Sadhguru 360 - Ep #5: The Hidden Dimensions of Kailash & Manasarovar | 4K UHD

Sadhguru chants Shivaaya, Parameshwaraya, Shashi Sekaraya, Namah Om. Bhavaya, Bhunshambhavaya, Shiva Thandavaya, Namah Om. If you can really be with Kailash, even for a few moments, life will never again be the same for you. It is a phenomena beyond all human imagination. Namaskaram and welcome to 360, Sadhguru 360. Shravana is a month deeply associated with Shiva, with pilgrimage, austerity, devotion, and an inward turning of attention. So it feels especially fitting that in this episode, I would be speaking about a journey to a place that has drawn seekers for thousands of years, Kailash. We are on the way to Kailash. This is the twenty-first year that I'm traveling to Kailash in 2026. 2026 is also the fire horse year in the Tibetan and Chinese zodiac traditions. This alignment comes only once in sixty years, so it is held as a very sacred year. The fire horse year in the Tibetan tradition has a special association with Mount Kailash and it is traditionally said that completing the Kora or the circumambulation around Kailash during the fire horse year carries thirteen times the spiritual merit of doing so in an ordinary year. Whether one chooses to take that literally, symbolically, or simply as a part of mythology surrounding this extraordinary mountain, it adds another layer of intrigue to an already remarkable pilgrimage. As for me, I'm quite literally riding my fire horse this year, and my fire horse happens to be a multistrader. A motorcycle allows me to experience the journey in a way that it is immediate and unfiltered. In many ways, hugging the terrain rather than being enclosed in the shell of a car, you feel the heat and the cold, the wind, the rainfall and snow possibly, and above all the altitude and every shift in the terrain beneath you. You don't just see the landscape, you become part of it. For me, that intimacy with earth is an important part of the journey. So perhaps there is no better fire horse for this journey than my motorcycle. I have never been a pilgrimage kind of person. If I close my eyes, I'm done. When I wandered around, I simply wandered around without a purpose or a destination. Definitely not trying to find something or learn something or glean something from the travels, just drinking in life. So why this journey to Kailash? Why do I keep coming back every year despite bad bathrooms and well, I can't say that anymore. The facilities have improved tremendously since we first came here. They have improved rather a bit too much. I never really had any intention of ever coming to Kailash because whenever people talked so much about Kailash, I resisted because they were talking about how they saw Shiva and Parvati floating in the clouds. I don't want to go there because Shiva in the cloud means the bull also and the bullshit will definitely fall upon your face. So I have heard so many spectacular things that people had experienced. And above all, I saw the adventure of driving through Tibet. So the first time we came, it was just out of curiosity. I thought, we will go just once. And here we are today, the 21st year, because the first time I came, it's so overwhelming that what we saw in Manasarovar is more fairytale-ish than any fairytale. It's simply amazing and unbelievable. My great-grandmother was a great storyteller. I have still not met anyone who could tell a story like that. If we went for a month-long vacation to our ancestral home, she would start telling the story post-dinner time, and we were all open-mouthed, open-eyed, open-eared, sitting there. The princess will start combing her hair. The comb will start from here. By the time it reaches the end of her hair, it will be a month. In between, so many things that will happen, a story inside a story inside a story. And time for us to leave and go back to school has come, and we beg her, please tell us the end of the story. She would say, no, come back next summer. She was over hundred years, but she was sure she will see us next summer. She told us all kinds of stories. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories, but they never passed through the filter of my skepticism. I enjoyed the way she told the story with such involvement and with such description and detail that it went on endlessly. But I'm not the kind to believe grandmother stories. But after being in Lake Manasarovar, I'm willing to believe any toothless grandmother story. If you even taste a little bit of it, it is too fantastic for any logical mind to come to terms with it. It's just absolutely insanely fantastic. There is a tremendous amount of activity upon the lake. The beings or the life forms there are nothing like what we generally know as life. It is life, but not the way we know it. These beings are in bunches. In our understanding of life, we know beings as individual beings, never as bunches. These are bunches of beings. They are individual, but they are still in bunches. They move by tendency, but they are still conscious. You cannot differentiate whether they're truly conscious or unconscious. The first few times we came to Manasarovar, we set up a few exploratory experiments and what I see is they know the human system thoroughly. We really don't know anything about them except what we have observed from outside. But they seem to know