Sadhguru: These questions and these thoughts are coming
from a mindset
which has grown in organized religions.
We are not talking about Shiva versus somebody else
because that you refer to as Shiva
includes all these things that you are talking about.
Just one little dimension,
this or that they found out
and they started talking about it
and they became popular.
I am not trying to belittle them;
they are all wonderful human beings
who’ve done great service to humanity.
But I am saying in terms of perception,
there hasn’t been another being like him.
And perception is all that I value
and that's all you should value.
Rest can be made up,
rest is just frills.
So you are talking about Zen.
What greater master than of Zen than Shiva himself?
That somebody comes,
his own son,
he doesn’t get the point –
you’ve heard of Gutei,
the Zen Master?
Gutei always did this
He will be talking
people look at it,
‘Okay why he is showing his finger to me?’
The thing is
he is always trying to say everything is one,
this is the teaching.
Rest of what I say is not important,
this is the teaching.
So there was a little boy
because in these Buddhists monasteries,
Zen monasteries little boys become monks,
four, five year olds.
So the little boy who is growing up in the monastery,
he saw Gutei and you know
the boy takes to him.
So this boy is going about
if anybody says anything
So Gutei watched this.
He waited for him to become sixteen.
One day he called the boy and he did this
the boy instinctively
because he has been doing it all over the place,
he also did this.
He took out a knife and chopped off his finger
and they say he attained.
He suddenly saw the point that it's not about one,
it's about nothing.
Shiva went further long time ago.
He came back from somewhere,
he always carried a trishool –
So trishool is a trident.
He is always carrying the trident to show people there are three dimensions –
yourself,
your way of being,
what you know and what you do not know,
and what you do not know rules,
not what you know.
So one day he came back after a long break.
He has not seen this boy, his son.
Now he is ten, eleven years of age.
When Shiva came,
this boy is carrying a little trident,
with that he tries to stop him.
He looked at him and took off his head,
not his trident.
Then whatever drama happened
and then he put another head,
a Gana’s head on top of him
and he became such a brilliant boy.
Even today in India
if people want to start education,
anything
first thing is they will worship this boy
which that Gana has become gaja –
a Gana’s head has become
instead of Ganesha he's become Gajesha now.
They kind of modified it
and made it into an elephant head
but he became the very embodiment of intelligence and brilliance.
They said there was nothing that he did not know.
So that’s the first act of Zen.
So anything
Anything that you can talk of the world,
talk in the world,
nothing is left out of his life.
He is so complex and so complete
and he did not have a teaching,
he only had methods.
That’s the most important thing.
Others have teachings.
How many fingers can you cut?
A method like this,
can you employ?
Can you go about employing this Gutei’s method of cutting a finger?
One boy’s finger you cut and he got it.
If you cut many fingers
you will only have crippled people,
nothing would have happened.
So there is no teaching from Shiva,
only methods
and the methods are one hundred percent scientific in nature.
He gave one hundred and eight ways
and added another six
and said one hundred and twelve ways.
One hundred and twelve ways
because there are one hundred and fourteen chakras in the body,
two of them reside outside the physical body.
He said ‘That realm is only for those who are beyond.’
For human beings there are only one hundred and twelve ways.
And he showed clear methods
as to how you can exploit this one hundred and twelve dimensions
of how this life is made
and each one how you can,
through each one of them you can realize.
There is a beautiful story.
When he was expounding the mechanics of life
with the seven sages,
he had one witness
and she’s, that witness is not like Anantaatheertha,
she is Parvati.
She is already realized.
He taught her or he made her realize in a very intimate manner.
But when the seven sages sat
he went into a completely different dimension of exploration
So it was interesting for her.
Something that happened to her so simply
is such a complex process.
So as he went about expounding different dimensions,
he said,
‘There are hundred and twelve ways
in which a human being can attain.’
She being a woman,
she being realized
and above all she being the wife,
she said, ‘Why only hundred and twelve?
There must be more ways.’
He was looking at the mechanics of life,
exploring things.
He is not giving a teaching,
he is not giving a philosophy.
As he was exploring he saw this as a disturbance,
he waved her aside
‘Tch sit.
There are only one hundred and twelve.’
Because you are going through something
and somebody makes a comment which is a personal comment,
a whimsical comment
he… ‘There are only one hundred and twelve.’
She says, ‘I’ll find more.’
He said, ‘You go and find.’
Then she went.
She is already realized,
she is trying to explore different ways to find it.
After,
they say, many many years of sadhana she came back.
He was still talking to the Saptha Rishis or the seven sages.
She being his wife,
she can come and sit beside him
but she came and sat one step below.
She did not want the sages to know
but she wanted him to know that she has failed.
She just came and sat one step below
to indicate that whatever challenge she threw,
she’s failed.
So she did not want the others to know
but she wanted him to know.
So there are hundred and twelve different ways.
What Shiva is talking is mechanics of life,
no philosophy,
no teaching,
no social relevance,
simply science.
Social relevance,
we add just to make it rounding it off,
otherwise it's too scientific.
From this science,
individual masters make technology out of it.
He did not give technology,
he just gave the science of it.
The technologies that you are enjoying today,
either in the form of a Smartphone or a computer
or some other gadget that you are using,
there is a science behind it.
That science is not relevant to you.
You are only using the technology
but if somebody had not grasped the science
you would not have the technology.
The algorithms that go into the making of
a simple software is very complex.
Sometimes you got your email in a coded form,
did you see?
You can't figure out,
‘Is this what I typed?’
It is all kinds of gibberish
but for somebody else it makes sense.
Because of that it is going.
Now, here we are just using sound waves.
If I speak these amplifiers are just amplifying the sound that I create
and it's travelling as sound-waves.
But suppose I spoke to you on a phone
then what I speak is not going as sound-waves,
it’s becoming electromagnetic waves,
going there and reconverting themselves.
So when it's travelling from here –
you speak on a cell-phone,
it's travelling from here to Bangalore;
it is not going as sound-waves,
it’s become something else.
If you hear that if you can or if you feel that,
it would be something totally different
but some other instrument once again converts it into sound waves
the way you can understand.
So what Shiva said is simply pure science.
He is not talking technology.
He left it to the Saptha Rishis to make the technology
as it would suit the people who would sit in front of him on that day.
Depending upon what kind of gadget we need we produce that
but the fundamental science is the same thing, isn't it?
Nothing has changed about that.
So I am talking about Shiva all the time.
Because it is the science,
the tech is not important;
it's the science which is important.
Tech can be made up,
technology is a made up thing.
Because there is a fundamental science,
using that we are making something out of it.
Gadgets that are relevant today may be irrelevant tomorrow.
Already it's happened, isn't it, so many things?
So many gadgets that we thought were very valuable,
no more valuable
because new gadgets have come
but the same science.
So what kind of gadgets we produce
simply depends upon who is sitting in front of you right now,
what is the need of the hour.
So in this context
there is a very very very big difference
between what you refer to as the Adiyogi
and all the other names that you are mentioning.
They are all technology people;
they grasped one aspect of it
and they made a certain technology for people
who were sitting in front of them at that moment.
It worked for the people
so that's all that matters at that moment.
But we are looking at Adiyogi
as the fundamental science.
It's important at a time like this.
At a time like this
when the humanity is in the kind of state
that it is for various reasons,
it's important the essential science of it is strengthened.