30 Sadhguru Quotes from Inner Engineering on Spirituality, Love, and Understanding Life

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Excerpt: Learn how to better engineer the inner workings of your life by reading this powerful collection of Sadhguru quotes from Inner Engineering…

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Introduction: Exchange Grandiose Visions for Immediate Opportunities

“You cannot transform the world without transforming the individual.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 262)

…Just like you cannot transform a wall without transforming each individual brick; or a football team without transforming each of the individual players; or a relationship without transforming each of the individual actions.

What most people miss, in my opinion, is the immediate opportunity in exchange for a grandiose vision. Our opportunity to change the world is right in front of our faces every day, but so many of us are too busy thinking about how we can change the whole world and are doing nothing instead.

I shouldn’t say “nothing” because I’m confident that many of us are doing some intense planning, visualization work, and goal-setting—but, how far does that really go in making a difference?

The answer is, nowhere until those plans, visions, and goals are acted upon. And some of them will be acted upon and it will all turn out great. But, the vast majority, in my estimation, won’t get acted upon at all.

Life gets in the way. Things tend to get chaotic and work loads increase. Distractions will continue to distract and before you know it, everything you had planned will be forgotten. Or it will get pushed so far on the back burner that you won’t even remember you put it there.

Think about how this pertains to you.

How many times have you wanted to transform the world and thought up some great ideas to one day implement? And how many of those ideas made their way to the light of day? If you’re anything like the rest of us, my guess is not many.

We tend to have way more ideas than we could ever rightfully act on. And part of the reason why so many of them are so hard to act on is because of their sheer scale. In order to transform the world, you need a world’s worth of resources! You need an abundance of time, money, energy, effort, or skills that can be scaled across the globe—and that’s, to say it lightly, unimaginably hard.

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Below, you will find some of our favorite Sadhguru quotes from Inner Engineering. Arranged in a way that captures the essence of what Sadhguru tries to communicate throughout his book, these insights are deeply insightful, moving, and thought-provoking in nature.

Discussing mostly how, as the title of the book suggests, we might better engineer the inner workings of our lives, Sadhguru covers a wide range of territory that may impact how you think and, consequentially, how you live. Covering ideas from wellbeing to happiness to present-mindedness to love to responsibility to spirituality to understanding life and how we work as humans—this book will lay a foundation for you to grow from for sure.

For those who don’t know Sadhguru, he makes a special note that guru means, “dispeller of darkness, someone who opens the door for you.” And as a guru he makes it clear that he has no doctrine to teach, no philosophy to impart, and no belief to propagate. He simply aims to light the way for people so that they may find their own path according to their own truths.

Please, enjoy this collection of quotes from Inner Engineering. My hope in sharing this list is that they help brighten the way for you as you keep moving forward in your life. I’d also like to point out that the bolded lines in the quotes were specially emphasized by me. Everything else is emphasized as read. Enjoy!

The List: 30 Sadhguru Quotes from Inner Engineering on Spirituality, Love, and Understanding Life

“Put simply, our inner ecology is a mess. Somehow we think that fixing outer conditions will make everything okay on the inside. But these past 150 years are proof that technology will only bring comfort and convenience to us, not well-being. We need to understand that unless we do the right things, the right things will not happen to us: this is true not just of the outside world, but also the inside.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 30)

“Well-being is just a deep sense of pleasantness within. If your body feels pleasant, we call this health. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call this peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this joy. If your emotions become pleasant, we call this love. If they become very pleasant, we call this compassion. If your life energies become pleasant, we call this bliss. If they become very pleasant, we call this ecstasy. This is all that you are seeking: pleasantness within and without. When pleasantness is within, it is termed peace, joy, happiness. When your surroundings become pleasant, it gets branded success. If you’re not interested in any of this and want to go to heaven, what are you seeking? Just otherworldly success! So, essentially all human experience is only a question of pleasantness and unpleasantness in varying degrees.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 26)

“Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 27)

“One of the biggest problems in the world today is loneliness. It is quite incredible. The planet is teeming with seven billion people, but people are lonely! If someone enjoys being alone, there is no problem at all. But most people are suffering because of it! They are going through serious psychological problems as a consequence. If you are lonely, it is because you have chosen to become an island unto yourself. It doesn’t have to be this way. ‘I am not responsible’ makes you unwilling to get along with anyone—until you can’t even get along with yourself. It often comes to a point when you believe you are not even responsible for what is happening within yourself!

