Mystic’s Musings By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

People keep asking me about how they can control their anger. It does not matter how much people preach “don’t get angry,” when certain situations arise, you do get angry. Emotional states that you call anger, hate, lust, compassion or love — from the lowest to the highest — are certain types of expression of the same energy.

For many people, anger is the most intense situation they have experienced in their life. People want some intensity, somewhere. They do not know how to be intense. Either through physical action or through anger, or through pain — this is the only way they know how to be intense.

The very reason why drugs and sex has become such a big thing in the world is because somehow people want to experience some intensity, at least for a few moments. It is the intensity which draws them, and that is the only thing that human beings are seeking; and that is the only thing that will liberate man from his present bondages.

Unfortunately for most people, their fear, anger or hatred are the most intense situations in their lives. Their love is never so intense, their peace is never so intense, their joy is never so intense, but their negativities are intense. So they experience power in negative situations. Anger is enormous intensity; it is an intensity which hurts you. It is an intensity which can get you into a lot of trouble and destroy people around you and yourself, in so many ways.

It must be understood that no matter what kind of human being you become, even if you become a super human being, you will never have absolute control over the external world. Whether it is your institution or your family or the world, you will never have total control over the external situation. But you can have total control over the internal situation.

If you transform your energy in a certain way, it naturally becomes compassion and love — then nobody needs to teach morality. And slowly as this process goes further, you reach the pinnacle of self-awareness and experience a unity with all life.

Suppose you start experiencing yourself as part of people around you, after that there is no one need to teach you to be good and not harm or kill. Once you experientially are a part of everything, you can do something as the situation demands, but without anger. What you have to do, you do. But when you do it with anger and hatred, it is of no value — whatever you do.

The whole process of yoga is based on this. A day will come when even if you are put into the most extreme situation, your energies will remain very calm. How you respond will depend on the situation you are in, who you are, what your capabilities are, and what means you have. When you act out of unity with all life, you act without identity. Only then can you function out of your intelligence.

Yoga means to cultivate your energy in such a way that gradually it breaks the physical limitations and elevates you to the highest level of awareness, the flowering of human potential.

[Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, 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. www.ishafoundation.org]