Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny

by Sadhguru

SUTRA #1 Karma is about becoming the source of one’s own creation. In shifting responsibility from heaven to oneself, one becomes the very maker of one’s destiny.

Karma is not a creed, a scripture, an ideology, a philosophy, or a theory. It is simply the way things are. It is an existential mechanism. Like the sun, it operates whether you acknowledge it or not, whether you pay obeisance to it or ignore it. It is not looking for a fan club.

Your mind shapes the way you experience the world around you. This becomes your karma—an orientation to life that you have created for yourself in relative unawareness. You are not aware of how these tendencies develop. But what you consider to be “myself ” is just an accumulation of habits, predispositions, and tendencies you have acquired over time without being conscious of the process.

The lives of many people, for instance, are dominated by food or substance abuse. Chemical addiction certainly plays a role here, but the primary problem is that they have set up a recurrent pattern in their life. However hard they try to emerge from it, they keep falling back into the trap.

The mind is a process that picks up momentum without any assistance from you. You may have noticed that when you were eighteen, you were generally able to shrug off difficulties and move on. That ability was more challenged by thirty. By forty-five, many things seemed to bother you. And, by sixty, you find it almost impossible to pick yourself up, adapt, and move on.

Everything has changed except for your experience. You can keep modifying the outer environment, but nothing will work because you haven’t figured out how to change your karma. Something else seems to be pushing your buttons. Someone else seems to be driving your car.

But the accumulation of karma essentially happens on the levels of the first three bodies: physical, mental, and energetic. Therefore, even if you break your body and your mind, your life energy continues to bear the karmic imprint, like a computer hard disk. The backup systems are so efficient that even if you lose your body or your mind, you still do not lose your karma.

The Smell of Bondage As we have seen, whatever you do with your body, mind, or energy leaves a certain imprint. These imprints configure themselves into tendencies. These tendencies have been traditionally described in India by a wonderfully apt word: vasana. Literally, vasana means smell. This “smell” is generated by a vast accumulation of impressions caused by your physical, mental, emotional, and energy actions. Depending upon the type of smell you emit, you attract certain kinds of life situations to yourself.

Because the need for that kind of concentrated energy work is over, I draw other kinds of people to me. I am probably unrecognizable to the people who knew me then, because I am a different person. Depending on the nature of the work, I adjust the tone of my vasana. This may be puzzling to some. But this is the way every spiritual master operates. However, the capacity to adjust one’s vasana is not an option reserved only for the spiritually adept. It is possible for each individual to choose not to be a victim of their vasana to a great extent. All it takes is a certain awareness. With a little awareness, every human being can begin to transform habit into choice, compulsion into consciousness.

One thing that we are trying to change through yoga (and hopefully, this book) is the kind of fragrance you throw out into the world.

Depending on how deeply entangled you think you are, wait consciously for a few more moments before you engage in that activity or interaction. You will see that your experience of food or love or life generally becomes that much more profound. Gradually, the two minutes of waiting for a meal could be extended for two hours or for an entire day. This deceptively simple exercise can mark the beginning of a tremendous inner shift. Consciousness is not a matter of behavior. It is the nature of existence. Compulsiveness, however, is behavioral. The moment you wait before you engage in a compulsion, you are aligning yourself with the conscious nature of existence. Over time, this helps weaken the compulsive nature of your behavior.

Your intention makes all the difference. If you say something prompted by love, and another person gets hurt, that is his karma, not yours. But if you say something out of hatred and another person has no problem with it, it is good karma for them and not for you! You still acquire negative karma. How the recipient of your hatred reacts is not the point. The accumulation of karma is determined by your intention, not merely by its impact on someone else.

So what determines human volition? Why do some people operate out of a greater sense of inclusiveness and others out of a greater sense of exclusiveness? Look at this closely. You will see that volition is shaped fundamentally by your belief that you are a separate being—an individual. In other words, it is your identification with your individuality that determines your volition. The operative word here is identification. If you were not identified with this sense of separateness, you would not be accumulating karma. If your identification were all-inclusive, that would be the end of the karmic cycle!

