Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

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.

You go out today and someone tells you that you are the most beautiful person in the world: you’re floating on cloud nine. But then you come home, and the folks at home tell you who you really are: everything crashes!

There is scientific proof today that without ingesting a drop of alcohol or any other substance, you can get fully intoxicated by yourself.

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.

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.

You have surely noticed that when you are happy, you always function better. You seem to have an endless supply of energy. You can go on and on, even without eating or sleeping. Just a little happiness liberates you from your normal limitations of energy and capability.

When someone is constantly giving a hundred percent, a point comes when one surpasses all limits and reaches total effortlessness.

Our body and brain work at their best only when the stomach is empty.

Life has a million ingenious ways to bend you, break you, knead you, and grind you.

If you tell yourself you don’t want to think a certain thought, that is precisely the first thing your mind will produce! That is the nature of the human mind.

Irrespective of what you think you are, when death confronts you, every identification falls away. If human beings learned to drop these voluntarily, life would be blissful.

Make a list of all the things that the major religions of the world call a “sin,” and you will find that just to be alive is a sin. If you are born it is a sin; if you menstruate, it is a sin; if you copulate, it is a sin. Forget all this, even if you so much as eat a chocolate, you could commit a sin.

if you want to experience a mountain peak, you either elevate yourself to that level, or simply look up.