Sadhguru is many things to many people – guru, mystic, yogi, friend, consultant on all things and topics known (and unknown), poet, architect… so many faces, so many dimensions! But he is also a father and a husband.

He met his wife Vijaykumari, fondly called Vijji, two years after his experience of spiritual awakening. Their first encounter was in Mysore, at a lunch Sadhguru was invited to. This was followed by a brief but heartfelt exchange of letters, which culminated in marriage in 1984, on the auspicious occasion of Mahashivratri. Sadhguru’s schedule of yoga classes was as hectic as ever, and he crisscrossed South India conducting programs. Vijji worked in a bank, and would often accompany him on his motorcycle, volunteering at his programs when she could.

In 1990, Sadhguru and Vijji had a daughter, Radhe. “Vijji was very keen on a child” Sadhguru says. “She felt that motherhood was a crucial experience in every woman’s life. Actually, when I was just about 19 years of age, when I had no inclination towards or was even thinking of building a family, I happened to visit Rishi Valley, one of the schools that J. Krishnamurthy had started. I thought to myself, ‘If at all I do have a child’ – and for some reason I thought ‘she’ – ‘she must go to this school.’ Then almost five years before Radhe was born, me and Vijji happened to go to Kalakshetra (one of the best schools for classical Indian dance), and when we saw this, we said, ‘If we have a daughter, she has to go to Kalakshetra.’ After that I never ever thought about it. Well, she went to Rishi Valley School for eight years, and spent four years at Kalakshetra, and now she has become a dancer.”

As time progressed, Sadhguru focused his efforts on the completion of the Dhyanalinga, and Vijji was intimately involved in the process. Sadhguru says, “In the month of July in 1996, we were consecrating the Dhyanalinga. Vijji had decided that once the linga was complete, she would leave her body. She announced that she would leave on a particular full moon day, and she started working towards that. I tried to talk to her, “It’s not necessary now, wait for some time.” But she said, “Right now, my life is perfect, inside of me and outside of me. This is the time for me. I don’t know if another time like this will come for me.”

For some reason we could not complete the consecration at that time. So on that full moon day, she sat with a group of people, meditating. Eight minutes later, she left, without any effort and with a big smile on her face. She was at the peak of her health, just thirty-three years of age. It is not easy to leave like this without causing any damage to the body. Just walking out of your body like you drop your clothes and go is not an ordinary thing. When a person has reached that point in his life when he feels everything that he needs is fulfilled, and there is nothing more to see in his life, he drops his body, willfully. If there is any struggle or injury, it means suicide. When there is no struggle, when somebody just walks out like he walks out of a room, that’s Mahasamadhi.

Once a person leaves like this, that person is no more. When somebody dies, you say they are no more, but that’s not true. They are “no more” the way you know them, that’s all. But once a person leaves in full awareness, shedding the body without causing any injury or damage to the body, that person is truly no more. That person doesn’t exist as a being anymore. They have just melted away, the game is up, completely.

For all spiritual seekers, Mahasamadhi is the ultimate goal – the very culmination of their sadhana to dissolve into Divinity.