Development Cooperation Handbook/Interviews/Sadhguru

Interview on Youtube ⇒ playlist

Jaggi Vasudev = also also known as Sadhguru

सदगुरु जग्गी वासुदेव - சத்குரு ஜக்கி வாசுதேவ்

Sadhguru is a yogi and the founder of the Isha Foundation.

He was interviewed in Coimbatore in the last week of February 2011 by Fausto Aarya De Santis

On YouTube ⇒ Isha Foundation, Project Green Hands - playlist

On YouTube ⇒  Sadhguru - playlist

⇒  Green Hands

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev also known as Sadhguru, is an Indian yogi and mystic. He founded the Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization which offers yoga programs around the world, including India, United States, England, Lebanon and Australia. The Foundation is also involved in various social and community development activities, which have resulted in the Foundation being granted special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations He has also founded the environmental initiative Project Green Hands, the social initiative Action for Rural Rejuvenation and the rural education initiative Isha Vidhya.

He was a delegate to the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit -and a participant at the World Economic Forum in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Spirituality is inclusiveness
The very basis of spirituality is inclusiveness, because exclusiveness comes because of physicality, because physicality means boundaries, boundaries means explosiveness. Boundaries means you are on one side, I’m on the other side.

Spirituality means going beyond the physical, going beyond the physical naturally means going beyond boundaries, going beyond boundaries is inclusiveness, isn’t it?
 * Right now people are struggling to think inclusively. That struggle is not needed if your experience of life becomes absolutely inclusive. That is the spiritual process.

Is spirituality the only way forward or can non-spiritual people also have a dire of inclusive growth?

There is no one who is non-spiritual. Either you can be consciously spiritual or non-consciously spiritual. Can you just be physical? There are other dimensions of who you are. Physical is what you have gathered over a period of time, is that so? Whatever you gathered is can be yours but it cannot be you, isn’t it? Right now you sit on this stone and say this is my stone. After some time, if you sit long enough, you say, “this is me”. That is madness, isn’t it? That is what is happening with your body and your mind. Whatever you collect, whatever you accumulate it can be yours but it can never be you. If you get out of that foolishness, if you get out of that illusion, then you are spiritual. Whatever you are not conscious of does not exist for you, that is a problem with life, isn’t it? Right now behind you a huge elephant is standing. Don’t turn back and see! Such a big animal; you are not conscious of it so it does not exist for you, isn’t it? Life is like this, only what you are aware of you for exists, what you are not aware of does not exist for you. Spiritual process means that whatever this is [the whole you] you are aware of; that you do not want to leave this piece of life unexplored, that you want to know it through and through. That is the spiritual process.

Spirituality is the ultimate sense of inclusiveness. When you are able to understand and to feel in every cell of your body that what you are and what everything else we know as life, is one and the same, that is ultimate inclusiveness. When you are able to feel that you are in the path of spirituality. And for a person wants to be in that path, it is but natural that he would want to spend maximum time with life, people, in all forms. We are always thriving for personal growth; in the sense that, how as a person I can attain to the maximum of my potential. And in that pursuit you might be doing different things, but irrespective of what you are doing, your ultimate aim is to maximize your potential and grow in that direction. Ultimately, they say, existentially how much you are involved with life is all that matters. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are or what you are doing. You may be the prime-minister, a clerk in the government office or a farmer, ultimately, how involved in the life process is what is going to determine the quality of life. And your growth, in that sense, is also determined in that. So showing your involvement in whatever you do is what we call as spirituality. This in a sense also lays down the path for your development. Its not about what you do or what you don’t do but how you do is the most important thing.