Full transcript: Sadhguru on London Real
3:41 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Sadhguru, the Indian yogi, mystic, visionary and philanthropist. You’ve been a keynote speaker at the United Nations and the World Economic Forum and have been named as one of India’s 50 most influential people. Your book, Inner Engineering, a New York Times bestseller details your transformational system for achieving inner fulfillment and your Isha Foundation with more than 9 million volunteers worldwide is dedicated to addressing all aspects of human well-being. Sadhguru, welcome to London Real.
4:10 Pleasure to have you here. Before we get started, we’re sitting in an English countryside manner. I was wondering, what is your relationship like with London and with England? And when you were a young boy growing up in Mysore, India, what did you ever dream that London would be? Well, we had to inevitably read a lot of English literature. You can imagine I read a lot of Thomas Hardy, so I had a pretty good picture of London. I mean, English countryside.
4:41 He used to describe it for pages and pages, right? Yes. And you love that. Sentences ran for two pages at a time. You had a photographic mind. Very. You almost had a picture in your mind when you read Hardy. And you used to do the same when you used to travel through the countryside.
5:02 Yes. Maybe I was drawn to Hardy because of that. Because I, even today, I don’t think in words, I don’t have languages in my mind. I think in pictures or videos. So my memory is also like that.
5:18 I just crisscrossed India, not trying to go anywhere, simply recording the terrain of the land. I still remember every small outcrop, a rock, a twisted tree here and there. This is what lives in my mind. So I found the terrain, the geometry of the terrain as the most engaging thing for me always. So in that sense, I think some of the English writers became attractive to me because in their minds, it looked like they also saw it that way. But they were trying to paint a colorful picture maybe for the readers, but they had, even in that reading, I only saw the geometry of the land. And when you finally did come to London, do you remember your first thoughts, what it was like? See, for me, one place is not so different from the other except for the culture and the people and stuff like that. Wherever I am, I enjoy whatever kind of place it is.
6:21 Because I see people are thinking they can enjoy something. No, if you’re joyful, everything is a pleasant experience. So is London for me. You’ve been a busy man the last few years and you’ve been traveling, speaking in front of universities, doing interviews, because I think you feel that we don’t have that much time left, maybe 10, 15, 20 years. Can you talk about what you mean by that?
6:52 See, as a generation of people, our survival is better organized than ever before. We have ability to communicate like never before. We have comforts and conveniences that nobody had ever imagined, this generation. But also, certain things happening. One thing is, there are more people on the planet today thinking for themselves than ever before.
7:18 Otherwise, a religious book was thinking for them, a priest or a pandit or a mullah was thinking for them, or there was one wise man who was thinking for them. Now, for the first time, a huge massive number of people are thinking for themselves. Well, you can debate always whether they’re thinking right or wrong, all that thing, but at least they’re thinking. When I say thinking, what happens to thought process is, see, if two people get into an argument, both the people think the other person is illogical. That means in their mind, there is a certain logical pattern. However illogical somebody may seem to you, in his mind, he has his own logical pattern. Once this pattern sets up that there needs to be some logic for you to come to a conclusion about anything, then many fanciful things that you believe, like your journey to heaven and what is up there and all these things, they start collapsing.
8:17 If you look at this generation, let’s say two generations ago, how many people in UK thought they will go to heaven? And today, how many people think they’re going to heaven and they’re preparing for it has come down dramatically. Eighty percent, heavens have collapsed in people’s minds. Still, they don’t dare to say that because there is still fear, but in their minds the aspiration of going to heaven is largely collapsed. So when heavens collapse, what will human beings do? They will try to find it here, which is a very good thing.
8:53 But if they… if you don’t show them any way to find a heaven within themselves, that is when at least eighty to eighty-five percent of the population today is on alcohol or some kind of drug happening, simply because they are trying to build their own little heaven. Because the other heaven that was promised for a long time has collapsed in their minds. We have come to a place where to grow our food, we need chemicals. To be healthful, we need chemicals. Today, seventy percent of the population is on prescription medication of some sort. To be peaceful, we need chemicals. To be joyful, we need chemicals. To be ecstatic, of course, you have ecstasy. So we are going towards chemicals in a huge way. The water that you drink is full of chemicals, the air that you breathe is like that, and the food that you eat is like that. So if ninety percent of humanity goes into chemical consumption, consciously or unconsciously, if they consume a lot of it, the next generation that we produce will be of a lesser quality than who we are. That’s a crime against humanity.
10:05 Has that happened before in history? No, generally always the next generation is better than the previous generation. But today we are coming to a place where we could be producing a next generation, which is less than us. Once that happens, we have done something very negative against the fundamental life process. So this heaven’s collapsing, and there is… it’s like a trapeze.
10:28 You’re leaving one trapeze. You need something else. If you don’t find it, you’ll hang on to anything. So right now, chemical is a net. It’s not another trapeze.
10:38 It’s a net that you can fall into, and people experience the whole little heaven. Well, it ruins you in so many ways. See anything. This is not a moral issue for me. What I’m saying is, the important thing about life, whether it’s a grasshopper out there or you, both of us are striving to be the fullest possible life that we can be.
11:00 A grasshopper is trying to be a full-fledged grasshopper. A human being is trying to be a full-fledged human being. So suppose you cut off one of grasshopper’s legs, which is supposed to hop, the hopping leg if you take it off. Have you enhanced its life? I’m asking you.
11:14 No. No. So similarly for a human being, if you take away any of his faculties in any way, even temporarily, have you enhanced his life? No. So intoxication is just that. It is taking away your faculties for a period of time, but if you continuously do it, it’ll take it away for your life.
11:34 So you’re taking away or subjugating your faculties for a little bit of pleasure, or maybe a lot of pleasure, whatever, however you wish to describe it. But the important thing is you’re taking a backward step with life, because life can only be enhanced by sharpening and increasing our faculties, not by decreasing our faculties. Our ability to be active physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, if this is in any way crippled, this means we are taking a backward step, though there may be pleasure attached to it.
12:06 So I’m teaching them away. If you sit here with your eyes closed every day, I’m very proud of this now. There are millions of people in the morning, if they sit with their eyes closed for a few minutes, tears of ecstasy will flow. Millions of people across the world that you’ve taught. Yes, this is what needs to happen, because you need to understand the greatest chemical factory, the most sophisticated chemical factory is right here.
12:31 The question is only, are you a great CEO or a lousy CEO? If you are a great manager, you will produce what you want from this. If you’re a lousy manager, you do wrong things, you get anxiety, you get something else, you get rubbish going on within you, because you are misusing your chemical factory or you don’t know how to manage your chemical factory.
12:55 Just look at my eyes, I’m always stoned. Never touched a substance, but always stoned. Is this because we have the technology for the chemicals or are people taking the chemicals or reaction to this anxiety? No, no, see people, every human being wants his life enhanced. If you don’t show them proper ways to enhance, they will find shortcuts. See a man who goes to the bar and a man who goes to a church or a temple or whatever, they’re seeking the same thing. They’re trying to enhance their life, isn’t it?
13:33 If you do not show them a proper way, they will take whatever ways are available on the street, that’s all. That’s why I’m saying it’s not a moral issue for me. It is just that it sets you backward. You want to go forward, but it sets you backward. Besides the chemicals, what else bothers you about the world? Are you worried about climate change or are you worried about AI, mobile devices?
13:59 Why would I worry about artificial intelligence? I don’t know. If they’re going to do all my work, I will be glad.
14:08 What about global warming? What about some of these other issues? The environment is a huge issue right now, there’s no question. Am I worried about it? No, I have a plan and I’m working to the plan.