everything about us. One aspect is they are constantly tugging at my ring finger to a point where sometimes I have to close my hand and sit. The ring finger is like the very key to the whole cosmos. If you give me enough time, we can open up the whole cosmos with just the ring finger, because this finger is like a key to the existence. This, I believe, is essentially human. If some other form of life knows about it, either they have a role in making us who we are, or they know what we know, or maybe it's one of them who taught us all this. On one of these trips, I thought, let me try something and I separated one of these beings from the bunch and took… took them, I don't know what… how to refer to that, them, it, him, her, whatever, into my system. But it became so restless and like it wants to go and created a such a sense of, you know, increased sense of temperature and stress within my system. I tried to contain it, but I saw that it started creating some damage to my system a little bit, so I thought it's better to just let it go. And that was the end of that experiment because I don't think we were ready to hold them in any sense and they were not willing to be held either. I don't want you to believe whatever I'm saying. If you told me, I wouldn't believe you. So let's be fair to each other but don't be a fool and disbelieve it either because assuming that whatever is not in your knowing or in your experience cannot exist is the very crown of ignorance. I have been in touch with many mystical things, but nothing of the scale and intensity that is happening in Manasarovar. Beneath Manasarovar, there is a huge space, a subterranean space which could be about two or three kilometers in diameter in my perception. That is what it seems like to me, but it may actually be just the size of a grain of sand because there is a way of folding up space. This space is light sea green kind of color and these bunches of beings are coming in and coming out and at the bottom there are some very small life forms parked there. According to our ways of thinking, we can think it is some kind of a nursery maybe, but that's just conjecture. And the most incredible thing which is absolutely intriguing is there are half-formed human forms, dozens of them, and on the side there are what seems like electric blue colored rocks. There is a lot of movement and traffic happening around this place, but none of these beings ever go near that space. Somehow everybody maintains a clear distance from those rocks which are glowing electric blue. We know from our experience that if there is a realized being who is very static and in one place his aura will be generally bright white, but if there is a realized being who is active and dynamic, then always his aura shall be electric blue. It's based on this that in Indian culture the gods are blue-skinned. Shiva, Krishna, Rama, it is not that their skin was blue because they had blue aura. They were referred to as blue gods. So these blue rocks and these half-formed human forms are very intriguing. We have managed to gain a certain access to these aspects, but still whatever we think is happening there is probably not the way it is. It is something that is far beyond our imagination and conjecture. Just the intrigue of this space is so fascinating that it keeps me coming back every time. The first time we came on the Kailash trip, we came with one-hundred-and-sixty-three people with very rudimentary arrangements and there were no roads anywhere in the entire place and we were just finding our way through the Tibetan plateau. We crossed eighty-three rivers and on one drive I drove eleven kilometers upriver in the water. Our four-wheel drives were getting stuck everywhere and it was sixteen days of drive. I enjoyed it thoroughly because I was driving. Others were being thrown around in the four-wheel drives towards being made into a pulp. I was always telling them, being in a Land Cruiser, don't complain. There has been a 12,000-year history of pilgrims from India making it to Kailash without a single year's break irrespective of the weather, not for livelihood, not for business, not for conquest, but in seeking, walking 3,000 kilometers, men and women. Can you imagine what fired these people, what kind of fire they carried in their hearts? I want you to just imagine, suppose you started off from southern India, you had no fancy down jackets, whatever equipment, no trekking boots, at the most one woolen blanket barefoot a thousand years ago. If you started off and walked up to Kailash, 3,000 kilometers, what it would be? There was a wonderful devotee of Shiva a few hundred years ago from a place called Karakal in Tamil Nadu. She never bothered to introduce herself to anyone, so they just called her Karakal Ammayar, the saint who came from Karakal. When she went to Kailash, I want you to understand what it must have taken for a woman to walk all the way there in those days. She went around Kailash, which is normally three-day trek, approximately fifty-eight kilometers, but she walked on her hands and knees, not letting her feet touch the ground because she saw it as the very body of Shiva. So, this is not a tour, this is not an adventure trek, this is a pilgrimage. If you are a trekker, you wear down the mountain path a little more than it already is. If you are a pilgrim, you don't go