Turn Your Pain Into Power, Not Poison | Sadhguru
1 Jul 2026 · 85 min
In this episode of the "Greatness" podcast, host Lewis Howes interviews spiritual teacher Sadhguru, exploring how personal suffering can be transformed into growth and how societal notions of abundance often miss the point of true fulfillment. The conversation moves from a critique of wealth as a measure of success—questioning what "abundance" really means—to a deeper look at nurturing one's inner roots rather than chasing external fruit. Sadhguru discusses the role of fear, anxiety, and ease, emphasizing that a state of inner calm dramatically expands one’s capacity. He examines how identity, hate, and love function as powerful motivators, arguing that hate often fuels action more than love. The dialogue also delves into the paradox of human intelligence: a unique evolutionary gift that becomes a curse when not grounded in a stable physical and energetic platform. Throughout, Sadhguru stresses the importance of looking inward, listening, and "shutting up" to access deeper awareness. The interview concludes with Sadhguru’s three‑truth teaching—shut up, look, listen—and his definition of greatness as a state beyond boundaries, tying these ideas to a vision of a conscious, joyful planet where influencers collaborate to uplift humanity.
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When unpleasant things happen, do you become wise or do you become wounded? How do I live clean? How do I live happy? You don't have to eliminate the waste. Waste is very valuable. Right now in this garden, they buy waste at a very exorbitant price.
To fertilize?
Yes. So whether you turn your filth into a fertilizer or you smear it on your face and walk around, that's your choice.
He is an internationally renowned speaker and author of New York Times bestsellers Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and one of India's 50 most influential people Sadhguru, intellect is like a knife.
If you want to dissect something, it's very good. You want to stitch your clothes. If you stitch your clothes with the knife, what will happen? You will be in tatters. This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they become.
For the people watching or listening who might be saying, you know what, I don't have financial abundance, I'm struggling financially, struggling in my health and wellness. How can they start to think differently to to apply these principles.
You are setting up all the wrong goals.
What should the goals be?
Simply this.
From the Midwest in Ohio, I grew up hearing the word karma, saying that if you do something bad, then bad things are coming for you. And you talk about in the book that it's not necessarily that case. Can you define karma for the uneducated person like myself? On what karma treats—
I thought that was my title. You're stealing that from me. Uneducated guru is what people say, and now you're saying you're uneducated interviewer. Anyway, about if you do bad things, bad things will come for you. This has been the way of the world. You don't need the word karma for that. Because people have been trying to control people either with fear or guilt. This has been the basis of a whole lot of things happening in the world. If you do this, you will go to hell. If you do that, you will go to heaven. Otherwise, here itself it will happen to you, whatever. Or there is somebody up there with a stick waiting and they will whack you. All these kind of things. Essentially, you're trying to manage humanity. Control humanity with fear or guilt.
Yeah.
Fear and guilt, I see particularly in the Western world, is like enormous. It is in the psyche of people in such a big way. Well, karma is not about fear. Karma is not about guilt. Karma is about liberation. It is about freedom. Because you are a composite, as you sit here, you are composite of various memories within you.
Yes.
It goes back, it goes way back, but let's start with amoeba in recent times. Okay. From amoeba to now, the whole evolutionary process in some way is recorded in this body. Otherwise, this body would be confused every other day whether this is human or not. This is 100% clear that this is human. This is evolutionary memory, always there. There is genetic memory, there is karmic memory, there is articulate, inarticulate, you know, unconscious, subconscious, and conscious memories. Right now when we say memory, people think only of their conscious memory, which is less than 1% of their actual memory.
So the things they actually remember in their mind, the conscious memory.
That is less than 1% of the actual memory. See, for example, I can give you a thousand examples like this which are manifesting in everybody's life. The simple thing is this. Uh, let's say 500 years ago, how your great-great-great-grandfather was, you don't remember for sure.
No.
But his nose is sitting on your face probably.
Right.
My ears are his ears.
Yeah.
Yep.
Many things. Yeah. Even the color of the skin and the texture of the skin, everything. So the minutest details of what happened to your forefathers a million years ago still living with you right now.
Wow.
It is living with you right now. Now all these memories, a composite or an amalgamation of all these complex memories is what you call as myself. What you call as myself consciously may be just a small part of that, but that small part is happening Because of this massive memory that is there. In, you know, like in India, we have in the yogic culture, we have this word called vasana.
Vasana.
Vasana. Vasana literally means smell.
Yes.
So we say your personality is just your smell. See, right now you walk there, there is jasmine. You recognize the jasmine by its fragrance. You will recognize filth by its stink.
Mm-hmm.
So we recognize your personality, personality by your vasana. What kind of vasana or what kind of smell is coming out of you right now depends on what kind of stuff have you gathered.
Mm.
So now karma means to understand that there is all kinds of things. Because when it comes to memory, you have no choice. What to keep and what not to keep.
You can't erase memory.
You cannot.
No matter how hard you try.
Try and see. What you try to forget will be foremost in your mind.
Amplified, yeah.
Whatever you think you should not remember. So always people tell me, Sadhguru, my memory is bad. I say, just try to forget it. You see, you will remember it always.
Right.
It's simple. So because this is the nature of the mind, you cannot There is no subtraction and division in your mind. There is only addition and multiplication. Whatever you try to do, it'll be one more. If you try hard, it'll multiply. This is the nature of your mind. So what is there in your memory is not your choice. Whatever you see, it's all recorded. Whatever you hear, everything recorded. Whatever you smell, taste, touch, every perception that you have is recorded within you. You have no choice. What to record? Here there is a flower which is beautiful. Let me just record that. There, there is filth. I don't want to record that. There's no such thing. Everything gets recorded. So if all this is there, how do I live clean? How do I live happy?
How do you eliminate the waste, the trash?
You don't have to eliminate the waste. Waste is very valuable. If you know, right now in this garden, they buy waste at a very, you know, a very exorbitant price because their waste goes into the public system. They have to buy waste from somewhere. They have to buy filth.
To fertilize.
Yes. So whether you turn your filth into a fertilizer or you smear it on your face and walk around, that's your choice. This is why karma. So what kind of karma happened in my life till this moment is not always my choice. So many things have happened. But what kind of karma I perform right now in this moment is 100% my choice. Will I use this filth as manure and blossom into a wonderful fragrance, or will I smear it around me and walk around with filth? This is the choice everybody has. When unpleasant things happen to us, which happens to everybody in some way, if you're living in the world, I'm saying, unless you drop from somewhere else. If you're living in this world, so many unpleasant things happen. Now, with these unpleasant things, do you become wise? Or do you become wounded? This is a choice. To exercise this choice, there must be a little space. When I say a little space, where is your memory stored? People think here. Your brain has very little memory, okay? Every cell in the body carries a trillion times more memory than your entire brain.
Every cell in the body?
Every cell in the body. Because if I take one cell from you, we can, you know, create you completely in a lab. That means what? Well, your parents, your father and mother gave you only one cell each. They were not very generous. Only one cell each. See, a whole man came out of it. Yeah. So in that one cell, all this memory head to toe, everything was there, isn't it?
Yeah.
No mistake. Texture of the hair, texture of the skin, the nails, the works, every detail to the minutest detail. Was it packed in that one cell or no?
