By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

Sadhguru: The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “The other is hell.” He said many stupid things all his life, but this was one devastating statement he made. Unless you are in yoga — yoga means everything has become one in you — unless you are like that, suffering is inevitable. Suffering is less or more, depending on your ability to manage life, but it is inevitable because “the other is hell.”

Your problem has come because of your identification with your limited body. It does not take any great enlightenment. Anybody with a little sense can know, this body is something that you picked up from this planet. It is just a recycle.

Whatever you think is mine is just coming in and going out all the time. You cannot hold on to it. Not just at the final moment when you die, but every day, you cannot hold on to this body. If you knew this, not in a sense of intellectually knowing it, if you were aware of this, then naturally you would not be identified with it. Once you are not identified with your body, then the next thing that is left is your thought process. It is very easy to see that it is always on recycle.

If you can identify with these recycles, why can’t you identify with the planet itself? Why can’t you identify with the whole cosmos because everything is recycle? Life is on recycle all the time. This is not a stagnant piece of body — it is an ongoing process.

If it becomes experiential for you that this is all just a recycle — the life energy that you think is “me,” the body that you think is “me,” the mind that you think is “me” are all on a recycle process, so what will you identify with? Either you simply sit here without any identity, or you get identified with everything. These are the only options you have: either you become a zero or you become infinite; in between is a big lie.

Everything between zero and infinite is a big lie. That is the maya of duality. In zero, there is no duality. In the infinite, there is no duality. Zero is not made by you — zero was discovered. Infinite was not made up by you — infinite was discovered. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — is made up by human beings, it is a lie. So duality is a big lie.

If you want to get out of this, you must understand the nature of it. You can get out any way you want. If you want to experiment, just don’t eat for the next nine days. You will see, what is in your body is getting out. Slowly, you will shrink. But you don’t have to break it. You don’t have to destroy it.

Understanding it intellectually is not good enough; if you experientially come to know that this is just another vehicle that you have gotten into, then you have no issue to play the game in the middle, knowing fully well it is just a game. If you think that is the real thing, then it is a danger. Then you are lost.

[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]