Inner Engineering by Sadhguru: Book Review

It’s a book about finding a right path towards spirituality to discover the ultimate goal of human life.

Bucketful Read
5 min readDec 5, 2021
Inner Engineering by Sadhguru Book Review

Introduction

Sadhguru is an exceptional person and he has been doing the work of making people aware of their life philosophy and how they can make their lives much better; if they work on their viewpoint and start seeing and sensing life within them instead of running after the outward world. Sadhguru says that The power of will that we all humans have from birth if we work on our willingness spiritually, we all can live joyfully.

Sadhguru explains the labyrinth philosophy of life in very simple language, which helps very much in understanding the whole concept of life and its philosophy and our perception of it. I have seen a lot of videos of Sadhguru on YouTube before reading this book. That's why I found that some chapters of the book "Inner Engineering" have been transcribed from the YouTube videos of Sadhguru. This is fine for me because it's always great to have a book rather than having a plethora of videos.

The book "Inner Engineering" has been divided into two parts. The first has a short autobiography of Sadhguru which has some life-changing lessons, and it tells us how he got that exceptional dimensional shift in him. And after that how his life completely changed forever. The second part of the book has "Yoga" where Sadhguru sets the roadmap for readers to achieve the ultimate goal of their life.

Review

At the initial part of the book before taking us onto the road of spirituality and showing us the right way to start our journey through the spiritual path. Sadhguru tries to make us understand why someone needs a guru and what these four-letter words stand for. He tells us also that phrases like "Be in the movement", "Do only one thing at a time", and "positive thinking" are misleading and crippling the true power and capability of a human mind. You have to shun these men’s made perceptions of life if you want to get on the path of spirituality.

Self-transformation

Self-transformation isn't something that we can have just after reading some self-help or spiritual books. Because it's a process that starts within us. And it depends only on our willingness that how much time after we will start feeling the change. It depends on us how we perceive and experience life within us to achieve the ultimate goal of our life.

Self-transformation is achieved not by morals or ethics or attitudinal or behavioral changes, but by experiencing the limitless nature of who we are. Self-transformation means nothing of the old remains. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life.

We all are doing it wrong

Our happiness and sorrows and all other things which we feel emotionally and physically, we are branding all of these on some living or dead things, while in reality, whatever is happening right now or happened in the past, it all happens within us. And we are solely responsible for the things which happen to us throughout our life. Sadhguru says that things which we feel through a medium are limited and we are never going to achieve the ultimate goal of our life until we live in this way. He says the way to find the ultimate joy is within, not without.

When pain, misery, or anger happen, it is time to look within you, not around you. To achieve well-being the only one who needs to be fixed is you . What you forget is that when you are sick, it is you who needs the medication. When you are hungry, it is you who needs the food. The only one that needs to be fixed is you, but just to understand this simple fact people take lifetimes!

Yoga

Sadhguru says, Yoga is not a practice, it's not an exercise, it is not a technique. So by yoga, if you're imagining your mind, one of the bodies twisted into some impossible posture then that's not yoga. Even the modern-day trendy "studio yoga" isn't the "true yoga".

Yoga is the science of creating inner situations exactly the way you want them.

When you fine-tune yourself to such a point where everything functions beautifully within you, naturally the best of your abilities will flow out of you.

The body can become a means for your spiritual growth or it can become a barrier. When the pain is acute, it is hard to aspire to anything higher, because that pain is dominant in your life. The physical body has such power when it doesn't function as it should, it can rob your life of every other aspiration.

If you want to maintain the body in a certain way, it is important to pay attention to the various activities of the body, in relation to food, sleep, and sex.

Mind, Body and Energy

Sadhguru says, if we want to achieve the ultimate goal of our life then we have to work on three important things which control our emotions, thoughts, and life. Body, Mind, and Energy are the things that are an essential part of humankind. And to achieve Joy, we have to maintain these three parts of our very existence. And only then we'll start seeing a clear picture of our life which starts and ends within us.

In a nutshell

This book looks so promising when I read it, and some of the things which Sadhguru said were agreeable and applicable. Like maintaining our body and mind health to achieve peace and joy. Also, by changing our food habits and sleeping habits we can feel a certain positivity and boost in our life. But some parts of the book went all above my head, like chakras and black magic. Even Sadhguru isn't a great supporter of science and human psychology, and here I can't agree with him. There are a lot of sadhanas in the book which are easy to do and with practice, one can feel positive changes.

Recommendation

If you have everything or you are doing good in your life but not feeling peace and happiness in life then this book can be helpful for you wholly. But if you are quite a practical thinker, then half of the book is still great to read. This is the kind of book which every reader might take differently because it has some contradictory philosophies. If you have already watched videos of Sadhguru on YouTube and like his philosophy on life then you should buy this book. The link is below to order.

Abhi Panwar

Grab your copy here

Inner Engineering

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