Last Updated on September 2, 2024
The founder of Isha Foundation, Sadhguru is an Indian yogi and guru. He feels at home in blue jeans as much as in his loincloth. He is at peace with himself when he’s walking barefoot through the Himalayas or hitting the open road with his BMW motorcycle.
Sadhguru is not your average mystic and spiritual leader. He doesn’t adhere to mere rituals and customs. Using yogic sciences to empower modern lifestyles, he has touched the lives of many, improving their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.
Early Years
Jaggi Vasudev, popularly known as Sadhguru, was born in Myusuru, Karnataka, India, on the 3rd of September 1957. His mother was a housewife while his father served as an ophthalmologist for the Indian Railways.
Due to his father’s line of work, the family moved a lot when he was younger. When he was 12, he had met yogi Malladihalli Sri Raghavendra Swamiji, who taught him basic yoga asanas. Since then, he practiced it regularly until it led to a deeper experience.
After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Mysore, Sadhguru embraced many ventures. He tried his luck at poultry farming before entering the construction business using his father’s insurance. He succeeded both times, which resulted in a great sense of fulfillment.
Discovering His Spirituality
Sadhguru showed no interest in the conventional forms of learning when he was a child. Growing up, he was always intrigued by God and life in general. However, he didn’t have his spiritual experience until he was 25 years old.
He used to skip his classes to explore nature. Because of his occasional trips outdoors, he became fond of nature, particularly trees. Fascinated by the swaying of the trees, he discovered the art of meditation.
One day in 1982, he went up Chamundi Hill to commune with nature. He sat down on a rock, where he discovered his spirituality. Recalling that fateful day, he described his experience as a dimensional shift. He gained a deep understanding of life. At the same time, he experienced a transformative change in his outward appearance.
A few weeks later, he decided to leave his business and traveled extensively to gain more insight into his experience. After a year of traveling and meditating, he decided to share his personal experiences. He held his first yoga class with only seven students.
From Mysore, his practice quickly spread across Hyderabad and Karnataka. He would travel from one class to another using his motorcycle. He lived off the profits from renting his poultry farm, but he never charged students for attending his yoga classes. Instead, he would ask his students to donate to a charity of their choice on the final day of their program.
Isha Foundation
Discovering his capacity to reshape lives, Sadhguru launched Isha Foundation in 1993. It is a non-religious, non-profit organization which, to this day, is run entirely by volunteers.
Shortly after, he began conducting yoga classes at the Isha Yoga Center. He holds yoga classes, specifically for corporate leaders. He helps today’s leaders become more compassionate towards others and enables them to build a culture of inclusion in the current economic scenario.
Isha Foundation supports numerous social and community development programs. It launched a multi-phased initiative called Action for Rural Rejuvenation (ARR) to improve the quality of life of South India’s poorest sectors. It also created Project Green Hands, a project aiming to improve forest coverage in Tamil Nadu.
Awards and Achievements
As a well-known public figure and spiritual leader in India, Sadhguru draws in massive crowds of more than 300,000 people for group meditation.
Over the years, Sadhguru’s influence has spread worldwide. He speaks at international leadership forums, advocating for diplomacy, environmental protection, education, and economic development. His yoga programs are now offered in countries around the world, including Unites States, Singapore, Canada, China, Australia, and Nepal.
Sadhguru received the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar award for his efforts in environmental protection. The Government of India awarded him in June of 2010. He was also voted as one of the country’s most powerful people in 2012 for his ecological initiatives.
Sadhguru’s Sayings
Aside from all the awards he has been given, what Sadhguru has accomplished is help people unlock their potential through his unique meditation techniques. As a visionary of the modern age, he sees no obstacle in seeking divinity while responding to daily life obligations.
Here are 90 Sadhguru sayings to help you achieve inner well-being in your daily life.
