Sadhguru Exclusive: Secrets of Tantra - No. 3 (of 6)

Sadhguru Exclusive
Secrets of Tantra
16 minutes - 1998
Location of talk: Tibet
Transcript


Female Questioner:
Namaskaram, Sadhguru. Does past life regression help in working out karma?


Sadhguru:

So, what's generally being done as past life regression is essentially a psychological process. You don't touch anything past life that way. It is just that even within the mind that you have right now there are so many layers to this which never comes into your access.


You know there are schizophrenic people. The recorded number. Actually there could be more. Medically well documented number is there have been people who have managed 32 different personalities in the same person, complete people. One man being 32 different people. These are clinically well recorded cases. There could be more.


For you as a person, for you to be the person that you are you have so much complexity of thought, emotion, this, that. Just imagine 32 like this within you, your mind can effortlessly handle it. If you ask me how many are possible, I would say 84 million personalities you can do. You can do that or more because the mind has come with that much capability. It is never really used. A schizophrenic is probably using his mental capacity far more than a so-called normal person.


So the complexity of what the mind is, is such that it can create different levels of experience for you. Mind is such, right now you are here in Tibet. You just saw a few things of Tibetan life. With this your mind can take this information and build a whole new Tibet within you, if you want.


See people are writing books, you know? Somebody came to Tibet for 10 days, he goes back and writes 500 pages which you read for 10 days and it looks like a world by itself. He was here only for 10 days. Now he created a whole new Tibet in his mind. All of it may not be true, but it doesn't matter. From the little information he got, he just multiplied it in his mind in so many different ways and it may not be totally off either, from the reality. It may be slightly off - but it's still Tibet.


So if I show you anything. You saw me now. Just using me as a subject you can write 1000 pages if you want. Human beings have the capability, isn't it? Some have developed it, some have not, but it is there in every human being.


[video cuts to a top-down view of a Tibetan Buddhist monk creating a large mandala]


So if I just give you one thought with that thought you can build a whole life. This is the whole art of Tantra. Tantra means just this - using the mind in such a way that you create such elaborate detail of everything. Now we could just work. You have a little flower or something?


The Kriya and the Pranayam and whatever Shakti Chalana Kriya and other things that you are doing are still very simple ones. There are more complex ways of using your mind. Even in this, you need to use your mind. I am sure right now at least 60% of people can never get their 7 cycles right? Yes? Am I right? Am I being cruel on you?


[Sadhguru grins at his small audience and audience laughs]


All you have to do is count up to 28, you know? 7 cycles, 4 mudras. I would say at least 60% of the people won't get it right. They'll always get mixed up, beyond 3-4 they're gone. [audience laughs]


When I watch a person doing it, I know they are gone. If you do this everyday, everyday now you train your mind a certain way.


[Sadhguru leans over and grabs a handful of what looks to be a certain type of tall grain grass bundled together and looks down at the handful]


This is too much creation for you. [said looking directly at the bundle of long grass]

I wanted something more simple, but okay.

[Sadhguru picks out one long grain grass from the bundle and puts the rest aside. He then holds up the specimen for the audience]


Okay, this is just - let's take it here. Okay? Just this much, the last part.
[holds it about 3 inches of stem from the grain but makes sure to keep the entire grass, grain and long stem intact]


All of you can see this, right? [Raises it up high for the audience]

Maybe you can't see the whole detail but I am sure you have seen this many times in your life. So I will give you 3 minutes.


Close your eyes and recreate this in total detail in your mind. Start from the bottom or start from the top and slowly create this whole thing in your mind, let me see.


[video cuts to various close-up scenes of various kinds of tall grain grasses waving in the wind]


Sadhguru: Okay. Are you managing? You know being a creator is a hard job. How much attention it must have taken if just one piece of grass is taking so much attention? And every bit of it is unique. No repetition, no carbon copies anywhere. So what you call as creation or the Creator - the source of creation is a phenomenal dimension of attention. Just from within, this body slowly got created, every cell, every detail within. Do you know how much attention it would have taken? You think it happened without attention?


Does it look like this happened [Sadhguru grins and spreads his arms wide] without attention? Tremendous amount of attention has gone into it, isn't it? If that attention became conscious then you are aware - otherwise it's only mental alertness.


Mental alertness can do things. Many incredible things it can do. In the physical plane of life, mental alertness can do incredible things. It can create a world by itself.


So Tantra is a science where they started working with the mental attention to such a point that you can create a whole new world if you wish.


[Video cuts to a snow-capped mountain]


So Kailash is known as the Tantric mountain and Tibet is known as the land of Tantra. It did not originate here. All the initial gurus who came and brought the Tantric process to Tibet were from India.