14:22 If everybody works to one plan, because the plan is not made by me or you, our plan is along with the natural contours of life. If all of us have the same plan, we can turn this around. But if you don’t do that in the next fifteen years’ time, if you start now and next fifteen years actively across the world, if we do certain simple things to correct, another twenty-five to forty years, there’ll be a significant turnaround. But if you leave this for another twenty-five to thirty years, you go on business as usual and then try to turn it around, it will take hundred to hundred and fifty years to turn it around, because that is the kind of threshold we are on.
15:06 If we cross that, then turning it around becomes a much bigger challenge than the way it is right now. This is a good time to turn it around. Are we going to make it? Are we going to turn it around? You’re asking for a prediction. I’m telling you I have a plan.
15:20 Are you committed to the plan? That’s a question. Isn’t it? Prediction means what? That means we don’t have a plan.
15:31 And how do we get people to do this? Is it about education? Is it about people spending time without the chemicals, spending time with themselves? Is this why you wrote the book and are engineering? See, all those things have to be done, but they are not the solution.
15:45 There are incremental changes. The important thing that needs to happen in the world is policy changes need to happen in the government level on a global scale. This is what we have achieved in India. For the rivers of India, I did this rally for rivers, which got phenomenal support from the people. 162 million people participated. This has been the largest moment ever. 162 million people in one month’s time. So, we made a recommendation how rivers should be handled in India. So, this has become official recommendation from the federal government now to all the states. So, once the policy change happens, budgets will come and everything, the government machinery will start moving in that direction.
16:28 Well, we’ve been doing a lot of work. We’ve changed a few things. Many other organizations are doing this, but this is not real solution. Solution will happen only when the fundamental policy in every nation changes towards a more eco-friendly way of doing things. One big mistake that’s happened in the world is all these environmentalists are always fighting somebody. These fighting people, nobody wants to be a part of it, because they are fighting against the economy. If you… if ecology and economy fights, economy will win hands down.
17:03 So, one fundamental change that I brought about in Indian mindset is, I said, I’m going to marry, I’m going to officiate the marriage of ecology and economy. If our economy is not conducted in ecolog… ecologically sensitive way, if you say ecology or economy, well, only economy will happen, ecology will go, totally get destroyed. We will only turn around when some great disaster happens to us. You don’t have to wait till then. So, it’s important that I involved the corporate sector in India and made them understand, we are not looking for how to destroy your industry.
17:42 We are only giving you suggestions how to transform your industry, so that you could be serving in a larger way than the way you are serving right now. So, this is important for this policy change is needed, hand holding is needed and turning around is needed, rather than going against somebody. You used to be a businessman, does that help you talk their language? That’s a long time ago.
18:09 Your father wasn’t too happy about the chicken… the chicken farming. But you did have a good… a background though, does that help you sometimes navigate things or give you an extra edge or understanding business as opposed to never having experience?
18:29 See, this question comes from the presumption that everything has to come from your experience. That means you’re going to be very small. In this world, how many things can you personally experience? Very small. Even if it’s wide ranging experience, still it’s very small.
18:49 So, essentially this whole… this whole attitude and questioning and this kind of thing has happened to the world in a big way because our education is confusing people to make them believe that memory is intelligence. Memory is not intelligence. Memory is useful as data, but intelligence is a different dimension. We have gobbled this up that we have made children believe from a very early age. If you remember something, you’re smart. No, no. A tape recorder can remember everything.
19:22 This camera can remember everything. This doesn’t mean it’s intelligent. So, one major aspect of my work is to separate this two. In your… within your experience, your memory and your intelligence are two different things. If you have an intelligence which’s unsullied by memory, you will see everything just the way it is.
19:43 But if you look at everything through the filters of your memory, everything is prejudiced. We see a lot of fighting happening these days. Us versus them, Democrats versus Republicans. I think the New York Times did a survey the other day and they found out that someone would rather be against someone than for someone, even if they supported. We’re kind of… we’re looking for the enemy. No. See, this is a culture that’s evolved. Many places this is happening.
20:13 I’m… because elections are coming, I’m tweeting to encouraging people to vote. In India or not? In India. I’m saying in India. So, as a process of that, I say, democracy is about all of us getting together and creating a wonderful nation.
20:30 This is not about pointing fingers at each other. Oh, there’s a whole barrage of comments saying, what does he know about democracy? Democracy is about criticizing the government. Democracy is about pointing fingers. Democracy is about pointing out the mistakes.
20:47 So, some very left-leaning media came to me and asked me this question. I said, do one thing. You’re married, right? You go home today. From morning to evening, you’ll be all right. In the evening, just for two hours, criticize your wife for all the small, small things about she… which she’s not okay. If you pay enough attention, she’s not okay in many things, as every human being is. You criticize her, twenty-two hours you appreciate her. You enjoy her. But two hours you criticize her every day.
21:22 Believe me, in thirty days your marriage will be over. Is that so or no? I said, yes. Then why do you think you have to do this to the government? Once people elect, next five years you support them. In every possible way you bolster them. They’re doing something wrong, of course. But the day they get elected, if you start criticizing, what are they supposed to do?
21:45 At least wait for them to make some mistakes. So, about being Republican, Democrat, this American culture is unfortunately spreading to other countries also. See, just… when I first came to United States, it’s always amazed me. How are you Republican or Democrat by birth? This is feudalism, this is not democracy. Democracy means, whatever happened in the last four years, you look at it, what they have done is good for you, good for the nation in which you live or not, and then make up your mind who should rule for the next four years or five years or whatever the term is. Now, no, by birth you have decided, because my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Republican, accordingly I have decided, this is feudalism, where is democracy? This is like another religion. You’ve destroyed democracy. Democracy has something called a secret ballot, that means who you vote, even your family need not know whom you voted, all right? But now you already declared from birth, I’m going to vote only for this party, no matter what they do, this is just a feudalism. I think the, you know, the 1800s, the feuds of middle America have gotten to the whole of America now. America needs to rethink, if they want democracy. I’m suggesting this in India, none of the political parties will like it.
23:13 I said one thing is political parties should not have membership. They can have office bearers, whatever number of people they want as people who work for them. But there should be no national membership where millions of people are enrolled as members, because then it’s already decided who they’re going to vote for. It’s important that every election, every citizen thinks whether this is good for me and my nation or not. And according to their own intelligence, they will think and they will vote, otherwise there’s no democratic process. So I’m pitching for this, that political parties must surrender their, this thing, this should go, that there should be no membership, because you just formed a new religion.
24:00 Why do you have so much pride and passion in India? I mean, you flew back for one day to vote, you’re constantly giving back and doing things for this country. I’m doing everywhere in the world, not just to India. Okay, you do a lot with India too, notably. Because large part of the work is still in India. Above all, for me, a nation is not a geographical or political entity. For me, nation is the largest segment of humanity you can address.
24:28 So India as a nation is 1.3 billion people. If you make some changes, then you are addressing a massive amount of humanity right there. So I’m looking at every nation as just a segment of humanity, not as a political or geographical borders. That’s not important for me. But we have still not found a way where the entire world can embrace each other and become one global entity. That’s not yet a reality, still far away.
24:57 That’s not Twitter. That’s not Twitter and social media, not yet. That is okay, but in terms of administration, in terms of gold, see, even now, European Union, you’re having a Brexit, all right? People find their own reasons as to why they cannot be together. So world is still not in the place where they can embrace each other and live as one. So right now, how do you address?
25:20 How do you address the well-being of human beings? Nation is the largest piece that you can address. You get to speak to a lot of young people in their 20s. You become very popular. You’re kind of the uncle they never had, the grandpa they never had.
