Sadhguru: Inner Engineering
Sadhguru is a realized yogi and mystic – a man whose passion spills into everything he encounters. With a keen mind, balanced by a heart that knows no boundary, his presence creates an extraordinary opportunity to break through limitations into one’s natural state of freedom, love and joy. Sadhguru has a unique ability to make the ancient yogic sciences relevant to contemporary minds, and acts as a bridge to the deeper dimensions of life. His approach does not ascribe to any belief system, but offers methods for self-transformation that are both proven and powerful.
Sadhguru: Inner Engineering, Technologies for Wellbeing
Interview by Sandie Sedgbeer
“As there is a technology to create external wellbeing, there is a whole science and technology to create inner wellbeing” – Sadhguru
Sadhguru, world-renowned yogi, mystic, visionary and founder of Isha Foundation will be touring 18 cities throughout North America this Fall to offer refreshing and unique insights into many aspects of life, ranging from the mundane to the ultimate. The tour will also launch Sadhguru’s new book “Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy” where he presents readers with a path to achieving absolute well-being through the science of yoga. The book offers simple practices that can be done by anyone, anywhere. For all of the strides we have made in science and technology, with standards of living unimaginable a century ago, most human beings still remain in search of wholeness and purpose in their lives.
Sadhguru has often said that “society is overripe for a spiritual process.” His fundamental vision is to offer the science of inner well-being to every human being – a science vitally helping realize the ultimate potential within. From this vision stem a multitude of projects, programs, and methods, all towards the same aim: to raise every human being to the peak of their potential, be exuberant, all-inclusive, in harmony within themselves and the world.
Perhaps Sadhguru’s mission is most succinctly summarized in his own paradoxical words: “I have no mission of my own. It is just that when you see a certain need around you, you do what you can do – that’s all. But I have a dream, that someday, walking on a street anywhere in the world, I would be able to meet lots of enlightened or realized beings. That would be the greatest blessing to happen to the world.”
OMTIMES: What is Inner Engineering?
Sadhguru: Right now I hear there’s only one phone in the United States, it’s the iPhone. It’s a good phone but what we’re forgetting is the “I.” The iphone is alright, but the “I” is the most important thing. An iphone is just a little gadget produced by this larger gadget. This is the gadget, isn’t it? All the other gadgets have been produced by this gadget. If you pay a little attention to this one; if the necessary understanding and awareness and ability to transform this gadget happen within you, your ability to live will be greatly, greatly enhanced. Then outside technologies are not a barrier. Outside technologies are a boon that’s been offered to us. But the boons that have been offered to us are turning into curses in people’s lives simply because they’ve not taken care of this one. They’re only trying to take care of external situations.
We have done a lot of engineering in the world outside and because of this we have a huge level of comfort and convenience in the world today. The kind of comfort and convenience that no other generation of people could have ever imagined, that level of comfort and convenience we have. Though we have this, though we are the most comfortable generation ever on the planet, we cannot claim that we are the most peaceful generation. We cannot claim that we are the most joyful or loving generation on the planet for sure. So in many ways, this generation is becoming the most neurotic generation or most complaining generation because we have taken care of the outside but we have not taken care of the inside. The world is engineered the way we want it. But are we engineered the way we want us to be?
So there is a certain way to engineer our system to make this body, to make this mind, to the very chemistry within us the way we want it. If our wish is to be blissful, to make the world blissful, it will take too many things, but to make this one person blissful, a willing person, somebody who wants to be blissful, it shouldn’t be difficult at all. But this has not been done because people have never paid attention to the mechanics of how a human being functions and to engineer that the way we want it. So these are technologies for inner wellbeing. Everybody wants health, peace, blissfulness but these are simple things. Why these things are not happening is we have never paid attention to the inner mechanism of what a human being is. To pay attention to that and to create it the way we want it, this is Inner Engineering.
Inner Engineering is offered in various ways to suit everyone’s needs. One can take the program online or as an in – person program in various cities across US and Canada and also as a Retreat at Isha Institute of Inner-sciences in McMinnville, TN.
“This life for me is an endeavor to help people experience and express their divinity. May you know the bliss of the Divine.” ~Sadhguru
Sandie Sedgbeer: What is the importance of the breath? Is there more to breathing well than positive health effects?
Sadhguru: Breath is the thread which ties you to the body. If I take away your breath, you and your body will fall apart. It is the breath that has tied you to the body. What you call as your body and what you call as “me” have been tied together with breath. And this breath decides many aspects of who you are right now.
For different levels of thought and emotion that you go through, your breath takes on different types of patterns. If you are angry, you will breathe one way. You are peaceful, you breathe another way. You are happy, you breathe another way. You are sad, you will breathe another way. Have you noticed this?
Based on this, conversely, is the science of pranayama and kriya: by consciously breathing in a particular way, the very way you think, feel, understand and experience life can be changed.
This breath can be used in so many ways as a tool to do other things with the body and the mind. You will see with the Isha Kriya, we are using a simple process of breath, but the kriya itself is not in the breath. The breath is just a tool. The breath is an induction, but what happens is not about the breath.
Whichever way you breathe, that is the way you think. Whichever way you think, that is the way you breathe. Your whole life, your whole unconscious mind is written into your breath. If you just read your breath, your past, present, and future is written there, in the way you breathe.
Once you realize this, life becomes very different. It needs to be known experientially; it is not something that you can propound. If you know the bliss of simply sitting here, the blissfulness of just being able to simply sit here, not thinking anything, not doing anything, simply sitting here, just being life, then life would be very different.
In a way, what this means is… Today, there is scientific proof that without taking a drop of alcohol, without taking any substance you can simply sit here and get drugged or stoned or drunk by yourself – no hangover. If you are aware in a certain way, you can activate the system in such a way that if you sit here, it is an enormous pleasure. Once simply sitting and breathing is such a great pleasure, you will become very genial, flexible, wonderful – because all the time you are in a great state within yourself. The mind becomes sharper than ever before.
Sandie Sedgbeer: What is the book about?
Sadhguru: Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy is not an academic treatise or a self-help manual. It offers a combination that I have never attempted before in any previous book: a mix of perspective and practice, of explanation and experiment, of insight and the chance to test every hypothesis in the laboratory of life. This makes it unique.
The end-result is a reminder of the power and profundity of yoga – not as acrobatics or metaphysics, but as an empirical science that makes you the master of your own destiny, the architect of your own inner bliss. In short, this book is a roadmap to joy — an invitation to each one of you to turn from an armchair reader into a dynamic participant on an ecstatic journey inward.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Why write this book?
Sadhguru: After an overwhelming experience that transcended all that I knew as life and left me dripping in nameless ecstasies over three decades ago, the sight of anyone on the street in a state of misery would disturb me deeply. I couldn’t understand why any human being should be unhappy when the source of limitless joy lies right within us. I decided it was my mission to enlighten the world. Years later, I’ve grown wiser. I know now that people are often unhappy because they are invested in their own unhappiness.
Hence I developed simple tools for self-transformation. And that’s how this book happened.
My aim in this book is to help make joy your constant companion. To make that happen, this book offers you not a sermon, but a science; not a teaching, but a technology; not a precept, but a path.
“The book presents the wisdom and practical advice in a highly accessible form that entertains as it enlightens—with anecdotes from his own life, surprising humor, and stories of those who have inspired him.”
For more information about Sadhguru Fall Tour or Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy, see meetsadhguru.com.
Connect with Sandie Sedgbeer on her radio show What Is Going OM by clicking on the show pic!
