The Guru Of Our Times? Sadhguru’s Journey From Indian Villages To The World Stage

Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview

---

Sadhguru is a globally renowned yogi, mystic, and founder of the Isha Foundation—an organization powered by more than 18 million volunteers worldwide. He has addressed audiences at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, Oxford, and Stanford, while simultaneously building grassroots movements in India’s most rural villages. His initiatives span environmental conservation, education, rural revitalization, and mental health—always with a focus on enhancing human wellbeing.

Few spiritual leaders move as fluidly between rural villages and global economic forums as Sadhguru. Through Isha Foundation, he has initiated movements that reach millions—whether it’s a meditation app for mental health, sports festivals that unify divided communities, or quiet conversations with the world’s most powerful decision-makers.

In this interview, he shared reflections on leadership, well-being, and why something as simple as play can become a tool for profound social change.

Sadhguru

“The essential business is human wellbeing—and that is my business too.”

You’ve spoken everywhere from the United Nations to Oxford and Stanford, while also launching movements that start in small rural villages. How do you bridge the global and the local in your work?

Seventy percent of our work is in rural India’s villages. Before any spiritual process, the first thing is that people’s survival should be handled. I´m not such an obscene person that I will go to someone struggling for their daily bread and tell them to pursue spirituality. A person must be well-fed and comfortable to even think of something beyond.

Survival is everything when it is not taken care of. At the same time, it is nothing once it is taken care of. So we are also focusing on empowering the economic, political, and religious leadership. We are very concerned as to how people who hold responsible and powerful positions in the world are within themselves, because what kind of leaders we have will determine how the world runs and works.

In 2006, the first time I was at the World Economic Forum, someone looked at me very resentfully and said, “What is a mystic doing at an economic conference?” I thought I should speak their own language, so I asked, “What do you do? What is your business?” This person said, “Well, I am the head of one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world.” I said, “You are doing computers…” I pointed out someone who was in the automobile industry, and I said, “He is making cars. Someone there is making a safety pin. It does not matter whether you are making a computer, car, safety pin, or spacecraft; what is the fundamental business?” He said, “What? My business is computers.” I said, “Your business is not computers. The fundamental business is human wellbeing, isn´t it? The essential business is human wellbeing, and that is my business too, so that is why I am here.”

Over the last few years, my effort at various global forums has been to work with the individual human beings there. These 2000-and-odd people control a large part of the world’s economy, one way or the other. My effort has been to shift them from their personal ambition to a larger vision and a more inclusive way of life. We have been working in a very private manner, and many top-level business leaders have made a phenomenal change in the way they approach their businesses and the way they relate to the rest of the world.

They are looking at investing their resources and conducting their businesses with a much larger vision. I cannot say only I brought this about, but we have definitely been playing an important role in making this happen on many levels.

You founded Isha Foundation, which now has over 18 million volunteers worldwide. What sustains that level of commitment year after year?

For me, activity is only as per the requirements of the world. Otherwise, I am at my best when I am alone. The way I am made, if I close my eyes, I have no need to open them anymore at all. All this activity is not because I need activity. But there is so much to be done, so we are on twenty hours a day.

For 25 years, I managed with just about two-and-a-half to three hours of sleep a day. These days, I’m getting a little lazy – I’m sleeping four to four-and-a-half hours. But seven days a week, 365 days, we are on non-stop, simply because we are creating what we really care about. If you are really doing what you care about, then your entire life is a vacation. Even if you work 24 hours a day, it is not burdensome because you are doing what you love to do.

At Isha Foundation, we have an organization with over 18 million volunteers across the world, doing their best all the time. This is not because we are a spiritual organization; this can even be done to a whole nation. The volunteers don´t work for me, but what they find is very valuable for all.

My work is to make them realize what the most important aspects are that are vital for humanity and life upon this planet.

Sadhguru

"If you are really doing what you care for, your entire life is a vacation."

For Sadhguru, inner transformation is inseparable from outer action. His latest initiative—the Miracle of Mindmeditation app—reflects that philosophy, offering free tools for mental wellbeing at a time when loneliness and stress are spiking worldwide.

With Miracle of Mind, you’ve launched a free meditation app accessible to everyone. Why now — and what transformation do you hope people will experience through it?

