The Architect of Enduring Change: Sadhguru

Entrepreneur

20-05-2025

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Sadhguru, an Indian guru and founder of the India-based non-profit spiritual organization Isha Foundation, remains undeterred even as much of the world often ignores his urgent warnings - whether concerning our planet's alarming soil degradation or humanity's impending mental health crisis. "Nobody wants to take up something which may take 15 to 20 years to produce real results," he says. "If you increase the GDP, everybody notices it tomorrow morning. But if you increase the soil organic content, plants are happier, animal creatures are happier, you yourself are healthier and better, but you don't notice it."
Blending ancient mysticism with modern pragmatism, Sadhguru is guided by a vision that stretches far beyond election cycles or even his own lifetime. His global projects exemplify this dedication, particularly the Miracle of Mind app that offers a seven-minute guided meditation in multiple languages, along with an AI-powered feature that distills his teachings. "The problem right now is that, when something happens, people react in a certain way, but if they gave themselves more reaction time, more thinking before they react to something, a whole lot of things, including suicide and murder, would be down," Sadhguru explains. "Our effort through the Miracle of Mind app is to touch at least 3 billion people in the next 24 months. If 3 billion people close their eyes for seven minutes a day, we will definitely be making a real difference in the world. This is a generational responsibility."
Highlighting the urgency, Sadhguru references multiple research studies predicting severe mental health issues, such as that 30-33% of the world's population would be mentally ill by 2050, or that one in three teenage girls in the US are clinically depressed, or that 42% of Europeans over 40 years of age are on some kind of psychiatric medication, or that about 17,600 children below 18 years of age committed suicide in India in 2023 alone. "Also, I was in conversa- tion with the Surgeon General of United States, and he says that one in two Americans is feeling lonely. Loneliness is the incubation period for mental illness. When you start feeling lonely, you're working on it. After some time, you'll graduate into a worse situation," he says. He adds, "Many responsible scientists say that in another 15 to 20 years' time, probably there will not be a single family without at least one person who is mentally ill. That's not a good prospect because after thousands of years of human struggles, we have come to a place where our survival is better organized than ever before, but we are mentally cracking up."
Sadhguru and Tamara Pupic, Managing Editor, Entrepreneur Middle East.
Source: BNC Publishing
The Miracle of Mind app's successful launch, surpassing a million downloads within just 15 hours—quicker than even ChatGPT's initial milestone—demonstrates public eagerness for accessible solutions. Sadhguru emphasizes the key to addressing this crisis lies in understanding that "human experience originates internally."
He adds, "Pain and pleasure arise from within us. Joy and misery originate from within us. Agony and ecstasy emerge from within us. In other words, the source of human experience lies within, not in external surroundings. External factors may stimulate us, but the root, the very seat of human experience, is internal. Given that the source of our experience is within, taking charge of it becomes one of our most critical responsibilities—especially at a time when we face a growing threat of widespread mental illness, which could lead to immense individual and societal suffering."
Related: From Startups to Self-Care: Why Young Founders Must Prioritize Mental Health
Other projects developed from a place of his genuine belief call for an urgent environmental action to address challenges of soil, water and climate change, such as land degradation, water scarcity, agricultural distress, and biodiversity loss. "Soil degradation is very directly connected to mental health, because our health, physical and mental, depends on the strength of the soil," Sadhguru explains. "The food that we eat and the bodies that we carry are all soil. When soil degradation happens, the first thing that happens is that our software starts cracking up. Soil degradation and mental and physical health and not separate issues. It's all about life."
Through the Conscious Planet Movement's Save Soil campaign, Sadhguru seeks global mobilization— activating over 4.1 billion people to urge governments to legislate mandatory organic content (a minimum of 3%-6%) in agricultural soils. Although progress varies, Sadhguru remains resolute. "One thing is that the Save Soil movement has definitely changed the narrative on the planet, but is narrative everything? No," he says. "A few countries which are very progres- sive have taken on the soil policy very strongly. Others have made half-hearted changes. Some are committed to making changes. This is the way human beings act. A war comes, an election comes, something else happens, they put these kinds of things on the back burner."
