Sadhguru Answers Question About Identifying True Guru, Overcoming Anger, And More

Sadhguru: If you go to a Guru and if you feel very comfortable with him, then he is not your Guru. If you sit with him and you are drawn to him, but at the same time something within you feels threatened, then he is your Guru. If your Guru does not threaten you, he is no good for you. He must threaten everything that you are because that is his very work: to threaten your limitations so that something else happens. If he comforts your limitations and gives you solace, then he is not your Guru.

The problem is that all kinds of solace peddlers have become Gurus in the world. If solace is what you are seeking, you must go to a psychiatric clinic and cry your heart out; they will tell you pleasant things. A Guru will not say pleasant things about you. He will point out all the nonsense in you. He will find fault with you whichever way you are, because till the Ultimate happens, whichever way you are is not okay with him and with life – you will keep suffering one way or the other. Until the inner dimension touches you, life will be imperfect. So, till that touches you, your Guru will go on finding fault with you whichever way you are. So, he is not very comfortable to be with.

How can I overcome my anger?

Sadhguru: Anger is a certain level of out-of-control emotion. People get angry because many people wrongly perceive anger as a means of power and stimulator of action. If one does not know how to consciously conduct one’s life, anger becomes a poisonous substitute.

There is no need for anyone to transcend anger as it is not in existence unless one creates it. Anger does not happen to someone, one gets angry. If one conducts the activity of mind and emotion consciously, there is no such thing as anger, so transcending does not arise at all.

Mentally, anger is a certain loss of sanity. We already know the impact of anger in terms of family and society. If one remains in state of anger for a sufficiently long period of time, it would completely throw one’s chemical balance off and cause a variety of physiological disturbances and disease.

There may have been times when people, through their anger, were able to move situations for a positive result. That does not make anger itself positive. Justification for anger is a justification for unpleasantness within yourself. For causing unpleasantness within yourself, there is no justification.

You must understand that anger is a way of working against yourself, anger is a very unintelligent way to exist.

Does God punish people?

Sadhguru: Nowadays, the way people talk about God is, if you do not go to his temple, church or mosque or whatever and give him his weekly “pay-off,” he will get angry. He will make your children unhealthy and turn your business upside down. Anyone who has any sense will not want to go anywhere near that sort of man. We have presented the Divine in such a juvenile way.

Do not become a God-fearing person. The divine is not something that you seek with fear. If fear is the basis of what you are doing, it will definitely not bring wellbeing to you. What you will come to in the end will not be good. If fear comes to you, look at it and handle it. What is the basis of your fear? Your limitations are the basis of fear. “What may happen” is the basis of your fear. But what can happen to you after all? At the most, you will die one day. So, live your life totally and do the things that you really want to do. Who knows what is going to happen in the end? Anyway, you will die. The question is just whether it will happen today or tomorrow, that’s all.

Because of this fear, if you do not do what your heart longs to do, if you do not create what you want to create in your life, your life will be wasted before it starts. So do not pray to the Gods, “Nothing should happen to me, nothing should happen to me.” Pray and ask, “Let everything in the world happen to me.” Let everything happen to you. Let life happen to you.

(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)