Mystics Musings

Sadhguru

Ambition to Vision
Sadhguru

(Mystics Musings Series)

Copyright 2013 Isha Foundation

First Edition: March 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form without the written permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contents
Introduction 5
1. Creating Your Destiny 13
2. Absolute Ambition 33
3. A Vision for Wellbeing 47

Introduction
The word ambition makes frequent appearances at
motivational and personal growth workshops. Having big
ambitions is considered a virtue and an essential stepping stone
to success. But if we look at the state of the planet today, a
centurys worth of human beings ambitions have brought the
environment to a point of collapse. Global warming, sea level
rise, and a host of alarming situations have already begun to
materialize. But this is not a new phenomenon. The history of our
species has seen frequent episodes of disaster induced by human
ambition. Hitler was ambitious, and his ambition brought about
one of the worst tragedies in human history. But we can at least
be thankful that Hitlers end came before the birth of nuclear
weapons. The result of such single-minded, prejudiced ambition
equipped with todays technology would be worse than a hell on
earth. So, is ambition a bad thing? No. As Sadhguru says, the
bane of the world is just that human beings are working with
limited individualistic ambition. When ambition is guided by a
vision for wellbeing, our activity becomes a powerful possibility
to create our destiny.
Creating Your Destiny, the first part of the book, looks at
success and what it takes for an individual to shape his future. For
most human beings, the course of life is littered with unforeseen
circumstances sometimes resulting in happiness, and sometimes
leading to tragedy. Sadhguru gives us tangible first steps towards
the ultimate plan of action to understand every aspect of our
creation and existence, and create yourself the way you want.

In Absolute Ambition, the second part of the book, Sadhguru

looks at the nature of competition in todays world and answers
questions about dealing with peoples expectations. Later on, he
tackles what is probably one of the biggest obstacles in most
peoples road to success the fear of failure. Not one to offer
empty platitudes or pointless feel good mantras, Sadhguru first
puts things in perspective. Failure is generally an idea imposed
upon us by society, and what might appear to be a failure may
actually be a blessing in disguise. The choice that every human
being has is to utilize any situation either to liberate himself or
to entangle himself.
In A Vision for Wellbeing, the third and final part of the
book, Sadhguru speaks about the need to have a vision and bring
about transformation in the world. After all, society is just a
word, and change can only happen if each individual transforms
himself or herself. Looking at the qualities needed in a leader
and the process of building a strong nation, he explores what it
takes to inspire people around us. The book ends with a bang,
as Sadhguru delves into the importance of energized spaces in
creating a generation of empowered human beings. In the past,
powerfully consecrated spaces were created in India, which
brought an enormous sense of wellbeing among people where,
if you simply sit here, you are blissed out. It is a different kind
of wellness which every human being is capable of.
English Publications
Isha Foundation

Ambition is about more, vision is about all.

What is ambition? A human being wanting to be something
more than what he is right now. Whatever economic, social and
other levels of existence that one may be in, every human being
according to his imagination and understanding of life is seeking
to be something more than what he is right now. If someone is
starving right now, his ambition is that somehow, for the rest of
his life he must have at least one meal a day. If he has one meal,
he thinks of two. If he has two, he thinks of a home. If he has a
home, he thinks of something else.
It is only a few people, who have made it to a certain level
of success in their life, whose desires get labeled as ambition
by someone else. But everyone is ambitious in his own limited
ways of thinking. A beggar is also ambitious, a rickshaw puller
is also ambitious. It is just that right now he is driving someone
elses rickshaw, and his ambition is to someday own his own
rickshaw, which is not a small jump; it is a big jump in his
view. He thinks he is just thinking of his needs and he looks
at you and thinks you are ambitious, but it is not so. He is also
ambitious in his own limited way. Compared to you, his desire
or his ambition looks so limited, so it seems to be categorized as
something different, but it is not different.
Ambition is essentially a longing within a human being to
somehow have a little larger slice of life. Nobody is free of this.
Everyone is looking at it from their own context, of course. How
they are trying to achieve it may be different for different people.
Someone may believe that money is the way to achieve his
Ambition to Vision

larger slice of life. Someone else may believe power is the best
currency to do it. Someone may believe knowledge is the only
way. Someone may think love is the way. Someone may think
corruption is the best way that is also a substantial category
now, we cannot ignore them anymore.
The currency may be different from person to person, but
there is no human being who is not longing to be a little better
than what he is right now. This ambition is not the problem,
because it is very natural for every human being to strive to
be something more than what he is right now. The scale of the
ambition is the only question.
Sometime ago, I was addressing the House of Lords in the
UK. The subject we were talking about was Sustainability: is
consciousness the key? When we look at the way our ambitions
are designed and structured right now, if you look at the larger
world today, everyone is aspiring for whatever they think is a
better way of living. Today, a lot of people across the planet
are aspiring to a lifestyle similar to that of an average American
citizen. Every nation is trying to provide that for their people.
The Living Planet1 which has become an authoritative source
of ecological information says that if seven billion people on
the planet achieve the lifestyle of an average American person,
we will need 4.5 planets. But we have only one. So this kind
of ambition is self-destructive. This kind of ambition is going
to lead us to a disastrous situation. When we carry on with this
form of ambition, we can only wish that at least half the people
should never succeed. If someone comes to you, you must be
able to freely bless him with success in whatever he desires, but
now the way it is going, we have to wish, Let them fail.
1 The Living Planet Report is released by WWF, and analyses the
impact of human activity on the Earths environment. It can be downloaded
at wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/

Ambition to Vision

In 2008, when I went to the World Economic Forum,

everyone was in deep depression because the recession had just
hit. Everyone was carrying a long face and many chins were
dragging on the floor. They gave me a subject to speak on
Recession and Depression. The room was full of people, and
everyone wanted to know how to beat the depression. I said,
Recession is bad enough, you dont have to also get depressed
now.
Right now, the way we have structured our economic system,
the way we are driving the economic engine on this planet, if we
do not succeed, we will be depressed. If we do succeed, we will
be damned. So I said, I prefer that you are depressed. It is
better that you are depressed than damning the world because
with what we are aspiring for, if we succeed, the world will be
devastated for sure.
It is very important that our ambition comes from our
intelligence, not just from imitation. Today our ambition is,
someone has done this much, we want to do this much. If
someone has done that much, we want to do that much it is
an endless process. This kind of self-destructive, self-defeating
ambition is not a good thing.
The bane of the world is just that human beings are working
with limited individualistic ambition. Instead of working with
ambition, if people work for a vision of their own, a deeper
vision of life for themselves and for everything around them,
their ambitions would never be in conflict with anyone elses
vision, because fundamentally, all human beings are working
for human wellbeing. It is just that the scale of how you handle
human wellbeing may be different from person to person.
For one person, human wellbeing may just mean ones own
wellbeing. For another person, it may mean ones family. For
another person, it may mean ones community, or ones nation.

Ambition to Vision

For another person, it may mean the whole humanity. There is no

one on this planet who is not concerned about human wellbeing.
It is only a difference in scale.
If every human being, instead of working with an individual
ambition which is bound to be in conflict with someone elses
ambition if we work with a larger vision, then there is no need
to scale down anything. Anyway you want wellbeing. All I am
saying is, why are you stingy about your desires? Why dont you
be magnanimous? Why dont you be infinite in your desires? It
is not just about I want to be well. I want the whole world
to be well. I want the whole existence to be well. I want all life
to be well. I want you to be really greedy with your ambition.
Whatever is your ambition for yourself, extend that to the whole
of humanity or to all life forms on this planet. Then there is no
need to scale it down. I am telling you, up it, dont bring it down.
Right now the problem is that you have brought it down.
When we say ambition, ambition is just an exaggeration of
the existing. When we say vision, as the word suggests, it is
about a new possibility something which is not yet. Ambition
is about wanting to take as much as we can take. Vision is about
making everything yours. One is an aggressive way of taking
it, another is an embrace. Trying to take a piece of the world,
and making the world yield to you willingly, are two different
dimensions of life.
All this philosophy, is it possible for a businessman? It is
very much possible and not only possible; it is especially needed
for the businessman because business is about expansion. Does
expansion happen because of inclusiveness or does it happen
because you forcefully take something? If you forcefully take
something, you will never expand to your full capacity. Only if
you learn how to make the world yield to what you want it to be,
can you take it all. Ambition is about more, vision is about all.

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Ambition to Vision

There is a beautiful story in the Indian lore. A monkey goes

into a house and finds a jar full of nuts. He puts his hand inside
and takes a handful of nuts. It is a very narrow-necked jar so the
hand will not come out it is stuck. The monkey has to let go of
some nuts, but it is ambitious. It cannot let go of even one nut.
He pulls and pulls, but the hand does not come. Then, another
wise monkey comes some monkeys are wise, you know. The
wise monkey says This is not the way. Leave the nuts. And
together they overturned the jar and all the nuts fell out. We have
to move from more to all. If you journey from more to
all, that means you have travelled from ambition to vision.

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11

Creating Your Destiny

Success means you are living your life to

your full potential.
Questioner: If we want to succeed in life, what plays a
major role fate, God, effort or luck?
Sadhguru: Fate, God, luck, effort maybe all of them,
but in what proportion? When you say fate, obviously it is
something you cannot do anything about. When you say luck,
again obviously it is something you cannot do anything about.
God is also not something you can do anything about. The only
thing that is in your hands is effort. Put your hundred percent into
your effort. What happens, happens. Dont leave proportions of
your energy and your capability to luck God, fate, and all these
things that is not your business. If there is such a thing, it will
act. Your business is only effort, and the effort has to be incisive;
it should be focused and calibrated. Simply creating effort is
foolish. Hard labor alone is not going to get you somewhere.
The right kind of action, the right timing, the right place all
are important.
For these things to happen, you need perception and
intelligence. That is all you must do in your life constantly look
for ways to enhance your perception and your intelligence. The
rest will anyway happen. And this is the one thing that humanity
is unfortunately not doing.
For example, twenty-five years ago, everyone wanted
to become a doctor. If you want to study, the first choice was
medicine. Let us say you became a doctor, but then everyone
came to the yoga program and stopped having to go to doctors.
Business will go down. It will no longer be a good profession to
go into. Anyway, very few people are becoming doctors because
they want to become doctors. There are a few doctors who really
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Ambition to Vision

want to be doctors, understand the human system and serve

people, but others are becoming doctors because they think it is
lucrative. It is quite disturbing for me that someones sickness
is a lucrative business, because you would not want everyone to
become healthy.
Do not try to put up a recipe for your success. Real success
happens when you use yourself to your full potential. It does
not matter whether you become a doctor or a politician, a
yogi or whatever; success means you are living your life to
your full potential. If that has to happen, you need perception
and an active intelligence. How do I grow my intelligence?
Dont worry about that. The important thing is to enhance your
perception. If you are able to see life just the way it is, you have
the necessary intelligence to conduct it well. If you are not able
to see life the way it is, your intelligence will work against you.
Intelligent people on this planet are generally the most miserable
people on the planet. This is simply because they have an active
intelligence but no perception of life.
People today are trying to broaden their minds, which may
make one socially successful, not truly successful. If you want
to be truly successful, you must be able to see everything just the
way it is, without distortions. If you can see everything just the
way it is, life becomes a play, a game. You can play it joyfully
and you can play it well for sure. If you can play it well, people
will say you are successful.
You should not be aspiring for success. It is a miserable way
to structure your life. You will simply cause pain and suffering
to yourself and everyone, because your idea of success right
now is that everyone should be below you, while you are on top.
This is not success; this is sickness. Never think, I want to be
successful. Just see how to make yourself into a full-fledged
being, and it will find expression. If it finds good expression,
people around you will say, He is a great success! That is fine.
People should recognize that you are a success, but you should
not be thinking about how to be successful. That is a very wrong
way to approach life.
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15

