Sadhguru speaks about devotion as a tool to establish our way of being, so that we remain untouched by external upheavals. Only then, Sadhguru says, can we really explore life.

Sadhguru: Unfortunately this has been the way of the humanity when they feel helpless they bow down, when they’re little… feel little powerful they step on your head. There is nothing new about it in this world. So devotion means just that, to change that that you do not choose whether situations or people to… as to how you are, you are the way you are that your way of being is not any more determined by who is standing in front of you. That’s the idea of devotion. Everything else, whatever other values you know, other ways of behavior you know with people always is determined by who is standing in front you right now and what kind of situation are you in right now. Devotion means just that somebody is there, nobody is there, whoever is there, whatever the situation you are still the same person.

This is the best way to establish your way of being. Right now that’s the whole problem. You are still too much of a flux. When you are so much of a flux how to take you anywhere? You will naturally spill out somewhere, isn't it? That’s exactly what's been happening with your life, not just one person, I am saying with everyone; you try to go somewhere then you find half of you is there. So you have to go back to recollect that and most probably you won't come back anyway.

So devotion means just that that your way of being is no more determined by anything or anybody. The situations in which you exist and whom you are facing right now will not determine the nature of your being, this is how you are, because devotion is that which is devoid of you. There is no sense of me when are devout. If you constantly bow down to everything, genuinely, not as an exercise, not because somebody has told you, genuinely if you bow down to everything that you see, within yourself and outside of yourself then you will see there will be no such thing as you left. When you are devoid of you, you are always the same. Once your way of being has become consistent now we can take you somewhere, it's possible to move, it's possible to make a journey, otherwise the journey will be a deceptive journey, you will not go anywhere because you’re too fluid. So that’s exactly what we are going to change. We don’t doubt a bit that If you are threatened with a gun you will lick the… that man’s boots. Do we have any doubt? No, you definitely will, but if the same man comes begging in front of your house… but if the man pulls out a gun… This has to change.

This has to change. That’s what devotion is to change that, that situations and entities which appear in front of you will not determine the nature of who you are, you will always be the same way. If that firmness, if that solidity is not brought into your life, how can you be taken somewhere?