Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

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 sta...

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.

The choice is always before you: to respond consciously to the present; or to react compulsively to it. There is a vast difference between the two. And it can make the world of a difference.

If terrible things have happened to you, you ought to have grown wise. If the worst possible events have befallen you, you should be the wisest of the lot. But instead of growing wise, most people become wounded. In a state of conscious response, it is possible to use every life situation—however ugly—as an opportunity for growth. But if you habitually think, “I am the way I am because of so...

That was when she made a life-changing decision: “It doesn’t matter who I meet, I will never speak to them in a manner that I regret later, because this meeting could be my last.” She could have spent her life in defeat and remorse, but she made this simple decision, which transformed her life phenomenally. She went on to live a rich and fulfilled life.

The most horrific things in life can be a source of nourishment if you accept, “I am responsible for the way I am now.”

Which is freedom? To have choices or to have none? Your logical mind tells you, “Give up all responsibility and you will be free.” But in your experience of life, the more you are able to respond to everything around you, the freer you are! The logical and experiential dimensions of life work in diametrically opposite ways. Logic is not without its uses, but these help only to handle the material aspects of life. If you handle your entire life with logic alone, you will end up a mess.

Secondly, people often confuse responsibility with reaction. We have already demonstrated earlier that there is a world of difference between the two. The first is born in awareness, the second in unawareness. The first is born in consciousness, the second in unconsciousness. The first is freedom, the second enslavement.

Responsibility and action belong to different dimensions. The ability to respond gives you the freedom to act. It also gives you the freedom not to act. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. It empowers you to decide the nature and volume of action you want to undertake. Responsibility is not compulsive action; it offers you the choice of action.

Through millions of years of evolution, nature has caged you within certain boundaries—this is the human predicament. But this imprisonment is only on the level of biology. On the level of human consciousness, you are like a bird in a cage without a door. What a tragic irony! It is only out of long aeons of habit that you are refusing to fly free.

Once your joy is on self-start rather than push-start, you have upgraded your technology. You are no longer enslaved to an external source—whether a person or a situation. You are now capable of being loving and blissful without doing anything in particular, just sitting here, no matter how anyone in the outside world behaves. Once you experience this inner freedom, you will never experience insecurity in your life again.

“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.”

Don’t simply believe what you are reading. The only way to find out whether something is true or untrue is to experiment with it. Stop the internal debate and simply put it to the test. The yogic path is not a path of inherited belief; it is the path of experiment.

However, there is a fourth layer called the vignanamayakosha, or the etheric body. Gnana means “knowledge.” Vishesh gnana means “extraordinary knowledge”—that which is beyond the sense perceptions. This is a transient state. It is neither physical nor non-physical. It is like a link between the two. It is not in your current level of experience, because your experience is limited to the five sense organs which cannot perceive the non-physical. Those who report near-death experiences are those who could have slipped accidentally into this state. Such an experience occurs when, for some reason, people’s physical, mental, and energy bodies have become feeble. If you learn to find conscious access to this dimension, there will be a quantum leap in your ability to know the cosmic phenomenon.

There is also a fifth sheath, the anandamayakosha, which is beyond the physical entirely. Ananda means “bliss.” It has nothing to do with the physical realms of life. A dimension that is beyond the physical cannot be described or even defined, so yoga talks about it only in terms of experience. When we are in touch with that aspect beyond the physical, we become blissful. It is not that a bubble of bliss lies within your physical structure. It is just that when you access this indefinable dimension, it produces an overwhelming experience of bliss.

But bliss is not a goal in itself. Once you touch this dimension of nonexistence, blissfulness is guaranteed. In this state, you are no more an issue in your own life. When you are no more an issue, you can fearlessly explore the beyond. When you touch this dimension beyond definition, the impact of time and space is obliterated. This accounts for the many stories of yogis sitting unmoving for incredibly long periods of time. This is possible not because of physical endurance, but because in these states, they are not available to the process of time. They have touched a dimension beyond all th...

So, to experience well-being all you need is a certain mastery over these three dimensions of body, mind, and energy. Being successful in the world depends on your ability to harness these dimensions, according to the needs of your life situations and the activity you want to perform.

