adhguru

By Phyllis King

Edited by Dina Morrone

Sadhguru has often said that “society is overripe for a spiritual process.” His fundamental vision is to offer the science of inner wellbeing to every human being – a science that helps a person realize the ultimate potential within. From this vision stem a multitude of projects, programs, and methods, all towards the same aim: to raise every human being to the peak of their potential, so that they are exuberant, all-inclusive, and in harmony within themselves and the world."

Sadhguru, thank you so much for your time. It is an honor to sit with you today. Please tell us, how did your life prepare you to become a guru?

Sadhguru: As a child, one thing I realized was that I was utterly, absolutely ignorant. I did not know anything at all, and because of that, I had to pay enormous attention to everything. My sense of awareness became like this – if I saw a leaf, I could sit there looking at this leaf for hours. If I sat up in my bed just staring at the darkness, I could do this for the whole night. This attention brought a different level of involvement and interaction with just about anything and everything around me, animate and inanimate.

Later, on a certain day, I went up Chamundi Hill in Mysuru, India, on my motorcycle. I parked my vehicle, went to a particular rock, and sat with my eyes open. Until that moment, like most people, I had always believed that this body was "me" and that is "somebody else."

But there, for the first time, I did not know which was me and which was not me. Suddenly, what was "me" was all over the place. The rock on which I was sitting, the air I breathed, the atmosphere around me – I had just exploded into everything. This, I thought, lasted for 10 to 15 minutes, but when I came back to my normal consciousness, I had been sitting there for about four-and-a-half hours – I was fully conscious, eyes open, but time had just flipped in my experience.

I have always been peaceful and happy – that has never been an issue. But right then, every cell in my body was bursting with a new indescribable level of ecstasy. I had no words for this. I did not know what to say, but something phenomenal was happening within me.

Ever since, there has been no looking back. My life has been an effort to rub this bliss off on people because every human being can know this. When it comes to external situations, each human being is differently capable. But with interiority, all are equally capable. My effort has been to create mechanisms so people can experience this.

Why are human beings so focused on being right?

Sadhguru: In the Yogic understanding, there are 16 dimensions to the human mind. These 16 dimensions fall into four categories: buddhi, manas, ahankara, and chitta.

Buddhi is the intellect – the logical dimension of thought. The intellect directly connects with the dimension of your mind called ahankara. Ahankara is sometimes translated as ego, but it is much more than that. Ahankara gives you a sense of identity. Once your ahankara takes on an identity, your intellect functions only in that context.

The moment your intelligence gets entangled with identifications, it does not show you things the way they are. It will distort everything depending upon what types of identities you have taken. Whether it is of gender, race, religion, nationality, or being rich or poor, inevitably, our intellect will work only towards protecting our identity. You will not even know what you are doing. Even if everyone thinks you are a fool, you think you are doing the right thing because your identity makes your intellect function that way.

The whole spiritual process is to take an individual from a limited identity to an all-inclusive possibility, not just intellectually but experientially.

How do we learn to flow with life rather than control it?

Sadhguru: In your perception of life, there is you, and there is the world – so, it is you versus the universe. "You versus the universe" is a bad competition to get into. Do you think you have any chance of winning this competition? Don't compete with the universe.

This is why we found a way called Yoga. When I say "Yoga," people immediately think of twisting the body into some posture. No, the word "Yoga" means "union." Yoga, or union, means you consciously obliterate the boundaries of your individuality, so there is no such thing as "you and the universe" – it feels like one. You need to do a little Yoga; otherwise, your mind will get twisted out with all kinds of ideas, emotions, and opinions.

If you open it up a little bit. If you obliterate the boundaries of your individuality, it becomes very easy because you see the other person as a part of yourself. You have no problem whether it is a man, woman, child, or animal. You will communicate with everything absolutely because you have opened up your boundaries. It is only when you have concretized your boundaries that you will always have a problem.

It is time you work on bringing yourself to ease with life. If you are not at ease, you will never realize your full potential. There is a certain genius in every individual, but 99% of people live and die without ever opening up this genius within themselves. If the true potential within you has to open up, your life should come to ease.

Why do human beings find it so difficult to have peace? How can one align the mind, body, and soul to hold the three together in complete balance?

