The founder of the world’s largest people’s movement, Conscious Planet – Save Soil, SADHGURU shares his philosphy of life and living fully in the modern world in this conversation with PALLAVI DEMPO
A Yogi, mystic, visionary, New York Times bestselling author, and 2017 Padma Vibhushan recipient, Sadhguru believes we all have the potential to live in blissfulness and inner wellbeing – if only we create the right kind of climate within ourselves. Since 1982, Sadhguru’s fundamental vision has been to offer the science of inner wellbeing to every human being.
Like millions of your countrymen, you began your journey as an entrepreneur. What made you turn to spirituality?
I started an enterprise early and was very successful by small-town standards of the 1970s. Everything I wanted was happening in my life, so I was not looking for anything. I had been practising Yoga since I was 12 years of age for physical and mental wellbeing, but I never thought of anything spiritual. Being spiritual was impossible because, till then, I was a sceptic’s sceptic.
One afternoon, on September 23rd, 1982, I had a little time to spare between two business meetings. So, I rode up Chamundi Hill in Mysore. There, I sat on a huge rock, my usual place, with my eyes open. After a few minutes, I had an experience that forever transformed me. Suddenly, I did not know which was me and which was not me. I was all over the place. Every cell in my body was bursting with a new, indescribable level of ecstasy. All I knew was that I had hit upon a goldmine within myself that was dripping ecstasy that I did not want to lose, even for a moment.
Since then, my life has been an effort to rub this bliss off on people because every human being can know this. My goal is to create mechanisms so people can experience this.
Yoga and meditation have long been central to Indian spirituality. What, in your view, is the power of meditation?
The English word “meditation” doesn’t mean anything because if you sit with closed eyes, you are “meditating”. But with eyes closed, you could do many things – japa, tapa, dharana, dhyana, samadhi, shoonya. Or you might have mastered the art of sleeping in vertical postures! In today’s context, when most people use the word “meditation”, they refer to dhyana.
The central aspect of meditation is right now, your mind is the boss, and you are the slave. As you become more meditative, you become the boss, and your mind becomes the slave. Once you become meditative, there is a clear space between you and your body and mind. Once there is a distinct separation, this is the end of suffering because there are only two kinds of suffering you have known – physical and mental. You will dare to explore the full scope of what it means to be human only when there is no fear of suffering.
Yoga and meditation are believed to bring out a man’s sense of divinity in himself. However, do you think that by focusing largely on physical wellbeing through Yoga, we may have lost out on its true essence?
One aspect of Yoga is towards ensuring your body isn’t an issue. The body is full of compulsions. It can be a terrible bondage. Or, it can be a stepping stone for something extraordinary beyond your imagination.
If you yourself are an issue, what other issue can you handle in the world? Physical Yoga is relevant to prepare the body, mind, emotions and energies so they are not an issue. But there are other dimensions and aspects to Yoga, and to reduce it to an exercise form would be a crime.
The focus of Yoga is to set another dimension alive within you, which is beyond the physical. Only when that is alive, slowly everything opens up. Existence opens up to you in a million different ways. Things you never thought existed become a living reality for you simply because a dimension beyond the physical has come alive.
In our country, there is a noticeable shift away from spiritual traditions as we get overwhelmed by modernization. Do you think we can strike a balance between tradition and modernity?
Today, as societies evolve into higher levels of economic wellbeing, comfort, and technologies, every kind of possible conveniences that could not have been imagined are available. But mental health issues are rising across the planet in such a way that it is no longer an individual experience – it has become a societal experience.
For thousands of years, whenever people were troubled in different parts of the known world of that time, they naturally moved towards India because there is an inner strength in Indian culture that stems from a whole science and technology of inner wellbeing. Right now, the entire world is crying for it. They have outer technology with which they have done wonderful things on the outside, but they are struggling inside. If we fall back on the knowledge bank that we have in this country, it could be the greatest asset – not only for this nation’s wellbeing but for the world’s wellbeing as well.
Some people believe that you can achieve whatever you dream; others believe that you are born only to fulfil your destiny. In your understanding, what is the reality?
What you refer to as “destiny” are those situations going on without your permission; they seem to be unfolding themselves without your intent. You may have been told that God is making your destiny and plotting your life for you, but there is no such thing as destiny. Whatever you call destiny is something you have created unconsciously. You have created most of it unconsciously, so you think it is being heaped upon you from somewhere else.
The whole effort of all spiritual processes is to see that you create your life consciously instead of blundering through it. Once you make that effort, you will see more and more of your life become self-determined, not pre-determined. If you have mastery over your physical body, 15 to 20% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, 50 to 60% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your very life energy, 100% of your life and destiny will be in your hands – every moment of your life can become self-determined.
Your commitment to the cause of environmental conservation has been exemplary. How impactful have your initiatives in this direction been?
In 1998, a team of experts predicted that by 2025, Tamil Nadu would become a desert. I don’t like predictions. People make predictions based on statistics and cold figures; they do not take into account human aspiration and longing, and what beats in the human heart. So, I decided to drive around Tamil Nadu and take a look. I realized that we might not even make it to 2025! Small rivers had dried up, homes were built on riverbeds, and there was not enough soil moisture for even palm trees – desert vegetation – to survive. Since then, we have been working on revitalizing soil and rivers.