Once you have come here as a human being, the potential of

what it means to be human, all the dimensions of who you are
must be experienced. Only then I would say you are successful.
And the ability to explore that potential, the daring to explore
that potential will come to you when you come to a state within
yourself where there is no fear of suffering, that no matter what
the life situation is, your experience of life will not alter itself.
Right now, Isha2 is involved in two dozen social projects.
Some of them are mega-size projects in Tamil Nadu and the rest
of the world. But I am not even concerned about the success
of my activity. If they happen well, they will be beneficial for
the people. But even if everything fails, I will still be blissful. I
will do my best, there is no question about that, because I have
nothing to lose and nothing to gain whichever way, but the
success of the activity depends on a variety of situations, and on
cooperation from millions of people. However, what happens to
these projects or how successful they are in terms of the worlds
eyes will not determine my experience of life.
If you have to find fulfillment, if you have to know the joy
of doing something, you will only know it when your action is
total hundred percent. In everything that you are doing, if you
are absolutely hundred percent, you will notice your action will
have a certain sense of exuberance. My activity stretches for
almost eighteen to twenty hours a day, seven days of the week,
three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Maybe in someone
elses mind this would look like slavery. It is not so for me,
because I spend my days in absolute exuberance, and that is so
for lots of people around me. This is success, if you want to
name it that way. But what I would say is, this is life. Life, if
lived totally, is success. If it is lived in a meager fashion, that is
not being successful. Once you are here, you must explore, live
and experience the full depth and dimension of your life.
2 Referring to Isha foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded
by Sadhguru, which addresses all aspects of human wellbeing.
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Ambition to Vision

This is the choice you have you can take

the very process of life and death into your
hands to such an extent that you can even
choose the womb in which you will be born.
Questioner: Could you talk about the concept of destiny?
Sadhguru: Destiny is a kind of software that you
unconsciously wrote for yourself. If something can be written
unconsciously, it can also be written consciously. If you can walk
in your sleep, you can also wake up and walk. You naturally tend
to move in a certain direction because you have written a certain
type of software, but if you become conscious enough, you
can rewrite this completely. The moment you say, I am on the
spiritual path, the fundamental statement that you are making
about life is: I am taking my destiny into my hands. I do not
care what my horoscope or my genes or my karma or even God
says. Essentially, you are taking your life in the direction that
you want it to go, and not allowing it to be pulled or pushed by
external agencies or situations.
Spirituality means taking the drivers seat; taking your
destiny into your hands. The fundamental requirements for you
to do that are that your body, mind, and energy behave the way
you want them to behave. If this begins to happen, you have
taken the first step.

Questioner: Are destiny and fate the same?

Sadhguru: Destiny is a relatively more inclusive word,
compared to fate which is a more defeatist kind of word, but you
Ambition to Vision

17

are basically saying that the future course of your life is decided
by something other than yourself. I am saying it is not decided
by anything else except YOU. For example, every year about
70,000 children in Tamil Nadu lose their eyesight due to causes
which can be easily averted. This number used to be much bigger
just about ten years ago. Millions of people around the world
used to get crippled with polio. You do not see so many of them
anymore, at least not the young ones. Someone gets crippled,
someone loses his vision, is it his destiny? We always thought
so, but today, we have taken destiny into our hands with just one
damn drop of vaccine in someones mouth.
Just imagine your own life, living here being able to see,
enjoy and visually experience all this and compare it to having
no eyes to see. It is a phenomenal difference in ones life. Having
your eyes and not having your eyes we have taken those things
into our hands, havent we? The same thing with being alive or
being dead. In 1947 when India got its independence, the average
life expectancy of an Indian was twenty-eight years. Today it is
sixty-four years. All those people who used to die are alive. We
have taken all this into our hands.
Anything that you do not understand, you think of as destiny.
The moment you understand it, it is in your hands. As a human
being, you are made in such a way that you have the capability
to understand everything concerned with your creation and your
present state of being. Once you understand, you will take it
into your hands. One who has not understood, one who has kept
himself in ignorance thinks everything is destiny. One who has
understood the process of life takes the reins and drives his or
her own life. This is the choice you have you can take the very
process of life and death into your hands to such an extent that
you can even choose the womb in which you will be born. Even
now you are choosing, but unconsciously.

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Ambition to Vision

You can very easily take your destiny into your hands if you
are willing to pay a little more attention rather than reacting
compulsively and instinctively to things. Destiny is just a selfcreated mess, but nobody wants to admit that it is they themselves
who have done all this nonsense. People would like God to take
the responsibility.
Once it happened, a pompous man approached Bernard
Shaw in a party and introduced himself, I am a self-made man.
Bernard Shaw looked at him and said, That absolves the
God Almighty of a terrible responsibility.
This is something all of you should do. You must absolve the
Creator of the terrible responsibility of having created you. You
must understand it is you who has made yourself like this. If you
think something else has made you like this, you are finished. I
am like this because my father was not okay. We cannot replace
the guy now it is too late. Butif you see it is you who has made
yourself like this, then you can make yourself anyway you want.

Ambition to Vision

19

Confidence
a disaster.

without

clarity

is

always

Questioner: I want to know the difference between

confidence and clarity.
Sadhguru: Let us say my physical vision is not good, I
cannot see clearly, and I need to walk through a group of people
but I am very confident. What will happen if I walk through?
A lot of people are walking through their life like this because
they are confident. They cannot see a damn thing, but it does
not matter; they are confident. This is disastrous for you and for
everyone around you. If my vision is clear, I would walk through
the whole group without touching anyone. If my vision is not
clear, at least if I have the humility to see that I have no clarity,
I would seek help and walk slowly, gently. I may not walk as
quickly as a man who has clear vision, but I would at least go
gently. If there is no clarity in my vision but I have confidence,
I am a disaster.
This is happening everywhere because we are teaching
people to be confident. We think confidence is a kind of a
substitute for clarity it is not. Lets say whenever you want to
make big decisions in your life, either professional or familyrelated, all you do is get yourself a 1-rupee coin and flip it,
Heads we will do this, tails we will do that. It will work fifty
percent of the time! If you are right only fifty percent of the time,
there are only two professions you can pursue you can either
be a weatherman or an astrologer. If you are in any other job
and you are right only fifty percent of the time, you would most
likely be fired.
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Ambition to Vision

There is a city called Mangalore on the west coast of India. It

is a beautiful, quaint, little town and I have been associated with
this place for some time. I had not gone there for almost four or
five years, and then I happened to visit. There was a homeopathic
doctor there who was over seventy-five years of age, but he was
still managing a small clinic. I went there to visit him, not as a
client, but just to see him. The clinic is in the Malabar region
the land of the king cobra snake bites are common. Outside
the clinic there was an advertisement which said, A common
antidote for all types of snakes. I know enough about snakes.
I have lived with them, I have them all around me, I have been
bitten by them any number of times, and snakes and me have
been very closely associated for a very long time. So I know
enough about them to survive.
Essentially in India, there are two basic varieties of venoms.
One is a neurotoxin and the other affects your cardio-vascular
system; a very small number of snakes have both. These are two
completely different kinds of chemicals, so there cannot be a
common antidote. Today, because people cannot identify what
snake is what, doctors are administering an antidote for both
together, which is very damaging for the system.
I went in and was in conversation with the doctor, casually I
said, How did you allow this board to come up in your clinic?
This is not right. Someone is claiming there is a common
antidote.
He is a very wise doctor. He said, See, almost ninety percent
of the Indian snakes are non-poisonous, and this antidote works
ninety percent of the time.
Ninety is a good percentage for anything. Confidence is like
that. If a snake bites you, just look up at the sky and say Damdoom-dis-dis-dis! the venom will go away, actually. Really!

Ambition to Vision

21

You must say it with enough vigor, it actually goes away it

works ninety percent of the time. And people will get more and
more confident because it works ninety percent of the time. That
is a fools way to exist, isnt it? What you need is clarity, not
confidence.
If we want life to happen the way we want it, the first and
foremost requirement is to be clear about what it is that we really
want. Even simple practices can go a long way in creating this.
Every day when you wake up in the morning, sit up on your
bed cross-legged, sit with your hands open, eyes closed and
just look at everything you are not. Appreciate all that you have
gathered your home, your family, your relationships, your
qualifications, your body, your clothes everything. Be thankful
for that. At the same time, identify everything that is not you
as This is what I have gathered and mentally keep it aside.
What you gather can be yours, but it can never be you. Spend ten
minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the night every day.
This will bring clarity. If one is properly initiated by a Guru, this
particular process can take on a new dimension. But till such an
opportunity comes in your life, you can do this by yourself. It
will definitely have a big impact upon your clarity.

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Self-realization is not a choice, it is a must.

Questioner: I want to leave this daily routine and
dedicate myself fully to understand the real I. But
the moment I think of my family, everything takes the
backstage. How do I balance this?
Sadhguru: So, your family is living with a fake you. How
horrible!
When people hear the word self-realization, maybe it
conjures up images in peoples minds about some Himalayan
cave. I dont want to talk about anything which is not yet in
your experience because the moment we talk about it you will
lose touch with reality. If you start believing realities which are
not yet in your experience, you will lose ground in the reality
in which you are. Unfortunately this is what has happened in
the world in the name of spirituality and religion. God is not
an enabling factor, God is unfortunately a disabling factor in
most peoples lives. People have become disabled because they
believe God is going to take care of their food, their survival,
their health, and their business. This nation has been disabled
simply because of all kinds of belief systems of which people
have no experience.
So, let us not talk about knowing yourself in some mystical
way or another dimension. Let us talk about knowing yourself
in the most practical way that we can look at. If you want to
do anything with anything, for example let us say you want to
drive your motorcycle or your car. The better you grasp what the
machine is, the more control and freedom it gives you as to what
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23

you can do with it. Whether you are using your car, computer or
even your cell phone, the more you know about it the better you
can use it. Or even with the people around, your own family,
your friends, people who work with you, the better you know
them the better you can deal with them. Definitely, whatever you
wish to deal with, the more you know about it, the better you can
handle it.
Why is it that you dont see this about yourself? The more you
know about this piece of life, which you refer to as myself, the
better your grasp over this, and the better your ability to handle
it, which definitely gives you more access to life. In other words,
self-realization is a way of knowing this piece of life in a much
better way than the way you currently know it. You may know
something about your thought process, your personality, and
your emotions you may have been psycho-analyzed already
but you still do not know anything about the nature of this life
how this happens, where it comes from, where it goes, what is its
nature you do not know anything. If you do not know anything
about the machine that you are handling, you will handle it by
accident. If you do not know anything about the people around
you, you will handle people by chance.
Please look at this. What do you know about this piece of
life? When you live accidentally and exist here as an accident,
you are a potential calamity. Whether you actually become a
calamity or not, you are a potential calamity. If you live here as a
potential calamity, to be anxious and fearful is very natural, and
that is how life is happening.
Do not think of self-realization as some weird thing that
some yogi does in a Himalayan cave or whichever mountain. It
is not about that. It is just that if you want to live your life with
a certain ease, you have to know this piece of life. If you do not
explore and know this, how will you live with ease? And when
there is no ease, joy is out of question. When there is no ease
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Ambition to Vision

and joy in your life, then questions will come up, To be or not
to be? People think this is a very intelligent question. This is
the most idiotic thing you can ask yourself. This life process is
such a phenomenon. But you are asking, To be or not to be?
Such silly questions have risen in your mind because you have
not realized the immensity of what it means to be human. Selfrealization is not a choice; it is a must.