25:36 What do you see in our young people today? What do you see them struggling with? And do you see hope? Do you see confusion? See, the problem with every generation is the previous generation thinks the next generation is all confused. Always in the case, right?
25:55 It’s not true. It is just that the older generation is not able to come to terms with the new possibilities that the next generation is exhibiting. But one concern is physically, mentally, the next generation, the generation that’s coming up now, seems to be much weaker than the previous generations, especially physical strength, I’m saying, because I’m not talking about you being a muscle man or something. But this is weakening of the species, which is dangerous over a period of time.
26:28 You can maybe after some time, only two thumbs will be living because the only thing they do is text. They may be having big thumbs, but nothing else growing in them. So I feel the youth of today should get little more in terms of physical activity, a little more into nature, maybe climb a mountain, maybe swim in the lake. Everything has become super safe, especially in the United States. You can only swim in the pool. Nobody can jump into your pond and swim.
26:59 You’ll get arrested by the local cop. The sheriff will come and pick you up if you swim. When did this happen? How will a young person gain strength, courage, learn to handle many things? If you don’t do something little unpredictable, everything is a set track.
27:19 It’s not good. I’ll just tell you an example. This was when I came first to the United States. We are doing program after program. I drew one program, finished this, and overnight we drive, and next day morning I’m doing another program. So I’m driving across United States.
27:37 So around 2 a.m., we are starved. We’ve not eaten anything. We’ve been driving. So no place. Then I see one Burger King. Then we walk into this place and then we ask what they have. All their burgers have meat and whatever else. I said, no. Then I said, you do one thing. You just give me the buns. You keep the meat. He said, what am I supposed to do with that? I said, it doesn’t matter. You can give it to somebody or you can eat it yourself because you anyway eat it, you eat it. I’m not going to eat it. So why should I take it and throw it? He was so confused. I couldn’t believe this. He was so confused. He’s refusing to give me the buns. I said, I’m going to pay for the whole thing. Whatever the burger cost, I’m paying for this. Just give me the buns. You keep the meat. He was confused for a few minutes.
28:35 I said, what am I supposed to do with this piece of meat? I said, you eat it, give it to somebody. Somebody will appreciate it if you could double meat and give it to them. I said, no. And he picked it up and threw it into the trash can and gave me two buns.
28:50 It’s so single track mind. Why should you do that? In India means if I told somebody, I don’t want what is in between. You would just take it and eat it and give me the buns. And do you think people these days are missing that relationship with their own body?
29:07 I would say because that was a big part of your evolution, wasn’t it? This whole thing about how our education systems are set are making it all logically correct. And in terms of life, it’s all wrong.
29:29 The movements, the physical movement. No, the way you use your intelligence. Can you speak on the physical movement? Because when you were a young boy, you started a yoga practice and I’d love for you to define what yoga is because there’s the Western version and maybe your version. Maybe we start there. What is yoga?
29:47 Well, today, from where you come, yoga means you must look like a leftover noodle twisted out. The word yoga means union. Union means whether you are aware of it or you’re not aware of it. Right now, you’re happening here as a part of everything else. What the trees exhale, you’re inhaling.
30:13 What you exhale, the trees are inhaling, not just on the level of respiration and all levels, this is happening. If you live for 75 years, they’re saying you could be eating somewhere between 12 to 14 tons of food. That means right now, you must be at least 600 to 700 tons of food. Are you? Apparently. No, no, I’m saying, are you carrying that much? Not that much now.
30:39 So this is because even what you call as your body is not the same body every day. It is changing. The very content is changing every day. So what you think as myself is just a psychological boundary that you have set up. So yoga means consciously obliterating the boundaries of your individuality. So if you sit here, if you experience everything around you as myself, this is yoga. If you experience all this as myself, do you need morality? Be good to people.
31:15 Don’t harm them. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Would it be necessary? No. Did anybody teach you out of this five fingers? This is a small finger. Don’t cut it off. Is that a morality needed like that? Anything that you feel is a part of yourself with that, you don’t need any values, ethics, morals, nothing, because it’s a part of you. This is what yoga means. You experience everything as a part of you. When somebody experiences the whole universe as a part of himself, then we say he’s a yogi. But today in California, where you come from, if you wear a Lulu pant, you are a yogi, Lulu lemon. So they’ve confused the physical practice with the spiritual transcendental idea. See, the physical is important because after all you’re cased in this physicality, you’re not free from this. So one important aspect of why there is a physical dimension to yoga is it is the science of aligning your geometry, your individual geometry with the cosmic geometry. When geometry is congruent with something larger, it becomes like that. It functions like that. It makes you experience yourself like that. So in that sense, you’re trying to reorganize your geometry, so that it’s congruent to the larger or cosmic geometry. But just doing yoga as an exercise, you can better better swim or play tennis or something, believe me, because yoga is not an exercise like that. It’s a very subtle practice.
32:53 If you’re doing it as an exercise, you may feel stretched and flexible, whatever, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to realign your geometry. And when you were a young boy, you were jumping down a very deep well, and you saw an older man do the same thing. Only 70 feet. 70 feet. I’m still trying to imagine that, jumping to a dark hole, hoping there’s water on the bottom. There is water, you can see it, not a hope.
33:18 And then you have to climb back up. But you saw a 70 year old man do it, and he ended up teaching you yoga. And by using that physical practice, you started to become aligned and you didn’t realize it was happening. Many things happened to me, which, you know, when I was as a child, as a young boy, waking me up in the morning was a project. It would take two hours for my sisters or my mother to drag me out of the bed, make me sit up, I’ll fall asleep. Make me stand up, I’ll sit down and fall asleep right there.
33:53 My mother will put toothpaste in the brush and give it to me, I’ll stick it in my mouth and fall asleep. They’ll push me, they’ll splash cold water in my face and push me into the bathroom to have a shower, I’ll fall asleep right there. Once I started doing simple physical yoga, within a month or two, it doesn’t matter where I am till today, morning 3.30 to 3.40, within those 10 minutes, I always come awake. It’s my choice whether to get up and do something, or if I wish to rest some more, I could rest some more. But it just comes awake, because it just got aligned. There is something happening in nature between 3.30 to 3.40. It’s called Brahma Mohurtam in yoga, it’s a very significant part of the time. So when that happens, your body just comes awake, it happens to everybody, but they don’t notice it.
34:43 So like this, many changes happen simply because simple yoga. So that’s why I’m constantly reminding people, it doesn’t matter for what reason you do the right things. Even for wrong reasons, if you do the right things, right things will happen to you.
35:00 In your book, you talk about how everyone is out there searching for happiness and joy, and yet it’s inside them the whole time. Everything is inside them, if they look. See, all human experience comes from within, isn’t it? I don’t know what kind of geniuses start these things. I know in America, there must be a million books telling you how to, you know, milk happiness from something else or somebody else. But all human experiences generated from within. What comes from within you must be the way you want it, isn’t it? Isn’t that simple enough, I’m asking? Yes. What comes from around you may not be the way you want it.
35:42 But what comes from within you must be the way you want it. If whatever happens within you the way you want it, will you be blissed out or miserable? Blissed out. Now it’s simple, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Well, it’s not difficult either. You, if you see most people understand, complexity has intelligence. If they make themselves difficult, they are supposed to be intelligent. Making a simple thing difficult is not intelligence. Making a very complex thing simple is intelligence, isn’t it? So wrong sense of intelligence, idea of intelligence has entered people’s minds. They think if they make a problem out of every solution, they’re intelligent. No, no. If you find solutions for every problem, that is intelligence. That’s my understanding.
