Role of Spirituality in a Student's Life

Q: Sadhguru, how does spirituality take a position in students’ lives? 

Sadhguru: A spiritual process means that you have become a seeker. A religious person means he has become a believer. Unfortunately, academics and scientists are also becoming believers today.  But a student and a spiritual seeker are a perfect match because in some way any agile life is a natural spiritual seeker. They may not necessarily identify themselves that way, but they want to know what everything is about. This means you are a spiritual seeker. But have you organized your seeking so that it will come to a result, or are you just one more guy who will ask this and that question when you are young, but by the time you are thirty you forget everything and just live your life grubbing around? Grubbing for food, grubbing for money, grubbing for something - that is how most people are living.

Keeping the Questions Alive

If you keep the questions alive, you are naturally a spiritual seeker. How can you leave an unanswered question just lying there? Any question about your life must be answered. Your mind and your intellect will not be capable of keeping this alive. After some time, it will become devious, you know. From how you were at the age of ten to how you are right now, you have become a little more devious. Unfortunately, by the time you are thirty, you will become much more devious. You will even start saying, “God created the entire universe,” though you do not know a damn thing.

Generally, in the world, people understand being an adult as knowing everything that you really do not know. An adult acts like he knows everything that he does not know. But I want you to remain this way, “What I know, I know. What I do not know, I do not know.” 

Even on your deathbed, still you will not know many things. Is it okay, or will you just make assumptions? A lot of people who remained atheist for a whole lifetime will start praying when death starts coming. They want some certainty now. But spiritual process means celebrating uncertainty. We know this life is uncertain, and we are seeing how to equip ourselves to handle this uncertainty rather than creating a false sense of certainty.  Everybody is trying to create a false sense of certainty. “Oh, God is sitting there, do not worry, God will take care of you.” But nothing like that happened. What you handled well worked well; what you did not handle well became a mess. But with so many uncertainties, even if we are handling everything right, tomorrow morning we may fall dead. It is possible. 

Dancing with Uncertainty

This cosmos of uncertainty will equip you to handle uncertainty without trying to bring a false sense of certainty into your life with confidence, with belief, and with ideologies. In trying to create a certain sense of certainty, you will start curtailing your boundaries. People start making themselves smaller and smaller because the smaller the area, the more certainty. If you just live in your room, ninety percent will happen your way - the other ten percent, the cockroaches and others will do their own thing. But if you expand your area to a town, then fifty percent will happen your way and fifty percent is uncertain. If you expand your area to the entire globe, not even ten percent happens your way, and ninety percent is uncertainty.  

You will live a large life only if you learn to dance around with uncertainty. Otherwise, seeking certainty in everything, you will make your life very small. You will take away all the potential of living.

Youth is not the time and age for you to seek certainty. You must equip yourself to handle uncertainty. For this, you need a spiritual process. 

Preparing for Life’s Opportunities

Every day, I am in a new place. If I sleep on the same pillow two nights, it is a luxury for me. Obviously, I have no proper schedules, but still my body takes travel, sleeplessness, and killing schedules better than most young people. I take this beating better than everybody mainly because of the twenty, twenty-five years of absolute sadhana that I put into this body. That is still holding me up and making me function far better than anybody. 

Your body and your mind should facilitate all your aspirations, not come in the way. Your moods, your likes, your dislikes, your bodily problems, your back ache, head ache - all these things will stop you from doing what you really want to do in your life. That should not happen. 

For most people, their own bodies and minds hold them down when opportunity opens up in their life. At this age, you must put in substantial physical and spiritual sadhana so that when the time comes, when life gives you an opportunity to do things, your body and your mind should not hold you back. They must be the sails of your life, not anchors. 

Editor’s Note: Watch the Youth and Truth #UnplugWithSadhguru playlist, a comprehensive compilation of Sadhguru’s talks and interactions with the youth and students of India. New videos will be added to this playlist as more videos are released from the Youth and Truth events, so remember to visit this playlist again!