In the first of two parts, here’s an excerpt of a talk by Sadhguru during the consecration of Adiyogi: The Abode of Yoga on 23 September 2015 at the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences in Tennessee, USA.

Q: Could you explain how this Adiyogi consecration is different from other consecrations that you have done in the past?

Sadhguru: It is very different for sure. The Dhyanalinga consecration was another dimension. We are not going to ever repeat that. We do not have a body to attempt one more thing like that, and it is not necessary either, because the Dhyanalinga is not limited to a geographical space. If you are willing, it is always.


 

If you have been at the Devi consecration – that was my love affair gone public. We wanted to create the woman, and she is doing great. My only concern is she is becoming more popular than Dhyanalinga, and unfortunately, it is moving that way. I say “unfortunately” not in the sense that there is misfortune. Devi is a powerful process – there is no misfortune in that. The problem is there is fortune in that, and people are seeking the fortune.

Even in Devi, there is an element of transcendence, a dimension that is beyond all other things. But most people seek the fortune that she offers – fortune in terms of things that add quality to your life, in terms of relationships, in terms of wealth, in terms of wellbeing, in terms of health. These are all add-ons and accessories of life. If you are a beautiful life, you can carry the ornamentation well. If you are not a beautiful life, if you have made yourself ugly within yourself and you are highly decorated, you look super ugly.


 

Lots of people in the world have made themselves so ugly within themselves, but they got a chiseled nose and other parts of the body from the most popular doctors, the greatest experts in the field – they have got all kinds of add-ons to their lives. As you add more accessories to ugliness, ugliness becomes enhanced. The first thing is to make yourself into a beautiful being. Then you can add a few things that are needed for you to function in the world. If you have nothing, you could get functionally crippled.

Sadhguru Sri Brahma was a great yogi. In terms of capability, in terms of intensity, in terms of his fiery nature, very few compare to him. But still, he did not succeed in doing what he had to do because he did not gather enough accessories. He had the energy, he had intensity of the highest order, he had the intelligence, but not enough accessories. Lack of accessories, lack of social access became the barrier that stopped him from fulfilling what he thought he could do effortlessly. So, Devi is very significant, but the design is such that first you become meditative, then accessories. The Adiyogi is sitting on top of a mountain in a fantastic state, but he cannot do much. If one wants to be effective in the world, Devi becomes very important.

Darkness – The Basis of Life

For the Linga Bhairavi consecration, you wore red – the color of life. Here, you wear black. People think black is the color of death – it is not. Black is the color of the basis of life. The source of life on this planet is the heat and the light of the sun. Without the light and the energy that the sun exudes, life would not exist. If the sun was absent, there would be pitch darkness, in this part of the universe at least.

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Before the sun was formed, everything was pitch-dark. It was from this darkness of space that even the sun formed itself. Physical mass is a consequence of space, and that space is dark. Darkness seems to be a terrible thing only for those who are too horribly dependent upon their simple visual apparatus called eyes. Because your eyes can see clearly only when there is light, light has become very valuable. If I say “divine,” you will say “divine light” – you will not say “divine darkness” because of the way your visual apparatus is designed.

Enhancing Life

If you want to enhance your life, it does not mean adding more and more accessories to a point you have more accessories than substance. Enhancing your life essentially means enhancing your ability to see things that you normally could not see, and to hear things that you normally could not hear. You are pushing the boundaries of what is needed for survival. You are able to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and know dimensions that are not required for your simple survival process.

If you sit at the Dhyanalinga, you do not know what is happening, unless you are really receptive. If you walk into the Devi temple, she slaps you in the face and gets attention – she is made that way.

Devi is three-and-a-half chakras. The three full chakras – muladhara, swadhishthana, and manipura – are largely about wellbeing, health, and prosperity. The half one is about transcendence. If you involve yourself in that aspect, there is transcendence. A lot of people go to the Devi temple like people went to the Wild West – in search of gold. At the same time, for many people, Devi is evolving well beyond health, prosperity and all that.

