Mount Kailash – The Greatest Mystical Library

Sadhguru: Mount Kailash is the greatest mystical library. People have been making the pilgrimage there for the last few thousand years. Generally people say 10,000 to 12,000 years, many people say it is much more than that.

When the perception of great beings opened up and they came to know of life in a far deeper way than people normally know it, there was no way for them to share it with anyone because it was not in people's perception. They always sought out a few people who could be used to download this knowledge into, but they were not always successful. It is very, very rare for any Master to find people he can transmit all of himself to. Most of the Masters go without ever being able to transmit what they really want to transmit. I would say even in my life, what I can do in terms of imparting and what I am doing is just 2% of what I am. If I can increase it by one percentage point before I fall dead that is a great achievement. So where do you leave all this? You do not want this to go lost.

The Abode of Shiva

Generally, in India most yogis and mystics always chose mountain peaks because they were not frequented by people, they were safe places. They chose rocks to deposit their knowledge in an energy form. For thousands of years, realized beings always traveled to Mount Kailash and deposited their knowledge in a certain energy form. They used this mountain as a basis and created this. It is because of this that Hindus say Shiva lives there. When we say it is the Abode of Shiva, it does not mean that he is still sitting up there or dancing or hiding in the snow or something. In the yogic culture we don’t see Shiva as God, we see him as the Adiyogi, the first yogi, and the Adi Guru, the first Guru. Right from Shiva, many yogis from all traditions stored everything they knew here in a certain energy form.

South Indian mysticism always says their greatest yogi who is the basis of their tradition, Agastya Muni, lives there in the southern face of the mountain. The Buddhists say three of their main Buddhas, Manjushree, Avalokiteshwara, and Vajrapani, all of them lived there in the mountain. The Jains say Rishabh lives there in the mountain. This doesn’t mean that they are actually living there, but they deposited all their work there because they could not transmit it to people – a variety of social situations do not permit you to do that. All the 63 Nayanmars, the 63 major saints from South India, including one of the woman saints, came, because they never had the opportunity to transmit their perception to the people around them, social realities never allowed it. So it is a treasure house of knowledge.

The Greatest Library

If you are going to Kailash, you are like an illiterate person going to a huge library. Let's say you are illiterate and you walk into a mega-library. Everybody is sitting there and reading all these books. You don't know a word of it, but you will be overwhelmed. If you want to read it, you have to start from ABC. You have to learn the fundamentals of how to decipher life, starting with yourself. If you cannot decipher this small piece of life, deciphering anything else in the cosmos is out of question. So, right now, you need vision, otherwise we cannot educate you. Only if you can see, I can teach you the alphabet.

When you get the alphabet, then you would like to read the sentence. When you read the sentence, you want to read the book. When you read the book, then you want to know everything. Unless you have a taste, you will not even incline yourself into that direction. Let’s say the whole society is illiterate, they will never ever think of reading anything. If suddenly one man knows how to read, they will look at him, “Wow!” What empowerment, just because he can read.

This used to be so in Indian villages when we were young – there were only one or two people who could read. For example, there were a husband and wife – newly married; totally in love with each other. The husband had to travel for a month but there was no cellphone, nothing – how to communicate? So, while the husband was gone, this person who could read and write wrote letters for the wife. She said everything she wanted to say, he wrote all that, took it and mailed it every three days. And the husband had letters written to her as well.

When a letter came and there was only one person in the village who could read, you had to share your intimacy with this person. He came home and read this love letter for you. I saw this happen; it was very beautiful and touching to see. You should have seen the way they looked at him when he opened the letter and read – he was like God to them because he could read this letter and tell them what it was.

This is also just like that, on a different scale. If you really want to decipher and know these different dimensions, you have to put in a certain amount of investment, time and life. But if you just want to feel the power, you can come to certain spaces, be there, feel the power, enjoy it, take something and go. The grace of it is available, but the knowledge of it takes application.

The Journey of a Lifetime

Whatever temples and places and whatever else may be there in the world – and I have been to many truly sacred places, I have been to many truly powerful places, I have seen many powerful beings – when I bow down to them I am genuine, but I bow down to them a little less than I would bow down to my Guru, always. It doesn’t matter whether it is Kedarnath or Gautama Buddha or whoever comes in front of me, I bow down to them genuinely, but a little bit less than what I would bow down to my Guru. But when I bow down to Kailash, I bow down to it the same way I would bow down to my Guru. Never before I have done that to anything or anybody in my whole life, I always kept a little bit extra. But with this, once when I bowed down I really bowed down as I do to Him.

In terms of inner dimensions, anything that you ever want to know is in Kailash. If you know how to perceive it and decipher it, everything that you ever want to know about your own creation, about your making and your existence, and about your liberation, it is all there. Every form of it, every tradition has deposited this knowledge there and it is very much available. If one is willing to raise one’s perception to sufficient clarity it is distinctly visible. So Kailash is something we understand and we know how it is done and everything. Manasarovar is something outlandish, totally outlandish.

I am not in an inner state where I need to do any pilgrimage, but still this pilgrimage to Kailash Manasarovar has been absolutely astounding for me in terms of experience. I never expected it to be this way, because I am made in such a way that I am not surprised by anything. I have seen enough. I have been through so much of life that nothing really surprises me, that is how I am. It doesn’t matter what I see, because the strangest of the strange, the weirdest of the weird I have seen in my life. Things that you cannot believe have been a daily reality for me. Things which are like fairytales to people have been a living thing for me all the time, but Manasarovar was well beyond anything that I have seen till now.

Today, modern physical sciences are admitting that there are 11 different dimensions. They are not yet able to figure out what they are. They are saying they are parallel dimensions. In the yogic systems, we have always been saying there are 21 dimensions, not just parallel to each other – they are enclosed in each other. There are lots of beings who are not at all like you. There is nothing human about them. They are here as much as you are but for you, they don’t exist. For them, you may or may not exist depending upon who they are. It is actually not appropriate to say it this way, but it is like 21 cosmic spaces, one inside the other. 21 creations are merged one inside the other, all of them operating independently. One will not even be aware of the other unless you transcend.

So, Kailash and Manasarovar are not a question of belief, or a question of faith, it is not a question of religion. It is definitely a very enhanced space compared to what you normally live in.