Building A High-Powered Engine

How can one physically manifest what they visualize when it comes to career, relationships or even a community project?

Read in Telugu: మీ లక్ష్యం ఎలా ఉండాలి..?

Sadhguru: By maintaining a certain mental focus, you can achieve a few things in your life. But we have to redefine what achievement really is. Getting what you want does not mean you have achieved something. This is a very mediocre way of curing human nature. I see this particularly in the West; this is something I would like to change.

There are material things you want in terms of profession, relationships or - as you added - community projects, which is also one kind of career. Take, for example, a little auto rickshaw that holds three people, but is carrying ten. Somehow, the driver zigzags up a hill and makes it to the top; he thinks this is an achievement. He will celebrate by switching off his engine and sitting for a chai. It is relevant personally and economically, but this is not an achievement or a vision. This is a petty desire that could have been done in so many ways.

These things have become big in people’s minds because they have set their goals in a certain way. In the very introduction of the Inner Engineering program we talk about this; in yoga, we say if you have one eye set on the goal, you have only one eye to find your way. A one-eyed man thinks he has done a great thing because he has found his way home. But someone who can see clearly does not think much of finding his way home because it is the simplest thing that you can do.

Without enhancing the human being, we set some petty goals. This little engine, which does not have the power to go up a hill, makes it and thinks it has done a great thing! But if it built itself into a more powerful engine, without effort, it would anyway be there. This is where human focus should be, not on, “What should I become?” or “What should I have?” Having and becoming should not be your goal; it should be, “How can I enhance this life?” When I say “life” I am not talking about your career, relationships or even your community projects. I am talking about this life, that which dwells in the body. How to make this from what it is to a much-upgraded or high-powered life. Just do that. If you do that, this will do whatever it has to do.

This is what yoga is about. Don’t worry about what you should have or should do; just make this into a powerful engine, it will climb any hill. This should be your vision. Not, “I want this kind of job, I want to earn so many thousand dollars, I want to marry this pretty girl in the neighborhood…” Just grow this into a size and potential beyond what it is right now, and all these things will happen more than you ever imagined. And above all, the quality of your life will not be determined by the arrangements of your life; the quality of your life will be determined by what is throbbing within, and that is how life should be because life happens within. What you arrange is of social consequence, not of any existential or life consequence.

So, do not call petty desires a vision: “I want to buy a new model car and it happened!” It will anyway happen because they are giving zero percent interest loans, and they will collect it back from you in ten years’ time. Anybody can buy a car, it does not mean anything, but what will you do sitting in that car? You will feel good only if your neighbors look and envy you. If all of them have bigger cars, you will feel like nonsense once again. But if this human being is enhanced, whether you sit in the city or in the mountain alone by yourself, it is fantastic, and that is what you should envision.