How does one overcome the fear of death?
S: Everything that you experience through the five senses is only physical. All your experience right now is limited to sense perception; so everything you know, including your body and mind, is physical. The mind may be subtler, but it is still physical. So everything that you know as yourself, as life and existence, is all physical.
The physical in the existence is constantly under threat because it is always within limited boundaries; it is always demarcated. With anything that is demarcated, there is always a fear of losing it. For instance, the physical “you” is constantly under threat. I am not wishing it upon you, but no matter how healthy, strong or young you are right now, tomorrow morning you may be dead. If your experience of life is limited to the physical, fear will always be a natural companion in your life. Just look back at your life. Almost everything that you have done in your life – educating yourself, finding a job, getting married – has been in search of security. The need for security arises due to fear. Fear is the fundamental emotion and everything else is springing out of it.
Only if a dimension beyond the physical becomes a living reality within a person will they become free from fear. Then fear will just evaporate. It will not even exist in your life; and there is no need to do anything about that which does not exist.
What kind of clothes should you wear for Yoga?
S: When I did Hatha Yoga as a young boy, the only thing we were allowed to wear was a loin cloth. The idea was that there should be as little obstruction as possible. Traditionally in India, people did not wear stitched clothing. Both the dhotis for men and the sarees for women are just pieces of unstitched cloth. When clothing is stitched, the movement of energy gets restricted to some extent – you want to minimize that when doing sadhana. This does not mean that you should start wearing a loin cloth, but Yoga practitioners should definitely not wear synthetic clothing such as the kind that athletes wear. Organic clothing – either cotton or raw silk – is ideal. Since organic raw silk may be too expensive and difficult to get, organic cotton would be the best option. Wool is all right too.
Before starting your sadhana, you should remove any objects from your body, especially metal ones, because they tend to disturb the free movement of energy. If you take an image of electromagnetic waves, even a small object will create a certain circulation around itself. Except for a few parts of the body that are dormant, like the earlobes, any kind of metal should be removed – even nose studs. Clothing with plastic fasteners or hooks are okay, but there should definitely be no metal, especially on your spine. If you are wearing rudraksha, you can keep it on. Rudraksha is a good support that creates a cocoon of your own energy.
If the sexual drive is low in a man, does it mean that the drive for success and other aspects like career will also be low?
S: In a male, there is a sense of conquest. If he is all masculine and he has not nurtured the other dimensions in him, conquest is very important. He sees everything, including sexuality, as conquest. Even a woman is a conquest for him – it is not pleasure or love, he has to prove his point. When it becomes like this, he becomes a restless human being and that restlessness is understood as drive for success.
Restless people do many things. Sometimes they may find medium scale success because of that. But true success comes only to those who are quiet and calm. If you see the geniuses in any field, they are all people without too much testosterone in them. They are regulated testosterone, not wild testosterone. Either naturally or with a certain attitude, they have tempered their testosterone.
So will the level of testosterone decide a man’s success in his career or business? Definitely not. The choice is just this: do you want to be driven by a certain chemical ingredient in your system or do you want to drive your system? If you are driven by the system, by accident you may reach somewhere; sometimes it may be a good place, sometimes it may be a bad place. If you drive your system, you will take it where you want to go.
(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author)
(Have queries for Sadhguru? Visit bit.ly/3GKogSX to submit them)
