Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is one of the most influential people of our times.
Not subscribing to any particular teaching, philosophy, religion or belief system, Sadhguru’s offering to humanity is based on an experiential knowing of Life. He says, “The word ‘Sadhguru’ is not a title. It is a description. Sadhguru means ‘uneducated Guru.’ I am almost 100% spiritually uneducated. I don’t know any scriptures. I come only from my inner experience.”
This inner experience has given Sadhguru an unfettered clarity, making him a speaker and opinion-maker of international renown. He has been a primary speaker at the UN World Headquarters and UNESCO Headquarters, a regular at the World Economic Forum, and a special invitee at organizations such as Microsoft, Google and TED, to name a few. He has spoken at Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wharton, MIT and several other globally renowned educational institutions. Sadhguru is also a New York Times bestselling author with over 200 books to his name.
Sadhguru has nearly 11 million followers on Instagram
and over 25 million subscribers on YouTube across
multiple languages, and in 2022, his videos were viewed
over 3.5 billion times. His annual nightlong celebration
of Mahashivratri, was watched by 140 million people in
2022 – a viewership larger than the Superbowl and the
Oscars combined.
Sadhguru has received three presidential awards from the Government of India, including the Padma Vibhushan in 2017 – the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.
Born in 1957 in the southern Indian city of Mysuru, he was the youngest of four children. He grew up a skeptic, seeking answers to fundamental questions of life. As a youth, his desire to explore life led him to travel all across India on his motorcycle. After graduating with a degree in English literature, he started several successful businesses.
On the 23rd of September 1982, he rode up Chamundi Hill, near Mysuru. As he sat there, he moved into a state where he says, “I did not know which is ‘me’ and which is ‘not me.’ What was ‘me’ was just everywhere. The very rock I was sitting on, the air that I was breathing, the atmosphere around me, everything had just become me.”
He came out of this state after what seemed only a few minutes, but in reality, had been nearly four hours. Tears of ecstasy were overflowing from his eyes. Sadhguru would later remark, “Something was happening within me. I did not know what it was. All I knew was I had hit a goldmine and I didn’t want to lose it.”
This transformative experience led Sadhguru to dedicate himself to sharing methods from the science of Yoga to bring this experience of absolute inclusion in every human being. From a humble beginning with just seven participants in his first Yoga program, today he has inspired a global spiritual movement, impacting the lives of billions.
What makes Sadhguru’s message so impactful? His oratory skills, ability to simplify complex ideas and sense of humor are part
of the reason. However, the crux of the inner transformation that people around the world have experienced lies in the potent Yogic tools for wellbeing.
Three decades ago, Sadhguru founded Isha Foundation, a non‐profit human-service organization to address all facets of human wellbeing. The foundation is supported by over 17 million volunteers in more than 300 centers worldwide. At the core of the foundation’s activities is an array of powerful Yoga programs, including the flagship program of Inner Engineering, which have helped millions of people gain greater balance and remarkable clarity in life.
Isha has several major centers, the most prominent of which are the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore and Sadhguru Sannidhi in Bengaluru, India, and the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences in Tennessee, USA. The centers offer energized spaces for self-transformation, where one can imbibe classical Yoga, meditation, and rejuvenating processes for health and inner freedom.
Sadhguru’s work has also inspired Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to establish the Sadhguru Center for a Conscious Planet, as a multidisciplinary research center. Several studies at the Center and at leading universities across the world have shown the phenomenal mental and physical benefits conferred by the science of Yoga.
Sadhguru has also launched social outreach programs in education, health, rural rejuvenation, and the environment. His environmental initiatives are seen as a
game-changing paradigm for soil revitalization in the tropical world that would, in turn, dramatically enhance agricultural food security and water resources, reduce global warming and increase biodiversity. At the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification COP15 in 2022, Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw recognized Sadhguru as “one of the world’s voices and leaders in soil conservation and land.”
In 2004, Sadhguru began a mass tree planting movement that set the Guinness World Record for the most saplings planted in one day. In 2017, he launched the “Rally for Rivers” campaign to revitalize India’s rivers, which was supported by 162 million people. The Government of India allocated a budget of 2.3 billion dollars to implement river revitalization across 13 Indian river basins based on Rally for Rivers’ recommendations.
In 2019, the Cauvery Calling project was launched, to facilitate tree-based agriculture and the planting of 2.42 billion trees in farmlands in the Cauvery river basin in 12 years. Till date, 135,000 farmers have shifted to treebased agriculture, and a total of 68.5 million living trees have been grown!
In 2022, Sadhguru completed a 100-day lone motorcycle journey from London to southern India, as part of the Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement, to raise awareness about soil degradation and create public support for government policies to increase soil organic matter to a minimum of 3-6%. He addressed the policy makers of 193 countries at the UNCCD COP15 in May 2022, and 81 nations have taken steps to regenerate their soil. Save Soil has reached over 3.91 billion people till date, making it the world’s largest people’s movement. Apart from being an ecological movement, Conscious Planet – Save Soil hopes to become a unifying force in a time when lines of race, ethnicity, religion, caste and creed have divided humanity.