Jaggi Vasudev Quotes

The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.

The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.

If you resist change, you resist life.

If you ask a tree how he feels to know that he's spreading his fragrance and making people happy, I don't think a tree looks at it that way. I am just like that, and it is just my nature to be like this.

Too many people are hungry not because there is dearth of food. It is because there is dearth of love and care in human hearts.

Love is your quality. Love is not what you do. Love is what you are.

If you think you are big, you become small. If you know you are nothing, you become unlimited. That’s the beauty of being a human being.

I am not talking about you being a spectator, I am talking about involvement. I am talking about involving yourself into life in such a way that you dissolve into it.

People have fallen in love with words and lost the world. It’s time to regain it.

Sex in the body is fine. Money in the wallet is fine. It is only a problem when they enter your mind.

If you think hundred percent logically, there is really no possibility of life.

There is so much adventure that only a youth can experience. Youth is not the time to languish in pleasure - youth is the time for exploration and adventure

You have too much social influence upon you. You are not going by your own nature. People do so many nonsensical life-negative things because they don’t want to be left out of the scene around them.

Mind is not in any one place. Every cell in this body has its own intelligence. The brain is sitting in your head, but mind is all over the place.

The quality of your life depends on how well you manage your body, your mind, your emotion, your situations, your home, your communities, nations, your life in general and the world.

when I say spiritual, I am talking about you beginning to experience that which is not physical. Once this spiritual dimension is alive, once you start experiencing yourself beyond the limitations of the physical and the mental, only then there’s no such thing as fear. Fear is just the creation of an overactive and out-of-control mind.

Yogis are not against pleasure. It is just that they are unwilling to settle for little pleasures. They are greedy.

A human is not a being; he is a becoming. He is an ongoing process – a possibility. For this possibility to be made use of, there is a whole system of understanding the mechanics of how this life functions and what we can do with it, which we refer to as yoga.

If your body goes in search of a relationship, we call this sexuality. If your mind goes in search of relationships, we call this companionship. If your emotion goes in search of relationships, we call this love. If your energies go in search of relationship, we call this yoga.

When you have that, you dream of this and when you have this, you dream of that. Maybe you call it romantic, but it’s just plain stupidity. It destroys life.

Money is definitely needed, but how much money do we really need? If we would change our idea of a successful life to a joyful life, we would find our need for money would dramatically decrease.

Death is a fiction created by people who live their lives in total unawareness. There is only life, life and life alone, moving from one dimension to another, another dimension to another.

Nothing has ever been out of place in this existence. Things have been out of place in human societies.

Your life is just about craving, and making something else tremendously more important than you.

The man who does only as much as is needed will only get that much.

Sunlight comes into your house not because you want it. It happens because you open the windows.

To rise above the modifications of your mind, when you cease your mind, when you cease to be a part of your mind, that is yoga.

Most people are investing their whole lifetime just for their material well-being. Dying to live, this is called.

But when it comes to the inner situation, there is only one ingredient: you. At least you must happen the way you want.

Our lives become beautiful not because of what we do, our lives becomes beautiful simply because we have included everybody around us as a part of our dream of well being.

Mysticism is like pure science; it has no use. Mysticism is just the human longing to know… Occult is not science. Occult is just technology.

Your body is on loan from the planet. All the countless numbers of people who have lived on this planet before you and me have all become topsoil, and so will you. This planet will collect back atom by atom what it has loaned to you.

I learned to create a little more space between my thoughts and actions—actually between my feelings and reactions. This is extremely important; without it, life can be a real roller coaster ride.

Generally, the smartest people on the planet – those people who think they are really smart – tend to have the most horrible relationships.

There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.

One should use information and logic as a drunkard would use a lamp post, only for support, not for illumination.

Why do we refer to the mind as a circus? A circus is not a mess; a circus is a very coordinated activity deliberately made to look like a mess. On one level it is a mess, but on another, it is a highly coordinated activity.

Only if you know to what extent your logic should go and where it should not go, your life will be beautiful.

They have been promising us for a long time — in every culture — that they are going to take us to heaven. They promise heaven because they are making a hell out of this place.

Your mind need not be controlled; your mind needs to be liberated.

