal?
Sadhguru: If you are running at a certain pace, there
is a tendency to open your mouth because breathing
through your nostrils may not be sufficient. But
you never ever breathe through your mouth during
asanas. This is not an aerobic exercise – asanas are
about building internal strength of the organs and
the whole system. Within a few weeks of practicing
asanas, naturally, your system will become more
capable and your pulse rate will decrease.
Breathing through the mouth is both unaesthetic
and unscientific. You should always breathe through
your nasal passage – except in emergencies. Either
you are just born and they hold you upside down,
or you are running a marathon and your pulse rate
goes beyond a certain level, or it is your last breath
and you want to live for one more minute – then it
is all right. Otherwise, always breathe through your
nostrils, because the nasal passage is there for this
purpose – make use of it. There are many benefits to
that – one is the purification of the air, another one
is the temperature of the air gets adjusted to your
body temperature before it enters the lungs, which
is important.
In yogasanas, there is absolutely no necessity to
breathe through your mouth. You should never
push yourself to the point where you have to open
your mouth. You must steadily build it up in such
a way that your ability to breathe keeps increasing.
We say you should breathe slightly deeper than
normal because otherwise, if you go into an extreme
position and I say “breathe normal,” you will not
get enough oxygen, and after some time, you will
gasp. Any gasp is an aberration in the breath. Any
aberration in the breath naturally has an effect on
various aspects of the body.
If you breathe in hot air, even if you are at sea
level and there is enough oxygen, you will gasp as
if you were in high altitude. The human body is
comfortable at a certain temperature, and it needs
a certain air mixture. When I used to ride my
motorcycle across the country and I would go up a
mountain, from about 4000, 5000 feet above mean
sea level, the oxygen becomes less and the engine
starts behaving differently. Since I always wanted
the same level of power, I would stop, open up the
carburetor, make the necessary adjustments, and
16 ISHA FOREST FLOWER
November 2014

only then ride on. If you come down to sea level,
the engine starts knocking, and you have to adjust
the cylinder head.
For a truck that is lugging up to 130 tons, even a small
change in the engine performance will translate
into a big overall performance drop. Therefore,
there are now electronic instruments that measure
the firing in the internal combustion engine, the
fuel temperature, the oil temperature, and correct
any aberration. If the fuel temperature is too low,
it is getting warmed up; if it is too hot, it is getting
cooled down. This is all just a small imitation of
what your body always does. If you are breathing
properly, the body has measures to correct itself for
even a small change in the air temperature, for the
rareness of air – everything.
This time when we went to Kailash, we were at
an altitude of over 16,000 feet for almost eight, ten
days. Except for the Sherpas who always live in
that altitude, I was the only one who did not take
diamox1, even though all the other participants
were practicing more yoga on a daily basis than
I do. But if you build your system over a period
of time, you can enjoy the benefits on all levels,
all the time – not only in high altitude. If the
body comes to ease, the other possibilities open
up. If the body is not at ease, the other possibilities
will not open up because everything is focused on
making the physical part right.
This is what yoga is about – you want to bring your
body to such a state of ease that you do not even
1 Medication against altitude sickness
know whether your body exists or not. You cannot
forget the parts of your body that hurt right now.
You can only forget what is at ease. To bring the
body to such ease, you must breathe slightly deeper
than normal, and over time, in any asana, if you are
in the perfect posture, your breath should become
normal. If your body is in good shape and you are
within a certain age range, after about 12 to 18
months of intense practice, you will come to a point
where in a full asana posture, there will be no need
to breathe deeper than normal anymore. Just the
normal breath will be more than enough, without
gasping. If you remain in the full posture for one
minute and there is no aberration in your breath
or your pulse rate, it means your body is coming to
ease. If it comes to such a state of ease, there will be
no dis-ease. And if there is no state of dis-ease in you
whatsoever, then the body has energy to explore
other dimensions of life. Otherwise, the body keeps
you busy for the rest of your life.
Excerpted from a talk by Sadhguru at the
Isha Hatha School of Yoga.
For dates and details of hatha yoga programs,
visit www.ishahathayoga.com.
The Hatha Yoga Teacher Training program
is an opportunity to be trained in
classical hatha yoga devised by Sadhguru.
Upcoming dates: 31 July to 25 December 2015 at
the Isha Yoga Center in India.
For more information, please send an email to
info@ishahathayoga.com.

