By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

We need to understand what depression is. Depression is self-created for most people — unless you are pathologically ill, which is just a small number people. Why is it that you get depressed and feel “low”?

Fundamentally, you expected something to happen and it did not happen. You expected someone or something to happen your way, and it did not happen. In other words, you are simply against what is happening. Maybe you are against a person or a situation, or maybe you are against life itself. Accordingly, the depression will run deeper.

Why are you against something? Only because things did not go your way, isn’t it? But why should the whole world go your way? Either you have no faith in the creator or you have a hyper-sensitive ego. That is why you get depressed.

Depression makes you cynical and is deeply self-damaging. Depressed people only hurt themselves more. Killing need not necessarily mean physical killing. A depressed person is always trying to cause more damage to himself. A man who goes out with the sword and kills somebody, his ego is not as sensitive and it does not need as much nurturing as a depressed man’s ego. The violent man can be very easily settled. Have you seen this on the streets?

When people get into a fight, if there is one man with a little wisdom, if he just handles them right, those people who are trying to kill each other one moment, the next moment, they will drop it and become friends and go off. 

But this is not so with the depressed person. He will carry this for life. Whether they do it consciously or not, these people go on sharpening their knife and cutting their own heart. Why will a person keep hurting himself? Generally it is to get sympathy. For a very depressed person, normal sympathy is not sufficient; somebody should bleed with him.

What is it within you that can get hurt? If someone beats your body with a stick, the body will get hurt; that’s different. Otherwise, what is it that gets hurt within you? Just the ego, isn’t it? The mind and the inner nature cannot get hurt. It is only the ego that gets hurt.

One can make any emotion into a creative force in their life. If your sadness reminds you that you are incomplete, it is good; make use of your sadness to grow. But, when you get sad, if you get irritable and angry, and get into a state where you think the whole world is wrong, you will only cause more damage to yourself.

Do you want to make sadness into anger, or into love and compassion? It is very easy to become compassionate when you are sad. Sadness is an energy that is already inclined towards dissolution. You  can further use it for dissolution to lead to your ultimate well-being.

The unfortunate reality with people right now is that their humanity will function only when they are mauled by life. For most people, maturity will not happen without knowing sadness and pain. Otherwise they never understand what is happening with them and with anybody else around them.

In yoga, depression is handled at the level of the body, mind and the energies. If the necessary balance and vibrancy is brought about in the physical, mental and energy bodies, to be blissful is very natural. In a blissful being, depression can never exist.

[Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan,” India’s highest annual civilian award, by the Government of India in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.]