Yeah.
Yes. So every cell in your body carries a trillion times more memory than your entire brain carries.
Wow.
So if you do not use that, if you just use one part of your body, then everything seems to be stressful. Everything seems to be a struggle. Today everybody complaining about everything. Everything is stressful. You are a toddler, you have stress of diapers. You are a teenager, you have hormonal stress. You're middle age, you have crisis. You're old age, geriatric stress.
Right.
All right, which is not stress? Entire life is stress. Tell them, okay, you die. Oh, that is enormous stress. So this is not because there is something wrong with anybody's life. It's simply because it's like you have a car, it's supposed to go on 4 wheels. Try to drive on 1, okay, 1 may look like too much. Try to drive on 2, well, within 10 miles your tires will burst. Because too much stress on one point, other things are not being used. This is all that's happening to human beings.
Are we stressing our minds too much?
See, when we say mind, see again, your hand went almost here. Are we stressing our minds? No, there is an entire— there is a mind across this body. What is it that you call as a mind? A certain combination of memory and intelligence is mind. Isn't it?
So our whole body is mind?
Yes. In yoga, we see physical body, mental body, energetic body, etheric body, bliss body, like this. Everything is body. Because it is right across, it is not in any one place. Only intellectual activity is here. Mm-hmm. Okay. Right now, because modern societies, particularly Western societies, have become such slaves of their intellect, because of that, they think everything is here.
Right.
Intellect works only with the data that you have gathered. You cannot function beyond your data. That means you will remain so small. Because even if you've read the libraries on this planet, what you know in terms of data is minuscule compared to what this cosmos is. With that minuscule, you think you're very intelligent because you're analyzing and processing. Anyway, all these people who think they're intellectually very smart are going to feel dumb, stupid in the next 5 years because your phone will be far more smarter than you. Already people are calling it a smartphone. See, why would you call somebody or something smart? Only because it's smarter than you.
Right?
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Otherwise you wouldn't. All right. So right now, too much dependence on intellect because our education systems are crafted like this, not exploring other dimensions of intelligence at all. See, intellect, if I ask you this simple question, would you like your intellect to be sharp or blunt? Choose, choose quickly. I'm going to bless you. Yes.
Sharp.
So essentially, Intellect is like a knife. If you want to dissect something, it's very good. Yeah. So now the only instrument that you have is a knife in your hand. You want to stitch your clothes. If you stitch your clothes with the knife, what will happen? You will be in tatters. This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they have become. With all this education, tell me, uneducated people, are more unhappy or educated people are more unhappy in the world?
It depends what type of education.
No, generally illiterate people in the rest of the world, tribes and this and that, even in India, many, many people.
Whenever I visit, I go to Guatemala almost every year and I visit small villages and the kids seem so happy. Yeah. Seems so happy.
Because they didn't go to school like me.
They don't have much, but they have family, they have community.
What do you mean they don't have much?
I mean, they don't have much in terms of the material world.
They're not financially disastrous.
That's what you were saying. Right, exactly.
Yeah.
They don't have a lot in the material side of things, but they have a lot in their hearts, richness, connection, community, love, and they seem very happy.
Essentially, uneducated people or illiterate people are happier than the educated people. With education, your life should have become better, isn't it? Unfortunately, they're becoming unhappy simply because they only have sharpened their knife. And a sharp knife in your hand and you're unconscious, you're cutting yourself all the time. All the time cutting yourself.
That's beautiful.
You don't need any outside help.
You can stab yourself.
Yes.
So people come to me and say, Sadhguru, my boss, he's horrible. My mother-in-law, she's not even human. My wife, she is such a pinin. My husband like this. I say, you come here to the yoga center. I'll make sure your boss, mother-in-law, wife, husband, nobody enters this place, just you. I'll give you a nice place to live, good food to eat, nothing to do. Just be happy. That's all. Yeah. You must be just joyful. I'll make random checks on you. If I find you unhappy or miserable, then I won't feed you because I don't believe in feeding Misery. If you remain joyful, I will feed you for the rest of your life and take care of you like you're my prized guest. But if you show misery, we won't feed you. Well, you leave them in one room for 24 hours, you will see in how many ways they'll twist themselves out is unbelievable. Because when you're alone, if you're miserable, obviously you're in bad company, isn't it?
Right.
I'm with you. I'm miserable. I think it's because of this guy I'm miserable. This guy I'm miserable. I'm sitting here alone and miserable.
Now who? Right.
Who? Who is causing misery?
How do we get out of that though?
No, essentially one must understand human experience is caused from within, not from outside.
Right.
What we do, arrangements we do outside in the form of home, family, automobile, this, that, These are arrangements to facilitate our activity. They are not going to make you happy or unhappy, but right now, the car sellers are telling you, only this is joy, this car— I'm sorry, I'm not against any brand. I like the brand. They say this car is joy. Another somebody else says this car is love. Oh, all the best.
This is power. This is, yeah.
Power is okay, car has power. But where is love exuding from the engine or joy exuding from the engine? All right. Power, all right. But right now, if you, you know, this is something I've been noticing. It's only in recent times, probably last 10, 15 years. If you look at any car, I look at every advertisement, whether they're selling an automobile or a machine or a crane or an earth mover, because I'm interested in anything that works, not that I'm going to buy them. So when I look at it, car ads, Nobody's telling you what's the engine, what's the transmission, what's the power, what's the torque, nothing. They're talking about the leather, they're talking about the wood paneling, they're talking about the stereo. Are you buying a sitting room? You want to buy a drawing room or do you want a car? If I want a car, I would look at the engine, how it is made, what does it do. No, nothing. Only.
Why is that?
Because they're buying a car for neighbors' envy. They're not buying a car because they love to drive a good machine. Yeah. It's always about being better than somebody else.
Why do we obsess over that in general? And is that mostly in America? Do you see that all over the world?
No, no, it's everywhere. America kind of setting the pathbreaking.
The standard. We're the best at trying to be the best.
So this is unfortunate cultivation that is happening from kindergarten. If you're going to school, what your parents will say, you must be number one. If you are number one, what about all the other 30, 40 kids who are there? They must be below you.
They're losers.
They're losers. So your joy is only in other people failing. When your joy is about other people's misery, That's not joy, that is sickness.
Phew!
Right now, whole world is invested in this. It's not just America. America kind of displays it like that. Not that it's not there everywhere else in the world. Everywhere it's there. But here it's being shamelessly displayed. They are little shy everywhere, rest of the world. But still they got it.
Yeah.
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What would— what would the world look like if we chose to lift everyone up and celebrate other people succeeding or, or being happy or whatever it looks like for them to succeed? What would the world look like?
See, I see in America everybody keeps talking about family, family, family. But you've forgotten just as maybe a century ago, Yeah. Maybe a century ago or even 70 years ago or 50 years ago, if you said family, it meant crime.
Why?
Because the families were running the crime.
Oh, wow.
The Cosa Nostra.
Family crime.
Gotcha. They always refer to crime as family. Because family is a crime.
Really?
Let me come to that. I know this will get me into trouble. Let me come to that.
Explain it to me.
See, there is only one crime. And there's only one evil in the world. That is limited identity. How much crime you will commit simply depends on how empowered you are.
