There is a lot of talk about “detachment” these days essentially because there is fear of involvement with life. Actually, the fear is not about involvement, the fear is about entanglement. Because people do not know the distinction between involvement and entanglement, they talk about detachment. If you know how to be absolutely involved with life and not be entangled, you would not be talking about detachment. It is the fear of entanglement that has started this entire philosophy of detachment.
Entanglement has come not because there is something wrong with life. Entanglement has come because you are handling life improperly. If there was no involvement with life, you would not know life. That means, when you talk about detachment, you are talking about avoiding life. Why do you want to exist here and avoid life?
There are too many people on the planet who are not fully alive. Partially alive people are a crime against life. You have come here to live and experience life. Your life should happen in the most exuberant way possible, but the fear of entanglement makes you weave all kinds of philosophies. If your involvement is absolute and total with everything that you are in touch with right now, you will see there is no entanglement. The problem is, you choose to be involved only with a particular person and you want to ignore the rest of life around you, so you get entangled.
If you are involved with everything that you are in touch with right now, the very air that you breathe, the atmosphere around you, life around you, then there is no question of entanglement. Entanglement has come because of discriminatory involvement. Only if you show involvement with everything around you, at that moment you will know life. Even if you are in heaven, without involvement it does not mean anything. Whether it is your family, work or the world, you will have some experience of them only if you are deeply involved with it.
Detachment is a philosophy created by people who have completely misunderstood life. Because of such philosophies, there is a huge aversion towards anything spiritual in the world. Right now, most of the population has come to this conclusion: spirituality is for those who are not interested in life. They assume that if you are spiritual, you should not eat properly, you should not dress properly, and you should not live properly. You must be suffocated, or you must look suffocated at least. If you smile, laugh and enjoy your life, then you are not spiritual. If you have a goat-like face which has never smiled, then you are spiritual—this is what most people think.
Being spiritual really means your interest in life has gone so deep that you want to know everything about life. You want to know not just the physical dimension of life; you want to know all of life. For a person who is trying to avoid life, there is no chance to be spiritual because spirituality needs absolute, total involvement with everything. Otherwise there is no possibility.
It is not the life process but the ignorance with which you are handling life that entangles you. You get identified with things that you are not, so you get entangled. You have gotten identified with a million things that you are not, starting from your physical body, your thoughts, opinion, ideas and emotions, your clothes, jewellery, family, and work. Once you get identified, your whole life gets distorted. If you do not have a proper perspective of what you are, then you get entangled. If entanglement should not happen, you must maintain awareness as to what you are and what you are not. If this distinction is constantly kept, there is no question of entanglement.
Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the "Padma Vibhushan", India’s highest annual civilian award, by the Government of India in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org