How Sadhguru Spends His Free Time

Sadhguru in Private

Questioner: When you get up in the morning, what is the first thing you do?

Sadhguru: I open my eyes.

Questioner: And then? What is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Sadhguru: Why would anything come to my mind? Nothing comes to my mind unless I want it.

Questioner: I think you said somewhere that you get up at 03:30 every day. Is that correct?

Sadhguru: The body comes awake, but it depends what time I went to bed. Today I got up at 3:15 or so. I went to bed at one o'clock. Then I golfed eighteen holes. Then I’ve been in interviews, meetings, and stuff. Here I am with you, and this will go on. Tomorrow I’m in London.

Questioner: And what do you like to do when there’s nothing to do?

Sadhguru: I do nothing. I really do nothing. These days, I’m not getting that time, but if I shut my doors, I don’t read, I don’t look out of the window, I don’t turn on the TV, I don’t look at the phone. If I close my doors for four, five days, I don’t have a single thought for four or five days, and that’s the best time of my life.

What Does a Guru Do?

Questioner: How would you define your role as a Guru? What do you actually do?

Sadhguru: I do nothing and I teach people how to do nothing.

Questioner: How to do nothing? But I just read a book of yours that was filled with advice on what to do.

Sadhguru: Really? I never give advice to anyone.

Questioner: It’s called Inner Engineering. And there’s a lot of nice, small little things you can do in your everyday life.

Sadhguru: That’s because the book is published in America – they want tidbits. “What’s the takeaway?”

Questioner: Is that the only reason behind this?

Sadhguru: No. Small things are useful to people. But all these things can bring a little bit of wellness to you, not transformation. If you have to transform, do you have to change the shape of your body? If you grow a tail or a horn, will you be transformed? You may not look the same, but will you be transformed?

Questioner: You mean as in how I feel and who I am?

Sadhguru: In your experience, will you be transformed? Real transformation can only happen beyond your physical nature. Suppose someone exercised and became fit. They’re not transformed. They just become a little more efficient with life. Similarly, if they change the way they think and feel, they may become a little more conducive, but that’s not transformation. Small changes will happen. Transformation means something beyond physical nature becomes active in such a way that when you sit here, your body is not the important thing. Something much bigger than that is happening to you.

You can call it life. You can call it consciousness. You can call it whatever, but something beyond this form, which you think you are right now, needs to happen for transformation to happen. That is what we are looking at all the time – to bring that about. There are many methods… If you have a headache right now and I talk to you about enlightenment, you are not interested. You want the headache to go. So we will talk about the headache, but my interest is not the headache. My work is not about curing people of headache. But right now when there is a headache, because we can’t talk to you about something else, we are talking you out of your headache. So all those tidbits are like that, addressing small issues of life.

The Biggest Issue in Life

Questioner: And so the big issue in life would be enlightenment?

Sadhguru: The big issue in life is just this: you do not know the fundamental nature of what this life is about. If you do not know how this phone works, can you use it well? The more you know about it, the better you can use it. Why should that not be true with the human mechanism? The more you know about it, the better you can use it. If you know everything that you need to know about this, this is called self-realization. Once you know everything that you need to know about this, you can use it whichever way you want.

Enlightenment: Luxury or Necessity?

Questioner: Do you think enlightenment is a luxury?

Sadhguru: It is an absolute necessity. Fundamentally, there is only one problem in this world – human beings.

Questioner: We have created a lot of problems.

Sadhguru: Why is a human being, who is supposed to be the most evolved and the most intelligent creature on this planet, a problem? Because they have not realized what the nature of their existence is. If you are of a lower intelligence, you would be fine. If you are a fish in the lake, you would swim. You would eat each other and be fine. If you are an animal in the forest, you would hunt and eat something and be fine. But because you came with this level of intelligence and evolution, you become a problem. What is a forward step has become a problem. The greatest thing you have is your intelligence, and that is what is messing you up. Human beings are supposed to be the most evolved and most intelligent, but they are the source of all problems. What is your idea of intelligence? Is creating problems intelligent or is creating solutions intelligence?

Questioner: The latter.

Sadhguru: Then what? So is enlightenment a must, or is it a luxury?

Questioner: It is a must I guess.

Sadhguru: That’s it. Time to make an effort.

Editor’s Note: Experience Inner Engineering with Sadhguru in your own space, at your own pace. This article was originally published in the September 2019 edition of Forest Flower magazine. Click here to subscribe.