Why just get by, Sadhguru asks, when the entire existence can be ours? Dismantling both modern comfort zones and age-old religious bargains, he insists that true spirituality means no longer playing small and instead experiencing life beyond our limited selves.
Question: Why is it that no matter what we get in life, there’s always this feeling of wanting something more? We see it everywhere – in career ambitions, relationships, material pursuits – yet nothing ever seems to bring lasting satisfaction. Why can’t we ever seem to feel that it’s all enough?
Sadhguru: Every life wants to be a little more. Some take big strides, others small steps, all based on their fear and insecurity. Life wants to find its ultimate nature.
This longing to expand is the nature of life. What we call spiritual is a deeper dimension of who you are that is longing to expand. People try to reach the infinite in small installments – a hopeless method that will leave you unfulfilled.
This is the nature of life: Like a soap bubble whose air is held by its surface until it eventually bursts from the tension within, the limitless life within you is held by the boundaries of your physicality, slowly building up tension.
You want something to happen in your life. If nothing happens, it is unbearable, because there is a natural longing to expand. No matter how much you expand, it will never be enough, because there is a longing for infinite expansion. You are seeking infinite expansion through physical means, which can never work because the physical can only be limited.
If you look at our physical nature, all of us have grown from small infants into who we are today. Your body is something you have gathered over time. Whether you gather a healthy or excessive amount is up to you, but the gathering definitely happens. What you gather – whether clothes, possessions, or even your body – cannot be you. Basic human intelligence is enough to recognize this truth, but most people live in denial.
Living in such denial inevitably leads to suffering. Suffering does not arise from life’s situations but from ignorance. Some say that ignorance is bliss, but this is like jumping from a balcony – the free fall feels wonderful until you hit the ground. Ask any skydiver – they know this fantastic feeling of free fall.
People like the feeling of butterflies in their stomach because life is not enough for human beings – they want to be something more. Some think money, conquest, or shopping will get them there; others think it is knowledge or love. These are all different ways in which people try to enhance themselves. There is a constant longing to expand in human life. No matter how much you have grown, still there is a longing for more.
When this longing to include or expand finds physical expression, we call it sexuality. When it finds emotional expression, we call it love. When it finds psychological expression, we call it conquest, ambition, greed, or shopping. When it finds conscious expression, we call it spiritual process or Yoga.
The word “Yoga” means union. What does union mean? In reality, you are not an individual – you are floating like a soap bubble in a mass of life. You only experience yourself as an individual due to the psychological construct within you. For this individual to find fulfillment, you have to become universal.
How do you become universal? There are fantastic parables about that in our culture. In one story, Krishna is playing outside, and Yashodha thinks he may be eating mud. She asks him to open his mouth, and when she looks inside, she sees the whole cosmos within his mouth.
This parable illustrates Krishna’s state of absolute inclusion, which found a different expression in the Vishwarupa Darshana [1] during the Kurukshetra war. These stories show that he lives not as an individual but as a universal entity, and it is possible for every human being to become that.
Becoming that, or in other words, enlightenment, is not an attainment but a realization, because it is already there – you simply have to realize reality. Realization is the key; it is not an accomplishment; it is not like climbing a mountaintop.
[1] A divine revelation where Krishna shows his cosmic form to Arjuna, displaying all of existence within himself.
Some people retreat to a quiet place, seeking a deeper experience of life. Let us say you are fed up with what is happening in your city and want to go on a vacation. Generally, you will choose a quieter place, maybe a resort at the edge of a jungle, because you are incapable of living in the jungle.
I used to spend weeks alone living off the forest – it takes a different physicality, mentality, and inner strength. Your physical body is not ready for that because it has become accustomed to unnatural levels of comfort, living in enclosed, temperature-controlled environments.
Our modern lifestyle weakens the seed that has been carried through evolution for millions of years. We are the weakest generation ever, and each subsequent generation becomes even weaker if we continue to live like that. This is because the nature of physicality is based on the five elements.
The more you are in contact with the five elements, the stronger and more robust your body will be. Creating a robust body is an important part of the spiritual process because if your body is an issue, you will not be interested in enlightenment. Let us say your body is aching and God appears in front of you, the first thing you will ask for is that your backache will go away.
Today, 99 percent of the prayers on the planet are about, “Give me this, give me that, save me, protect me.” There is nothing beyond that; no higher dimension is explored.
In this culture, there was a specific design of worship and prayers. Among the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh (Shiva), only two temples are dedicated to Brahma, the Creator, which speaks volumes about our gratitude. There were also not many temples for Vishnu in ancient times; they only came up in the last 600–800 years.
Before that, there already were thousands of temples dedicated to Shiva. Almost all the temples were for the Destroyer, and the prayers were always, “Oh Mahadeva, destroy me as I am so that I can become like you,” because the aspiration is not to reach God but to become divine.
Becoming divine means breaking the limitations set by the compulsive nature of your physicality. If you break those limitations, you are seen as divine. This is the tradition that people follow unconsciously.
When a saint, sage, or Yogi visits an area, everyone comes to touch his feet. This is because when someone has transcended the limitations of his physical nature, people consider him worthy of reverence, and, above all, they receive a certain energy and grace.
The entire culture was designed to be spiritually oriented. Being spiritually oriented need not necessarily mean retreating to the jungle – it simply means living a full-fledged life. Your physicality remains, but its compulsions are gone, and you explore the other dimensions of who you are.
We are here, and I will bless you with a long life, but eventually, we will all die. Before you fall dead, is it not important to know this piece of life – yourself – in its entirety? You must experience its full breadth and scope.
Your job, family, entertainment, and holidays are not life. Life is what is throbbing within you. Everything else is just activities and arrangements that we have made for the wellbeing of this life. If you leave this planet without experiencing the full depth and dimension of this life, you have wasted it. The spiritual process means just this: you want the full cake; you are not willing to just have a slice.
