Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

MORTALITY AND PROFUNDITY Only when you recognize your mortal nature do you want to know what more there is to life. It is then that the spiritual process opens up. Once it happened . . . Two men over eighty years of age met. One recognized the other and said, “Did you fight in World War II?” The other man said, “Yes.” The first asked him where, and with which battalion. The other man told him. The first exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Don’t you recognize me? We were in the same foxhole!” Oh, they hit it off! They talked and talked. All that they had actually seen was about forty minutes of an intense combat situation. But they talked about every bullet that went by, zing, zing, just missing them by inches. They spoke for over four hours about those forty minutes. When they had exhausted everything that they could say about that time, one asked the other, “What have you been doing since the war?” “Oh, for the past sixty years, I’ve just been a salesman.” Those forty minutes had come to define their lives because their mortality was dangling in front of them at every moment. In battle they had forged a bond that was profound. Beyond that, this man’s life could be summed up in a single sentence: he was just a salesman. You discover an indescribable profundity within yourself when you realize your mortal nature. If you have not realized your eternal nature you must at least realize your mortal nature. Death is not the end of life. Death is simply the end of the body. If you have lived...