For many people, she is becoming a point of dissolution because being a woman, she naturally demands involvement. If you sit at the Dhyanalinga, you do not know what is happening, unless you are really receptive. It is very subtle and fantastic, but you need a certain level of receptivity. If you walk into the Devi temple, she slaps you in the face and gets attention – she is made that way. He is made in such a way, he does not demand attention – you have to pay attention of your own accord.

Two Kinds of Consecrations

The consecrations are fundamentally of two kinds. One is simply a reverberation of energy. We can make a substance reverberate with energy so that it indiscriminately benefits anyone who comes in touch with it. That is, it has no intelligence of its own – it only has reverberation. The other form of consecration also creates a reverberation, but it is discriminatory in nature. It knows what to do with a specific person.

If you want to categorize the different consecrations in these two ways, Chandrakund and Suryakund are not discriminatory. Whoever gets in, they do the same thing. They have no sense of discrimination. They are constantly reverberating, not for any specific purpose – just adding a new level of vibrance to the system, which may bring health, wellbeing, and many things – but that is a consequence, not the intention of the form.


 

Reverberation without Discrimination

For example, the sun is a tremendous reverberation. It has no interest in your wellbeing. But we are all well because of the sun. This is not its intention but a consequence of its nature. Similarly, the Chandrakund and Suryakund lingas have a certain natural reverberation from which people will benefit, but the form has no intent. But Dhyanalinga, Devi, and Adiyogi have intent. They have a discriminatory intelligence of their own. This is not a negative kind of discrimination but the ability to identify one from the other. Adiyogi knows how to respond to a particular person.


 

A Suryakund linga is a far more raw reverberation, but it has no discrimination. It has been set up oriented towards a male or a sun or a pingala type of energy, but the linga does not know that. It is simply like that. Like so many forces in nature, they are reverberating.

A tree, a rock, the sun, the moon are all reverberations, but they do not know what they do. They just reverberate because that is their nature. Fire does not know whether you are doing a pooja, or you are cooking, or that it is a funeral pyre – it just burns. We may make our life out of it. We may make death out of it. We may make so many things out of it. But the fire itself does not know the nature of what it is burning. If it finds the material hospitable enough, it burns. That is one level of consecration.

Energy Forms with the Ability to Discriminate

Another level of consecration is creating an energy form that has a discriminatory mind, that is able to recognize what is what and to respond to a particular life in a particular way. Adiyogi belongs to this category. But this Adiyogi here is different from the Adiyogi that we created in the Adiyogi Alayam, which was mainly created as a repository of hatha yoga. To give an example how a form can be a repository – a small USB stick can store a lot of information. You can store information in different forms. The difference between these energy forms and a USB stick is that the stick needs another kind of process, in this case a computer – by itself, it will not know what to do. The information is in the stick, but you need another process to get this information out of it. In a way, Adiyogi is a composite computer – a storehouse of information, energy, and reverberation, which will reverberate for a very long time, a time beyond human conception.

A Repository for Hatha Yoga

The Adiyogi at the Adiyogi Alayam was mainly created as a repository of knowledge for hatha yoga, because I think of all the dimensions of yoga, hatha yoga will take the maximum beating in the coming generation, in the form of distortions. They cannot distort samadhi; they cannot distort shoonya; they cannot distort turya – they cannot distort aspects that most people are not aware exist. But now, everyone knows of hatha yoga. It is already getting distorted, but I think the distortions will go to their peak in the next generation.


 

Therefore I thought it is a fundamental responsibility to put hatha yoga in a repository that cannot be distorted, that is always available. If there is a person who is willing to receive, he will know hatha yoga in its purest form – not as it is taught, but the way the system is. Hatha yoga is not something that you teach to someone. It is something that makes someone realize the nature and the geometry of his system. As he understands the geometry of his own system, he will find the right postures for himself, and invariably, they will be the same postures.

Hatha yoga is no longer transmitted in this way. Looking at the forms that it has taken, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. It is cry-worthy, but we laugh – what to do? There are too many things that are cry-worthy in the world. If you start looking at them and cry, you will cry endlessly. So you better learn to laugh at all these cry-worthy things.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in Isha Forest Flower November 2015. Download as PDF on a “name your price, no minimum” basis or subscribe to the print version.