Answering a question on devotion, Sadhguru elaborates that devotion is not something that one applies to their life in a corporate context. Devotion essentially means that a person has no agenda of their own. The moment one takes up corporate and family responsibilities, they are clearly stating that they have their own agenda. Not that devotion is absent in people, but that they should not attempt it as a full-time path. There are other ways to attain without disturbing external realities.

Questioner: Sadhguru you mentioned about the fact that, I mean a true devotee is one who is willing to, like give himself up and his agendas. How does one work with this philosophy in let’s say any work, in this corporate world, or …

Sadhguru: You cannot, you just cannot because you have your own agendas. So don’t waste your time on devotion. You must explore other ways. Devotion means taking your emotion to its highest pitch, yes? Isn’t it so? You have various kinds of emotions. Devotion is held as the highest form of emotion because it’s least entangling. It’s liberating. So taking your emotion to its highest pitch. Devotees are insane people; they’re not reasonable people as far as the world is concerned. They’re very beautiful people within themselves but as far as the society is concerned they’re usually insane people. Your Mirabai’s, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the South Indian devotees. Akka Mahadevi’s, all these people are very insane people. You can’t live with them. After they’re gone you can worship them. When they’re there, nobody could understand what the hell is happening with these people? I know Mira is so worshiped in the Northern part of the country.

There is a wonderful book called, ‘Cuckold,’ written by Kiran Nagarkar. This is life perspective of Mirabai’s husband. Let’s say you have a wife who believes she is Krishna’s wife, not yours. All the time, she’s going into such states that it’s like Krishna is with him, with her. She’s dancing with him, she’s loving him, she’s kissing him, she’s everything, okay? She’s so deeply involved. Now you are the husband. Are you going to appreciate her, appreciate her devotion or go insane with your own problems, isn’t it? So this book is the husband’s perspective of Mira’s life, how he experienced Mira. Because devotees are like that. They don’t belong to the logical dimension of life. They are of a different this thing.

Devotion is one of the quickest ways to attain but you won’t fit into normal social and other situations. It’s not possible. If you want to fit into normal situations, your family and social situations and still pursue spirituality I’m not saying devotion is completely absent in you, there is a part of you, your emotions are there so naturally certain amount of devotion happens here and there but you can’t choose it as a path because you still want life to happen the way you want it. When you want life to happen the way you want it, you should just learn to use your body and mind the way you want it, then only things will happen the way you want it, isn’t it? You can also attain through your intelligence. You can also attain through your physical action, you can also attain by transforming your inner energies but you’re not just any one of them, you’re a combination.

So, we’re choosing a combination of these things so that without disturbing external realities, you can still evolve. If you want to preserve the external realities and still evolve then naturally there are compromises you go slowly. You’re not bothered what happens to your corporate world, or to your husband, or wife or child or anything. You just want to grow, then it’s very quick. You want to preserve this also but you want something else to happen, that is why we’re going slowly. With different people we do different things. There are some people who are not concerned about all those things. With them we work in a different way. Now you are people who want to preserve the external situation but still you want an internal possibility. So we are going slowly on combination of all these things, not putting anything to a high pitch. Everything trying to raise to the next level of experience. Not to the ultimate. We’re just seeing how to push you to the next level of experience.

Devotion and corporate world will not go. Devotion and family life will not go. Devotion and anything will not go. Devotion means everything else has to dissolve. That’s why I’m saying don’t talk devotion, it’s just deception. Some moments when your experience raises to a certain pitch, a moment of devotion may happen to you. Just wait for that moment it’s very wonderful but don’t try to pursue devotion as your policy because there’s a very deep deception in it.