Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy Sadhguru

Introduction​

​This book is excellent.  I had previously signed up for some of his online courses and found them extremely overconfidence and off putting.  However, perhaps his gift is for writing, or perhaps his ghost write is just exceptional.  Either way is this a MUST READ!!

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General Notes

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Introduction:

A Guru is the dispeller of darkness.

Live in the moment and not the past or future.

Self-transformation is a gradual journey.  Don’t expect to realize it all at once.

Yoga and the book are a science, not a religion.  He has found an experimental approach to be most helpful.

In meditation he cried and lost all sense of time.  He meditated for days that seemed like seconds.  Others viewed him as a god.

He noticed as a child that people leaving restaurants are happier than people leaving the temple.

I don’t know the doorway to keeping or knowing.

The self is not an autonomous being but a nebulous being.

Don’t look for things, just look to enhance perceptions.

Logical intelligence is limited.  Life is everything not just logic and not just you.

Moksha is perceptions.

 

The Way Out is Inn:

All just want pleasantness.  Body pleasantness is health.  Mind pleasantness is peace.  Emotional pleasantness sis love.  Life energy pleasantness is bliss.  Pleasantness within is joy, peace, and happiness.  pleasantness of surroundings is success.  

When blissful, intellectual abilities increase.

Pleasantness is the only goal.  Some thing in terms of wine, others in terms of divine.

Pheasant and bull shit story was good.  Bull shit gets you to the top but doesn’t let you stay.

Experience starts from within yourself.

All human experience is 100% self-created.

Anandamide is a bless chemical.   It is self-created, and one does not need drugs.  Look within to find it. 

People seek what deprived (e.g., food in India, love in California, etc.).  Gets worse in middle age.

Enlightenment and compassion yield a homecoming not an achievement.

Do not divide the world.  Good vs evil is usually a false distinction.  All is one in boundless unity.

The store is 24,996 miles the way you are going, but if you turn around it’s only 4 miles.

Design Your Destiny:

We can rewire ourselves via aligning with life nergy and riding the life events, not getting crushed by the past.

Every morning millions of miracles occur. 

You are a living deity not a psychology case.

 

No Boundaries, No Burdens:

Who is responsible for who you are?  YOU!  Responsibility’s importance cannot be over state as it is reality.  Reactivity is enslavement.  Responsibility is freedom. Responsibility is an inner life in control.  

Anger is a poisoning to your system.  In rage you become with the person you rage against.

Out of range you become one with the universe.

Resent, anger, jealously, pain, hurt, and depression hurt you not others.

Logic has uses but also limits.

Responsibility is not reaction, not action, but awareness, willingness, and being.  These have limitless potential.

Loneliness is a choice because one is unaware of the links between the moon, sun, people, and universe.

Voyage inward is the solution.  

Love is the way you are, not what you do.  Respond openly and freely. 

I am the maker of my life.

Responsibility is a way to express you own divinity.

Division is misery.

Homecoming is cosmic. 

 

And Now, Yoga:

You are in synch with existance.

All existance is energy which includes you, the rock, the tree.

Yoga is the refining and focusing of energy, union, and non duality.

There are 5 kosha: 1. Food (Annamaykosha), Mental (manomayakosha), Prana or energy (Panamayakosha). Extraordinary knowledge (Vinanamakakosha).  5. Bliss (Anadamayakosha).

Every can get via all the koshas.  It’s not like making money or college admissions.  Spots are not limited.

The ways to bliss include (ideally a combination of): karma (service) yoga, ganana (knowledge) yoga, bhakti (devotion) yoga, kriya (transforming) yoga.

Yoga is not superhuman but realizing that humans are super.

 

Body:

The body is a miraculous machine. The body undertakes creation via digestion.

Two forces must be balanced: grounding and expanding.

Pleasant feelings cause expansion.  Unpleasant feels cause contraction in the body.

Inhale, image the tree exhaling.  Exhale, imagine the tree inhaling.

5 senses are all relative to one’s self.  It’s important to know one’s self.

Going to sleep with examining who they self really is.

Hu = sun, tha = moon.  Hatha yoga is not an exercise but channeling energy. 

Listening is the key success factor.

We all use less than 1% of our body today.  So much more potential.

100% effort become effortless and reveals Dhyana.

Slow the breath!  12 breath/minutes = understand each other, 9 breaths/minute understand the language of others creates, 6 breaths/minutes know the language of earth.  3 breaths/minutes and one will know the secrets of creation.

One can feel the rain coming if attuned with nature.

Surya namaskar is to align self with the solar energies (all food is fed by the sun).  Females of childbearing age are already in synch with moon.

Cycles are samsara (driven by compulsivity).  Humans try for transience.

Surya shakti is muscular strength.

Surya Kira is the link for spiritual growth.

Nadi Vaidyas are Ayurvedic doctors who use the pulse to see one’s health.

Bhuta Siddhi are able to balance out the 5 elements.

3 meals a day is ideal if <30 years old.  2 meals a day is ideal if >30 years old. 

Cooking destroys 80% to 90% of enzymes.  It is better to eat raw food.

Listen to the body to determine the best foods. 

Mood and gratitude have a material impact on digestion—try it.

Human jaws, intestinal length, and mouth enzymes are more like herbivores than carnivores.

Fruit is digested quickly, while meat is digested most slowly.

Ayur = lifespan. Veda = knowledge.  Ayurveda = extending one’s life span.

Clarified butter alone without sugar cleanses the digestive system. 

A consistent diet helps to align the acidic vs alkali systems in the stomach.  Variety is not good.

Mandala is a 40-48 day cycle, do not need to eat food for 3 days of this cycle  Must prepare the body and mind to fast.  Fruit is okay with the fast if needed. 