36:40 Hmm. And how do people start on this path? Because a lot of this makes sense to people, but in the world they live in, they don’t know where to start. Even yesterday, I was at this how-to academy talk. The last question was, all this is fine, Sadhguru, can you give us one mantra that we can take home and that’ll work for us? So I asked a simple question.
37:04 See, to learn ABC, to learn to read and write a simple language like English, I’m saying simple language, just 26 alphabets. Tamil language has 212 alphabets. Very complex. To learn a simple language, you take 12 years of schooling to read, write, understand. This is all you’re doing in the school. You may be reading a science book, but you don’t know any damn science by reading a high school textbook, all right? So for this, you’re taking 12 years. To transform your life, you want to do it in two minutes. So is that what your life is worth? So if your life is worthwhile, is it not important that you invest a certain amount of time and energy rather than looking for this stupid stuff of one mantra with which I will transform my life?
37:54 It will not happen like that. That’s the reason why most people have remained the way they have remained, because they’ve not invested in their well-being. So it’s a serious long-term investment. It is not long-term. I would say if I ask you, is your life worthwhile enough to invest 30 to 32 hours of focused time to bring some basic transformation within you? If I teach you a way where you can manage your chemistry the way you want, but we need 32 hours of focused time, do you think your life is valuable enough for that much investment? I’m asking.
38:31 Yes. Then you must invest. That’s what is called in an engineering program. 32 hours of focused time. We can format it in different ways, but that much investment has to go in. You want a two-minute mantra, this is like this. It once happened Shankaran Pillai had a serious spinal issue. So you went to the doctor. Doctor took an x-ray and told him, say you need a surgery and it cost you 50,000 rupees. You can convert that into pounds if you wish.
39:03 And you need six weeks of bed rest. Shankaran Pillai said, don’t you know I’m a busy man, I’m a television anchor. I can’t take six weeks break, nor do I have 50,000. I’ll give you 100 rupees. What can you do? The doctor took the x-ray, toyed with it for some time and said, well I can fix the x-ray for you. Tell me about your jokes. You have a lot of good jokes. And you have some bad jokes as well. Because when they don’t get a good joke, you have to tell a bad joke.
39:45 Sometimes you tell jokes like my grandpa would tell, or you just want to leave the room, they’re so bad. But they always have a point. Have you always used humor? Because there’s a lot of it in the book. Well, I don’t know what’s a bad joke. For me, it’s not a joke, just another device to make them see something. Because most people cannot even laugh simply out of sheer joy, you have to tickle them. Even if you tickle them, in that they’re judging what’s a good joke and a bad joke and getting angry about some joke that they don’t like. Because they think it was attacked something that they believe in, that they’re identified with. It is just a device. It’s just a device to make a point.
40:35 Because if the same thing is told to you in utmost seriousness, you will make a dogma out of it, which is very dangerous. The idea is, see, people are always looking, there’s… in the end, people who ask, all this is fine, but what’s the takeaway? They want a commandment. We are talking about consciousness. Commandments won’t fly. Commandments means you’re trying to fix your life.
41:06 Consciousness means you want to liberate your life. My intention is you must liberate your life. People come and say, Sadhguru, please teach us how to control my mind. Say, you want your mind controlled or liberated? Oh, yes, yes, liberated, but how to control? Because they think that intelligence is a serious problem and it’s been in their lives. So what is the solution? If you remove a part of your brain, you will be fine. You’re essentially complaining, I wish I had the brain of an earthworm, this human brain I’m not able to handle. Yes, that is a fact. See, according to Charles Darwin, he’s an English man, okay? It’s not me. Charles Darwin said, that you evolved out of a monkey. You were a monkey, then you became a man.
42:02 Some of the neuroscientists today are studying… I mean, genetic scientists are saying this, that the difference, the DNA difference between a chimpanzee and you is only 1.23 percent. So in that sense, physiologically you’re only 1.23 percent away from a chimpanzee. Not a big difference, isn’t it? A shade, it’s just a shade of difference. But in terms of intelligence and awareness, you are worlds apart from a chimpanzee.
42:34 So your problem is just this, you have an intelligence for which you don’t have a stable enough platform and that’s why yoga, to create a stable platform so that your intelligence works for you. Right now, you may call it so many things, so many exotic names have come up, stress, tension, anxiety, depression, madness, all kinds of things. All this essentially what it means is your intelligence has turned against you, that’s all. You can give any number of reasons, but essentially your intelligence has turned against you. If your intelligence was working for you, would you create blissfulness or misery? This is all. Why your intelligence has turned against you, there’s no stable enough base. So the entire yogic system is about this, that you create a stable base so that your intelligence works for you. If your intelligence turns against you, no power in the universe is going to save you, you are a done thing.
43:38 You’re talking the book about thoughts, you know, we’re obsessed with thoughts in this world, I’m thinking this and I’m thinking that. In the book you talk about… You must understand when I say I’m thinking this, you… another word, another way of saying it is, I’m making up this, I’m making up that. You can make up whatever you want, as long as you enjoy it. But that can be dangerous, always trying to think of the solution, always trying to be your thoughts. See, if you become what you make up, unfortunate, isn’t it? Hmm? Yeah. Your thoughts belong to you or you belong to the thoughts, you must make up your mind. They can be dangerous, those thoughts.
44:30 They’re not dangerous, they’re fantastic. Only thing is fantastic things mishandled can kill you. A car can kill you, isn’t it? It’s a wonderful thing, an automobile. It’s made our lives. If you handle it irresponsibly, it kills you. Every possibility is like this.
44:50 Every possibility, if you do not harness it, it becomes a problem. So the same goes for your cerebral capability. If you do not harness it, it’s a serious problem. It’s taking away… Eighty percent of the human beings are simply suffering. They don’t need any outside help. They’re on self-help.
45:13 You mentioned the word responsible there. You mentioned in the book, what does that mean, that word responsible? See, suppose somebody’s here, lying down. If I call him, he doesn’t respond. If I shake him, he doesn’t respond.
45:31 If I poke him, he doesn’t respond. What do you think of him? He’s dead. He’s dead. So death means you have lost all ability to respond. So what does life mean to you?
45:44 Your ability to respond. So now you make up your mind how alive you want to be. Fifty percent will do. If you’re hundred percent alive, it’s fantastic to be alive. If you’re dead, it’s good, at least for others I’m saying.
46:02 But if you’re half alive, it’s torture, isn’t it? So whether I keep you half alive or you keep yourself half alive, whichever way it’s torture, isn’t it? If I do it, I’m inflicting the torture on you. If you do it to yourself, it’s self-torture. But whether I do it or you do it, it still is torture. It’s suffering.
46:28 So tell me, for most of the people, how many people in this world are being tortured by somebody else? Most. Really? In their minds. No, they’re being tortured by themselves. How many are actually physically being tortured by somebody else? Unfortunately, it happens to a few people. All right.
46:51 It may be a certain number of people, but definitely not eighty percent of the population. Eighty percent of the population are experts in self-torture.
47:05 It’s like if I ask you a simple question, would you want your intellect to be sharp or blunt? You must choose. I’m going to bless you right now. Sharp or blunt? For me. Yeah. Oh, I’ll take sharp. Thank you.
47:19 Sharp. So if I give you a sharp knife, if you hold it on the wrong side, wrong end of the knife, if you hold it, the harder you hold it, the more it hurts, isn’t it? That’s all. You’re suffering your own intelligence. You’re suffering your own possibilities.
47:40 So what is the solution? Soak your brain in alcohol every day in the evening. It looks like it’s a solution for the evening. Tomorrow morning, of course, is a bit soaked and swollen and it hurts. And this is going to get worse, this problem.
