By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

Question: I have noticed that you have emphasised on inclusiveness. I am making an attempt to be as inclusive as possible by breaking my own barriers, but social upbringing has taught me that one should be exclusive — exclusive clothes, watch, shoes, car, home, designer stuff, etc. Not only that, I have to offer exclusive products and services at work and make the customers feel that they are getting exclusive products and services. I have to offer exclusivity while feeling inclusive about the customer. It appears to me to be in contradiction with my ultimate objective of being inclusive. So I am confused. Could you please help me become clearer in my perception and understanding?

Sadhguru: Inclusiveness does not mean you have to go and hug everyone on the street. Yoga is about enhancing the interiority of who you are. The outside has to be conducted as it needs to be conducted. When you are driving on the street and you see a buffalo, if you go and give it a kiss and say, “Please move away,” it’s not going to work. The buffalo is behaving according to its nature. You are not behaving according to your nature. This is not because of inclusion, this is because of confusion. 

Inclusion is not an idea or some kind of a concept. It is how life is happening. It is the way existence is. If you vouch by the commonness of the universe as an intellectual idea, it actually causes damage to the individual. People do all kinds of silly things because they get this idea that everybody is one, before somebody teaches them a good lesson and then they see, “This is me, that is you. No way to be one.” You will see, when things come down to even money — it does not even have to boil down to life and death — even for money, “This is me, that is you.” The boundary is clear. There is no question of you and me being one. 

Instead of being an intellectual idea, if inclusiveness becomes an experiential reality, it will not bring forth any immature action. It will bring forth a tremendous experience of life. Physically, there are boundaries and there have to be. There is something called “your house” and “their house,” “my country” and “your country.” Can we remove all these physical boundaries right now? The world is not mature enough to do such a thing yet. If such a thing happens, it would be fantastic but we are far away from that — very, very far. So we cannot remove the physical boundaries, but a human being is capable of looking beyond his physical boundaries. If you limit yourself to physical boundaries, your whole life will be dedicated to self-preservation and procreation and nothing else.

When we say spirituality, it means to take the experience of your life beyond your physical process. Once you take it beyond your physical process, boundaries don’t mean anything. “This is me, that is you,” “this is my house, this is your house” — these are physical boundaries to maintain the physical integrity of things. These are not the essence of being human. The whole process of spirituality is to raise one beyond his physical and individual limitations and make him an all-inclusive human being. At the same time it hugely equips the individual to be more efficient, more capable, more balanced and in turn more productive. This is good for business. This is good for the world. 

[Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and best-selling 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.]