Sadhguru: 4700 of years ago
there was a full fledged temple
with almost five feet tall lingam
we put the rudraksh and showed them
how at different places
how the linga behaves differently.
whole of Europe was full of temples like this
I was in Turkey just two weeks ago
- you’ve heard of Konya, outside in the garden
so many broken pieces,
you know, huge faces,
half faces, all kinds of things,
old temples all broken and made foundation stone.
So, we were just walking through
and there in the garden I found about a four and half feet or more…
about four feet nine inches kind of linga;
properly created linga, an ellipsoid stone.
I said, “Wow,” you know.
And when we looked at the history and things like that, they said this is almost 4700 years old.
4700 years ago there was a full fledged temple
with almost five feet tall lingam which was in worship
and it was consecrated
that long ago - still alive!
Cracked a little bit,
so it got disturbed
and I was just demonstrating
for the few…three-four people who were with me
- every point on the linga is different,
different points on the linga are differently done,
beautifully done piece,
whoever worked on it they knew what they were doing,
not rudimentary job, very subtle work
- still alive 4700 years,
thrown out in the garden, not worshipped, still alive.
Because of little bit of cracks that have happened,
some disturbances happened to the whole thing,
but still there.
I just demonstrated,
I felt this and then because they had to see,
we put the rudraksh and showed them
how at different places
how the linga behaves differently.
So, this work has been done in the past plenty,
but when very, you know,
when my way or no way attitude came,
these things were all razed to the ground
in many ways,
otherwise whole of Europe was full of temples like this,
consecrated spaces like this.
These eastern temples were never built
as places of prayer.
Even today in India,
nobody ever leads a prayer in a temple.
You're not supposed to pray or worship but you're just supposed to sit there and come.
The idea was, people will go and sit there and benefit.
This is how a temple was created
- no priest, no prayer,
there is a maintenance person
who is now calling himself a priest.
Certain families were appointed to maintain the sanctity of the place, to keep it going
in a certain way.
You are just supposed to go there,
sit there for some time and come.
In South India this tradition is still alive.
In north it's been disturbed,
because the brunt of invasions
north India took, south India left.
The Deccan plateau was generally left untouched
by the outside invaders.
So, you were just supposed to sit there,
nobody leads a prayer,
nobody teaches you a prayer,
nobody says you must do this or that,
you just sit there and imbibe this because these are all consecrated spaces,
they created many.
All these things were razed to ground.
Only few that are left are generally in India and some other South East Asian countries;
otherwise whole of Arabia and Europe were full of consecrated spaces.