One thing is certain- Sadhguru will not give up. He keeps these topics in focus through his regular appearances at the UN and its various entities, the World Economic Forum, or speaking to the world's business community, including the likes of Microsoft, Google, or TED. His massive social media following is not to be underestimated either- 13 million on Instagram, 12.4 million on YouTube, or 10 million on Facebook. "We've crossed the danger mark," Sadhguru reiterates. "We've crossed the red line in many ways, yet we still behave as though everything is fine. Recent studies show that 78% of the world's soil has lost approximately 30% of its moisture, meaning we've destroyed trillions of microorganisms and millions of species. Many people focus solely on saving iconic animals like pandas or tigers—I'm not saying they're unimportant; they're extremely important—but microorganisms form the foundation of life itself. Even our own bodies consist of more than 60% microorganisms. By neglecting this vital layer of life, we're effectively dismantling the very foundations upon which we stand."
In addition to looking to institutions or governments for social and environmental betterment, Sadhguru is turning his attention to an immensely powerful group of individuals - entrepreneurs and private sector executives. "In the next 30 to 50 years' time, it is the business leadership that will become the most significant leadership on the planet," he says. "There was a time when religious leadership was the most powerful leadership on the planet, then the military machines, then the democratically elected leaders, but prosperity and well-being to the people will come only from successful businesses. It is very important that we understand that the success of businesses is the success of a nation and success for the people of that nation."
Through Isha Foundation, Sadhguru has already established a series of programs for leaders, including the Inner Engineering, a 7-steps online transformative program, and Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, a 21-minute Yogic process, which both help build foundation of health, joy and exuberance. There is also Isha Insight: The DNA of Success program, a business leadership intensive that explores the science of scaling up one's business and self. But Sadhguru highlights that the foundation's Ecstasy of Enlightenment program serves as a doorway to higher states of conscious- ness that are particularly needed in the business realm. It starts with Sadhguru posing a compelling question- Would you rather live blissfully or miserably? He explains, "Human experience has a chemical basis to it. Bliss, ecstasy, agony, misery, anxiety, stress, or whatever you go through, have a chemical basis. You are not producing blissful chemistry because you have not even read the user's manual of this factory [the brain] to learn how it works, functions."
The program derives from scientific research by Isha Foundation and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, that showed that doing simple 21-minute meditation practice for six to 12 weeks leads to brain-derived neurotroph- ic factor (BDNF) [a key molecule involved in plastic changes related to learning and memory] increasing by 70%. "I can teach you to be blissed out all the time," Sadhguru says. "If you're blissed out and your mind is very clear, because there are no anxieties, no stresses, then you conduct your life much more sensibly. Whatever you do in your life, it is a very conscious process. Once you are in a conscious process, you are a far more effective. This must happen to every business, every entrepreneur, because an entrepreneur is an adventurous person, wanting to walk into new terrain. If you are full of stress, new terrain is going to freak the hell out of you, because you are afraid of uncertainties. You will seek the familiar but no great progress will happen then."
Ultimately, Sadhguru's vision for business leaders emphasizes shifting from personal ambition to broader, lasting goals. "I would say that in the next probably 15 to 25 years, there could be a significant change how business leaders function. It will not be about how much money they can personally accumulate, but about creating something larger than themselves. That's one of the most significant works for me right now," Sadhguru concludes.
'TREP TALK: Sadhguru's Advice for Entrepreneurs
"Taking a break for your inner well-being is not a pause. It is empowerment. If you don't have time to eat your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, tomorrow your ability to work will go down. Similarly, if you don't have time to service the interiors of your life, tomorrow your activity will be much lower. The productivity of a human being depends on how he or she is feeling right now. How pleasant is your experience of life? There's substantial medical and scientific evidence to show that only when you're in pleasant states of experience, your body and brain function at their best. If you want to do well in your business or in your enterprise, your body and brain must function well. It's very important."
Related: The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Young Entrepreneurs