Relationships, responsibilities, regrets, reasoning and religion, the 5Rs are mostly on top of our minds as we traverse from teen to mid twenties and further. Being torn between what-to-do and what-not-to-do, the constant dilemma in minds that are already on steroids given the cut-throat competition in the cluttered world, raises millions of questions in our minds. To find answers to some of those questions that prick us (not literally) every now and then, we speak to spiritual guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an artist, an adventurer, an author and a man on mission to spread happiness.

Here are excerpts from the second part of the Sadhguru interview with Opoyi

Q) Should we believe in astrology?

Sadhguru: Astrology means you are trying to look at the positions of the planets and make certain predictions. Planets are inanimate things. Should inanimate things decide the course of your destiny or should human nature decide? It is human nature that should decide. If planets are deciding the course of your destiny, it means your human nature is not even functioning to the level of inanimate objects.

So is there nothing to it? There is something to it, but as usual human beings exaggerate things. If you are in a certain state of susceptibility, these things will work to some extent in your life. But if you are well established within yourself, no planet is going to decide the course of your life.

When anyone says “I am on the spiritual path,” what it means is, “It does not matter where the planets are, it does not matter what karma I have, I am going the way I want to go. I am going to go towards liberation.” That is what spirituality means – taking destiny into your hands.

Q) Are organised religions more detrimental than useful?

Sadhguru: All religions started as a method to turn inward. An inward step can be taken only by an individual. It is a very intimate thing. But when people try to organize this inward step by reducing it to a set of beliefs, naturally it gets distorted.

The moment you believe something, you can go about with a certain level of confidence. Confidence without clarity is a disaster. This is exactly what you see in the world today. Belief systems fire people up with a great sense of confidence and this confidence without the necessary clarity is a huge disaster on this planet.

Once I believe what I believe is the truth, naturally I will try to impose it on other people. I don’t call it imposition; I call it saving you from ignorance. It is not to hurt you, but you will get hurt because any imposition hurts. When you resist, I will use other methods to put it into you – the sword, money and every kind of inducement has been used.

The moment a person became religious, it should have been the end of all conflict. Unfortunately, religion has become the main source of conflict everywhere in the world. It has taken the maximum number of lives and caused the maximum amount of pain on the planet for thousands of years. This is because today religion is essentially coming from a set of belief systems.

Q) Does having sexual intercourse with multiple partners affect your spiritual journey?

Sadhguru: If you do this exercise of falling in and out of love too often, if you go on playing around with too many people, after some time you will become numb; you will not like anybody because there is something called runanubandha.

Runanubandha is a certain aspect of karma; it is a certain structure of karmic substance. It happens because of a certain amount of meeting and mingling that happens between people. It is a kind of recording in the body. If intimacy happened with another body, it is keeping a record of that particular kind of energy. Especially when two bodies come together, the runanubandha is much deeper.

Now because the body remembers, if there are multiple partners, the body slowly gets confused over a period of time and this confusion will tell in your life in a million different ways. In many ways, one of the major reasons for the level of anxiety, insecurity, and depression that is going on right now is just that the bodies are confused.

Everywhere in the world, it is understood that if someone gets very serious about his spiritual process, the first thing that he does is keep away from all kinds of relationships, because if he builds any physical relationships, naturally, it will complicate things. But if you must have a relationship, at least stick to one body, because too many will confuse the physical system.

Q) To what extent are children indebted to their parents, in the face of choosing what will make their parents happy versus what will make them happy?

Sadhguru: In the Yogic science, we look at human life as a full cycle if one lives up to eighty-four years of age. In this cycle of life, which involves a little over one-thousand-and-eight cycles of the moon, the first quarter is when the influence of the parents is upon us energetically. In terms of karmic influence, parentage can only influence us up to twenty-one years of age. After that, we are not supposed to be influenced by them – it is important that one’s life is a fresh life, not a repetition of what has happened in the previous generation. We should not look for parental nurture after twenty-one years. We can only live in gratitude for whatever they have done. First of all, they have brought us into this world, and they have done many other things out of their love and involvement.

Also read: ‘Fix the inside’ – Sadhguru’s single mantra for happiness

Q) How do you know if the partner you are with is the right one for you?

Sadhguru: What is needed to make a marriage successful is not the perfect person – there is no perfect person on the planet. What you need is absolute integrity. Whether someone is watching or not, you should act in the same way. Who you are should not change depending upon where and with whom you are. Once you have established your way of being, interacting with another person can be a joy. Another aspect is that if you try to extract something out of each other, and you or the other person does not get what he or she wants, there will be constant conflict.

Do not look for the ideal man or the ideal woman – there is none. If you understand that it is your needs that make you seek a companion, find someone who is reasonably compatible with you. If you accept, respect, love, include, care for, and take responsibility for each other, it can be a beautiful relationship.

Q) How one can balance spiritual and normal materialistic life

Sadhguru: This distinction of what is material life and what is spiritual life has come from a certain level of ignorance. When you sit here, can we separate whatever you are referring to as the spirit in you from your body? Your body is the material, it is the essence of this Earth. So how can you separate the material and the spiritual? There is no spirit without material; there is no material without spirit.

Life comes as a whole. There is no such thing as materialistic and spiritual. The very distinction is causing an unnecessary conflict. Whatever material that we handle – our homes, our relationships, our money, our other material things – are about external arrangements that we make in our life for our external convenience, comfort and joy.

Similarly, whatever inner arrangements we make for our inner wellbeing is spiritual. Can you just live with fantastic outside arrangements but internally be a mess? Or internally be blissful but have no food to eat – does that solve your problem? Both of them need to be organized; one has to balance these according to individual needs.

Q) Are we responsible for the pain our personal choices cause our loved ones?

Sadhguru: What you choose to do in your life may not be in line with your parents’ choices or your peers’ choices, or with the society in which you live. If you want to do your own thing, and it is not in line with the larger interests of what is around you, you must understand there will be a price to pay. If what you want means so much to you, you must pay the price, but if you find the price is too much for what little you want to do, you will step back naturally.

It is like going to the market – you want to buy a few flowers. The vendor says, “2000 bucks.” You say, “I want flowers but no, he is asking too big a price.” This is so with every step in our life. We must evaluate: “Do I want to pay this price?” There is no standard treatment for everyone. This is individual. Some people want it so badly, they are willing to pay any price. For some people it is a passing interest so they will drop it and go on. There is nothing wrong with either. Both are fine.

Also read: Smriti Irani, Sadhguru call for revival of hand weaving industry