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25

Just being concerned and emotionally

charged about a problem is not a solution.
The solution will come only when we empower
ourselves.
Questioner: As a capitalist society we tend to function
out of our economic interests. For me, it is hard to be
happy when I know that even buying things involves
exploiting people, and that I am living in a society that
in some way promotes violence around the world. How
am I supposed to focus only on myself and forget about
the suffering in the world?
Sadhguru: You must understand, a human has to become a
human being. One does not land here as a human being you
have to become, you have to evolve. You do not become a human
being just because you are born out of a human womb. What is
human is so complex and so beautiful, you have to make it; it
is your project. Your mother just delivers you as raw material.
You are not delivered as a wonderful being. How wonderful a
human being you become depends on how well you conduct
this project. So, you are beginning to become a little sensitive to
someone elses suffering. Good. You are on the project.
Let us say half the world is miserable it is actually. If
you make yourself miserable, are you adding to the problem or
are you a solution? They are miserable for one reason, you are
miserable for another reason. This does not solve the problem.
You are only adding to the problem. Only if you are joyful and
you know what it means to live beautifully, can you create it for
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Ambition to Vision

someone else. How can you make it happen for someone when
you dont even know what happiness is? If you are concerned
about life around you, the first thing you must be concerned
about is yourself. If you do not know how to take care of this
life, how will you take care of some other life? If you know
how to keep yourself in the best possible state, then you also
know how to take care of someone else. Otherwise, with good
intentions you will cause misery to everyone in the world. More
misery has happened on this planet with good intentions than
with bad intentions.
If you are concerned about the rest of the world which
everybody should be which is better: to be concerned about
them as the rest of the world, or to be concerned about them the
way you are concerned about yourself? Just as you are concerned
about yourself, isnt it? If that is the case, if you go to fix that one
without fixing this one, that one will tell you, First take care of
yourself. What nonsense are you going to do to me?
Wherever you want to do something, what condition would
you like to go there in, both physically and mentally? We are
working in Sierra Leone in Africa. If I drop you in Sierra Leone
and give you two years time to make a difference, you will get
lost in the problem. I have dropped people there who have spent
four or five years training themselves to do this. When they go
there, in three months time, they make a big difference because
they know what to do with themselves and with other people.
If you do not invest this time upon yourself in enhancing your
capabilities, if you just go with great emotion and try to fix the
situation in some place, you will get lost in the problem. Good
intentions alone will not do it.
If you want to make a difference you need capability.
Without that, nothing happens; you can only sit in your house
and complain about everything. If you are interested in doing
something, the first thing is to see how to enhance your capabilities
Ambition to Vision

27

and your own ability to deal with life. Otherwise, how are you
going to reach out to anyone and do anything? There are too
many people in teashops in every street corner who know how
to run the country! They are advising the Prime Minister, they
can be batting coaches for Tendulkar. Right there in the teashop,
revolutions happen and they change the world. But the moment
the tea is over, the revolution is over. Just being concerned and
emotionally charged about a problem is not a solution. The
solution will come only when we empower ourselves. If you
do not take time to empower yourself, we will create more and
more horrible situations on this planet.
If you are concerned about humanity, please empower
yourself that no matter what kind of situation you are placed in,
you are not going to be broken and shattered by the situation.
You will do the best you can do. First empower yourself. That is
yoga, a technology to empower yourself.

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Ambition to Vision

I have no teaching at all. But if you are

willing, I can deliver you into a space and a
situation within yourself that you have never
imagined possible in human life.
Questioner: Sadhguru, I have read many books on
success, many chapters of the Gita, and heard sathsangs
on TV where many gurus came and gave different
teachings. But sometimes we forget those things and get
confused, so I want to know one basic rule which we
should all follow in life so that we grow spiritually and
materially in life.
Sadhguru: So, the formula! You said many gurus came
and gave many teachings and you forgot. If you can forget, it is
not worth remembering anyway. If something has touched you
really deeply, if something has gone deep into you and is capable
of transforming your life, there is no question of forgetting or
remembering; it becomes a part of you.
You also read the Gita.3 The teaching is being given to
someone who is a total failure. I know Arjuna Awards are given
to people who are successful, but in his life, Arjuna was a big flop.
He lost his kingdom, his wife, his property, he lost everything
3 Lit. song. Refers to the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most sacred
teachings of the Hindus. This central episode of the epic Mahabharata
is a dialogue between Lord Krishna and his chief disciple Arjuna, on the
battlefields of Kurukshetra. Krishna imparts to the warrior-prince Arjuna his
knowledge on yoga, asceticism, dharma and the manifold spiritual path.

Ambition to Vision

29

that was meaningful to him. Isnt he a big flop? Would you want
your life to be like Arjunas life? No. So, Krishna is giving the
teaching to someone who has been a huge flop in his life, and he
is yet to win the war at the time of the teaching. The only feather
in his cap is he won the war, but when the teaching was given, he
was yet to win the war. His past has been an absolute failure and
everything that should not happen to a man has happened to him.
If some element of the Gita has to enter you, you must be
Krishna himself. Otherwise you cannot get it. Though it is
happening full-scale everywhere, reading the Gita intellectually
and trying to interpret it is nonsense. You cannot interpret truth;
you can only experience truth. You cannot understand truth, you
can only dissolve into it. It is not something that you grasp, it is
something that you merge with. The Gita is not to be read and
understood. You can become the Gita, but you cannot understand
or learn the Gita.
If you want to know anything about the creation or Creator,
within is the only place you should look. All books, no matter
what antiquity they belong to, the older the book is, the more
likely it is that many people have meddled with it. Even the
Gita was not written by Krishna, obviously. He spoke in the
battlefield Arjuna did not have a tape recorder. Who wrote
it then? Someone else wrote it and we dont know how many
misinterpretations happened.
Whether they have actually distorted it or not, human beings
are capable of distortion. If you see something today with your
own eyes and tell your neighbor, he goes and tells someone
else. If it goes through twenty-five people in twenty-four hours
and comes back to you, can you recognize that story? It is very
obvious that human beings are capable of enormous distortion.
When something has come down for thousands of years, you
can imagine how much could have happened to it on the way.
You know textbooks are being distorted every time an election
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Ambition to Vision

happens; not history from prehistoric times, history from fifty

years ago is being constantly distorted. You dont know what
exactly happened fifty years ago. When this is the condition,
who knows what happened five thousand years ago? With just
one word why even with misplaced punctuation, you could
change the whole context of what is being said.
These books were written by people who are capable of
enormous distortion. But this book this piece of life that you
call myself was written by the Creator himself. This cannot
be wrong. In this, there is no distortion. There cannot be any
misinterpretations. You just have to learn how to read this.
Dont go for slogans. The slogan-shouting public is always
the most idiotic of the lot. With slogans, people will gain
confidence. When you want to move people, if you coin the right
kind of slogan, you can move people to do things. But anyone
can move them to do anything. We have coined slogans in the
name of religion, social change, and revolutions. People have
been moved to do things, and most of the time when people
moved in a mass, they created such terrible things. Intelligent
action never happens out of slogan shouting. When mass action
happens, generally it is horrible action. So dont get into one
more slogan. I want to take away all your slogans and quick-fix
solutions that you have for life.
I dont have any teaching because I am an uneducated Guru.
When you use the word Sadhguru, what it means is he is an
uneducated Guru. He does not know the scriptures, the Vedas,
the Upanishads; he knows nothing. The only thing that I know
is myself, and that is more than enough. That is much more than
any scripture can say, because it is creation.
What you need is a method, not a slogan. If life could be
fitted into a slogan, life is not worth living. This life is too
exuberant and too multi-dimensional. You cannot fit it into any

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31

kind of teaching or slogan. But you can have a method with

which you can arrive there. You must understand, Isha Yoga is
not a teaching; it is just a method. If you employ it as a method,
it will deliver you somewhere. If you take it as a teaching, you
get some more garbage in your head.
So I have no teaching at all. But if you are willing, I can
deliver you somewhere you have not imagined. I can deliver you
into a space and a situation within yourself that you have never
imagined possible in human life.

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Ambition to Vision

Absolute Ambition

Your whole life is invested in looking a little

better than someone else. This is a wasteful life
because most probably you will not succeed.
Questioner: Namaskaram Sadhguru. Throughout our
life, in school, in the office, everywhere we are constantly
being compared with others around us. Why are such
comparisons being made? Why are we not appreciated
for who we are?
Sadhguru: There are certain areas of life where our whole
learning process is only because of the many other things that
have happened in the past. You can write ABC because someone
else also wrote ABC before you. By yourself you would not have
written ABC. So, what you can do is not just coming out of you.
What you can do is coming out of the experience of humanity.
Writing ABC is coming out of the experience of language of
thousands of generations of people.
Every other thing that you can do is also like this. It is not
coming only out of you; it is coming because of everyones
contribution to you. Invariably, comparison becomes a necessity
because if there is no comparison, you might be doing something
silly in your life and you would think you are doing great. Hasnt
it happened to you often enough? You thought you were doing
fantastic. Then someone came by and they were doing things
in such a way that you felt like an utter idiot. This comparison
is needed. Otherwise everyone who is doing idiotic things will
think he is a king by himself.

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Ambition to Vision

The comparison is perfectly okay, but this is not about you.

This is only about what you can do. This is just about your
actions. In activity, all of us are differently capable. If we do not
have benchmarks, we cannot improve our activity. Not everyone
is driven by passion to do what they are doing, where they will
anyway do their best. They need some benchmarks. There is
nothing wrong with this. Otherwise every day you will start
from scratch and reinvent the wheel.
Only if you have a problem in knowing that someone is
doing better than you, then this comparison is a problem. You
should not have a problem that someone is doing better than
you. I am always seeking someone who can do things better
than me because then my life will become easy. I dont want to
live with dumb people who cannot do things as well as me. If
they can do things better than me, my life gets easier, better, and
more beautiful. But if you are a horrible tyrant, you do not want
anyone to do better than you. This is a silly way to exist. This
foolishness has come into you because you are always trying to
measure the person, Am I bigger than him? Am I smaller than
him? because your whole effort is somehow to sit on top of the
heap.
Your parents or your corporate sector goading you is simply
because they are not interested in doing things well, they are
only interested in being number one. They are not interested that
you might run a hundred meters in seven seconds nobody did
seven seconds yet they are only interested that you must be
one inch ahead of the rest of the pack. If the rest of the pack
has no legs, it does not matter. If nobody can walk but you can
crawl, they are happy. This is an idiotic existence because you
are not finding your full potential, you are not exploring the
possibility of what you can do. You are just being a little better
than someone.

Ambition to Vision

35

This problem arises because you have a horrible sense of

insecurity about yourself. Your whole life is invested in looking
a little better than someone else. This is a wasteful life because
most probably you will not succeed. When your idea of success
is about being one inch ahead of someone else, definitely you
will not explore the full potential of who you are. You will be
miserable when you succeed and even when you dont, because
constantly trying to stay ahead of someone is a miserable way
to exist. The insecurity that someone may pull you down and
exceed you is a horrible way to exist.
Right now, the fundamental process we are doing is Ananda
Alai4 a wave of bliss. If you are blissful and if you run a race,
then you run to your full potential; you know the joy of running.
If someone else is running faster than you, it will make you even
more blissful. But if you are miserable, your only joy is that you
want to stand one step above someone else. That is all they do in
the end, they stand on the podium just six inches above everyone
else. But in case the man who came second is seven inches taller
than you, even standing on the podium is a problem!
The most fundamental thing is to fix your way of experiencing
life. If you are joyful by your own nature, whatever you do,
you will not get into this unhealthy state of life within yourself.
You will go, participate in any kind of competition, but you are
already blissful so you will do the best you can. Even if you
come last, it is still beautiful because you have done your best.
You will know the joy of action only when you are blissful by
your own nature. If you are doing action to squeeze happiness
out of life around you, then once in a way when there is a flash
of success you are elated, but when it does not happen you will
be miserable. Whatever type of activity you do, how many
moments of success and achievement can you have in a day?
4 A series of large-scale programs conducted by Sadhguru in India,
which has reached lakhs of people.
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Ambition to Vision

Most probably, not even one. If you are a horribly flaky creature
whose idea of success is elbowing someone to get through the
door first, then you will have a few moments of success. But if
you are looking for some profoundness, success will come to
you once in many years. Are you going to be joyful only once in
many years? That is not the way to exist.
If you are really creating what you love to create and are
enjoying the process, suppose you did something and it did not
find result and you have to do it all over again, there would be
no issue. If you got one more opportunity to do it, you would
still enjoy that. But if you are a miserable human being, when
you do something you have to get a result. Otherwise you will
die of a stroke because you are carrying the world on your head.
Only when you are carrying the planet upon your shoulders,
being better than someone is a big issue for you. If simply sitting
here and breathing is a fantastic experience for you, would you
want to breathe better than someone else? No. But when you
carry the world on your shoulders, you definitely want to do
it a little better than someone else. Dont get into that track. It
is a miserable condition that people render themselves into for
nothing.
We are trying to plunge into the process of life without setting
up the fundamental foundation that is needed for one to live a
healthy life. The first and foremost thing that a child came with
is, the moment his stomach is full he knows how to be joyful.
Even an infant knows this. Only when he is hungry he yells,
the rest of the time he is joyful. This is the fundamental fabric
of life. Nature is clearly telling you this state of being joyful is
necessary for you to live a healthy life. This has to be firmed up,
established, insured. You have to insure your joy first and then
get into activity. Then it does not matter whether activity goes up
and down, you will not go up and down.

