Most people think satsang means gathering for a spiritual discourse. But according to Sadhguru, true satsang is something much deeper – it is the complete dissolution of the walls between “you” and existence itself. Satsang is not just about coming together; it is about dissolving our false sense of separation and experiencing the fundamental truth of our existence.
Sadhguru: The whole process of growing with a Guru is a satsang. It is not just a particular meeting that should become a satsang – your life should become a satsang. The process of growing with a Guru means you are being with that which cannot be perceived. Or you ignore everything that can be perceived so that the subjectivity of who you are becomes present. You cannot perceive it, but everything becomes that.
Right now, your whole life happens on the level of thoughts and emotions. Either you think or you feel – that is the only way you know life. Without a relationship, it is difficult to drop everything else.
What you call “myself” is just a garbage bin of impressions that you have gathered from around you. “If I do not identify myself with that bundle of impressions, where am I?” The very process of satsang means to go to a state where you as an individual and a person do not exist anymore.
As long as you exist as a small person, you will live in fear. Anxiety is inevitable. It does not matter how bold or courageous you try to act – it just takes some situation in life to break you. One person may be soft like butter; even the mildest sun melts them. Others may sit like a rock; they need a pulverizer. Life will offer that someday. If the events of life do not pulverize you, death definitely will.
Satsang means to go beyond that. You cease to exist as a person. You stop identifying yourself so that the subjectivity becomes everything. There is nothing to perceive; you simply sit there. This is the very basis of everything that you can call “spiritual.”
But without the overpowering presence of someone, you cannot drop your own identifications. That is all that you have right now, so you naturally cling to those things. Whatever you identify yourself with – starting with your body, your ideas, your likes and dislikes, your relationships – if you strip yourself one by one of everything that you identify yourself with, you will see there is no such thing as “me.” But there will be a tremendous, overwhelming presence.
Unless you taste this, you have not taken any spiritual step in your life yet. You are only “thinking spirituality” – thinking and hesitating all the time.
“You told us spirituality means ultimate freedom and liberation. Now you’re talking about destroying us!” This is always the struggle in human beings. You think freedom means getting somewhere. But in reality, wherever you go, you will not be free.
I do not usually talk about this, but there has been a lot of talk about “surrender” everywhere. The moment thinking, logical, educated minds hear the word “surrender,” they will build forts around themselves. They are free-thinking people who are trapped in the mess of their own minds: “Surrender is for slaves and defeated ones!”
When we use the word “surrender,” it means you surrender that which is false. Everything that you have been is just a falsehood – identifications you have taken on in your life. What have you got to really surrender? You have nothing. When you realize this, you have surrendered. When you surrender the wall that you have built, everything becomes one. Only when you merge with existence are you free.
As long as you and existence are separated, there is no such thing as freedom. True freedom can happen only when you are not. As long as you are there, where is freedom? You may enlarge your prison walls, but bondage is still there. As long as you exist, there is bondage. When you surrender this illusory wall of separation that you have built between you and existence, everything is one.
This wall does not exist. You believe it exists. All that you surrender is your illusion, not reality. When you surrender the illusion, you begin to experience reality. Reality is not something that you can create; reality is that which contains you. Reality already is – but it comes into your experience. Reality will simply be.
Right now, in your experience, you have become a whole world by yourself. With all the multiple impressions that you have, you have built a world of your own. This world is not reality. Every moment, even to exist here physically, you have to communicate with the rest of existence. Just your breath is a form of communication on the physical level. If you break the communication even for one moment, you cannot exist. But you believe you have nothing to do with anything.
Satsang means to drop that which you are identified with – the falsehood that you have created. You put down the wall that you have built between you and reality. It is not that it has to happen in a particular room or hall. For those who are willing, it is always available. In a room or hall, we are trying to create an atmosphere that makes it easier for you.
Without a certain presence that seems to be larger than yourself, dropping your identifications becomes difficult because it is like jumping into the void. If you feel something that is bigger than yourself, it becomes a little easier to keep what you think of as yourself aside.
You have to come to a satsang with a different attitude than the way you go to associations or clubs. Those places are to manifest your exclusiveness. A satsang is to drop your exclusiveness. Right from a textile advertisement to a cigarette, modern culture is trying to make you exclusive. Your effort is to be special. People who love you are supposed to tell you all the time that you are very special.
I am here to tell you that you are not special. In trying to be special, you are being stupid because you are separating yourself from reality. If people around you are reinforcing this, it is not out of love – it is out of fear and need. What you call “love” is an attempt by two people to become one. But if you think you are special, how will you ever become one?
Love is out of the question as long as there is fear of losing yourself. Only one who is beyond the fear of losing oneself can know love, can be love. A Buddha can be loving; a Jesus can be loving. But those who have a fear of losing themselves can never be loving.
If two people with fear meet, they try to give each other a little bit of strength to go on with life. These are survival skills that cannot liberate you; they only bind you. As long as there is fear of losing yourself, there is no possibility.
