How Jaggi Vasudev became Sadhguru

let's talk about the life of a god man that our country is blessed to have today jaggi vasudeva or as he is popularly known as sadhguru in case you live under a rock and don't know who he is well it's this guy jaggi vasudev is a motorbike riding golf playing english speaking cryptic advice giving dimension expanding self-styled godman pratik goyal my colleague here at news laundry has done a gigantic investigation into who this man is where he came from how he managed to gain prominence and then as all god men kind of do did some illegal stuff on the side to make obscene amounts of money and raise a spiritual empire so let me quickly take you through the main points of this investigation how jaggi's isha foundation built a 150 acre campus in an ecologically sensitive area without necessary permissions and a little bit about his nifty trick of taking donations while not paying taxes on it but first like every interesting character here is his origin story the year is 1974 a guru named rishi prabhakar devised siddha samadhi yoga in bengaluru a young jaggi vasudeva came to him in mysore and said teach me sensei teach me your ways a great one he learned this form of yoga in 1986 after his training rishi prabhakar sent jaggi to coimbatore to set up an institution on his behalf but jaggi allegedly separated from him and started his form of yoga called isha yoga perpetually inspired by the samadhi yoga in 1992 he set up the isha foundation this foundation is kind of a rabbit hole more on that later now we come to 1997 where chennai tamil weekly magazine ananda vikrant started a spiritual column called manasseh relax please relax your mind by one swami sukha dhananda from 2004 jaggi vasudev wrote for their second spiritual series which translates to wishes for everyone he wrote well and gained more readership in 2007 he started his own magazine now around the same time something interesting happened jaggi met m karunanidhi the then chief minister of tamilnadu their new relationship was clear when the very atheist chief minister participated in a tree plantation drive organized by isha foundation in september 2007 at chennai's anna university jaggi gained a nice foothold in the political circles of tamil nadu now we come to 2008 jagi got a sunday half an hour show on star vijay based on his old column where he chatted about spirituality social issues dimensions etc with tamil celebrities from different fields thus he gained a foothold among celebrities of the south in 2010 his isha foundation launched a new show called in conversation with a mystic where he would do the same with bollywood celebrities by the way they turned this into a ticketed event with a sit-in audience his latest public adventure is with big fm where he has a show right now let's talk about jaggi vasudeva's isha foundation this is a foundation that has centers across india and even the world and claims to have a network of 4600 full-time volunteers and nine million part-time volunteers the biggest of these centers is the isha foundation headquarters at ikerai bolivar patti in the foothills of veliangiri hill situated in coimbatore tamil nadu that's a mouthful this particular campus has been riddled with allegations of illegal constructions harming forests and wildlife you see this campus is located adjacent to the bolampati reserve forest which is an elephant habitat it has an elephant migration corridor where human activities have been banned in the past 15 20 years animal man conflict in the area has been on the rise because of construction and a rush of devotees to this centre this campus thing is bhari murki in 2012 a forest ranger called ms parthipan visited the campus and found that isha had illegally erected buildings walls and electric fences they were forcing elephants out of natural corridors and into adivasi settlements trampling crops and attacking villagers the allegation is that isha foundation carried out construction activities on more than 6300 square meters and created an artificial lake on another 1400 square meters without the permission of hill area conservation authority haka which was set up to protect the ecologically sensitive areas like this one now vasudev said that he got permission to build on 32 845 square kilometers from the local panchayat but they are not authorized to give such permissions so yeah what's more they built a 112 foot adi-yogi statue there without necessary clearances in 2017 this was inaugurated by none other than honorable pradhan sevak prime minister shri aadhar near narendra modiji he has his own dimension in the same year the comptroller and auditor general cag asked haka and isha foundation why they allowed this construction without approval there is a lot more to this story and i recommend you read pratik's piece on our website he has gathered all the documents and relevant evidence then created a timeline of how this campus came up after multiple legal violations bit by bit illegal building by illegal building oh yeah and on one occasion while interacting with students in nalsar university jaggi was questioned about all of this and this happened a lot of the infrastructure of thesha foundation has been built on elephant corridors something which both the national green tribunal as well as the high courts have admitted to without the requisite permissions we tell you this goes against rule of law which you stand for this goes against living in harmony with species some both of which you've spoken right here at niles if you could clarify regarding that there are some activists who are going on publishing this endlessly you're reading that social media trash and you're coming to conclusions anyway i want you to know today if i want by tomorrow evening i can file 100 cases against you all kinds of things it's for you to come out of it in the next 20 years this is the country you're living in i want you to know damn i mean for a man who preaches spirituality and patience and yada yada threatening to file cases against a young student is kind of uncharacteristic just saying speaking of legal threats news laundry is not afraid of repercussions after doing this story you know why because we are funded by you our lovely subscribers and readers you power our journalism so that amazing people like pratik goyal can take on powerful men like jaggi vasudeva thank you for imposing your faith on us and your hard-earned money subscribe moving on to jaggi vasudeva's business interests the isha foundation sells a lot of things for instance this glorious wooden box which is worth five thousand eight hundred and ten rupees no idea why but fun other than this fancy ecommerce portal which sells everything from jewelry to dosa mix to miniature statues here are some of the other companies isha foods and spices isha crafts isha natural organic solutions uzawan agro solutions threshold foundations thrishul shelters krishi land farms isha arogya isha institute of inner sciences what anyway isha life research foundation isha life fitness system isha capital isha beauty products and wellness amazing according to the ministry of corporate affairs asia foundation earned a total of 117 crore rupees in 2019 and 2020 from all of these other than these divine products jaggi vasudev also sells well himself or at least access to himself anyway if you have 50 lakh rupees lying around somewhere then you can give it to isha foundation for a jaunt around the kailash mansur over and jagiji himself will come along with you but if you are not that rich which i guess everybody there are some cheaper versions you can give 5.5 lakh rupees and travel in a group of 30 or 2.7 lakh rupees to travel in a group of 60. that's not all for 12 lakh rupees you can go on a 12 day motorcycle ride with him in the himalayas what fun oh and in case you're wondering who the hell pays for this stuff well in 2021 right before the second wave hit 17 groups of 60 each had booked the 2.75 lakh package four groups took a special 3.45 lakh package and two booked the 5.5 lakh package yeah you do the math jaggi vasudev also hosts fun mahashivarathri events which have tickets costing 50 000 to 2.5 lakh and here's the most important thing isha foundation probably pays no tax on any of this why because isha foundation is registered as a public charitable trust their social development wing isha outreach is exempt under 80g of the income tax act jaggi vasudeva's isha foundation inc is registered in the united states and shows a net income of 56.43 crore rupees in 2018. that's as per the irs records of this it says about 35 crore came from donations there are no public records of the foundation's revenues in india but it claims that the donations or contributions as it prefers to describe such transactions account for a considerable chunk in pratik's story he lists many instances of how this works for instance nagapan gotham bought a product from the foundation for 14 000 rupees a few months later they sent him a receipt for a random amount of 1242 rupees saying it's a donation for the foundation and opened up new dimensions of course multiple court cases on jaggi and his foundation are languishing in courts and haven't come up for hearing for years one person shankar also filed a complaint with the income tax in 2018. he got a call back immediately and he told the department that he'll provide detailed evidence but for three years after that shankar hasn't heard back from them we have included this evidence in our piece do give it a read it's quite something links to all three of news laundry's investigation into this self-styled godman and his empire are in the description below by the way this was part of our nl cena project called on a godman's trail which was funded by 155 of our readers and the interesting thing is when we were raising funds for this project we did not even reveal which god man we were going to investigate our readers had faith that we'd do a good job no matter which bearded dude we were going to investigate and we have tried to do just that now go grab a cup of coffee sit back and read these three stories and share it with your friends and family change their dimensions and life