47:59 You said in India, drinking has gone up. Thousands of. Tremendously. Tremendously. Because it’s available now. Economic means it’s normal.
48:08 Not only that culturally, everybody is trying to be Western. They’re all trying to be Englishmen.
48:19 They learn the language later, but right now they’ve adopted the evening drink. Otherwise, in our homes, when we are growing up, if anybody says in that family people drink, nobody will give their girls to them. Nobody will marry from their family because in that family men drink. This is how it used to be 40, 50 years ago. Today, if you don’t serve a drink, nobody will come to your wedding. That’s a change that’s happened.
48:49 How do you fight against that? You can’t fight it. That’s why I’m giving them something which is much more than any drink or drug. You close your eyes, you blissed out. Why would you go for a lower drug?
49:08 I’ve had experiences where I don’t tell me what all you had. Oh, in California. I know that you, you don’t think alcohol is good and cannabis is good. And some of these drugs are not good for your system. Right? Even though there’s receptors, they were meant for your own generation inside your body. Is that right? But I have had a moments when I have transcended my body and done many things you talk about in your books, where I do feel connected to the universe. And I feel like I do see what everything is all about and everything you say makes sense. But they usually happen when I’m having a psychedelic experience. But it definitely happens. And without that, I probably would not understand what you’re talking about. But because of that, I actually can see that you are speaking the truth.
49:55 No, without that, you would have understood that you don’t understand what I’m talking with that. Now you think you understand. No, recently when I was in the universities in India, so there also there’s a bunch of students, young people saying, let’s make marijuana legal. I said, no problem. Let’s do it. But let me ask you a simple question. Suppose you want to fly and the pilot is smoked up. It’s called smoking up. Just smoking is tobacco.
50:29 Smoking up is spiced. So your pilot is smoked up. Would you like to fly with him? Oh, no. You want to go through a surgery. Your surgeon is smoked up. Would you like the surgery?
50:44 No, hundred percent. Then how come you think you can be a good student in the college smoked up? How come? You clearly understand your faculties are lowered, right? Yes or no?
50:58 Yes. So lowering human faculties, if you think it’s a virtue, please go ahead. But sometimes it gives me a glimpse, Sageru, into something I miss. Yes, it does. I will tell you, you’re just walking on the street. Suppose we kind of club you on the head. It’ll just give you, it’ll make you see stars, you know?
51:17 Okay. You saw the stars. But is that the way? So I should do the work and find that within myself. You must take charge of this chemical factory, which is the finest chemical factory on the planet.
51:31 Believe me, it is. And you can access all of those chemicals yourself. Oh, yes. And put them in the receptors they were meant to go to. You don’t have to do that. The mechanism will take care of that. You start off the book with a four-letter word. Can you talk about that four-letter word and what it means to people? Well, the word guru means, guru means darkness.
51:59 Roo means dispeller. One who dispels your darkness is guru. That means you walked in this light, this LED light is your guru because it dispelled your darkness. Physically, right now you can see things the way they are because there is light. So other dimensions of life for which you can’t turn on a torch light or a tube light or a LED light, there you need different kind of light. For subjective dimensions of your life, where you can’t put on an outside light, you need some kind of light. So whatever opens up that dimension for you, that’s your guru. Why is that a four-letter word? Because it’s four letters.
52:50 You know, lately on the internet, I seem to see a lot of gurus popping up from different places. And sometimes I don’t know if they’re going to dispel me from the darkness. Is this a phenomenon of social media where I called it a four-letter word because of the many ugly ways in which it is being used today? Okay. Incorrectly. So I wouldn’t say incorrect. I would say ugly.
53:18 Okay. See, you don’t know. The question that you’re asking is how do I know somebody is really a guru or somebody is just going to take me into more darkness. The simple thing is this, you never believe what people say. Just look at them, how they are. Has it worked for the guy who’s talking about it? If you think it’s worked for him, please listen to him. If you think it’s not worked for him, don’t worry. Even if he’s talking about the biggest things, there’s no point because it’s not worked for that guy. What’s the point? That’s simple. It is. In India, there’s a long history and tradition of gurus. Yes, we have seen some absolutely fantastic gurus out there in the tradition, not one or two, many thousands. But because we have been under serious invasions for over thousand years, we’ve been an occupied nation for thousand years, where systematically people try to destroy the spiritual culture and ethos of that nation.
54:25 Because India is a nation, if you look at it culturally as, see, the mechanics of any making of a nation is the sameness. Sameness of language, sameness of religion, sameness of race, sameness of ethnicity, something like this, some sameness. See, right now, why you want Brexit? Because they’re all speaking different languages. They’re different culture, different everything.
54:52 We are English. It’s a sameness always. But India as a nation is a nation which has completely defied the definition. We have 1300 languages and dialects in the country. Every 50 kilometers or 100 kilometers, if you drive, people look different, dress different, eat different, everything different. If you walk into any home, there are five people, five people were worshiping five different gods and goddesses of their own. But still, there is no issue, because this was the land of seeking. Seeking was the connecting thread for us, that everybody is a seeker, not a believer. This is the fundamental nature of that culture, that you’re supposed to seek, you don’t believe what is written somewhere, you don’t believe what some guru said, what some great somebody who claimed to be a god said or a messenger said, you always seek. You use all of them as help to seek more profoundly. So guru was there not to give you a commandment, but only to assist you to seek. You’re seeking, but maybe you’re seeking is not incisive enough. So a guru gives you class to seek little more effectively.
56:07 But he never gave you a commandment. So there is really no danger from him, because he’s not giving you commandments. The moment he gives you commandments, he is claiming to be God. So if you’re eager to go to heaven right away, first thing is you must die. All right, you seek a guru because you want your seeking to be more effective, not because you’re seeking an answer. And these old places of worship you used to go and not be told anything, they were just spaces. Yes, or you could even now it’s like that most of the places in India, only now in competition with somebody they’re trying to turn them into places of worship. Otherwise, the basic rule is if you go to your temple, you’re just supposed to sit there. Just sit there. That’s all quietly sit there, imbibe the energy and go out.
57:05 That’s what consecrated places mean. Consecrated places means very concentrated life energy. See, essentially life and death means like this in yoga. This same energy, if it is very dynamic, we call this life. If it attains a certain level of inertia, then we say it’s death. It’s the same stuff. Life and death is the same stuff. In a dynamic state, we call it life. In a state of inertia, we call it death. So the whole purpose of various practices that you do is how dynamic can you get it so that your seeking becomes effective.
57:45 If it’s not dynamic, your seeking will not be effective. Every time you make a conclusion, every time you believe something, in some way you bring inertia into your life and to your intelligence. So a guru is not there to give you commandments. A guru is there to constantly crank you up and crank you up and crank you up so that you are dynamic in every aspect of your life. Without dynamism, you will not taste life. Dynamism need not necessarily mean you’re doing a thousand things in the world, not necessarily like that. If you sit here, this life is in its highest dynamic nature. It has to be like this. Only then it will know the full depth and dimension of what this life is about. If it gathers inertia, either because of the drug or the drink or just the way you’re structuring your mind with belief systems and dogmas, it becomes static or inertia gathers, then you’re creating death. When you’re alive, if you have to practice death, which is what most people are practicing, if you just go and see outside, most people are driving their dream cars. But look at them, it looks like they’re going to their own funeral. If you look at the expression on their face, why are they practicing the last pose of their life? They’re not driving their dream car with great joy. Does that make you sad when you see so many people unhappy? There was a time I cried for it, but these days I laugh.