Sadhguru: Generally, for most people today, Yoga means asanas. Asanas are just a small preparatory aspect of Yoga. Yoga is not a practice, a particular action, or a posture – it is a way of being. As I mentioned, "Yoga" fundamentally means "union." When you begin to experience everything as a part of yourself, you are in Yoga. Intellectually, whatever we say about it at the most will make you curious to know more about it or inspire you to walk the path of Yoga. We can never say what Yoga is in words, but if a person is willing, experiencing Yoga is very much possible.

When the physical dimensions of Yoga were first taught, it was expounded as to how to align this human system to cosmic geometry. If you get it perfectly aligned, all the friction is taken away.

Internal friction means you are working against yourself; you are an issue by yourself. When you are an issue yourself, what other issue can you handle? – everything is stressful. As you take on more activity in the world, the challenges will multiply endlessly. That is why your own body, mind, emotions, and energy should work for you, not be stumbling blocks in your life. The only way for that to happen is through Yoga.

If your body, mind, emotions, and energy are properly aligned, the body and mind can suddenly do things you have not thought possible in your wildest dreams. People will think you are superhuman. But, whatever you do, you will do it with a certain level of efficiency and competence. This is because, essentially, somehow, either con- sciously or unconsciously, you found the geometry of existence.

Are you optimistic about the future of people on the planet?

Sadhguru: People keep asking me, "Sadhguru, where do you think the world will be in fifty years? What do you think will happen in the future?"

I ask them, "Do you want a prediction or a plan?"

All those who are incapable of a plan are looking for a prediction. The very fact that creation gave you such big brains and the possibility to create many things means that you are supposed to have a good plan rather than wait for a stupid prediction.

I think the present situation neither needs optimism nor pessimism; what it needs is realism, which is always a necessity.

Today human intellect is sparking like never before. Never before have this many human beings been able to think for themselves. A priest, a pundit, a scripture, or something else thought for you, but now human beings are beginning to think for themselves. Whether they are thinking straight or not is another issue, but at least they are thinking something. So, once human intellect begins to fire like this, even if God comes and stands here and speaks unless he makes sense, people will reject him. So, once they reject this, it may so happen that the heavens will fall down.

Heavens may crumble, but human longing to experience something more will not go. The human longing to experience something will always be there. If you take away the hope of heaven that somewhere else, glorious things are going to happen to you, people will start seeking solutions here.

Energy is useful only if you can direct it the way you want. That is when a human being naturally transforms into a spiritual possibility.

If you do not show them a logically correct and scientifically ascertainable way where they can take charge of their inner experience to create the kind of experience that they want – if you do not give them the technologies for inner wellbeing – then I would say in another 60–80 years' time, 90% of humanity will seek chemical solutions; they will be either on drink or drugs.

Ninety percent of people being on drink or drugs is not a moral issue for me. But one fundamental responsibility we have as a generation of people is that when we leave, we should have left a generation that is at least one step better than us. But if 90% of people are on drink and drugs, we will leave behind a generation that is worse than us. This will be a complete failure of who we are. Everything that we have worked for, the development of civilizations, will go to waste.

At the same time, never before in the history of humanity have we had this ability to communicate with each other. Technology has offered us this phenomenal possibility that you can sit in one place and speak to the whole world. So today, when people are willing to load all kinds of rubbish on the internet and reach people, I don't see why the spiritual process should not reach everyone online. The most important thing to be done right now in the world is to raise human consciousness. With the kind of technologies, capabilities, and empowerment available to us, we should see that this becomes mainstream.

Our time on the planet is now. It is in our hands to make this the best time ever or the most irresponsible time. Both are in our hands. I wish we could make this the most responsible and wonderful time on the planet. For this to happen, you need to empower human beings beyond their body, and beyond their mind. Something bigger needs to touch them. That is the basic effort of what we at Isha are doing.

How do we gain mastery over our energy?

Sadhguru: There is no equivalent word in English for "prana," but we could translate it as "vital energy" or "life energy." Prana has ten different manifestations in the body, but for the sake of understanding, we usually bring it down to five. These five are referred to as the five vayus or pancha vayus. These are prana vayu, samana vayu, udana vayu, apana vayu and vyana vayu. This is because they are in charge of different dimensions of what happens in the human mechanism.