there to wear the mountain path, you go there to wear yourself down. In some way, you must become less than who you think you are. The idea of a pilgrimage is the journey itself should make you less and less as you go by. Your likes and dislikes, your sensibilities, it is with this you have built your personality. Your personality is an accumulation of all kinds of whims and fancies you have created. Kailash is still what it was a thousand years ago, but back then the journey would wear you out in such a way, by the time you got there, you were all receptivity. But today, the journey is not wearing you out because of the airplanes, the highways, the buses. From the first time we went and how it is today, there is a five hundred percent improvement in the comfort level. Except for the altitude, which continues to remain a challenge, most other challenges have been flattened out. Only altitude, that's the only challenge. The mountains are very democratic, they don't care whether you're a king, a sage, or a great warrior. Once the altitude begins to rise, everybody breathes the same thin air. So technology and engineering has advanced, but just because we are going in comfort, no one should miss the significance of what Kailash is. Modern day life and technology can deliver us there with ease, but let our comfort and convenience not work against us. Unfortunately, this is what I see as people and societies become affluent, as life becomes more comfortable and convenient, they will not become more sensible. Most people lose their fundamental sense about life. One of the main reasons is the way we have set up education today. Education is geared towards making you exclusive, but the fundamental dimension of spirituality is to become all inclusive, not exclusive. Inclusiveness is life, exclusiveness is death. One classic example of someone who was immensely capable and empowered, but turned into a very exclusive life is Ravana. Ravana was a fierce devotee of Shiva. There are many stories about him. A devotee shouldn't become great. A devotee should never think I'm a great devotee, but he was a great devotee. He came to Kailash all the way from down south and began to sing Shiva's praises. He had a drum, which he used to set the beat and compose 1008 verses, extempo, which is called Shiva Thandava Stotram today. Shiva was so pleased and enamored listening to this music. As he sang, slowly Ravana started climbing Kailash from the southern face. When Ravana was almost at the top and with Shiva still engrossed in the music, Parvati saw this man climbing up towards their seat. Parvati tried to bring Shiva out of his musical rapture and she said, this man is coming all the way up. But Shiva was too engrossed in the music and poetry. Then finally Parvati nudged Shiva and managed to bring him out of being enthralled. And when Ravana reached the peak, Shiva just pushed him off with his feet. Ravana would use the furrow to climb the southern face of Kailash, slid down through the furrow all the way down. Then having ended up at the bottom of the peak, then he thought, why should I come to Kailash and be kicked down like this? Let me take Kailash to Sri Lanka, my home. I will take Kailash to my place. So he started lifting using his superhuman strength, he started lifting Mount Kailash. This made Parvati very angry once again. She told Shiva, it does not matter how dear he is to you, you cannot allow him to shake Kailash like this and his attempt to take it to the south, that is not possible. Shiva also saw this and angry with Ravana's egoistic nature and so he pressed the mountain down, trapping Ravana's hands beneath Kailash. Ravana struggled in pain, but Shiva refused to release him. Then Ravana with his hands stuck beneath the mountain started pouring out his love for Shiva in various beautiful hymns. Shiva released him and said, you can have a boon, ask me what you want. Once again, Ravana's negativity manifested itself. He said, I want your wife. Shiva, as he had already promised, ask whatever you want. Okay, whatever you want. Parvati, he's having a bath in Manasarovar. Okay, you take my wife and go. He's like that because he doesn't possess or hold anything. Ravana came looking for Parvati. Parvati realized what had happened and she took a toad and transformed it into a woman and left her near the lake that is now called Rakshasthal. The toad woman was having a bath and when Ravana came, she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. So he picked her up and went back and made her his wife. That is why she's Mandodari as she was a toad who was transformed into a woman. This whole kissing a frog business in the West originally probably comes from this basis. Shiva is Bholenath, meaning the innocent one, like me. No, no, you won't agree with that. Yes, but I am like that. Just anybody can take me for a ride, not because I lack the intelligence to know what they're doing, because today they try to misuse, tomorrow I will come to use. I know this. Many who came, like investigators, today they're all devotees, not one or two, many, thousands upon them. Thousands upon thousands have come in a suspicious manner, doing all kinds of things, but today they're ardent followers and they're doing fantastic work. See, Shiva is Bholenath means he's innocent. We must understand there is a significant difference between