oral transmission is very challenging
Questioner:I have a hard time memorizing. Being receptive to oral transmission is very challenging for me. Could you say something on this?
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Sadhguru:Everything that you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is recorded. There is no recording problem. Let’s say I abuse you badly right now, you will remember it all your life. You have great memory. You just remember bad words, that’s all. The problem is only your inability to bring back certain parts of your memory when you need them. You are not able to pick out what you want. This is just a question of clarity, not of memory. If we say a phone has low memory, it means it has a limited capacity to record. On the other hand, if I press “2” and it shows “5,” the issue is not bad memory but a bad keyboard. Your issue is also a question of “bad keyboard.” There is no need to fix the memory – everything you experience is recorded. You are not able to retrieve the right information – that is the entire problem.
Bringing precision into life
We have to work on clarity. What is it that gives us clarity of mind? A simple thing you can do to improve clarity is to handle everything you do with a certain precision. Hatha Yoga is all about precision – how your feet should be positioned, where your hands should be, how you should hold your head, how you move, how you place the things that you brought with you and so on. If you bring precision into your activity, there will be precision in your mind. You need to practice precision in every aspect of your life. How your room should be, how you go to bed – everything. Bring the meticulousness that you apply when doing an asana, into your life. You will see, slowly, the mind will become very clear. It will become meticulous with everything.
Hatha Yoga is all about precision. If you bring precision into your activity, there will be precision in your mind.
From this moment, a simple practice that you can do is when you stand up, when you sit down, when you walk, whatever you do, do it with precision and attention. Consciously register everything that is around. For example, there are five columns here, one vessel, one big rock, one pond, another four columns, one door. How tall? Looks like twelve feet. Just practice this with everything. How many steps from here to there? Don’t count “one, two…” – start walking and notice “Okay, I think that’s three,” another three, and another three. After a few days, do intervals of four, five, or eleven – without thinking, you must slowly know when you have walked twelve steps. This is yoga. This effect will happen over a period of time by itself.
The precision that you try to bring to your body, bring it to your mind too. Let the mind imitate the body. You will see, clarity will naturally come.
Hatha yoga can lead to asana siddhi. If you attain to asana siddhi, your body becomes still.
Hatha yoga can make meditation a joy. Likewise, if you train your mind to stay focused on something, meditation will be effortless. If both your body and your mind are well-trained, meditation will not be difficult. Hatha yoga can lead to asana siddhi. If you attain to asana siddhi, your body becomes still.
Stillness is of many different levels. If you become totally still, you are in meditation, without any effort. The only effort is managing to sit in one place and to keep your mind where you want it. Right now, both the body and the mind are not listening to you – they are hopping all over the place. If I make you sit here for one-and-a-half hours, your legs will be telling their own story. If I make you sit for two hours or more, your bladder will be telling its own story. You will not care about heaven or enlightenment anymore – there will be only one place you want to go. For some people, it is food; for others, it is sexuality or some other physical compulsion that rules their lives. Once these compulsions come up, everything else gets obliterated. There are many ways to fix this.
Breaking Compulsions
Once, a young woman was in a cinema. While the movie was on, she went to the bathroom. When she came back, she tapped a man who was sitting at the end of the row on the shoulder and asked him, “Did I step on your toes when I left?” He said, “Yes,” thinking she wants to apologize. She said, “Well, then this is my row.” People display compulsions in so many different ways. When you have a body, some compulsions are there – you have to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and things like that – but that should not determine the direction of your life.
One meaning of the word hatha is being adamant. No matter if your body, mind, emotions, or your family like it or not, you get up in the morning and do your hatha yoga.
One meaning of the word hatha is being adamant. No matter if your body, mind, emotions, or your family like it or not, you get up in the morning and do your hatha yoga. It takes a certain adamancy to break the compulsiveness of your physical body. The body has a million years of evolutionary history behind it. It has its own tendencies, intentions, and compulsions. It will not give in easily.
At the ashram, generally, there are two meals a day. Between the first meal at ten o’clock in the morning and the second one at seven o’clock in the evening, people get hungry. They come and sit in the Biksha Hall for dinner. The volunteers serve and once the food is in front of you, you want to eat. But you wait for everyone to be served, then everyone does an invocation together, and only then you eat. All this is part of hatha yoga. You are adamant about not only keeping the body aware but the mind too. The physical needs of the body are still there, but you slowly overcome the compulsiveness. If there is no compulsiveness in your system and you sit here, without the need for instructions, you are in meditation. What you are trying to work through are the compulsive cycles of karma. It may take a certain amount of time and effort to break all compulsiveness by using your body alone, but it is a fantastic thing to do.
Hatha yoga is not just about bending and twisting the body. Essentially, it is about consciously working towards eliminating all that is compulsive in us – compulsions that we have carried on over millions of years of evolution. What distinguishes human beings and animals, or, in other words, the essence of being human is the possibility to move from compulsiveness to consciousness. Only if you transcend your compulsiveness completely, are you a full-fledged human. Otherwise, you are not a human being, you are a human becoming. We could call it “Project Human.”
