What is spirituality?

Spirituality does not mean a particular practice. It is a certain way of being. To get there, there are many things to do. This is like growing a garden in your house. If the stem of the plant, the soil and the sunlight are not in an appropriate way, the plant will not yield flowers. You have to take care of those things first. Similarly, if you cultivate your body, mind, emotions and energies to a certain level of maturity, something else blossoms within you. That is spirituality.

People say they have spiritual experiences when they go to the ocean or the mountains. The oceans and the mountains may be beautiful – you must enjoy the world the way it is – but you must understand, a fish in the ocean doesn't think it is a spiritual experience because it is there all the time.

What has happened during those moments of experience is essentially that some barrier within you broke. You were in a shell. This broke and became a bigger shell. Once you get used to this bigger shell, it feels the same as the previous one. How big a shell will settle you for good? How much expansion will satisfy you? Even if you were made the king or queen of this planet, you will look at the stars because there is something within you which does not like boundaries. Every human being is looking to become boundless. If you give him whatever he wants, he is fine for three days. On the fourth day he starts looks for something else. Somebody may label this as greed. I say this is life process in the wrong direction. If you want to become boundless and you attempt it through physicality, you are essentially trying to go towards boundlessness in instalments. Can you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and one day count to infinity? You will only become endless counting. That is not the way. If you want to know boundless nature, you must perceive something which is beyond the physical – something you might have touched when you jumped into the ocean or saw a mountain or sang a song. You may have touched it in so many ways. But now the question is of sustainability.

There are very simple, subjective technologies – a simple practice – where by investing just 21 minutes a day, you can start your day with a very phenomenal spiritual experience within you, which leaves you peaceful and joyful throughout the day. Apart from that, one simple thing every human being has to do is to make his sense of involvement indiscriminate. If you look at a person, a tree, or a cloud, you are equally involved as you are with your own body and breath. If you have no discrimination as to which is better, and you are equally involved with every aspect in life, you will be constantly spiritual.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service