Say it one more time. How much crime you commit simply depends on how empowered you are. How empowered you are.
Yeah.
So do I want to be?
If you are highly empowered and your identity is very limited, you will do terrible things. So the most important thing is to enhance or to expand one's identity.
How do we do that?
See, for example, traditionally in the yogic culture in India, before we start education for a child, the first and foremost thing is that he must take a cosmic identity.
A cosmic identity?
Yes, he has to take that.
What does that, what does that look like? So if I'm a child, Yes. In your teachings.
So the thing is, one thing is there is a mantra which says that, that he has to say it again and again. He has to look at the sky and say it. He look at the earth and say it. Look at the air and say it. Look at the fire and say it. All the elements of water and say it. Because these are all the composition of the cosmos. You look at empty space and say it. You look at water and say it. You look at fire and say it. You look at the earth and say it. So that you understand your identity is limitless. Why this is being done is—
Oh, wow.
Why this is being done is education is seen as an empowerment. You should not empower a person who has a limited identity because he will cause havoc. I'll take the worst example, which will get me into trouble.
Sure.
See, everybody talks about— you're not even supposed to mention this name— Adolf Hitler.
Uh-huh.
Well, many people have been there who caused enormous pain to other human beings, but I don't think anybody managed to organize it, mechanize it, and really deliver it like a factory of misery, like this man did. All right, it's a factory. Yeah, literally a factory of misery, manufacturing misery, properly organized. But do you think there aren't thousands or hundreds and thousands of people with the same mindset in the world? Absolutely. They are. Only thing is they're not empowered like him. Competence is the only thing that's lacking. Tyranny is there in people's mind. They're as much tyrants as Adolf Hitler. You may find them in a school teacher, you may find them in your parents, you may find them all around you in your neighborhood. Only fortunately they're not as potent as that man. That man is super competent. That is what the problem. So right now, human competence becomes a terrible problem simply because you have a limited identity. So you invest your identity in a family, you invest your identity in a community, race, religion, nationality, your relationships, your— tell me, in the name of nations, in the name of race, in the name of religions, in the name of communities, How much terrible, how many terrible things have we done in this world?
It's still happening today.
No, the most terrible, leave what's happening today. Just look back in the last 100 years.
All for someone's identity, pride, country, city, state, religion, all these things.
How, you just take 20th century. Okay. One century passed. 21st century is just progressing now. 20th century, take it. In the name of race, what all have we done to each other?
Yeah.
In the name of religion, what all have we done to each other? In the name of nationality, what all have we done to each other? Just look back and see, we've literally killed half the world's population in 20th century.
Because of identity.
Yes. Of a philosophy, of an ideology. People have killed, all right?
Right.
So limited identity and empowerment is a disaster. But we are continuously cultivating this all the time. So I said family is crime because family is the first identity that you take. After that comes community. After that comes maybe race or religion or nationality. Right now, nationality is reasonably the largest identity you're taking. Within this nation, it looks nice that you are committed as an American to the well-being of America. But just see who is fighting who in this world. A good Indian is fighting a good Pakistani. A good Hindu is fighting a good Muslim. A good American fighting just about anybody. Because you never fought a war here, you go out and fight all over the world. Well, you will find reasons as to why you fought that war and the heroic nature of it. I know people who lost their lives believing that they're doing the best thing in their life. Yes. But I want you to know that man that you think is horrible, that terrorist, that miscreant, that militant or whatever you want to call him, that guy also, like a suicide bomber. See, anybody, for every human being or even for an ant, its life is precious. You try to catch him, see, he'll do everything possible to save his life. So somebody to throw away their life like this, obviously what they believe in means much more than their life.
Crazy, right?
Yeah, it's not crazy. See, if they do it your way, you— it's heroic. If they do it their way, it's crazy. I'm not trying to support terrorism or something. I'm just telling you it's limited identity. Genocides have been committed because of limited identity. Nations have been razed down because of limited identity. Evil things we have done to each other on individual level simply because of limited identity. So this is what yoga means. Yoga means union. That means you consciously obliterated the boundaries of your individual nature and your experience of life expanded. Once you sit here and you experience everything around you as a part of yourself, after that you do not need any morality, you do not need any commandments. Thou shall not cut the tree, thou shall not kill this Thou shall not rob this. This is meaningless to you when you have experienced something as a part of yourself. So the entire system of yoga— when I say yoga, I mean yoga, all right? Not the yoga that's happening in Los Angeles studios. I have nothing against them, but I'm saying we've reduced it to something just to build an identity around. Yes.
Yeah.
Twisting and turning your body. It's good for you. You will become flexible and maybe healthy. That's good for you. But I want you to understand, would you not wish that Adolf Hitler was a sick man instead of a healthy man?
I would not wish that. Yeah, I wish he was a healthy man. I would wish he was a healthy man.
He was healthy. That's the problem I'm saying.
You wish he was a sick man?
Yeah.
Would you, wouldn't you be happy if he got cancer at 25 and he wouldn't kill all these people, wouldn't set up this factory?
Yeah, I wish they wouldn't have died.
So I'm saying Health becomes a curse. Competence becomes a curse. Individual— intelligence becomes a curse. Why? Because you have limited identity. It's in that context I said family is crime. Family is a wonderful place where people are supporting each other. Like you said, is it not important if you create a world where everybody is supporting each other to do their best? Well, that's happening in the family. That's the most beautiful aspect of the family. But why is it only limited to those 4 people or 5 people or whatever?
What should families start to reconsider about their unity, their connection? How could they expand it to something greater than just the family of 4 or 6 in this home living this way?
I don't know if you've heard, even political leaders in India, for example, wherever our Prime Minister goes to United Nations, He will say, "Vasu devaka kutumbakam." This means, "The world is my family." It's a chant that always he says, "The world is our family." Because this has to be inculcated from childhood, that your identity is not about a few people who are born around you or people, a couple of people who bore you. Your identity is the air that you breathe is your identity. Yeah, this is your life.
Yeah.
So if you identify with the air that you breathe, what is it that's not you and what is it that's you?
Everything's you.
Yes. If everything is you, your intelligence is a boon. Your competence is a boon.
Is a what?
Your intelligence, your competence, your capabilities, everything is a gift to the world, right? But if your identity is small, all the wonderful things that human being has becomes a curse. See, right now, our intelligence, so much science, technology we developed, but the cutting edge of science and technology always goes into military equipment, isn't it? First, at least. Many of these things will never come to you on the street. It's always there, all right? Only when every other nation has, maybe then it'll come to you.
Sure, sure.
Till then, it's just kept there. So our intelligence is going into destructive force. Why? Limited identity. But right now, can I just open up the borders of this nation and say, I love everybody? We are not there. We are not yet there. The world is not yet there. We cannot do that. All right. We still need nationality. We still need all these things, but we can hold it little lightly. We don't have to hold it like it is absolute. It is not absolute. It's something that we have done. Our idea of family is our making. Our idea of community is our making. Our idea of race, religion, everything is our making. Our idea of nationality is our making. So don't treat it like it's an absolute.
What would happen if we opened up every border in every country?