We started a project called Project GreenHands in 2004 to plant 114 million trees, enough to bring at least 33% green cover to Tamil Nadu’s land area, which was the national aspiration. In 2017, we launched the Rally for Rivers campaign. The Rally for Rivers was largely an awareness campaign to bring about a change in the policy as to how we conduct India’s rivers. The NITI Aayog made the draft policy recommendation into an official recommendation for all the 29 states.
In 2019, we launched Cauvery Calling, a project in partnership with the farmers, the government, and the larger civil society to bring very large-scale tree-based agriculture. Since then, much has happened in the Cauvery Basin as a part of Cauvery Calling. With the help of the local farmers, we have planted 93 million living trees and transitioned 183,000 farmers to tree-based agriculture. Seeing the success of Cauvery Calling, the Government of India has allocated Rs. 19000 crores, approximately 2.5 billion USD, to regenerate 13 river basins through tree-based agriculture. If these projects are implemented, 67 per cent of India’s land will be enriched in a significant way in eight to ten years.
The Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement is about bringing policy change, that agricultural soil should have a minimum of 3-6% organic matter based on regional conditions. The response to the movement has been phenomenal. Since we started the Save Soil movement, we have reached over 4 billion people. I addressed 193 nations at the UNCCD COP15 in Africa, where we suggested an incentive-based approach for soil revitalization, and now, 81 nations are in the process of forming soil policies. The European Union has signed a manifesto with us, and we are confident it will naturally bring change across all the EU countries.
Many UN agencies have joined us. We have active partnerships with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and World Food Programme (WFP). The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) scientists also work with us.
So, I am sure policies will definitely be implemented almost everywhere. It is only a question of managing the pace.
Through the Isha Vidhya initiative, the Isha Foundation has taken meaningful strides in education, aiming to empower rural children. What is your philosophy of education?
Most of the education today is machine-like – acquiring information and interpreting it as knowledge. We are biological machines, but there are synthetic machines that calculate much better than us. And with advancements in artificial intelligence, they will only get better.
A machine can only function around memory – whatever data has already been fed into it. The value of human intelligence is that we can perceive something absolutely new, which no machine can do. A human being is not just about machine-like efficiency. A human being is about ingenuity and creativity.
Everywhere in the world, education has largely been about gathering information, passing examinations and getting a job. So much emphasis has been placed on accumulating memory that human intelligence is being suppressed. Human intelligence is above memory – it can be sharpened and made incisive so that it will penetrate and explore different dimensions of life.
Education should look at one’s overall development and enhancement. It should incorporate other dimensions of widening our horizons, creating more evolved minds, fitter bodies and better human beings.
History is one of the common causes of conflict in societies across the world. How should we read history?
A list of facts is not human history. History means his-story or human experience. Largely, the human history you read today is written by western societies, and it is always about recorded facts and not the experiential aspects of life.
In India, history was written from a conceptual point in the form of epics like Mahabharata or Ramayana. These are being dismissed today as no good because they are not factual. The facts that happened a thousand years ago are not of great consequence. What happened to human beings, what they learnt, what was the nature of a human being, how they fought, how they fell, how they transformed themselves, and how they were within themselves – only if we present history like this, will it be a learning process. Otherwise, history is an account of many gory things. People fought, killed, and did terrible things to each other, and this is recorded. All the beautiful things that happened – people danced, sang, and loved – that is never recorded.
Our history books today are more like old newspapers containing only facts. This kind of history may have academic significance but no life significance. Only resentment, anger and hatred will arise from just knowing the facts of what has been done to you in the past by someone else.
History must include everyone’s experience, without judging who is good or bad, but acknowledging that everyone has a role. It should be presented as a story about how some people learnt, grew and became wonderful human beings while others chose other aspects. History must relate to you as life. Only then it can be made use of.
Today, the world is divided by religious and nationalist identities. How can we turn people to love
humanity?
The moment your intelligence gets entangled with identifications, it does not show you things the way they are. It will distort everything depending upon what types of identities you have taken. Whether it is of gender, race, religion, nationality, rich or poor, inevitably, our intellect will work only towards protecting our identity. You will not even know what you are doing.
Even if everyone thinks you are a fool, you think you are doing the right thing because your identity makes your intellect function that way.
In the Yogic understanding, there are 16 dimensions to the human mind. These 16 dimensions fall into four categories: buddhi, manas, ahankara, and chitta.
Buddhi is the intellect – the logical dimension of thought. The intellect directly connects with the dimension of your mind called ahankara. Ahankara is sometimes translated as ego, but it is much more than that. Ahankara gives you a sense of identity. Once your ahankara takes on an identity, your intellect functions only in that context.
The whole spiritual process is to take an individual from a limited identity to an all-inclusive possibility, not just intellectually but experientially. Once you experience all life as a part of yourself, you cannot help but fall in love with everything and everyone around you.
Isha Foundation has transcended the borders of India to emerge as an institution with a global footprint. What is the core of your teachings to your innumerable followers across the world?
In pursuit of inner wellbeing, some people believe something, some adhere to some philosophy, some go to the temple, the mosque, or elsewhere. Different people do different things, but it is essentially based on their beliefs. Isha Foundation is focused towards offering inner wellbeing in a scientific manner, not with philosophies, ideologies or belief systems, but with tools for transformation. It does not matter what you believe or disbelieve – if you learn to use the tool properly, it works. The essence of our work has been to take away the cultural trappings from the spiritual process and present it as a science, as a technology. We are hugely accepted in all kinds of forums worldwide because we do not subscribe to any particular religion or denomination.