Scientists and global health organizations are predicting a mental health pandemic. Every year, nearly 800,000 people commit suicide. The US Surgeon General has said that one in two Americans is lonely. This is not because there are not enough people around. We have too much population, and yet people are lonely! Loneliness is the incubation period for psychological ailments. We must understand, our mental health and sanity are a fragile privilege that we must protect and nurture. Just as your physical body might be healthy today and could fall sick tomorrow, your mental health can also flip. It is not that insanity is something that happens to others, and we will always be fine. Sane people can become insane because the line between sanity and insanity is thin. For example, when you get angry, you say, "I am mad at you". You crossed the line between sanity and insanity and came back after a while. But if one day you cannot come back, you will be declared mad.

It is very important that each of us take individual responsibility to stay mentally healthy and ensure those around us also stay that way. If this has to happen, you must unleash the miracle of the mind.

We are enamored with spacecraft and supercomputers, but they are just a small drop in the human mind. The mind is the gadget on the planet. But instead of being a miracle, it has become a misery-making machine for most people. You may call it stress, anxiety, tension, but fundamentally, your intelligence has turned against you. To put it very simply, we have not even read the user´s manual of this most sophisticated and fantastic instrument.

Without knowing anything about this, people want to operate it accidentally. When you do things accidentally, it is bound to be a mess. This is why we have created the Miracle of Mind app. We want to make sure that, at least in small measure, people learn to access this instrument that is the human mind. The app will offer you a simple meditative process that you can do anywhere to bring a sense of peace, joy, and exuberance into your life to create mental health, emotional stability, and balance. This app has taken a lot of resources and effort to create, and it comes with AI tools that can help in various ways. But it is offered for free because we want three billion people to close their eyes and meditate for just seven minutes a day. This can change the world in subtle ways.

Many think of meditation as deeply personal and quiet. How can technology and apps enhance — rather than dilute — that experience?

People are always asking, "Sadhguru, in these times of technology and materialism, is spirituality possible?" I am telling you, this is the best time ever in the history of humanity because it is only now that if you want, you can close your doors, simply sit and meditate for three days - this was never possible before. Today, we have reached a level of technology where if you go into a shop and have the money, you can buy whatever you need for the next year and not have to step out of your house. This was never possible before. Every day, for thousands of years, if you wanted water, you had to carry your pot and go out. Even now, it is still the same situation for many in the world, but for a large number of people, their survival is organized in a way that they don´t have to bother much about it. So, technology is not against us; technology is with us.

Technology is a great facilitator if it is in the right hands. Everyone can use it to enhance whatever they are doing. I am sure you are enjoying the benefits of technology in your field of work. I am enjoying the benefits of technology even as a spiritual teacher. A Rama, a Krishna, a Buddha, a Jesus, so many great beings have come on this planet, but when they spoke, only fifty or a hundred people could hear. Today, I can sit here and speak to the whole world. So how can I complain about technology?

Today, when people are willing to load all kinds of rubbish on the Internet and reach people, I don´t see why the spiritual process should not reach everyone online. The most important thing to be done right now in the world is to raise human consciousness. With the kind of technologies, capabilities, and empowerment available to us, we should see that this becomes mainstream.

This is our time on the planet, and it is for us to see that we do the best possible things that human beings can do.

Gramotsavam, which you initiated, is now one of the largest grassroots sporting events in the world. Why did you choose sports as a tool for social change?

India, as a culture, had 365 festivals in a year because we wanted to approach life as a celebration. We were agricultural communities. On one day, if we wanted to plough, there was a song, dance, and celebration for ploughing. Tomorrow, we wanted to plant the seeds; there was a whole dance and music for planting. The day after tomorrow, we wanted to do weeding; again, another celebration. Harvesting was another celebration. Everything was approached in this way because celebration means you are not serious about life. At the same time, no celebration can happen without absolute involvement. Absolutely involved, but non-serious – this is the condition that is necessary for you to pass through life successfully and beautifully. Without this, you will become bitter.

One of the reasons why farmers are in such bitterness, apart from economic reasons, is that what used to be a joyful community activity is today individual. Individually, working on your land is heartbreaking work. I have been a farmer myself, so I know what it takes. You have to work just by yourself in your land, which is three or four acres, with a barbed wire around you. And if you want to do more, you must get your wife and children to work, or you must get labor. If you do not have the money, you end up not doing the work properly. This is how it is. But earlier, it used to be community work. If today were planting, the entire village came and planted in your land, and you planted in their land. There was a certain joy and a celebratory aspect to it.

Today, that is missing, and this is one of the reasons why they are so miserable. Sport is a simple way of bringing back this celebratory mood. The level of relaxation and togetherness that playing games brings to people is enormous.