"Yama" means "to control" or "take charge." So "pranayama" means a method with which you want to take charge of these pancha vayus. Our Inner Engineering programs offer a twenty-one-minute process called Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya. Shambhavi also has an element of pranayama in it, which brings many benefits. If you are willing to dedicate this much time, it is a way of activating your energies so that the fundamental chemistry in your body alters itself within two to three weeks of practice.

There is a lot of research happening on Shambhavi. Some universities have studied it, including Rutgers, Harvard, Indiana University, and Florida University.

Scientists found that the cortisol awakening response is significantly higher for people who have practiced Shambhavi. The cortisol awakening response marks different levels of wakefulness. Enlightenment is also called awakening. Why? Aren't you awake already? No, you are not at the same level of awakening every moment of your life. If you have been practicing Shambhavi for at least ninety days, thirty minutes after you wake up in the morning, your cortisol awakening response is several times higher than usual.

The BDNF, which is the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, also increases. The inflammatory markers greatly improve too. And your DNA shows that after ninety days of practice, you are 6.4 years younger than you were on the cellular level. All this has been properly established by responsible scientists. And above all, the most beautiful thing is the level of calmness multiplies manifold while the brain is still active. This is a unique dimension of Shambhavi.

How do we find joy when we feel pain or lack? If we do not like our life or our feelings, what can we do to change them? So, are fear, jealousy, anxiety, created by our thoughts, and if so, how can one control them and not let them control us?

Sadhguru: There are two ways people can suffer. Generally, people think in terms of physical suffering and mental suffering. Physical suffering could be caused in different ways, but 90% of human suffering is mental, which is caused within ourselves. People create suffering for themselves every day – suffering anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, insecurity, and so many other things. This is the maximum suffering in the world.

Why would you create suffering in your mind? Simply because the basic faculties in you, your body and your mind, don't take instructions from you. Suppose you are driving. If your car is going out of control, what is the first thing you should do with it? At that moment, there is only one thing on your mind – you want to somehow stop it. Isn't it the same thing that you need to do with your mind also? You are using your automobile just a few hours a day, but it is through the vehicle of the mind that you are traveling through your life. And it is in an outof-control state. It does not do what you want it to do. You want to be joyful, but your mind creates suffering! So when it is like this, isn't it time that we pay a little attention to our interiority as to how it should be?

Right now, your mind is the boss, and you are the slave. As you become more meditative, you become the boss, and your mind becomes the slave – and that is how it should always be. If you allow the mind to rule, it is a terrible master. It will put you through all kinds of endless suffering. But as a slave, the mind is extraordinary – a miraculous slave.

Why do so many people struggle with money?

Sadhguru: Money is a simple tool, but we make it too big. Without money, we would otherwise be dealing in a barter system, but now we have a more effective mechanism. Money can only create external pleasantness, not inner pleasantness. If you have a lot of money, you can stay in a five-star hotel, but if your body, mind, emotions, and energy are not pleasant, would you enjoy your five-star hotel? No. If these four are very pleasant, you could even enjoy yourself under a tree. So does it mean to say you should not have money? No, but the priority should be considered as to which should come first. There is nothing right or wrong about money. It is just that if you keep money in your pocket, it is excellent. It becomes misery only if it enters your head because that isn't its place. If it is in your pocket, there are many wonderful things you can do in the world. It is a means and empowerment.

People keep asking me, "Sadhguru, where do you think the world will be in fifty years? What do you think will happen in the future?"

I ask them, "Do you want a prediction or a plan?"

Why do so many people struggle to find love?

Sadhguru: Many people subscribe to the idea that there is a single "right" person out there for everyone. What is needed to make a relationship successful is not the perfect person – there is no perfect person on the planet. What you need is absolute integrity. Whether or not someone is watching, you should act the same way. Who you are should not change depending on where and with whom you are. Once you have established your way of being, interacting with another person can be a joy. Another aspect is that if you try to extract something out of each other, and you or the other person do not get what you both want, there will be constant conflict.