That would be possible only if there was no economic disparity. If there was no economic disparity, there were no national boundaries about two centuries ago. People could walk wherever they want. There were no visas and passports anywhere because economically, reasonably, everybody was in the—
What about race though? Would people be, you know, well, India is a classic example.
If you, if you travel from north to south, every 50 kilometers, people will look different. They dress different, they talk different, and they eat different. Every, every few kilometers, you will see people are different and we have no problem. That's what— that's how it would have been. Yeah. Only because you protected yourself for too long. Now race seems to be one big issue, right?
But the money disparity, you think, is the challenge?
It's the economic disparity which is difficult to handle.
Yeah.
Right now, if you take away the boundaries of this country, maybe half the world, it will be right here in the United States. And that will not be a solution because you will become poor.
Right.
Okay, United States will be poverty-ridden if that happens, but if you totally wall yourself out, then also you will become poor in a different way. So this has to be— first thing is, if your identity is little flexible, you will do things judiciously as it's necessary for the situation, an appropriate action. Not— our actions are never ever absolute. Our actions are just about being appropriate to the situations in which we exist.
Yeah.
If there's some parents watching or listening and they're like, wow, this is very eye-opening. I've never thought of it this way. They've always raised their kids a certain way. Their kids are between—
This word, this is a word that I hear very often in United States. We don't hear this in India. I was raised this way. Yeah. People say I was raised Catholic. I was raised Jewish. I was raised Baptist. I was raised this way. See, you don't raise human beings, you only raise cattle. A human being is a possibility that needs to be nurtured, not raised in a particular way. So you are raising people in a certain way because you are already committed to something that you think is absolute. Wow. Nothing is absolute. Life is a possibility. Will you allow your children to explore that possibility? Or do you want to make them like concrete blocks that they come out in a particular shape, raised in a certain way? No, this is not the way to handle humanity.
So say these parents are hearing this and they want to nurture their children in a different way.
Yes, the first thing they must do is—
but they've been taught something their whole lives.
They can do their prayers as they know it, but let them know that it's not absolute. They can sing their national anthem with pride. Wonderful. Let them know it's not absolute. Let them also teach them two lines of global anthem. If not cosmic anthem, one global anthem which includes every life's well-being. Every child should sing this in every school.
A global anthem?
Yes, we need to make a global anthem.
Yeah.
I'm singing Indian anthem with great fervor and you're singing American anthem. What does it mean? Next moment we get an opportunity, we're going to pull out each other's eyeballs. Yes.
Yeah.
Not because you're bad or I'm bad, because I'm Indian and you're American. All right.
Right. It's a global anthem.
We need a global anthem for sure. Today, technology has many ways made national boundaries meaningless. All right. People are sitting in India and working in America right now. Whole lot of people.
Sitting in India and walking in America?
Working in America.
Working, oh yeah.
Here they are.
Yeah, they're getting paid, yeah.
You pick up a phone, the Indian guy is practicing American accent and he's speaking from Bangalore.
Right, right, yeah.
So when national boundaries, borders have become so porous, It's time to work towards that. It's not— see, tomorrow morning, if you open up all the borders, there'll be disaster. Yeah. We must know these things we made at certain times for certain conveniences. It is not absolute. The lines that we have drawn on this planet are not absolute. We just made it for certain convenience.
Yeah.
It's time to relax it. See, one great example that's happened in the world is Europe. They fought as bitterly as they fought World War I, World War II. Did anybody think Germany and France will share open borders?
Hello?
In 1944, would you believe that?
No.
See, today they have open borders. I don't see this as a geopolitical whatever. In a way, it's an evolution of human consciousness itself. They might have done it for economic reasons, political reasons, but still there is human consciousness involved in this because that's not easy after fighting such bitter wars when that generation is still alive. You opened your borders to each other, trusted each other, is not a small thing to do.
Yeah.
We need to make that happen in the world everywhere. But for this, we need a reasonable level of economic parity. Otherwise you cannot do it.
Can't do it. One of the things I feel very grateful for in my childhood, my father, we didn't have a lot of money growing up to travel to other places outside of Ohio, but I had 7 exchange students from around the world live with us for 6 months at a time from Brazil and Japan and Germany and France and Philippines.
Nobody came from India.
No one from India.
See, otherwise they would've taken you back.
Yes, exactly. But I felt very fortunate as a 5-year-old until I was about 12, having these cultures come.
That is a very wonderful thing to do.
And learn the language, learn the food, learn about their beliefs.
Because you see, when you live just in a limited atmosphere, you don't know how horribly prejudiced you become. You never realize that. You think you're doing fine. You become horribly prejudiced. I'm sure even Adolf Hitler is thinking he's fine. He thinks he's fine. That's why he's doing what he's doing.
Yeah. Right.
I'm saying the extreme example.
Right.
Even he thinks he's doing fine.
Right.
Only the wrong thing he did was he lost the war. If he had won the war, whole world would have said what he's done is fine.
Right.
Please know that. It's a horrific thing.
Do you think someone who's doing that feels a sense of guilt?
No.
No, no.
Like when they're taking another life and they're seeing someone in pain.
See, every nation is taking somebody else's life.
Every nation?
Yes, every nation is, isn't it?
But I mean an individual, one person.
See, nation means it's individuals who act on the ground, right?
Yeah.
It's an American pilot who drops the bomb. It's an American sniper who pulls the trigger. All right. But he believes he's doing it for the country.
Right.
So he won't feel any guilt. Even the terrorist who is right now, which we think is absolutely unreasonable and insane, that guy thinks he's doing the right thing. He's doing God's work. Not a simple thing. He feels great pride in what he's doing. So this is why I'm saying it's a limited identity. It is not that somebody is bad, somebody is good. The moment you have limited identity, you are a crime. It's just that whether your crime is recognized in the law as a crime or not is a subjective thing. But you are a crime. Right now I sit here, my identity is with myself. I'm interested in the well-being of this. I don't care a damn what happens to this. So this is a crime. I may not shoot you with a gun, but I'm committing a crime because I don't care what happens to you. The moment in some way you forsake your humanity, I don't care, means I have forsaken my humanity. It is a crime. Will I cause enormous damage or small damage simply depends on how competent I am. How competent I am. Competency becomes a curse.
The more competent you are, the more you can hurt and harm.
Yes. Your intelligence and competence instead of being a solution becomes a problem. Isn't that what is happening in the world today?
Uh-huh.
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So where does karma fit in around people that are acting to harm or to not support someone else's well-being or the things around them? How does karma fit in?
All your identity is only from your memory, isn't it? How are you an American? You remember that you were born in America.
Yes.
Suppose air is your memory. Are you American?
Suppose what?
I erase your memory.
Am I an American?
Yeah.
I don't know.
No. So how does your family identity come? How do your racial identity come? Everything is by memory, isn't it? Yeah. Now karma means this accumulated massive amount of memory. Now, will you stand above that? This is a stage for our life. This karmic background is like a platform. If you create enough surface tension, in this, you can stand on it and do your fresh act today. But if your feet sink into it like quicksands, then you are just a victim of your memory. Right now, the person that you think is a racist is a victim of his memory.
Right.
The person that you think is a terrorist is a victim of his memory. Mm-hmm. The person who is a suicide bomber is a victim of his memory because he remembers what has been taught to him, all right? If he loses his memory, he's a fine guy.