The whole art of being a Guru is just this: to constantly puncture people’s egos and still manage to remain their friend.

Every seed goes through the tremendous struggle of losing itself – losing its safety and integrity and becoming vulnerable to every outside force that’s around. But without that vulnerability, without the breaking, without the shedding of the shell, life won’t sprout.

You cannot choose a Guru. Deepen your longing and the Guru will choose you,

If you want God as a tranquilizer, it is okay as an idea, but if you want the Divine to be an awakening process in your life, an idea is not good enough.

How the human system is happening, in the same way the universe has happened. In the same way that the micro is happening, that is how the macro has happened. If you look at the micro and perceive it, you will also know existence.

If your body, if your mind, if your emotions, if your energies are not functioning the way you want them to, then this is the worst kind of slavery, because somebody else decides what should happen within you. If somebody else decides what should happen around you, that itself you call as slavery. But if someone decides what should happen within you, is it not a more horrible way of being a slave? But please see, the whole world is in this slavery. The only consolation is everybody is like this.

When we say "transformation," it means that nothing of the old has remained. Something totally new has flowered within you. Now you look at a rose plant that is full of thorns. Springtime came and rose flowers burst out — it is a transformation. The thorns are still there — there are more thorns than flowers — but we do not call it a thorn plant. We call it a rose plant because of that single rose. Everyone's attention goes more towards that single rose than a hundred thorns that are on the plant, isn't it? So all the thorns in you, maybe you cannot remove them right now, but if one rose flower blossoms, everyone is willing to overlook those things.

I am not here to speak the Truth. I am here just to give you a method to perceive it.

A human is not a being; he is a becoming. He is an ongoing process, nothing is fixed.

If you are forming relationships to seek happiness – you trying to squeeze happiness out of someone and that person trying to squeeze happiness out of you – this is going to be a painful relationship after some time.

In the Indian culture you never told your parents, your wife, your husband or your children, “I love you.” This was not a part of this culture because the moment you say it, it’s almost like it’s not there. You’re only trying to assert it. Love is not an assertion. Love is a supplication. An asserting mind can never be a loving mind.

people who have failed in their lives, they are suffering their failure. People who have succeeded in their life, they are suffering their success.

Unless you begin to see the hollowness of where you are right now, you will not begin to seek something else strongly.

Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful because we put our heart into what we are doing. It doesn't matter what we are doing. Whether we are sweeping the floor, or managing the country, or whatever we are doing. If we are putting our heart into what we are doing, it is beautiful to be doing that activity. Living in an atmosphere where people are passionate about what they are doing itself is highly enriching.

Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.

The moment it is in touch with the earth, the body recognizes it. That is why spiritual people in India walked barefoot and always sat upon the ground in a posture that allows for maximum area of contact. In this way, the body is experientially reminded that it is just a part of this earth. Never should the body forget what it is. If it forgets, it will start making fanciful demands; if you constantly remind it, then it knows its place.

So the whole process of spirituality is just about enhancing your perception.

Life is a circus when your intellect and your body alone are involved. Life is a dance, when the intelligence begins to play its role.

If you try to make the limited unlimited, you will suffer.

By consciously getting your body into a certain posture, you can also elevate your consciousness, you can change the very way you feel, think, understand, and experience life simply by sitting in a particular way.

The hen that you are, how will you know what deceptive ways Grace will descend. It is Grace that brought you here and it is Grace that will deliver: I prefer the hen that looks up to the sky than an eagle that flies but always looking down. How high is not the question, but how intense is your longing for the sky. May you always be in Grace.

When we talk of "exploring the mystical," we are not trying to dig into creation, because if you dig into creation, it will only get more complex. It will not bring clarity; it will only bring more complexity. That is why the yogis looked in a different direction. We looked inward. If you look inward, a different dimension opens up. Now instead of things getting more complex, you get to clarity. It is because of this that we say that those who look inward have a third eye. They see things that others cannot see. They have brought a new clarity to life.

Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful because we put our heart into what we are doing.