Yoga tells us there are a few fundamental ways. If you employ your physical body to reach this ultimate union, we call this karma yoga, or the yoga of action. If you employ your intelligence to reach your ultimate nature, we call this gnana yoga, the yoga of intelligence. If you employ your emotions to reach your ultimate nature, we call this bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. And if you use your energies to reach the supreme experience, we call this kriya yoga, the yoga of transforming energies. Every human being is a unique combination of the same ingredients. All these aspects—karma, gnana, bhakti, kriya—have to function in an integrated way, if one wants to get anywhere. If these four dimensions—body, mind, emotion, energy—don’t walk together, you will be one big mess.

Yoga is, quite simply, the science of bringing the four idiots together. Right now, for most people, these four dimensions are aligned in different directions. Your mind is thinking one way; your emotions pull you another way; your physical body another way; your energy another way. This makes you a potential calamity, an accident waiting to happen. You are being hijacked—you are being pulled apart, in four different ways.

The problem is that religious nuts around the world have exported everything that is beautiful about a human being to the other world. If you talk of love, they speak of divine love. If you talk of bliss, they speak of divine bliss. If you talk of peace, they speak of divine peace. We have forgotten that these are all human qualities. A human being is fully capable of joy, of love, of peace. Why do you want to export these to heaven?

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

The physical body is designed and structured to function by itself without much of your intervention. You don’t have to make the heart beat, the liver perform all its complex chemistry, or even try to breathe; everything that is needed for your physical existence to manifest itself is happening on its own.

How does the human body make sense of the world? What is its source of knowing? The answer is obvious: through the five senses. Whatever you know of the world or yourself is information you have gathered only through the five sense organs—by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. If these sense organs fold up, you would know neither the world nor yourself.

When you sleep every night, suddenly the people around you disappear, the world disappears, and even you disappear. You are still alive, everybody around you is alive, but in your experience everything evaporates, because these five sense organs have gone into “shutdown” mode.

To put it in the simplest way, just by observing the way some people sit, you can almost know what is happening with them, if you have known them long enough. If you have observed yourself, when you are angry, you sit one way; if you are happy, you sit another way; if you are depressed, you sit another way. For every different level of consciousness, or psychological state, your body naturally tends to assume certain postures. The converse of this is the science of asanas. If you consciously get your body into different postures, you can elevate your consciousness.

For a lot of people, spiritual growth happens very painfully because the necessary preparation has not taken place. Most human beings have unfortunately allowed themselves to be molded entirely by external situations.

Look around. Among your family, coworkers, and friends, can you see how everyone has different levels of perception? Just observe this closely. If you know a few people who seem to have a greater clarity of perception than others, watch how they conduct their body. They often have a certain poise without practice. But just a little practice can make an enormous difference. If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. You will now begin to understand what I mean by the geometry of your existence. Just the way you hold your body determines almost everything about you.

The body is like that antenna: if you hold it in the right position, it becomes receptive to all there is in existence. If you hold it another way, you will remain absolutely ignorant of everything beyond the five senses.

The body responds the moment it is in touch with the earth. That is why spiritual people in India walked barefoot and always sat on the ground in a posture that allowed for maximum area of contact with the earth. In this way, the body is given a strong experiential reminder that it is just a part of this earth. Never is the body allowed to forget its origins. When it is allowed to forget, it often starts making fanciful demands; when it is constantly reminded, it knows its place. This contact with the earth is a vital reconnection of the body with its physical source. This restores stability to the system and enhances the human capacity for rejuvenation greatly. This explains why there are so many people who claim that their lives have been magically transformed just by taking up a simple outdoor activity like gardening.

If you tend to fall sick very easily, you could just try sleeping on the floor (or with minimal organic separation between yourself and the floor). You will see it will make a big difference. Also, try sitting closer to the ground. Additionally, if you can find a tree that looks lively to you, in terms of an abundance of fresh leaves or flowers, go spend some time around it. If possible, have your breakfast or lunch under that tree. As you sit under the tree, remind yourself: “This very earth is my body. I take this body from the earth and give it back to the earth. I consciously ask Mother Earth now to sustain me, hold me, keep me well.” You will find your body’s ability to recover is greatly enhanced.