Right, right, right.
Yes.
So right now you don't have to lose your memory. Where is your memory? Your memory is in your body and what you call as your mind, which is all one. All right. This is hardware. That is software.
Sure, sure.
So this software, you wrote it unconsciously through various incidents, experiences. Your own perception according to your intelligence. You wrote your own kind of software unconsciously. It's written by you, but unconsciously. There have been cases where people have sleepwalked and committed a murder. Even the judiciary thinks that is not worth punishing. They don't punish them, even though they committed murder sleepwalking. As far as the act is concerned, somebody died. They lost their life. Not a small thing. But this man was sleeping. So that man doesn't get punishment because he was sleepwalking.
All right?
He could have even killed himself in his sleepwalking. It's possible. But instead he killed somebody else. So essentially, you're unconscious. So you're not punishable because you're less than a child, I'm saying. But the important thing is to become conscious. Where is your memory? It's in the body. It's in the mind. If you create a little distance between you and your body, between you and your mind, this is the end of your karma.
The end of your karma.
Yes. The karmic influence, I mean to say. Karma is still there.
Yes.
Karma is the richness of your life. Okay, if you have no karma, you will be a bimbo.
Right.
All right. There is karma. There's the more rich and vibrant the karma is, the better. Only thing is, is it your platform to dance upon or is it a quicksand that sucks you in? Most human beings right now are only suffering their memory, isn't it? Yeah. This moment they're not suffering. What happened yesterday, they're suffering. What happened 10 days ago, they're suffering.
Why?
What happened 25 years ago, they're still suffering.
When they hold on to the thought. The memory?
See, it is not their choice.
To think about the thought?
They don't have to. They're identified with the situations in which they were. Now it makes them suffer. Today we know that a whole lot of diseases that people are suffering are psychosomatic. It does not mean they're always thinking about it, but it's working. The memory is working.
Yeah.
Depending on how strongly you're identified. Let's say you're strongly identified with your family structure. Now, something happened in your family which is not pleasant, something very unpleasant happened, let's say. Now, you don't have to every day think about it. Slowly your face will become like this. Lot of people, just see. Because the memory is working from inside, you— it doesn't even ask your permission. It doesn't ask your permission, should I come or go? It just works on every cell in your body. Slowly you lose your vibrancy. What was a vibrant, exuberant person slowly becomes like this. This has happened to more than 75% of the population.
Right.
When they were 5, 6 years of age, how joyful and exuberant lives they were. Mm-hmm. By the time they're 30, they're like this. What is their problem? What is their problem? Is somebody poking them? No. Because their karma is overtaking them. So The entire process of this book is step-by-step way of standing above your karma on the richness of your memory. Because you can convert this memory into manure and you can blossom upon that. Because what happened yesterday, you cannot change. What is happening today, you can only experience. What is tomorrow, you have to create.
Hmm.
When you have, I mean, you've, you've experienced some bad things in the past, right? Some harmful things, some challenges, pain. You've felt these things, right?
No. In the past? You haven't? People try to do lots of bad things and they're still doing lots of them. Every day, a whole bunch of people abuse me. People that I've never met, they have enormous hatred for me. Because, you know, like today what I've said, a whole lot of people will hate me for this. Do you know?
Yeah.
Because their identities are shaken. They have created false sense of identity upon which they are standing, shaking. They know if this is gone, they have nothing to live for. They need to understand there is a life beyond identities. Identities are created for purpose of action in a given situation. It is none of our identities— identities are absolute. See, first of all, we need to understand before you and me came here, countless number of people walked this planet. Where are they? All topsoil, part of the manure in this garden. Yes or no?
Yes.
You and me, what will we be in 100 years' time?
Same thing.
Same thing, unless your friends fear you may raise from the dead and bury you real deep. So no roots can get to you. I'm saying. So We are just a small pop-up in time, but we are thinking too much of ourselves.
Yeah.
Because we are, we attach too much self-significance to ourselves. Because of that, our identities have risen beyond absurd limitations.
Can identities be good at all? Can having an identity be good?
Without identity, you cannot function in the world. Right now, this is me, that's you. If this identity is not there, if you ask me a question, I will look like this. What's the point of that? No activity is possible without identity. The important thing is to— it's like wearing your clothes. Right now, these are my clothes. See, I wear loose clothes so that always you're aware this is my clothing, this is not me. Suppose I wear skin-tight nylon clothes. After some time, I don't know which is my clothing, which is my skin. So that's all the thing is. Do you have a space between you and what you have created? Or are you stuck with it? That's the important thing. If you are stuck with it, you will do crazy things thinking you're doing good things.
If you're held on to the identity, if you're attached to it.
Ah, it will wrap you up. Once you create it and leave it, it will just wrap you up unless you're conscious.
Sure.
So if you can see, this is the entire Inner Engineering process we are offering is just this. If you do this practice, which we call as Shambhavi, if you sit here, your body is here, your mind is out there, what is you is elsewhere. Once there is a little space between you and your body, between you and your mind, this is it. One thing is there's no suffering within you anymore, because suffering happens only two ways, physical suffering, mental suffering. Do you know any other kind of suffering? Mm-hmm. Once there is a little distance, this is the end of suffering. And above all, this is the end of all identity.
And how do you distance the suffering?
You don't distance the suffering. You distance yourself from your own body and your mind. This is what the practice is about. How to distance means this. See, right now there are life energies. See, when you were a 5-year-old child, how much were you identified with your body?
I'm trying to remember a 5-year-old child. How much do I identify as my body? I think I was probably exploring my body, trying to run around.
At 5, you were not exploring any body.
My body? I think I was running and jumping and I was thinking, I think I was fine.
You were using it, but you were not identifying it because every day it's changing. You can't even identify with it.
Right. Right.
All right.
Yes.
Your identity with the body got strengthened when you became an adolescent. Okay. That is when, when hormones started poisoning your mind. When your hormones hijacked your intelligence, suddenly you lost your sense of who you are. Otherwise, you as a life were far more exuberant than your body can ever be. Yes or no?
Yes.
When a child laughs, when a child jumps, when a child does these things, I'm still like this. I'm saying, you will see body is just a thing to use. He's not that. That's not the prime thing. The same was true with your intellect and your mind also, isn't it, when you were a child? So now—
You're curious, you're exploring, you're—
Yes, because it was changing and growing.
You're questioning everything.
You, you real— you, you, not that you consciously realize, But you know this is not it because your exuberance is beyond that. If you keep your exuberance of life like that today, very clearly you know what is you, what is your body, what is your mind. When I say what is you, let us not give a definition to that. But your body we can define. It's a defined physical form. So we can define this. How did this happen? Just the food that you've eaten, isn't it? This is a heap of food, right? What you call as my mind is a heap of impressions. What you gather, whatever you gather, can be yours, but can never ever be you, isn't it?
What you gather, right now, this cup, it's yours, but it's not you.
Yes.
Your thoughts are yours, but they're not you.
They're not you. Because yesterday you had one kind of thought, today you have another, tomorrow you may have different thoughts.
Does the collection of your thoughts make up you? No. What makes up you?
