Why Misery?

Being happy or unhappy is actually your choice. By nature you want to be happy. This is not a teaching or a philosophy; this is your true nature. Every creature wants to be happy. Everything that you are doing, every single act you are performing is in pursuit of happiness in some way. For example, why would you want to serve people? Because serving people gives you happiness. Somebody else wants to make a lot of money, because that gives them happiness. Why do you want to go to heaven? Only because somebody has told you that if you go to heaven, you will be happy.

Whatever every human being is doing on this planet, even if he is giving away his life to somebody, he is doing it because it gives him happiness. So happiness is the fundamental goal of life. After doing all that you are doing, if happiness is not happening, somewhere you have missed the ABCs of life; the fundamentals of life have been missed. When you were a child, without doing anything you were simply happy. Then somewhere along the way, you lost this. Why did you lose it? Because you got deeply identified with that which you are not – your body and your mind.

What you call your mind is actually just the stuff you have picked up from social situations around you. Depending upon what kind of society you have been exposed to, that is the kind of mind you have acquired. Everything in your mind right now is something you picked up from outside. You picked it up and got identified with it. As long as you are not identified with it, you can collect any kind of garbage you want but you got so identified with it that now it is causing you misery. This body is also not yours; you picked it up from the earth. You were born with a tiny body, which your parents gave you. After that, you ate plants and animals and grew. You borrowed it from the earth; it is not yours. But you have become so deeply identified with it, you think this is you. No wonder you suffer.

The whole process of spirituality is only to dis-identify with that which you are not. When you don’t know what you really are, can you search for it? If you search, only your imagination will run wild. So the only thing that you can do is, whatever you are not, start discounting that. When everything is discounted, there is something which cannot be discounted. When you arrive at that, you will see there is no reason for misery in this world.

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.