Young women have an advantage because they are also in sync with the lunar cycles. It is an advantage, but a lot of them treat it as a curse. It is a fantastic possibility that your body is both connected to the solar and the lunar cycles. Nature has granted this advantage to a woman because she has been entrusted with the responsibility of propagating the human race. So she has been given some extra privileges, which unfortunately have been perceived socially as disadvantages. People do not know how to handle the bonus energy generated at that time and hence treat it as a curse, and even a kind of madness. (The word “lunatic” is derived, as we know, from “lunar.”)

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.

In southern India, five major temples were built for each of the five elements. These temples were created not for worship but to facilitate a specific type of spiritual practice. To cleanse the water element you would go to a particular temple and do one kind of practice. To cleanse the element of air, you would go to another. In this manner, five wonderful temples were created for each of the elements, infused with the kind of energy that assisted a particular type of spiritual practice. Traditionally, seekers traveled from one temple to another, to be initiated into practices that enabled them to have mastery over the elements and to achieve healing, well-being, and even transcendence. These five temples were built so that they functioned as one system. This was a phenomenal technology. Those who knew the appropriate spiritual practice could make use of it. Those who did not know the practice could benefit just by living in that region. The temples still exist, and even those who do not understand their energy significance marvel at these magnificent works of architecture.

It is important not to keep eating through the day. If you are below thirty years of age, three meals every day will fit well into your life. If you are over thirty years of age, it is best to reduce it to two meals per day. Our body and brain work at their best only when the stomach is empty. So be conscious of eating in such a way that within two and a half hours, your food moves out of the stomach, and within twelve to eighteen hours completely out of the system. With this simple awareness you will experience much more energy, agility, and alertness. These are the ingredients of a successful life, irrespective of what you choose to do with it.

In yoga, there is absolutely nothing religious, philosophical, spiritual, or moral about the food that we eat. It is only a question of whether the food is compatible with the kind of body that we own.

Most carnivorous animals do not eat every day—definitely not three times a day! They know the food they eat moves very slowly through their tracts. A tiger is said to eat once every six to eight days. He is agile and prowls when he is hungry, eats a hefty meal of fifty-five pounds of meat at once, and then generally sleeps or ambles around lazily. A cobra eats sixty percent of its own body weight in a single meal, and eats only once every twelve to fifteen days. The pygmies from the central African region used to hunt elephants, eat their organs and meat raw, and drink the blood fresh. They say they would sleep after this kind of meal for over forty hours at a stretch. But as lifestyles change and grow more urban and sedentary, it is clear that human beings cannot maintain such a mode of life. You certainly cannot afford this sort of lifestyle. You have to eat every day and rest at specific times because your alimentary canal is similar to that of the herbivores.

The consumption of a spoonful of clarified butter (ghee in India) on a daily basis a few minutes before a meal does wonders for the digestive system. If you eat clarified butter with sugar, as in sweets, it is digested and turns into fat. But clarified butter without sugar can cleanse, heal, and lubricate the alimentary canal. Additionally, the cleansing of the colon will immediately manifest as a certain glow and aliveness in your skin. Even those who prefer not to consume dairy products could experiment with this because clarified butter passes through the system largely without getting digested.

If you must eat non-vegetarian food, the best would be fish. Firstly, it is easily digestible with very high nutritional values. Secondly, it leaves the least amount of its imprint upon you.

If you observe the natural cycle of the body, you will find that there is something called a mandala. A mandala is a cycle of forty to forty-eight days that the human system goes through. In every cycle, there will be three days on which your body does not need food. If you are conscious of how your body functions, you will become aware that on a particular day the body does not require food. Without effort, you can go without food on that day. Even dogs and cats have this awareness; on a particular day they often choose not to eat.

