SADGURU'S BACKGROUND

Sadhguru was a rebel, always questioning what was normally accepted by society.
For example, as a boy when he was dragged into a temple he asked of his parents:

why was it necessary to pray before idols?
What good would it do?
He would get beaten up for that.

In ten years he changed ten schools in and around Shimoga where he was born.
It was also because his father, an ophthalmologist with the Railways, was shunted him from place to place.

When the time came to join college, Sadhguru refused.
Instead he spent a whole year reading all kinds of books.
Finally, because of parental pressures, he enrolled for the B.A. course and just about managed enough examination questions to pass.”

After college, Sadhguru wanted to make a lot of money because he craved to travel the world.
He started poultry farming as that was a thriving business in those days. He succeeded, and his father was thrilled.
But Sadhguru disappointed him by winding up the farm. “He was bored of chickens.

Sadhguru then teamed up with a partner to enter the construction business in Mysore. It did very well. Once again his father was thrilled.
And once again he was in store for disappointment.

“One afternoon,while sitting on a rock on nearby Chamundi Hills, Sadhguru experienced something mysterious yet ecstatic.
He was left crying and smiling for several hours.

From then on the experience repeated frequently.
It endowed him with a deep insight into life and people, an insight that proved to be an unfair advantage over competitors in the construction business.
He wound up the business and set about finding what exactly it was that he had experienced.
In the ensuing months, he was able to remember experiences in a previous life with a sage called Palaniswamy.

Sadhguru was already equipped with various aspects of yoga learnt during his youth from Malladihalli Swamy, a reputed yogi in Karnataka.
This knowledge together with memories of life with Palaniswamy helped Sadhguru design specific practices for the yoga of gnana (intelligence), bhakti (emotions), karma (action), and kriya (energy).
This method of ‘inner engineering’ that Sadhguru designed was to align these four ‘wheels’ in such a way that one could travel smoothly.