Sadhguru Quotes
- “If you ask a tree how he feels to know that he’s spreading his fragrance and making people happy, I don’t think a tree looks at it that way. I am just like that, and it is just my nature to be like this.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “Too many people are hungry not because there is dearth of food. It is because there is dearth of love and care in human hearts.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.” – Jaggi Vasudev
- “If you resist change, you resist life.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “When pain, misery, or anger happen, it is time to look within you, not around you.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “The fear is simply because you are not living with life, You are living in your mind.” – Sadhguru
- “Love is your quality. Love is not what you do. Love is what you are.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Midnights with the Mystic
- “I am not talking about you being a spectator, I am talking about involvement. I am talking about involving yourself into life in such a way that you dissolve into it.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “People have fallen in love with words and lost the world. It’s time to regain it.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “If you think you are big, you become small. If you know you are nothing, you become unlimited. That’s the beauty of being a human being.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Pebbles Of Wisdom
- “Krishna says in the Gita, “The worst crime in the world is indecision.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “Sex in the body is fine. Money in the wallet is fine. It is only a problem when they enter your mind.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Three Truths of Well Being
- “Learning to listen is the essence of intelligent living.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “You have too much social influence upon you. You are not going by your own nature. People do so many nonsensical life-negative things because they don’t want to be left out of the scene around them.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Pebbles Of Wisdom
- “There is so much adventure that only a youth can experience. Youth is not the time to languish in pleasure – youth is the time for exploration and adventure” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
- “Mind is not in any one place. Every cell in this body has its own intelligence. The brain is sitting in your head, but mind is all over the place.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “If you think hundred percent logically, there is really no possibility of life.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “Do you understand? Man needs entertainment simply to hide his madness. If he was perfectly sane, he would not need entertainment. He could just sit and watch this bamboo grow. He does not really need entertainment.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “The quality of your life depends on how well you manage your body, your mind, your emotion, your situations, your home, your communities, nations, your life in general and the world.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Inner Management
- “Confidence and stupidity are a very dangerous combination, but they generally go together.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Yogis are not against pleasure. It is just that they are unwilling to settle for little pleasures. They are greedy.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Nothing has ever been out of place in this existence. Things have been out of place in human societies.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Three Truths of Well Being
- “The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside. On” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Death is a fiction created by people who live their lives in total unawareness. There is only life, life and life alone, moving from one dimension to another, another dimension to another.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Life and Death in One Breath
- “Your life is just about craving, and making something else tremendously more important than you.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mystic’s Musings
- “When you have that, you dream of this and when you have this, you dream of that. Maybe you call it romantic, but it’s just plain stupidity. It destroys life.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Essential Wisdom From A Spiritual Master
- “Responsibility simply means your ability to respond.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “An intellectual understanding that is not backed by experiential knowledge can lead to mind games and deceptive states.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “To program the calories you must consume and the number of hours you must sleep is a foolish way to handle life.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Money is definitely needed, but how much money do we really need? If we would change our idea of a successful life to a joyful life, we would find our need for money would dramatically decrease.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Midnights with the Mystic
- “Most carnivorous animals do not eat every day—definitely not three times a day! They know the food they eat moves very slowly through their tracts.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Mysticism is like pure science; it has no use. Mysticism is just the human longing to know… Occult is not science. Occult is just technology.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “The man who does only as much as is needed will only get that much.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mystic’s Musings
- “Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Why do we refer to the mind as a circus? A circus is not a mess; a circus is a very coordinated activity deliberately made to look like a mess. On one level it is a mess, but on another, it is a highly coordinated activity.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “To rise above the modifications of your mind, when you cease your mind, when you cease to be a part of your mind, that is yoga.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “But when it comes to the inner situation, there is only one ingredient: you. At least you must happen the way you want.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Three Truths of Well Being
- “You cannot choose a Guru. Deepen your longing and the Guru will choose you.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mystic’s Musings
- “One should use information and logic as a drunkard would use a lamp post, only for support, not for illumination.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “The logic is simple: if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you even without your intent.” – Sadhguru, Adiyogi
- “Our lives become beautiful not because of what we do, our lives becomes beautiful simply because we have included everybody around us as a part of our dream of well being.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Inner Management: In the Presence of the Master
- “There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.” – Jaggi Vasudev
- “Sunlight comes into your house not because you want it. It happens because you open the windows.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “Your ideas of good and bad are just a certain level of prejudice against life.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Generally, the smartest people on the planet – those people who think they are really smart – tend to have the most horrible relationships.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Life and Death in One Breath
