You Control Your Own Karma with Sadhguru

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey, and in your book, which is really profound, your book on karma, you talk about how intent behind inaction is very important for karma. Can you walk into the difference between intent versus outcome? And then I have a few specific examples where I'd like to go deeper on understanding Karma and teaching that to our listeners.

Let us handle the three aspect. Intent, content, and outcome. See, outcome is a consequence of many things, not just what you do. If you exert a certain amount of force upon something, depending on what that is, sometimes it will move to a higher place, sometimes it'll break, sometimes it'll fall down. Many things. Outcome is a consequence of many factors. Not entirely yours, but intent is 100% yours. The content of our activity, again, is not fully ours because in a given situation there could be 10 different forces or hundred different forces in that you are also exerting your force to see whatever. So the only thing that you have control over is your intent. The content and the outcome is never hundred percent in your hands. To some extent, it is in our hands. We aspire to make it happen the way we want. But actually, in reality, only our intent is in our control. Rest is not really in our control.

But does it affect your karma? If your intent is good but you do great evil, which side of that is the karmic impact?

See if your intent is inclusive when I say intent is good. People have done terrible things with good intention because of wrong identifications. Now, in the name of being two different nations, we have done terrible things to each other. In terms of being two different races, we have done terrible things to each other. In terms of being two different religions, we have done terrible things to each other. In terms of being two individuals, we have done terrible things to each other. All right, so in this, somebody is fighting for his nation or his race or religion. He thinks he is doing a great thing, but he is doing terrible things. So this is why the most important thing is before you do any action in the world, before you even generate a thought in your mind, the most important thing is to set your identity. In the yogic culture, this is the most important thing, that you must set your identity first, because your identity is what is determining the nature of your thought and your emotion. See, right now, for example, let's say you belong to a certain country. Your flag flutters, tears will come in your eyes. It's just a piece of cloth. All right.

I love what you're saying. Keep going.

So you are willing to live and Die for that. Because piece of cloth. This is because you're identified with that. If you're identified with another piece of cloth, you would be willing to do the same thing with that. So identity rules. Our mind and emotion, thought and emotion is entirely decided by what we are identified with it. Nationality, race, religion, caste, creed, you know, all kinds of things and individuality. So the most important thing is to set a cosmic identity to yourself. That first of all, you have an inclusive identity. That smaller identities that you have are just to play the game, but essentially you have a cosmic identity. We say this before we start a child on education in India for, you know, for millennia we have done this. We always taught them, aham brahmasmi. This means my identity is with the cosmos, not with my parentage, not with my family, not with my caste or creed or religion. But my identity is with the very cosmos we. I do not know where my identity begins, where it ends. All I can see is it's an endless possibility. Once you set your identity in an inclusive nature, your intent will evolve in a certain way. With that intent, the chances of you causing harm is only accidental in nature. Now let's say a surgeon is trying to fix a patient with the best intent, but it could so happen that the knife slipped and he could kill the patient. It's happened any number of times, but the intent is clear. He was only trying to save the life, but maybe it went wrong for whatever reasons. So it is the only thing that is in our control, is our intent. We should bring this into our hands, not do what we can do. We are a disaster. So to avoid this disaster, the best thing is you have an inclusive identity and you fix your intent. Who knows how effective our actions will be? Who knows whether the world will allow our actions to be successful or not? Because our actions, how they, how successful they are, is a consequence of time. It is not all about ourselves. Whatever we are doing today, if you and me were here a thousand years ago on this planet, we would you and me doing podcast with each other. I'm saying this, this activity is a consequence of the times in which we exist. We should not aggrandize our actions too much because most of the things that we are doing is a consequence of the times in which we exist. That is for many generations of people, the foundations that they have created upon that we are doing a little drama.