I am not interested in sending people to heaven. I am interested in making people in such a way that, even if they go to hell, nobody can make them suffer. That's freedom, isn't it? "I want to go to heaven, I want to go to heaven," is a huge bondage. Suppose you land in the wrong place. Suppose someone hijacked your airplane on the way to heaven. He didn't crash it; he just landed it in the wrong place. You're finished, aren't you? You're always living with something that can be taken away from you by somebody or something. True liberation is when nobody can take away anything from you.

People on the spiritual path are people of unquenchable discontent. It is being propagated that spirituality means contentment. Contentment means you have contented yourself with what you have. A spiritual person means he is unwilling to settle for anything less than the Ultimate.

People have gotten used to living a botched-up life — to be anxious, insecure, hateful, jealous, and in various states of unpleasantness through the day — slowly humanity has begun to see it as normal. None of these things are normal. These are abnormalities. Once you accept them as part of life they become normal because the majority has joined the gang of unpleasantness. They are all saying, "Unpleasantness is normal. Being nasty to each other is normal. Being nasty to myself is normal." Someone trusted that you would be doing good things at least to yourself and said, "Do unto others what you do unto yourself." I am telling you, never do unto others what you are doing to yourself! By being with people, I know what they are doing to themselves is the worst thing. Fortunately, they are not doing such horrible things to others. Only once in a while they are giving a dose to others, but to themselves they are giving it throughout the day.

Even if I say something, do not believe this nonsense, but do not disbelieve it either. Just see, "Someone is willing to sit in front of so many people and talk absolute nonsense, something that is totally absurd. Let me see what this is about." If you keep that much openness, the possibility is alive in your life. If you believe it, you will kill it. If you disbelieve it, you will kill it.

They are certain old qualities and flavors within you. However much you may try to pretend that you’re a very nice and loving person, when deals are offered, suddenly old vasanas will take control of you. There’s an urge to bite the deal.

How can you become old in spirit? Only by carrying the past, isn't it? If you carry sixty years of burden with you, you're sixty years old. If you don't carry anything, you're like a newborn. The physical body may develop limitations, but the way you are has no limitations. It simply has no limitations. You are this many years old or that many years old simply because you carry that many years of garbage with you.

There is a Force within That gives you life Seek that. —Rumi

Children only come through you, you don’t create them. It is a privilege that they have happened through you. Enjoy the privilege; don’t think of it as an authority. Just enjoy the privilege that another life chose to come through you into this world.

Asking for outside help, or even if it comes unasked, to allow outside help, needs a certain gracefulness and humility. Otherwise, you cannot allow outside help. Lots of people cannot receive something gracefully. Always, the social ethics have taught you that giving is important, taking is not important. Yes, taking is not important, taking is ugly, but receiving is very important.

The longing for peace has essentially come from troubled minds, minds that are torturing themselves. For them, peace is a big commodity that they have to seek. If you are not using your mind for self-torture, why would you think of peace? Would you seek the exuberance of life or would you seek peace? Only if you have become an expert in self-torture, peace seems to be the greatest thing.

True human capabilities will not find expression in competition. True human capabilities will find expression only in absolute relaxation. Your mind, your body will work best, will find fullest expression, only when you are joyful and peaceful, and quiet within yourself.

In the process of creating what we want, in pursuit of our happiness, we are just destroying the very source of our life, this planet; we are making a bonfire out of it. But still we are not satisfied, nor are we any more joyful than what people were five hundred years ago.

Learning is a natural human trait. When you learn something that you did not know, it should make you joyful. But if learning is making children miserable, then we have not understood how to impart learning.

You can convert this human system into absolute receptivity, where you can perceive life in ways that you have never believed possible. If you keep all your ideas, emotions and your nonsense aside, maybe you can take a step, move one inch. One little step existentially is worth more than all the scriptures that you can read on the planet. One little step is far more important than all the philosophies that you can spout.

The hen that you are, how will you know what deceptive ways Grace will descend. It is Grace that brought you here and it is Grace that will deliver: I prefer the hen that looks up to the sky than an eagle that flies but always looking down. How high is not the question, but how intense is your longing for the sky. May you always be in Grace. – Sadhguru

18 When we utter the word ‘spirituality’, what we are saying is, “I want to become all-inclusive, or all-exclusive. I want to include everything as a part of myself, or I want to just exclude everything, including myself.“ These are two ways – either include everything or exclude everything. Either become infinite, or become zero; the in-between is an endless trap.

