Tale of 2 Extraordinary Devotees | Sadhguru

Rishi Mathanga told a woman disciple, whose name was Shabari, to wait till Rama comes. Sixty to seventy years she waited and when Rama came, she takes the figs, bites them and then give it to him. Lakshmana got offended. Rama said, you relax, this is a different woman. There was a yogi, over eighty years of age. They look at him and say, hey old man, you think you can go up this mountain? The yogi said. They experienced things what sadhakas who did sadhana for many, many years could not, simply because unwavering devotion. There is no wall that can stop when human consciousness becomes one-pointed. You need a mad heart, mad enough that nothing else matters. Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama. We are… we're in that terrain that Rama traversed and Mathangeshwar ashram, which is not so far away from here, is a place where Rishi Mathanga told a woman disciple, whose name was Shabari, to wait till Rama comes, many years ahead of time. We don't know how many years, but looking at her age, it looks like decades before. He said, one day Rama and Lakshmana will come this way, you just wait and serve them and that'll be your highest attainment. So she waited. Every day gathering wild berries, just in case if he comes today. We do not know if he was even born, but one day Rama will come this way. She waited. Among various aspects of devotion, waiting is the greatest thing. As a quality, this has receded a lot in our modern times. We can't wait. As those of you who've been through the Samyama, we've been talking about this, it's just about waiting. Sati means waiting. Well, today activists are interpreting it as, oh, why should only women wait? It's not about being a man or a woman, it's the quality is called feminine, waiting. Because it's not dynamic, it's passively dynamic, intensely waiting. Nobody will simply sit here and wait like this. When you're really waiting for something important, you're dynamic, but waiting. No activity involved, but you're very intensely waiting. Actually, when you're really waiting for somebody important in your life, the waiting period is actually far more intense than actually meeting. Hello? Because waiting has that quality, because it's all you. You have to be everybody in your waiting. When people come, it'll become many things. So she waited. We do not know exactly how long, but it looks like sixty to seventy years she waited. And when Rama came, she had gathered again the wild berries as she's been doing for all these years to welcome him. And his brother Lakshmana, quite little, he's a soldier. So when he came, she found many berries, particularly figs. If you do not know about figs that you love to eat, figs almost all the time have worms in it. It's the worms which is very nutritious for you. Only if they've become big enough and moving around, you'll notice it. Otherwise, the follicles and the seeds and the worms, they are all the same. In the flower itself, the insects will lay their eggs. When the fig fruit forms inside this invariably, almost all the time, there are worms. So she takes the figs, bites them, tastes them, whether there are worms or it's good fruit, and then gives it to him. Lakshmana got offended. You're treating Rama like this, that you bite the fruit and then give it to him? Rama said, you relax. This is a different woman. She's not doing this to disrespect us. This is out of extreme love. She doesn't want me to eat a bad fruit. And taste this and see, she's giving you the sweetest fruits possible. So this became very famous, a classic example of devotion in the Indian bhakti lexicon. The devotees took on many forms, like those like Sabari, Meera, Akka Mahadevi, the women devotees, they took on extraordinary quality of power and grace, simply because unwavering devotion, nothing to get, have no intention to get anything. Though no intent, emotion without intent is always the most fantastic emotion. If I say, I love you, you must say, I love you too. If you say three, you're in trouble. So, without intent, simply, simply overflowing devotion, one pointed, it's a sure way to attain. You have many times I've spoken about this, Nischala Tattvam, Jeevan Mukti, unwavering attention is naturally liberation. Well, as you see, in today's world, everybody's carrying their attention deficiency, like a qualification. I can't focus for more than two seconds, it's supposed to be you're a CEO. What the hell are you doing with your company, if you can't focus for two seconds, especially if you have responsibilities to fulfill. If you are carrying other people's lives upon your shoulder, you must be able to focus attention. Because without attention, you don't open any doors in this world or in the other world. No doors are opened without a very keen sense of attention. How to focus your mind on something? Try and see, you keep it there. Few seconds, it goes there, goes there, goes there, goes there. It suddenly develops multiple channels. You thought it had only one channel, suddenly it has two hundred channels going on. Because forceful attention is torture. This is why I said concentration is a concentration camp. Torture it is. Why people find education so hard is simply because they are trying to concentrate. But if you're in love with something, mind is simply there. You don't have to concentrate. That's the only thing that fills your mind. So devotion is that intelligence where you don't have to concentrate and turn yourself into a torture chamber, because you're emotionally all gone there. Mind will also go there, body will also go there inevitably. There was a yogi over 80 years of age. One day he decided to go up the Velliangiri Hills. You know Velliangiri Hills, where they are? So the background of Isha Yoga Center is Velliangiri Hills. He decided to climb Velliangiri Hills. It's a hard climb, going up to the seventh hill is tough climb. If you're very fit, it may take three-and-a-half, four hours. Otherwise it'll take seven, eight hours. Many people climb between two days and come back. Single day is not possible for a whole lot of people. Well, your knees will learn new tunes that you never heard before, because it's like that. It's not like a trek, it's a climb-climb. Most of the time. So, eight-year-old man just came and he's wanting to go up the Velliangiri Hills. These shopkeepers who are there, who sell this and that for people who go up, these idiots never, ever go up. They only sell this and that to make a living to others who are going up. They look at him and say, hey old man, you think you can go up this mountain? Even we have not gone up. You think you can go? Do you know how high it is? I laughed. He kept walking. Then more laughter, this, that happened. Then the yogi said, see, my heart is already there. It's inevitable, rest of the body has to follow. It will get it. Because my heart is already there. This is not a choice. Whether I go or I don't go, should I go, may… will my knees take it or not take it? There's no such thought. My heart is already there. I have to catch up, that's all. So, a whole lot of people like this, they created a whole culture of devotion, soaked in devotion. They experienced things what sadhakas who did sadhana for many, many years could