Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy by SadhguruWhat is destiny? What is the nature of human mind? What does it mean to respond to life?
In this book, Sadhguru takes us into the detailed mechanism of how a human system is designed. From topics like responsibility to mystical dimensions of chakras and energy channels, he delves deep into the engineering of a well-designed human individual. With cutting insights and crisp pointers, he describes to the readers how to keep and maintain our individual human systems as well as sadhanas (tools) for meditation.
In this review, I share 43 insights that I learned from reading the book. Read on, get inspired and enjoy!
1. If you can use it when you want and put it aside when you don’t, the mind can be a fantastic tool.
2. The only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation.
3. Self-transformation is not incremental self-improvement. Self-transformation is achieved not by morals or ethics or attitudinal or behavioral changes, but by experiencing the limitless nature of who we are. Self-transformation means nothing of the old remains. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life
4. The world is not "out there".
5. Language is no more than a conspiracy devised by human beings. If someone speaks, they are only making sounds, and we are making up the meanings.
6. if you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking.
7. Do it for the fun of it!
8. An extraordinary intelligence within each of us that is capable of transforming a piece of bread or an apple into the human body in a single afternoon. Not a small feat!
9. it is possible to be ecstatic in one’s adulthood as in one's childhood. It is possible for every human being because all we can ever experience happens from within us.
10. We are all seeking to become infinite.
11. Well-being is just a deep sense of pleasantness within. If your body feels pleasant, we call this health. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call this peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this joy. If your emotions become pleasant, we call this love. If they become very pleasant, we call this compassion. If your life energies become pleasant, we call this bliss. If they become very pleasant, we call this ecstasy. This is all that you are seeking.
12. The human mechanism is the most sophisticated physical form on the planet. You are the greatest piece of technology, but the problem is you don’t know where the keyboard is. It’s like you’re handling a supercomputer with a pickaxe and a wrench!
13. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.
14. Human life is longing for unlimited expansion, and that is the only thing that will settle you for good.
15. Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement. It is a homecoming. Your senses give you the impression that you are experiencing the outside, but you have never experienced the outside. When you realize that all that you experience is within, that absolute homecoming is enlightenment.
16. When it comes to our inner nature, there is only one governing principle: borderless unity. Our physical and social worlds are governed by boundaries. Our inner world needs none.
17. If you go outward, it is an endless journey. If you turn inward, it is just one moment. In that one moment, everything changes. In that one moment, you are not in pursuit of joy anymore. Instead, your life becomes an expression of your joyfulness.
18. To mold situations the way you want them you must first know who you are. Who you are is not the sum total of accumulations you have made.
19. Creating your own destiny does not mean you have to control every situation in the world. Creating your destiny is about steadily heading toward your well-being and your ultimate nature, no matter what the content of life is around you. It simply means making yourself in such a way that, whatever the events and situations around you, you don’t get crushed by them; you ride them
20. The physical and psychological dimensions belong to the realm of polarities—pain-pleasure, love-hate, masculine-feminine, and so on. If you have one, the other is bound to follow. But when you move into the fundamental dimension of who you are, you are beyond all polarities. You now become blissful by your own nature. You are the master of your own destiny
21. This ability to respond to the entire universe is already a physical reality. It is only your thoughts and emotions that need to become conscious of the fact.
22. Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom. Responsibility is the ability to respond. The choice is always before you: to respond consciously to the present; or to react compulsively to it.
23. The wealth of life lies only in how you have allowed its experiences to enrich you. Filth can blossom into the fragrance of a flower. Manure can transform itself into the sweetness of a mango. No adversity is an impediment if you are in a state of conscious response
24. Every subatomic particle in your body is responding in a limitless way to the great dance of energies that is the cosmos.
25. Once your joy is on self-start rather than push-start, you have upgraded your technology.
26. The physical body is the first gift of which we are aware. It is also the ultimate machine. Every other machine on the planet has come out of this.
27. The very source of creation is functioning within you.
28. There are two basic forces within you. One is the instinct of self-preservation, which compels you to build walls around yourself to protect yourself. The other is the constant desire to expand, to become boundless. These two longings—to preserve and to expand—are not opposing forces, though they may seem to be.
29. The human body is capable of downloading the entire cosmos
30. If you observe the natural cycle of the body, you will find that there is something called a mandala. A mandala is a cycle of forty to forty-eight days that the human system goes through. In every cycle, there will be three days on which your body does not need food.
31. Your body is just a loan from this planet. What you call “death” is just Mother Earth reclaiming the loan that she offered to you.
32. Fear is not a natural part of their existence. Fear is a result of the incompleteness of your existence.
33. Only when you recognize your mortal nature do you want to know what more there is to life. It is then that the spiritual process opens up.
34. Death is not the end of life. Death is simply the end of the body.
35. If you tell yourself you don’t want to think a certain thought, that is precisely the first thing your mind will produce! That is the nature of the human mind.
36. You are, therefore you may think.
37. Learn to discern the real from the illusory, what is existentially true from what is psychologically true.
38. Avoiding something is not freedom from it. Such morality is based on exclusion. Spirituality, on the other hand, is born of inclusion
39. Spirituality does not mean moving away from life; it means becoming alive to the core, in the fullest possible way. With age, physical agility may diminish, but the level of joy and aliveness need not. If your level of joy and aliveness is declining, you are committing suicide in installments.
40. A well-established human mind is referred to as a kalpavriksha, or a wishing tree that grants any boon.
41. If you want to experience a mountain peak, you either elevate yourself to that level, or simply look up.
42. The most generous way to live is to set an example to the rest of the world by living life full-throttle and beyond all limitations.
43. Try this. Sit alone for five minutes and see what your life would be like if you were absolutely alone in this world. If there were nobody or nothing to compare yourself with, what would you truly long for? What would really matter to you if there were no external appreciation or critique?
How do you engineer your human system?
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