Book SummaryInner Engineering, by Sadhguru

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Inner Engineering

We live in a time of unprecedented global wealth and material comfort. We have all the resources we need to solve the world’s problems—and yet so many are suffering. Depression, anxiety, poverty, and violence plague us, while joy evades us. Why? In this book, yoga master Sadhguru explains that we create our own suffering and we’ll remain trapped in it until we learn to seek answers from the right place—inside ourselves. He says we can only transform the world by transforming ourselves from within, using yoga. And that’s what his “inner engineering” program teaches us to do.

In this book, Sadhguru explains the yogic concepts behind his program. He says that to “engineer” something means to design it to be the way you want it. We engineer the world around us constantly, but we neglect to engineer our inner world. Yoga, he explains, is not an exercise, nor a belief system—it’s a technology for managing your body, mind, and energy in a way that creates optimal conditions for your life. If you manage your physical and mental processes consciously, Sadhguru says your whole life experience will be of your own making.

Shift your perspective and you’ll see miracles happen around you—not because anything external has changed, but because you’ll recognize the miracles that are already there. This shift can make your whole experience of life more joyful.

(Shortform note: Although most yogic teachings agree that yoga doesn’t require a specific belief system, it [has its origins in the Vedic texts of the Hindu...

Inner Engineering Summary Part 1: We Create Our Own Problems

To begin, we’ll outline some of the problems that plague humanity, and explain how Sadhguru’s background led him to his realizations. He says we create these problems for ourselves in two ways:

• We operate in survival mode, thus failing to reach the potential we have to transcend our basic instincts and become enlightened.
• We allow our thoughts and feelings to control us, rather than us controlling them.

Sadhguru says that everything in nature has the purpose of reaching its fullest potential, and all other life forms, from algae to spiders to ravens, do everything in their power to become the fullest expression of what they’re meant to be. Humans are the only creature that falls short of its potential. He says we’re like plants that begin as seeds but never sprout because the soil is bad. That “soil,” he says, is the state of our minds and bodies. And yoga is the mechanism for giving that seed of potential within us the right conditions to grow into what it’s meant to be.

Trauma Keeps Us in Survival Mode

Psychologists say that [trauma contributes to people being stuck living in “survival...

Inner Engineering Summary Part 2: Yoga Is the Solution to Our Suffering

So now that we know our problems come from our own mental constructs, how do we go about solving them? Sadhguru says yoga provides all the techniques we need to transform our inner lives so that we can move beyond our limitations and reach our highest potential. In this section, we’ll explain first what yoga is not, clearing up some common misconceptions in the Western world. Then, we’ll explain what Sadhguru says yoga is, and how it works on three levels—our bodies, minds, and energy.

What Yoga Is Not

To get an accurate understanding of yoga, we need to first recognize that people in the Western world tend to misunderstand it. What we think of as yoga is just one of the many forms, Sadhguru explains—and even that form we tend to misunderstand.

1. Yoga is not exercise, or a means for getting “fit.” The yoga we’re most familiar with in modern Western cultures, involving stretching postures, is hatha yoga. But people tend to focus only on the physical part of it. Sadhguru says that’s totally inefficient because the physical and spiritual must work together. If you do it for “exercise,” it’ll still bring you some benefit, but not as much as if you...

Inner Engineering Summary Part 3: Practices to Begin Your Inner Engineering

As mentioned earlier, this book focuses more heavily on the philosophical concepts behind Sadhguru’s yogic methods. But he does offer some basic practices you can do to begin to put some of these concepts to work in your life. In this section, we’ll briefly describe a few of those practices. The blog section of Sadhguru’s Isha Institute website has more practices and advice.

Get in Touch With the Five Elements

Sadhguru says that according to yogic practice, everything is composed of five elements: earth, air, water, fire, and ether. His advice: Begin to think of the world around you in terms of these five elements, and acknowledge them with reverence. For example, when you drink water, consciously acknowledge it as a sacred element; when you walk on the ground, look at the dirt and recognize it as the sacred element of earth. If you interact with the world this way, you’ll begin to see the world around you as sacred.

(Shortform note: Ether is also referred to as “space” and is sometimes thought of as “consciousness.” [Sometimes called...

Shortform Exercise: Move From Being Reactive to Responsive

Sadhguru says you must move from being a passive victim of circumstance to an active master of your own life, which means making a shift from being “reactive” (having an unconscious reaction) to being “responsive” (having a conscious response).

Can you think of a situation in your life when you were unconsciously “reactive”—for example, when you reacted with anger or another destructive emotion? What happened? Describe how you felt during and after the reaction.