Why are you asking me, ah? See, this is the problem. You want to get life into a definition. You can only define that which has distinct physical boundaries. Anything which doesn't have a physical boundary, you cannot define that, isn't it?
It's boundless.
Don't go there. That is also a definition because that's just a word.
Okay.
All right. All right, boundless is a good word, but still it is just a word. People think boundless means, oh, maybe like that. Boundary means like this. No, no, that is also a boundary, isn't it?
Sure.
Yeah. When you are a child, maybe this house compound was your world. Today your world might have expanded, but still it's a boundary.
Right.
Larger boundary, but still it's a boundary. But there is something naturally within every human being that the moment you realize you're restricted by a boundary, you want to go beyond that. Whoever you are right now, you want to be something more.
Don't touch this. Okay, I want to touch it.
No, no, I'm not talking about that. See, whoever you are right now, you want to be something more. Yeah. If that something more happens tomorrow, you want to be something more.
Why is that?
That's what I'm saying. This is an innate longing within the human being because there is something within you which is not physical in nature. It doesn't like boundaries.
Hmm.
Till you experience that, you will think you, by shopping, you will expand your boundaries. By ambition, you will expand your boundaries. By conquest, you will expand your boundaries. See, always a human being is seeing how to be something more. If it finds a very basic physical expression, we call this sexuality. What sexuality means is something that is not you, you're trying to experience as it a part of yourself. It works for a few moments. Then anyway, two people are separate. If it happens mentally, it is called ambition, conquest, or simply shopping. Different people do it different ways. If it happens on an emotional level, we call it love. What love means is somebody who is not you, you want to experience them as a part of yourself. But if you do it consciously, we call it yoga. That if you do it successfully, it's called yoga. Yoga does not mean twisting and turning. Yoga means union. That means you consciously obliterated the boundaries of your individuality. So that you experience the union with everything. This is not an idea. This is not a philosophy. This is the nature of the existence. Most people get it only when you bury them, unfortunately.
Really?
When you bury them, they understand they're part of the earth, right?
Right.
That also they won't understand because today they're burying them in a concrete box.
Right. They're creating a boundary around them. Yes.
That's the worst thing to do. At least when you die, you should become part of the earth.
Right.
Why is it so hard for people to feel that type of love, that unity love, the conscious love in a relationship, an intimate relationship?
See, this is because they are interested in the fruit, not in the root.
The fruit, not the root. Yes. What's the root?
Say right now you want to experience love. So what will we do? Like people are going about chanting this mantra, I love you, you love me, you love me, I love you throughout the day. Because you know if you don't say it for 2 days, it may go away. Love does not happen because you say it. Love does not happen because you're attracted to somebody. Yes, you may feel it at certain moments. When you like something, you may also begin to love it. All right. Essentially, love means sweetness of your emotion.
Sweetness of your emotions.
Yes. When you have very sweet emotions, That's called love, isn't it? If I have nasty emotions, that's called hate, that's called whatever. So sweetness of your emotion, why is it that you have tied it to something that you like to eat? I love ice cream. I love this man or woman. I love this. I love that. I love car. I love Ford. I love Chevy. You know, people are talking this everywhere. All right. So, or I love God. That's the safest thing to do. Because you can always claim God loves you. But if you claim this person loves me, tomorrow the guy, when it goes away, you can't say anything. But this is a safe thing to do, all right? People have found various ways. I am not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's okay. You use whatever means you want to feel the sweetness of your emotion. But you must understand, It's the sweetness of your emotion. I'm asking you, what happens within you? Why is it determined by somebody else? What happens within you if it's determined by somebody else? This is the worst form of slavery, isn't it?
When love is determined by someone else.
Not only love, your happiness, your joy, your peacefulness, your love, anything that happens within you. When your inner experience is determined by something or somebody, that is the worst form of slavery. Yeah, but we are a free country.
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When people are in a relationship and there seems to be a wave of joy and love and acceptance, and then other days maybe it's anger or resentment or frustration. How do we move out of that and more into acceptance and conscious love as opposed to control or manipulation or, well, you need to do this to make me happy? How do we expand beyond that?
See, first of all, you must decide, is your life in pursuit of happiness? Or is it an expression of joy?
Is it in the pursuit of happiness or expression of joy?
Tell me, in your life, when you're expressing your joy, was that the best moment? Or when you're pursuing happiness, what did the best moment?
The joy.
Yes. So why is it that you have not done that? Because you still believe there is joy in this tree and you can squeeze it out. There is joy in this man or woman that you can squeeze it out. You wring them. And then you expect relationship to be great. It will not be. You're wringing them out so that juice of joy will come to you or love will come to you. No, love is not something that you do. Love is something that you can become. It's your quality. If your mind is in a certain way, it's joyful. If your emotions are in a certain way, it's loving. This is the quality of sweetness of body. If your body becomes sweet and pleasant, it's called health and pleasure. If your mind becomes very pleasant, it's called peacefulness and joyfulness. If your emotions become pleasant, it's called love and compassion. If your very life energy becomes pleasant, it is called blissfulness and ecstasy. Only if your surroundings become pleasant, it's called success. Only to achieve success, You need competence, you need cooperation, you need help from other people. All right. Because without all of them cooperating, there'll be no success. Right now, these guys must cooperate. Otherwise, this shoot is not going to work well. All right. But even if these guys don't shoot well, we can still be joyful. They cannot stop us.
No, we cannot. We can be joyful.
Yeah. Yes. They cannot stop us. But for the shoot to go well, you— they need to cooperate. If they don't cooperate, the situation will not go well. For the success of this situation, you need the cooperation of all these people. But for my body, for my mind, for my emotion and my energies to feel pleasant, I don't need anybody's cooperation. This is 100% my business. So right now, to experience love within you, you're asking somebody to be in a certain way. Oh, all the best. You're going to have a trip.
Is that why you think most marriages go through divorce, because it's more of needing the other person to support you in feeling a certain way?
See, suppose you cannot walk without a crutch. Crutch, you know? Without a crutch, you cannot walk. Then next moment, you go to go and say to somebody, some pretty woman, I cannot live without you. Between the crutch and her, what is the difference, I'm asking? One is a physical crutch, another is emotional and psychological scrutch, isn't it?
Yeah.
So essentially, you have crippled yourself.
Mm.
This life is a complete life by itself.
Mm.
If this is a complete life, it's joyful, loving, wonderful by its own nature. Now, when it's feeling so wonderful, it may want to share this wonderfulness with people around. You can share this with thousands of people, but you also want a more intimate sharing to happen. For that, you need one person. So if it's about you expressing your joy and love to somebody and you find that person, you think that person is going to run away from you? No, you want to squeeze them for love and joy. Initially they drip, afterwards sometime they're dry. Yeah, you squeeze them too much.
Yeah. For the people watching or listening who might be saying, you know what, I've struggled in my relationships. I don't have financial abundance. I'm struggling financially. I'm out of shape, struggling in my, my health and wellness. And they're wondering how they can use karma in a sense to support them to create more abundance, financial abundance, spiritual abundance, relationship abundance. Health and well-being, or maybe they've been thinking, well, maybe karma's been against me in that way of thinking. How can they start to think differently to apply these principles?
