Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny

Product Information

Reading Sadhguru’s book Karma was a profound experience. It gave me glimpses of the agnostic and the inexplicable, and eventually gave them meaning and context. The tools Sadhguru provides in Karmabring me to a place of peace within myself. Thank you for your wisdom and transformational guidance.” -Rosanna Arquette Karma is an exploration and a manual, restoring our understanding of karma to its original potential for freedom and empowerment instead of a source of entanglement. Through Sadhguru's teachings, you will learn how to live intelligently and joyfully in a challenging world. Sadhguru’s Karma book is a riveting read, a must for all interested in understanding how life works. I have lost hours of sleep two nights in a row because of this book. I couldn't stop pressing the gold button for 28 minutes more.

Even when one is not doing anything in particular, one’s body, mind, emotions and energy are all in action. These four actions of Karma are happening every moment of one’s life - in wakefulness and in sleep. The real question is how much of it has been conducted consciously, and how much is purely accidental? The author and narrator, a self proclaimed Guru, Sadhguru sets forth a bunch of topics that he attempts to answer. It started off in a rather compelling way, littered with amusing parables. As time wore on though, I found the evasive speech, contradictions and self promotion disturbing. Any spiritual teacher of note, that I have met, has been extraordinarily clear.

Karma

Sadhguru has been a part of my life since late 2017 when I took his InnerEngineering course and learned Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya. Since then I've learned several other practices offered by him through the Isha Foundation, and I am truly truly grateful for how profoundly they've changed my life. What is karma? Most people understand karma as a balance sheet of good and bad deeds, virtues and sins. The mechanism that decrees that we cannot evade the consequences of our own actions. In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma simply means action: your action, your responsibility. It isn't some external system of crime and punishment, but an internal cycle generated by you. Accumulation of karma is determined only by your intention and the way you respond to what is happening to you. Over time, it's possible to become ensnared by your own unconscious patterns of behavior. This book can be looked at as a treatise on Karma. It explores the topic intellectually and in great detail, for example, defining and classifying the different types of karma. At the same time, it is a practical guide that can be used to live one’s life consciously and joyfully. In the second part of the book, he gives specific methods and tools how one can do this and move towards liberation.

Sadhguru has also initiated several projects for social revitalization, education and the environment through which millions of people have been given the means to overcome poverty, improve their quality of life and achieve community-based, sustainable development. While the author is a captivating and enchanting storyteller, we must remember that this is one man’s interpretation of Karma. No more. No less. We must all make our choices and be accountable for them. The following steps can be useful to living a life of full immersion and engagement. Set ambitious goals? Yes! Work hard to acquire skills and prepare to achieve your goals? Yes! Do the absolute best? Absolutely! Focus on the intent, commitment, diligence, and execution. Consider the outcome to be irrelevant. Embrace the outcome whatever it is. Celebrate the outcome? Yes! It does not matter what the outcome is. The outcome is out of your hands. Surprisingly, this book has been a "hide under the covers with a flashlight and hope the parents don't catch you" type of read. I really found it that engrossing.Your five senses are collecting data from the outside world every moment of your life. You are literally being bombarded with stimuli at every instant. Over time, this enormous volume of sense impressions begins to assume a certain distinctive pattern within you. This pattern slowly shapes itself into behavioral tendencies. A cluster of tendencies hardens over time into what you call your personality, or what you claim to be your true nature… This becomes your karma - an orientation to life that you have created for yourself in relative unawareness.” So, what can we do to change it with the small hands, head, and heart that we have? That is the essence of why I was first moved by Sadhguru. Working together, we might be able to help the world change course. Sadhguru has explained in “Karma” how we are creating new additions for the karmic library, and how we can gain more control over the direction our lives are taking. It becomes clear when reading this book why Sadhguru stresses responsibility and awareness in Inner Engineering, and the inevitability of the moment – because of each of us are creating our lives using a karmic pattern that everyone who has ever lived on this planet has contributed to. On an unconscious mission of self-destruction, we have compromised this extraordinary birthright of being the true masters of our life.” Tour de Force from Sadhguru, maybe his best yet. For folks who come from a skeptical or scientific perspective, it's great because Sadhguru speaks to this-he says don't believe anything he says. Why read then? Try it as a working hypothesis and see whether this model captures your experience. I am only about a third through the book but already it is making me think in new ways about how I am creating recurring patterns that I did not even see as patterns before the book, much less see my role in creating them. A crucial aspect is discovering how I am getting new understandings because the book highlights assumptions made about karma, a main one being that it is about reward and punishment for good or bad actions. I think this is a mindset I imbibed unconsciously from the way spirituality or God is understood overall in American culture. The book highlights assumptions like this and offers a different premise to try and I am experiencing this as opening new possibilities for creating my life the way I want it.