Are you searching for a sense of peace, joy, and well-being?

You won’t find it in the outside world, spiritual teacher Sadhguru explains in his first-ever book for U.S. readers, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy (Spiegel & Grau Hardcover/Random House, September 20, 2016).

“[If] someone or something can make you happy or unhappy, [that] means what happens within you is determined by an aspect outside of you. This is the worst form of slavery,” Sadhguru, the yogi, mystic, visionary, and founder of the Isha Foundation, tells Yoga Journal. Instead, the goal is to create an “inner chemistry of blissfulness where being joyful is not being subject to something outside of you,” he explains.

When it comes to outside situations, “some happen our way, some don’t … it’s only a question of how we can handle it,” he continues. “The outside need not decide the nature of our experience. All human experience happens from within.”

In Inner Engineering, Sadhguru also offers sadhanas, or daily spiritual practices, to help you uncover your inner joy. In this excerpt from the book he explores the very nature of joy.

Uncovering the Source of Joy

Let us start with a single question: what do we consider to be a state of well-being?

Very simply, well-being is just a deep sense of pleasantness within. If your body feels pleasant, we call this health. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call this peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this joy. If your emotions become pleasant, we call this love. If they become very pleasant, we call this compassion. If your life energies become pleasant, we call this bliss. If they become very pleasant, we call this ecstasy. This is all that you are seeking: pleasantness within and without. When pleasantness is within, it is termed peace, joy, happiness. When your surroundings become pleasant, it gets branded success. If you’re not interested in any of this and want to go to heaven, what are you seeking? Just otherworldly success! So, essentially all human experience is only a question of pleasantness and unpleasantness in varying degrees.

But how many times in your life have you lived an entire day blissfully—without a single moment of anxiety, agitation, irritation, or stress? How many times have you lived in utter and absolute pleasantness for twenty-four hours? When was the last time it happened to you?

The amazing thing is that for most people on this planet, not a single day has happened exactly the way they want it! Of course, there is no one who has not experienced joy, peace, even bliss, but it is always fleeting. They are unable to sustain it. They manage to get there, but it keeps collapsing. And nothing earth-shattering needs to happen for it to collapse. The simplest things throw people off balance, out of kilter.

It is like this. You go out today and someone tells you that you are the most beautiful person in the world: you’re floating on cloud nine. But then you come home, and the folks at home tell you who you really are: everything crashes!