Inner Engineering

by Sadguru

  • The only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life.
  • “I do not know” is the doorway—the only doorway—to seeking and knowing.
  • Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now. No matter how much we achieve, we still want to be something more. 
  • We are the most comfortable generation to have ever lived on this planet but we are definitely not the most joyful, or the most loving, or the most peaceful.
  • Only a person who knows what it is to work understands rest. Paradoxically, those who are always resting know no rest; they only sink into dullness and lethargy.

IN, NOT OUT

  • All we can ever experience happens from within us.
  • The only thing that stands between you and your wellbeing is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.
  • Technology will only bring comfort and convenience to us, not well-being.
  • You can bullshit yourself into all kinds of emotional states, you can somehow crank up some well-being for yourself, but the problem is, it doesn’t last.
  • All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.
  • Peace and joy are the basic requirements for a life of well-being.
  • When being peaceful, blissful, and joyous are not efforts anymore, you naturally start seeking, want to know the nature of life. 
  • Your senses give you the impression that you are experiencing the outside, but you have never experienced the outside. When you realize that all that you experience is within, that absolute homecoming is enlightenment.
  • You have been told to love your enemy. If you first label someone your enemy and then try to love him or her, it’s going to be torturous! Once you have fragmented creation like this, there is no way to arrive at a state of absolute inclusiveness.
  • If you believe that someone “up there” is going to rescue you and solve all your problems, just remember that you are living on a round planet—and one that’s spinning. So, whenever you look up, you are obviously looking in the wrong direction! The only distinction you do know right now is “within” and “without”. “The only way out is in.”
  • Your outer life may not be a hundred percent in your control, but your inner life always will.
  • Only when you recognize your mortal nature do you want to know what more there is to life. It is then that the spiritual process opens up.
  • The quality of your life is always decided by how you experience life, not by what life offers you.

RESPONSIBILITY 

  • Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you.
  • The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter. If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence, and sensitivity is compromised by a compulsive or reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation. 
  • Realize that you are responsible for all that you are and all that you are not, all that may happen to you and all that may not happen to you.
  • Whatever we do not want to take responsibility for, whatever we cannot make sense of logically, we label “destiny.” It is a consoling word, but disempowering.

BODY & MIND

  • Your body is just an accumulation of food. Your mind is just an accumulation of impressions gathered through the five senses. What you accumulate can be yours, but it can never be you.
  • If you have mastery over your physical body, fifteen to twenty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, fifty to sixty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your life energies, a hundred percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands.
  • Anger is fundamentally self-defeating. If you look at your life closely, you will find that you have done the most idiotic and life-negative things when you were angry.  There is substantial medical and scientific evidence to prove that in a state of anger, you are literally poisoning your system.
  • You come into this world with nothing and you go empty-handed. The wealth of life lies only in how you have allowed its experiences to enrich you.

LOVE

  • Love is not something you do; it is just the way you are.
  • Love is just your own quality. You are only using a person you ‘love’ as a key to open up what is already within you.
  • There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love. There are conditions and there is love. When you talk about love, it has to be unconditional. The moment there is a condition, it just amounts to a transaction. Love need not necessarily be convenient; most of the time it is not. It takes life. You have to invest yourself.
  • Of all the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. 
  • When you are a truly blissful human being, everyone will naturally want to be around you!

YOGA

  • The experience of union with existence, of oneness with all life, of boundlessness was yoga.
  • The science of yoga is, quite simply, the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.
  • With the practice of yoga, your body and mind can be maintained at the highest possible level of capability and efficiency.
  • Hatha yoga is not exercise. It is, instead, about understanding the mechanics of the body, creating a certain atmosphere, and then using physical postures to channel or drive your energy in specific directions. 
  • The surya namaskar is essentially about building a dimension within you where your physical bodily cycles are in sync with the sun’s cycles, which run about twelve and a quarter years.
  • The way you think is the way you feel. But it is also true that the way you feel is the way you think. This is why yoga includes both thought and emotion as part of the same manomayakosha, or mental body.

