Adiyogi Quotes

The logic is simple: if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you even without your intent.

Life has no use at all, declared Adiyogi. It is simply a phenomenon. Little acts have purpose. But life is not framed within the narrow grid of utility. It is beyond frames. It is beyond grids. It is beyond utility. If you have a taste of this existence beyond purpose, of life beyond sense, you are enlightened.

The spiritual journey is a journey towards clarity, but never towards certainty. When you draw conclusions about beginnings and endings, you are a believer. When you accept that you really do not know anything, you become a seeker. To

To be enlightened is not a condition of certainty. It is to move from limited knowing to boundless unknowing, from gravitas to grace. It is to awaken to a condition of borderless ignorance, of limitless uncertainty. When you are no longer bound by the limitations of creation, you are blessed with the freedom of the Creator. The

Renunciation, or refusing to identify with that which one gathers (however precious it may be), is the ultimate doorway to knowing.

Fundamentally, the basis of yoga is just this: to initiate a process of self-creation where the nature of your body, your emotion, your mind, your energy is consciously created by you. This is what Adiyogi did. He crafted his life in its entirety.

We really do not need another nuclear explosion to annihilate life on this planet. Just a successful economy can do it quite effectively!

The basic principle is that the very things that can be your downfall in life can be used to raise yourself. If you simply change your perspective, what is down can be up. What is a downward chute can be used as an upward process. Whatever draws you into compulsive nature, you use that to become conscious. You use that momentum to grow.

There one exists not as an accumulation of memory and experience, not as an embodiment of love or compassion. There one simply exists in an intensity of inclusiveness.

Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored.

The yogic culture is not god-oriented – and this is what makes it an invaluable contribution to a world ravaged by wildly conflicting definitions of the divine. Adiyogi

Up and down, good and bad, sacred and profane: these are all assumed. But inward and outward: this is the one context we are sure of, the one context we can work with. This is Adiyogi’s most significant contribution to humankind and it is a profound and enduring one: “The only way out is in.

Only he who is constantly aware of the mortal nature of his existence, who knows that the flesh and blood that he carries is nothing more than a heap of ash, is truly self-realized. In incinerating all falsehood within is the making of a yogi. This is the ultimate truth that Adiyogi embodied.

For the sake of the world he married Sati. But once did, he surrendered totally to the union. Immense passion happened between them. The years rolled by, their love making was recorded as the most intense in human history.

To experience the ultimate you have to be willing to obliterate the self-created boundaries of individuality, you have to be willing to dissolve. That state of unbounded freedom is a state of oneness with Shiva – an unconditioned state beyond physical experience, beyond imaginative speculation, beyond all conceptual understanding.

The logic is simple: if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you even without your intent. Shiva

In the hierarchy of instincts, sex is considered to be the lowest, and the desire for the divine the highest. But here divinity is represented by the metaphor of sexual union – a hugely courageous way of looking at life. Such an image would be impossible in a culture where perspectives of the sacred evolved out of narrow ideas of morality, good and bad, right and wrong. This is only possible in a culture where an understanding of the sacred evolved out of consciousness. There is no distinction between the sacred and the profane in this symbol.

Recent scientific research reveals that the human system is capable of producing its own narcotic if it is maintained in a certain way. It is a completely self-contained system. And, what’s more, this is a narcotic which has a tremendous impact on health, well-being, alertness and perception. This chemical has been termed Anandamide (after the ancient Sanskrit word ‘ananda’, which refers to the core of life as blissfulness). If a sufficient amount is generated in the system, an individual can be intoxicated and fully awake at the same time. So, what Adiyogi disclosed, in effect, was that there is a whole marijuana mountain inside you! If you cultivate it properly, you could be stoned and yet stable, exuberant and yet aware all the time.

Modern physicists have accepted that all existence is fundamentally energy. But now they also acknowledge that there is something else that they have no instrument to measure. They have begun to realize that there is a dimension of energy that seems to hold everything together. They recognize its existence, but have no clue to its nature. Since they are not able to perceive it, they call it ‘dark energy’. For now they concede that it constitutes 73 per cent of the universe. (It will take time and evolution for them to see that it is, in fact, a lot more than that!) They also tell us that at the centre of our galaxy, and presumably of several others, is a ‘black hole’ which is constantly sucking creation in. At the centre of a black hole, they say, is a singularity, a place where creation and destruction happen simultaneously. In fact, scientists seem just one step short of saying: Shi-va!

To claim a limited end to a limitless process, to reduce the infinite to the finite, to draw borders across the borderless, to make measurements of the unfathomable – this is the beginning of the human impulse to create certainty where none exists. It is the birth of pain, of suffering, of delusion. The

Down the centuries, mystics have explored fragments of human consciousness. They have found one doorway here, one doorway there. But nobody has explored every possible doorway to human consciousness. No one did it before Adiyogi. And no one has needed to do it since. His work remains alive for those who have the eyes to see it.

Shi-va is the centripetal force that holds existence together; Shakti is the centrifugal force that gives rise to the explosive diversity of existence. In

Shiva does not spell religion. Shiva spells responsibility – our ability to take our very life process in our hands. When

Shiva is only meant for those whose greed is unlimited, for those who are not willing to settle for life in instalments, for those who want to become one with the very source of existence. If you go to the ultimate power in existence, you must also be going with the petition for the greatest possibility. You cannot be going with petty things to the big man! From

We have the tools and technologies in our hands with which we can make this world a paradise, or turn it into a living hell, or obliterate it altogether because of our own capabilities. In other words, we have reached a point where if we do not raise human consciousness, our intelligence and capability is going to work against us. We are racing rapidly towards self-sabotage. It

Adiyogi’s legacy offers you the licence to believe in the god of your choice, or not to believe at all. And if you do not find a god to your taste, it allows you the freedom to create one. That is how the Indian subcontinent arrived at an exuberant 330 million gods and goddesses at last count! To see the divine in a tree, rock or elephant is not considered absurd because every speck of creation is seen as a portal to the ultimate reality. These

This speck of human life is so insignificant, and still the very source of creation is active in it. The Creator still finds it worthwhile to be active in this speck. That means there must be something else other than the speck, isn’t it?

