Shyama: Pranam Sadhguru.
I have a question about Bhuta Shuddhi.
We speak about cleansing of the five elements.
Cleansing them of what,
why do they become impure
and what is the difference between
Pancha Bhuta Aradhana which happens on Shivaratri
and the Bhuta Shuddhi process
which we learn as a part of Hatha Yoga?
Sadhguru: The five elements,
just five,
if they have to play so much mischief,
it’s not one or two manifestations,
trillions of manifestations.
If all this has to happen,
if it does not acquire other qualities or possibilities,
there is no way, with five, you can create so many.
They are naturally receptive i n nature.
The air that you breathe,
the food that you eat,
the water that you drink,
we will leave the other two
because you don’t have much experience of those two.
Today, we know
we can influence them
just with thought, emotion, intension or energy
we can change the quality of the water,
we can change the quality of the air and the food that we eat,
just with our intention or emotion or thought process.
So
the five elements within you
which makes this body a deeply, deeply influenced..
A certain layer of information,
which generally referred to as the Karmic substance gathers;
without it the elements would not behave in a particular way within you.
It would be same
every human being would have been same
if there was no specific information.
See, if you eat a banana you become a woman
the banana becomes a woman.
Somebody here eats, it becomes a man,
if a cow eats it becomes a cow - same banana.
Banana is not so intelligent to make itself into a man, woman, cow, whichever animal consumes.
It is a certain amount of information within you,
which transforms a banana into
a woman or a man or a cow or an elephant or whatever for that matter.
What you call as myself,
individual self is essentially a certain volume of information
and the fundamental way that it is stuck on to you
is through the elements
because there is nothing here apart from the elements.
So, cleansing it is also about cleansing it
and making it free of the accumulated information
or the karmic substance.
If this is not done
then you will be a strong individual
but you will never know
how to breach this boundary that you have set for yourself.
This is not some boundary set by the existence;
this is a boundary that you’ve set for yourself.
If you cannot cross the boundary that you set up,
that’s a foolish way to live, isn’t it?
You set up a boundary without knowing why
and you can’t cross it after sometime
and you start claiming
“This is how I am!”
This is… you know this is a common statement you hear everywhere,
you ask them to cross some limitation
“No! This is how I am.”
This is not how you are
this is what you made yourself to be.
Now, cleansing becomes relevant
when you want to extend yourself beyond these boundaries,
when freedom and liberation becomes the goal of your life.
If you want to be a concrete ball
there is no need to cleanse,
there’s no need to cleanse at all.
So concretization of karmic processes will make you rigid.
Rigidity will bring enormous amount of suffering,
enormous.
You don’t need a calamity to happen;
you are a calamity by yourself.
You do not need any external assistance,
this is called self-help.
Most people,
when it comes to their suffering,
they are all on self-help.
You know
Nobody need to poke them.
When was it last time that somebody physically poked you?
Hmm?
When was it last time?
Maybe when you were in school,
somebody did this to you.
After that nobody is bothered about doing anything like that.
Most of you, almost all of you have never
been poked with a dagger or a swordm
at the most a pin or a finger,
nothing more.
But for most of you in the last ten, fifteen or twenty-five years,
nobody has ever even poked you with a finger
because everybody is weary of you.
Who’s ...
So, how much ...
if you look at the volume of suffering that you go through -
anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, whatever else you go through,
misery whatever-
how much has been caused from external agencies,
how much is caused by you
if you look at it,
it is a miniscule percentage
which has been caused from external agencies.
“No, no, no my mother-in-law said this,
my boss said that” -
they are saying what they’re saying
but they are not poking you.
Physical suffering has not been caused to you from outside unless you’re from Middle-East.
For most of you such things have not happened
but rest is all your own making.
This is simply because
the imprint is so deep
that you behave in predetermined compulsive ways.
A thousand times the same situation has happened,
but still the next time it happens,
you almost react the same way -
it takes a certain amount of awareness,
certain amounts of shaking you up to respond in a different way.
So, what’s called Bhuta Shuddhi is
to do it in the most fundamental level.
If we cleanse your mind,
if we clean it in the morning,
by afternoon you will have a whole new world again
It’s really waste.
This is why
no… no significance or no importance is given in the yogic system
towards your psychological structure
what you think, what you feel they don’t care
because if you change it today,
again within few hours you will change it back into something else.
We are only interested in the body;
this is why yoga calls everything as body
physical body, mental body, energy body like this
but no mind
because the psychological activity that’s happening
towards which you have given enormous importance
is of no consequence or significance.
Depending upon the type of information imprinted within you.
Whatever is your karma,
whatever is your sanskara,
that is how you think,
that’s how you feel,
that’s how your emotions happen,
everything happens that way.
So we are interested in handling the root.
If you prune the tree,
it will sprout back with vengeance
no point pruning it.
If you handle the root, it’ll be gone.
So the very root of karmic imprint is in the elements,
that is the most fundamental space.
It takes much more than handling other aspects.
So, generally …because most people are not interested in absolute transformation.
They just want a little change,
they don’t want to lose themselves.
Bhuta Shuddhi means you want to lose yourself
whether it’s good, bad, ugly, beautiful, it doesn’t matter
you want to lose everything that you have built,
so that the creator’s creation will stand up and shine within you.
It’ll take a certain amount of work.
The Bhuta Shuddhi that’s been taught to you is very basic.
If you want to do more serious forms of Bhuta Shuddhi,
it will mean
it becomes your entire life,
it’s not something that you do on the side.
So even if you do a very minor version of Bhuta Shuddhi,
you will see
the change that happens in you is permanent
there is no tendency to fall back
and that’s important.
Otherwise everybody changes for three days
and again they fall back into the rut.
After sometime that will not happen
when you assist whatever else you’re doing with the Bhuta Shuddhi practice.
Nadha Aradhana… I mean the Pancha Bhuta Aradhana is another matter,
that’s a ritual.
For those who are not willing to do sadhana
just to give them some benefit,
that’s the beauty of a ritual,
that’s a limitation of a ritual.
Somebody else can conduct a ritual for you –
you don’t have to do any sadhana, just sit there and benefit from that
but then only if they conduct, you have it
otherwise you don’t have it.
Suppose we don’t do Pancha Bhuta Aradhana, you don’t have it.
So, the ritual is always like this,
it is beautiful because
people who do not know anything about it
they can still benefit from it.
At the same time, if those who conduct,
do not conduct it properly
it will not happen to you.
If they do not conduct it at all,
it will never be available to you.
But if you do Bhuta Shuddhi practice by yourself,
if you’re willing you can keep it up
and you will see as time progresses
its impact is undeniable.
Above all,
whatever it does,
however small the practice is,
whatever it does, there is no turning back.
That’s a very important aspect of Bhuta Shuddhi.
If you,
if you
let’s say six months you do asana,
another one year you give it up,
everything will back,
will be back as it was.
Six months you did pranayam
if it’s a powerful process like Shakti Chalana Kriya, if you did,
its impact will be there
but of… at a certain period of time
if you don’t do it for a certain period of time,
again it’ll turn back.
You meditate, you do Shoonya meditation for some time -
if you don’t do it for a certain period of time,
slowly it’ll turn back.
But that is not the nature of Bhuta Shuddhi.
Bhuta Shuddhi if you do,
nothing seems to be happening
because it’s very fundamental and it’s slow
but whatever happens, it will not turn back.
It stays with you,
as long as you hold this body, it stays with you
it will not go
because it’s on a very fundamental level.
That’s the significance of Bhuta Shuddhi.