Questioner: How does practicing Bhairavi Sadhana enhance emotional intelligence?
Sadhguru: The sadhana is essentially towards using your emotional intelligence. When we say emotional intelligence, today it’s been identified in the world.
For a long time we thought intelligence means just IQ. See, this is not a – IQ means, I stand in the queue. That means, always behind somebody. This is the nature of the intellect. Intellect is always trying to imitate and be one up. Wanting to be better than somebody is also an imitation of somebody, isn’t it? Essentially, we are trying to do a little better than the monkeys. That’s evolution. Yes?
The nature of the intellect is – right now, the way it is for most human beings, it is a useless instrument, unless there is a bank of information. There is no information – most people do not know how to use their intellect. Only with information they can use their intellect.
This is not the nature of emotional intelligence. It doesn’t need any information. It can just embrace everything, and know it. It can feel its way through life, it need not stand in a queue. It need not stand behind somebody, it need not try to be better than somebody, it’s simply a way of being involved with life. Knowing life by involvement, not by dissection. This is the difference between intellect and emotion. Intellect tries to know everything by cutting it open, by dissection. Emotion knows things by embrace, by inclusion.
The sadhana [Bhairavi] is essentially to heighten your emotional intelligence
So, the sadhana is essentially to heighten your emotional intelligence, because it’s so much of an easier way of doing things. If you want to dissect the ultimate, if you want to dissect the divine, that’s not a good thing, and you won’t get anywhere with it. The best way is to embrace. When you embrace somebody, you are also allowing yourself to be embraced, otherwise it will not happen. Only I will embrace you, you cannot embrace me – it doesn’t work like that. When I embrace, I am also embraced. So, this is a way of embracing the divine, rather than dissecting the divine.
So, the sadhana is essentially about this – devotion means just that. Devotion is not about dissecting the divine, it’s about dancing with the divine, becoming one with it. Essentially, to heighten your emotional intelligence, so that your ability to live well is not dependent upon being better than somebody. Your ability to live well is by your own innate nature, not because you are better than somebody. You don’t have to prove that you are better than somebody. You don’t even have to try to be better than somebody. This is emotional intelligence – there is no hierarchy in this.
Once intellect enters this, if you say ‘love,’ who loves most? There is no such thing. Do I love Dhyanalinga more, or you love Dhyanalinga more? Do I love this turtle more, or you love this turtle more? Do I love this monkey more, or you love this monkey more? Nobody can decide this. Never, ever, can anybody weigh it and say, “Okay, this person loves more than the other person.” There is no such thing. Quantities do not apply to emotional intelligence. When quantities do not apply, the high and low disappear, big and small disappear, life becomes as it is.
Is ant a more important life than you, or you a more important life than the ant? If you think you are more important, you have a gross mind. You do not understand that ant considers its life as important as you consider your life – probably more! He’s got more limbs than you, probably doing more useful things, he’s more organized than you, we don’t know what else – probably their population is more. If you give them the voting rights, they would win, hands down.
It is your intellect which has created conflict. It is your emotion which can bring this together
So, intellect is always trying to set one thing against the other. It is your intellect which has created conflict. It is your emotion which can bring this together. But if emotion follows intellect, emotion also will become a deadly conflict. If your intellect follows the emotion, then there would be no conflict, there would be sweetness in the world, there would be wonderful situations in the world.
So, the sadhana is essentially oriented towards that. It’s a simple structure, but if you give yourself, it does miraculous things to you. A lot of people cannot understand that something so simple can do something like this to a human being, because they dissect it and see. If I dissect you and see, let us say, you are a great singer. ‘Wow, you sing so well! Let me see what is in your vocal cords.’ And I will dissect your vocal cords and look in, I will not find any music, because that is not the way life works. So, dissection will take you to a place where everything will become meaningless.
If you apply your intellect to every aspect of your life, you will turn everything into meaningless rubbish. This is what is happening in the life of an intellectual, that everything looks meaningless and rubbish. But if you apply your emotion, everything becomes valuable and beautiful. Every little thing becomes, a blade of grass becomes poetry, simply, a wave of the branch becomes a song. But if you apply your intellect, everything can be reduced to rubbish, everything becomes no good. If you apply your emotion, everything becomes great.