You're setting up all the wrong goals.
What should the goals be?
Simply this. See, right now, if you, instead of philosophizing, reading scriptures, reading self-help books, all this, Just pay attention to the trees around here. What are they doing?
Being.
Be— no, no, no, no, no. They have no capability to be. They're not called beings. Only you call being. Human being you are. They're not. That's just a tree. It's a wonderful tree. What is it doing? Beneath the ground, it's fighting. All right? What is it fighting for? Is this maple tree Trying to produce apples?
No.
No. It is just trying to be the best possible maple tree it can be. It is not trying to produce apples. Definitely I don't see any coconuts up there. All right? Right. This is all. As a human being, you must see how this life can blossom into its fullest. If it blossoms to its fullest, somebody may become rich, With money, for somebody may become intelligent, somebody may become knowledgeable, somebody may become loving, somebody may become an artist, somebody may just wander. But a fully blossomed human being is a joy to see no matter what the hell they're doing or what they're not doing. Whichever way, they're an asset to whole humanity. Instead of doing that, you want, for example, you said abundance in economic terms. What is your idea of abundance in economic terms? Jeff Bezos, is it?
Me personally, that's not it. But you mean having enough to be able to do what you want, not feeling like you're a slave to paying your bills or things like that?
No, no, I'm not insulting anybody. I'm just saying right now, everybody's saying he's the richest man in the world or whatever. So what is your idea of abundance? $200 billion of personal wealth? I'm asking, are you up to it?
$200 billion for me?
Yeah, yeah, why not?
That's not my definition of abundance, but that is—
What is it? $10 billion?
Probably, I mean, probably over, I guess it depends on what age I am.
Tell me at your present.
If I'm 10 years old, it's like $100,000, I'm rich, you know. My present, I mean, I feel pretty abundant financially, but I mean, if you're asking for a specific number—
No, no, I'm asking for a number, not because I want to find out your number. Yeah, I'm asking because these numbers are bloody meaningless. They're all socially relevant, not relevant to you. And anyway, talking about karma, right now let's say you are the guy who has $200 billion.
Yes.
It's only in your memory. If I erase your memory, your money is gone.
Hello?
Yeah.
It's gone, isn't it?
Well, it's in your bank account.
It is in the account, but if you've forgotten what?
Yeah, if you've forgotten the code or you've forgotten the access, then it's gone.
A whole lot of people buried their treasure all over the bloody world and somebody else found it 1,000 years later.
It's true. A lot of people have lost all their Bitcoin and they can't get access to it.
Yeah. Yeah. All these issues are there, but the important thing is, why do you want affluence? Let me put the word abundance as affluence. An individual person wants affluence. A society wants affluence. A nation wants affluence. Everybody is striving for that. Why? Because initially it means a choice of nourishment.
A choice of nourishment.
Yes. If you have money, you can eat what you want. Initially, that's the goal.
Yes.
If it goes beyond that, after you eat everything you want to eat, next thing is a choice of lifestyle. Yes. Now, for example, United States of America has the highest choice of nourishment choices, highest level of nourishment choices, highest level of lifestyle choices. All right. But you're spending $3.25 trillion on healthcare.
Right.
Oh, wonderful. That's big. That is larger than India's economy.
Really?
For 1.4 billion people, we don't have a 3.25 trillion dollar economy. All right. So what is the abundance you're seeking? You, you want to destroy the planet. That's what you're saying.
I'm not saying for me, I'm saying for people watching.
No, no, I'm saying The thing that you're thinking is because you're in California, your idea of abundance is here. If you are in Timbuktu, your idea of abundance would be this. All right?
Of course.
So I'm saying do not think in terms of abundance. Think in terms of a fulfillment of life. If you are a fulfilled life according to your competence, according to your capability, according to the times in which you live, you will do the appropriate thing. Right now in the, in pursuit of abundance, people are doing vulgar things. Two people are living in a 50-bedroom house. What's the point of this?
Right.
You, can you sleep in 50 different places?
No.
Yeah. You can have everything that you can use well. But the important thing is, are you making arrangements of home, automobile, this, that, everything? As a means to act in the world or as a means to enhance yourself, this you must decide. This is why I said the car advertisements are all talking about the leather, about the paneling, about this. Why? Because this is a way of enhancing yourself. Your car is little shinier than your neighbor's car and you are supposed to be better. I'm saying nothing makes you better. All right, nothing makes you better. The only thing is everything that you can be within yourself, are you or are you not? Hmm, that's all. In our lives, if we do not do what we cannot do, there's no issue. If we do not do what we can do, we are a disaster. So I am saying, at least are you as joyful as you were when you were 5 years of age? At 35, 40, if you are not as joyful and as exuberant as a 5-year-old boy or girl that you were, Obviously you're a disaster because you're not even square one.
Mm.
That was square one of your life when nothing was in your control. All right. You're not even in square one. You sunk deeper. That's a disastrous life.
So we shouldn't be thinking abundance and finance or this or that.
No, those things will happen according to times, isn't it? Yeah. See, if you and me were here 10,000 years ago, I would definitely find an Indian cave because there are many. I don't know if you would have found one. Ohio has caves.
Yes, it does.
Yeah, you wouldn't have come to California. You would have found a big cave in Ohio or gone to neighboring state of Kentucky and found a really massive cave out there. All right, I've been visiting all these caves.
Yeah, so, uh, trying to find some water. That's abundance.
What would be your idea of abundance at that time? I'm asking.
Yeah.
So I'm saying do not think of abundance because the moment you thought like that, that is what destroyed this planet massively. And now you are saying you want to be eco-friendly by driving an electric car. No, no. It is because fundamentally wrong thinking has come. Life has become about something else. Something else around you enhances you. No. The only way to enhance yourself is to bring this to its full blossoming of what it can be, at its fullest best, what it can be. What I am at my fullest, am I better than you? No, I'm just different. This tree, is it better than that tree? No. This is one way, that's another way. And that's why the world is so beautiful. If there was one more guy just like you in your house, could you live there? No.
No.
If there were 7 billion people just like you, could you live in this world? You would commit suicide, believe me.
So how does someone know what their full potential is of who they can truly be?
See, if you don't fix yourself with limited identities, if you do not compare yourself with anything, if you explore and see, if you want this tree to grow to its fullest thing, that's why I said not the fruit, root. If you count the fruits, maybe that tree is bearing more fruit than this one. That's not the point. You nurture the root. The fullest possible nurture, if you give to the root, what it has to become, it'll become. A blade of grass cannot become a tree. But is it not wonderful?
Yeah.
Is it not wonderful? You may step on it.
Yes.
But is it not wonderful?
Yeah.
You mostly have the garden for grass, not for trees, actually.
Right. So how do we nurture our inner roots? And not focus on the fruit.
