If you look at yourself as a machine, you have brains, you have body, you have everything. But ‘grace’ is the lubrication. Without the lubrication, you get stuck at every point. There are such people on the planet—they are intelligent and capable, but at every corner they get stuck because there is no lubrication.
To become receptive to this ‘grace’, so that the process of life becomes graceful, the easiest way would be devotion. But the mind is very cunning; it cannot devote itself to anybody or anything. You can sing songs of devotion, but you have your own calculation: ‘All that is okay, but what has God done for me?’ Calculating minds cannot be devout. Trying to be devout will just be a waste of time. I may hear so-called devotional songs and music, but this too is calculated; there is no devotion in it.
A devotee is not somebody’s devotee; devotion is a quality. Devotion means single-pointedness—you are constantly focused towards one thing. Once a person has become like this—his thought, emotion, and everything works towards one direction. Grace will naturally happen to that person; he becomes receptive. What you are devoted to, whom you are devoted to is not the issue. ‘No, I want to be a devotee, but I have a doubt whether God exists or not.’ These are all the predicaments of a thinking mind. What you need to know is, God does not exist. But where there is a devotee, God exists.
The power of devotion is such that it can create the Creator. The depth of what we refer to as devotion is such that even if God is not existent, it can bring it into existence. Thinking minds always have an allergy to devotion because devotees have made such fools of themselves. This is simply because fear is passing off as devotion.
With a lot of people, extreme deviousness is passing off as devotion right now. If one knows the joy of devotion, it is truly for the intelligent, not for the stupid because without devotion there is no profundity to your life. Nothing is worthwhile if you analyse it with your thought. The whole existence, you yourself, nobody in the world is worth anything if you just cut it down with the knife of your intellect. Only when devotion arises, depth comes into one’s life. Devotion does not mean going to the temple and doing ‘Ram, Ram’. Anybody who is one-pointed, anybody who can absolutely give himself to whatever he is doing is a natural devotee. He need not have a deity to become a devotee—he is a devotee. God will happen. It is not because there is God, devotion has come. Because there is devotion, God has happened.
Just knowing devotion as an emotional experience is one thing. Knowing devotion as an overpowering dimension of life is a different thing. Knowing devotion just as an emotion maybe makes your life a little sweet; but devotion is not intended to make your life sweet; devotion is intended to completely demolish you the way you are. Just becoming a little better, that is not the intention of the devotion; devotion means dissolution. The root word for ‘devotion’ is ‘dissolve’. The only one who is willing to dissolve himself can be a true devotee.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, a bestselling author and poet. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org