Do not look for the ideal partner – there isn't one. If you understand that it's your needs that make you seek a companion, find someone who is reasonably compatible with you. If you accept, respect, love, include, care for, and take responsibility for each other, it can be a beautiful relationship.

Please tell us about Isha Foundation.

Sadhguru: We decided to form Isha Foundation in 1992. The word "Isha" literally means "that which rules." Whatever that is which rules the existence – that is Isha. Or in other words, Isha means a formless divinity. When divinity is approached as a possibility – not as worship or as something that you look up to, but as something that you yourself can become – it is looked at as Isha. Because the fundamental purpose of the work we do is to help people experience the divine within themselves, the foundation is named Isha.

In the last few decades, we have really pushed Isha Foundation as an instrument for individual transformation because a larger transformation in the world can only happen through individual transformation.

Today, with the tools of science and technology, we have brought ourselves to a self-threatening situation where everyone in society needs to turn spiritual. Unless some sense of oneness touches people, especially the leadership on the planet, self-destruction is a live threat.

The fundamental goal of Isha Foundation has been, and will always be, to make the spiritual possibility available to people. The goal is that every human being, irrespective of their caste, creed, religion, gender, or whatever else, must have at least one drop of spiritual process in them. A non-religious, scientific, spiritual process is the need of the hour. It is the need of the century, the need of the millennium, the need of eternity.

Isha Foundation covers a vast array of needs, from medical, educational, meals, women's empowerment, disaster relief, and recently in the past couple of years, Covid-19 support. Please tell us how your team manages to be supportive in so many different projects.

Sadhguru: We have over seventeen million volunteers doing a variety of activities. This massive volunteer force has functioned so wonderfully well until now, mainly because of a strong inner experience that Isha Foundation has managed to transmit. It's from that strong experience that all this work is happening the way it's happening.

Essentially, volunteering means becoming willing or becoming an absolute yes to life. A volunteer means they have dropped this one calculation, "What can I get out of this?" Suddenly, they become a phenomenon.

A volunteer may not be particularly talented for the job, but they are enthusiastic and want to do it. And you didn't hire them, so you can't fire them. So instead, you have to shape them and re-shape them every day. It's difficult management!

I was teaching a program with the top twenty-five people of a major company. These are people who are every day hiring and firing people. They are managing thousands of people, so they have an eye for attrition. Our volunteers were all over the place running around, doing everything properly. So, one of them asked me, "Sadhguru, where do you get these people? The enthusiasm and involvement with which they are doing everything, where do you get them?"

I said, "You don't get them. You have to make them." They asked, "How do you make them?"

I said, "You have to make them fall in love with you. They're running around like crazy because they're in love with me." They said, "How do we do that?"

I said, "First, you have to fall in love with them." They said, "Oh, they don't pay us for that!"

So, you have to make them fall in love with you. You have to build that love and trust, and involvement in them. You have to inspire that. Then they will do their best.

Women's uprisings are happening in so many countries. What is your message to them?

Sadhguru: This is the unfortunate nature of the human mind that we are capable of turning every difference among us into a discriminatory process. We have done horrible things because of discrimination of caste, creed, color, race, and various other kinds. But gender discrimination is among the most abominable because it is irreparable, and everyone will suffer because of it.

Particularly in theocratic societies, women's rights are a chronic issue. Most of the religions in the world today are largely male-oriented or masculine. It is about God and His Son or His all-male messengers – never female. This has happened because the existence of the feminine as a divine form would never allow for an organization that these religions were planning to build. You can never organize religion if women have a role to play. You have to think masculine for "organization." The feminine is a certain spontaneity and exuberance, not organization.

Except in India and a few other places, the feminine has been violently uprooted. In India, women's preeminence was always prevalent because the culture represented the feminine as the most powerful dimension of life. A few thousand years ago, the whole country was matriarchal – feminine ruled. Even during ancient times, women were the leaders of society in so many ways. The understanding was that someone who has more feelings, and more love for life around them, should lead society. So, while work, business, and industry were handled by men, the general society as such – including education, religion, and family – was basically handled by the women.

