IN AN exclusive interview to this Correspondent Sathguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder of Isha Yoga Center, addressed some of the doubts that often beset a participant of the centre's programmes.
What was the inspiration for you to consecrate the Dhyanalinga?
The Dhyanalinga was my Guru's dream. Ever since this memory descended upon me 22 years ago, my life has been a single-point agenda of consecrating it. The Linga is an enormous spiritual tool. This one has been consecrated not through mantras and rituals but through energy processes. It is an energy form. The stone Linga itself is not important. Even a person who is totally ignorant of meditation will become meditative within a few minutes of being in that space. The Dhyanalinga is a Guru of the highest possibility who delivers the spiritual processes without a single instruction. This is our gift to posterity.
You do not conform to any tradition or philosophy; yet, there are elements of different spiritual traditions in the make-up of Isha Yoga. Is your method one of integration?
It is not a question of integration. What you see here, as Isha Yoga, is a pure expression of inner experience. Maybe in various spiritual traditions around the world, some aspects that we are using in Isha Yoga could be present... What is being offered is a deep understanding of the human being — the physical, mental, energy, etheric and spiritual dimensions. This understanding has not come from scholarship but from pure experience within. Various traditions you see today, also at some point, started as the inner experience of an enlightened being. To ensure that distortions or misuse do not happen we have set up necessary safeguards. Who you are, your innermost core is Isha Yoga.
Your work has been channelled into social concerns like rural development, forest conservation, Yoga for prisoners and so on. Do they not deviate from the purpose of your real mission?
Human wellbeing is our real mission. Learning to live joyfully is the greatest thing that can happen to a person. So all these programmes are only aimed at that — to bring about transformation within so that the ability to be joyful is not controlled or enslaved to external situations. The work is fundamentally spiritual, so there is no question of deviating.
Yoga today has become a buzzword for the health and fitness conscious. In your programmes, do the majority of the participants rise to its true spiritual dimension?
People come to Isha Yoga programmes for various reasons like health, to get rid of stress, obesity, spiritual and so on. That is perfectly okay with me because after all a person seeks what he does not have. When a person does not have basic health or wellbeing, he cannot seek enlightenment or other dimensions of life. Health and wellbeing is a natural outcome of Yogic practices that anyway gets taken care of. Everybody is seeking spirituality; it is just that most people are seeking it unconsciously.
Whether they are seeking consciously or unconsciously, that is not the point; that they are seeking is important. Isha Yoga, that is offered naturally, raises the practitioners to the spiritual dimension. From a simple tribal person to a criminal in the prison to top executives around the world, all have been touched by it and it has become a living experience for them.
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