[Video cuts to a famous painting of the 8th century Indian Buddhist and Abbot of Nalanda (Nepal) - Santaraksita]


So he came and he started the process to some extent but he was more Buddhist than Tantric.



[my note: that means he was more into the fully internalized path of Yoga than the ceremonial ritual path which is Tantra. Yes, that makes what JMG teaches in his many books a Western-Druidic Tantra lineage, not a Yoga lineage]


Later on, when he realized that it is not really taking people off their old occult practices into a spiritual process then he went in search of a right kind of teacher who could do this and in a completely different realm. There is very mystical background to the birth of Padmashambhava (Guru Rinpoche).



He (the Abbot) found Padmashambhava as an 8 year old boy who happened to be sitting on an island which could...(pauses)...may not be an island as we know it.



[Video cuts to show a tall brass statue in Tibet of a fierce looking man in ornate headdress, robes and ornate staff]


Land, water, island - not in that sense. It might have been a completely different realm altogether. He found this boy sitting with a diamond in one hand and a lotus in the other hand. So, it is from this the Vajrayana Buddhism came which is purely Tantric.


It is remnants of that what you see as Tibetan Buddhism today. It is a very...(pauses)...what to say? It is a socially convenient concoction of mixing Buddhism and Tantrism because Tantrism by itself would have never found acceptance in the society because they (ie the Tantrics) are no-holds barred people. Buddhism is very straight and clean.


So Padmashambhava, a clever master, he mixed these two in right proportions. Buddhism was just a camouflage. Tantra was the real thing that he brought in. So after some time when you are not able to...generation to generation...when you are not able to keep the aliveness of the science then the surface becomes the real thing.


If...let's say yourself..you joined the Army. If you join the Army here, you will join the Chinese Army and you wore this uniform and every day you walked up and down or took the gun and you walked in front of us every day. Initially you will see, "Oh, this guy has become a soldier. This guy has become a soldier." After some time, slowly, slowly you become a soldier in our mind...that person that we knew will slowly disappear. The uniform you wear becomes you that's what happened. These were Tantrics who wore the Buddhist uniform because without that they wouldn't have found social acceptance and they did phenomenal things which would have never been done with simple meditative processes of releasing you from suffering and those kinds of things. They did phenomenal acts.


And...but from generation to generation, when the science died, the uniform remained. That's what you see today. Still there is some flesh inside. Not totally lost but mostly lost.


And...(heavy sigh)


And what's being done in terms of taking life back to its works...see suppose you are driving a Toyota. For you a Toyota means like that, you know it looks like that. [Makes hands to indicate a car] Now you have gotten the shape of the Toyota in your head. At least the back of the Toyota (audience laughs). Yes, because you're constantly staring at some Toyota's backside. It's clear to you that's how a Toyota looks. This is how it looks on the road. This is how it looks even if it goes to the local garage, but if you take it to the manufacturing place a Toyota looks different.


A Toyota is doing what it is doing, not because of the way you see it - because of the way somebody else sees it in the works. Yes, do you understand what I am saying? So similarly a human being means he looks like this. A man means looks like this. A woman means looks like that, ant means looks like that, elephant means looks like that. That is just like seeing the backside of the Toyota. If you take it to the works life at its works looks completely different. Yoga means taking life back into the works. In that dimension what's been done here is so phenomenal.


Ironically this all started in the Indian subcontinent and still is active in some minimal way but mostly got wiped out because the word Tantra was taboo because people misunderstood it as something else.


So when, in the 12th-13th century when the Muslim invasion came, they just slaughtered anything that is Tantra. If anybody was known to be somewhere associated with anything Tantric he was just instantly extinguished because these people were considered anti-God. Because God is the only creator. You can't mess with creation. That's their idea.


[video cuts to various old paintings of muslims slaughtering Indians]


They left milder parts of religion which they said, "Okay, you worship some nonsense, it's alright. But if you're getting too deep into it, you shouldn't live." With that attitude they took it off. And later on when the British came with their very prudish Victorian ideas they also stamped it out wherever they could. So very small remnants of it are left and now the American authors are completely distroying it by distorting it in the most horrible ways. Because of this, this absolutely fabulous dimension of life has got derailed completely.


So...I won't go by this, but if I go by the present thought process of my mind this is where I should come and live. (ie Tibet where this talk is being recorded)


Right now my thought is like that. If I give way to that, this is where I should be living, not somewhere down because...this is something else. It's not that we don't have good stuff going, we have great stuff going but this is really freaky challenge.


[Video cuts to show the mountains of Tibet and Nepal. Sadhguru is raising hands in praying palms gently touching his forehead and facing Tibet and Nepal]


Sadhguru:

It's truly out of the world. Not just as a statement. It's truly out of the world. Maybe this is where that expression arose. If that expression makes any sense anywhere, it is here. This is really out of the world.