- “Eating natural foods, in their uncooked condition, when the cells are still alive, will bring an enormous sense of health and vitality to the system.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “I learned to create a little more space between my thoughts and actions—actually between my feelings and reactions. This is extremely important; without it, life can be a real roller coaster ride.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Midnights with the Mystic
- “If you handle your entire life with logic alone, you will end up a mess.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Man needs entertainment simply to hide his madness. If he was perfectly sane, he would not need entertainment. He could just sit and watch this bamboo grow. He does not really need entertainment.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “If you want God as a tranquilizer, it is okay as an idea, but if you want the Divine to be an awakening process in your life, an idea is not good enough.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “The path is not difficult. It is very simple. If you are simple, it’s very simple. If you are all wound up, the path is very, very winding. That’s all it is.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “Only if you know to what extent your logic should go and where it should not go, your life will be beautiful.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “Most people are investing their whole lifetime just for their material well-being. Dying to live, this is called.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Pebbles Of Wisdom
- “The whole art of being a Guru is just this: to constantly puncture people’s egos and still manage to remain their friend.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Pebbles Of Wisdom
- “The identity around which the intellect functions is called ahankara.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Today people just go on working, working and working. Not because they are creating something fantastic, but simply because they have to work, otherwise they don’t know what to do with themselves.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “Renunciation, or refusing to identify with that which one gathers (however precious it may be), is the ultimate doorway to knowing.” – Sadhguru, Adiyogi
- “They have been promising us for a long time — in every culture — that they are going to take us to heaven. They promise heaven because they are making a hell out of this place.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “Bullshit may get you to the top, but it never lets you stay there!” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Your mind need not be controlled; your mind needs to be liberated.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “Things do not descend upon anything that is not ready to receive them.” – Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “Life should touch you, even if life smothers you, it’s better than remaining untouched by life” – Sadhguru
- “The whole spiritual process is just this: that you are willing to take the next step not knowing where it will lead you. If you are not ready for that, that means you are not ready for any new possibility.” – Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “I am not here to speak the Truth. I am here just to give you a method to perceive it.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “Once your intellect gets identified with something, it gets chained to the identifications, and leaves you with a completely distorted experience of the world.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “If your sadness is reminding you that you are incomplete, it is good. Make use of your sadness to grow. When sadness sets in, if you become more compassionate, more caring, and more loving, you have some sense in you.” – Sadhguru, Emotion
- “If you are not using your mind for self-torture, why would you think of peace?” – Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
- “Right now, you don’t have the necessary faculties to know anything which is beyond the physical. If you recognize this, if you understand this, if you accept this absolutely, only then the other dimension opens up.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “Whatever has been the highest experience in your life should become the centerpiece around which your life is structured.” – Sadhguru
- “When most people say “life,” they mean the accessories of life—their work, their family, their relationships, the homes they live in, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, or the gods they pray to.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Don’t think of this as your first step or last step. Just be here as a piece of life. That is the best way to be. You are not a young man; you are not an old man. You are just a piece of life.” – Sadhguru, Life and Death in One Breath
- “Don’t think of this as your first step or last step. Just be here as a piece of life. That is the best way to be. You are not a young man; you are not an old man. You are just a piece of life.” – Sadhguru, Life and Death in One Breath
- “By consciously getting your body into a certain posture, you can also elevate your consciousness, you can change the very way you feel, think, understand, and experience life simply by sitting in a particular way.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Body the Greatest Gadge
- “If you consciously get your body into different postures, you can elevate your consciousness.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Freedom—or mukti or moksha—is seen as the natural longing in every human being and our ultimate destination.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “So the whole process of spirituality is just about enhancing your perception.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Enlightenment: What It Is
- “Resentment, anger, jealousy, pain, hurt, and depression are poisons that you drink but expect someone else to die. Life does not work that way. Most people take lifetimes to understand this simple truth.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Life is a circus when your intellect and your body alone are involved. Life is a dance, when the intelligence begins to play its role.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Mind is your Business
- “The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Unless you begin to see the hollowness of where you are right now, you will not begin to seek something else strongly.” – Jaggi Vasudev
- “The essence of yoga, as we have said before, is just this—to arrive at that moment where there is a clear space between you and your mind.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “Every human being is longing for involvement. Not for touch, not for a kiss, not for sex, not for anything else; one is basically longing for a deep sense of involvement.” – Sadhguru, Pebbles Of Wisdom
- “Every opinion you have about anything can be a limiting identity.” – Sadhguru, Midnights with the Mystic
- “The walls of self-preservation that you build for today are the walls of self-imprisonment for tomorrow. Boundaries that you establish in your life as a protection for yourself today will feel like constraints tomorrow.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
- “If you are forming relationships to seek happiness – you trying to squeeze happiness out of someone and that person trying to squeeze happiness out of you – this is going to be a painful relationship after some time.” – Jaggi Vasudev, Life and Death in One Breath
- “But being on the spiritual path is not about making life pleasant. It’s about seeing how to transcend both the pleasant and the unpleasant.” – Sadhguru, Mystic’s Musings
- “Relief from something that you cannot hold within you is always the greatest pleasure, isn’t it? Whatever that thing may be!” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
- “Believing means you have assumed something that you do not know; seeking means you have realized that you do not know.” – Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