Ambition to Vision

37

Life does not become beautiful because you

are perfect; life becomes beautiful because
you put your heart into everything that you
do.
Questioner: How do we handle others expectations, say
for example our parents expectations of us, or my wifes
expectation of me? Sometimes we are unable to satisfy
them and that creates pressure on us.
Sadhguru: Different people have different expectations,
and these expectations are treading on each other. Your wife
wants you home by 5:30 but your boss wants you in the office
till 7:30 in the evening. You have only twenty-four hours but if
you have to fulfill your parents expectations, your childrens
expectations, your bosss expectations, and above all your wifes
expectations, you actually need sixty hours a day. Where do I
get those extra hours? Thats the question.
Right now, people have expectations way beyond your
capabilities. Dont curse that. It is a great boon that people are
expecting big things from you. If people looked at you and
thought Oh, we cant expect anything from him, and they had
no expectations from you, do you think that would be good for
you? If your wife has no expectation at all, if she has given up on
you, There is no point expecting anything from this man, what
does that mean? She has written you off. If your boss has no
expectation from you, you will get fired. They are all expecting
many things from you. So dont complain about your wellbeing.
Your wife is expecting big things from you, it is good. Your
38

Ambition to Vision

boss is expecting big things from you, it is very good. This is

an opportunity for you to go beyond your limitations and do
something with life. Does it mean to say I will do something
perfect to fulfill everyones expectations? It will never happen.
But if all of them are constantly having or expecting more than
what you can deliver, that means your life is going well.
Enjoy your wellbeing, dont complain about it. Do the best
you can do and that is all there is. Nobody I know is happy with
me. Everyone feels that I am not spending enough time with
them; I am not doing enough. I am spread too thin all over the
place. Everyone is unhappy with me, and that is good. If all of
them give up this hope, that is bad.
This is not about being perfect in your activity. There is
no such thing as perfection in life. There is only one thing that
happens perfectly, and that is death. If you seek perfection,
unconsciously you will seek death. Dont seek perfection in
life. Life does not become beautiful because you are perfect, life
becomes beautiful because you put your heart into everything
that you do. Life is never going to be perfect because whichever
way you are functioning right now, you could always be a little
more, isnt it? So there is no question of perfection. Only when
there are big expectations, will you stretch yourself beyond your
limitations. If you can stretch, that means you have still not
reached your limitation. If there are no expectations, you will
never find your full potential.
It takes a completely different kind of consciousness and
awareness to stretch yourself to your ultimate limit without
anyones expectations. That takes something else within you.
Right now you are not like that. You are only driven by peoples
expectations. So let them expect bigger and bigger things from
you. Not sixty hours in twenty-four hours, let them expect two
thousand hours in twenty-four hours. That means people really
are looking up to seeing big things from you. You manage the
Ambition to Vision

39

situations to the extent you can manage them. Some things will
always be out of control, and the more things you get into, the
more things will be going wrong in your life. But many more
things will be going right also. The quality of your life, or the
success of your life need not be measured in terms of fulfilling
something. It needs to be measured in terms of whether you are
giving yourself totally or not. What has to happen will happen
according to your capability, the situations, and how everything
falls together many things are included in this. But are you
giving yourself hundred percent to whatever you care for in your
life? Thats the question.
You go to work, you have to manage your family this
is survival, no big deal. You have not taken up something of
tremendous significance. It does not take anything great to do it.
But a lot of people have made it as if it is their lifelong effort.
Their whole lifes purpose is to earn a living and somehow
survive. It need not be that way. A human being is far more
capable than that. If this capability has to find expression, you
need a certain amount of clearing of your mind. There are simple
tools and practices to work with. If you work with this for a
certain period of time, you will see there is much more clearing
in your head and you can see these things clearly, because this is
not beyond your capability. This is something that you can and
owe yourself to do.

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Ambition to Vision

It is always a petty mind which aspires to be

great; it is always a very ordinary mind which
aspires to be special.
Questioner: I have read the books of great people like
Mahatma Gandhi and many others. I am inspired and
I want to be like them. What should I do so that I am
different from others and do not go nameless in society?
Sadhguru: The very aspiration for greatness comes from a
very petty mind; it is always a very ordinary mind which aspires
to be special. It is not necessary to aspire to greatness or to be
special. If you make the focus and the ambit of your life well
beyond the concerns of who you are, if you take away this one
calculation, What about me? from your life, you will anyway
be a great human being. How great and how recognized you will
be in society depends on your capabilities. You may be a great
man in your street or at home, or you may become a great man in
your nation or the world. That depends on a variety of situations.
One thing is the situation historically where you are placed.
Maybe if a Mahatma Gandhi came today, he would not be as
known as he was back then because there was a certain situation
happening back then. At the right time, the right kind of spirit
came and things happened. If he is there in the present political
scenario, he may not even get elected. Greatness happened to
him not because he was seeking to be great, but because his way
of looking at life is way beyond his What about me?
Just drop this one calculation from your head, What about
me? and function to the best of your ability. In some way you
Ambition to Vision

41

will be great. You will be a wonderful human being because once

you take away, What about me? you are naturally looking at,
What can I do about all the life around me? Once you are
looking at this, you will naturally enhance your capabilities
because there is so much to do! I cannot understand how people
in India claim to be unemployed when there is still so much to
do in this country. You are too concerned about, What about
me? You are only willing to do a certain kind of job, you are
only working to fulfill certain kind of needs, so you think you are
unemployed. Otherwise there is too much to do in this country.
How can you be unemployed?
Take out this one calculation and function to the fullest of
your ability. What has to happen will happen. People may or
may not call you Mahatma; it does not matter. You will live like
a Mahatma; you are a Mahatma. Mahatma means you are a great
piece of life. You are a great piece of life the moment you take
away this one calculation from your mind. Then, wherever you
are, you will shine.

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Ambition to Vision

For one who sees this life as a stepping stone

for a larger possibility, there is no failure.
Questioner: Sadhguru, fear of failure leaves me
immobilized. How do I change this?
Sadhguru: For one who sees this life as a stepping stone for
a larger possibility, there is no failure. For one who is looking
at the simple events of this life itself as the goal of life, there is
failure and success. If you see this life as a stepping stone for a
larger possibility, if you have a good deal, you use that for your
wellbeing; if you have a bad deal, you use that also for your
wellbeing. Every fool can be successful when the economy is
booming; it does not take much. Everyone gets carried anyway.
But when there is a meltdown, it takes something else to be
successful. When the economy is booming if you bring a certain
dispassion towards the money that is flowing in, then, when the
economy is down, it is time to meditate and walk in the mountains.
When there was money, it took away your time and life. Now the
taps are closed, there is so much time! It does not matter what
the hell happens, if you see this life only as a stepping stone for
a larger possibility, then whatever the situation, it can be turned
into something beautiful and useful.
Once, there was a farmer who was tired of various natural
factors ruling the quality of his crop. So one day he called Shiva.
It was a wild card entry and he found access and Shiva said,
What?
The farmer said, I am tired of all the natural nonsense
happening. Obviously you are not a farmer. I know from history
Ambition to Vision

43

that you were a hunter. You dont know what it means to farm.
Why dont you leave nature in my hands? I am a farmer. I
know when it should rain, when there should be sunlight, when
there should be wind. You dont know because you are just a
hunter and a crazy ascetic. You are definitely not a good farmer.
At the wrong times it is raining, at the wrong times things are
happening. Leave it to me.
Shiva was in one of those moods. He said, Okay, nature is
in your hands.
The farmer planned his crop and planted maize. He snapped
his fingers, Rain! He poked the land and saw, Okay it is
soaked up to six inches. Stop! Then he ploughed the field and
planted it and waited for two days, Rain! Sunlight!... Today I
am working in the field, so cloud! Everything happened just the
way he wanted. A beautiful maize crop came. He was overjoyed.
See, it is good that nature is in a farmers hands.
When the time to harvest came, he wanted to see that none
of the birds came. He said, No birds! no birds. Then he
went and looked at the crop. When he opened the maize stalk,
there was no grain inside. He wondered What the hell is this?
What did I do wrong? He could not figure it out because he had
managed everything properly rain, water, and sunshine. So,
again, he went back to Shiva and asked, I did everything right
but there is no grain. Did you sabotage my crop?
Shiva said, I have been watching. You were in-charge so I
did not want to interfere. The rain was great, the sunshine was
great, everything was fine, but you stopped all the winds. I used
to always send fierce winds which would threaten your crop.
Because the plants felt pushed and threatened, they sank their
roots deeper into the earth, so grain happened. Now you have a
great maize crop but no maize.

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Ambition to Vision

Either you can use various situations in your life to make

yourself stronger and better, or you can sit and cry. This is the
choice you have with everything. It does not matter what, even
the most horrific event that happened in your life can also be
used for your growth and wellbeing, if only you have clearly
seen that the small events of your life when I say small events,
I mean your business, your marriage, your children, all those socalled big things are just stepping stones.
This is not new to you. In this culture, they put this into you
for millennia. They told you, Your life is about mukti.5 Your
marriage, your business, your social life, these are all means to
get there. Either you go with it or you go without it, but whether
you are a sanyasi or you are in samsara,6 your only goal is
mukti. The goal was not only for the sanyasi. For everyone, it
is mukti. If you walk alone, you walk alone; if you want a party
going with you, you walk with the party. That is your choice. If
you want to get there quick, you walk alone. If you want to go
there having a picnic on the way, slowly, you go with people.
The choice is yours, but the important thing is, whatever the
hell you are doing, there is only one goal. If you set this up,
then all the events of life, everything is beneficial. The boom is
beneficial; the meltdown is even more beneficial actually. It is
also ecologically very good.
Failure is bad enough, now fear is adding spice to it. Success
happens to you not because you desire it, but because you earn
it. Everyone desires it, but it comes only if you are capable of it.
No, I am very capable. I was doing very well five years ago but
now Yes, but now situations have changed, and you do not
know how to deal with it. That is all it means.
5 Release, liberation, final absolution of the Self from the chain of
death and rebirth.
6 The continuing cycle of birth, suffering, life, and death.

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45

But if you have set a larger goal for yourself than just eating,
breeding and earning a living, however much the situations
change is fine today you have a twelve-course meal, tomorrow
you have just dry bread both can be enjoyed. Actually, it is
good for health not to have a twelve-course meal. A lot of people
are having a simple meal by choice. If nature assists you, what
is the problem?
I am sure you can do with less food, a smaller house, a
smaller car even walking is great. Walking is very good for
health. Some man in Coimbatore city who just turned a 100
years I have not met the man, I read this in the newspaper some
time ago they asked him, What is the source of your health
and wellbeing, because he is still strong and well. He said, I
am a walk-king, because every day I walk. I am 100, I am still
walking.
Your failure could be extremely good for your wellbeing.
Dont be against your own wellbeing. You are crying about the
share market, and because the damn graph is going up and down,
you want to die? No, but I lost so much money. There is no
such thing. These are all social things not existential things.
We created society for our wellbeing, not to take our lives.
You created your family, your social structure and every other
damn thing for your wellbeing, not to take your life. Now every
damn thing is taking your life. Dont make things that human
beings create, larger than your life.

