Questioner: Are spirituality and a material life compatible?
Sadhguru: This distinction of what is material life and what is spiritual life has come from a certain level of ignorance. What is it that you call as material, what is it that you are referring to as spiritual? When you sit here, can we separate whatever you are referring to as the spirit in you from your body? Your body is the material, it is the earth. Your body is just the essence of this Earth. So how can you separate the material and the spiritual? This separation itself is ignorance.Being materialistic or spiritual is just an idea. There is no such thing. There is no spirit without material, there is no material without spirit.
Whatever material that we handle, our homes, our relationships, our money, our other material things are about external arrangements that we make in our life for our external convenience, comfort and joy. Similarly, whatever inner arrangements we make for our inner wellbeing is spiritual. Can you just live with fantastic outside arrangements but internally you are a mess? Does it solve your problem? Or internally you are blissful but you have no food to eat, does that solve your problem? There is no such thing; there is no distinction. Both of them need to be organized, but with how much balance. What is the priority that you give to the two is individual. According to individual needs, one has to do it.
But making a distinction between the two is coming from certain ignorance. There is no such distinction. Life comes as a whole. There is no such thing as materialistic and spiritual. The very distinction is causing an unnecessary conflict. A conflict not between two things, a conflict between the same thing. One life that you are, you are creating a conflict. If you do this materialistic and spiritual, these kinds of distinctions, you will only become schizophrenic and suffer.
So the question of compatibility does not arise. When you exist here as one life, dividing it and then trying to find compatibility between the two is a foolish thing to do.