The day the system says “no food” is a cleanup day. Since most people are not aware of which day their body should go without food, the day of Ekadashi was fixed in the Indian calendar. Ekadashi is the eleventh day of the lunar segment and recurs every fourteen days. It is traditionally regarded as the day to fast. If some people are unable to go without food because their activity levels demand it, or if they do not have the appropriate spiritual practice to support it, they can opt to go on a fruit diet.

If you force yourself to fast without preparing your body and mind sufficiently, you will only cause damage to your health. But if your body, mind, and energy are properly prepared with the necessary ...

The entire aim and endeavor of yoga is to open up the cocoon of the physical body to the larger sensory body where you experience everything as a part of you. Fasting is an extension of this logic: it is a way of nourishing yourself without any active ingestion. It may be done as a detoxification process nowadays, but this is the internal rationale. This is why every spiritual tradition in the world has fixed a certain period of fasting for its adherents. In the yogic tradition, the fasting period was fixed according to the lunar cycle. This is because your ability to assimilate energy from water, air, and sunlight is greater on certain days of the lunar cycle. In some religions, the fasting period was fixed in peak summer when the consumption of water and sun by the human system would naturally be high.

My mother used to do this as well: every day before she ate her breakfast, she would take one handful of it and go looking for ants to feed. Only then would she eat. This has been a tradition among the womenfolk in many families. An ant is the smallest living entity you can see around you, the most inconsequential organism you can think of. So, for that very reason, you feed it first. You make an offering not to the gods, or other celestial creatures, but to the smallest creature you know. This planet belongs as much to them as it belongs to you. You understand that every creature on this planet has the same right to live as you have. This awareness can help create a conducive atmosphere, mentally and physically, for consciousness to grow. Just a simple act like this loosens you from your identification with the physical body. As you become less of a body, your awareness of the other dimensions of who you are naturally becomes enhanced. When you are very hungry all your body wants to do is eat. Just wait for two minutes; you will find that it will make a big difference. When you are very hungry, you are the body. Give it a little space and suddenly you are not just a body.

Gautama the Buddha went to the extent of saying, “When you are badly in need of food, if you give away your food to somebody else, you will become stronger.” I am not going that far with you; I am only saying, just wait a few minutes! It will definitely leave you stronger. If you are very compulsive about food, it is good to miss one meal consciously. Try doing this: on a day when you are particularly hungry and some of your favorite dishes are being cooked, try skipping a meal. This is not to torture yourself; this is just to become free from the torture chamber that your body can very easily become. What kind of food you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, turning it from a compulsive pattern into a conscious process: this is the essence of fasting.

An average person’s pulse rate on an empty stomach would be in the seventies or even eighties. For a person doing the right type of meditative practice, you will find that the pulse rate would range between the thirties and forties. Even after a good lunch it would stay in the fifties. This is just one parameter that indicates the level of restfulness that your body is experiencing moment to moment. Restfulness essentially defines the replenishing and rejuvenating capability of the body.

If you start certain simple practices of yoga, in three to four months’ time, your pulse rate will drop at least eight to twenty counts very easily. That means the body is running so much more efficiently and at a relaxed pace.

What the body needs is not sleep but restfulness. If you keep the body very relaxed through the day, your sleep quota will go down naturally. If your work and taking a walk or exercising are also relaxation for you, your sleep quota will drop even further.

Right now, people want to do everything the hard way. I see people walking in the park in a state of tension. Whether you walk or jog, why can’t it be done easily, joyfully? This exercise may be causing more harm to you than well-bei...

Do some activity that you enjoy: play a game, swim, walk, run. If you don’t like to do anything except eat cheesecake all day, then you have a problem! Otherwise, there is no incompatibility between being active and relaxed at the same time.

If you sleep without a pillow or with a very low pillow, which doesn’t allow the spine to get pinched, the neuronal regeneration of the brain and the cellular regeneration of the neurological system will be much better. If you sleep without a pillow, it is best to lie on your back in a supine position, rather than on your side. Lying in this position is referred to in yoga as shavasana: it enhances the purification and rejuvenation of the body, promotes the free flow of movement in the energy system, bringing relaxation and vitality. But there is no reason to get dogmatic about this. (At least in your sleep, don’t take a position!)