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Ambition to Vision

A Vision for Wellbeing

If man has a vision of what he wishes to do

with himself and the world around him, it is
not beyond his capacity to create it.
If one wants to live here without any vision, without being
burdened by will, that person should be absolutely innocent and
egoless. Such a person can simply live here. He does not need a
vision, or have a will about anything. But if a person is not like
this, it is very important that he lives with a vision.
Today, in spite of all the conveniences and facilities we have
because of science and technology, humanity has remained in
absolute confusion and in an absolute mess. If you are a little
sensitive and feel the human part of the world around you,
you will experience it as a cacophony of voices, thoughts, and
emotions. These are an outpouring of confusions on many
different levels and states, which are formed and expressed with
a very distorted perception of current reality. When man is in this
level of confusion, when he is subjugated by misconceptions or
a wrong perception of the reality around him, the noise, pain and
suffering that he creates for himself, for people and for all other
life forms around him is very unfortunate. That is the reality that
you see today. There is no clarity in human will and vision. Most
people in the world live their lives without even understanding
what it is they really want for themselves. Or even if they know
what they want, they neither have the will nor the vision to
create what they want. Most of the time they are just settling for
whatever is easy, for whatever they term as attainable and within
their reach. They settle for anything if they feel it is easy.
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Once, there were two friends, Ramu and Bheemu. Ramu was
a bargain hound. Wherever there was anything available for a
bargain, he was ready. If there was a sale, he would go and buy
anything. It didnt matter whether he needed it or not.
One day, Bheemu came to Ramu and told him, This is
it. This is the bargain of your life. A circus company has just
landed in town and they have excess elephants. This elephant
normally costs 50,000 rupees but they are willing to give it for
2000 rupees. An elephant for just 2000 rupees!
Ramu said, Are you crazy? What will I do with an elephant?
And I am living on the third floor in a single-room apartment.
Where will I keep the elephant? How will I manage the elephant?
I dont want an elephant.
But Bheemu would not give up, But just imagine. It costs
50,000 but now they are willing to give it for 2000. It is a real
bargain. You must take it.
Ramu said, No, no, where will I tie the elephant? Where is
the space? Where is the money to feed the elephant? No I dont
want it. First of all, why do I need an elephant?
After much talking, Bheemu said, If you really let me
negotiate, I can get you two elephants for the same 2000.
Then Ramu said, Now you are talking. Thats a deal.
If something is easily attainable, people go for it without
seeing whether they really need it or want it in their lives. It is
easily attainable, that is the whole thing.
In the last thousand years, though man has done more than he
has ever done before in terms of changing the physical situation
on the planet, he has done a tremendous injustice to himself and
the world by always aiming for that which is attainable. What
has not been done in the last million years has happened in the
last millennium, but at the same time, man has always aimed
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49

for that which is easy the two elephants. He has done so much
which he does not need. He has brought about so many changes
in the planet which have caused so much harm to him. It can be
done. That has been the whole thing.
Due to the lack of the necessary vision, man has been going
about doing things that he regrets after fifty years. Unfortunately,
the blessing of science and technology has become a curse
because man is settling for what he terms attainable, not for
what he really wants and what really matters in his life. What
could have been a great convenience has become a great threat
to mans life because man has been planning and creating this
kind of a life around himself.
This lack of vision and will in life is fundamentally because
of a distorted understanding of the world around us. We are
always trying to create our lives based on the current reality
that exists around us at this moment. If we enslave our visions
to our current situation, it is once again only settling for what
is attainable and easy, what you think is possible. We need not
think in terms of what is possible or not possible. It is in terms
of seeing what is the vision, what is the highest that you can
seek in your life. What you know as the highest, just seek that.
It does not matter whether it is going to happen or not going to
happen. Simply living with a vision itself is very elevating and
liberating. It is a very joyous process for any person. You have
a vision, and you are not concerned about whether it is easy or
difficult, or whether it is attainable or not. Or in other words, you
are not concerned about the result in the end. You have a vision
and you give your life towards it. This is one of the easiest ways
to attain the highest. The whole Gita is just about this simply
to give yourself to what you want with undivided attention, not
caring whether it is going to happen or not going to happen.
It is a spiritual process by itself. It is a way of transcending
limitations within and outside of ourselves and of knowing life
here and beyond.
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Ambition to Vision

If man has a vision of what he wishes to do with himself and

the world around him, it is not beyond his capacity to create it. It
may happen in this lifetime or it may take a couple of lifetimes,
but what we want will definitely come. It is only because man
is a bundle of confusion and is most of the time seeking what
he does not want, that things that he really wants never come
to him. At any given moment in life, if we go by the experience
of our past, or in other words, if you trust your logical mind to
decide what is possible and not possible, it will always tell you
mediocre things as to what is possible. But if a persons vision
of life is clear to him, and if he seeks it every moment of his life,
the highest things will come and fall at his feet.
It happened in Socrates life, for some unfortunate reasons
he was sentenced to death. When he was on a death row he
was going to be killed in the next few weeks within himself
he heard a voice that he wants to make music. He had always
been a philosopher, never a musician. His whole expression of
life had been philosophy. Suddenly, when he was on death row,
he wanted to make music, and in those few weeks he learnt and
became a very wonderful musician. He made wonderful music
and found a new expression in his life. Suddenly, it gave a
new color and life to him. If they had spared his life, he would
probably have become a musician and been known to us as a
musician not as a philosopher.
Like this, once man chooses, even though he is facing death
in the next few weeks, he has the courage, he has the will to
dream of becoming a musician for those few days. There have
been many stories and examples in Indian culture where, once
certain men who were sages and saints willed, even gods had
to come down and do things for them. There are many stories
like this. Shiva cannot help it if a man sits with complete will
and the vision that he wants Shiva to come down. Shiva has to
come down; he has no choice about it. These things demonstrate
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51

to you that if what you want is very clear to you, and if you are
set on it, what seems to be impossible today becomes a normal
part of your life tomorrow. Without any fuss it falls at your feet.
But at every moment, if you logically question this and think in
terms of Is it attainable or not attainable, the confusion that you
create in your mind makes the world itself into a big confusion.
It is time to really create a vision within ourselves not for
today, but in terms of being a human being as to what is it that
you really care for and what is the highest thing that you can
seek, and create that vision. If one man has a vision and everyone
else works against it, very little will happen. Only when a large
section of the population has a vision, will really beautiful things
happen in society.

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The unfortunate reality in the world is, most

people will know peace only with death. It is
time you do something about it in life.
Questioner: What is an individuals role in society?
How can he change himself so that he can see changes
in the world?
Sadhguru: What can he do for himself so that the world
will change? The word society is just a word, there is no such
thing. It is just you, me and someone else and someone else.
There are only individual people. Human beings are a reality.
Humanity or mankind are just words.
If you want society to change, individual people have to
change. Without individual transformation there is no such thing
as universal transformation. If we want the world to change, the
first and foremost thing is you have to change. If you desire
something for the world which you yourself are not, how will it
happen? Wherever I go, I hear people talking about world peace.
So I always ask them, Are you peaceful? No, they cannot say
they are. If you are not peaceful, how will the world be peaceful?
You can control violence, but still neither you nor the world will
be peaceful. Just because there is no war does not mean the
world is peaceful. Many other kinds of battles are going on.
If you really want the world to change, one human being
at a time has to change. That is the work of Isha right now. If
you create a good number of people who are in a certain state
of consciousness, the world will change they will have an
impact. Above all, if this is brought about in the leadership, the
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53

percolation effect is even more substantial. That is one of the

reasons why we are working with leadership across the world.
Whether it is corporate, political, bureaucratic or whatever kind
of leadership, any human being who can influence and impact
another thousand people is a leader.If there is a change and a
transformation in the very way the leadership thinks, feels and
experiences the world, the world will change.
We are always trying to work with the leaders on one level,
and on a different level on the grass root level in the villages,
essentially because both these things need to happen. Something
at the grass root level needs to happen and something at the top
level needs to happen.

Questioner: So if I should first work upon myself, what

is your advice to someone like me, who is just learning
to understand his inner self and fulfillment but is also
very interested in helping in outward fulfillment and
betterment?
Sadhguru: So, Till I become enlightened should I not
do anything? To become enlightened, there are so many
dimensions. For example, apart from these programs7 we are
doing so much other activity. Have you heard of the Rural
Rejuvenation project?8 We are trying to reach millions of people;
it is a huge volume of activity. For the whole of our lives we are
going to have to endlessly raise funds and go on doing this. That
is the volume of work that we have taken up.
This is not because we are workaholics, nor are we seeking
any satisfaction in the work that we do. I do not need to do any
7 Referring to the various Isha Yoga programs which include, Inner
Engineering, Bhava Spandana, Shoonya and Samyama.
8 Referring to Action for Rural Rejuvenation, a multi-dimensional
project with a holistic approach towards improving the overall health and
quality of life of the rural poor.
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Ambition to Vision

work to be satisfied. I am more than satisfied. This is being done

as a tool for people to find expression. Most people can be only
in their doing. If they do not do, they do not know how to be.
So we are providing them the opportunity to act. This is called
karma yoga. If the action is concerned about you, then you tend
to get entangled. This is an action which is not concerned about
you. You want to do something for someone in another part of
the world, not with good intentions or bad intentions, simply
because it is needed. There is no need to make it sacred or turn
it into a huge sacrifice. You do it because it is needed. We are
eating well, but some people are not eating well, so we need to
do something about it, that is all.
When you just do what is needed, you become more life
less emotion, less thought, just life. As you become more life,
you are more in contact with the creation. The more you become
creation, the closer you have become to the Creator.
Activity is being used as a tool. If I say this, you will
misunderstand, but I want to tell you, these projects are not an
outpouring of my love. My love can find expression without
action in a very beautiful way. If I just close my eyes and sit,
I can become more loving than when I do things. This is just
being done as a tool to enhance peoples quality of life, to make
them break through the limitations of those limited selves.
Right now, they keep pampering just themselves or maybe
one more. But now, you expand the scope of activity to bodies
and people that you do not know and are not connected with
in any way. You do something to someone who has nothing to
do with you, not because you love them or because you have
some philosophy They are all Gods creation. When you
say, They are all Gods creation, you are trying to build a
relationship of brotherhood with them. No. You simply do it
because it is needed. It does not mean a damn thing to you, but
you do it like your life depends on it. That is the essence of it.
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55

All these Isha Yoga programs do not mean a damn thing to

me personally. But when I do it, I do it like my life depends on
it more than that. My involvement is unfortunately much more
than the people who are sitting in front of me. I would like to
see a day when the involvement of the people who are sitting
in front of me is higher than mine. It would be fantastic. My
involvement is so much more, but it does not mean a damn thing
to me. It does not bring me satisfaction or fulfill me. I just do it
because it is needed. When you do something only because it
is needed, where it does not mean anything to you but you are
capable of involving yourself as if that is your life, it transforms
you action becomes liberating.
When we were building the temple,9 people thought, This
is it! He wants this temple to happen. Let us do it! Once this is
done, we can relax. They worked like their life depended on
it. They went from house to house, raising funds and bringing
the necessary support and made it happen. When it was done,
before they said Ooff I announced ten different projects. I
will always keep it on because people need that kind of action.
They need to do what is needed without worrying about their
fulfillment and their likes and dislikes. Anyway we are doing
something for our growth, so let us do something that is useful
to everyone. Let us do sensible action.
There have been many masters who created action like this.
When Gurdjieff10 started his centers in Europe, the European
elite went to him. In the morning he would give them a shovel
and a pickaxe and tell them, Dig trenches. In the hot sun they
stood and they dug and dug. These are not people who are used
9 Referring to the Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple, a powerful energy form
consecrated by Sadhguru exclusively for the purpose of meditation at the Isha
Yoga Center.
10 An early twentieth-century spiritual Master in Europe.

