Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is the spiritual head of Isha Foundation USA. He is a realized master, yogi and mystic from South India who embodies the universal truths of the great spiritual masters of east and west, which transcend religious divide. Through public talks and yoga programs, he teaches a unique perspective to all seeking a higher expression of life, inner peace, health and fulfillment.

As a world spiritual leader and spokesperson, Sadhguru inspires international audiences with his spiritual and cultural views on human values. His speaking tours and media interviews provide a forum for him to address hundreds of thousands of people on the synthesis of spirituality and science and his vision for establishing a spiritual foundation in all dimensions of life. Sadhguru encourages people to evaluate and enhance their responsibility and contribution to society and the world. He affirms that it is only through individual involvement that we can change the world.

Sadhguru is a member of the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, which he attended at the United Nations in 2000. As an active supporter of the World Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders' efforts to relieve suffering, foster harmony, and promote the dignity of all life, Sadhguru works to introduce people to essential changes in thought and action that support peaceful possibilities. His initiatives for world peace and his outreach programs for life-term prisoners, destitute children and rural rejuvenation are internationally renowned. By working in harmony with all spiritual traditions, Sadhguru helps transform individuals as a lasting way to establish a peaceful and prosperous global society.

Born in Mysore à Karnataka, he graduated from Mysore University. He started yogic practices like Pranayams and Asanas under Shri Raghavendra Rao, popularly known as Malladihalli Swami. At the age of 25, he had a spontaneous experience of the Self (Divine or Ultimate Consciousness) that completely changed his life. His source of wisdom comes from direct, inner experience. In Sanskrit, "Guru" means dispeller of darkness, and "Sadh" means within. Sadhguru developed Isha Yoga, Yoga of the Divine, as a spiritual science for hundreds of thousands of initiates around the world to transcend the body and mind in order to reach the ultimate reality, the awareness of the essential divine nature within all human beings.

Sadhguru is the author of four books including, Dhyanalinga: The Silent Revolution; Encounter the Enlightened, Eternal Echoes and a new release, Mystic‚s Musings. He is a great teacher and humanitarian who tirelessly devotes his life to advance human consciousness by helping individuals break through limitations into their natural unbounded state. In his own words, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev distinctly defines his life and work, "This life for me is an endeavor to help people experience and express their divinity."

SG = SOUL GRAFFITI
SJV = SADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV

SG: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A REALIZED MASTER?

SJV: Now when we say the English word master it means so many things. But on the spiritual path, when we say a master, what we are saying is that he is not a teacher. He is not trying to teach something. He is trying to share something, which is him. So in Indian culture we would say a Guru. A Guru is not a teacher. He may not have anything to teach, but still he is a Guru. Because his way of being is such, whether he speaks or he doesn’t speak, something happens. With a teacher, only if he speaks, something happens. In fact, nothing much happens, only that you learn something. With a master, the closer and closer you get to him, the less and less you know him. With a teacher the closer and closer you get to him, the more and more you know. As you get closer and closer to a master you become an utter fool. As you get closer and closer to a teacher you become very smart. That is the basic difference. One kills you (the ego), another nurtures you. Why on the path of spirituality, as much importance has been given to Guru as God himself is simply not because he is bigger than God but because he is a better possibility. He is limited and unlimited at the same moment.

SG: WHAT DOES KINDNESS MEAN TO YOU?

SJV: See if you want to hold a flood with a band-aid, it’s up to you. You will know after sometime it will not hold. See they have taught you ‘kindness’ so you went on being kind to everybody and in the end you’re so frustrated. The next person who comes, you might want to murder that person. Yes! Why they’re telling you kindness is because they don’t know how to be love, so they’re talking kindness. Substitutes. Because they don’t know how to be joyous and loving they’re talking about kindness and gratitude. I would like to see a world where nobody needs anybody’s kindness. If I see you as a part of myself I don’t have any gratitude for you. I have no kindness in me.

Now stability will not come by playing tricks with your mind. It will hold you for a while, definitely. It is just that the flood will build up and burst in a bigger way. This practice of kindness has driven people to madness. Instead of understanding you’re suppressing. This suppression will not release you. Why should you practice kindness? Only because somewhere inside you have a tremendous cruelty within you, isn’t it? You don’t experience others as life, only you experience yourself as life. When everything else is there only for your well-being, you will use me and also say ‘thank you.’ If you see all as part of yourself whatever you do is not a question of using somebody, it’s just being together and sharing. Otherwise where is the need to practice kindness? So instead of changing the root of your experience, which is bringing all this, you are trying to fix it in subtle ways. Don’t sugarcoat that which is within you. It is better you address the basic root of from where it’s springing.

The very process of spirituality is to become in such a way that, if I sit here all the world is within me. All existence is within me. The word yoga means “union.” When you experience everything as one in your consciousness, then you are in yoga.

