Sadhguru

Sadhguru
Born	Template:Birth date and age Mysore, Mysore State, India
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Jagadish "Jaggi" Vasudev (born 3 September 1957), known by the honorific title Sadhguru,Template:Efn is an Indian yoga guru and proponent of spirituality.

He has been teaching yoga in southern India since 1982. In 1992, he established the Isha Foundation near Coimbatore, which operates an ashram and yoga centre that carry out educational activities.

Vasudev is the author of several books and a frequent speaker at international forums.

In 2017, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award, for his contributions to social welfare.

Early life and education

Jagadish Vasudev was born on 3 September 1957 in Mysore, Karnataka, India. He is the youngest of the five children of Susheela Vasudev, a homemaker, and B.V. Vasudev, a physician at the Mysuru Railway Hospital.

Defying his parents' wishes, he refused to pursue a post-graduate course and took to business instead.

Career

Overview

Vasudev's first business was a poultry farm in a remote part of Mysore that he set up with borrowed money. During the process of constructing his farm, he also entered into the construction business with a company named Buildaids.

At the age of 25, he rented his businesses to his friend and travelled for about a year.

In 1983, he taught his first yoga class in Mysore. Over time, he began conducting yoga classes across Karnataka and Hyderabad travelling on his motorcycle, subsisting on the produce of his poultry farm rental and donating the collections received from his students.

Spirituality

At the age of 25, on 23 September 1982, he went up Chamundi Hill and sat on a rock, where he had a "spiritual experience". Six weeks later, he left his business to his friend and travelled extensively in an effort to gain insight into his mystical experience. After about a year of meditation and travel, he decided to teach yoga to share his inner experience.

In 1983, he taught his first yoga class with seven participants in Mysore. Over time, he began conducting yoga classes across Karnataka and Hyderabad, travelling on his motorcycle, subsisting on the produce of his poultry farm rental and donating the collections received from his students to a local charity on the last day of the class.

Business and travels

One of his favourite haunts was the Chamundi Hills. Besides riding his motorcycle in and around Mysore, he also rode across India, before being stopped at the border because he had no passport.

His first business was a poultry farm in a remote part of Mysore. He chose poultry because the sector was on the rise in the region at the time. He set up his farm with borrowed money. Though his family did not approve of his choice of business and thought it was a waste of time, the farm soon turned profitable. Operating his businesses occupied four hours of Vasudev's time each day. The rest of his time was spent writing poetry, reading, swimming, and relaxing. Vasudev says that though he was practicing asanas and pranayama from the age of thirteen, it was during his time at the poultry farm that he began to meditate in an established way.

His third business was a construction company named Buildaids. Vasudev entered the construction industry in response to the constant questions from his relatives about why he was involved in the poultry business. He started the company in partnership with a friend who was a qualified civil engineer. Though Vasudev had no formal engineering training, he used the experience gained from building his poultry farm in his new company.

Isha Foundation

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In 1992, Vasudev established the Isha Foundation, an organisation headquartered near the city of Coimbatore, as a platform for his spiritual, environmental, and educational activities. He remains its head until now. The organisation offers yoga programmes under the name "Isha Yoga" and is run "almost entirely" by volunteers. The foundation aims to improve the quality of education in rural India through an initiative called Isha Vidhya. It has also launched projects and campaigns focused on environmental conservation and protection, including Project GreenHands, Rally for Rivers, Cauvery Calling, and Save Soil. Vasudev recently completed a journey on his motorbike from London to India to raise awareness about the Save Soil campaign.

Speeches and writings

Vasudev has authored several books, including Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny; both have made it to The New York Times Best Seller list. Vasudev is also the author of Mystic's Musings and Death: An Inside Story.

Vasudev is a frequent public speaker who has been invited to address many prestigious forums and conferences across the globe, such as the United Nation's Millennium World Peace Summit, the British House of Lords, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the International Institute for Management Development. He has also spoken at the annual World Economic Forum in 2007, 2017 and 2020.

Family

Vasudev and Kumari's daughter is a trained bharatanatyam dancer. She married Chennai-based classical vocalist Sandeep Narayan in 2014.

Honours and awards

Vasudev received the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award from the Government of India, in 2017 in recognition of his contribution to the field of spirituality. He stood 92nd in The Indian ExpressTemplate:' list of 100 most powerful Indians in 2012 and 40th in India TodayTemplate:'s list of 50 most powerful Indians in 2019.

Reception

Vasudev has received attention from celebrities, political leaders, intergovernmental organizations, and members of the public interested in his social and environmental campaigns and spiritual teachings. He has engaged with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification to advocate for the Save Soil campaign. Trevor Noah hosted Vasudev on The Daily Show to discuss Save Soil, and similarly, Joe Rogan has spoken with Vasudev on his podcast. On World Environment Day, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, attended an event with Vasudev to discuss efforts to improve soil health.

Some critics have said that Jaggi Vasudev shares the ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), and that he takes an "intolerant nationalist" stance in his media appearances. He advocates for a total ban on cow slaughter and characterises the era of Muslim Rule in India as an "oppressive occupation" that was far worse than the British Raj.Template:Citation needed Vasudev has also spoken in favour of the 2019 Balakot airstrike, the introduction of a comprehensive GST, and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, while denouncing the Thoothukudi protests as a peril to industry. Vasudev accuses leftist liberals of aiding and abetting militancy in Kashmir and has suggested that Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, known for their involvement in the JNU sedition row, should be put behind bars. Critics have questioned the non-political label that he has assigned himself.

Some Indian environmental activists have accused Vasudev of greenwashing.

Vasudev has also been accused of promoting pseudoscience and misrepresenting science. He propagates the claim, unsupported by science, that cooked food consumed during a lunar eclipse depletes the human body's pranic energies. He also perpetuates numerous myths regarding clinical depression and opposes the potential prohibition on the use of mercury in traditional Indian medicine, despite the substance's extreme toxicity. His views on the Higgs boson and alleged benefits of vibhuti have been rejected as unproven by science.

Vasudev has repeatedly claimed to be able to solidify mercury at room temperature; these claims have been debunked.

Bibliography

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External links

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• Isha Foundation's official website