On the 3rd anniversary of our column ‘Bookstrapping’, we bring you an insightful conversation with the yogi, mystic and visionary Sadhguru. His most recent book ‘Enlightenment’ is written in a style that’s both fluid and undecorated; he writes to be understood.
At a time when reading is arguably challenged by our attention spans, Sadhguru shows us that it is possible to write a bestseller in service of the reader. In trademark anecdotal style, he explains that ‘enlightenment’ is not a quest, but a homecoming. Its the process of coming back to your original nature. Dive right in.
In your book ‘Enlightenment,’ you speak about the ‘calamity of the non-committed way of existing.’ These are powerful words and paint a picture of a very shallow existence. How do we overcome this?
Sadhguru: Whether it is sport, art, music, dance or work, no one can ever hope to produce anything of any consequence without being absolutely devoted to what they are doing. Devotion is not about god or prayer or going to the temple. Devotion is about focusing everything you have in one direction. If you are scattered all over the place, you will only do mediocre things. Only if everything that you have is organized and thrown in one direction, it will become a fireball of success that will travel far. Devotion is about organizing yourself in such a way, your body, brain, emotion, energy and whatever the hell you may have, everything gets organized in one direction, so that you penetrate the morass of life to get somewhere.
There are many examples but let me take the example of Sachin Tendulkar, our Bharat Ratna. He is so devoted to hitting a ball, and he hits it like no one else can. This is devotion. His entire life is invested in one simple act, hitting a ball, and because of enormous devotion, tremendous things happen.
2. Are our young in fervent denial about the loss of skills due to lack of deep committed work? For eg; reading?
Sadhguru: You must ask yourself a simple question: is your life precious to you? If it is, then what are you going to invest this precious life in? This is something that must concern you. You must not do something because someone else is doing it. You must see what is it that really matters to you and do that. What other people say does not matter. Whatever you do, you must do it well, and you should not do anything that you will be ashamed of tomorrow.
3. Reading the book suggests that we misunderstand what enlightenment is all about. Are there many such misconceptions?
Sadhguru: There are many misconceptions about what Yoga is. In most people’s minds, Yoga means some physically impossible postures. But asanas are just one aspect of Yoga. Yoga does not mean twisting your body, holding your breath or standing on your head. Yoga is not an exercise form, it is a whole technology as to how to elevate yourself to the highest point that a human being can be.
4. ‘We all seek what we don’t have’, you have said in the book. Are we more obsessed with personality than ‘presence?’
Sadhguru: Your psychological manifestations, behaviour and emotions are just manifestations of your personality. What you call as personality is an accumulated quality, a collage of many things that might or might not have happened to you. A personality is for social reasons – it has no meaning to your life. You need a personality to interact with the world. You should never have a personality when you are alone.
Presence is the quality of life. Presence means that as you enhance the process of life within yourself, your presence becomes more powerful and wonderful. One of the biggest limitations for this to happen is that you have invested too much in your personality. As you invest more, it becomes more rigid.
The less rigid your personality, the more powerful your presence is. Yoga as a process, method, technology and science is essentially to break the limitations of a certain concretization called personality and to evolve from being a person to a presence. If you are a person, that means you have made a shell out of yourself within which you operate. If you break the shell, you will no longer be a person but simply a presence – as life is.
5. You also add that any kind of ‘lack’ comes from ‘what we are unconscious about.’ How do we overcome lack and become powerful?
Sadhguru: Life is a powerful process. If you want to fulfill that, you have to be a powerful human being. This is the essence of the spiritual process, that if you dissolve your personality, your life presence becomes very powerful.
When you have a powerful presence that is beyond your personality, this presence can leave imprints which are forever. This is the power of the spiritual beings of the past. Though they have been gone thousands of years, their work still continues because if you use the power of your muscle, your work has a certain lifespan. If you use the power of your mind, your work has a much larger lifespan. But if you use the power of your innermost core, your work is eternal.
6. The idea that the earthworm the tree, every being is selfish seems very probable.
Sadhguru: Every life – whether it is a worm, insect, bird, animal or tree – is striving to become a full-fledged life. This is all the aspiration of every life. Every moment of their life, they are full-on, wanting to become full.
That longing is there in us also, but we have a little problem. Because for every other life, nature has put two lines, so we know what is the top line. But with a human being, there is a bottom line but no top line, that means it is an endless possibility. You cannot define what a full-fledged human being is.
7. So is selflessness also a myth?
Sadhguru: About being selfish and selfless, for ages, people have been deceiving themselves saying that they are selfless. When your existence here and your perception of the people and the world around you is rooted in yourself, how can you be selfless? No one can be selfless. And if you try, you will only pretend to be selfless.
Only because there is self, you can see, hear, speak and everything. There is no life without self. The question is only whether your selfishness is concerned only about you or your family or your community or nation or the world or the entire universe or all life. So the simplest way is to be selfish in such a way that your selfishness includes the whole existence. Don’t be stingy with your selfishness. At least with selfishness, be generous. Use it to the fullest and include the whole existence as a part of yourself; it will liberate you. If you become totally selfish, you are free.
8. You speak about Swami Vivekananda’s work in your book. He was making the West understand us better. Today, the West not only understands us, but also admires us. Perhaps the landscape has shifted. In this context, what kind of books are relevant today?
Sadhguru: I never really read any books that are generally considered spiritual. Dennis the Menace, Asterix, these are the kinds of books that I read growing up.
I am not saying this with any disrespect towards Vivekananda. I have great regard for him, because he went to the West and brought the awareness of another dimension of knowledge that is present in the East. You have to appreciate his zest and his fire. But whatever books you read, with all due respect to all of them, they are written by human beings. A book can inspire you to seek. As an inspiration it may work well, but a book cannot reveal anything to you.
If you read this book that is the life that you are, this is a microscopic version of the whole cosmos in a certain way. So by inference, you will know everything that is worth knowing.
9. So enlightenment would be…
If you want to know what this life is about, you have to look inward, because the life that you are, is a book written by the Creator. I want you to learn the language of reading this book, so that you don’t have to depend on anyone else’s words, whether it is someone from the ancient past or myself here now.
Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ Asia’s first reading coach, you can find her on Instagram @OfficialReetaGupta.