Stable like a Mountain

At the foothills but my

Heart longs for Mountain

Peaks. What would I be

without the Blissful Burden.

Video transcript

Sadhguru: It’s fantastic to be here, at the foothills of these mountains. The first half of my life went looking for them, because I have to unload my load. Now hardly able to be here.

On one level, spiritual process means to become like a mountain – stable, still. Only when somebody has a very stable base, many things can be done. Exuberance of life can be possible only if there is absolute stability. Otherwise, exuberance will lead to madness. That’s why a lot of people who are a little creative, little active, little exuberant, end up freaky and nearly insane. Because without stability, you cannot have a dance going. This is why Shiva means stillness and Shiva means dance, at the same time. Either you see him sitting absolutely still, or you see him in an explosion of dance. An explosion which is not destructive is possible only when there is stability.

People try to become stable by controlling, trimming their lives. This is the way your grandmother would tell you to be stable: “Control yourself, then you will be stable.” Yes, if you are dead, you will be stable. I promise you that. So normally, people who talk about stability are a constipated existence. You know what’s constipation – that means it happens little by little. Their joy, their love, their ecstasy happens little by little, here and there. So stability is not because you trimmed your life down or pruned it down to minimal and you are stable – that’s of no consequence. Stability is because you see everything utterly clearly.

That is why when we say Adiyogi, we’re talking about stability; at the same time, an exuberant dance. This is possible only because he has more than two eyes, not necessarily three – more than two. That means he sees much more than most people ever see. Because he sees much, much more, he is able to be stable. If you see only one part of it, you cannot be stable. So the entire effort is to see better. Darshan means seeing, you know. The entire culture has always been talking about this. You go to the temple not for sending petitions, but for darshan – to see better.

Fundamentally, why people are not able to see what is there with life is simply because of identifications with so many things. Starting with the body, the identifications have gone into so many things. The moment you identify with something, your entire mind understands that it needs to be protected, and it just works for that. “So, how do I break my national identity, my religious identity, my racial identity?” You don’t have to go like this. If you break your identification with your own body, it’s gone. Everything is gone, because everything is rooted in that. Everything is just an amplification of your identification with the limited boundaries of your own body.

The moment you get identified with the body, the rest of identification is only multiplication. And it multiplies pretty rapidly. The more successful you are with whatever you are doing, it will multiply much faster. And you will be able to see less and less, as your identities grow. The drama, the psychological drama rises to crescendo – won’t allow you to see anything. Your own thoughts and emotions will drown you. Unfortunately, the world has been constantly pushing people to believe that what’s happening in your mind is very important. I’ve been trying to convince the world what’s happening in your mind is just trash. “No, Sadhguru. I am thinking about God!” That is also trash. Maybe a bit holy trash, but still trash. Because in your mind, God cannot come, devil cannot come, angels cannot come – only thoughts come.

It’s a fool who identifies one thought as sacred, another thought as something else. Thought means something that’s not real right now. Thought means old garbage is festering in your mind. You need to think about this and that to survive. But you don’t need to think to explore something new. You don’t need to think to become enlightened. Because what will you think? You will only think the past data which is in your head – in many different ways, maybe. How many varieties of expressions your rubbish finds is of no value to life – maybe socially, there is some value. In some places, when I go internationally, people are saying, “He’s a thought leader.” I say, “Oh!” No thought in my head.

Seeing clearly, seeing everything, that your vision is not obstructed by yourself – if this one thing happens, stability will happen. Exuberance, you don’t have to worry about, because that’s the nature of life itself. Everything is exuberant. It takes stability to allow exuberance to happen. Otherwise, you keep curtailing your exuberance because it hurts when you are out of balance. If you are out of balance and you move at a certain speed, you are going to hurt yourself. Whether you’re riding a bicycle or you’re riding the cosmos, if you are out of balance and you attain speed, you are going to hurt yourself very badly. So balance is very important.

Balance that comes out of curtailment is not balance – it is packaged death, in a certain way. It looks very decent and dignified, because the dead are always very dignified, have you seen this? They never did anything indecent. Essentially, everything is rooted in clarity of vision, and that’ll not come unless there’s some distance between what is me and what is my body. If this distance is not there, then multiplication of identities is an inevitable consequence. Vision… You should pay attention to these mountains – you should go crazy every day. Though I carried it for my entire lifetime. Still I go crazy looking at it. Either you’re not seeing it, or you’re looking at it and not seeing it.

Once Shankaran Pillai came to Isha Yoga Center and said he wants to stay in a room which has a spectacular view. So after thinking, the reception put him in the Chitra block. Next day morning, he woke up and he complained, “I asked for a room with a view, why do you put me here? They just tried to explain “This is the room with the best view.” He said, “Where is the damn view? The mountain is in the way.” The mountain never gets in the way. Look beyond yourself – this is all there is.

Refers to the consecration of the Dhyanalinga at the Velliangiri Foothills, a mission entrusted to Sadhguru by his Guru