innocence and ignorance. Ignorance may come with shrewdness many times, but innocence is only possible with the assurance of knowing, with the assurance of clarity, that you can afford to be vulnerable. Even for me, there are a lot of self-appointed advisors around me. I did not appoint them. They appointed themselves because they're volunteering, you know. They say, Sadhguru, people are misusing you. They're just using you in so many ways. Let them use me. That's why I'm here. What's the problem? Let them. Anybody can deceive me. That's the whole thing, not because I don't have the intelligence to ward off their deception. I can see them through and through, but just about anybody can deceive me because I come with an assurance. Let them deceive me and live well and see. They will never ever do that, not because I will curse them, because it's like spitting into the sky. You spit into the sky, it will land straight back on your face, no other way. So today, the type of education we have created around the world, which is mostly an import of 19th century western ideas of education, is producing a lot of very capable but imbalanced human beings. You must understand, Ravana was an immensely talented, knowledgeable man, a great administrator, a great warrior, a scholar, but his own intelligence, talent and capabilities worked against him, because he had no balance. I'm constantly telling everybody, you may have intelligence, you may have talent, you may have various qualities, but if there is no balance, your intelligence will work against you. When I say balance, balance on many different levels, physiological, psychological, emotional, chemical balance, energy balance, on all levels, we need balance. And talking about balance brings us back to motorcycles again. Last year, we rode to Kailash on motorcycles, which was a fantastic experience. I think we were one of the first group of people to do the ride to Kailash from India on a motorcycle. Then in early 2024, I banged my head a little bit, as it's my want to forget my chronological age, that led to an emergency brain surgery. And again, travel and schedule well before fully healed, and getting into another situation of banging my head badly, and went into another emergency surgery. Doctors were warning me that there can be no third surgery for me, as it is miraculous. The second bang up was not fatal in May 2024, as it was, they predicted that there can be cognition losses or faculty losses. But I was clear, going to Kailash would be hugely beneficial, beyond normal logic, of course, to test the whole theory of this miraculous process, of which I had absolute trust in. Looked like a death wish to the doctors and all those around me, when I announced I will ride on a motorcycle into that altitude and terrain, but have I not come out of this whole head breaking episode well, if not better than before, at least as good. Well, that is yoga, and Kailash is a very phenomena of yoga, or the source of yoga. Practices like Shambhavi, Shunya, Samyama, Angamardana, Sadhilaja, Upayoga, these are not imparted anywhere else in the world, in the form and power as transmitted by us. These are all techniques derived from Adiyogi's or Kailash's essence. Some aspects are from Ghana's, rest from Adiyogi's energetic knowing. Many times I squirm with embarrassment, when people acknowledge me for these practices, when all I have done is transmit what I imbibed from that source without distortion. I am incapable of distortion, as I am nothing, or I have no knowledge of my own. I am an empty space. So I am simply incapable of distorting anything. So last year, the ride was so wonderful. I'm back this year again on my fire horse. Of course, four wheels are still good for some things. The first time we came to Kailash, I was driving a land cruiser, and there is a Tibetan guide sitting next to me. And in the backseat, there are three people, two of them are ladies. I was driving, and of course, there are no toilets or restrooms anywhere in Tibet at that time. So these ladies asked, if we want to use a loo, where do we go? The guide says, tree behind. So they go tree behind. Then we drive into the Tibetan plateau. As it gets higher, absolutely no trees, a treeless terrain. There is not a speck of green anywhere. In most of western Tibet, you will not see any trees, except around Lhasa and in a few other parts. One reason is because of the altitude, another reason is because it is windswept. If you come in certain seasons, the wind will be on constantly at a very high speed. Only that kind of vegetation which hugs the ground and stays there can survive. There are no trees. These ladies asked the guide, now what do we do? The guide says, rock behind. Then they go looking for rocks and behind. Then we drive deeper into the Tibetan plateau, where it's like a moonscape. There is no rock, there are no trees, and there is not a blade of grass, nothing. Then they said, what do we do? He says, car behind. So going to Kailash, what is the purpose of making this journey despite all the discomforts? There are three different dimensions. One is an overwhelming presence in terms of the sheer energy of it, that is easy to access. If you go with a little bit of integrity, when I say integrity, it means you're not just waiting to make up something. First moment you see a little something, you