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 63)

“The most horrific things in life can be a source of nourishment if you accept, ‘I am responsible for the way I am now.’ It is possible to transform the greatest adversity into a stepping-stone for personal growth. If you take one hundred percent responsibility for the way you are now, a brighter tomorrow is a possibility. But if you take no responsibility for the present—if you blame your parents, your friend, your husband, your girlfriend, your colleagues for the way you are—you have forsaken your future even before it comes.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 58)

“Whenever we have had to do something about our lives, we have taken it into our hands. Whenever it comes to other people’s misfortunes, we have a word to explain it: destiny. And what a convenient word that is. Destiny has become a popular scapegoat, a way to deal with failure, a fatalistic ruse to reconcile ourselves to all kinds of uncomfortable situations. But turning inward is the first step from passivity to agency—from being a victim toward becoming a master of your own destiny.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 40)

“If terrible things have happened to you, you ought to have grown wise. If the worst possible events have befallen you, you should be the wisest of the lot. But instead of growing wise, most people become wounded. In a state of conscious response, it is possible to use every life situation—however ugly—as an opportunity for growth. But if you habitually think, ‘I am the way I am because of someone else,’ you are using life situations merely as an opportunity for self-destruction or stagnation.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 56)

“My ability to respond is limitless, but my ability to act is limited. I am one hundred percent responsible for everything I am and everything I am not, for my capacities and my incapacities, for my joys and my miseries. I am the one who determines the nature of my experience in this life and beyond. I am the maker of my life.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 66)

“Only if you realize you are responsible do you have the freedom to create yourself the way you want to be, not as a reaction to the situations in which you exist. Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom. When you are able to create yourself the way you want, you can create your life the way you want as well. Your outer life may not be a hundred percent in your control, but your inner life always will.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 53)

“Responsibility is not burdensome. Boundaries are burdensome. If you draw yourself a boundary, whether of ideology, caste, creed, race, or religion, you cannot move beyond it and you end up stuck for no reason at all. These boundaries only end up breeding fear, hatred, and anger. The bigger your boundary, the more burdensome it becomes. But if your responsibility is limitless, where’s the boundary? No boundary, no burden. This is the turnaround in human consciousness that needs to take place. Once this happens, it is not that the cosmos begins to happen your way. Instead, what you are becomes cosmic. This is not transcendence; this is homecoming.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 69)

“Do you want to be a living being or a thinking being? Right now, ninety percent of the time, you are only thinking about life, not living it. Have you come into this world to experience life or to think about it? Your mental process is a very small happening compared to the life process, but right now it has become far more important. It is time for humanity to shift the significance to the life process once again. The need is an urgent one. Our lives depend on it.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 162)

“The most beautiful moments in your life—what you might consider moments of bliss, joy, ecstasy, or utter peace—were moments when you were not thinking about anything at all. You were just being. Even without your thoughts, existence is.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 150)

“If you have a good seed and if you create the right atmosphere, it will sprout. Creating the right atmosphere of body and mind is the only work. You do not have to do anything else. No teachings of morality, no metaphysical discourses are needed. If your humanity is stirred, you are a beautiful human being.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 187)

“When you realize that all your material achievements are of value only in comparison with those who don’t have them, this is joy that springs from another’s deprivation. Can you really call this joy? Isn’t it actually a kind of sickness? It is time everyone addressed this. If you were alone on this planet, what would you want for yourself? Ask yourself this question and see where it takes you.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 221)

“When I first came to the United States, I heard everybody talking about ‘stress management.’ It puzzled me. Why would anybody want to manage stress? I always thought we managed the things that are precious to us—our money, our business, our family. It took me time to see that people have assumed that stress is an inevitable part of their lives! They do not see that it is entirely self-created and self-inflicted. Once you take charge of your inner life, there is no such thing as stress.“

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 54)

“Everybody thinks their job is stressful. No job is stressful. There are many jobs that could present challenging situations. There could be nasty bosses, insecure colleagues, emergency rooms, impossible deadlines—or you might even find yourself in the middle of a war zone! But these are not inherently stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 141)

“Gautama the Buddha is supposed to have lived 2,500 years ago, and Jesus is supposed to have lived 2,000 years ago, but as far as I am concerned, both are a living reality. Once you create a certain volume of work with your life energies, it is permanent for all practical purposes and time does not destroy it. If you work with the physical body of flesh and blood, it has a limited life span. If you use your mind, the life span of that work is much longer. But if you work with your fundamental life energies, then the result is timeless.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 248)