The crux of the matter, therefore, is identification with your desires. When you are no longer identified with your desire, when there is a distance between you and your mind, you simply do what is needed for the moment and for the situation. You learn to play with desire. The desires are no longer about “you” anymore. Now your karmic bondage vanishes entirely.

The irony is that the more you try to avoid karma, the more it multiplies!

Philosophies of detachment are essentially joyless creeds. Embracing them might produce some semblance of balance and stability in day-to-day life, but they do not lead to liberation. Instead, they frequently lead to greater karmic accumulation. Those who practice these life-denying philosophies turn slowly lifeless themselves. Inviting lifelessness is negative karma. The suppression of life is most definitely negative karma.

Living totally does not mean just having a good time. It means experiencing anything that comes your way fully and intensely. The very process of life is the dissolution of karma. If you live every moment of your life totally, you dissolve an enormous volume of karma.

Let us first make the distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is physical. Pain is produced whenever there is any injury to the body. Pain is the body’s way of alerting you that something is wrong, that action must be taken. Pain is useful. It is a valuable wake-up call. Suffering, on the other hand, is psychological. It is produced by you. It is a hundred percent self-manufactured. You don’t have a choice about being in pain, but you do have a choice about suffering. You can always choose not to suffer.

Your karma is not in what is happening to you; your karma is in the way you respond to what is happening to you.

When you were eighteen, it looked like you could grow in so many different ways. But as you grew older, it slowly seemed like choices were shrinking. It felt like there was only one way for you to be. As the karmic substance increases in volume, the discerning mind becomes almost useless, because you now work largely by habits, patterns, and cycles. The attraction to one’s own karmic patterns can be powerful, because most people experience a sense of safety in the familiar. Whether the patterns or cycles are small or big is irrelevant. Their recurrence can offer a sense of security, identity, and even power for those who fear the unfamiliar.

Without dropping physical memory, the body is ridden with compulsions. Most people are aware of this. You may decide with great determination to abstain from certain substances or to wake up early every morning. You may even manage for a while, but that is only in the initial phase. Mental determination alone cannot eradicate physical memory. It takes time and effort to work runanubandha out of your system. You can see how difficult it is already. So many triggers exist. The memory of tobacco may provoke the body to move in one direction; the smell of alcohol in another; the aroma of food in one direction; the memory of sexuality in yet another. Once all these memories have been reduced, however, life is very simple. Now if you want to simply sit still, the body does this very easily. Life now unfolds in the best possible way. With unexamined accumulation, the body can turn into a living hell. But once this receptacle is reasonably empty, once there is a certain ease in the system, this body is extraordinarily perceptive.

For instance, whether I meet a stranger or a friend, my interiority remains the same. My involvement is total. I may communicate and act differently, but internally I remain the same. My way of being remains unchanged, although what I do or say is relevant to the situation and the person. This breeds no karma. When involvement is selective, you fall into the trap of entanglement. Here is the central problem: Selective involvement leads to suffering and karma; detachment leads to lifelessness. But involvement need not come from a place of memory. It can be conscious. For most people, involvement springs from memory and is compulsive. Once memory enters, action is enslaving. Without memory, however, you can operate consciously. When your action is unsullied by past impressions, it is liberating. From Being

