A Devotee Has No Personal Agenda
Sadhguru: Devotion means taking your emotion to its highest pitch. It is held as the highest form of emotion because it is the least entangling – it is liberating. But if you have your own agendas, don’t waste your time on devotion because you cannot be a devotee.
Devotees are very beautiful people within themselves, but as far as the world is concerned, they are usually insane and unreasonable. Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi – these were very insane people; you would not be able to live with them. Once they are gone, you can worship them, but when they were here, nobody could understand what the hell was happening with them. For example, Mirabai saw herself as Krishna’s wife. She was always going into such states that it was like Krishna was with her – she danced with him, she loved and kissed him – she was so deeply involved. If you were her husband, are you going to appreciate her devotion? No. You will go insane with your own problems. Devotees are like that. They don’t belong to the logical dimension of life.
I am not saying devotion is completely absent in you. You have emotions, so there is naturally a certain amount of devotion. But if you want to fit into family and social situations and still pursue spirituality, you cannot choose just devotion as the path because you still want life to happen the way you want it. So you need to explore other ways.
You can also attain to the ultimate through your intelligence, through your physical action, or by transforming your inner energies. Every human being is a combination of these four – body, mind, emotion and energy. No human being is just one of these. It is best if there is a combination of these four so that you can still evolve without disturbing external realities. The compromise is that you go slowly.
If you are not bothered about what happens to your husband or wife or your corporate world or anything – if you just want to grow – only then devotion is a way to attain. It is one of the quickest ways. Devotion and family life, devotion and corporate world, devotion and anything will not go. Devotion means, everything else has to dissolve. That is why if you talk devotion, it is just deception. At some moments when your experience raises to a certain pitch, a moment of devotion may happen to you. Just wait for that moment. It is very wonderful. But don’t try to pursue devotion as your policy because there is a very deep deception in it.
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.
