A Burning Piece of Life

Sadhguru, you have spoken about your relationship with Shiva. How he entered your life without asking for your permission. How could you let him trespass like this? And did you ask for anything in return?

I never was spiritually inclined, which is a known fact now. Nor was I inclined to anything. I was not inclined towards a particular profession, not inclined towards a business, not inclined towards any person, not inclined towards anything. Simply a fire without direction. A bit angry with the world around me. One thing is the level of injustice that you see in the world kept me that way. A bit of my fire turned into anger, as when a man is young, stupidity appears to be the worst of all crimes – that also burns me a bit even now. And it is all-pervasive in various aspects of life. How people conduct themselves, how they conduct the life process within themselves. The ridiculousness and the stupidity also kept one percentage of my intensity towards anger.   Intense - not about anything. Angry a little bit - not about anything. There was something within me constantly telling me I should not invest my energies into anger. But I liked the feeling of anger at that time. Anger was the only thing that gave me some sense of purpose; otherwise I had no purpose about anything. I was simply burning hot just towards anything. Anything I touched was absolutely on, but nothing in particular. So anger gave me some sense of purpose because I was angry about something, but I was intense - purposeless and directionless.

Shiva likes people who are not inclined towards anything, but simply a burning. Just life. Life does not mean your food, clothing, family, society, things that you do and do not do. Life just means this (references himself), this is life. And life is a purpose unto itself; it need not have another purpose. It is a big enough phenomenon; its magnitude is too large for it to be focused on something else. It is a purpose unto itself. It is an end unto itself. It does not need another direction. Many people in the big cities in the world are asking this question, ‘Sadhguru what is the purpose of my life?’ (Laughs) They want a god given purpose, or they want to be the chosen one.

The moment you think you are a chosen one, you will start doing all kinds of idiotic things because when you say, ‘I am a chosen one,’ you believe you are special. Once you are ‘special’, you will get ‘special’ treatment from life. But this is about just being life, just ordinary life, like an ant, grasshopper, elephant, tree, mountain, rock, just like that. Simply life. Nothing special, just ordinary. So ordinary it turns out to be extraordinary. ‘I want to be special’ is a kind of disease. Once it catches you, you will do all kinds of idiotic things to prove that you are special and you will invite things upon yourself which are absolutely unnecessary for anyone.

To know the source of life, to know the divine, you just have to be life and nothing else but life. But right now you are a man, woman, mind, thought, idea, philosophy, belief system, maybe you are just a slogan, who knows. People have reduced themselves to all kinds of things. So these are all deductions from life, but you come here as life and fizzle out as life. In between it is left to you what kind of blunder you want to be. Because you can never be anything other than life.

You can imagine that you are a king; maybe a thousand people around you may also call you your highness. But it is just a game. The reality is that you are just a piece of life. Either you blossomed into your ultimate possibility, or you are an unsprouted seed or an unblossomed flower, but nothing happened. If nothing happened, you think you are safe.  Either you lock yourself in a prison – prison is a very safe place – or a coffin is even better. Very safe. Nothing ever happens to you. We can even make it termite proof.

That which is the basis of life has to come to you if you are just an intense piece of life, there is no way it can avoid you. There is no way Shiva can desert you if you are a burning piece of life. But you become something else and something else and something else…Things that you can never be, things that you realize you are not only when they bury you.

Birthdays and burials are related, if one happens the other is inevitable. Happy birthday to myself and all of you. We are mortal and that makes our lives very precious. May you live a great life.