59:15 That’s sadistic, isn’t it? But you see it. I mean, people into their phones and people unhappy and people angry at each other. And yet we’re at this time in our life where we have, you know, the connection to so many resources and knowledge. How do you manage that in your brain just to see those two things? See, that is the most fundamental aspect. That is the following success secrets are only available inside the London Real Tribe, where you get exclusive access and insights from our high performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health and well-being. To join our tribe community, go to londonreal.tv forward slash tribe. Now let’s continue with the show.
1:00:08 And what do you say about people that complain? Well, they can complain as much as they want. All they’re doing is what see all this is happening because people are not conscious that they’re mortal. They think other people die. They don’t know consciously that I will die.
1:00:29 As I sit here, my clock is ticking away. What is ticking away is not the clock. Life is just ticking away. As you sat here, both of us are thirty minutes closer to our grave. Yes? Yes. If you’re conscious of this, you would manage your life in the best possible way.
1:00:48 You think you have eternal amount of time. So you have time for all kinds of rubbish. There are only two aspects to life. It’s a certain amount of time and a certain amount of energy. Time is rolling away for all of us the same way. There’s no choice about this.
1:01:05 It’s just going. But you can manage your energy. If you manage your energies in a very intense and dynamic way, what somebody does in ten years, what somebody experiences in ten years, you could experience in ten days or ten moments. In this context, you will live long. If you both of us live for hundred years, in my experience of intake of life, an impact of life, I have lived here for thousand years. Somebody else in hundred years, they could have barely lived for a year or ten years because they are practicing, they’re committing suicide in installments.
1:01:53 And your mission is to change all that? No, I’m just, I just want to live in a wonderful world, not with miserable people. So I’m trying to add some company. And is it working? Oh, of course it’s working.
1:02:14 But I know I’m destined to be a failure because you know this, when it first happened to me, I just realized one day that if I simply sit here, don’t mess with myself, every cell in my body will overflow with ecstasy. There’s really nothing to do. If I don’t just mess around with my mind and simply sit here, ecstasy will flow. I tried in many different ways, various kinds of situations, wherever I am, if I simply don’t mess with my mind, if I simply sit here, ecstasy will overflow.
1:02:54 Then I decided, I made a plan. I know there’s no fool like a young fool. Because you’re younger than me, I’m saying that. A little bit.
1:03:04 So I was just 25 and I decided in next two and a half years, I actually made a plan. Two and a half years time, I will make the whole world ecstatic. And that day the population was 5.6 billion people. I said I could easily do this because after all there’s nothing to do. If I just teach them simply to sit here, it’ll happen.
1:03:26 Well, 37 years, look at me. Well, people say we have touched some 500 to 600 million people today, but that’s not my idea of the world, 7.6 billion people. So I’m destined to die as a big failure. I’m trying to increase my percentages, improve my percentages, but I know I will die a failure, but a blissful failure. Because whether I succeed or I fail, either it works, it doesn’t work, does not decide the quality of my life.
1:04:01 But you do feel that now is the time to really go on. Now is the best time ever. Why is that? Because we are here.
1:04:13 And also, just imagine, there is a statue of Buddha sitting here, Gautamata Buddha. When he came 2500 years ago, if he spoke a gentle being that he is, hardly ten people heard. People behind will ask, what did he say, what did he say? That idiot will say something to that guy, that guy will say some other nonsense to somebody. By the time it goes to the last person, some rubbish will happen.
1:04:41 This is the fact. And somebody will write down and misinterpret it in thousand different ways. Hardly we know what in ancient times they actually spoke, because everybody interpreted and reinterpreted these things according to their convenience. Said, look at the technology today. I can sit here and talk to the entire world, if the necessary arrangements are made, isn’t it?
1:05:06 And it’s all recorded. Tomorrow, if you come back and say, Sadhguru said this, we’ll just play back the tape and said, that’s not what I said. Was this ever possible? So today, if we want to transform the world, human beings, if you want to raise human consciousness, there has never been a better time. This is the best time.
1:05:30 I agree. And the technology can help us in this situation. Technology, definitely. Above all, people, heavens are collapsing. This is the time to change.
1:05:39 I have two young boys, two and three years old. How do I raise them in this age, to make sure they don’t… See, we use the word raise only for cattle.
1:05:55 Human beings, you don’t raise. Even for plants, we say we cultivate. But only for cattle, sheep, we say we raise the flock. So this raise thing has come from a very religious background. You want to raise them.
1:06:12 That means, you want to raise them in such a way that they will not think one thing more than what you teach them. This is a way of subjugating future generations. This is a way of subjugating human intelligence. No, you should not raise your voice. They don’t belong to you, you must understand this.
1:06:33 Just a privilege that they’ve come through you. It’s a privilege you must enjoy, create the necessary atmosphere, a healthy, loving, nice, pleasant atmosphere so that they will grow of their own accord. You raising them means, you screwing them up. That’s what raising them means. Please don’t do it.
1:06:52 Next generation should not be like you. It should be in a way that you cannot imagine. This is even possible, isn’t it? Yes. Your own daughter, you didn’t have anyone teach her math or letters or languages.
1:07:06 You just let her grow. Yes.
1:07:10 Tell me about your live events. I’ve seen some of these big shows, amazing shows, some of these things you do in India. Well, why do those? And what do those bring? What do those feel like when you’re there?
1:07:24 It’s not a show, best of all, because what happens in these events, if there are 100,000 people in an event, you will see at least 80% of them will be shedding tears of ecstasy and love. So it’s not really a show. There is no promise of heaven, all right? There is no miracle. There is no enemy.
1:07:56 Why I’m saying this is, without creating an enemy, you can’t gather people and get them focused somewhere, usually. All moments in the world, if you see, they will create an enemy first. All our problems, this guy is the source. Now you can get all of these people, boom, against him. The fundamental of the moment is that there is only one enemy, that’s yourself.
1:08:22 If you fix this one guy, everything is fine in this world, actually. Isn’t it? That’s true. Yes. So never before a hardcore spiritual process like this has become such a massive moment.
1:08:35 This is unique that today, if we do the annual event in February or March, over a million people gather, over 100 television channels are transmitting this live. That means, I don’t know how many millions of people are watching it on the television, on the webcast, on the YouTube, all this stuff. Why I’m saying this is, this is only possible now. Gautama spent 40 years of his enlightened life traveling from village to village, town to town, talking to small groups of people, large groups of people, all kinds of people.
1:09:12 I’m sure what he said was misinterpreted in a million different ways. Even today, though it is so crystal clear, what I’m saying is so simple, you ask 10 people, 10 people will say 10 different things. So we have to keep on saying the same thing in many different ways, so that misinterpretation is minimized to the minimal. But misinterpretation is difficult with me because most of the people don’t even know what I’m talking about. Because they are all looking for a takeaway.
1:09:42 What is the takeaway? There’s nothing takeaway. I will not give you any takeaway. If I give you takeaway, what will you do? You will carry it on your head or you will reject it.
1:09:52 One of these things you will do. Both are no good. If you believe what I say, you will not get anywhere. If you disbelieve what I say, you will not get anywhere. Only if you exercise your own consciousness, you will get somewhere.
1:10:06 So the entire thing is just a device. It is just a method to get you into a certain state of seeking, certain state of evolution within yourself. It is about active evolution of yourself. We were 15,000 years ago when Adi Yogi spoke about this. When they asked, what is the nature of life?
1:10:27 How do we do this? He said, the significance of being human is just this. For all other creatures evolution, how they evolve is fixed by nature. For the human being, your evolution is in your hands. If you strive, you can evolve whichever way you want.
