Spiritually clean

SOME years ago, I was invited to a school in Trichy to speak to the students. When I asked what they wanted to do with their lives, many 14-year-old boys told me they wanted to join those professions that they believed were the most corrupt!

One boy said, “I want to become a Regional Transport Officer.” I asked him, “Why? Are you interested in motor vehicle reform or something?” He said, “No, I can make a lot of money there.”

When most people talk of corruption, it is in the context of politics or public life. But it is important to start looking at corruption in a more fundamental way. It begins in your own mind. Between your right hand and your left, you have deemed one superior and the other inferior. When this is the state of your mind, corruption is inevitable. As soon as you say something is ‘mine’ and something else ‘not mine’, the process of corruption has begun. As I once said, there seems to be a small misunderstanding about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Einstein said ‘everything is relative’; people seem to have understood it as ‘relatives are everything’!

I am often asked about the level of corruption in spirituality today. Firstly, spiritual corruption cannot be seen in isolation from corruption in other areas. Integrity has to be worked at, whether on the personal or the political level, the social or the spiritual level.

In the name of spirituality today, anyone can write a book; anyone can impart a meditation. To make spirituality available to everyone may look like a wonderful and romantic ideal, but once a process of trivialisation sets in, spirituality degenerates into little more than a joke. There was a time when a spiritual person was revered, but today, in popular perception, he’s either a joker or
merits a criminal investigation.

At Isha, we make sure the training of teachers is an exacting process for this reason. This is not for someone who wants do one week of yoga and get a teaching diploma. If spirituality becomes a career, it will not last. A person must value this process above his life; only then it works the way it is meant to.

People often ask how to distinguish between real and fake spirituality. It can be a hard job because sometimes the counterfeit looks better than the real thing. First, you must see what it is doing to you. Maybe you saw God. So what? What has it achieved? What is the transformation it has produced? Have you become a more joyful, more intense human being? Have you become a better life?

When people come to a spiritual place, they are walking in with a certain vulnerability. It is our responsibility to see that the most vulnerable creature entering this space is not misused in any way, because once a spiritual system acquires acertain baggage, it will no longer be effective. If we want to establish human consciousness, it is our responsibility to offer paths that stand up to public scrutiny.

As a mystic, I am not someone who fits into a conventionally logical scheme of things. But I have chosen to clip my wings so I can present certain spiritual processes logically to the world. These are sacrifices I make consciously because I know that, in the long run, establishing a clean spiritual path is most important—more important than performing some phenomenal feats that might win immediate attention, but will compromise a spiritual tradition in the long run.

Corruption in the spiritual world needs to be handled more strictly because this is an area where people enter with a certain level of trust. So whether it is a doctor who handles matters of life and death, or a spiritual guru who addresses the deeper aspects of life, it is very important that misuse of any kind is severely dealt with.

And yet, there are thousands of people all over this country doing fantastic work, who often receive little or no attention. One of the greatest assets of this country is the depth and profundity of its spiritual heritage. It would be unfortunate if a few scandals led us to conclude that all spirituality is spurious.

SOME years ago, I was invited to a school in Trichy to speak to the students. When I asked what they wanted to do with their lives, many 14-year-old boys told me they wanted to join those professions that they believed were the most corrupt!

One boy said, “I want to become a Regional Transport Officer.” I asked him, “Why? Are you interested in motor vehicle reform or something?” He said, “No, I can make a lot of money there.”

When most people talk of corruption, it is in the context of politics or public life. But it is important to start looking at corruption in a more fundamental way. It begins in your own mind. Between your right hand and your left, you have deemed one superior and the other inferior. When this is the state of your mind, corruption is inevitable. As soon as you say something is ‘mine’ and something else ‘not mine’, the process of corruption has begun. As I once said, there seems to be a small misunderstanding about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Einstein said ‘everything is relative’; people seem to have understood it as ‘relatives are everything’!

I am often asked about the level of corruption in spirituality today. Firstly, spiritual corruption cannot be seen in isolation from corruption in other areas. Integrity has to be worked at, whether on the personal or the political level, the social or the spiritual level.

In the name of spirituality today, anyone can write a book; anyone can impart a meditation. To make spirituality available to everyone may look like a wonderful and romantic ideal, but once a process of trivialisation sets in, spirituality degenerates into little more than a joke. There was a time when a spiritual person was revered, but today, in popular perception, he’s either a joker or
merits a criminal investigation.

At Isha, we make sure the training of teachers is an exacting process for this reason. This is not for someone who wants do one week of yoga and get a teaching diploma. If spirituality becomes a career, it will not last. A person must value this process above his life; only then it works the way it is meant to.

People often ask how to distinguish between real and fake spirituality. It can be a hard job because sometimes the counterfeit looks better than the real thing. First, you must see what it is doing to you. Maybe you saw God. So what? What has it achieved? What is the transformation it has produced? Have you become a more joyful, more intense human being? Have you become a better life?

When people come to a spiritual place, they are walking in with a certain vulnerability. It is our responsibility to see that the most vulnerable creature entering this space is not misused in any way, because once a spiritual system acquires acertain baggage, it will no longer be effective. If we want to establish human consciousness, it is our responsibility to offer paths that stand up to public scrutiny.

As a mystic, I am not someone who fits into a conventionally logical scheme of things. But I have chosen to clip my wings so I can present certain spiritual processes logically to the world. These are sacrifices I make consciously because I know that, in the long run, establishing a clean spiritual path is most important—more important than performing some phenomenal feats that might win immediate attention, but will compromise a spiritual tradition in the long run.

Corruption in the spiritual world needs to be handled more strictly because this is an area where people enter with a certain level of trust. So whether it is a doctor who handles matters of life and death, or a spiritual guru who addresses the deeper aspects of life, it is very important that misuse of any kind is severely dealt with.

And yet, there are thousands of people all over this country doing fantastic work, who often receive little or no attention. One of the greatest assets of this country is the depth and profundity of its spiritual heritage. It would be unfortunate if a few scandals led us to conclude that all spirituality is spurious.

Sadhguru, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader (www.ishafoundation.org)