Philosophers From India

"The fact is, when we are born, we are neither theists nor atheists, but ignoro-theists."

"We are creatures, not only of the mind, but of feelings and emotions as well. Indeed, feelings and emotions are more fundamental to our being than pure logic and reasoning."

"Just sitting silently for a few minutes within the sphere of Dhyanalinga is enough to make even those unaware of meditation experience a state of deep meditativeness. - Sadhguru (on the Dhyanalinga meditation shrine at Isha Yoga Centre, India)"

"This is an attempt to create a space that will witness mystical dimensions that have never been witnessed in this part of the world. -Sadhguru (on Isha Institute of Inner Sciences, McMinnville, TN USA)"

"Constantly all around us, one substance is being made into another. This transition and this transformation is happening all the time. If you make mud into food, that's called agriculture. If you make food into a human being, this is called digestion. If you make a human being into mud again, we call this cremation. If you transform the physical into the non-physical, that's called consecration. Why the need to transform the physical into non-physical? Because that's your longing. When you say ‘I want to walk the spiritual path’ what you're saying is, ‘I want to touch something which is non-physical.'–Sadhguru, Mahima Consecration, USA, Nov 7, 2008"

"Affluence has not brought misery... Having a lot of money in your pocket is good, isn't it? If it enters your head it becomes misery because that's not its place. It should be in your pocket. If it's in your pocket, there are many wonderful things you can do in the world. It is a means, and it is a tremendous empowerment. -Sadhguru"

"When you destroy the walls of falsehood that you have built, everything becomes one. Only when you merge with the existence, you are free. As long as you and the existence are separated there is no such thing as freedom. -Sadhguru"

"Hata yoga is a way of working with the body, disciplining the body, purifying the body, preparing the body for higher levels of energy. All of us are alive; all of us are human beings, sitting here. But all of us do not experience life to the same intensity because our energy levels are not the same. Our pranic energies are not the same. Different people experience life in different levels of intensity. -Sadhguru"

"A leader is someone who takes a chance on the destiny of a large mass of people. He's a leader because he is capable of organizing and directing situations to the desired goal. But that only happens if a leader has some mastery over himself. -Sadhguru"

"What you call as creation is just (energy). Everything is the same energy. The rock is the same energy. God is also the same energy. This is gross; that is subtle. As you make it more and more subtle, beyond a certain level of subtleness, you call it “Divine.” Below a certain level of grossness, you call it animal; further below that you call it inanimate. It is all the same energy. -Sadhguru"

"Enlightenment never happens. It is there; it is always there. The sadhana that you do is just to see it is there. You are not doing sadhana to construct divinity within you. All you will construct is only ego."

"All along, you've been shaping your destiny unconsciously. But you can also work on it consciously. If you make the effort to access your core and realise that everything is your responsibility, and shift your focus inside you, then you can rewrite your destiny."

"God will not lift a little finger for you, please know, because whatever he has to do, he has done it. His work is not pending. He has done a fantastic job over the creation, isn’t it? He has done a fantastic job. There is nothing to complain. He has put himself into you; beyond that he cannot do anything... Everything that you need now has been given. So, it is your turn to play the game now. Match has started, coach cannot interfere now."

"Our life energies are the most basic and the most powerful aspect of human beings. Though most people are unaware of it, whichever way our energies play, that’s the way our bodies and our minds and our emotions play. So, once we get the energies—the fundamentals—moving in one direction, we can make sure that our bodies, emotions, and minds are also moving in that direction. -Sadhguru"

"The word ‘yoga’ literally means ‘union’. When you experience everything as one in your consciousness, then you are in yoga. -Sadhguru"

"Right now, the bane of the world is just that human beings are working with limited individualistic ambition. Instead of working with ambition, if people work for a deeper vision of life for themselves and for everything around them, there is no need to scale anything down. -Sadhguru"

"How deeply you touch another life is how rich your life is. -Sadhguru"

"As many colors of the rainbow are an outcome of one pure light, the many religions of the world are an expression of one divine source."

"Most of the time you are thinking about life, not living life."

"Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future."

"Spirituality does not mean going away from life. Spirituality means becoming alive in the fullest possible way so you are not just alive on the surface, you are alive to the core."