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Sadhguru:Everything that you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is recorded. There is no recording problem. Let’s say I abuse you badly right now, you will remember it all your life. You have great memory. You just remember bad words, that’s all. The problem is only your inability to bring back certain parts of your memory when you need them. You are not able to pick out what you want. This is just a question of clarity, not of memory. If we say a phone has low memory, it means it has a limited capacity to record. On the other hand, if I press “2” and it shows “5,” the issue is not bad memory but a bad keyboard. Your issue is also a question of “bad keyboard.” There is no need to fix the memory – everything you experience is recorded. You are not able to retrieve the right information – that is the entire problem.
Bringing precision into life
We have to work on clarity. What is it that gives us clarity of mind? A simple thing you can do to improve clarity is to handle everything you do with a certain precision. Hatha Yoga is all about precision – how your feet should be positioned, where your hands should be, how you should hold your head, how you move, how you place the things that you brought with you and so on. If you bring precision into your activity, there will be precision in your mind. You need to practice precision in every aspect of your life. How your room should be, how you go to bed – everything. Bring the meticulousness that you apply when doing an asana, into your life. You will see, slowly, the mind will become very clear. It will become meticulous with everything.
Hatha Yoga is all about precision. If you bring precision into your activity, there will be precision in your mind.
From this moment, a simple practice that you can do is when you stand up, when you sit down, when you walk, whatever you do, do it with precision and attention. Consciously register everything that is around. For example, there are five columns here, one vessel, one big rock, one pond, another four columns, one door. How tall? Looks like twelve feet. Just practice this with everything. How many steps from here to there? Don’t count “one, two…” – start walking and notice “Okay, I think that’s three,” another three, and another three. After a few days, do intervals of four, five, or eleven – without thinking, you must slowly know when you have walked twelve steps. This is yoga. This effect will happen over a period of time by itself.
The precision that you try to bring to your body, bring it to your mind too. Let the mind imitate the body. You will see, clarity will naturally come.
Hatha yoga can lead to asana siddhi. If you attain to asana siddhi, your body becomes still.
Hatha yoga can make meditation a joy. Likewise, if you train your mind to stay focused on something, meditation will be effortless. If both your body and your mind are well-trained, meditation will not be difficult. Hatha yoga can lead to asana siddhi. If you attain to asana siddhi, your body becomes still.
Stillness is of many different levels. If you become totally still, you are in meditation, without any effort. The only effort is managing to sit in one place and to keep your mind where you want it. Right now, both the body and the mind are not listening to you – they are hopping all over the place. If I make you sit here for one-and-a-half hours, your legs will be telling their own story. If I make you sit for two hours or more, your bladder will be telling its own story. You will not care about heaven or enlightenment anymore – there will be only one place you want to go. For some people, it is food; for others, it is sexuality or some other physical compulsion that rules their lives. Once these compulsions come up, everything else gets obliterated. There are many ways to fix this.
Breaking Compulsions
Once, a young woman was in a cinema. While the movie was on, she went to the bathroom. When she came back, she tapped a man who was sitting at the end of the row on the shoulder and asked him, “Did I step on your toes when I left?” He said, “Yes,” thinking she wants to apologize. She said, “Well, then this is my row.” People display compulsions in so many different ways. When you have a body, some compulsions are there – you have to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and things like that – but that should not determine the direction of your life.
One meaning of the word hatha is being adamant. No matter if your body, mind, emotions, or your family like it or not, you get up in the morning and do your hatha yoga.
One meaning of the word hatha is being adamant. No matter if your body, mind, emotions, or your family like it or not, you get up in the morning and do your hatha yoga. It takes a certain adamancy to break the compulsiveness of your physical body. The body has a million years of evolutionary history behind it. It has its own tendencies, intentions, and compulsions. It will not give in easily.
At the ashram, generally, there are two meals a day. Between the first meal at ten o’clock in the morning and the second one at seven o’clock in the evening, people get hungry. They come and sit in the Biksha Hall for dinner. The volunteers serve and once the food is in front of you, you want to eat. But you wait for everyone to be served, then everyone does an invocation together, and only then you eat. All this is part of hatha yoga. You are adamant about not only keeping the body aware but the mind too. The physical needs of the body are still there, but you slowly overcome the compulsiveness. If there is no compulsiveness in your system and you sit here, without the need for instructions, you are in meditation. What you are trying to work through are the compulsive cycles of karma. It may take a certain amount of time and effort to break all compulsiveness by using your body alone, but it is a fantastic thing to do.
Hatha yoga is not just about bending and twisting the body. Essentially, it is about consciously working towards eliminating all that is compulsive in us – compulsions that we have carried on over millions of years of evolution. What distinguishes human beings and animals, or, in other words, the essence of being human is the possibility to move from compulsiveness to consciousness. Only if you transcend your compulsiveness completely, are you a full-fledged human. Otherwise, you are not a human being, you are a human becoming. We could call it “Project Human.”
