Sadhguru | Yoga isn’t twisting your body, tying your limbs into knots; it is ultimate inclusiveness

There was a time, even now in some parts of India, 200-300 people were living together in one large home because husband, wife, children, grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts, granduncles, grandaunts, cousins, everybody is one family. As we got a little more educated, we dropped these uncles and aunts; we thought family means husband, wife, children, and parents. Then after a while, we thought, let’s drop the parents. We thought family meant husband, wife, and children. Now children are thinking it is not so. It is becoming such that even two people, the couple is not able to live together. Only if they meet once in a while they are okay. Weekend marriage is all right; through the week — impossible. It is becoming like that because we are becoming more and more exclusive, not inclusive. All modern societies encourage exclusiveness. Never before, humanity had known these kinds of comforts and conveniences. Never before has humanity enjoyed this kind of food and health security, but never before has humanity been this depressed because they cannot get along with anybody. They have become too exclusive. Inclusiveness is a relationship. Exclusiveness naturally leads to depression. Yoga means ultimate inclusiveness. The word ‘yoga’ literally means union. When you have become one with everything, this is yoga. Yoga does not mean twisting your body, tying your limbs into knots or holding your breath or doing some other circus. The word ‘yoga’ means, in your experience, everything has become one. How can everything become one? You are you, I am me, isn’t it? No question of these two becoming one. Do you know today modern science is telling you the whole existence is just one energy manifesting itself in a million different ways? It is a scientific fact. This and that are the same energy. Maybe it is not in your perception, but that is the reality. So this is what science says. And the religions of the world have been screaming for a long time that God is everywhere. Whether you say God is everywhere or you say everything is the same energy, it is the same reality. God is everywhere, everything is the same energy — it is the same reality expressed in two different ways. A scientist has not experienced this reality; he has somehow mathematically deduced it. A religious person also has not experienced it, but he believes that it is all God. Now a yogi means somebody who is not willing to settle for deductions or belief systems, he wants to know it. If you have such a longing that you want to know it, you are unwilling to settle for other people’s deductions or belief systems, then you have to pursue yoga. When I say ‘yoga’, do not think I am talking about a particular way of knotting your limbs or holding your breath or standing on your head. No. Anything that leads to the union is called yoga, whichever way. How many ways are there to reach your ultimate union with life, or with everything? You can only work with what you have, isn’t it? So what is it that you call ‘myself’ right now? Your body, your mind, your emotions… Your energies may not be in your experience, but you can easily infer and see, if your body, mind and emotion function like this, there must be some kind of energy making this happen. Right now we may not understand how this microphone works, but because it is amplifying the sound, we can understand that either a battery cell or a power house, some kind of energy source is behind this. So these are the four realities for you — body, mind, emotion and energy. If you employ your body and try to reach your ultimate nature, we call this Karma Yoga, yoga of action. If you employ your intelligence and try to reach your ultimate nature, we call this Gnana Yoga, yoga of intelligence. If you employ your emotion and try to reach your ultimate nature, we call this Bhakti Yoga, yoga of devotion or emotion. If you transform your inner energies and try to reach your ultimate nature, we call this Kriya Yoga, yoga of transforming energies. All these four aspects, body, mind, emotion and energy have to function together, only then you get somewhere. Every one of you is a unique combination of these four things because body, mind, emotion and energy come together in different ways in every person. So accordingly the right kind of yoga has to be mixed in the right proportion, otherwise it does not work. It is because of this, in the yogic traditions so much stress has been laid about having a live guru because he will mix the right kind of concoction. Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.