There's a story Sadhguru tells that stops people mid-conversation
Sadhguru talks about being able to walk up Chamundi Hill in Karnataka, pause at a particular cluster of rocks, and know, with complete certainty, exactly which one a snake was hiding beneath at that moment. "I could easily track a snake in the wild. I would smell it and just go and catch it. If I went to some spot on Chamundi Hill, I would know under exactly which rock the snake would be at that moment," he's said, as documented on the Isha Foundation's website.
When he caught a 12-feet long cobra during school days
When Sadhguru was in school, the campus was large, and snakes were very much part of the scene. Most people were terrified, but he could just catch them. Word got around. He slowly gained a reputation where, if a snake was seen anywhere in town, they'd call him to catch it. He tells one story about being called to a tubelight factory in the afternoon — a big cobra had been spotted and the entire workforce of 25 to 30 people had ground to a halt, unwilling to move until someone dealt with it.
When he kept a snake under his bed for 3 years
He has narrated another incident. “Then one day my father went into my room and he heard some noise. He bent down and looked but he couldn’t see anything. Then he looked under my bed and saw the snake and freaked out totally. He was hopping mad when I came home. He was so terrified and everyone was standing on the chairs and sofas though the snake was still in the jar. They asked me to leave it out but I put it on the terrace. The snake was with me for almost 3 years. Later on I let him go in my farm.”
“There was a time when I used to have twenty live cobras all over my bedroom. They would be just everywhere. It takes a certain level of alertness and awareness to live with them. They are very wonderful but one wrong move and you know what,” he says.
What gave him that ease?
His answer is neither bravado nor spiritual mysticism, it's more practical than that. "The snake is one animal where you can just pick it up gently and it just won't do anything to you if you are not agitated," he's explained. The agitation, in his view, is the problem. Fear triggers a response in the handler, the snake picks up on it, and that's when things go wrong. Stay calm, stay slow, and a snake, even in the wild, responds entirely differently than most people expect.
What Sadhguru says about snakes and energy
This isn't just folk wisdom for him. Sadhguru connects the human relationship with snakes to something much older, the way the creature is woven through Indian spiritual tradition, from the symbolism of the kundalini to the reverence shown at Naga temples across the subcontinent. "One reason why the snake is worshiped in India is because it is a symbolism of kundalini. In India, if a snake dies they give it a proper funeral, because in the evolution of the body, a monkey is very close to human beings but in the evolution of the soul, a snake and cow are very close to the human soul,” he's said.
Start a Conversation
Post comment