"True compassion is not about giving or taking. True compassion is doing just what is needed."

"Awareness is aliveness."

"Whenever you say, "I do not know something," you are flexible. Whenever you think, "I know it," you become rigid. This rigidity is not just attitude; it percolates into every aspect of your life. This rigidity is also the cause of an enormous amount of suffering in the world."

"How aware you are is how alive you are."

"Your intelligence is so deeply entangled with the social identification that you have taken on, your brains are not working in line with the life within you; it is working against your own life. That is the source of misery."

"If I choose among you, you will feel hurt. But nature has its own way of choosing. Those who are not entitled to something, drop out by themselves."

"If you use any external activity to create an inner situation, you naturally get enslaved to that external activity, and that becomes the condition for your joy. That's the basis of your slavery and bondage; unless you change that, you will never know joy as a way of being."

"In the case of Isha, the process will last in a very active way for six hundred to seven hundred years. After that, it will continue in a lowered way. But the energy part of it is indestructible. Though, right now, the teaching looks like the major part, it is actually just a small part in my life. The real work that I do is not in what I am saying or doing around the world. The real work is in the “eggs” that I lay which can’t be destroyed, which will be there forever."

"Your joy keeps crashing down repeatedly. It doesn't matter how many times you think 'This is it', it keeps falling down simply because you don't understand the mechanics of it."

"This life for me is an endeavor to help people manifest their divinity."

"How Human beings are, that is how the society will be. So, creating human beings who are flexible and willing to look at everything rather than being stuck in their ideas and opinions definitely makes for a different kind of society. And the very energy that such human being carry will influence everything around them."

"If you are joyful, whatever you do you will do it to the hilt because you have nothing to hold back, nothing to fear, isn't it?"

"Vasudev has been one of the pioneers of "environment spiritualism." At present, he is leading a massive plantation campaign - Project GreenHands in Tamil Nadu. The plantation drive had started two years ago and since then there has been a gigantic increase in the green cover in Tamil Nadu."

"The Isha Foundation set up by yogi Jaggi Vasudev in Coimbatore in 1992 aims to plant 114 million trees in Tamil Nadu by 2010. In 2006, the Foundation entered the Guinness Book of World Records by planting 852,587 saplings in 6,284 locations across Tamil Nadu in one day The foundation, which has 250,000 volunteers across 150 centres, also conducts Isha yoga programmes that are popular across the globe."

"The spiritual process is just to create the right kind of chemistry, where you are naturally peaceful, naturally joyous. When you are joyous by your very own nature, when you don't have to do anything to be happy, then the very dimension of your life, the very way you perceive and express yourself in the world will change. The very way you experience your life will change."

"When people live together without understanding each other, their survival instinct turns everything into a fight."

"Education should not be about molding children the way you want them, but about supporting their natural longing to know and blossom."

"If somebody is hurting and it does not hurt you at all, that means you have forsaken your humanity."

"When you are able to create yourself the way you want, you can craft your Destiny the way you want as well."

"When you are seeking happiness through your action, you are always enslaved to the external situation. As long as you are enslaved to the external situation, you will always be in some level of suffering because the outside situation is never going to be hundred percent in your control."

"The best thing you can do for your family, your children, society, and the world around you is to enhance yourself."

"Genius is not individual. Genius is that dimension of life which is the source of creation which is there in a seed form in every human being. Whether we will create the atmosphere to unlock that or we will keep it supressed, is what the parents can do or not do. Please in some way let their (chidren) genius unfold."

"Life is about Consciousness – not concerns, compulsions, or conflict. May the coming months bring the profoundness of human existence that leads to a blissful life."

"Prejudice is poison, fed to us from an early age by our families, religions and societies."

"There is no need to aspire to greatness. If you go beyond concerns of 'what about me,' you will anyway be a great human being."

"Without the necessary energy, being aware is extremely difficult."

"Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Yoga is about experiencing it."

"The basic purpose of life and the basic purpose of education is to enhance one’s boundaries of perception. I don’t want the children to just survive after ten years of schooling here. They must blossom and flower wherever they go. -Sadhguru (on Isha Vidhya rural education project)"

"If you are wired to your memory, repetitions will happen and redundancy will come; but if you are paying attention, that changes your ability to look at things"