Becoming A Source of Energy
“If you resist, you create more heat and less light. If you do not resist, you will create a lot of light and very little heat.”
—Sadhguru
Q: Sadhguru, you spoke about touching the spinal thread and about the sushumna nadi becoming alive. Can you elaborate on this?
Sadhguru: There is a very beautiful ad that I saw for a CFL light bulb in India. A little Tibetan boy is sitting with a book on a pedestal with a halo behind him. An old woman sees this and starts saying “Rinpoche, Rinpoche [An honorific title in Tibetan Buddhism conferred upon respected teachers].” People in the town hear her, and soon, the whole town comes and starts saying “Rinpoche, Rinpoche,” in front of the boy. Then the boy sees all these people and he also gets down and starts saying the same thing. The halo is actually a CFL light glowing.
You may not yet be able to glow like that but something is glowing. If nothing was glowing, the very atmosphere we have set here at the Isha Yoga Center is not one where you can have some kind of psychological or social comfort. It is not an atmosphere that gives you any kind of authority or grip.
We have a very elaborate system of how to keep everyone’s life sufficiently disturbed but not too disturbed so that they will run away. It is a very calibrated level of disturbance because we do not want people to settle down. This is not a home away from home. This is a way to learn to live absolutely homeless. The Dhyanalinga is not a home, it is the womb. Have you ever heard of any woman keeping her child in her womb forever because she loves it? However much she loves it, she gives birth. That is how it is.
Your understanding of love has to evolve. You always think love means to hold. No. Love means to liberate and push forth. If you really care for life, love means to take life to its highest possible pitch. If you are in love with any life-form, you want that life-form to go to its ultimate pitch.
We are using Isha Yoga as an effective tool to level people’s minds. It rolls you down pretty well and in that moment of a little bit of openness in the psychological process, we did touch your spine. The moment openness happens, your spinal thread will not be spared, have no hope of that. It will immediately be touched. Whether you let it glow or you resist and create more heat than light is up to you. It is in your hands. It has been touched and the power is on. If you resist, you create more heat and less light. If you do not resist, you will create a lot of light and very little heat.
Becoming a Source of Energy
If you want to cultivate this further, so that your glow is not just for your transformation, if you want to become an “alternative source” of energy on this planet, you have to pay a lot of attention to it. A lot means a lot. But you cannot pay a lot of attention to anything because you can only pay what you have. But in what you have also you save – that’s not okay. Whatever attention level you have right now is not all that is possible. There is more but that is still in an un-manifest state where you do not have access to it. But at least you must pay what you have. If you hold back in that, the chances of evolving or improving upon what has been touched is very remote.
Even with your mental attention, all of it is not there right now, please see. You are at different levels of attention at different times of your life. If you are doing your work, you are in one level of attention; if you are in meditation you are in a different level of attention; if you are eating something that you like very much, you are in a different level of attention; if you are watching a video or something that you like, you are in a different level of attention. Your levels of attention are different at different times, and whatever the peak attention that you have had in your life at any time, that is still not all of it. That is just a small part of it. You are capable of much more attention.
Suppose I leave you without a torch in the middle of the forest at night, when it is pitch dark, you will see that your level of attention will be different. When you face danger and hear wild animals but you cannot see anything, you will be in a different level of attention. If it is a question of life and death, you will become attentive in a completely different way.
A few years ago, I took a small group of people on a trek on a railway track between Subramanya and Mangalore in Karnataka. This stretch has over 300 bridges and 100 tunnels. You are practically either on a bridge or in a tunnel most of the time, and it is an absolutely wonderful mountain. Some of the tunnels are over a kilometer long. Even in the day it is pitch dark if you go in. You cannot see your own hand in front of you. After some time you do not know whether your eyes are open or closed, it is that dark. Probably, most people have never been in a place like that – even starlight gives you some sense of vision. In the tunnels, there is absolutely no vision; it is pitch black. After some time you start wondering whether your eyes are closed or open because it does not make any difference.
I made them walk in those tunnels without any torches. There could be a ditch, there could be an opening, there could be anything. And bats are flying all over – they do not see anything either but they are damn sure about where they are going. They are flying really close to you all over the place. Initially, people were scared but after some time, slowly they started walking and enjoying the whole experience. If you are in a place like that, your attention becomes really heightened. If you can keep your attention like this every moment of your life, then you will glow.
Pay Attention
Why I constantly push people in the ashram to notice even little things in the ashram is not just to maintain cleanliness. It is not just about the aesthetics of the place but to be absolutely attentive to every little thing. If a pebble has turned over, you must notice it. It is not a question of the pebble, it is just that you are attentive. If you bring this attention to a peak, then your spinal thread will really glow. It has been touched, no question about that. If you have to make it glow, you have to pay attention. If you learn to have a heightened sense of attention, then we can teach you methods as to what you must and what you should not attend to within yourself.
If you become very attentive, we can look at how to make use of that attentiveness. It is only when you truly pay attention to your life that you see that you don’t know where it begins and where it ends. You are going about as if whatever you are doing is the be all and end all of life. The moment you pay a little attention, you understand “This is not it.”
The very first step of even thinking spiritual came to you only because of a certain level of attention. If you pay much more attention to everything, above all if you heighten your ability to be attentive, that could be used in miraculous ways. It could really create an alternative source of energy.