“Logically, somebody who never put effort into anything should be the master of effortlessness. But it is not so. If you want to know effortlessness, you need to know effort. When you reach the peak of effort, you become effortless. Only a person who knows what it is to work understands rest. Paradoxically, those who are always resting know no rest; they only sink into dullness and lethargy. This is the way of life.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 105)

“Our body and brain work at their best only when the stomach is empty. So be conscious of eating in such a way that within two and a half hours, your food moves out of the stomach, and within twelve to eighteen hours completely out of the system. With this simple awareness you will experience much more energy, agility, and alertness. These are the ingredients of a successful life, irrespective of what you choose to do with it.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 125)

“Most people think peace and joy are the goals of the spiritual life. This is a fallacy. Peace and joy are the basic requirements for a life of well-being. If you want to enjoy your dinner tonight, you must be peaceful and happy. If you want to enjoy your family, the work that you do, the world that you live in, you must must be peaceful and happy. Peace and joy are not things you attain at the end of life. They are the basis of your life. If you consider peace to be the ultimate goal, you will only ‘rest in peace’!

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 33)

“People will always find ways to subvert values, morals, and ethics. But when you are naturally joyful, you are naturally pleasant with the world around you. Spirituality does not mean moving away from life; it means becoming alive to the core, in the fullest possible way. With age, physical agility may diminish, but the level of joy and aliveness need not. If your level of joy and aliveness is declining, you are committing suicide in installments.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 186)

“The whole effort of the spiritual process is to break the boundaries you have drawn for yourself and experience the immensity that you are. The aim is to unshackle yourself from the limited identity you have forged, as a result of your own ignorance, and live the way the Creator made you—utterly blissful and infinitely responsible.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 67)

“If you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything. People think spirituality is about looking for God or truth or the ultimate. The problem is you have already defined what you are looking for. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 15)

“To be loving is simply this: a willingness to respond freely and openly. Right now, it may be limited to one or two people in your lives. But it is possible to extend this ability to embrace the entire world. Does it mean going out into the streets and hugging everyone? No. That would be crazy—not to mention, irresponsible. As we have said, responsibility is not about action, but a way of being. Love is not something you do; it is just the way you are.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 65)

“If you have to be in love, you should not be. The English expression ‘falling in love’ is very significant. You don’t climb in love, you don’t stand in love, you don’t fly in love, you fall in love. Something of you should fall or melt away to accommodate the other. There is a distinction between a transaction and a love affair. A love affair need not be with any particular person; you could be having a great love affair with life itself.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 200)

“Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 65)

“There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love. There are conditions and there is love. When you talk about love, it has to be unconditional. The moment there is a condition, it just amounts to a transaction. Maybe a convenient transaction, maybe a good arrangement, but that will not fulfill you or transport you to another dimension. It is just convenient. Love need not necessarily be convenient; most of the time it is not. It takes life. You have to invest yourself.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 192)

“Morality is worthwhile because it helps ensure social order, but it is capable of wreaking inner havoc. Since nobody can live by the morals prescribed by most religions, most of humanity lives in a state of perpetual guilt, shame, and fear. This is a tragically crippled existence. Humanity will also bring social order, but it requires no external enforcement whatsoever.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 186)

“Never before has a generation of people known the comforts and conveniences we have today. And yet, we cannot claim to be the most joyful or loving generation in history. A vast number of people live in states of constant anxiety and depression. Some are suffering their failure, but ironically, many are suffering the consequences of their success. Some are suffering their limitations, but many are suffering their freedom. What is missing is human consciousness. Everything else is in place, but the human being is not in place. If human beings stopped obstructing the path to their own happiness, every other solution is at hand. You cannot transform the world without transforming the individual.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 262)

“When it comes to external realities, each human being is differently capable. What one does, the other may not be able to do. But when it comes to inner realities, all of us are equally capable. There is no guarantee that you will be able to sing, dance, climb a mountain, or make money, merely because you want to. But making your inner life blissful is something that everyone is capable of. It cannot be denied to you, if you are willing.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 79)

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If you enjoyed these quotes from Inner Engineering, then you should definitely check out Sadhguru’s book in full. It comes highly recommended: