A few years ago, I took a small group of people on a trek on a railway track between Subramanya and Mangalore in Karnataka. This stretch has over 300 bridges and 100 tunnels. You are practically either on a bridge or in a tunnel most of the time. Some of the tunnels are over a kilometre long. Even in the day it is pitch dark if you go in. You cannot see your own hand in front of you. Even starlight gives you some sense of vision. But in the tunnels, there is absolutely no vision; it is pitch black.
I made them walk in those tunnels without any torches. There could be a ditch, there could be an opening, there could be anything. And bats are flying all over. Initially, people were scared, but after some time, they started walking slowly and enjoying the whole experience. If you are in a place like that, your attention becomes really heightened. If you can keep your attention like this every moment of your life, then you will glow.
The very first step of even thinking of spirituality came to you only because of a certain level of attention. If you pay much more attention to everything, above all if you heighten your ability to be attentive, that could be used in miraculous ways. But for this to happen, you have to pay a lot of attention. But you cannot pay a lot of attention to anything; you can only pay attention to what you have. And it is not okay to save your attention in what you have.
Even with your mental attention, you are at different levels of attention at different times of your life. If you are doing your work, you are in one level of attention; if you are in meditation you are in a different level; if you are eating something that you like, you are in a different level. Your levels of attention are different at different times, and whatever the peak attention that you have had in your life at any time, that is still not all of it. There is more, but that is still in an unmanifest state.
Suppose I leave you without a torch in the middle of the forest at night, when it is pitch dark, you will see that your level of attention will be different. When you face danger and hear wild animals, but you cannot see anything, you will be in a different level of attention. If it is a question of life and death, you will become attentive in a completely different way.
It is only when you truly pay attention to your life that you see that you don’t know where it begins and where it ends. You are going about as if whatever you are doing is the be all and end all of life. The moment you pay a little attention, you understand “This is not it.” If you bring this attention to a peak, if you learn to have a heightened sense of attention, then we can teach you methods as to what you should and what you should not attend to within yourself. If you become very attentive, we can look at how to make use of that attentiveness.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, a bestselling author and poet. He has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org