Grace and devotion

If you look at yourself as a machine, you have brains, you have body, you have everything. What you call as 'Grace' is the lubrication. Without the lubrication you have a great engine but you get stuck at every point. Any number of people like this are there on the planet – they are intelligent, they are capable, but at every corner in their life they get stuck because there is no lubrication. Whatever is considered as 'Grace,' seems to pervade some people's lives, and for somebody else, everything is a struggle.

To become receptive to this Grace, so that the process of life becomes graceful, the easiest way would be devotion. But the mind is very cunning; it cannot devote itself to anybody or anything. You can sing songs of devotion, but you have your own calculation, 'All that is okay, but what has God done for me?' Calculating minds cannot be devout. Trying to be devout will just be a waste of time, and life. I hear any amount of so-called devotional songs and music. This is too calculated; there is no devotion in it.

A devotee is not somebody's devotee; devotion is a quality. Devotion means a certain single-pointedness – you are constantly focused towards one thing. Once a person has become like this that his thought, emotion, and everything has become in one direction, now Grace will naturally happen to that person; he becomes receptive. What you are devoted to, whom you are devoted to is not the issue. 'No, I want to be a devotee, but I have a doubt whether God exists or not.' These are all the predicaments of a thinking mind. What you need to know is, God does not exist. But where there is a devotee, God exists.

The power of devotion is such that it can create the Creator. The depth of what we refer to as devotion is such that even if God is not existent, it can bring it into existence. Thinking minds always have an allergy to devotion because devotees have made such fools of themselves. This is simply because fear is passing off as devotion.

With a lot of people, extreme deviousness is passing off as devotion right now. If one knows the joy of devotion, devotion is truly for the intelligent, not for the stupid because without devotion there is no profundity to your life. Nothing is worthwhile if you analyse it with your thought. The whole existence, you yourself, nobody in the world is worth anything if you just cut it down with the knife of your intellect.

Only when devotion arises, depth comes into one's life. Devotion does not mean going to the temple and doing 'Ram, Ram.' Anybody who is one-pointed, anybody who can absolutely give himself to whatever he is doing is a natural devotee. He need not have a deity to become a devotee – he is a devotee. God will happen. It is not because there is God, devotion has come. Because there is devotion, God has happened.

(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru's wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. www.ishafoundation.org)