Channel: newslaundry

Views: 1,480,846

Keywords: newslaundry, paytokeepnewsfree, sadhguru, jaggi vasudev, sadhguru foundation, jaggi vasudev to sadhguru, life of sadhguru, isha foundation, who is sadhguru, godmen of india, osho, isha coimbatore, documentary on sadhguru, sadhguru videos, sadhguru empire, sadhguru cases, cases against sadhguru, meghnad s, Tamil Nadu Sadhguru, TN on Sadhguru

Id: pIvTg05NpKI

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Him threatening that girl with lawsuits was kind of chilling. It is really unsettling to get the glimpse of the real person behind the smiling friendly image he maintains.

[u/ConclusionSea9559]

The Art Of Living guy is also quite a character.

[u/WaKaSaHaKa]

Koi aur Desh hota toh Journalist ko Pulitzer & Sadhguru ko Police ka Zor milta. But sadly... "Till that happens, Pay To Keep News Free & Garv Se Kahiye Mere Kharch Pe Aazaad Hai Khabre!" 🤭

[u/Pandemic_Over]

I thought the anchor was Sadhguru in his college years

[u/ekonis]

Selling spirituality to affluent masses by using language of science and trying to appear knowledge very mystic. This is a great piece. I wish there's one where someone busts his pseudoscience, or at least reveals that the science he talks is not his own, just plagiarized, repurposed into the language of spirituality and sold to his millions of bhakts.

[u/Paree264]

Wife murderer saala . Become a godman , gain a ton of blind followers nd keep committing crimes ..

[u/DrMrJekyll]

All this, yet somehow his followers throw money/time at him. Well, I suppose all that is a "tax" for their stupidity

[u/1ogica1guy]

Godman my ass

[u/MonDking]

I remember a lot of my friends used to quote him. Good thing I don't see that much nowadays