The beggar’s eyes fell on a single grain of gold in his rice, a sight and a lesson that he would never forget. This ancient parable, shared by Sadhguru, speaks to humanity’s eternal struggle between giving and holding back.
While markets reward exponential growth and accumulation, Yogic wisdom reveals a fundamentally different measure of wealth: one where abundant radiance arises not from what we gather, but from what we dare to let flow.
Sadhguru: Shiva himself said that when women outnumber men on this planet, Kali Yuga will end. Right now, women clearly outnumber men. The next yuga is supposed to bring forth better people – devas. The word deva literally means “a radiant being.”
Who becomes a radiant being? Essentially, all life upon this planet is solar-powered. Some life holds what comes to it, while some life radiates it. If you choose to radiate, you become a deva. If you hold back, you become a rakshasa. You become a rakshasa not because you do something that is considered bad but because you have no sense of giving.
If you choose to radiate, you become a deva. If you hold back, you become a rakshasa.
Giving is not necessarily about material things; it means your very life process is one of giving. You give whatever is there, whenever and wherever it is needed. It is not about where, what, and how much to give – such calculations destroy everything. If there is a sense of giving in everything you are, you become a deva.
Once there was a beggar who had collected a few kilograms of rice for the day. In India, it is a common practice to give grains rather than money to beggars. He had collected quite a bit of rice in his bag. Then he saw a fine chariot coming and thought, “Oh, a rich man. Maybe I’ll go and beg. If he is generous, he may give a gold coin or something like that.”
He went there to beg. A truly radiant being got down from the chariot, a fabulous-looking man. But when the beggar was about to beg, this man put his hands in front of the beggar and said, “Bhiksham dehi” – he was the one begging! The beggar thought, “Oh my God,” because according to tradition, if someone asks you for something, you should not deny it to them; you must give them something because they have already humbled themselves.
The beggar looked at him and said, “You look rich, but you are begging, and as per my tradition and culture, I can’t say no,” and he gave him a single grain of rice. The man took it and went away. Later at home, while storing his rice, the beggar saw that a single grain of rice had turned into solid gold. He wept, realizing that had he given the man all the rice, he would have had a bagful of gold. That is how life is.
Similarly, if you are always thinking about what you can get, you may not even get a stone in the end. If you transform your life from “what can I get” to “what can I give,” if every moment of your life becomes a process of giving, you become a deva. This is not about an attitude of giving – it means allowing life to happen as a process of giving because that is the nature of life. When you hold it back, life becomes stagnant. Only if it keeps flowing is it a beautiful experience.
Life is not in quantities but in intensity of experience.
A stagnant life is a miserable life. You may have everything and still have nothing in your experience. Life is not in quantities but in intensity of experience. How much you have does not make your life big or small; how intensely you experience life does.
A deva is radiant not through intentional acts of charity, but by naturally becoming a process of giving. There is no sense of holding back. You have looked at life carefully and understood that there is nothing in this world that you can give because there is nothing here that you brought. Everything has only been taken from the earth. If you do not become stagnant, you naturally become a radiant life. A radiant life is referred to as a deva.
When we do consecrations with large numbers of people, even though it would be easier in private, it is to transform you into devas – from a process of stagnation to one of radiance. You become like a mirror, reflecting everything. If you ask yourself, “What will happen to me if I give away everything?” – the whole world will become yours.
The process of consecration and being in such energy spaces transforms your life from stagnation to radiance. Drop these petty calculations of give and take. If you give your life to everyone around you, everyone will take care of you. I am well taken care of. My father used to worry, “What will happen to this boy? What will he do for a living?” I said, “Why are you bothered? If I can’t make a living in the world, I’ll go into the forest.” I know how to live there.
If you ask yourself, “What will happen to me if I give away everything?” – the whole world will become yours.
The day-to-day process of life has been completely misunderstood. Look at your lives from the moment you get up in the morning until you fall asleep – how many moments of exuberance do you have, and how many moments of calculation? This shows whether you are a stagnant life or a radiant one.
I am not against wellbeing, wealth, or comfort – but I am against stagnation, because if you stagnate, you might as well be dead. Being alive yet stagnant means you are torturing yourself. To drag your body through the day without any sense of exuberance, feeling like a stagnant pool instead of a blossoming life, is the most torturous way to exist.
Being alive yet stagnant means you are torturing yourself.
You might say, “But I have made investments.” Where are you going to take them? What if you fall dead tomorrow? It is not my wish. You must live a long life if you are a radiant life. But if you are half a life, it is torture. A full life means exuberance; death means equanimity; half a life is torturous.
For those of you who have witnessed these situations, if they have touched you in some way, you have to go and “set fire” to the world in whatever way you can by becoming a deva, a radiant being.
The process of consecration allows you to experience something powerful and tremendous beyond yourself, which would take lifetimes of sadhana if you had to earn it. Now it is radiating free. If you take it in, you must also radiate. Being in consecrations, you must become a more radiant life.