If you are experiencing deep emotional stress, a simple practice is to remain as far as possible in a posture where your spine is erect. The lumber region in particular needs to be relaxed and stretched to activate the spine. If you are able to squat for lengths of time, this is particularly beneficial because the extension of the spine has a profound impact on psychological well-being. A natural upsurge of energy will happen if you keep your feet together when you squat. But not many people can do this. So the next best option is to widen the distance between the feet when you squat, keeping your feet in line with your shoulders. Make sure your feet are firmly upon the ground. This is not just an exercise. The spine is not merely a collection of bones. It is the very basis of communication and perception within the human system. Keeping it in optimal condition will not just revitalize and rejuvenate the body but will make a phenomenal difference in your mental and emotional life and the way you function. There is a more comprehensive seven-step practice called the Yoga Namaskar, which is offered free of charge on the Sadhguru app (isha.sadhguru.org/app). This is a powerful process of activating and strengthening the spine and the muscles alongside it, so as one ages, the spinal system does not collapse and the nerves are not pinched. If there is already spinal damage, this is a good way to regenerate the spine and ensure allaround benefits for the entire body. This is als...

In the next couple of decades, the upswing of artificial intelligence will radically change the way we look at the concept of intelligence. Our ideas of education will be fundamentally altered. If you are looking for tools of self-transformation, a memory-based educational system will be of little use. The intellect, which is based on memory, is a wonderful tool. However, it can only inform; it cannot transform.

The human being is an organic machine, but a machine nonetheless. If we are to distinguish ourselves from other machines in any meaningful way, and not merely replicate their functions, we need to empower our capacity to perceive. For this, we need to reclaim our access to that unfettered unprejudiced intelligence—which in Sanskrit is called chitta— that is the basis of our lives.

This is why, as a guru, I never bless people with the wish that their dreams should come true. Since dreams are simply based on memory, you can dream only of a more magnified and more improved version of what you already know! If your dreams come true, there is nothing terribly special about that. My wish is that your dreams should be shattered. Only then will something larger than memory manifest in your life. May something you could never dream of happen to you.

The problem with today’s world is that we have created rigid ideas of right and wrong. When our minds are so full of hierarchy, it is impossible to be wholeheartedly involved in any action. When my daughter was twelve years of age, she came to me, a little troubled. I gave her just one guidance: “Never look up to anyone; never look down on anyone.” If people practiced this simple sadhana, they would see everything just the way it is. If you look up to someone, you will exaggerate their positive qualities; if you look down on someone, you will exaggerate their negative qualities. But if you simply look—not for something, but just look—you will see things just as they are. Now your ability to navigate your way through life is greatly enhanced.

The basis of karma yoga is to be involved in the process, not the product. Whether you approach your karma through awareness or abandon, the point is to immerse oneself in the journey and not be anxious about the destination.

The namaskar is a beautiful greeting because it is a deeply respectful acknowledgment of the source of creation within another person. If you look at a person’s body or personality, you could either like or dislike it. This means a karmic pattern of craving or aversion is being set in motion. But when you bow down to the source of creation within someone—which is the same source that throbs within you—it means you acknowledge your shared and inherent divinity. You also ensure that you do not get entangled with yet another body through superfluous physical contact.

But once you accept something, it becomes a part of you. Even for a moment, if you accept something as a part of you, you attain a profound sense of harmony. You are attuned to life. If your acceptance is total, you can experience the whole of existence as part of yourself.

You are a sensory being. Your entire experience of life is a certain sensation. If you don’t feel a certain sensation, you are not even aware that that part of your body exists. When your leg goes numb for a few moments, you are not even sure if it exists. It is vedana that reminds you that you exist by giving you the experience of sensation. The way you recognize the sensory input is the way you experience life. Vinyana, sanya, and vedana—cognition, recognition, and sensation—are automatic and take place in a split second. However, the fourth part of the mind is related to reaction and is entirely in your conscious control. If a pleasant sensation arises and you say you love it, your sankara immediately says “Oh, he loves it. Store it in the love bag.” Now it is stored in your love bag forever. If an unpleasant sensation arises, and you strongly feel “I hate it,” sankara immediately says “He hates it. Store it in the hate bag.” It is then stored in the hate bag forever. If you find yourself oscillating between craving and aversion, love and hate, your karma is growing at a rapid pace; your bondage is intensifying. If you have strong likes and dislikes, your suffering is also more intense. But another scenario is also possible. If a sensation arises, you have a choice whether to react. Once you are able to exercise this choice, you simply experience the sensation for what it is. If you generate a strong reaction, you will distort the experience. But if you remain equanimou...

