Question: Sadhguru, Namaskar. I’m a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. My query is, have you experienced God?
Sadhguru: A lot of people think “Sadhguru” is a title, but it is actually a description.
When you call someone “Sadhguru,” it means that you do not go to him because you want to understand the scriptures – he has not read any. You do not go to him because you want to go to heaven – he has not been there, and he is not interested in going there. Sadhguru literally means “one who comes from within.” I know this piece of life in its entirety, from its origin to its ultimate. And that is all I know.
There is a scientific theory called Constructal Law about the design of nature. This theory is trying to prove that an atom is made the same way the cosmos is made. How a single cell is made is how every life is made. How an amoeba is made is how a human being is made. It is just that the complexity and sophistication are multiplying.
This is something we have always said in the yogic sciences – anda [egg] and pinda [body] are the same. In terms of fundamental design, the minutest minuscule of creation and the ultimate creation are the same – it is only the complexity and sophistication that differ.
So, all I know is this piece of life entirely. Fortunately, because you are also a piece of life that is made like me, if I talk about myself, you think I’m talking about you. If I talk about myself, you think I’m talking about the cosmos. If I talk about myself, some people think I’m talking about God. These are all their interpretations. I’m only talking about myself.
Question: Sadhguru I often come across a lot of selfish people around me. How should I deal with them?
Sadhguru: 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 your self, how can you be selfless? No one can be selfless. And if you try, you will only pretend to be selfless.
A mother takes care of her child not because of selflessness but because of a deep selfishness, because that is what gives her the most joy and happiness. Someone is willing to die for his country not out of selflessness but with a very strong sense of selfishness because that is what is going to fulfill him – that is why he does it.
You must become absolutely selfish. Don’t be stingy and miserly even in your selfishness, be totally and absolutely generous at least with that. Why are you so limited in your selfishness that you want only your family or your country or the world to be well? Be selfish in such a way that your selfishness includes the whole existence. 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.
Question: How to become a devotee?
Sadhguru: Devotion means you are not a kanjoos, you are full of juice – everything in you is flowing out all the time. Every moment, everything that can ooze out of you is oozing out of you. Nothing is held back. That is a devotee. A devotee is always seeing how to expend his life as rapidly and as fully as possible. He is not somebody who is trying to conserve life or who is planning to live tomorrow. He is somebody who is living now, absolutely. He is so absolute that he loses the need for any company, he loses the need for this or that.
He is the way he is, not because he is useless, but because he is choice-less. Moving from compulsiveness to choice is evolutionary. You went through the “monkey process” and evolved. The life that was compulsive has become choice. So to move from compulsiveness to choice is evolutionary, but to move from choice to choiceless-ness is revolutionary. Not compulsiveness, choiceless-ness. This is the silent revolution of realization.
Choiceless-ness is a natural state for a devotee. Only when you are miserable, you have a choice with life. If you are absolutely ecstatic, there is no choice about life. There is only one way to be.
(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)
