Sadhguru

“Even if I say something, do not believe this nonsense, but do not disbelieve it either. Just see, "Someone is willing to sit in front of so many people and talk absolute nonsense, something that is totally absurd. Let me see what this is about." If you keep that much openness, the possibility is alive in your life. If you believe it, you will kill it. If you disbelieve it, you will kill it.”

“Now the need for seeking something outside will completely disappear. Once you are blissful by your own nature, your life becomes an expression of your blissfulness, not a pursuit of happiness.”

“There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.”

“If you want God as a tranquilizer, it is okay as an idea, but if you want the Divine to be an awakening process in your life, an idea is not good enough.”

“So once these needs are fulfilled, nobody is going to value these things. If you are well-fed, peaceful, blissful, happy, well-loved, with nothing to complain about, you will not value food, peace, love, compassion so much.”

“So, as you do the practice, if you are connected with your consciousness, then the mind is just free. It is so free that everything that you have smelled, tasted, touched, heard and seen is all there. You don’t have to try to remember anything; it is all simply there. You can just pull it back. Memory is not about remembering, memory is just about your ability to bring back the data, isn’t it?”

“Today, if you have one depressing thought in you, you will sit depressed. Why? The whole cosmos is going on phenomenally well today, but that does not matter. In your mind there is one thought – not too many, just one – that is bothering you, that will depress you and put you in the dumps.”

“Things do not descend upon anything that is not ready to receive them.”

“How the human system is happening, in the same way the universe has happened. In the same way that the micro is happening, that is how the macro has happened. If you look at the micro and perceive it, you will also know existence.”

“Whatever is in your hands, you keep that in perfect condition; then what is beyond you will anyway happen. But people are always trying to work at what is beyond them, not taking care of what is in their hands.”

“Today people just go on working, working and working. Not because they are creating something fantastic, but simply because they have to work, otherwise they don’t know what to do with themselves.”

“Questioner: One question comes to my mind: if everybody looked inward, what would happen? Sadhguru: You would have a sensible world. (Laughs) Is that a danger?”

“In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being. You can see great human beings surface only when the society is really suffering. When India was under the oppression of British rulers, how many wonderful people stood up? Where are they now? They have just fallen back into their comforts, that's all. All those Ghandis, Patels, Tilaks are still there, but they're dormant. When pain came, they all became alive. They left everything behind and stood up as giants. Where are they now? This is the human misfortune that still there's not enough intelligence in the world that human beings will rise to their peaks when everything is well. They wait for calamities.”

“People who want to acquired powers over somebody else, for them imagination is a powerful tool. If you are seeking liberation, if you want to become free, the first thing that you must become free from is your imagination, because that is the deepest trap. Your memory and your imagination are the two traps. Do you see? One of your legs is stuck in memory; another leg is stuck in imagination. If you release yourself from these, meditation is just natural. When you sit for meditation, what is your basic problem? You are either thinking about tomorrow or thinking about what happened yesterday, isn't it? If you are free from memory and imagination, you will always be meditative.”

“When conquest became the mode, people burnt the feminine out of the planet. We made it like this that the masculine is the only way to be successful, and we have compelled even women to be very masculine today in their attitude, approach and emotion. We have made everybody believe that conquest is the only way to success. But to conquer is not the way; to embrace is the way. Trying to conquer the planet has led to all the disasters. If the feminine was the more dominant factor, or at least if the two were evenly balanced, I don't think you would have any ecological disasters, because the feminine and earth worship always went together. Those cultures which looked upon the earth as the mother, they never caused too much damage to the environment around them.”

“The longing for peace has essentially come from troubled minds, minds that are torturing themselves. For them, peace is a big commodity that they have to seek. If you are not using your mind for self-torture, why would you think of peace? Would you seek the exuberance of life or would you seek peace? Only if you have become an expert in self-torture, peace seems to be the greatest thing.”

“There is nothing in this existence which is not connected to your spiritual process. Everything is. It is from this that Indian culture created this idea (which now might have taken on extreme forms) that if you see a tree, you bow down; if you see a rock, you bow down; if you see a cow, you bow down; if you see a snake you bow down. Whatever it is, it does not matter what. Every creature, every form, whatever you see, if it makes an impression on you, you bow down to it.”

“The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.”

“The mind has no tools to enter the unconscious dimensions. Only if you are outside of the mind you can look at everything the way it is. When you are in it, there is no way to dissect yourself. You can catch hold of somebody else and dissect them, but you cannot dissect yourself. Even if you do, you cannot see everything. If you are using any faculty of the mind you cannot truly be aware of the nature of the mind.”

“The whole spiritual process is just this: that you are willing to take the next step not knowing where it will lead you. If you are not ready for that, that means you are not ready for any new possibility.”