For a variety of reasons, we are not able to provide those in rural India the necessary fundamentals to live a dignified life. But even if we cannot change the economic situation overnight, we can definitely make them sing and dance, play a game, or throw a ball - do something playful. This is the purpose of Isha Gramotsavam – to bring playfulness into village life.

Sadhguru

Participants range from 12-year-olds to grandmothers in their sixties. What does that reveal about human potential and community across generations?

The women in rural India probably never play any kind of game after they turn seven or eight years of age. Games are seen as only for boys and children. Even the male population would have played some game till they were fifteen to sixteen, and then it was over. If at all they play anything after that, it is playing cards, gambling, and such things. When we brought back games into villages, you should have seen the level of enthusiasm! You have to see the joy on their face when they come out and play these simple games.

Many women over seventy years of age are now playing in the Isha Gramotsavam. In one particular team that had gone through the league of fifteen to twenty matches and came to the finals a few years ago, one woman was seventy-three years old. Her daughter-in-law, who was in her late thirties, and her granddaughter, who was seventeen years of age, were also on the team. All three generations were playing on the same team! There is such joy and pleasure in watching these inter-village tournaments, where the older women actually play with the youth and win games. During the agricultural seasons, when there is a lot of work, some men drop out of the games, but women keep it up because that is their only freedom.

Caste and other kinds of prejudices that have been carried from generation to generation are also overcome through sport. When there is a Gramotsavam match, you will see all the communities gather. Initially, they stand among their own people. As the game picks up momentum, the spectators boil over and mix with each other. They start slapping each other’s backs – they forget who is who. In playing together, people forget who they are. That is the beauty of a game – once you jump into a sport, there is a certain sense of abandon in you that your identity collapses. Sport brings such a sense of involvement that they become ready for bigger things. People who play with the necessary intensity can transcend the limitations of who they are. This is what sports offer you.

Gramotsavam has led to reduced addiction, improved school retention, and more women stepping into leadership. How can something as simple as sport create such profound change?

Right now, the spirit in rural India is low. There is nothing to live for or be proud of for a rural person. Just eating, sleeping, and working, people get tired. Old traditions have broken down. The sense of togetherness that was there in this culture is gone. No new possibilities have come into their lives. Compared to the time when I was farming many decades ago, there is a huge drop in the rural psyche. The idea of Isha Gramotsavam is to raise the human spirit. We are not looking at the economic, administrative, or other aspects as part of this. If the human spirit is raised, a human being is capable of taking care of their economics, administration, and everything. Sport naturally makes a human being function in a certain exuberance of life.

So, we wanted to have volleyball teams and throwball teams in every village, where we would organize inter-village tournaments – something for people to be involved in, something for people to be proud of. Suppose your village team is playing this Sunday, there is bound to be a lot of excitement. It can raise the human spirit. When the spirit is low, everything is destruction. But once the human spirit is raised, human beings are capable of taking care of everything.

Another important aspect of sport is the level of physical fitness it brings. After we brought sports into action, we also introduced Yoga, and this has brought a huge change in the way people live. People have grown out of their smoking and drinking addictions and are now working to be fit because they want to get on the sports teams.

This is the miracle of sport, that it has brought healthy competitiveness beyond caste and creed distinctions, and a natural desire in the villagers to be fit and come out of addictions.

If a reader wanted to start fostering wellbeing and unity in their own community, what’s the first small step you would suggest?

Playing games or bringing sport into communities builds a sense of community better than a million teachings that you can give. Moral teachings, scriptural teachings, and religious teachings have not brought in the sense of community that sport brings in, because sport is a natural inspiration for people to be together and move together in one particular direction. When you play a team sport, it brings in a certain sense of inclusion. When you want to play a game with a team of people, both your own team and the other, unless you bring yourself into a certain space of inclusiveness, you cannot play the game well. This sense of inclusiveness – going beyond your likes and dislikes for individual people and including all of them as your team – and this whole group of people striving to achieve a common goal, definitely brings in the necessary fundamentals for community building. Social transformation can be very easily introduced into societies if sport is used as an entry point.

Sadhguru’s vision connects the smallest communities with the world’s grandest stages. Whether through meditation apps, grassroots sports, or private conversations with leaders, his message remains consistent: that true progress is rooted in raising the human spirit.

For more info, visit: Isha Foundation, Miracle of Mind, Gramotsavam.