Put differently, one might say, allow this simple truth to percolate into you: my ability to respond is boundless.

Purification, or karmic burning, is necessary for those who are entangled and compulsive. Without that burning, most people will not be able to meditate. But once meditation begins, the path is no longer about burning; it is instead an illuminating process of creating a certain distance between yourself and your physical and mental dimensions. This is the journey to freedom.

Once your Allotted Karma (prarabdha) is handled, a certain inner space is freed up within you. This gives you the room to perceive life with a certain clarity. You need not work out everything else, because you now see that the entire karmic influence is illusory. Once you have that clarity of realization, it is easy to drop it when necessary. Working out your entire Accumulated Karma (sanchita) is a very long process, because the accumulation is massive. So do not try to investigate the content of your warehouse; it will take forever to go through, and it might well engulf you! The danger of sifting through your karma is that you could well find precious elements that you want to preserve. Just handle the Allotted Karma and make use of the clear space to drop the Accumulated Karma altogether. The moment you close the retail outlet, the warehouse looks like meaningless trash! So when the time comes, you simply dispose of the entire warehouse wholesale—with all its content and storage facility.

Also, what you might see as mere pain in someone else is also sometimes fuel to help them grow. It is unfortunate that many people lead frivolous and superficial lives until their lives are touched by pain. Do not think you are always helping them by alleviating it. Instead, help them go beyond it. The ultimate guidance you can offer is to help someone transcend their suffering. This is what the great sages and mystics down the ages have done. They remind the world that there is a way out of suffering. Even if there is pain, there need be no suffering. The ability to see this difference is the supreme human attainment.

SADHANA It is important to remind yourself as often as possible that everything you consider to be yourself is an acquired identity. One simple way to approach this realization is to make sure you are physically exhausted every night before you head off to bed. You will always sleep well and deeply. Many superfluous ideas about yourself will fall away, and so sleep of this kind can also be karmically rejuvenating. But there is a more conscious exercise you could perform. Every night, sit on your bed, preferably crosslegged, with your eyes closed. Remind yourself that all memory is accumulation. Everything about you is acquired: your ideas of nationality, race, religion, all your relationships of like and dislike, love and hate. Slowly, gently, start setting aside everything with which you have a relationship. This could mean setting aside people, as well as your material possessions. Remind yourself that even your body is an accumulation. Imagine that you are on your deathbed and that you are going to die in two minutes. Put away everything that is not you—your sensations, thoughts, and emotions. See your sleep as impending death. You may feel a certain fear and struggle within you initially. But it will pass. Leave your body sitting and simply lie back with your eyes closed. Go to bed like this. If you do this each night, a great deal of karma can be worked out each night. If you fall asleep as if you’re dying, you will see that your karma barely has any impact on you. Yo...

The problem is that when you undergo experiences unconsciously, you do not learn from them. It does not matter how many times it happens: if you keep forgetting, you will repeat the same actions. If it is a conscious experience, however, it will always transform you. In Samyama, you do not work out your karma on the level of memory, but on the level of conscious energy experience. Even now, your personality is a projection of many past lives. But this is an unconscious projection. If this becomes a conscious projection, you will see that the anger or jealousy you are experiencing right now will be transformed into love and compassion. If you see that your rage and resistance are only because of past influences, they will transform instantly into something positive. It is because you cannot see that your present personality is just a projection of the past that you cling to it.

You don’t have total control, of course. Nobody has complete control over another. With children, the less you try to influence them, the more they are influenced by you. The more you try to influence them, the less successful you will be. Now, it is because of karma that even an unborn child has a certain nascent personality. If you ask women who have had more than two or three children, they will tell you that every child did not behave in the same way in the womb. The basis or the seed of the personality is already present. This is what we refer to as karma. The karmic body is already present in its entirety in the prenatal stage. By the time the child is born, it has as much of a karmic body as you have. It is only that the physical body has not yet filled out.

