SADHGURU’S MODERN YOGA
The ideas of Sadhguru as expressed in his book Inner Engineering and his talks show a path to transcend the conflict between leftwing and Hindu nationalist ideologies in India. Sadhguru has said, “To live and operate in the world, you may have to identify with something. Play with your identifications — don’t let them rule you.” He adds that education enables a child to blossom through an uncluttered intelligence, free from identifications with religion, politics, or prejudice. As a result, his approach to politics is highly unorthodox. He advocates the abolition of political parties because they have become the new religion. People should decide who they will vote for on the basis of the candidate’s quality rather than political affiliation. Otherwise, the democratic process is subverted and feudalism reigns.
The key to understanding Sadhguru’s social and political standpoint is his insistence that without inner transformation, significant betterment of the human condition is not attainable. This is where he departs from the most common leftwing positions. However, unlike many politicians of a religious bent, he advocates not obedience to conventional forms of authority but the creation of flexible human beings who see everything with fresh eyes. These new humans are not committed to beliefs and opinions rooted in memory and social conditioning. Rather they use the inner technology of ancient Indian yoga to access the intelligence of existence itself, a way of knowing far superior to that provided by the intellect alone.
Sadhguru’s critique of our time is that the world is run by an economic engine which we serve as cogs in the machine. This machine requires the development of the intellect which is valuable for satisfying survival needs, but once such needs are provided for, the intellect poses an obstacle to experiencing the oneness of life. This doesn’t, however, mean he is anti-modern, since Sadhguru does 70% of his work in rural areas. He recognizes that for individual transformation and social transformation to occur, economic development comes first. What are people capable of when they don’t have enough to eat?
A crucial step toward bringing about a new spiritual era is a revolution in education. Although people in rural areas must learn the necessary skills for gainful employment, once survival needs are taken care of, the emphasis shifts to the blossoming of the person. Led by teachers for whom education is a passion, the curriculum in his schools is based on physical education, yoga, and martial arts; art, dance, music, and drama; participation in community development, such as environmental and ecological programs; and presentations, clubs, and educational trips. Children enter at the age of six and at fifteen they undergo three years of monastic life after which they return to the world.
In Sadhguru’s words, “education is not about loading the child’s mind with information, but about making the child’s mind capable of razor sharp perception, capable of knowing life in its full depth and dimension. Education is about expanding the horizons of human experience and becoming inclusive.” In accord with this outlook, Sadhguru’s schools are not trying to prepare students for a career. Their goal is much loftier: “The children must blossom and flower into great human beings.” When they graduate, they will be capable of gathering and accumulating by themselves the information they need in order to be effective in the world. They will receive no certification, nor will they have any need for it, since they will possess something far more valuable: competence. Sadhguru himself has no educational credentials.
For Sadhguru, memory is not intelligence nor is it the accumulation of data and the ability to use this data. Once artificial intelligence takes over the work of calculation, consciousness will be more valued than knowledge gained through memory. People whom we now consider to possess great intelligence will lose their prominence and their function, not to mention their jobs. It is consciousness that must be developed for people to know how to live, deal with their emotions, and gain happiness. This is where yoga plays the central role.
Sadhguru has no illusions about what is at stake when he describes the ecological challenges faced by humanity today. He writes, “As a generation, ours has taken the biggest bite off the planet. Whatever we do for the environment today is neither service nor a great achievement; it is a matter of survival. It’s not the planet that is in danger today; we are.” And the cause of such looming disaster is spiritual, the perceived separation between humans and their environment. Nature is the support of human existence, and Mother Earth protects us. Through spiritual development, our lived experience dissolves the boundaries we have set up due to our ignorance.
When Sadhguru had trees planted in southern India to stave off increasing encroachment of desert due to the drying up of rivers, he recognized that the most difficult seeds to plant are in people’s minds. Without this first step, no environmental project can succeed. Although finding the best way to combat the problem is a technical issue relying on intellectual knowledge, Sadhguru, through his mass rallies and campaigns, has been raising popular awareness of the urgency to address the matter, a necessary condition for taking effective action.
At present, he has been promoting the idea of saving the soil. His idea is that farmers need to have a simple focus that they need to achieve. Otherwise, the idea will not catch on and a strong and deep people’s movement will not take hold. So far, perhaps the international agreement to stop the depletion of the ozone layer has been the most effective, because complex scientific matters were reduced to one simple target. Sadhguru proposes that the goal for a global save the soil campaign should be a minimum threshold of 3 to 6% organic content. Farmers should be given incentives for reaching this goal and there should be a mark that indicates the superior quality of food grown under such conditions. In addition, the health and nutritional benefits of eating such food should be promoted.
Sadhguru’s philosophy cannot be categorized as upholding a particular ideology. Capitalism is useful for bringing legions of people out of abject poverty and for mitigating feudal oppression but it has also been associated with an economics-first orientation that venerates the intellect and neglects the overall development of the human being. Individuals are responsible for their own destiny, but society is also responsible for ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest.
Yoga is an ancient practice but making it a major educational vessel is a radical departure from the status quo. Sadhguru’s educational philosophy points toward a future in which the evolution of human consciousness will be greatly accelerated, thereby fulfilling the progressive goal of realizing innate human potential. But progress in the manifest world at the level of form only occurs through an enhancement of perception, a realization of one’s innate capacity to see truly, and so, as Sadhguru says, it is a “homecoming.”
Sadhguru has also emphasized that science and spirituality are in harmony with each other. For the past 50 years or so, we have performed experiments that have shown the positive effects of yogic practice. But people in India have known this for millennia, not as the result of religious belief or doctrinal adherence but through their own experience. Observation of one’s own experience is a form of empirical study that parallels scientific observation of the material world. Sadhguru has used simple but powerful forms of expression to attract many people in India to yoga.
