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. Knowing this is yoga. One who embodies this is a yogi. One who guides you in this direction is a guru.

To reduce a sophisticated science, like yoga, to mere doctrine is just as tragic as turning it into a cardiovascular workout.

For at those junctures when the conditions are right—when an insight is articulated from a place of inner clarity and when it meets a reader at the right moment of receptivity, an age-old truth turns explosively alchemical. All of a sudden, it is fresh, alive, radiantly new, as if uttered and heard for the very first time in history.

In the city of Mysore, there is a tradition. If you have something to do, you go up Chamundi Hill. And if you have nothing to do, you go up Chamundi Hill. If you fall in love, you go up Chamundi Hill. And if you fall out of love, you have to go up Chamundi Hill.

I had lots of questions about everything, but never felt the need to draw any conclusions. I realized very early that I knew nothing about anything. That meant I ended up paying enormous attention to everything around me.

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.

There is something within every human being that dislikes boundaries, that is longing to become boundless. Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now. No matter how much we achieve, we still want to be something more. If we just looked at this closely, we would realize that this longing is not for more; this longing is for all. We are all seeking to become infinite. The only problem is that we are seeking it in installments.

Whatever you feel deprived of looks like the highest aspiration.

Human life is longing for unlimited expansion, and that is the only thing that will settle you for good.

Choices that you make out of inability are not life solutions. An inability to be joyful by your own nature can make the simplest issues in life seem like highly complex problems. Right now being peaceful and joyful is made out to be the most significant problem in human existence. In pursuit of human happiness, we are ripping the planet apart.

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.

The reason why everyone is not naturally enlightened is simply this: people have categorized the world into good and bad, God and Devil, high and low, sacred and filthy, pure and impure, heaven and hell. These are parallel lines that will never meet.

If you go outward, it is an endless journey. If you turn inward, it is just one moment. In that one moment, everything changes. In that one moment, you are not in pursuit of joy anymore. Instead, your life becomes an expression of your joyfulness.

To be human means you can mold situations you are living in the way you want them. But today most people in the world are molded by the situations in which they exist. This is simply because they live in reaction to situations they are placed in.

If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.

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.

Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom.

Can you act upon everything in the world today? No, but you can respond to everything in the world today. Action has to be judiciously performed, depending on a careful analysis of resources—strength, capability, energy, age, situation. Your ability to act is always limited, but there are no limitations on your ability to respond. If you are willing, you can respond to just about anything.

That’s the way life is—not an independent, self-contained bubble but a moment-to-moment dialogue with the universe.

Just the act of inhaling and exhaling can be a tremendous love affair.

One of the biggest problems in the world today is loneliness. It is quite incredible. The planet is teeming with seven billion people, but people are lonely!

But to be loving is simply this: a willingness to respond freely and openly. Right now, it may be limited to one or two people in your lives. But it is possible to extend this ability to embrace the entire world.

Love is not something you do; it is just the way you are.

“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.”

The yogic path is not a path of inherited belief; it is the path of experiment.

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

If you want to know effortlessness, you need to know effort.

An intellectual understanding that is not backed by experiential knowledge can lead to mind games and deceptive states. But if oneness becomes an experiential reality, it will not produce an immature action. It will produce a tremendous experience of life that will leave you transformed forever.

Only this body needs to be protected; nothing else within you needs protection. If you are willing to drop the ideas, philosophies, and belief systems you are currently attached to, you can re-create your entire life with the very next moment.

Most people live cautiously, measuring out their love and joy in sparing doses for fear that it will run out.

If your intelligence is sufficiently evolved and mature, you realize that the more you analyze, the further away you are from any conclusion.

The entire yogic process is aimed at aligning oneself with the natural longing of life to expand in an unlimited way. It gives conscious expression to this basic human need. The various spiritual practices in the yogic sciences are intended to assist this longing on three levels: the physical body, the mental body, and the third sheath, or layer, of the human mechanism, the pranamayakosha, or the energy body.

every human being has the choice: to suffer or not to suffer.

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