Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

the enormous reserves of memory and the incredible possibilities of the imagination that are the result of an evolutionary process of millions of years.

If you can use it when you want and put it aside when you don’t, the mind can be a fantastic tool.

When you are unable to process real-time information and control your psychological drama, you seize on “positive thinking”

the only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation. 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.

But I hope that the following section will offer you some moments when the two converge. 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.

have never looked for anything in my life. I just look.

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.

Slowly, I began to realize that it is life that is the ultimate intelligence.

Instead of trying to tap into this all-powerful intelligence

that pulsates within each of us, we opt to use our logical intellect, which is useful in certain situations, but essentially limited.

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. ...

Freedom—or mukti or moksha—is seen as the natural longing in every human being and our ultimate destination.

The moment I realized that human desire was not for any particular thing, but just to expand illimitably, a certain clarity rose within me.

Chamundi Hill

for a human being, life doesn’t seem to end with survival; life begins with survival.

The amazing thing is that for most people on this planet, not a single day has happened exactly the way they want it!

Of course, there is no one who has not experienced joy, peace, even bliss, but it is always fleeting.

Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident.

your body and mind function at their best when you are in a pleasant state.

It is said that if you can remain blissful for twenty-four hours, your intellectual capabilities can be almost doubled. Just settling the internal muddle and allowing clarity to surface can achieve this.

Now, the same life energy that you refer to as “myself” has sometimes been very happy, sometimes miserable, sometimes peaceful, sometimes in turmoil. The same life energy is capable of all those states. So, if you were given a choice about the kind of expression your life energies should...

some think it’s in the wine, and others think it’s in the divine, but pleasantness is what everyone’s seeking.

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.

What’s happening in your head is your dream. At least your dream should happen the way you want it, shouldn’t it?

technology will only bring comfort and convenience to us, not well-being.

You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you.

Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you.

Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you.

The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.

Raphael Mechoulam, and his research team initiated a project that eventually isolated a “bliss molecule”

particular chemical has been named “anandamide,”

Do not look for a way out of misery. Do not look for a way out of suffering. There is only one way—and that is in.

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

The spiritual quest is not a cultivated choice. It is not an induced quest. It is a natural longing.

When being peaceful, blissful, and joyous are not efforts anymore, you naturally start seeking, wan...

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.

The moment you make this fundamental mistake of identifying something that is not you as yourself, life becomes an unnecessary struggle.

To live in empathy is not some esoteric principle.

This is the way a human being is made

Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement. It is a homecoming.

If you first label someone your enemy and then try to love him or her, it’s going to be torturous! Once you have fragmented creation like this, there is no way to arrive at a state of absolute inclusiveness.

To attain the ecstasy of borderless unity, which is our natural state, all you need to do is live by the guideline that all human experience is generated from within—either with the support of external stimuli or without. That is all.

But you won’t ever see me distressed because my way of being is not in any way enslaved to what’s happening outside.

What he imparted to these disciples was an unimaginably profound system of self-exploration and transformation, based on the radical premise that it is possible for a human being to evolve consciously. Unlike biological evolution, which happens without our conscious participation, spiritual evolution can happen consciously. All it takes, Adiyogi told us, is willingness.

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.