Now, how do you not gather karma? As we’ve seen, the simplest thing you can do is to make your involvement absolute, not selective. The air that you breathe, the sound you hear, the ground you sit on—be absolutely involved with all of it. Unbridled involvement is the nature of life itself. The tree standing here is involved with everything—the earth, the water, the breeze, the sky, everything. Life will blossom only if involvement is total. Once you discriminate, karma multiplies big-time. This is what every human being should aspire to: discrimination only on the level of action, not involvement. Action is necessarily limited. It involves a certain expenditure of energy, time, competence, and other factors. Discretion is necessary only on the level of action; otherwise, you will waste yourself. But involvement is an internal state, and it needs to be all-inclusive.

Life cannot be owned. The need to own life is responsible for much suffering on this planet. Let’s say you meet someone and say “I love you.” It feels really nice for three days. Then you think you must capture this love. Well, you ended up with a marriage! Nothing wrong with that. But the beauty of an experience cannot be captured; it cannot be institutionalized. This is the fundamental reason karma has become a problem. It is because you’re trying to capture life. You cannot own life; you can only live it.

Now, when we say we want liberation, or mukti, what we really are saying is that we want to prick this bubble in such a way that the enclosed emptiness becomes one with the emptiness outside. Once you burst a bubble, the air inside becomes part of everything around it, doesn’t it? It works the same way with the karmic bubble. Enlightenment also means the same thing: it means the bubble has burst. For most beings, the moment of enlightenment and the moment of leaving the body are the same.

You have the choice and ability to be any way you want in a given moment. That is the freedom and the curse. Most human beings are suffering their freedom.

The ritual was a complex one. The courtesan would encourage the man to have a drink, and then another, and then yet another. He would keep drinking and trying to undo her jewelry. But he grew more and more inept, until he finally fell asleep. This is exactly what she wanted! What he never guessed was that there was just one pin that kept the whole web of chains together. It was located in a spot that only she knew. If that single pin was pulled, the entire jewelry would fall off. Only she knew that. Karma is exactly like this. It is a complex web of chains—some beautiful and studded with exquisite diamonds, some of it just ugly rusted iron shackles. It makes no sense to try to pick the good karma from the bad. This is why spiritual seekers are not interested in acquiring good karma. They just want to drop the entire mess. This means burning up their karma through intense action as well as distancing themselves from it through meditation. But there is a third way, too. And this entails knowing the location of the elusive pin. Like the courtesans, if seekers knew where the pin was, they could find their way out of the labyrinth in just a moment. But most spend a lifetime getting more and more entangled in the karmic chains. Where does this single pin lie? In eliminating a single question from your life: What about me? If you are able to completely eliminate this question, you have annihilated the enormous sense of self-significance that most human beings live with. Now you c...

Traveling the globe can be wonderfully exciting. But at a certain point, one tires of going round in circles. The scenery changes, the weather alters, but there is something deep within a human being that dislikes going in circles. This innate dislike is bound to surface at some time. The aim of this book is to remind you that there is a way out of circles of repetitiveness. There are many ways to walk the path of karma yoga—to become a spiritual practitioner capable of walking out of circles into an eternal and imperishable nowness. Some circles can be instantly erased. Some need some more work. Others need some extra outside help. But it is important to do all that you can. The guru—whether in a physical form or not—finally steps in to do whatever remains to be done.

The reason why human beings keep generating karma is that they want to leave a footprint. They are seeking some continuation of their individual identity. Whether it is in terms of personal achievements, relationships, bearing children, or engaging in social causes, they want desperately to leave a dent on existence, attain immortality, live on for posterity. But those who long to leave a footprint shall never fly. The longing to fly is deeply human. The thirst for freedom is not something that the sages invented. It is something far more primal: the longing of life for itself.