Food offering to other creatures like ants reduces one’s identity and is fine to establish harmony.

One should try to skip one meal a day occasional to see the impact.

One must chew raw food, which results in eating it slower.

Stress is not the environment, but rather the internal systems (body, mind, and emotions). 

The average person’s pulse is 70-80 bpm.  Wen in meditation a yogi has 30-40 bpm.

If one is restful during the day, then his or her sleep quota is reduced.

Walk or run for joy, not to help the heart.  The joy is what helps the heal and reduce stress.

Sex is duality seeking non duality.  Society focused too much on the energy of sex.

Holding hands (even one’s own hands) unites energy.

How one lives not death is the issue.

20% of people in developed countries are on meds to solve a mental issue.

 

Mind:

 

The mind becomes the circus so the moment.

Yoga creates a distinction between you and your mind to boundless unity of experience.

Just be, don’t think. 

Emptying an ocean via a tablespoon is difficult, if not impossible. Old Greek proverb.

Why do we focus on bad thoughts rather than on how miraculously the planets and the cosmos are?

We manufacture ways to suffer. 

Too much logic is suicide.  Intellect is limited.

If you disidentify with the mind, a blank mind is capable of a million illusions.

4 types of dimensions to the mind exist: 1. Buddhi: intellect which too often divides; 2. Manas: Memory which sis the garbage bin that retains too much of those we don’t like. 3. Chitta which is awareness. 4. Ahankara which is identity. 

More thoughts create less joy. One discovers real truth via perceptions.

Intellect does not change ‘good’ or ‘bad.’  One should be careful to avoid labels and not embed childhood identities.

Akash is the ether 18-21 inches around one person.  Access it via awareness.

Once separated from one’s genetics and karma, then life is effortless.

Knowing without thought (via changing knowing and knowledge) comes from every cell in one’s body and is always there.

Thought is not intellect

If a level of joy and awareness is lowering, then one is committing incremental suicide.

The difference between believing and seeking is that seeking is better.

Yoga is science, not belief.

There are five levels to the mind (in increasing levels of energy): 1. Inert mind. 2. Rudimentary mind. 3. Energized but scattered 9most difficult). 4. One pointed mind. 5. Conscious mind.

Existence is an endless library.

The mind and the heart want the same thing.

10% of the population has thoughts so deep to remove the emotions.

Shi va also means that which is not, that which is beyond the physical realm.

Infinity and zero are the same, just a difference of positive or negative bias.

For most people emotions are stronger than thoughts.  Therefore, devotion is the key.

Buddha said, “Let me go to hell and I can help others.  Anyway, I cannot suffer.”

Love is a quality, not something that we do.  Physical, psychological, emotional, financial needs, etc are all mutual benefit schemes, not love.

There is no such thing as conditional love.

Love is an inner state that is static.

Confidence and stupidity are an extremely dangerous combination.

The divine is a life force, not a deity.

Devotion is fire and dedication.  More analysis is further from conclusive.

The idiot and the mystic at first appear quite similar, but the mystic got to the same point with way more thought.

Self-esteem => One should loose either one’s self or esteem.

Bow 1x per hour to something and learn to be a devotee. 

 

Energy:

Energy shows that God is everywhere

Soul aim of individual’s life energies is to tough the infinite.  Separateness is a myth. Don’t’ follow body which is dying or mind.

Separateness is a myth

One can change the physical which changes the mind which change the energy. 

Ideas, beliefs, and emotions are the focus of psychology

If one follows their life energy, then they will achieve equanimity and harmony

Pain and suffering are separate.  There can be pain without suffering.

Karam is action, not good or bad, just bondage.  Karma can come in a physical, mind, or energy form.

Karam is old patterns and compulsions which are written on memory, body, chemistry, and energy.

Vasanas are smells

Life is how you experience it, not how it offers

Experience all absolutely without thought, emotion, and psychological drain, then you become a yogi

If you were alone on the planet, what goods would you want?

Food = body, ideas = mind,

Kriya = good discipline, dedication, and receptivity.  It is the highest form of yoga and involves nonphysical yoga.

Every 40 minutes a new thought cycle starts

Sun = masculine = right side pingula channel

Moon = famine =left ida channel.

Chakras and nadis are not physical but energetic.  They cannot be seen.

Higher chakras increase intensity.

Vishdua (throat) chakra is also a filter.  Others cannot impact you if activated.

Most people only have 2-3 active chakras.

The goal of Zen is to carry the load without realizing it is a burden.

Everyone eventually wants to understand the source of creation

A deity is a tool or tantra with waking energy.  Sone icons of deities must be prayed to or have a ritual every day or they create very bad luck. 

Linga is the form, represented by an ellipsoid. 

Once you are touched in your etheric body, then it is forever.

Mt. Kailash is the most sacred place on earth to several religions

Many yogis never fund students and send their energy to mountains such as Kailash which makes them more powerful.

Once something is created with life force, it is forever

There are 8 types of samadhi

Miracles are just more profound access to life (like understanding a computer when others do not)

Occult is sending things or determining future events from afar.  Can be either good or bad.  Just a technology.

Tantra is technology.  Left-handed tantra is complex, requires advanced training and requires weird rituals and use of occult.  Right-handed tantra is more accessible and makes things happen.

Kundalini is a snake.  Snakes are deaf and only sense vibrations.  They are attracted to yogis and don’t bite them due to yogis low vibrations.  Would not waste venom on such low vibrations. 

 

 

Joy:

People are less happy today versus all the comforts and convinces

Your joy, your misery, your love, your anger, your bliss, all lie in your hands

There is a way out and a way in.  Turn in and crate love, light, and laughter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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