want to make up something else because you have a whole epic in your mind. Suddenly you start seeing Shiva and Parvati floating in the cloud, and of course there will be a bull and all that stuff. You need psychological integrity that you ignore all the thoughts and emotions that come because to create thoughts and emotions, you don't have to go to Kailash. You can sit at home and do it. You do it pretty well at home, don't you? You don't have to travel all the way to Kailash just to get emotionally excited about something. So there is an overwhelming presence of powerful energy which nobody can miss, whether they are conscious or unconscious. In the sense, I will tell you something that you are not conscious of, but the moment I tell you, you will be. You are breathing. There is air in this room. It's nourishing you right now. You are not conscious of it, isn't it? But it is still nourishing you. Even if you are not conscious, it is still nourishing you. Similarly, there is an energy there. Even if you are not conscious, it will still nourish you. It is like this, if today's dinner we churn it into a nice broth and with a pipe we will pour it into you, you will still be nourished, but you don't get to taste it. It is the same thing with the presence of Kailash. If you are conscious, you can taste it. You can consume it in a certain way which makes it both nourishing and enriching. If it just enters you, just as air is doing right now, it's nourishing, but it need not lead to any great joy. The energy permeates everybody, but if you are in a certain level of receptivity, you can taste it, which makes a big difference for many people who have come with us. The journey to Kailash is the greatest experience of their lives. Many of them have shared what phenomenal experiences they have been through during this journey. Getting that first glimpse of Kailash with Sadhguru next to you is… it's just unexplainable what happens within you. It's… it's… just brings tears to my eyes. It was very overwhelming for me. It was extremely overwhelming. My whole mind was blank. There was nothing in my mind and Sadhguru's energy was just… it was taking me to some other place that I just cannot explain. Tears were just flowing down everybody's eyes. It's an expression… it's an emotion that you just can't express by words. You have to… you have to experience it. Me personally, I don't know what I did to deserve his grace. And after this first Kailash yatra, definitely my perception of life has changed completely. The second dimension is, there is an enormous level of knowing out there. Kailash is a tremendous spiritual library. When we say this is the abode of Shiva, it does not mean he's still dancing there on the snow. It means everything that he was, he's invested in that place. And because of that, many yogis came after him and deposited their knowing in the mountain too. When the first Jain Tirthankar, Rishabh Dev came to Kailash, he came with a mission. He had heard much about it, so he thought he would take all this knowledge and make it available to the world. He was a yogi of immense capability, but after being touched by Kailash, instead of taking the knowledge, he became a part of it. No being who has tasted it to some depth will be spared that temptation. When you are in touch with it, you begin to think, this is it, why not? Everything else becomes meaningless. All the petty goals that one sets up for themselves to do this and that, when the opportunity to become immortal is thrown at you, there is temptation. When the possibility of becoming a part of such a grand affair is opened, it becomes a temptation hard to resist. For me, the most significant thing is that Agastya Muni invested everything that he was in the southern face of Kailash. It is a little inappropriate to distinguish or to discriminate between one face of Kailash and the other, but the south face is dear to us because Agastya Muni merged into the southern face. It is just a South Indian prejudice, bear with me, that we like the south face. I think it is the most beautiful face. In many ways, it is the most intense face, but very few people go to the south face. It is far less accessible and involves a more difficult route than the other faces. In many ways, Agastya is the father of South Indian mysticism. Yoga came in a particular format to South India through Agastya. Kailash is the greatest mystical library upon the planet. Everything that you ever wish to know is written into this place. Ask me any question about existence, if you give me enough time, I can glean it out of this mountain. But accessing that library will take a whole lot of preparation, which we are not even aspiring with most people. It is like, if you do not know how to read, if you do not know the alphabet, we took you into a massive library where there are millions of books. They overwhelm you. It's all stacked up. But when you took a book and opened it, you can't make out anything because you don't know the alphabet. So we are not really expecting anyone to access something. That would take a lot of preparation and a totally different level of involvement. And it could be risky for people who are not very stable within themselves. To give you an idea of what is available there, in 2007, before my trip to Kailash, I was in Los Angeles, and I started running temperature. But