DETACHMENT

There is a lot of talk about detachment these days because somewhere there is fear about involvement with life. Actually, the fear is not about involvement, the fear is about entanglement. Because you do not know the distinction between involvement and entanglement, you are talking about detachment. If you know how to be absolutely involved with life and not be entangled, you would not be talking about detachment. Only the fear of entanglement has started this whole philosophy of detachment. Entanglement has come not because there is something wrong with life. Entanglement has come because you are handling life improperly. If there was no involvement with life, you would not know life. So ifyou are talking about detachment, you are talking about avoiding life. The best way to avoid life is to fall dead. Why do you want to exist here and avoid life?

There are too many people on the planet who are not fully alive. Partially alive people are a crime against life. You have come here to live, to experience life. Your life should happen in the most exuberant way possible,  but the fear of entanglement is making you weave all these kinds of philosophies. If your involvement is absolute and total with everything that you are in touch with right now, you will see there is no entanglement. The problem with you is, you choose to be involved only with a particular person and you want to ignore the rest of the humanity or the rest of life around you, so you get entangled. If you are involved with everything that you are in touch with right now, the very air that you breathe, the atmosphere around you, life around you; then there is no question of entanglement. Entanglement has come because of the discriminatory involvement.

Only if you show involvement with everything around you, at that moment you will know life. Even if you are in heaven, without involvement it does not mean anything. Whether it is your family or work or life situation around you or the world in which you live or your current state of  existence, you will have some experience of this only if you are deeply involved with it.

See, detachment is a philosophy that has been owned by people who have misunderstood life completely. And because of these people, there is a huge aversion towards anything spiritual in the world. Right now, most of the population has come to this conclusion - spirituality is for those people who are not interested in life. They assume that if you are spiritual you should not eat properly, you should not dress properly, and you should not live properly. You must be suffocated; you must look suffocated at least. If you smile, laugh and enjoy your life, then you are not spiritual. If you have a goat-like face which has never smiled, then you are spiritual.

But being spiritual really means your interest in life has gone so deep that you want to know everything about life; your involvement is so deep that you want to know not just the physical dimension of life, you want to know all of life. There is no chance for a person who is trying to avoid life to be spiritual because spirituality needs absolute, total involvement with everything, otherwise there is no possibility.

It is not the life process which is entangling you; it is the ignorance with which you are handling life that entangles you. You get identified with things that you are not, so you get entangled. Right now I am speaking through this microphone. Now if I start believing that I am the microphone, then there is going to be lot of trouble. I would not be able to move without this. This has happened to you in many ways. You have gotten identified with a million things that you are not; starting from your physical body, your thoughts, your opinion, your ideas, your emotions, your clothes, your jewelry, your family, and your work. Once you get identified, your whole life gets distorted. If you do not have a proper perspective of what you are, then you get entangled. So if entanglement should not happen, you must maintain awareness as to what you are and what you are not. If this distinction is constantly kept, there is no question of entanglement.

Sadhguru is a Realised Master, Yogi and profound Mystic of our times. A visionary, Sadhguru asserts that peace and happiness is not the ultimate goal of life, but the most basic need in every human being. He developed Isha Yoga as a powerful method for individual transformation leading to human emancipation. A glimpse of his life and work can be found in the books of Encounter the Enlightened and Mystic’s Musings. For more details visit www.ishafoundation.org