1:10:44 This is the basis of yoga. Tell me about you and your day. What do you do every single day? This is my day. Every day is like this.
1:10:56 With somebody. Do you wake up early? Do you always, do you still practice a physical yoga? What is your day like that is always non-negotiable for you?
1:11:12 Everything is negotiable except the way I am. Because if I sleep on the same pillow for two nights, it’s a luxury.
1:11:28 In entire 2018, I slept at home for 32 days. So what is the routine people are always asking. First thing is when I wake up, where am I today? That’s the thing. So there is no routine for me.
1:11:46 I just take 20 seconds to organize my energies that it’s ready for the day. 20 seconds. And is that the plan for the rest of your life?
1:11:59 What do you mean? To do the, are you going to keep doing this traveling, speaking, working? No, at different stages of my life I’ve done different things. Right now, we’re in this mode. This will change after some time.
1:12:11 This kind of traveling will not be necessary after a few years. Maybe in a couple of years, probably. Technology is there. Real TV is there. So you guys will deliver.
1:12:21 I don’t have to travel. When will you know that your work is making a difference? How can you tell? Oh, it is always making a difference. You must see how people come the first day, how they live.
1:12:34 They look like flowers have blossomed within themselves. So there is no, this thing that I need some kind of outside measure. Because it has transformed me, I know this method will transform any human being. Any human being, whatever kind they are, wherever they are, it still will transform you because as a species, the fundamental mechanism is still the same. Only thing is to get them willing.
1:13:02 We have to do a lot of talking. If I was to ask your team here, what is Sadhguru’s super power? How has he managed to do all the things you do to travel, to do the events, to speak to people? What is it about you? What is the thing that allows you to do all this?
1:13:25 Because I’m not a product of my memory. I have a huge memory of lifetimes, but I’m not a product of that. That’s the important thing. Most people have misunderstood their memory as intelligence. Today, we are moving into an era where artificial intelligence is coming.
1:13:47 I’m being… It’s ridiculous thing is, I’m being invited to speak in these conferences where there’s debate about artificial intelligence. So I asked them, why are you asking me to come? I’m a natural intelligence. Why are you asking me to speak in artificial intelligence? They’d know the problem is, what will we do?
1:14:05 We will lose our jobs. I said, I’m glad you guys will lose your jobs. Because the only stupid thing you have done is, you read a book five years ahead of me and you think you’re a superhuman. And you’re acting funny in front of children that you know better than them. Just because you read a stupid book ahead of them, right?
1:14:27 This will mean nothing in the next five, ten years. Your scholarship, your PhD will mean nothing. My phone can do 10 PhDs in a day. It has that much information. So, you acting up, holding a certain bank of memory and acting up like you’re super smart, these days are over.
1:14:46 There was a time. If you had big muscle, you really acted like a big man. Today, if you have big muscle, maybe we’ll keep you outside at the gate as a security man. You’re not the boss here because of your muscles, isn’t it? The same thing will happen to your intellect.
1:15:01 Simply because you have big memory, you are not going to be of any great significance because the machines will do better than you. This happened to all the muscle men about fifty-hundred years ago. Yes, the machines came and took away the power of your muscle. Now machines are coming which will take away the power of your memory. This is fantastic time.
1:15:21 Now in future, the only thing that matters is what kind of a human being are you? I want you to emphasize the being because you’re the only one who has the privilege of being called a being. We don’t call it tiger, a tiger being, a lion, a lion being, an elephant, an elephant being, or a grasshopper, a grasshopper being. Only you. We refer to you as a human being because you’re supposed to know how to be.
1:15:50 How far away from truth is that? So once artificial intelligence comes and it takes over all the power of holding memory and thinking you’re great, your scholarship, your PhD, your priesthood, everything will go away. You read a handful of books and thought you’re a great scholar. Somebody read just one book and they thought they’re representatives of God. All this will go.
1:16:18 It’s good times coming. Part of your plan, AI. Yes, it’s wonderful plan.
1:16:25 Say Guru, what scares you? Huh? What scares you? Nothing has till now.
1:16:36 My father always, you know, was very worried. He would always say there is no fear in this boy’s heart. What will happen to him? I heard this many times through my childhood. One day when I was around 11 years of age, I caught a big cobra and came home and he said, this boy has no fear in his heart.
1:16:54 What will happen to him? I asked him, when did fear become a virtue? He said, see, I told you he has no fear in his heart. Why is fear a virtue? Religions of the world have put fear into you about everything, about life and death.
1:17:11 Isn’t it? And they’ve also told you if you die, you will go to God. So then why fear? But you also got fearing. Fear is the basis.
1:17:22 You must be God fearing, life fearing, death fearing, everything fearing. You fear the God, of course, you must fear the devil also, right? So fear is the basis. So fear is the key till now. This is important to understand what is happening is just this.
1:17:40 People are suffering. What are they suffering? They think they’re suffering their life. No. People are suffering something that happened 10 years ago, something that happened 10 days ago, something that happened day before yesterday, they’re still suffering.
1:17:55 Or they’re able to suffer what may happen day after tomorrow already. They are not suffering life. They’re just suffering their memory and their imagination. Two greatest faculties that human beings have is this a fantastic sense of memory, a vivid sense of memory and an absolutely wonderful sense of imagination. This only human being has.
1:18:18 These are all two basic faculties. These two things you started suffering. So what you’re saying is evolution has made a mistake with you. Please make me an earthworm once again. So that you can just at least become eco-friendly.
1:18:32 All the best. What happens when you die? What happens? What happens to your spirit? You’re asking me?
1:18:42 Yeah. What will happen to you? What will happen to you? No, I have a clear plan about that. Clear plan?
1:18:49 Yes. You’re not going to share it with me? It won’t make any sense to you. Anyway, it’s been an eight year project. Now I’m just nearing completion.
1:18:59 It’s a book on death. The inside story. Is that what it’s called? Yes. You have good names for your books.
1:19:07 The inside story. This is a book for all those who shall die. Is that ultimately also what makes us suffer our relationship with death? No, it is only because we have not come to a fundamental acceptance of the nature of life. Death is not a separate entity.
1:19:29 Right now we can say you’re living. We can also… If you remove the morbid ideas that you have about death, actually you’re dying right now. One day it will be complete, the process. Is it on or no? Yeah.
1:19:43 It is on. What’s wrong with this? It’s good. Death is good. It’s on right now.
1:19:49 One day it will be complete. Well, we don’t want it to complete tomorrow morning. We want to run through the full scale of it. But at some day you will be glad you will die, isn’t it? If I want to really punish you, I don’t have to give you death sentence.
1:20:04 Suppose I give you a life sentence, you cannot die. Just imagine.
1:20:12 I gave you a punishment that you cannot die no matter what you do. Even if you try to commit suicide, if you behave yourself, you still cannot die. How die? How’s that punishment? I’m thinking about it right now.
1:20:23 It’s too terrible. Because why? I see suffering and I see it never ending. That’s not the point. Even if you’re joyful, you would like to close the chapter at some point when you’re done with it, isn’t it?
1:20:36 Did you enjoy your school? Yes. So even if you enjoyed your school very much, did you want to get out of it as quickly as possible? Very much. Same thing with life, isn’t it?
1:20:49 Because you’re suffering. Because always the next possibility is always beckoning you, isn’t it? And there are more possibilities. Of course. Okay, and that the book is going to talk about that.
1:21:02 Yes. What would we be surprised to learn about Sadhguru? Something you do that maybe we wouldn’t expect a guru to do. Well, I can ride a motorcycle better than most young people can do. You still ride?