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to labor of any kind. By the time they had worked a few hours,
they had blisters all over. He stood there and drove them on. By
late evening, they were hungry but they worked and worked,
digging trenches. Then he would look at the watch, Okay, it is
seven oclock. Looks like dinner time. All of you can close the
trenches again before we go for dinner. A whole days work!
This activity is being done with a definite purpose to
do something which does not mean anything to you but with
total involvement. That is what breaks the karmic structure.
But anyway we are doing something, instead of just digging
trenches, let us go out and do something that someone else also
needs. That is why so much activity. So dont try to change the
world. It is better to focus on yourself, and focusing on yourself
involves some work outside.

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57

Too much empty talk is going on around

the nation. It is not time to talk, it is time to do
something. It is time to work.
Questioner: Sadhguru, what is your vision for India?
Sadhguru: I dont want to impose my vision on everyone.
All I am saying is, every human being is aspiring to live well,
and whichever way they are aspiring, that should happen to
them. They dont have to live the way I think they should live.
But definitely our aspirations should not be crafted on western
models because they are not sustainable. Western countries
are managing it because their populations are in a certain way.
The land to population ratios in United States and the land to
population ratios in our country are a completely different game.
For example, today the average amount of water that is available
for one Indian citizen is only 20% of what we had in 1947. They
say by 2025, it will be 7%. So our ideas of wellbeing have to
change. We cannot dream to create our vision or build a nation
just like some other country. We have to adjust our vision as it is
needed for us, as it will work for us.
The beauty of this nation is, it is resilient. A large percentage
of the Indian population is self-employed. That means everyone
is an entrepreneur by himself. There is a difference between
taking up a job and being an entrepreneur, even if you are just
selling peanuts on the street. You still need to understand where
is the cheapest resource, where is the market good, what is the
right kind of marketing to do, what is the thing to say according
to the season. There is a whole lot of mind-set involved, even
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Ambition to Vision

in selling a heap of peanuts. However small an entrepreneur he

is, he has a certain active intellect going on within him. He is a
small entrepreneur only because of the situations in which he
exists, not because of his capabilities. If you just give him an
opportunity, if he finds the necessary exposure, he will propel
himself. When such an effervescent intellect is there, we must
harness it.
If you just create a conducive atmosphere, people will do
incredible things. There is a whole educational revolution
happening in some parts of India. If you go to small towns
and look, what was not there just five years ago, today huge
educational institutions have come up all private but they
have come up in such large scale, you cannot believe it. Not
all of them may be top level in their quality, but quality will
improve over a period as competition comes.
One thing about India is, it is a kind of nation where the sense
of loyalty is very big. If you do something for them they always
stay with you. Another thing I always see is that an average
Indian crowd is intellectually much more effervescent than most
people on the planet. I have spoken in all kinds of groups, to
the highest level of academics, scientists and economic leaders.
There are brilliant people, no question about it, but there is a
certain level of intellect in the general population in India. This
is the effect of thousands of years of culture. And it has to be
harnessed. If you leave it unharnessed for too long it will dive
down and become static. Right now it is still an effervescent
intellect. If you give a person a little support, he will climb.
Today, India is on the threshold of an economic upsurge.
Various things that we did not even dream were possible for a
larger segment of the population could be possible in the next few
years if we handle things right. Large segments of population
could hugely benefit. We are right on the threshold, it depends
on how we handle it.
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59

People want predictions, Sadhguru, can you predict what

will happen to India? In fifty years will we be a superpower?
This is a question that keeps coming to me wherever I go. I
say, With a fool like you, there is no possibility, because you
are not looking at what you need to do today. You are thinking
about what will happen after fifty years.
If we handle the situation smartly, we can be a tremendous
power because we are a population of 1.2 billion. A population
of 1.2 billion with the necessary intellect, is as good as anything
can be. If we handle ourselves right, we can be a tremendous
power.
Power does not mean, Will we have the biggest army in the
world? Power means everyone looks at you for guidance in the
world. If they want to live well, they look at you for guidance
this is power. This culture has always had this power. People
always looked east when they thought of living well. So this is
not empty talk. This was there but the culture has fallen. But
one must understand, this happens to all cultures. There will be
peaks and there will be downtrends. If we as a generation have
any sense, we have to pull it up. It does not happen free of cost,
everyone has to work for it, only then it will happen.
Too much empty talk is going on around the nation. It is
not time to talk; it is time to do something. It is time to work.
Every individual, whatever sphere of life he is in, whatever
responsibility he holds, whatever influence he has, has to stand
up and make that happen in his area. The governments cannot
do this, some other leader cannot do it. Every human being has
to do it.
A vision for India is not about what I think or what you
think. What people need is what needs to happen. Right now,
what people need is at least reasonably decent levels of living.
So the most important thing is nourishment, which must happen.
Today, sixty percent of the Indian population is considered
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Ambition to Vision

malnourished even the reasonably well-to-do because their

skeletal systems are not growing to full size. If your body does
not grow to full size, your brain will also not grow to full size.
We are producing an underdeveloped humanity, which is a very
great risk for the future. If you have 1.2 billion people, healthy,
active, focused and trained for something, you can make a
miracle out of it. But if have 1.2 billion people unhealthy, unnourished, uneducated, unfocused and uninspired, you have a
major disaster on your hands.
Are we going to turn this population which is the youngest
population on the planet in terms of nations into a possibility
or are we going to turn this into a disaster? We are going to
determine that in the next ten to fifteen years time. And every
human being who breathes on this land has to participate in
making this happen in whichever way he can do it. That is my
vision: to draw as many people as possible to actively participate
in this, in whichever way possible because if this time passes, it
may be too late. If you sit on the threshold for too long, you will
be run over by someone.

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61

With morality, you become crooked. If you

allow your humanity to function, you will see,
naturally, your heart beats for everything in
the existence.
Questioner: In todays world, Western countries greatly
influence our younger generation. On account of this,
there is a great deterioration in ethics and morals and
also human values. Can you throw some light as to how
to reverse this plague?
Sadhguru: I want you to understand, India as a culture
has no morality at all. We never focused on morals and ethics
in this country. If you go to the Western countries, they have
a rigid sense of morality which they always break, that is
different but in their society, there is an established sense of
morality. In this country, we have no sense of morality, not just
today but always. We always saw morality as a restriction for
human consciousness. We did not want to conduct our lives, our
societies, and the world around us with morality.
Morality means you will become repetitive. If you become
repetitive, you will go in cycles. If you go in circles, obviously
you will not get anywhere. So we took the risk of raising
human consciousness. A large segment of the population or a
substantial segment of the population invested itself to raise
human consciousness, not to teach morality. It is a riskier path,
but ultimately it is the only way to handle humanity. If you
impose morality, people will do things, then they will feel guilty,
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Ambition to Vision

but they will put some offering in the temple and continue to do
the same thing. They are doing it today, isnt it? Today, largely
in the world, religion has become like this.
American Airlines is a particular airline in the United States.
An American Airlines flight was flying over Alabama, a state in
the United States. The airplane developed engine trouble. So the
pilot said, We have engine trouble. I will do my best to make
a landing but there is nothing much we can do. All of you just
sit tight in your seats, tighten your seat belts and do something
religious. So one man immediately got up, took his hat and went
passing the hat around. Because in most peoples mind, religion
means they will ask you for money. This has come essentially
because of a rigid set of morals and ethics which invariably
people will break and feel guilty about. If they feel guilty they
cannot live, there has to be a way out. The way out is, you make
a contribution and you will be pardoned. You will see in some
religious places, it is written down: If you have committed this
kind of sin, this is how many dollars you must put.
Once you set morals and say, Dont do this, dont do this,
that is what people will do, because that is the nature of your
mind. If you tell your mind Dont do this, that is all it will do.
There is no Thou shall not in this country. Nobody ever told
you what you should do and what you should not do.We only
told you how you should be, which is a more difficult thing to
impart. Ten commandments can be written down, but imparting
consciousness will not come easy. It takes lots of work, and it
would work best only if it is widely imparted, so that it is there
in the air. If the parents, neighbors and the atmosphere are like
that, the children will grow up with that kind of consciousness.
Then it becomes easy. But now we are reaching a crossroad
in this country where we have not done enough work to raise
human consciousness. At the same time, we dont have a shred
of morality. We are trying to pick up a few western ethics, which
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63

are alien to us, and it does not work because it has not even
worked for them.
Morality and ethics are only nice to tell someone else, but
never for yourself. But if you are in a certain way, we dont
have to tell you, Do this, do not do this. You will act as it is
appropriate to the situation. This is the fundamental difference.
Everywhere else in the world they try to tell you what is right and
what is wrong. In this country, in this culture, we never told you
what is right and wrong. We only told you what is appropriate
for now. What is appropriate tomorrow may be different. You
will see, every embodiment of Divine that you worship Rama,
Krishna, Shiva you cannot call them morally correct people.
They are not. Because it never occurred to them that they have
to be that way. But they are the peak of human consciousness.
If you want something indigenous not indigenous to this
nation indigenous to your being, let us not impose rules of,
Thou shall not because people will bypass morality the first
opportunity they get. Let us make the necessary effort to see that
human consciousness operates in a certain way because that is
the only insurance and the ultimate insurance that you have.

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You cannot lead people when you have to

constantly supervise and manage them. You
can lead people only when they are inspired
to do what you want them to do.
Questioner: What are the qualities of a good leader?
How can I actively develop these qualities?
Sadhguru: Whatever the nature of activity that we have
chosen for our life, if we wish to be leaders in those situations,
the first thing is we must be able to lead not by words, trickery
or cunning, but by example. Fundamentally, your ability to lead
people means your ability to take people in a particular direction
that you wish, to a particular goal. If this has to happen, you
must be able to inspire them to go on by themselves in that
direction. If you have to constantly keep them in line to get a job
done, it is going to be hugely difficult to be a leader. And as the
team grows or the kind of team that you manage goes beyond
physical contact, leading people is going to be very difficult if
you cannot lead them by inspiration. You cannot lead people
when you have to constantly supervise and manage them. You
can lead people only when they are inspired to do what you want
them to do so inspired that they are going to do more than you
thought of doing. Only then, leadership becomes an effortless
process. If you have to inspire people to do whatever is required
of them, the very way you exist must be that kind of an example
that people naturally stand up and want to do things that are
necessary to be done; otherwise there is no leadership.