not, simply out of pure devotion, one-pointedness. To become one-pointed is penetration. To end through anything, there is no wall that can stop when human consciousness becomes one-pointed. To get there, many, many ways, many sadhanas, many tricks. But devotion is the simplest way where you don't need tricks, you don't need technology, you don't need teaching, nothing. You need a mad heart, mad enough that nothing else matters. When your heart is mad like that, the elixir of life rains upon you. The science of elixir, or what in Sanskrit language is called amrita. Any amritas here? A whole lot of women and men also are named as amrit or amrita or amritraj or amritrani, amrit this, amrit that. Parents' aspiration, these idiots will someday taste the elixir of life. Tch, they had good intent, hello? They don't want you to settle for anything less, but slowly parents gave up on you and called you Tinky, Pinky, Chunky, Monkey, hello? They gave up on you. What to do? They called you amrita, amritraj, amritrani, amrit this, but you're not going anywhere in that direction, so they called you Chinky, Pinky. It's okay. The aspirations of human beings, the moment you lower the aspiration of a human being, you have lowered the whole humanity. This is happening at a scale that's unimaginable. You will see today evening, these are not the only ones. There are hundred other sites like this in this land where you can see people who worked for this, what is their aspiration? With bare hands, no machines, no cranes, no trucks, moving thousands of tons of rock and shaping these forms. What is their aspiration? Unless your aspiration is beyond yourself, you can't do these things. One cannot be giving themselves to something without knowing whether it will happen or not in their life, but entirely investing themselves to making it happen, they know they will never see complete in their own life. They know somebody a thousand years later may enjoy it or may break it. They did break it, but still putting your entire life into it. The kings invested everything they had in terms of money into these things. The people invested their life, their energies into making it happen. So, one thing is the aesthetic beauty of it, what it is, but I want you today when you are there, every little thing that's there, what kind of human spirit makes these things happen? You could have built a nice home for yourself. You could have taken care of your children. You could have provided things for your family, but instead you do these kind of things. You must be mad. We are fortunate there were many mad people like that in the past. Even today, they continue to be, not in the same numbers, but they still are. That is why there is something happening for future generations, otherwise everybody would eat, reproduce, that also they may not do because that also needs some kind of dedication to something. And die one day anyway, thinking they'll never die, but they will die. So, this is not about appreciating or depreciating life. Different people live differently, it's okay. But the important thing is to know that intensity within ourselves, where who I am right now doesn't matter. What am I aspiring for is bigger than who I am right now. Once that comes into your life, there is a quality that'll flood you down, life. You don't have to manage it. When you're in a flood, you don't manage it, you go with it. Just keep floating, that's all. You go with it. Anyway, generally it gets to the ocean. So, those who are sitting and calculating their lives through feeling trapped in small situations, their jobs, their family situations, their financial situations, people are spending a lifetime. How to extricate themselves from things that they themselves got into. This happened. One day Shankaran Pillai was rummaging through an old trunk in which all kinds of old artifacts and memorabilia was there. Then the wife came and asked, what are you looking at? Oh, nothing, nothing. He said, ah, nothing. I saw you that you're reading the marriage certificate for the last half an hour. What are you looking for in the marriage certificate? He said, I was been searching in case there's an expiry date. So, to get into something, there is so much effort. Then to get out of something, so much effort. Life just goes into this simple fulfilling needs kind of aspirations. A being who has an aspiration beyond himself or herself, is a blessed being, because their lives know an intensity that others will never know. So, this is a land of devotion. This is a land of the moon, where they kept their logic only to work with physical things. Rest of the time, they have no logic. To put the stone upon stone, you needed logic. Our modern idiotic engineers have done this, that they put mortar in the temple restoration. They had built the temples without mortar. Just the perfection of geometry of the stone, they managed to do things which lasted a thousand years. But our modern engineers thought they are smarter and they put mortar in between to make it ugly and miserable. Because mortar doesn't really bind a stone, it brines a brick very well. It doesn't bind a stone very well. And stone is supposed to sit on self-weight, for that you need geometry. If you do not understand geometry, if you put like this, it'll fall down, if you put like that, it'll fall down. So, fix it with glue. So, all this because we think something is not worth paying attention and striving for. Life is not in what we have, life is not even in what we produce, life is in how we experience whatever there is right now. How do we experience this? Because what we have right now was unimaginable a hundred years ago, isn't it? Does it mean to say they didn't have a life? People who lived here a hundred years ago, they didn't have a life. People who lived here a thousand years ago, they didn't have a life. You go and see these temples, they will mock at you that they had a life that you yet to realize. Because if somebody has to create such beautiful structures, not for living, just like that, you can call it devotion, you can call it their fancy, just for a emotional fancy, they spend their lifetime creating these beautiful structures, they must definitely know something, isn't it? They must have definitely experienced something to put themselves into such an endeavor, to such effort. These are not mega in their size. If you come south, you will see mega size, incredible size of temples that you can't imagine. How did they move these rocks? Thousand years ago, 1,500 years ago, how did they even move these rocks when there were no machines and there are no cranes and trucks? How did they do it? Just with human muscle, can you do this? The ingenuity of human intelligence is such it can do anything, if it really cares for it. If that much love and care is there in one's heart, it'll find a way. So these temples are a manifestation of that human spirit, where hardship, daunting challenges couldn't stop them for a moment, not even for a living, not for making money, not to build a kingdom, just like that, for something untangible, not something that you can touch it and see. But within their heart, they knew it is true. Within their heart, they knew they had to get there, because their heart was already there.