Jaggi Vasudev known as Sadhguru is an Indian yogi who teaches yoga, meditation and frequently answers questions related to spirituality. He is known for his keen wit, humour and ability to combine ancient Indian yoga with modern life. He founded the Isha Yoga Centre and has promoted several environmental issues. He has travelled around the world, speaking at venues from Davos to the United Nations. He promotes a spirituality which emphasises personal transformation, clean living and social awareness. He has been associated with aspects of Hindu nationalism
Early life
Jaggi Vasudeva was born 3 September 1957 in Mysore, India to relatively affluent parents. His father was a doctor who travelled around the country. As a child, Jaggi was high spirited with a streak of rebelliousness. He was easily bored with school and would frequently play truant and appear fearless in the face of authority. Rather than spend time in school, he would often wander off on his own to the countryside and become absorbed in nature. He owned a bicycle and would frequently cycle on long tours. He loved sports and outdoor pursuits and was interested in maintaining the best physical health. From the age of 13, he took up hatha yoga after meeting a 70-year-old yogi who displayed great physical dexterity.
His fearlessness and physical strength led to a lucrative job as a snake catcher. He would not use a stick but just catch snakes with his bare hands. He has had a lifelong closeness to snakes and the snake world. For a while, as a teenager, he threw himself into revolutionary politics as he became concerned with social justice but after a few years, he became disenchanted with the levels of hatred and hypocrisy within the political movements.
After school, he enrolled in a self-study course of English Literature at Mysore University, and despite his usual erratic attendance, managed to graduate, finishing second in English Literature. After graduating, rather pursuing more studies, to the dissappointment of his family, he set up his own poultry farm. Starting from scratch, he worked all day to create a financially successful business. With money from his poultry farm, he also set up an even more successful construction company. When not working on his farm, he would spontaneously tour the country on his motorbike, โ often at furious speed and taking extreme risk. He was never keen on planning but would travel at the drop of the hat. A popular destination for Jaggi was Chamundi Hill. In these days, he spent time with a group of friends who were attracted to a more alternative lifestyle โ for a time, they considered forming an idealistic commune, but it never materialised.
Self-realisation
Aged 25, Jaggi had a successful, if unconventional worldly life, but all this was set to change. On 23 September 1982, Jaggi made a typical journey on his motorbike to Chamundi Hill โ he had no particular reason for going โ he just often felt drawn to this mountain. Whilst sitting on a rock, without any particular effort, he began to enter a meditative state. In his own words he writes:
โSuddenly, I did not know which was me and which was not me. The air that I was breathing, the rock on which I was sitting, the atmosphere around me, everything had become meโฆ And here Iโm sitting tears are flowing to the point where my shirt is wet, and Iโm ecstatically crazy! But, here I am, drenched with a completely new kind of blissfulness."
src: https://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/sadhguru.html