See, when we say a "spiritual seeker," unfortunately most people assume that he is God-oriented. A spiritual seeker is not God-oriented; if Devil is the chief of existence, he wants to know that. We want to know what is true; we are not interested in proving our belief systems, because we don't have any.

Life is one kind of sound. Death is another kind of sound. Those who cannot hear the sound of death think death is silence. Death is not silence, it is just another kind of sound, but may not within the hearing range of a normal ear.

People who want to acquired powers over somebody else, for them imagination is a powerful tool. If you are seeking liberation, if you want to become free, the first thing that you must become free from is your imagination, because that is the deepest trap. Your memory and your imagination are the two traps. Do you see? One of your legs is stuck in memory; another leg is stuck in imagination. If you release yourself from these, meditation is just natural. When you sit for meditation, what is your basic problem? You are either thinking about tomorrow or thinking about what happened yesterday, isn't it? If you are free from memory and imagination, you will always be meditative.

There is a certain space within you which never gets disturbed, which is never in any kind of turmoil; a space which cannot be touched by outside situations.

What people are suffering is their freedom. That's why it is so tragic. If

The logical aspect of your life and the experiential dimension of your life are diametrically opposite to each other.

What does it mean to become a Buddha? “Bu” means “Buddhi,” the intellect. One who is above his intellect is a Buddha.

Lots of earthquakes and landslides and disturbances keep happening on a daily basis simply because the mountain is growing. The same is true with human life: if one is striving to grow, earthquakes and landslides keep happening in one's life. Those who are stagnant, who don't grow, their life seems to be stable and steady, and looks better. But it's lifeless. For one who is striving to grow, an enormous amount of upheaval happens in his life. But all the upheavals are worth a little bit of growth that could happen within a human being.

In the spiritual lore, the human body is considered supremely sacred, as this is the only mechanism that can take a being from the limited identification of the self to the unlimited, from a bounded existence to the realm of the unbounded, to the final plunge into the vastness of the Infinite.

To a disciple who lamented in a poem that he sought to become an eagle in the sky, but only managed to become a hen looking up to the eagle, pat came the reply: The hen that you are, how will you know what deceptive ways Grace will descend. It is Grace that brought you here and it is Grace that will deliver: I prefer the hen that looks up to the sky than an eagle that flies but always looking down. How high is not the question, but how intense is your longing for the sky. May you always be in Grace.

Generally, in English, one way in which we describe an insane person is like this: "He is out of his mind." See, if you were out of your mind, would you be insane? Insanity is of the mind always, isn't it? Only if you are in the mind you can be insane. If you are out of your mind, you will be perfectly sane; you will become like a Mansur, or a Jesus or someone who is beyond other people's understanding. Others may think they are insane, but they are the only few sane people that have happened on the planet.

The essence of the spiritual process needs to be understood as a means to generate the necessary intensity to break the bubble, so that you are out of your individual nature. It is not about being good, it is not about being ethical, it is not about being moral. These things may all happen as a result, as a consequence. Once you have broken the bubble and known the freedom of experiencing everything as yourself, as a consequence you may function as a good person in society. But you have no particular intention of being good!

In terms of experience, we want to make this (referring to the self) very pleasant. We want this to be blissful, ecstatic. But, as I said before, even being ecstatic is not goal by itself. If you are blissful by your own nature, then the important thing is that you are no more the issue. There are other issues in this existence; we can look at those. But if you are an issue, what other issue will you take in your hands? You will not touch anything. When I am enough trouble myself, why do I want to take on this one or that one? When I am no more an issue, now I am willing to dig into the whole existence and see what it is all about.

The biggest problem is the moment you say "spirituality," somebody starts talking about God, someone else about mukti, someone else about nirvana and someone else about the Ultimate. They are all already up there. You cannot do anything with people who are already up there. If somebody is down here, you can do something with them. You can only take a step if your feet are on the ground, isn't it? The moment you talk about God, you are not here anymore; you know it all. You can only start a journey from where you are. You cannot start a journey from where you are not. If you are willing to come down to where you are, then we can see what the next step is. If you are already on the third step to heaven, what can I do with you?

