By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

What does it mean to be spiritual? It does not mean you go to the temple and pray. That is not spirituality — that is highly materialistic. 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. You believe your gods will bring good luck, good money, good health and success — that is the reason most people go to the temple.

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.

Right now, because you perceive everything within the limitations of the five sense organs, your whole experience of life is only of the physical. Spirituality means to seek that which is beyond the physical, whatever that may be. If you want to seek that which is beyond the physical, there is no need to deny the physical, but it is very important that you are willing to go beyond the physical.

Generally, when one settles down into family situations, the physical becomes very important. Making the physical body comfortable and pampering it — eating well and dressing well — becomes extremely important. Once the physical body acquires such an importance within you, once you get deeply attached to the physical, you will not make any attempt to transcend the physical. The need, the very urge will go away within you. You will start catering to enhancing the physical. You will not seek what is 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.

When you are assured that your next meal is at 8 o’clock, life is one way. When you do not know where your next meal is, life is very different. When you have it, food is such a simple thing; but when you do not have it, it is a very big issue. You do not know what it takes to be hungry to a point where you could break and to still walk with dignity and in awareness. It takes tremendous strength for a man to do that.

In this country, begging is not considered a disgrace. Some of the greatest people, people who are revered and worshipped in this country were all beggars, so we are not ashamed of being beggars. We see begging as a tool to enhance our own quality and to go beyond our own limitations.

It is good for everyone on the spiritual path to go totally without any support for some time. 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 see, “I am not the body” — that would be wonderful. When the stomach is full if you say, “I am not the body, I am not the body” — that isn’t it. When you are hungry, you are really the body, isn’t it? At that time if you can maintain your awareness and still walk with dignity, you become something else.

Gautama said, “When you are really very hungry, if you give away your food to someone else, you will become stronger.” It is so. This is hard to understand for a logical mind. They always told you, “No, no, every day you must put in so many calories, so much protein, so much mineral, only then you will be strong.” It is not so. When you are badly in need of food and you give away your food, you become much stronger. Another kind of strength enters you that food can never give you.

[Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian 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. www.ishafoundation.org]