SG: HOW CAN WE EXPAND THE LOVE WITHIN OUR HEARTS?

SJV: Beyond this identity you call as “myself” is a certain amount of energy functioning in a certain way. What kind of expression this energy finds is what your life is right now. This energy, this moment, can become love, joy, misery, or hatred. This same energy can become ecstasy. Yes? At different points in your life you have felt this same energy finding expression in different ways. How did your energy find expression in different ways? Whichever way the eternal situations were, accordingly, you reacted to that. Or in other words, your life energies are in deep enslavement to the external situation.

As long as your life energies are in deep enslavement with the outside, you are bound to live like an accidental person. If situations around you are conducive, you are loving. If situations around you are boiling, you also boil. The basic aspect of being human means that everything in you should happen by choice not by compulsion. If you had a choice as to what kind of expression this energy should find right now what expression would you offer it? Love and joy- there’s no question about it. Nobody needs to teach you to choose to be joyous. That life has already chosen. Finding a conscious expression to your life energies is the important aspect of being here as a human being.

SG: WHAT IS THE LARGEST OBSTACLE TO PEACE?

SJV: The moment you start believing in things that are not a living experience for you, you are natural conflict. Now, what is the intelligence in moving into belief? The only thing is your ego feels comfortable “ I know” is the only way you can make the ego grow, isn’t it? “I don’t know” is a big loss for the ego. When you say, “I don’t know” you are incapable of conflict, you are a very humble and wonderful human being. See, you may be a very peaceful, nice human being today, but when somebody challenges your belief tomorrow, anger will arise within you, because you are so deeply identified with what you believe in. The moment you are identified, your identity is threatened with the belief system. Your survival instinct takes over and you will fight. We are going on talking about bringing peace to the world. I was a delegate in the United Nations for the Millennium World Peace Summit where we talked about bringing harmony and peace among religions. Why the need for tolerance and forgiveness? You think somebody’s wrong, you’re right. Now you think he has to be saved. He thinks you have to be saved. Both of you believe things that you do not know really. If you realize “I don’t know,” you cannot fight. Without being capable of bringing peace into your own being, there is no way you are going to be capable of bringing peace to the world. Isn’t it so?

If you can’t make this little mind peaceful, are you going to make the world peaceful? Whatever you see in the world is just a projection of your little mind, an enlarged projection of your mind. Is there anything happening in the world which is not happening in your mind? Now, this science of yoga is a way to look inward. You cannot look inward if you’re identified with something because the moment you’re identified, all doors are closed to you. The very way you think and feel depends on what you’re identified with. Right now let’s say, for example, you identify yourself as “I am an American”. Now, a situation happens, the very way you feel and respond to it is in a certain way. At that moment in national interest maybe it’s a good thing, but still, instead of reacting to it you can respond to it more intelligently. When you’re identified, you just become a reaction. You have no choice to think any other way. You have no capability of seeing the other person’s point of view. You have no capability of seeing from where the problem is springing. You will just react. It’s better that you come from your intelligence, not from your reaction. If you have to come from your intelligence, first thing is you must be able to look at things just the way they are, not from an identity. The moment you look at anything from an identity, you are prejudiced about it, isn’t it?

SG: THE WESTERN WORLD TEACHES US TO LOOK OUTSIDE AND TO SEEK MATERIAL OBJECTIVES AND WORLDLY POSSESSIONS AND TO CONFORM TO SOCIETAL CONSTRUCTED VALUES AND IDEAS. LIVING IN THIS CULTURE, HOW DOES ONE GAIN GREATER PERSPECTIVE OR ABILITY TO LOOK WITHIN?

SJV: Who can deny what is within you? Only yourself. So, that aspect of you, what you call as myself, is just a bundle of conclusions that you have made about life. These conclusions as to what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s not good, will not allow you to move. You are the only barrier. If you remove yourself, then to be spiritual, to be peaceful is natural. It is just getting back home. What you are referring to as myself is just your mind and body right now. You have to use your body and mind, but you don’t have to be identified with them. To be spiritual means to become free from the body and mind heaps that you have gathered. Once you have broken loose from these two, you’re back home. It’s very simple. If you become willing, it is one moment. Willingness means you are willing to drop all the conclusions that you have made. You’re willing to be here as your creator intended you to be. Simply life.

Yoga and spirituality is about seeing how to transcend all limitations. If you want to transcend your limitations the first basis that you need to set is: stop fooling around with ideas, ideologies and beliefs. Just see what I know, I know, and what I do not know, I do not know. As you go deeper into this, you will see how little you truly know about yourself. When you come to a big “I don’t know” knowing is just the next step, just one moment. The only reason the spiritual process seems to be such a struggle is you are not willing let go of your conclusions. Otherwise, there is really no struggle, it’s very simple. What you call as truth, peace, enlightenment, is something that is already there within you. It is not somewhere else to be attained. Yoga is just a device to help you see that it is there, that’s all.