Nature is a physical quantity. The word nature means that aspect of life which is limited to the perception of the sense organs. Only what you can see, hear, feel, sense taste, smell—that is nature.
All the animals are doing what is natural—eating, drinking, reproducing. If all you want to do is live like any other animal, you don’t need a philosophy or any spirituality. You can simply live. You don’t have to evolve a philosophy or read Vedas to co-operate with nature. Nature will make sure that you co-operate. If you want to become a part of it, there is no problem.
Nature means it wants to perpetuate life. The moment you are born with this body, it has certain needs. It has to eat, it has to sleep, it has needs for certain pleasures. It has a need to reproduce itself. These are all nature’s tricks to keep life going on. Even that man has forgotten now because he has become so artificial. He does not even enjoy that. An animal in the forest, he simply roams about, eats what he wants, drinks what he wants, he just goes about doing things; he is natural. Nobody taught him any philosophies. Simply he is natural. Man has forgotten even that.
He has not become super-natural. He has made himself so unnatural that his suffering has become very deep. When you are with nature, slowly you will become a part of it. It will absorb you. If you simply be in the forest for two days and see, somehow, that kind of peace, when night settles, you also become peaceful. If you live in a place where there is no electricity, simply when the sun sets, everything becomes quiet including your mind. When the sun sets and everything becomes quiet—you also become quiet. So nature just overtakes you and absorbs you into its fold. That much will happen.
If a human being becomes natural, definitely some amount of peace and happiness will enter his mind and heart. Definitely, he will be more peaceful and happier. But he is not totally free from suffering.
Now if you have to transcend nature, you need something else. In yoga, in any spiritual process, so many practices and other processes have been created to slowly transcend our nature. Gradually, one by one, you defeat nature. That is one way. There is another way of simply slipping out of nature; there is no question of defeating. You are just above it. You are above your own physical nature. You may have heard of yogis and others. They sit in one place—all needs of the body are forgotten totally. You may have heard of many such people sitting for months or years in a place. That person has transcended his physical nature. Whatever the limitations of the body, it is no more a limitation for him. He has gone beyond that. Going beyond nature is the ultimate deliverance. All yogic processes are only methods to go beyond the limited dimension of nature.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org