FOOD

  • Our body and brain work at their best only when the stomach is empty. So be conscious of eating in such a way that within two and a half hours, your food moves out of the stomach, and within twelve to eighteen hours completely out of the system. With this simple awareness you will experience much more energy, agility, and alertness. 
  • Eating natural foods, in their uncooked condition, when the cells are still alive, will bring an enormous sense of health and vitality to the system.
  • The pranic and nutritional value of all seeds/ nuts is tremendous. Soak the nuts that you intend to consume in water for six to eight hours, especially if they are dry nuts. All seeds have a certain natural chemical self-protection. Soaking in water will flush out these toxic substances and bring them to the surface, and these can be eliminated by peeling off the skin of the nut. Additionally, soaking them helps lower the concentrated protein content which sometimes makes them difficult to digest.
  • If you eat raw meat, it takes between seventy to seventy-two hours to pass through your system; cooked meat takes fifty to fifty-two hours; cooked vegetables twenty-four to thirty hours; uncooked vegetables twelve to fifteen hours; fruits one and a half to three hours. The human alimentary canal is similar to that of the herbivores.
  • Excess protein consumption can cause cancer.
  • It is important not to turn into a food freak. Food should never become an all-consuming affair- .
  • Large animals, particularly cows, are aware of their impending slaughter well before it happens. Consequently, they experience high stress levels, which generate a tremendous amount of acidic content in their systems. This, in turn, has its own adverse impact on those who later consume the meat.
  • A mandala is a cycle of forty to forty-eight days that the human system goes through. In every cycle, there will be three days on which your body does not need food. The day the system says “no food” is a cleanup day. Since most people are not aware of which day their body should go without food, the day of Ekadashi was fixed in the Indian calendar. Ekadashi is the eleventh day of the lunar segment and recurs every fourteen days. It is traditionally regarded as the day to fast.
  • If you force yourself to fast without preparing your body and mind sufficiently, you will only cause damage to your health. But if your body, mind, and energy are properly prepared with the necessary practices, then fasting can be of much benefit to you.
  • Fifty percent raw food, fifty percent cooked food. This is ideal for most people, who wish to be active for sixteen to eighteen hours a day.
  • If you eat raw food, you take a little more time to eat the same quantum of food, because you have to chew a little more. But the nature of the body is such that after fifteen minutes the body will tell you that your meal is over. So people tend to eat much less and lose weight.

REST & SLEEP

  • An average person’s pulse rate on an empty stomach would be in the seventies or even eighties. For a person doing the right type of meditative practice, you will find that the pulse rate would range between the thirties and forties.
  • What the body needs is not sleep but restfulness. If you keep the body very relaxed through the day, your sleep quota will go down naturally.
  • If you sleep without a pillow or with a very low pillow, which doesn’t allow the spine to get pinched, the neuronal regeneration of the brain and the cellular regeneration of the neurological system will be much better. If you sleep without a pillow, it is best to lie on your back in a supine position, rather than on your side. Lying in this position is referred to in yoga as shavasana: it enhances the purification and rejuvenation of the body, promotes the free flow of movement in the energy system, bringing relaxation and vitality.

TEMPLES

  • The Indian temples were never places of prayer. The temple was like a public battery-charging space. Most people have forgotten this nowadays. They just go to temples, ask for something, bum-bounce on the temple floor, and then leave. This is quite pointless. The idea is to sit and imbibe the energies of the place.
  • Mount Kailash (the mountain peak in western Tibet that is regarded as a sacred place of immeasurable power and antiquity) is the place where the maximum amount of knowledge has been stored for a very long time in energy form.
  • Kedarnath is just a small temple in the Himalayas. There is no deity there; it is just an outcrop of a rock. But it is one of the most powerful places in the world!

If one can exit the physical form voluntarily without damaging it, that is an indication of absolute mastery over the life process. This is generally referred to in the Indian tradition as mahasamadhi, or “glorious equanimity.”

Some Sadhanas presented in the book

1. Be aware of everything you do through the day… be aware of each item of food you eat, the air you breathe, etc.

2. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day.

3. If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. 

4. Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary, supported. Remain still. Allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down. 

5. If you see a straight line on the floor, try walking in perfect alignment with that line, maintaining an easy gait. This is one way of dipping your intellect in awareness.

6. The consumption of a spoonful of clarified butter (ghee in India), without adding sugar, on a daily basis a few minutes before a meal does wonders for the digestive system. 

Disclaimer: The key points of the book presented here are not a substitute for reading the book. To get the entire holistic message the author has offered requires reading the book.

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