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65

In every single action that we perform,

in every single thought and feeling that we
generate within ourselves, we can create a
better situation around ourselves.
Questioner: How do we create the necessary inspiration
in people around us?
Sadhguru: Everyone is thinking of doing one big mela one
day and getting people inspired into wonderful states. Such
things will not happen. It needs daily committed, dedicated
work it is a lifelong thing. Generally, most leaders in the world
have always inspired people by creating an external enemy. If
you create an external enemy, you can have everyone on the
street. But your limitations your fear, your anxiety, your anger,
your hatred, whatever the limitations from which one suffers
are your biggest enemies. To say that the enemy is within
you and then to inspire people, needs much more commitment
and dedication which have unfortunately become such scarce
material on the planet today. So inspiring people does not mean
that today you do something and everything is fixed, there is no
such possibility. It is like nurturing a plant. If you want it to bear
fruit, you have to nurture it every day. Every day you have to
water it and take care of it.
One thing is, our educational systems have become hundred
percent informative, there is no inspiration. Without inspiration,
no human being rises beyond the limitations in which he lives.
It is only when he is inspired that the human being aspires to go
beyond the limitations in which we are existing right now. Today,
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Ambition to Vision

education has become totally bereft of inspiration. A teacher is

not someone that is worth looking up to unfortunately, because
when it is all information, you can as well get information
from an audio, or a video, or the internet. You dont really
have to listen to a teacher. And a teacher is not the best means
of transmission when it comes to pure information. A book
is better; the internet is even better. Only if the teachers role
is to inspire people to learn, to create a thirst for knowledge,
only then a teachers role has something to give. If he is just
trying to transmit information, the other means of transmission
are better than a human being because a human being can
always misinterpret. Making the whole education system purely
informational has caused enormous damage, and that time of life
when you are youthful, when you are capable of many things,
that span of life unfortunately goes waste simply because the
necessary inspiration is not there.
As we are investing our time, resources and energies in
transmitting informative knowledge, we have to invest a certain
amount of time, energy and resources to inspire people, in
transmitting the inspirational dimension of education which
has not been done at all. For example, sixty years ago during
the freedom struggle, this country was an inspired population.
People were willing to come out and throw their lives on the
street for the nation. In sixty years time, we did not do any work
about inspiring people and suddenly we are such a disgruntled
and disoriented population. To get Indians to think as Indians
is a huge problem because the necessary inspiration has been
missing. No organized work has been done. Haphazardly,
small groups of people doing this and that has happened but no
organized work has been done.
A few years ago when I happened to be in the United States, I
saw an old poster in a magazine which was printed in the 1930s,
at a time when people from various cultures and languages and
different kinds of backgrounds were emigrating from various
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countries into the United States. To integrate all of them into one
nation, the authorities made a great effort. I saw this particular
poster and then I came to know of so many others that the
government did. This poster was for the Italian wives, because
a large number of Italians were moving into the United States.
To make an Italian housewife into an American housewife
how she should keep her kitchen, how she should tie her apron,
how she should serve breakfast as an American wife for every
Italian immigrant that came in, they were supposed to fix this
poster in their kitchens, so that she knows how to integrate
herself as an American housewife, to inspire her about how she
is American now, not Italian. I am taking this example because
the authorities took that kind of care to inspire people to feel like
one nation. The government was even teaching you how to serve
breakfast in your house to your own family, to make you a part
of one nation.
We need to do something about inspiring people in an
organized way. A very organized effort to inspire people without
creating an external enemy is required to make people understand
that the biggest enemy for a human being is always within
himself. This inspiration is what is needed. When we are not
inspired, we will tend to function only within the limitations in
which we are placed. Only when we are inspired, we go beyond
and do things that normally human beings would not do. Only
then will people in the society surge ahead and do something
worthwhile. Unfortunately, right now that is happening only
when strife happens. But it is very important that even in normal
peaceful situations, people should be inspired. When there is
a war, people want to go and die, that is not the point. When
everything is well, to be highly inspired, to keep and to create
the situations that we want in the country and in the world is
what is needed. And it is not one days work; it is a lifelong
work.

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It is time everyone stood up and did something. We dont

have to go out on the street and start another freedom movement.
Thats not necessary. But in every single action that we perform,
in every single thought and feeling that we generate within
ourselves, we can create a better situation around ourselves.

Questioner: Some people say that leaders are born.

Some people say that leaders are made. Is it either, is it
both? What is your take on it?
Sadhguru: Leaders are always made. Whether you made
yourself before your birth or after, it does not matter how, but
leaders are always made. It is just that a certain person may have
a certain charisma and flair about his personality that helps him
lead a little more effortlessly. But people who lead only with
charisma can lead people to disasters. We want people who lead
with sense. It is not always necessary that the leader should
be charismatic. You will see, those things which are of true
importance to human beings are being done not necessarily by
charismatic people. They are being done by sensible people who
know what to do and what not to do.
Whoever you are, whatever you are right now, it is something
that you have made. The only question is either you made
yourself consciously or unconsciously. You have manufactured
yourself unconsciously so you have come out as a mess
sometimes a successful mess, sometimes an unsuccessful mess.
But whichever way you are, if you have manufactured yourself
unconsciously, you are successful only in someone elses eyes.
In your own experience of life you will not be successful. Only
if you have made yourself consciously, you are successful in
your own eyes. It is very important that you are successful in
your own perspective and not in comparison to someone else, in
a social perspective.

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A leader should not only be on top of the group, he must be

on top of the world within himself. If he does not do something
about himself, what he does with other people is going to be
accidental and any moment the whole thing can collapse on his
head. Leadership does not mean that you have to sit on top of
a pile of people. Leadership means that within yourself, you
are in top condition. According to your capabilities, when your
capabilities find full expression, things will happen. As far as
capabilities are concerned, a human being can be trained for
anything. Of course, there are people with a certain natural talent
towards things, but even if you have natural talent, that also is
made by you, but unconsciously.
If you make yourself into a conscious leader, you will
function sensibly, which is much better than relying on charisma.
Charisma can be very intoxicating both for you and others and
you can lead them to a disaster. Many leaders who could gather
huge numbers of people behind them were disastrous for the
world. They led them into battles and disastrous situations,
because they led just by charisma, not by sense.

Questioner: How do we gain a perspective on what is

appropriate and sensible to do in a situation?
Sadhguru: If you do not have a direct perception, you must
be willing to listen to anything and everything. Someone
seems to be talking utter nonsense, but still you listen because
most of the geniuses in the world spoke utter nonsense as far as
the rest of the world was concerned at that moment. It is only
a generation later that people recognized those were the wisest
things that were said. If you are a leader it does not mean you
must know everything in the world. It is just that you are willing
to listen, it does not matter who is speaking. Whether a child
is speaking or a great man or a menial worker is speaking, you
learn to listen. It is very important.
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Listening need not necessarily mean hearing capability.

Learn to listen very carefully to life and the situations around
you. Only when you listen to everything around you, you have
a perception of what is happening now and what is the next step
to take. If you have no perception of what is happening now, and
you take a step which is not conducive or in accordance to the
existing situation, then even if the step that you take is a great
step, it will go waste because it is not connected to the existing
situation.
It happened one day, a friend came to Shankaran Pillais
house and wanted to take his donkey on a loan to use it for
some work. Shankaran Pillai said, It has already been loaned to
somebody, the donkey is not here right now.
The friend was just about to leave when he heard the donkey
braying from the barn. He turned back, came to Shankaran Pillai
and said, I hear the donkey. It is here.
Shankaran Pillai said, Whom do you want to believe, me or
the donkey?
So it does not matter who, it does not matter what, you listen.
Only when you listen, you grasp the situation, otherwise you do
not.

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You can produce very great intellects, very

great energy individual human beings
carrying phenomenal sense of energy,
intellect and capability if you create large
consecrated spaces.
Questioner: Sadhguru, the volunteers and brahmacharis
in the ashram seem to be so active and doing everything
so well. They never seem to slow down. What is the
secret?
Sadhguru: When would a human being do everything well?

When for him, handling his body, his mind and his emotion is
not an issue he is not an issue only then he can do everything
well. A few years ago, I was in Lausanne at the Blue Brain Project.
The project is a phenomenal effort which has been going on for
the last six years and it will take another ten to twelve years to
complete if it is well funded. The idea is to map the human brain
and to understand the potential that the brain carries.
Already, what they have discovered or what they have
uncovered is quite phenomenal for the scientific community, but
it is a cruel joke on the yogis because we have been saying this
for thousands of years.When human beings, out of whose brains
all these damn super computers came out, said it, people said
No, such things are not possible. But now that machines are
saying it, everyone is raising a thumbs up.
Today, there is enough proof to clearly say that irrespective
of your genetics, irrespective of who your father or grandfather
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was, irrespective of the information that you carry in your

DNA, you can rewire your brain completely in a moment. The
possibility is there. How? They dont know, but they see it is
possible because everything is so flexible and mobile inside.
Everything can be changed.
One more thing that they are saying is that each neuron in the
brain is processing some trillion and odd number of functions per
second. Just a handful of neurons could do the normal activity
of our life twenty years of education and running your career
or profession. But we have billions of them. What for? If ever
even a reasonable number of them are put to use, human beings
will live like gods. Actually, in this culture we have always been
saying that many human beings lived better than gods. When
gods had problems they came looking for the sages. That is what
the culture says, repeatedly. These are not just stories. There are
many real life examples.
People who have been reared in a certain atmosphere
have shown phenomenal capabilities. This is a culture where
mathematics was never really pursued as an academic subject,
yet the greatest mathematicians have always come from India.
You got a zero from India. Without a zero, what mathematics
would you do? And in more recent times, Ramanujam came
from Tamil Nadu. At the age of twelve, just by chance he came
across a book full of formulas. Someone had left it somewhere.
He picked it up and flipped through it, and he just understood
the whole science of what is being said through these formulas.
Then he sat down and wrote down a book full of formulas of his
own.
He looked at every aspect of nature and made a mathematical
formula for it a whole book full. He closed his eyes, looked
at himself and wrote formulas. Nobody could understand what
he was doing, but just looking at the boys focus and intensity,

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they sent this book to a British Officer who happened to be a

mathematician. He looked at it and could not understand it, but
he could see the whole pattern was something incredible. So
he sent it to one of the greatest mathematicians of that time in
England. That man looked at it and saw that there seems to be
something to it, but he could not make it out. He looked at it in
the night and kept it aside and went to sleep. Some time later, he
suddenly realized what he had seen. Literally, Ramanujam had
described the whole universe through his formulas.
Even today, many of the topmost scientific physical theories
are explained by Ramanujams formulas. There are still so
many of the formulas which are yet to find a theory. So they
took Ramanujam to England and this professor kept him in his
own house and asked him to write, because he saw Ramanujam
as a man of exceptional capability. And the man wrote pages
and pages of formulas. Many scientists firmly believe this could
be the ultimate answer to everything. I am saying this because
every single human being has this capacity.
There is an inner strength in this nation that stems from a
whole science and technology on inner wellbeing right now
the whole world is crying for it. They have outer technology
with which they have done wonderful things on the outside, but
they are struggling inside. This is a technology we have known
for thousands of years. It is from this context that this whole
culture evolved.
You see temple towns where they built huge magnificent
temples that we would not dare to attempt even today with all the
machinery we have. The whole state of Tamil Nadu is built like
this. Every significant town in Tamil Nadu had a grand temple
and around that, a little town. Because the kind of dwelling you
live in is not important. Whether your house is 10,000 square
feet or just 1000 square feet is not going to make an ultimate

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difference in your life, but being around a consecrated space is

going to make a phenomenal difference in your life. With this
understanding, they built human habitations like this: if there
are 25 houses, there must be one temple. Whether you go there
or not, whether you pray or not, whether you know the mantra
or not, is not the point. You must be in a consecrated space every
moment of your life.
Consecration is a live process. It is like this: if you transform
mud into food, we call this agriculture. If you make food into flesh
and bone, we call this digestion. If you make flesh into mud, we
call this cremation. If you can make this flesh or even a stone or an
empty space into a divine possibility, that is called consecration.
Today, modern science is telling you that everything is the same
energy manifesting itself in a million different ways. If that is so,
what you call the divine, what you call a stone, what you call a
man or a woman, what you call a demon, are all the same energy
functioning in different ways. For example, the same electricity
becomes light, sound and so many other things, depending upon
the technology. So it is just a question of technology. If you have
the necessary technology, you can make the simple space around
you into a divine exuberance, you can just take a piece of rock
and make it into a god or a goddess. This is the phenomenon of
consecration.
An enormous amount of knowledge about this dimension of
life was perpetuated particularly in this culture, and this was held
as the most important thing. Because it does not matter what you
are eating, how you are or how long you live, at some point a
need will come that you want to get in touch with the source of
creation. If that possibility is not created across the planet and
is not available to every human being who seeks, then society
has failed to provide true wellbeing for a human being. It is with
this awareness that in this culture, every street had three temples

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because even a few meters should not pass without there being a
consecrated space. The idea was not to create one temple versus
the other; the idea was that nobody should walk in a space which
is not consecrated, nobody should live in a space which is not
consecrated.
It is my dream that someday the whole of humanity should
live in consecrated spaces. Your home should be consecrated,
your street should be consecrated, your office should be
consecrated. Wherever you spend time, those spaces must be
consecrated. There is a certain beauty. Your evolution need not
stick to the Darwinian scale. You can simply leapfrog and go
if you live in a charged space. We can actually scientifically
establish this, in just one day of initiation, like brahmacharis
and others who are going into various other processes here not
just the basic processes, but people who live in the ashram who
are going through many other things in a single day we can
show a phenomenal change happening in their brain function, in
their physiological function, and in their genetic material.
This is the significance that when someone takes
brahmacharya11 or sanyas,12 he will do the kriya that he is
supposed to do after his parents are dead, when the parents are
still alive, because he is even washing off the genetic material
from his system. His father has no influence anymore. Maybe
my nose looks like my fathers nose but none of his stuff is in
me. I cleaned it up. That is what a sanyasi is saying. When he
leaves a tarpana for a live father which is an insult because
the man is alive and you are doing death rituals for him he is
11 The path of the divine. A life of celibacy and studentship on the path
of spirituality; the first of four stages of life as per the Varnashrama Dharma.
12 On the path of spirituality; the fourth of four stages of life as per the
Varnashrama Dharma. The spontaneous withdrawal from the world in search
for Self Realization.