I kept through the schedules. Then I came to a Bhava Spandana program in London, running very high temperature. I just popped paracetamols and continued four days of Bhava Spandana program. Then I came to India, running very high temperature. Within a week's time, I went to Singapore. And from there, I went to Australia. I was running temperature continuously. By now, it's already been four weeks, and I was running temperature well over 103 degrees most of the time. Then I came back to India, and we were shooting for this Tamil channel. In one day, we are shooting twelve episodes. So with all those lights and television cameras, I had to change my clothes every one-and-a-half hours, because I was just getting so wet with sweat. After shooting one evening, I came home, and it felt like my brains were just cooking up. I just checked my temperature. It said 107. I don't know what got into my head. I just went under the cold shower with my turban, clothes on, and I just stood there for about fifteen minutes. Later on, when I told the doctors, they said, that is the smartest thing you have done in your life. Then again, I traveled to United States. By now, I was treated for dengue fever, three types of malaria. Back in California, a tropical medicine doctor, who is supposed to be a specialist, said this is some strange kind of typhoid. They started treating me for typhoid. So I had an IV port running, but I kept my schedules. I was talking in a conference with my IV port on. After that, I was speaking at the house of the president of the conference. About twenty minutes I spoke, and I was dripping sweat. One man raised his hand. I thought he's going to ask a question. He stood up and said, you must go to the emergency room right now. I said yes, I know. And they took me to the hospital, but I couldn't stay there. I was just there for the night, because the next day I had appointments elsewhere. So I traveled to Atlanta. Then I was in North Carolina, where I almost collapsed around 2 a.m. Then they took me to the hospital, but the next day I had another event in New York. I went and did that event with IV port on. By then my neck had swollen. The lymph nodes in my neck had swollen. I had eighteen blood tests by then, and four MRIs. So I was joking with the doctors, if nothing else kills me, I may die of anemia, because the amount of blood they're taking for every test. And the doctors in North Carolina said this is too esoteric for us, and too complex, we don't know what the hell this is. All kinds of reports saying bizarre things. Every time I go through a test, they put me in a New York hospital. By then my lymph nodes were really swollen up, and I was in excruciating pain. They said we have to do surgery, maybe it's malignant. I stayed there overnight in the hospital, next day morning I'm going for an anesthetic check. They gave me that funny hospital gown that is open on all sides, and they asked me to go for an anesthetic check. By then I'm not able to walk by myself, I had to hold on to somebody to walk. Somehow I managed to get into the elevator. As I was going down, in another floor, just by chance, somebody else stopped the elevator, and one person got in. The doctor who was with me introduced this person, and he said, he's the one who is going to do surgery on you. He had not seen me till then, so he just checked my neck, how it was swollen, and my lymph nodes, and the kind of pain I was in. He said, it's very deep inside, you must inform the family. Then I went for the anesthetic check, then I decided I needed to do something about this. I just sat there, closed my eyes for about twenty minutes, then I got up and said, I'm leaving. The doctor said, no Sadhguru, this is risky, you will not make it. I said, it doesn't matter, I'm leaving. So I left the hospital, there were two people to help me. I stayed in a close-by apartment for four days. I closed my eyes and was good enough to travel. I came back here to India on the twenty-second or the twenty-third day. I was in Kailash. I trekked all the way up. I was weak. I couldn't speak properly. I had lost my muscle mass. My thighs had lost almost one-fourth of the muscle in these twelve weeks. In that condition, I came to Kailash. When I sat there, I saw the tremendous richness of what is there, the knowledge that is stored there. Let us say, it is like Shiva's dreadlocks. It is stored in strands. I just took one strand of that. You won't believe, in twenty minutes, I was a new man. Everybody could see that. I walked up all the way to the base of the mountain, trekking, and there were at least three-hundred people as witness that day. I bounced back like I was almost ten years younger than what I was and much, much more healthy than I was in those last ten years before that, and perfectly fine. This is just one tangible aspect. There are other more profound dimensions to it. It is an incredible space. Everybody may not be able to access what it is, but at least allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it. Maybe someday, if it lives within you, you can access it, hopefully. It's my wish and my blessing. You must allow this to happen to you, that the Kailash should reside within you and you must have access to this tremendous and unimaginable possibility. It is possible for every human being. It's just the willingness. Namaskaram.