Sadhguru: Practise Bhakti to banish negative judgement of others

SADHGURU: Devotion is like a love affair with creation. Generally, people’s idea of love is discrimination.

You love one person, not the other. If you look at one person, you are full of sweet emotions. If you look at the next person, you are full of negative emotions.

This is discrimination, not love. Because there are needs to be fulfilled, you play this trick. You would hate me too if I did not fulfill your needs.

Somewhere, you have physical, emotional, psychological, maybe economic, and whatever other kinds of needs. If the person that you claim to love does not fulfill your needs, your love affair will turn into a hate affair.

If you really want to know the sweetness of love, bhakti is needed. Bhakti means, at least initially, to constantly, consciously practise not to discriminate. Whether it is a tree, an insect, a bird, an animal, a man, a woman, or a child – learn to look at everything the same way.

If you think one piece of creation is more or less than another, you have completely missed the craft of creation. That which is the source of creation has paid as much attention to creating an ant as it has to creating a human being.

If the Creator is willing to pay that much attention to an ant, does it not deserve your attention? Bhakti means to be non-discriminatory.

Look At Everything The Same Way

If you have no emotion, look at everything with no emotion. If you have emotion, look at everything with emotion. Both are fine with me. Do not try to force sweetness you do not have. If you have absolutely no emotion for anything, if you look at everything the same way, that will also work. The important thing is not to further divide the world.

Right now, there is a division between what you consider as yourself and what is not. Yoga means trying to transcend that division.

With thoughts such as “I like this – I don’t like that. This is okay – that is not okay. I love this – I hate that,” you are further dividing the world. With that kind of attitude, it will just be a stupid exercise and you call it yoga – it is not going to work.

Yoga means to constantly see how to remove the boundary that has until now separated you from the rest of the universe. An individual transforming himself or herself into a universal nature is yoga. If you do not remove this boundary but establish it further, you may do circus in the morning and evening, but you cannot call this yoga.

Living a life of fulfillment, living a life of knowing, living a life of merging with the universe, becoming larger than the physical self is the only worthwhile thing to do. If you have paid attention to life and you are not a deprived human being, you will know the only worthwhile thing to do in the world is to become larger than the trap of this body.

Without transcending this discriminatory mind, without establishing a non-discriminatory way of looking at everything, you will never be a yogi.

Ranked among the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru was conferred the “Padma Vibhushan”, the Indian government’s highest annual civilian award, in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.