See, when we begin to question the very existence of the Creator that means the creation is perfect. If every day it could not function without morning and evening prayers, then this would not be a perfect creation. This creation is so perfect that you can forget the Creator — you can just discard him, dump him — and still it goes on. So a true compliment to the Creator is when you forget about him. That is a real compliment to the wonderful piece of creation he has made; it is so perfect within itself that it does not need to draw from anything outside.

When conquest became the mode, people burnt the feminine out of the planet. We made it like this that the masculine is the only way to be successful, and we have compelled even women to be very masculine today in their attitude, approach and emotion. We have made everybody believe that conquest is the only way to success. But to conquer is not the way; to embrace is the way. Trying to conquer the planet has led to all the disasters. If the feminine was the more dominant factor, or at least if the two were evenly balanced, I don't think you would have any ecological disasters, because the feminine and earth worship always went together. Those cultures which looked upon the earth as the mother, they never caused too much damage to the environment around them.

Someone is not stressful because of what he is doing; someone is stressful because he doesn't know how to manage his own inner system. It is not the nature of the job which makes one stressful. You ask the top executive, he is stressful; you ask the office hand, he is also stressful. Everybody believes their job is stressful. No job is stressful. If you have no control over your own inner system, you will be stressful whether you do something or you don't do anything.

Searching for truth is itself a big illusion because whatever we term the truth is always and everywhere. We don't have to search for it; we don't have to seek it; it always is. Now the only problem is your inability to experience life beyond what you call mind; or right now your capability to experience life only through the limited dimension that we call mind. That is the only problem.

Only when a person begins to experience a dimension beyond the physical within himself, then he can play with the physical world whichever way he wants, he can do the best that he can do in the outside world, but the interiority is undisturbed. If your body, if your mind, if your emotions, if your energies are not functioning the way you want them to, then this is the worst kind of slavery, because somebody else decides what should happen within you.

If you want to know for yourself, you must turn inward. Today, people are making serious efforts to know themselves by reading books. I am not against books. If you are reading a book to know about a nation or business or to learn engineering, it is fine. But reading a book to know about yourself is silly. You are here, alive and kicking! It is alright if you are reading a book to get inspired to take a step inward, but if you want to know something, you must look inward. You cannot read a book and know about yourself. After you are dead, if you have lived an interesting life, somebody may read about you, but when you are alive, you should not read about yourself. That is not the way to know yourself. In fact, the more learned you become, the more you realize that you actually know nothing. Only a fool who read half a book thinks he knows everything. Even if you read all the libraries of the world, you will still not know anything. But if you turn inward for just one moment, everything that is worth knowing in the existence can be known.

If spirituality means seeking ['Self'-Realization], why do I need a Guru?' Let's say, all that you're seeking is to go to Kedarnath right now. Somebody is driving; the roads are laid out. If you came alone and there were no proper directions, definitely you would have wished, "I wish there was a map to tell me how to get there." On one level, a Guru is just a map. He's a live map. If you can read the map, you know the way, you can go. A Guru can also be your bus driver. You sit here and doze and he will take you to Kedarnath; but to sit in this bus and doze off, or to sit in this bus joyfully, you need to trust the bus driver. If every moment, with every curve in this road, you go on thinking, "Will this man kill me? Will this man go off the road? What intention does he have for my life?" then you will only go mad sitting here. We're talking about trust, not because a Guru needs your trust, it's just that if there's no trust you will drive yourself mad. This is not just for sitting on a bus or going on a spiritual journey. To live on this planet, you need trust. Right now, you trust unconsciously. You're sitting on this bus, which is just a bundle of nuts and bolts and pieces of metal. Look at the way you're going through the mountains. Unknowingly, you trust this vehicle so much. Isn't it so? You have placed your life in the hands of this mechanical mess, which is just nuts and bolts, rubbers and wires, this and that. You have placed your life in it, but you trust the bus consciously. The same trust, if it arises consciously, would do miracles to you. When we say trust, we're not talking about anything new to life. To be here, to take every breath in and out, you need trust, isn't it? Your trust is unconscious. I am only asking you to bring a little consciousness to your trust. It's not something new. Life is trust, otherwise nobody can exist here.