When Adiyogi first began the transmission of the yogic sciences 15,000 years ago to his seven disciples—the Saptarishis—he began expounding many incredible things about the entire mechanics of human existence. At one point, he came to a dimension known as Kaivalyapada—he offered 112 different ways in which a human being can attain to his fullest potential. He declared, “If you use the human system, there are only 112 ways because there are only 112 doorways for this body through which it can attain.” If you wish to do something, you can do something only with what you have on your hands. You cannot work with what is not on your hands.
Of these 112, 84 are purely kriya. Fundamentally, “kriya” means “internal action”. When you do inner action, it does not involve the body and mind because both the body and mind are still external to you. When you have a certain mastery to do action with your energy, then it is a kriya. But in today’s world, most human beings do not have the necessary physical body to do kriya yoga in its entirety. It will just burn you down if you don’t have the right kind of body. So, a combination that involves other aspects of you—body, mind and emotion—works best.
Besides the 84, the other ways also have aspects of kriya because Adiyogi does not look at life through the intellect. He thinks human intellect is worth nothing. That’s his opinion and I agree with him because in the larger context of the existence, the human intellect is really nothing. Amongst ourselves, with our intellect and smart talk we can create little things, but in the larger existence, it doesn’t mean anything.
Let me tell you a story. It happened one day in the year 2075, a bunch of scientists decided to take an appointment with the God. They went and said, “Hey old man, you’ve done pretty well with creation so far. But now, we can do everything that you can.” God said, “Oh, what can you do?” They said, “We can create life.” God said, “Give me a demo.” So they took some soil, did something and made a baby out of it, and the baby cried. God said, “Well, that’s quite impressive but first get your own soil.”
Before you and me, something created all this. You can call it God, Shiva or whatever you want, but you didn’t make it. If you look at any aspect of creation, one thing that it smacks of is intelligence—intelligence beyond your imagination. Intelligence and intellect are different things. For example, the body is an immensely complex chemical factory. There is a certain intelligence managing and conducting this. Do you believe that you could intellectually, logically conduct this whole factory? You would not be able to manage a single cell if you tried.
What you call “intelligence” and what you refer to as “creator” are not different. If you operate only within the limitations of your intellect, you will never know that which we refer to as the creator. You will just do the circus of life. Life is a circus when your intellect and body alone are involved. Life is a magical dance when the intelligence begins to play its role.
The author is a prominent spiritual leader.
You are invited to be part of the unveiling of the world’s largest face—a 112-foot face of Adiyogi, the source of Yoga, on the occasion of Mahashivarathri on February 24, 2017 at the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore. isha.sadhguru.org/mahashivratri