Sadhguru - The Spinal Step

The Spinal Step

W hatever the experience of life whether it is light or sound or taste or smell or sensation, whatever is the form of experience, of pain or pleasure, every experience that you have is essentially conducted through your spine. If spine is taken away or what passes through the spine is in some way dislocated, there will be no experience.

We've always symbolized the spine as the axis of the universe because essentially you know the universe only from the context of your experience. There is no other way to know it. You do not know anything in this world without the context of your experience.

It is only by what's happening within you, you know or you think you know. Because you know the existence only by the context of your experience and the basis of your experience is what is being conducted through your spine right now.

Spine is seen as the axis of the universe. Today we know that the whole solar system is just a small blob in this cosmos. Tomorrow morning if this whole solar system evaporates, there will be no great vacuum, it will be just one little empty space. The rest of the cosmos will not even notice it. That's how insignificant it is.

So in yoga they experienced a different dimension of life and said that your spine is the axis of the universe. They're not saying this because they believe that you are in the center of the universe but because you are capable of knowing the universe only from the context of your experience and the basis of your experience is in your spine.

When any individual has to truly determine the nature of his experience on this planet for 100% then having a little bit of mastery over the spine becomes essential. Only that one who anyway determines the nature of his experience would dare to explore the full potential of his life because he wouldn't hesitate to step into anything.

If your experience is determined by anything other than yourself, naturally you'll try to avoid a few things and go after a few things. Whatever you consider as those which instigate or stimulate pleasant experiences, you will go after that. Whatever you think will create unpleasant experiences, you will go away from that. Once this division happens in your consciousness that you divide the existence into two, knowing the ultimate unity becomes unnecessarily difficult.

Once if you sit here thinking that this tree will create pleasant experience for you and when that tree creates unpleasant experience for you, naturally you'll never step in that direction. Youll only hang around here. That's what is happening to you right now. That's what is happening with every aspect of your life.

So once you divide the world, people have been telling you silly things that you should love your enemies. I don't know why you have to make your life so hard that first you make an enemy out of somebody and then try to love him. It's very difficult. Isn't it very difficult? If you don't make him your enemy, it would be easy. You make him your enemy and then you try to love him, this is an impossible condition.

They always want to set impossible things for you so that you will constantly go there. Let's look at the possibilities. Unless you do not divide the world, it will be very difficult to embrace the world. In your consciousness if you divide that this is mine and this is not mine, then trying to grab everything will be very difficult. Either everything is mine or nothing is mine. This is okay. Nothing is mine, this is one way. Or everything is mine. This is also okay. It'll work. These are workable solutions.

You are my enemy but I love you. This is very very difficult. Its a torture. And the fundamental for dividing the world is, somewhere one entity causes pleasantness and another entity causes unpleasantness within you. That's why you divide the world. It is essentially a survival mode.

You know if you go here, it'll be unpleasantness and if you go there, it will be pleasant. Now so slowly you start going there and not here and after sometime you cannot go there at all because you know the level of unpleasantness that will happen within you. Only if you are determining the nature of your experience you can keep it pleasant within yourself no matter where you are.

If people cause unpleasantness, they can do it only around you and never within you. Once this freedom is there, it's only then you can truly be inclusive, otherwise you get stuck. Every little sound that you hear, see if you can conduct it through your spine. Everything that you see, see if you can conduct it through your spine.

Right now I'm speaking. The sound itself is not flowing through this wire but in the form of electrical impulse. It is going through this wire and through the speakers and then boom. If I cut this, its not gonna work. The spine is just like this. Spine itself doesn't know anything but it is conducting everything.

Only the one who understands that all this bunch of wires out there can manage this sound properly as to how it should be. Only if you understand every wire that's out there you can manage this sound just the way you want it otherwise in between so many things will happen. The same thing with the spine also.

If you have a little mastery over how it's being conducted, then you can ensure what kind of experience you're producing for yourself. otherwise everything becomes accidental. Once the very experience of your life is happening accidentally, once you're very way of being is accidental, if youre existing here accidentally, that's like being a potential calamity. You know, just the fear generated by the thought as to what will happen to me, destroys everything.

The beauty and the gracefulness of being human will be completely lost once the fear of what will happen to me is there in my mind. You know animals are doing quite fine. Any number of philosophers have gone into the forests. Watched the quiet natural life that animals are having. People have been hugely drawn to it and they have tried to move into the forest and live just like them.

This draw is big time because of the chaos of human societies. But what you need to understand is that it's never going to work because the sense of peacefulness that an animal has is coming from a certain level of unawareness, a certain level of unconsciousness. You cannot fall back there. Do what you want but you cannot fall back into the unconscious nature of an animal.

Nature has pushed you into this level of consciousness. You can try hard and become conscious but you cannot try hard and become unconscious. At least this much nature has taken care for you that you can only move forward not backwards.

Philosophers and other various types of people have tried to live as simple as animals live hoping that life will become okay but it's not worked. It is not the complexity of external situation which is doing this, it is just that we are not determining the nature of our experience within ourselves.