Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

Self-transformation is not incremental self-improvement. Self-transformation is achieved not by morals or ethics or attitudinal or behavioral changes, but by experiencing the limitless nature of who we are. Self-transformation means nothing of the old remains. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life.

Perhaps the best way to put it is that I went up and didn’t come down. I never have.

I was a diehard skeptic.

Later in my life, I couldn’t help noticing that people coming out of restaurants always had more joyful faces than those coming out of temples. That intrigued me.

It has always seemed to me odd that the world does not realize the immensity of a state of “I do not know.” Those who destroy that state with beliefs and assumptions completely miss an enormous possibility—the possibility of knowing. They forget that “I do not know” is the doorway—the only doorway—to seeking and knowing.

It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

Between breakfast and dinner, my only sustenance was books.

I emerged from that one year more knowledgeable, but with more questions than ever before.

When everything you do is a success, you tend to start believing that the planets revolve around you, not the sun!

We have tried our best to fix the outside environment. If we fix it any more, there will be no planet left! But we are still no happier than our ancestors a thousand years ago.

The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.

The reason the simple things—like being peaceful, joyful, loving—have become ultimate aspirations is that people are living without paying any attention to the life process. When most people say “life,” they mean the accessories of life—their work, their family, their relationships, the homes they live in, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, or the gods they pray to. The one thing they miss is life—the life process itself, the essential life that is you.

The foundations of peace and bliss are not about attending to the external realities of your life, but in accessing and organizing the inner nature of your being.

If you go outward, it is an endless journey. If you turn inward, it is just one moment.

It doesn’t matter who you are, life doesn’t work for you unless you do the right things.

Existence is not judgmental. It treats all of us the same way.

There is an ancient science of how to create misery, and one in which human beings need no encouragement whatsoever. There is almost no one who is not an expert. Passing the buck is what you do in a hundred different ways each day. You have collectively refined the old blame game into a fine art.

The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter. If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence, and sensitivity is compromised by a compulsive or reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation. It means we have allowed the nature of our life experience to be determined by our circumstances, not by us.

Taking responsibility is not accepting blame instead of assigning it. It simply means consciously responding to the situation. Once you take responsibility, you will invariably start exploring ways to address the situation. You will look for solutions.

anger—usually provokes unintelligent action.

Besides, there is substantial medical and scientific evidence to prove that in a state of anger, you are literally poisoning your system. This can be verified with something as simple as a blood test. When you are angry, your very chemistry is altered, and your system turns toxic. Intense activity and sleep are times when this chemical mess can undo itself. But if you are in frequent states of rage, you are heading toward physical and psychological disaster. There is no doubt about this.

Human beings are in a perennial state of complaint. They carry their complaints with them like a badge of their identity. There are many who live their lives lamenting that life has been particularly unfair to them. They cite instances of all the terrible things that have befallen them, the chances they never got, the many injustices they have suffered. Maybe it is even true.

What most people forget is that the past exists within each one of us only as memory. Memory has no objective existence. It is not existential; it is purely psychological. If you retain your ability to respond, your memory of the past will become an empowering process. But if you are in a compulsive cycle of reactivity, memory distorts your perception of the present, and your thoughts, emotions, and actions become disproportionate to the stimulus.

If you take one hundred percent responsibility for the way you are now, a brighter tomorrow is a possibility. But if you take no responsibility for the present—if you blame your parents, your friend, your husband, your girlfriend, your colleagues for the way you are—you have forsaken your future even before it comes.

The wealth of life lies only in how you have allowed its experiences to enrich you.

“My ability to respond is limitless, but my ability to act is limited. I am one hundred percent responsible for everything I am and everything I am not, for my capacities and my incapacities, for my joys and my miseries. I am the one who determines the nature of my experience in this life and beyond. I am the maker of my life.”

my ability to respond is limitless—suddenly

Responsibility is not burdensome. Boundaries are burdensome. If you draw yourself a boundary, whether of ideology, caste, creed, race, or religion, you cannot move beyond it and you end up stuck for no reason at all. These boundaries only end up breeding fear, hatred, and anger. The bigger your boundary, the more burdensome it becomes.

Most people are not aware of the nature of their longing. When their longing finds unconscious expression, we call this greed, conquest, ambition. When their longing finds conscious expression, we call this yoga. If you still believe that everything will be okay the moment you find a new girlfriend or boyfriend, get a raise, buy a new house or car, then it is not yet time for yoga. Once you’ve tried all those things and more, and clearly know that none of it will ever be enough—then you are ready. So now, yoga.

The science of yoga is, quite simply, the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.

Yoga is not about being superhuman; it is about realizing that being human is super.

There are two basic forces within you. Most people see them as being in conflict. One is the instinct of self-preservation, which compels you to build walls around yourself to protect yourself. The other is the constant desire to expand, to become boundless.

Gravity is trying to hold you down, whereas grace is a force that is trying to lift you up.

To experience pain and still look beyond it takes an enormous amount of strength, which most people do not possess.

It is not only your spine that becomes flexible; you become flexible as well. Once you are flexible, you are willing to listen. It is not about hearing someone talk; you are willing to listen to life. Learning to listen is the essence of intelligent living.

If you are compulsive, you will see that situations, experiences, thoughts, and emotions in your life will be in cycles. They keep coming back to you once every six or eighteen months, three years, or six years, depending on your degree of compulsiveness. If you just look back on your life, you will notice this. If they come once every twelve years, that means your system is in a high state of receptivity and balance.

It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction.

In affluent societies almost every fifth person is on some kind of medication just to maintain mental balance.

The most beautiful moments in your life—what you might consider moments of bliss, joy, ecstasy, or utter peace—were moments when you were not thinking about anything at all. You were just being. Even without your thoughts, existence is.

Thought can only be logical, functioning between two polarities. If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than the intellect.

The planet is spinning on time: not a small event. All the galaxies are managing fine; the whole cosmos is doing great. But you have one nasty little thought crawling through your head, and it is a bad day! The problem is you are living in a psychological space that bears no connection with reality. And you are insecure, because it can collapse at any moment.

In the vastness and grandeur of cosmic space, if you look at yourself in perspective, you are less than a speck of dust. But you think your thought—which is less than a speck within you—should determine the nature of existence! You have lost your perspective of life: that is the basic problem.

The essence of yoga, as we have said before, is just this—to arrive at that moment where there is a clear space between you and your mind. Once this happens, a life of heightened clarity, perception, and freedom has begun. This is the birth of freedom.

Devotion means dropping the dualities of like and dislike, attachment and aversion. It means “what’s fine” and “what’s not fine” do not exist for you anymore; everything is fine.

As I said earlier, if you want to experience a mountain peak, you either elevate yourself to that level, or simply look up. The devotee knows that if you manage to ascend to meet the peak, you still only stand beside the peak. But if you become the valley, you hold the entire mountain in your lap.

That which knows how to bend will not break.

Everything that you have gathered in this life accompanies you wherever you go. It is deeply attached to you, and you, in turn, are deeply attached to it, on some unconscious level. It becomes an encumbrance because you don’t know when to put it down and when to pick it up. It is like a sack you carry on your shoulders all the time.

So, the quality of your life is always decided by how you experience life, not by what life offers you.

The idea is to sit and imbibe the energies of the place.

To find another person capable of receiving what you know is not easy. If you find even one person you are fortunate.