What Was Krishna's Sadhana?

Did Krishna do any sadhana before his enlightenment? What brought him to such a state in this life?

For a human being to live in joy and love every day is a tremendous sadhana. Most people smile when someone is around, but if you look at them when they are alone, the depressed face they wear says everything. If you cannot be alone, it obviously means you are in bad company.

Mixing with people is like a festival, but being is always in aloneness. To be loving every moment of your life – not only if a certain situation occurs, or if you see a certain person – if you are simply loving, indiscriminately, your intelligence blossoms in a completely different way. To be loving is not a gift to someone else. It is the pleasantness of your system – your emotion, mind, and body naturally become pleasant. And there is substantial scientific evidence to prove today that only when your system is pleasant, your intelligence functions at its best.

You will see, if your heart beats 60 times per minute when you are restful, you are in tune with the planet. If you do some simple yogic practices like Surya Namaskar and Shambhavi Mahamudra for about 18 months, it will be 60 – you will be in tune. When you are in tune, being joyful is natural because that is how the being is made. It is made to flourish.

This was Krishna's sadhana until the age of 16– he was in perfect tune with life around him. The fact that everyone still loved him though he stole butter and pulled all kinds of pranks means that somehow he got them in tune with himself. Then, at 16, his Guru, Sandipani, reminded him that there was a bigger purpose to his life. Krishna struggled with that. He went and stood on a small hill that is known as Govardhan Hill. When he came back down, he was not the boy he used to be. People knew something phenomenal had happened, and they also knew they were going to lose him. When they looked at him, he still smiled back at them, but there was no love in his eyes – there was vision.

After the reminder, his first exploit was to end Kamsa's tyranny. Then he withdrew into Sandipani's ashram with Balarama and lived the life of a brahmachari, doing intense spiritual sadhana till he was 22. Here, Krishna's sadhana was of a different dimension. Sandipani designed it in such a way that it was largely internal. Since Krishna lived and acted like he belonged to Satya Yuga, everything happened on a mental level for him. Sandipani did not need to open his mouth to give an instruction. All was conveyed mentally; all was grasped mentally; all was attained mentally. And he displayed that in a million different ways in his life.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.