Sadhguru: 'Without spirituality, success is mediocre'

Rashmi Bansal, best-selling author and rediff.com columnist, interviews Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation for lessons in life and leadership.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is the founder of Isha, a movement dedicated to the science of inner wellbeing. I think of him as a CEO -- or Chief Ecstasy Officer.

Sadhguru's eyes sparkle. His cheeks glow. He is fully alive and present, from moment to moment.

A being shining with wisdom for our everyday world.

In this interview, he talks about how spirituality and success are closely interconnected. And why 'relentless devotion' is the formula to achieving anything you desire. Anything at all.

...

I want to start with a very basic question.

Until five years ago, I wasn't into this world of spirituality. Most of us feel that this really isn't for us, at this stage in life. Young people, especially, feel it's something to get into when they are much older. What do you think is the right stage, or the right age, to get involved in the spiritual dimension of life?

If you see spirituality as a disability, then you must do it just before you die.

But if you see spirituality as empowerment, then tell me when should it happen -- at the beginning of your life or at the end of your life?

This is a spiritual process of great empowerment. It should start at the very earliest stage in your life. I would say it should start with children; if that's not possible, at least with youth.

That's why, at Isha, there are more youth than old people. It's the young who seek; the only thing the old seek is a resting place. They don't want to know truth.

Generally, it's the youth who have the strength and the inquisitiveness and the longing to seek. And these are, fundamentally, things for a spiritual process -- that one has the effervescence to seek.

The spiritual process is definitely for the youth. And, because I am so young (lightly touches his white beard), I can say by the youth (breaks into laughter).

...

What is your definition of 'success' in this day and age, when people are mostly obsessed with success, achievement, getting as much as possible as early as possible...?

What role does a spiritual process play in the life of someone wanting success in conventional terms?

Whatever you wish to do... if you have some sense of involvement in it, you want to do it well. If you want to do it well, it just doesn't come because you desire to do it well.

Success will not come because you desire it. It comes because you are competent. And competence will not come if you don't enhance yourself in some way. Right now, the only way people are trying to enhance themselves is by going through some educational process.

Education just gives you information and knowledge. It does not give you insight and inspiration.

The spiritual process is a tremendous inspiration and an insight and an energy... an unbridled energy within you. Without this, I don't see how any human being can succeed at anything he wishes to do... whether it's sport or art or sport or music or career or business, or whatever you want.

How will anybody succeed if he is not inspired? If he does not have a certain level of insight into what he is doing? If he doesn't have the necessary amount of energy required to carry on relentlessly, no matter what the outside situations are!

This is spiritual process. So if you want success, you must equip yourself with an inner strength. Without that, your success will be very mediocre and it could be very temporary.

...

Would it then be correct to say that any great creation or enterprise in the world has a spiritual dimension? Let me just take one example -- Steve Jobs and Apple computers.

You are all Apple disciples...! You only talk about Apple. Quietly, many other people have created many other things without promoting themselves.

Has anything significant on this planet ever been done without somebody having a great sense of devotion to what he is doing? It doesn't matter what it is. Nothing great has ever been done without some human being absolutely devoted to what he is doing.

Whether it's business, sport, art, career, whatever -- without being totally devoted, it will not happen.

A devotee does not mean someone who goes to the temple. A devotee means he is in unconditional involvement with something. It is because that involvement is there, an involvement which is beyond reason, that people go beyond limited levels of success and hit phenomenal levels of success.

At the same time, success may not happen just because you are competent, just because you are doing something. There is also a situational parameter to it.

If you wrote these books (Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, Connect the Dots and I Have a Dream) a thousand years ago, they would throw it into the bin. In today's situation, it's relevant. Maybe a hundred years later, it will be irrelevant again. We don't know.

So... it is also situational. It is not all yours.

A hundred years ago, if a very, very smart businessman he handled Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), he was considered super. Today, even small-time thieves are taking Rs 100-200 crores (Rs 1-2 billion). Politicians are talking of thousands of crores. This doesn't mean these people are 'more successful' than those people (from a hundred years ago).

Everybody is successful according to the scale of the situation. The scale is set by the situation. Now, the thing is, your 'success' is truly success when it changes the situation, rather than fitting into the situation. Some people are successful in this way; it becomes a game-changing success, rather than trying to fit into the situation.

But that will not happen unless someone has a great sense of devotion and involvement in what he is doing. Devotion is simply absolute involvement. It is involvement without any expectation; involvement beyond reason.

...

That happens to very few people...

That's because people keep changing their priorities too often. When you look at most hugely successful people -- at some time in their life, people around them thought they were 'no good for anything' because they were too involved with something.

There are many other people like that. All of them may not find the same level of recognition in the world but I still consider them successful because they have given themselves to something. What they do today may find fruit after a hundred years because somebody takes the next step.

Success is not necessarily about recognition. Recognition will come sometimes, sometimes it will not come... depending upon the situation itself and the society in which we live. But the important thing is, as a human being, did you get to use yourself fully?

The kind of body you have, the kind of mind you have, the kind of intelligence you have -- did you get to use all of it in doing something?

A human need is not to get this or that, it is find expression... to find who you are, as much as you can.

In the process, what comes back to you is a matter of situation. Sometimes, situations offer more. Sometimes, they offer less. But that does not mean you are 'more' successful or 'less' successful.

You are successful because you have done what you really want to do. And you have done it to the full extent possible.