Sadhguru Answers Questions About Managing Your Inner World, Spiritual Guidance, And Energising Spaces

Question: My boss wants me to listen to him even though he is wrong. I feel his ego gets in the way of him admitting to his mistakes. What should I do?

Sadhguru: The fundamental aspect of spirituality is just this: before you create an external situation the way you want, learn to create the internal situation the way you want. Which way do you want your internal situation to be? Happy or miserable? Obviously you want to be happy. Create this first because in the internal situation, there is only one ingredient – you. In the external situation there are so many different ingredients and all these ingredients will never be totally in your control. You manage, control, marshal and direct them to some extent but you never have absolute grip over all the ingredients that are functioning in the outside situation. But with the internal situation, you are the only ingredient and if you cannot manage even this one ingredient properly, how will you manage the thousand ingredients in the external situation if you are made the boss? So first learn to manage your inner situation and then do your best and become indispensable to the outside situation.

Question: To grow spiritually, is it necessary to be in the physical presence of a Guru?

Sadhguru: Being in the physical presence of somebody is needed because your perception is still so dependent on what you hear and see. Unless you see with your eyes that there is somebody sitting there, your perception does not open up.

Many people are actually not mature enough to be in the physical presence of a Guru because if you are in the Guru’s physical presence, your judgments about him will not stop. You will watch the way he eats, the way he drinks, the way he speaks, the way he mixes with people, what he does, what he does not do. From this, you will helplessly form opinions. The more opinions you create within yourself, the less receptive you become. This is one reason why a lot of Gurus always kept themselves out of reach of their disciples. Once in a way they appeared but the rest of the time, they were only available to two or three people around.

They did not do this because they had an allergy for people or because they thought they were too big to mix with people. It is just that, this was their device. They knew, if people ate, slept and walked around with them normally, people would miss their whole aspect and would just get entangled with the Guru’s personality.

So being in the Guru’s physical presence can be a blessing but can also be a big barrier because then, you will helplessly make your opinions about him and miss the whole dimension of who he is.

Question: Could you please share with us how you know how to energize things and consecrate spaces? Were you born with this capability or is this something that you have learnt over time? Could I learn this too?

Sadhguru: What we are teaching you in our programs is a methodology with which you can slowly consecrate yourself. If you do not consecrate yourself first, how can you consecrate something else? Whatever you wish to do in life, you cannot do anything that you are not. You can try to fake it, but it will not work. If you want to be able to transmit a certain quality to something or someone, first you must make it happen for yourself. What is not happening within you, you cannot make it happen in the world. In this culture, people who are doing sadhana were always told to withdraw if they were in a state of turmoil, because you should not let your mess spill to the world.

First of all, I want you to be consecrated. In a way, consecrating forms or spaces is not the ideal thing to do. Consecrating people would be easier and better – if only ninety-eight percent of human beings did not shift their priorities every few minutes. Those who are continuously making U-turns obviously have no intention to go anywhere. Now that you are here in this space of the Isha Yoga Center, unknowingly, Adiyogi [referring to the linga in Adiyogi Alayam] will seep into you. Today you are talking about consecrating spaces. Let me see if you maintain this intention long-term. If you want to consecrate anything, first you must become a living temple.

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