This is why when India got freedom in 1947, we did not even debate whether women should have franchises or not. We have long had women in topmost leadership positions, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, state Chief Ministers, and Parliamentarians. Because culturally, there was no such thought in our minds about whether a woman is equal or not, whether she is a human or not.

A home, a social structure, a nation, or humanity as a whole is not complete unless the feminine also finds full expression. If just masculine finds expression, we will have enough to eat, but we will have no life to live. Only when the feminine also finds expression there's a life to live.

There is no such thing as Women's Rights – it is just Human Rights. All that is open and available for the male members of a society have to be there for female members. As a responsible generation, let us eliminate these reprehensible discriminations and evolve into holistic societies through Global Action. Let us make it happen.

Humans want to live free. What is your perspective of freedom?

Sadhguru: In your misunderstanding, you may think freedom means doing wild things. That is not the truth. This is a very juvenile sense of freedom. When you are an adolescent, you may think freedom means doing wild things, but if you are an adult, if you have looked into life, freedom means you have absolutely no need within you to do anything. If nothing is to be done, you can sit, not doing anything. If something is needed, whatever it is, you can jump in, put your life into it and do it. That is freedom. If you have your own needs to do something, then that is not freedom. "I must do this" – this is not freedom. "I do not need to do anything, but whatever is needed, I can do it absolutely" – that is freedom.

Do you think our planet earth is facing a climate crisis, and how shall we proceed to help?

Sadhguru: When I was at one of the UN agencies, they asked me, "Sadhguru, what are the three most important things we need to attend to?" I said, "Soil, soil, and soil!" because it's connected to everything.

If you fix this one thing, everything will be fixed naturally. Whether you want to reverse climate change, do carbon sequestration, limit the temperatures rising in the world, or resolve water scarcity – we need to fix the soil.

Soil is a significant carbon sink and the largest water soak on the planet. A vast amount of carbon was always in the soil, but now a lot of it is in the atmosphere where it should not be, causing global warming. This is also happening because of emissions from industries and burning fossil fuels, coal, oil, etc. But nearly forty percent of global warming is happening simply because of soil degradation.

The same soil that can take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is now releasing it simply because we are leaving the land plowed and open without microbial activity as microbial biodiversity decreases, the expulsion of gases from the soil increases.

If the soil is rich, there will be water. The air will be purified if the soil is rich and there is enough vegetation on it. So, our attention has to shift to the soil. In normal agricultural soil, the minimum organic matter should be between 3–6%, but in large parts of the world, it is well below 1%. This means that most agricultural soil on the planet is inching toward desertification.

If we start now, in 15–25 years, there will be a significant turnaround. But let us say we wait for another 25–50 years and then try to turn it around.

They say it may take up to 200 years. And that period will be disastrous for human beings as a species.

You said, "Healthy soil is absolutely crucial to life on earth." Please tell us how essential it is to save the soil. Sadhguru: We, as a life, are a consequence of life in the soil. Even on the evolutionary scale of things, we have become who we are only because of the biome activity in the soil. However, we are not treating soil as a living entity but as a bunch of chemicals – this much nitrogen, this much phosphorus, this much sulfur, and so on. All these things are there, but the important thing is that the soil needs to be alive. It is not about nitrogen or phosphorus – it is about living soil.

We want to bring that perspective to the world that the soil you stand upon is a live process, and who you are is a consequence of the soil, not the other way around.

It should become a policy in every country that agricultural soil must have a minimum of 3–6% organic matter. Only by preserving the quality of the soil will the quality of life endure. If we can ensure the soil is organically rich and healthy, the planet will be capable of regenerating itself, and we will be able to manage the other problems to a large extent.

Soil is a very significant carbon sink and the largest water soak on the planet. A vast amount of carbon was always in the soil, but now a lot of it is in the atmosphere where it should not be, and it is causing global warming.

An elected government usually has a term of four to five years and would not be willing to invest in long-term soil policies of 15-20 years unless citizens stand up and speak. That is why we aimed to move at least 3.5 billion people, or sixty percent of the world's electorate, to speak for a soil health policy.

In the last few months, the narrative towards soil has shifted already. Through the Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement, we have reached 3.91 billion people. Now, I'm very sure that policies will definitely be implemented almost everywhere. It is only a question of managing the pace. Let us make it happen.