16 Enlightenment - Life the Way it is 17

just avoided me. In this one year, I had acquired the reputation of
being a dangerous man who had dropped his successful business
and was sitting quietly. It was my own business. I had built it from
scratch and I did not owe a single rupee to anybody, but still people
said, “He is dangerous – he has dropped his business.” Nobody
wanted to come. I couldn’t believe it.
After much coaxing and coercing I got seven people. They were Chapter 2
no Sapta Rishis1. They did not come with that level of preparation
or intensity or anything. Some came out of curiosity and some
came out of politeness. They did not want to say “No” to me – that
Encounter the Enlightened
is how they came.
The first program I ever taught started off as a four-day, two-hour
program. By the second day, it went into five, six hours. Third day, “When you are in a desert, and people are thirsting for
the same thing happened. On the fourth day, they said, “This is very water, and you have an oasis with you, it becomes your
good. Let’s extend it by two days.” So, it became a six-day program. responsibility to let people know of it,” says Sadhguru.
Since then, there has been no looking back. Millions of people Hence, Sadhguru’s life has been dedicated to taking spiritual
processes to the people. In an attempt to directly reach out
have gone through these programs and millions of lives have
to large numbers of people, during the years 2000-2002,
changed because of it. Today, I can proudly say that in homes and
Sadhguru conducted a series of Mahasathsangs where tens
the marketplaces alike, we have created people whose vision and
or sometimes even hundreds of thousands of people gathered
experience of life is rooted in the harmony and unboundedness of
in the evenings to be in His presence.
life rather than in any narrow perception of the limited.
Happening sometimes in the rural areas, sometimes in
I can proudly say that it is not just the urban and the privileged,
the urban cities and metros, these Mahasathsangs went by
but even the impoverished, whose struggle for existence is a daily
the provocative name, “Encounter the Enlightened,” which
process, that are able to walk the inner path to wellbeing. But I
clearly described the event!
am extremely grateful to those seven people because, these seven
people showed me that I could teach, that I could somehow rub off All people – young, old; men, women; aged and infirm
a part of this experience onto others. – from all walks of life, flocked to the venues to hear the
Enlightened One, knowing that it was an event that might
not recur in their lives. And not being the one to disappoint
them, Sadhguru on his part turned it into an evening that
they were not likely to forget, and for most, into an evening
when they stumbled into a world unknown, and a journey
1 Ancient sages, direct disciples of Shiva. within.