Program Highlights
Date Program Place Contact
4 Nov 2014
Sadhguru at
Koti Deepothsavam
Hyderabad – India
99488 75588
hyderabad@ishayoga.org
7–9 Nov 2014
Inner Engineering
with Sadhguru
Worli,
Mumbai – India
87675 52553, 87675 52554
mumbai@ishayoga.org
7–10 Nov 2014 Hatha Yoga
Isha Yoga Center,
Coimbatore – India
98840 04475
iycprograms@ishayoga.org
11–15 Nov 2014 Samyama Sadhana
Isha Yoga Center,
98840 04475
12–18 Nov 2014 Inner Engineering
Electronic City,
Bangalore – India
88809 82472
bangalore@ishayoga.org
Indraprasth,
Pune – India
98814 08561
pune@ishayoga.org
Gurgaon,
Delhi – India
99100 28884
delhi@ishayoga.org
13–16 Nov 2014
Inner Engineering
Retreat
Isha Yoga Center,
94890 45164
ieretreat@ishafoundation.org
20–22 Nov 2014
Surya Kriya and
Bhuta Shuddi
Isha Yoga Center,
98840 04475
21–23 Nov 2014 Guru Pooja Training Hyderabad – India
99488 75588
hyderabad@ishayoga.org
27–30 Nov 2014
INSIGHT: The DNA of
Success
with Sadhguru
Isha Yoga Center,
83000 84888
leadership@ishainsight.org
20–22 Dec 2014
Yantra Ceremony
with Sadhguru
Isha Yoga Center,
94425 04720
yantra@lingabhairavi.org
These programs are conducted in English, unless indicated otherwise. Current at the time of print, however subject
to change. For full program schedules and updates, please visit our website: www.ishafoundation.org.
18

Yantra Ceremony with Sadhguru
“The Linga Bhairavi Yantras are designed to powerfully impact your system,
the space in which you live, and the direction and destiny of your life.”
Receive a uniquely personalized
Linga Bhairavi or Linga Bhairavi
Avighna Yantra in an intimate
ceremony with Sadhguru.
Connect with the Grace of Devi
through a powerful initiation,
happening on 21 December 2014 at
the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore.
Registrations:
Tel: +91–94425 04720 or
Email: yantra@lingabhairavi.org
Linga Bhairavi Avighna Yantra

Isha Recipes
Roasted Vegetables
Ingredients
1 Zucchini
1 Yellow summer squash
Preparation Method
Seasoning:
(Serves 4)
Wash the vegetables. Peel the carrots. Take the zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots, first cut off
both ends, then cut them on the bias (diagonally) into thumb-thick pieces. Keep each vegetable
in a separate bowl.
Deseed the capsicums. Cut them lengthwise into 2-cm-wide strips. Keep in a separate bowl.
Cut the cabbage into 3 cm x 3 cm squares. Keep in a separate bowl.
Cut broccoli into florets. Keep in a separate bowl.
Blanche the cabbage in steam or boiling water. When cooked but still firm, take the cabbage out
and cool it immediately in cold water to stop it from cooking; drain. Keep in separate bowl. Do
the same for the broccoli.
Mix the seasoning (salt, black pepper, coriander powder, fresh chopped ginger, paprika, chili)
and olive oil in a small bowl.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
(or if not available, another zucchini (preferably yellow))
2 Big carrots
½ Broccoli head
¼ Cabbage
1 Red capsicum
1 Yellow capsicum
1 Green capsicum
½ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Black pepper
2 pinches Coriander powder
2 tsp Fresh chopped ginger
2 pinches Paprika
1 pinch Chili
1 tsp Dried Italian herbs
½ cup of Olive oil

7.
8.
9.
10.
Mix the carrot pieces with seasoning/oil mixture in a bowl. Do the same separately with all the
other vegetables. Let them marinate for a few minutes.
a) Option 1 – Sauté each vegetable separately in a flat iron pan until light brown on both
sides. Keep aside.
b) Option 2 – Grill the vegetables on a hot grill until light brown on both sides.
c) Option 3 – Roast the vegetables in the oven: Preheat the oven at 250° C. Put each vegetable
on a separate baking tray. Cook the zucchini, yellow squash for about 7–8 minutes; the
carrots for 10–15 min. Check and when cooked but still firm, take them out; let cool a
little bit. (The cabbage and broccoli are not cooked in the oven.)
Mix all the vegetables, add the Italian herbs and rectify the seasoning, salt and pepper to taste.
Arrange the vegetables on a plate and serve.
Live Simple – Eat Simple
The following is an excerpt from a residents’
sathsang with Sadhguru at the Dhyanalinga
parikrama on 25 March 2004.
If you want to be spiritual, you need to learn to do
everything in a simple way. If you eat, you simply
eat. If you think having a dinner means you have
to make much conversation to make the food tasty,
it speaks badly of the cook. Every aspect of life can
become a tremendous possibility if you do it in
a simple way. For example eating – taking a little
bit of food, which is a piece of earth, and making
it into yourself is a tremendous process. Something
that is not you is becoming you. How can you talk to
someone during such a big process?
The very basis of your spiritual longing is you want
to experience everything as a part of yourself. The
very basis, the engine that fires the love in you,
the sex in you, the emotions in you, the greed
in you, the ambition in you is that you want to
experience something that is not you as a part
of yourself. And that is there too when you eat
your food. Something which is not you is actually
becoming you. If you pay enough attention to this
simple process of eating and simply eat, you will
see eating is an explosive process.

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A Rock is an easy prey
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Just a touch and he reverberates forever.
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Registered with Patrika Channel Egmore RMS under Registration No. TN/CH(C)/492/14 –16. Published on 2nd of every month – November 2014

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