User talk:Ngwengi Konyui

'What is Enlightenment? Perhaps one the most frequent queries that consumes a seeker’s mind are the questions “What is enlightenment? Can spiritual practices enlighten me?” Sadhguru, a yogi and mystic with the experience of three enlightened lifetimes, answers these questions.

Sadhguru: In India, enlightened beings have been referred to as Dwijas. Dwija means twice-born. Once, you were born out of your mother’s womb; it happened unconsciously. You did not make it happen – nature did it for you. When you were born, you came with a certain innocence and blissfulness. A child is innocent and blissful by himself. But since this blissfulness did not happen consciously, anybody can corrupt it in no time. In no time, they will take it away... For some of you, it was taken away by the time you were 12 or 13 years of age; for many it was already taken away when they were 5 to 6. Children are becoming tense at 5 to 6 years of age today because their innocence gets corrupted in no time, depending upon the volume of influence that people around have on them.

Now, if you have to be born once again, you must die first. If you are not willing to die, the question of being reborn doesn’t arise. This does not mean dying physically. If you leave this body, some other nonsense will be waiting for you. But if you die the way you are, if you destroy everything that you called “myself,” then you are born once again. This kind of birth happens 100% consciously. Once again you become blissful and innocent, but fully aware. Now, this blissfulness cannot be taken away by anybody. So, what you call “enlightenment” means a conscious self-annihilation.

Right now, most people are not thinking of enlightenment. They are just trying to live a little better. They want to live a little more peacefully, joyfully, more efficiently, more effectively. We can use yoga for that also. It is a poor way of making use of yoga because yoga is capable of delivering you to another dimension of life; but it’s okay. If people are not satisfied with what they are seeking in their lives, they will never seek anything higher. If you talk about enlightenment to somebody who is hungry right now, he only thinks of food. Whatever people feel is missing right now in their life needs to be taken care of to some extent. Otherwise they will not seek anything higher.

Isha Yoga is offered in such a way that all dimensions are included but nothing is compulsive. When we initiate people into the kriya, it is taught in such a way that everything is available. We don’t want to deny anyone enlightenment just because they don’t know it. We want to create a taste of another dimension so that they will seek it. At the same time, nothing is forcing itself upon you; you can use it any way you wish to. If someone were an ascetic and a “fulltime” yogi, I would initiate them in a completely different manner where the way they should go is compulsive. But generally, I will not initiate someone in a compulsive way. I initiate them in such a way that they can make use of it in many different ways and it still stays alive.

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Konyui Ngwengi
Why Do People Go on Pilgrimages? Pilgrimages have been an essential part of the spiritual quest since time immemorial. But why do people go on pilgrimages, enduring hardships and discomfort? Sadhguru looks at the significance and purpose behind making a journey to a sacred space. What is the difference between travel, a journey and a pilgrimage? People move from one place to another for a variety of reasons. There are explorers who are always looking for virgin land that they want to put their footprint on. They want to prove something. There are travelers who are curious to see everything, so they travel. There are tourists who just go to relax. There are other kinds of tourists who just go to escape from their work or family. But a pilgrim is not going for any of these purposes. A pilgrimage is not a conquest, it is a surrender. It is a way of getting yourself out of the way. If you do not budge, it is a way of wearing yourself out. A process of destroying all that is limited and compulsive and arriving to a boundless state of consciousness. Subduing Who You Are The very idea behind a pilgrimage is fundamentally to subdue the sense of who you are. It is to become nothing in the process of just walking and climbing and subjecting yourself to various arduous processes of nature. In the ancient past, to get to such places, a person had to go through a certain amount of physical, mental, and every kind of hardship, so that he becomes less than who he thinks he is right now. Today things have been made much more comfortable. We are flying up, driving down and just walking a little bit. Physically, we are much weaker human beings than what they used to be a thousand years ago because somewhere we do not know how to make use of the comforts and conveniences for our wellbeing. We have used them to make ourselves weaker, at more difficulty with ourselves and with the surroundings in which we exist. So the fundamental idea of pilgrimage becomes all the more relevant to modern societies than it was to the ancient ones.

Hardship is not necessary but most people are unwilling to dissolve, so you have to wear them down. It is unfortunate that most human beings cannot grow in comfort. It would be wonderful to grow in comfort but unfortunately, most human beings become frivolous when there is comfort. Some profoundness comes to them only when there is hardship. But it need not be so. Something else need not beat us down. We must have the sense to understand that if we want to experience something larger than ourselves and touch dimensions which are not yet in our perception, the most important thing is that the sense of who you are should go down. Make Your Life a Pilgrimage If you have a working head, you would make your life into a pilgrimage. If your life is not a constant process of reaching for something higher than where you are right now, what kind of life is that? If this life is not constantly longing for something higher than what it is, that is not much of a life. If you are aspiring and working towards something higher, then your life is a pilgrimage.