By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

Where is the need to use our intelligence? And if everything is destined about our life, when a guru enters our life how can he change our destiny?

The very first moment when you utter the word spirituality, whether you realise that or not, what you are actually saying is, “I want to take my destiny into my hands.” It does not matter what my karma says. It does not matter what somebody in the heaven is going to say. “I want to move towards liberation.” This is taking destiny into your hands.

If you want to go where you want to go, you better take your destiny into your hands. Otherwise, you will exist here as an accidental being. I know for a long time, you have been told that God is making your destiny, sitting there every day and plotting your life for you. They told you many things like this but I think you are adult enough these days.

There is no such thing as destiny. There is a limited sense of destiny working, but there is no ultimate destiny — that is something that you have to choose. In a limited sense, the accumulations that you have within you forms a certain attitude and tendency within itself and it starts moving in that direction. It is not because somebody is guiding it in that direction. Simply because your tendencies are such, you are going that way. It is just that unconsciously you have made yourself into a certain possibility. So naturally you are moving in that direction. This is not destiny, this is a blind man walking. You create certain tendencies within you with your unconsciousness, according to the tendencies you keep moving in that direction.

For example, the river that is born on top of a mountain, at one place it is a brook, at another place it is a waterfall, in another place, it is just a meandering river. In another place it becomes a wide estuary to join the ocean. In another place it has become the ocean. Is this the river’s destiny? No, this is the water’s tendency. To constantly move from one place to another depending upon the levels that are there. If the oceans were placed high, the rivers would not go to the ocean. The river is not longing to go to the ocean, although your poet said so. Water just finds its own level and keeps going. If you dam it, the river is not sitting there and crying, “I want to go to the ocean.” There is no such thing. It is just poetry. Let’s enjoy the poetry, but reality is different. Enjoying poetry, enjoying the current realities around is one thing. When you are talking about reaching your ultimate reality, it is a            different thing.

Like they say in Zen, when you are an ignorant person, rivers are just rivers, trees are just trees, mountains are just mountains, clouds are just clouds. Once you become a seeker, rivers are no more just rivers, trees are not just trees, mountains are not just mountains, clouds are not just clouds. Everything has a different dimension to it. But if you become enlightened, once again rivers are rivers, trees are trees, mountains are mountains, clouds are clouds.

Then what is the point? If you are ignorant, it is the same way, if you are enlightened it is the same way. Yes. An enlightened person is just as good as an utter fool, but completely in a different world. An enlightened person is not in any way special the way you know special, because your idea of special is adding parts to yourself. Your idea of special is that you start identifying yourself with many things and become special. In that sense he is not special, he is more ordinary than the ordinary, but it is a full circle. It is a different dimension of                 existence all together.

So, this whole possibility is not because where you are right now is not good. It is simply because the way you are right now is not good. Where you are right now is perfectly fine, but the way you are right now is not good. That is the only problem, and that is all we need to change. We don’t have to go anywhere.

[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.]