SADHANA
“If You Catch My Attention, You Are in Trouble”
Most people who seek the Guru’s attention, Sadhguru observes, don’t quite know what they are asking for. They imagine it as a kind of blessing—something added to their life. What they discover, if it comes, is closer to subtraction. More than a few seekers have quietly relocated to the back of the satsang once they felt the intensity of it.
In this exchange, a meditator’s question about readiness opens into something more fundamental: not just the mechanics of individual guidance, but the question of single-pointedness.
Question: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. After completing Linga Seva, I’ve been experiencing much deeper states during sadhana—sometimes barely feeling my body, or as if I’m floating. I know we’re not supposed to chase experiences, and I’m not, but it made me wonder: what does it take for a sadhaka to become ready for more personalized guidance from you?
Sadhguru: If you catch my attention, you are in trouble. Many people initially sought that attention, but once they got it, they started hiding. They go and sit in the back because life becomes very demanding. If you get my attention, you will have nothing of yourself. You may say “yes” right now, but when it starts melting down, you will go and hide behind a tree in the satsang. That is okay.
We have set up a mechanism in such a way that not everyone receives the same level of nourishment, though our intention is for everyone. Not everyone is able to eat the same thing, and not everyone is able to digest it to the same degree. Even as you sit here, not everyone experiences the darshan in the same way.
I am not discriminatory; I am the same with everyone. But people are discriminatory. They say, “Ah, I like this. I will take it.” Or, “No, not this. He is saying you will die. I do not like it. It is about life. Let us come back again and again.”
You have your own ideas, which have nothing to do with life. I have no ideas about anything, including you or myself. I am just a throbbing piece of life. If you want to throb, I am always there. You do not even have to see me; I am always there. There are many people who have never come here, yet they are bursting with life every day, wherever they are.
If individual attention comes, the demands on you become very high. It will demand your life, literally. You still want to have your little things and also do the spiritual process. That is fine with me. It is just time-consuming.
I am not discriminatory; I am the same with everyone. But people are discriminatory.
I have only a few years left. “Few” means different things to different people. A boy may say he ate a “few modakams”[1]—perhaps twenty-five. What “few” means is up to you. But in my experience, it is just a few years.
So I am in a little bit of a hurry. If I see a possibility, I would like to push it. I am not saying you are not interested—you are. But look at this carefully: how many things are you interested in?
If I am interested in climbing this tree, and also that tree, and another one, then which one will I climb today? When I sit on this one, I will think I should have been on that one. There are gooseberries on this tree. If I climb the gooseberry tree, I will think, “Oh, there is a mango tree.” When you want to go up only one tree and you do not care about the rest, then I will push really hard. But if you still want to climb five trees and I push, it becomes ugly.
My sense of aesthetics is such that I will not force anything on anyone. But once you are willing, I am full force.