1:21:18 Oh yeah. Do you have a favorite bike? Right now I’ve been riding a scrambler but just now I’m here to… I’ve ridden it around, test ridden it, but yet to really do any long rides I have a Honda. A VFR. It’s a good one.
1:21:36 Why do you like riding? Why? Why riding? Why do you like it so much? I like sitting also.
1:21:45 I like walking also. I like golfing also. I like everything. But few things are still allowed. Other things are all gone because time.
1:21:57 Not enough time. So riding when I’m traveling and still going by car, I can ride. It still allows me a little bit of riding here and there. I guess you’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Oh yeah, way back.
1:22:11 What do you think of that book? Well, it inspired a whole generation in a certain way. Spiritual book, isn’t it? I wouldn’t say it’s spiritual. It is, it definitely made people think a little differently.
1:22:33 Maybe, maybe you could call it that way as a kind of a brochure. It’s a brochure for spirituality. Yeah, but a wrong brochure because you’re misunderstanding magic or spiritual process. This is the biggest problem. People always think spiritual process means something magic should happen.
1:22:57 No, spiritual process means you got to the roots of reality and reality itself is a great magic. Tell me, you walk into the garden, you look at the flowers blossomed all over. You think and if you smell, it smells wonderful. You think they sprayed perfume to the roots? No, they put filth.
1:23:20 You put filth and fantastic blossoming and fragrance comes out. Is it not magic? Is your existence not magical? Yes. In the middle of nowhere, you don’t know where this cosmos begins, where it ends.
1:23:36 In the middle of nowhere, in this tiny blob of mud, which you call as planet earth, you and me sitting here on a round planet which damn thing is spinning and we’re talking all this. Is this not magic? Hello? Yes. You want something more magical?
1:23:53 I’m asking you. The only problem is this blob of earth tomorrow morning if it evaporates, nobody will know in the universe. I’m telling all of everybody, including the religious people, who think they are the center of the universe. All right. I’m saying our existence here is so insignificant little thing.
1:24:17 The solar system itself is a speck. In that planet earth is a micro speck. In that London is a super micro speck. In that you’re a big man. This is a terrible problem.
1:24:32 What keeps you awake at night? What keeps you awake at night? Life. I just stay awake most of the time. You do?
1:24:39 Yeah. Thinking about life. No, just living. Living. Just being alive.
1:24:47 This is the most fantastic thing that you’re alive right now, isn’t it? Hello? Yes. Not thinking. Thinking is a very minor thing.
1:24:56 Unfortunately, in this part of the world, people have made human thought bigger than the cosmos. Your thought has become more significant than the universe. This is a tragedy.
1:25:08 Your thought is just a recycling of the data that you already have. Nothing new can happen there. You can just recycle your garbage as much as you want. Same things in different forms of permutations and combinations will come. But can you think of something absolutely new?
1:25:26 Other than what’s in your memory? I guess not. You cannot. So stop trying. No, no, what is there to try?
1:25:36 See, if you have an iPad, whatever you’ve loaded into it, that you can get it out in many different formats. As they improve the models more and more, intelligence goes into it. It will give you many more combinations. But can it produce something which is not there in it? Is it possible?
1:25:57 This also the same thing. Your intellect is like this. It’s ruled by your memory. What kind of memories you have? That it brings out.
1:26:04 Just because most of the memory that you carry, you’re not conscious of, it looks like fantastic things are coming out. Nothing fantastic is coming out. What you have gathered is what is coming out. But in many formats, of course. I’m not saying it’s useless.
1:26:21 I’m just saying it’s a limited possibility. Zegar, we have a couple final questions. Final question is one, not couple. If I were to give you a magic phone and you could call up the 20-year-old Sadhguru and give that young man a bit of advice, knowing everything you know now, what would you tell him? Well, 20-year-old Sadhguru didn’t have a phone to receive.
1:26:47 Let’s say he did. What would you tell him? What would I tell him? What would you tell him? He hadn’t gone up the mountain yet.
1:26:54 Just don’t talk to a Sadhguru. That’s what you’d tell him? Yeah. Don’t talk to you. Yes, because I am who I am because I never identified myself with anything.
1:27:10 Whether family, society, religion, politics, whatever was happening around me, I was involved with everything but never really identified with anything. There were many, many things happening around me. I was participating in everything but never identified with it. So if a Sadhguru came too early, I would have kept him away too. So 20 years when I am 20, Sadhguru was too early for me.
1:27:47 Today, I am seeing 12-15-year-old boys are coming to me with great involvement. They are fortunate people. But I was not like that. At 20, if Sadhguru came, I would have ignored him. So I’m glad he didn’t come at 20.
1:28:00 Okay. On that same note, best advice you’ve ever received. Huh? What was the best advice you’ve ever received in your life? Advice.
1:28:08 Me. Yeah. What did you listen to any advice? I never received any advice nor I’ve ever given advice to anybody. It’s a rule.
1:28:17 Okay. No advice taken, no advice given. You could suggest and explore things here and there. That’s it. I…
1:28:27 This may sound arrogant but this is not coming from arrogance. This is coming from…
1:28:35 From a very early childhood, I have a billion questions floating around my head. Hmm. Like a huge cloud. Always, day in and day out. Questions and questions and questions.
1:28:48 Not the way people suffer questions here in this part of the world. They suffer these questions. For me, questions were invigorating process. Every new question that I could create was always made me more alive and crazy. More confused but more alive.
1:29:05 Because I did not draw conclusions. So advice was not even something I was looking for. I was looking for answers, for solutions which never came from anybody. Everybody had something to say that they have read somewhere, they have heard somewhere. Nobody ever told me something that’s absolutely fantastic and real within themselves.
1:29:30 They’re all talking something they picked up from somewhere. This whole world, unfortunately, this influence has come. Everybody is talking about their role model. People ask me, Sadhguru, who was your role model? I tell them, no, I never rolled with the models.
1:29:49 Because this is a unique life. This, all you have to do is create an ambience where this life will flourish. This need not listen to anybody. Nobody needs to listen to me either. As an advice, but as a device, they must because they don’t have… they have not generated their own devices to grow.
1:30:13 If you had limitless amount of time, even devices you need not take from me because slowly your intelligence would evolve that by yourself. But you don’t have limitless time. You have limited amount of time. Because of that, you must borrow my devices. You should not take advice from me.
1:30:29 Anyway, I will not give you any to disappoint you. But they can borrow your devices. Of course, they should because time is limited. And so finally, to that 20-year-old that is watching us, that’s listening to us out there, we’re not going to give them a mantra. You’re not going to give them a next action step.
1:30:45 No, no, no. What can they do? They can do one thing. If you’re a 20-year-old, just here, I’m just thinking this up right here. If you’re a 20-year-old and if you tell me that you’re really committed, I will offer the program free for you.
1:31:02 What normally costs $150 or whatever, £150 or whatever. If you’re 20 or below, and you’re really committed that you will go through it in an interested way, in a focused and involved way, I will offer the free program free for you. Absolutely free. Why do that? Why?
1:31:21 Because you’re 20. Because you’re the future of this world. That’s why. Okay.
1:31:29 Sadhguru, I very much appreciate the time today. We’ve been waiting to do this for quite a while and I’m a big fan of what you do of your books, of your thought process, and everything. So, I hope to come to maybe one of your events in the future. You must come to India. You must come and see the yoga center, how it is.
1:31:47 Yeah, I’ve never been to India. It’s a fantastic tool, meticulously created for self-transformation. Doesn’t subscribe to any particular philosophy, ideology or belief. It’s just an instrument for transformation. I’m going to take you up on that.
1:32:03 All right. I wish you well. Thank you, sir.
