In the East, a whole science and technology of god-making evolved in such a way that we set up god-making factories! This is the only culture that understood that god is our making. Everywhere else, people still think god made them. This serious mistake has caused too much pain to humanity.
God is your making. Suppose all the human beings fell asleep for the next 25 years, do you think the birds and bugs will pray? There would be no god-talk on the planet and everything would still be fine. Well, you might say everything is fine because god is working. That is an unbeatable argument because it is not even an argument. It is just what the religious kind of people insist on.
This land and culture of Bharat understood that god is our making. They made every kind of god for every kind of need. There are over 330 million gods and goddesses in India. These 330 million were created when India's population was 330 million. We are now 1,300 million people. We should have had that many gods but in the last few centuries, not enough gods have been created because of invasions and the poverty that this culture was pushed into.
When the land and culture was flourishing, everyone asked for a personal god or goddess, and those who were capable created a personal god for them. These are called Ishta Devatas. The yogis and mystics would look at an individual, his or her energy, karma and situation, and create a personal god or goddess for that particular individual. Only that one individual would worship this god, no one else. This was very personalised—a designer god for you and the kind of person that you are. The technology of consecration was so widely available.
A major segment of the population did not study mathematics and other utilitarian subjects. They studied the science of consecration. Consecration is that dimension of life where you take a certain aspect of creation, which would be considered a gross aspect of creation, and turn it into a very subtle aspect of creation. You are turning a rock into Divine. It is wrong to use the terminology of gross and subtle, but there is no other way to use the language, so in that sense, consecration is the science of turning a grosser aspect into a subtler aspect.
Existence is essentially a play of the five elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Akash. If these five elements play in one way, it becomes a rock. If they play another way, it becomes a man. If they play another way, it becomes a divine force. We understood the technology of making the elements play differently, within ourselves and outside ourselves. We make the elements play to our tune. From mud to god, the same elements are playing a different kind of games. To make the elements play the kind of game you want is consecration.
Fortunately, though the spiritual culture we see today has in many ways been broken by invasions and distorted by long spells of poverty, the basic ethos of the spiritual process is not destroyed, nor can it be destroyed. It is time we reap the benefits of this profound tradition in its full glory.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org