The whole idea behind fashioning such an image – that embodies life and death all at once – is to make the point that whatever you call divine is something that can never be logically understood. It can be experienced, but never grasped. There

The fundamentalist impulse can creep up on a devotee in many ways. Devotion is the quickest path to the divine, but it also has its pitfalls. The tendency to turn literal, or dogmatic, or to believe that one’s path or one’s notion of the divine is superior to all others is a seductive challenge. This

The past, present and future are not three different places, they are a single happening, here and now. When you live this moment profoundly, you experience time not serially but simultaneously not as three , but one. You then wake up to the fact that mystics have known since the dawn of time, that this moment is eternity.

Right now, you’re in a compulsive state of thought. If one thought enters your mind, it gets you tangled up. If you’re in a conscious state, you can run any number of tracks in your mind. Because it’s not compulsive, it doesn’t entangle you. ‘So compulsiveness takes away the possibility of exploring the full depth and dimension of life; it prevents you from realizing its immensity. In a state of consciousness, you can carry this mind with you without becoming a part of it. ‘See, there are only two ways to live life. You can impart your qualities upon the material that you gather, or you can take on the qualities of the material that you gather. That is the fundamental choice you have. That is yoga.

Adiyogi’s yogic mastery allowed him the pleasure of being internally drunk and completely aware, fully stoned and fully conscious, at every moment of his life. This, he reminds us, is possible for each one of us. We can generate our own peace and joy internally, without any external stimulus. The path of yoga makes us the masters of our own chemistry, the authors of our own bliss. Once we find access to our own inner intoxication without losing our stability, our lives become an exuberant expression of our joy, rather than a pursuit of happiness. Intoxicated and alert; dynamic and still; superbly formed and yet in tune with lunar mysteries where things lose all shape and definition; larger-than-life and yet covered with the ash of death – Adiyogi embodied many contradictions all at once. When

Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nada hi Sakala Jeeva Roopa Nada hi karma, Nada hi dharma Nada hi bandhana, Nada hi mukti Nada hi Shankara, Nada hi Shakti Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nadam Nadam, Sarvam Nadam Nadam Nadam, Nadam Nadam (Sound is Brahman, the manifestation of the universe, sound manifests itself in the form of all life, sound is bondage, sound is the means of liberation, sound is that which binds, sound is that which liberates, sound is the bestower of all, sound is the power behind everything, sound is everything.)

In a conversation, he once discussed the concepts of chaos and order as complementary rather than contrary. ‘People assume that a jungle means disorder and a garden spells order,’ he said. ‘I use the word “jungle” to mean a very superior, highly sophisticated order. You don’t see any straight lines, but still everything is in place. The order of the jungle is not logically correct. For a gardener, a jungle may look chaotic. But no, there is a very deep order in this chaos. A forest will live for millions of years, while a garden may not even last a month without maintenance.

If the invariable human problem with the sacred is its intangibility, its elusiveness, here all complaints are surely laid to rest. For here is reality in capital letters. Here is mountain – solid, physical, eminently tactile. And here is metaphor – richly veined, textured, inflected by aeons of spiritual folklore. The result of this conjunction between the physical and the metaphysical, between the literal and the emblematic is Shiva frozen eternally in form. Or, to put it another way, here is simply the staggering sight of centuries of abstraction – of incredible mythological and mystical sophistication – embodied in unequivocal stone. Here is idea made image. The conceptual made concrete. Thought turned thingy. Miracle as mountain.

It means beginning the journey from the psychological – maya – to the existential – Shi-va. And

Up and down, good and bad, sacred and profane: these are all assumed. But inward and outward: this is the one context we are sure of, the one context we can work with. This is Adiyogi’s most significant contribution to humankind and it is a profound and enduring one: “The only way out is in.” Once

Shiva is a bit like a packed lunch! You don’t have to go to a restaurant to be served. You don’t have to go to a temple or to heaven to find him. The ultimate nature of your existence always goes with you. There is only one place to go and it goes with you. How’s that for simplicity? You really cannot get a better deal!

For me, Shambho is not just a word. It is all that I know. It is all that flows through me. It is the last thing I will utter before I shed my body. It is the password to my very existence.

You either participate in life out of your compulsions or out of your consciousness. Consciousness means to be beyond compulsiveness. Compulsiveness means repetitive nature. Adiyogi participates out of consciousness. He recognizes that there are compulsions in people, but the whole spiritual process is to rise beyond that.

The yogic tradition is filled with stories of the great yogi Gorakhnath. Some say he lived in the eleventh century, but there are many accounts that date him much earlier. He was a disciple of Matsyendranath, an illustrious yogi in his own right. Such was his level of attainment that Matsyendranath was often venerated as a reincarnation of Shiva or Adiyogi. The lore tells us that Matsyendranath lived for about six hundred years.

The vishuddhi chakra, located in the pit of your throat, literally means “filter.” If your vishuddhi becomes powerful, you have the ability to filter everything that enters you. Or in other words, once your vishuddhi is very active, you grow so powerful that external nature has no influence over you. Indian iconography depicts Adiyogi, or Shiva, with a blue throat, because he is capable of filtering all the poisons of the outside world and preventing them from entering his system by stalling them in his throat.

Feminine is not a gender – it is a dimension.