Opinion: When fear rules the mind a bathroom becomes a bedroom; the absurdity of Vaastu

Vastu is essentially a very basic architectural guidance. If you wanted to build a house a thousand years ago, there would have been no architect in the village. So, what guidelines do you use to build the house? In building any structure, the main challenge is always the span of the roof.

How would you have built the roof? You would walk into your farm, look for some trees and cut them down. Let us say you had a stunted tree which was only eight-feet tall. Now, the roof would have only an eight-foot span.

But suppose you had ten children, so you built a 120-feet-long room to accommodate all of them. If you build a house that is eight-feet wide and 120-feet long, you would be living in a tunnel. Your physical and psychological health will definitely be affected.

So, they told you, if you have to build a house, if one dimension is this much, the other dimension has to be this much. If you study vastu, you will understand that vastu in the hills is very different from the vastu in the plains. Vastu in Karnataka is different from vastu in Tamil Nadu. According to the weather and the temperature, they issued some common guidelines so that you could build your house sensibly because there was no architect to help you.

Today, people are stretching it to such a level and all kinds of nonsense is happening, because when fear rules the mind, you can make science out of everything. This has taken over people’s minds in the last ten to twenty years. Before that, no one knew about vastu, but everyone was fine.

A few years ago, I stayed in someone’s house. At night, for me, all the phones were on because, for people in the United States, work picks up after 10pm. So, I was on the phone, talking to them. But my cell phone was not functioning, and I was unable to connect.

So, I wanted to use the local landline phone. I went looking for the man. It was already around 12:30am or 1am, so I did not want to wake him up, but I had seen him only about 45 minutes earlier. With some hesitation, I went and knocked on his bedroom door – nothing. I thought he must be really sleeping and knocked again – nothing. Then, I turned the door knob and it opened. I looked in - no one was in the bedroom.

I thought he must be taking a walk in the garden or must be in the kitchen or somewhere. I explored the entire house – nobody was there. Then, I called the ashram and said, “My host is missing. Where is he? Both husband and wife are missing.” They called up his cell number, which I did not have, and he appeared.

I asked him, “Where were you? I searched everywhere, including the store room.” He said, “I was sleeping.” I said, “Where?” He replied, “You know, I went through some loss in the business and...” I said, “That is okay, but where were you?” He was sleeping in the bathroom! That is one place I did not think of. Some vastu man came and told him, “Your bedroom is in a bad position, so you should sleep in the bathroom. Your business will go well.” I told the man, “At least sleep with some dignity in your bedroom and die, instead of sleeping in the bathroom and living for a long time.”

(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. He is also the founder of the world's largest people's movement, Conscious Planet – Save Soil, which has touched over 4 billion people)