To be spiritual does not mean that you go to the temple and pray. If the gods come down and openly tell you that they are not willing to meet any of your materialistic needs, most people will not have anything to do with them, isn’t it? Wanting to go to heaven is not spirituality. Heaven means whatever pleasures and luxuries that you know here are eternally available there, a hundred-fold more. So wanting to go to heaven is a highly materialistic desire.
Spirituality means seeking that which is beyond the physical, whatever that may be. Right now, because you perceive everything within the limitations of the five sense organs, your whole experience of life is only of the physical. If you want to seek that which is beyond the physical, it is not necessary that you have to deny the physical, but it is very important that you are willing to go beyond the physical.
In yoga, we use many methods to help a person look beyond the physical limitations of who he is right now. One of the methods is to become a parivrajaka, or a wandering monk. In this country, begging is not considered a disgrace. We see begging as a tool to enhance our own quality and to go beyond our own limitations.
When you are assured that your next meal is at 7 o’clock, life is one way. When you don’t know where your next meal is, then it is very different. When you have food, it is such a simple thing; but when you do not have it, it is a very big thing. It takes tremendous strength for a man to be hungry to a point where he could break and still walk with dignity and in awareness.
Many fundamental realities in your life may be missed when your belly is full. Hunger is the time when you really become the body. When you are hungry, if you can maintain your awareness and still walk with dignity, then you become something else.
(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. isha.sadhguru.org)