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just saying, I am not wishing death upon you, it is just that I

have no father anymore because I have washed off my genetics
completely.
This has happened in many ways with many different
people. On a certain day when Jesus was giving a sermon, his
mother came and she could not find her way through the crowd,
so somebody said, Your mother has come.
Jesus said, Who is that woman? Who is my mother? He
had washed off his genetics.
The very fundamental building blocks in the system can be
changed very rapidly if one lives in consecrated space. If you
walk on the street, if you do business, if you live in a town,
everyone must constantly live in a consecrated space because
if you want to produce generations of enhanced human beings,
you need this kind of space. Otherwise only by accident or by
personal dint someone may become something, but you will not
produce a generation of beautiful people. This culture produced
a galaxy of knowledge, a galaxy of Enlightened beings. Every
generation produced this simply because they took care of a
number of aspects like this. Nowhere else on this planet have
single generations of people risen to such glorious heights of
knowing as this culture has known. You can produce very great
intellects, very great energy individual human beings carrying
phenomenal sense of energy, intellect and capability if you
create large consecrated spaces where the whole generation of
people are in touch with that kind of energy and space.
The most important thing is that you must live in a
consecrated space. Either you consecrate your home or you
consecrate your own body so that you constantly live in that
sacred space. Only then a human being will know wellbeing
in a completely different way. It is not something that you can

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articulate and tell people, I am also well, I went for a medical

check-up yesterday, not that kind of wellness. If you simply
sit here, you are blissed out. It is a different kind of wellness
which every human being is capable of. If a large number of
people are constantly touched by consecrated spaces, you would
see, human beings would blossom with a completely different
sense of wholeness, homogeneity and organic way of looking at
life, and above all as full-fledged human beings.
a

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Sadhguru
Yogi, mystic, and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master
with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and
pragmatism, his life and work serve as a reminder that yoga is not
an esoteric discipline from an outdated past, but a contemporary
science, vitally relevant to our times. Probing, passionate and
provocative, insightful, logical and unfailingly witty, Sadhgurus
talks have earned him the reputation of a speaker and opinionmaker of international renown.
With speaking engagements that take him around the world,
he is widely sought after by prestigious global forums to address
issues as diverse as human rights, business values, and social,
environmental and existential issues. He has been a delegate to
the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit, a member
of the World Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders and
Alliance for New Humanity, a special invitee to the Australian
Leadership Retreat, Tallberg Forum, Indian Economic Summit
2005-2008, as well as a regular at the World Economic Forum
in Davos.
With a celebratory engagement with life on all levels,
Sadhgurus areas of active involvement encompass fields as
diverse as architecture and visual design, poetry and painting,
ecology and horticulture, sports and music. He is the author and
designer of several unique buildings and consecrated spaces
at the Isha Yoga Center, which have wide attention for their
combination of intense sacred power with strikingly innovative
eco-friendly aesthetics.
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Listeners have been ubiquitously impressed by his astute

and incisive grasp of current issues and world affairs, as well
as his unerringly scientific approach to the question of human
wellbeing. Sadhguru is also the founder of Isha Foundation,
a non-profit organization dedicated to the wellbeing of the
individual and the world for the past three decades. Isha
Foundation does not promote any particular ideology, religion,
or race, but transmits inner sciences of universal appeal.
http://sadhguru.org
http://www.youtube.com/sadhguru

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Isha Foundation
Isha Foundation is a non-profit human-service organization,
founded by Sadhguru and supported by over two million
volunteers in over 150 centers worldwide. Recognizing the
possibility of each person to empower another, Isha Foundation
has created a massive movement that is dedicated to address all
aspects of human wellbeing, without ascribing to any particular
ideology, religion or race.
From its powerful yoga programs to its inspiring projects for
society and environment, Isha activities are designed to create
an inclusive culture that is the basis for global harmony and
progress.
Isha Foundation is also involved in several path-breaking
outreach initiatives: Action for Rural Rejuvenation (ARR)
enhances the quality of rural life through healthcare and disease
prevention, community revitalization, women empowerment,
the creation of sustainable livelihoods, and yoga programs. Isha
Vidhya empowers rural children with quality education. Project
GreenHands (PGH) initiates mass tree planting and creates a
culture of care for the environment to keep this planet liveable
for future generations. The project was awarded the Government
of Indias highest environmental accolade, the Indira Gandhi
Paryavaran Puraskar.
Ishas unique approach in cultivating human potential has
gained worldwide recognition and reflects in Isha Foundations
special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) of the United Nations.
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The Foundation is headquartered at the Isha Yoga Center, set

in the lush rainforest at the base of the Velliangiri Mountains in
southern India, and at the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences on the
spectacular Cumberland Plateau in central Tennessee, USA.
http://www.ishafoundation.org
http://blog.ishafoundation.org

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Isha Yoga
At the core of the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences activities
is a customized system of yoga called Isha Yoga. Isha Yoga
distills powerful, ancient yogic methods for a modern person,
creating peak physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. This
basis of total wellbeing accelerates inner growth, allowing
each individual to tap the wealth of vibrant life within oneself.
Sadhgurus introductory program, Inner Engineering, introduces
Shambhavi Mahamudra a simple but powerful kriya (inner
energy process) for deep inner transformation.
The uniqueness of Isha Yoga is that it is offered as a science.
It draws on the ancient yogic principle that the body is the temple
of the spirit and that good health is fundamental to personal and
spiritual development. Scientifically structured, it promotes
beneficial changes in ones inner chemistry to accelerate the
release of physical, mental and emotional blocks and produce
a life-transforming impact of profound experience, clarity and
boundless energy.
Isha Yoga involves a combination of carefully selected
purificatory and preparatory practices, including a series of
dynamic breathing techniques and meditation in simple sitting
postures. The practices that are taught do not demand physical
agility or previous experience of yoga. They integrate seamlessly
into ones daily life, allowing one to function at the optimum
level, making peace and joy ones natural way of being.
Thus, individuals, regardless of their personal situations
or backgrounds, have the possibility to integrate a powerful
spiritual process into their lives.
http://www.ishayoga.org
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Inner Engineering
Inner Engineering is offered as an intensive program for
personal growth. The program and its environment establish the
possibility to explore the higher dimensions of life and offers
tools to re-engineer ones self through the inner science of yoga.
Once given the tools to rejuvenate, people can optimize all
aspects of health, inner growth and success. For those seeking
professional and personal excellence, this program offers keys
for meaningful and fulfilling relationships at work, home,
community, and most importantly, within ones self.
Inner Engineering can be thought of as a synthesis of holistic
sciences to help participants establish an inner foundation and
vision for all dimensions of life and find the necessary balance
between the challenges of a hectic career and the inner longing
for peace and wellbeing.
The approach is a modern antidote to stress, and presents
simple but powerful processes from yogic science to purify
the system and increase health and inner wellbeing. Program
components include guided meditations and transmission of the
sacred Shambhavi Mahamudra. When practiced on a regular
basis, these tools have the potential to enhance ones experience
of life on many levels.

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Isha Yoga Center

Isha Yoga Center, founded under the aegis of Isha Foundation,
is located on 150 acres of lush land at the foothills of the
Velliangiri Mountains that are part of the Nilgiris Biosphere, a
reserve forest with abundant wildlife.
Created as a powerful sthana (a center for inner growth), this
popular destination attracts people from all parts of the world. It is
unique in its offering of all aspects of yoga gnana (knowledge),
karma (action), kriya (energy), and bhakti (devotion) and
revives the Guru-shishya paramparya (the traditional method of
knowledge transfer from Master to disciple).
Isha Yoga Center provides a supportive environment for
people to shift to healthier lifestyles, improve interpersonal
relationships, seek a higher level of self-fulfilment, and realize
their full potential.
The Center is located 30 km west of Coimbatore, a major
industrial city in South India which is well connected by air,
rail, and road. All major national airlines operate regular flights
into Coimbatore from Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore.
Train services are available from all major cities in India. Regular
bus and taxi services are also available from Coimbatore to the
Center.
Visitors are advised to contact the Center for availability
and reservation of accommodation beforehand, as it is generally
booked well in advance.

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Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple

The Dhyanalinga is a powerful and unique energy form
created by Sadhguru from the essence of yogic sciences.
Situated at the Isha Yoga Center, the Dhyanalinga is the first of
its kind to be completed in over 2000 years. The Dhyanalinga
Yogic Temple is a meditative space that does not ascribe to any
particular faith or belief system nor does it require any ritual,
prayer, or worship.
The Dhyanalinga was consecrated by Sadhguru after
three years of an intense process of prana pratishtha. Housed
within an architecturally striking pillarless dome structure, the
Dhyanalingas energies allow even those unaware of meditation
to experience a deep state of meditativeness, revealing the
essential nature of life.
A special feature of the temple complex are the Theerthakunds,
consecrated subterranean water bodies, energized by rasalingas.
A dip in these vibrant pools significantly enhances ones spiritual
receptivity and is a good preparation to receive the Grace of the
Dhyanalinga. The waters of the Theerthakunds also rejuvenate
the body, and bring health and wellbeing.
The Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple draws many thousands of
people every week, who converge to experience a deep sense of
inner peace.

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Worldwide Centers
INDIA
Isha Yoga Center, Velliangiri Foothills, Semmedu (P.O.),
Coimbatore 641114 India.
Telephone: +91-422-2515345
Email: info@ishafoundation.org
USA
Isha Institute of Inner-sciences, 951 Isha Lane,
McMinnville, TN 37110 USA.
Telephone: +1-931-668-1900
Email: usa@ishafoundation.org
UK
Isha Foundation, PO Box 559, Isleworth TW7 5WR, UK.
Telephone: +44-79 56 99 87 29
Email: uk@ishafoundation.org
AUSTRALIA
Isha Foundation Australia, Suite 1.5, 173 Lennox Street,
Richmond VIC 3121, Melbourne, Australia.
Telephone: +61 433 643 215
Email: australia@ishafoundation.org

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SINGAPORE
Isha Singapore, Block 805, 05-636, Chai Chee Road,
Singapore 460805.
Telephone: +65 96660197
Email: singapore@ishafoundation.org
MALAYSIA
Telephone: +60 17-366-5252
Email: malaysia@ishafoundation.org
MIDDLE EAST
Telephone: 961-3-789-046,
961-3-747-178 Email: lebanon@ishafoundation.org

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