See, as there is a science and technology to create the situations that we want in external situations, there is a whole science and technology to create inner situations the way we want. If you want to be nurtured, the first and foremost thing is just look back and see, has there been one 24 hours in your life or many people that you know in your life One 24 hours that they passed without anxiety, without fear, without being agitated, nothing. Simply at ease, 24 hours. 24 hours if you come to ease, believe me, your ability to use your mind and body may go up 100% in 24 hours. Just ease. This has not come to people, they are not even at ease. People ask me, Sadhguru, how are you like this? I say, I'm like, I'm talking to a crowd of 100,000. The way I would talk to somebody, they came and asked me something, I'm in the bathroom, I have to peep out of that and speak. Just like that, I'm speaking to 100,000 people on stage with the same ease and with the same not being concerned about what somebody thinks about me, what happens. That's not the point. What I see as truth, I speak. You like it, you don't like it, you realize it, you don't realize it, that's left to you. But you will get it someday. If you heard the words, not today, maybe on your deathbed you will get it, but that's a wasted time. If you get it today, it would be wonderful. Today, if you understood, sitting here, this body is just a piece of the planet that I've picked up. This is not really me. It's for me to use it right now. It's wonderful. Okay, this human body is the finest mechanism on the planet. It's given to me as a gift. I must keep it well, but it's not me. It's something that I picked it up from the planet. If I understand this now, I will live a very sensible life. If you get it from the Maggots, what to do? Some realization happened, at least for the Maggots. Yeah, it's good. Yeah.
Do you have any personal fears?
What do you mean by that?
Do you have any fears of anything in your life? Are you afraid? Do you remember the last time you had fear? How old were you?
I know fear only from other people's experiences. See, it's not about whether I have fear or not. I made myself like this. Only what I want happens within me. What I want may not always happen around me. But within me, only what I want happens because this is my space. It must happen my way. Why should it happen your way or somebody else's way? The same goes for you, isn't it?
Yeah.
What is within you must happen 100% your way. No other way.
When you see chaos around you in whatever way that might be—
Oh, I'm seeing it all the time.
How does your— what's your initial response inside? To whatever, someone screaming at you or something unjust or some pain happening around you, or whether it's attacking you or not, how do you internally respond? Or what do you say? Or what's your come from in that moment to stay grounded, to stay peaceful, joyful in a moment of pain?
I will act as it's needed. That's all.
Yeah.
I will not do anything other than that. If it needs action, I'll perform that action. If it's not necessary, I'll walk away from that. It depends what kind of situation it is. And I'm facing such things all the time, you know, all the time. Don't think I'm always celebrated. There are millions of people who celebrate me as a very, in a very fond manner that I'm very dear to them, though they have not seen me. There are also quite a number of people who simply hate me, endemic hatred towards me, though they have not seen me. Simply because they're all invested in something.
An identity.
If you— something, whatever it is. They call it nationality, they call it religion, they call it caste, creed, race, whatever. The moment you say something that threatens that identity, they will hate you.
What is hate? Saying about the person who's hating something?
It empowers him.
It empowers them?
Yes. Hate is far more empowering in terms of propelling you into action than love. When people are loving, they hesitate. They hesitate. But when they hate somebody, they go all out.
What does the hate do to someone who's creating the hate?
A little acid. But you know, California acid is popular.
Right. And do you have any big dreams? Do you think about your dreams of the future? Or is it more just, you're here in this moment, you're here to show up the most joyful way you can?
No.
See, this whole thing about being in the moment is This is just a mixed up idea. See, what this means is, right now, the way it is understood in this part of the world, the way it's understood is, being in the moment means don't think about the past, don't think about the future. Essentially, they are saying, do not use your cerebral capability. A human being is endowed with a phenomenal cerebral capability. Which no other creature on this planet has. In that department, we are number one on the planet, isn't it?
Yeah.
So right now, because people do not know how to use it, and they're torturing themselves with their cerebral capability, they're poking themselves with their sharp intellect. Because of that, somebody is saying, don't think about the past, don't think about the future, just be in this moment. If you're drinking water, just drink water. If you're talking, just talk, don't do anything. If this is just saying, why don't you become an amoeba once again? An amoeba also has a brain, small brain, that's all. No problems. Amoeba need not pray. Amoeba need not meditate. Amoeba need not think how to be peaceful, very peaceful and fine. All right. So even now for the human beings, if you remove half their brain, They will all be peaceful. Essentially, their problem is they don't know how to handle their own intelligence. So either you come up with philosophies like this, or you soak your brains half in alcohol, or drug it, right? Do something, eat too much so that it won't work. All you're trying to do is somehow dull the brain. I'm saying this evolutionary process took millions of years to give you the cerebral capability. And now you don't know how to handle it. How sad is that? That's a miserable thing that you're doing because no other creature has the cerebral capability that human being has. So essentially we are thinking intelligence is a curse. I told you already, it's a curse. If you have limited identity, intelligence is a curse, not just for you, for everybody around you. See, somebody who is very sharp but evil thoughts and they're doing things, you wish he was brainless. Isn't it so?
Yes.
So this is simply because of this, you don't know how to handle your intelligence for well-being. You tell me, in your experience, is intelligence a solution or a problem?
It depends on how it's being used.
No, no, that's not the point. Is intelligence a solution or a problem?
Essentially. I feel like it's a solution.
It is an absolute solution. But people are making a problem out of a solution.
Right.
Right now, people are making a huge problem out of a solution. You think we evolved like this to create problems? We evolved like this to sort out everything that other creatures cannot sort out, isn't it?
Right.
But we are not able to sort out anything simply because we crippling ourselves with this kind of things. So the most important thing is you have an intelligence for you don't have a stable enough platform. That is a fundamental problem. If you do not create a stable chemistry, stable energy system, stable physical body, your intelligence is the worst curse you have.
Right.
The sharper it is, the more you will hurt yourself. So this is your inability to handle it. For this, there are various reasons, because people are being raised like cattle.
Mm.
All right.
Not nurtured.
Not nurtured. I don't say everybody, but unfortunately, that's a majority. Right.
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We've got many more questions, but I want to finish with two final questions before—
Two is not considered final. Only when you come to one, you say it's final.
Two additional questions before I ask those questions. Very grateful for your time. Thank you for showing up the way you do and for educating an uneducated human being on all these things. I appreciate it.
You're grabbing the title from me.
This book is really inspiring. Uh, you shared some of these things, uh, that we talked about today that are in the book. In the first chapter I read, uh, a lot of these concepts I heard here. I know there's a lot more to go into, so make sure you guys get the book. Very inspiring. I recommend to get 3 to 5 copies, give them to friends if you want your friends to also have expanded identities and not be limited in that thinking. So get Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. Extremely inspiring. Also check out InnerEngineering.com for more. Lots of courses, books, programs, everything there. I'm gonna have to come to Tennessee someday. You should come and check it out.
So I want to go there and don't come there to check it out, it's already well checked out by me.
Come there to experience it, to express my joy.
Yes, make use of it.
I will use it. I will use it.
Checking out— I've done all the checking out and saw that it's all working.
Yeah, it's all working. Well, I want to acknowledge you before I ask these two final questions or two additional questions. I want to acknowledge you for being on a journey with all of us. I think the fact that you have learned so much and you want to show up every day and teach and you want to show up and create content and offer solutions through whatever means necessary, whether it's books, courses, videos, TikTok, things you're not even a part of that you're aware that are impacting the world. I'm just appreciative and acknowledge you're showing up.
No, all this effort is to— because I want to live in a joyful, loving, exuberant world. Yeah. So I'm just trying to set the atmosphere for myself.
Of course. Yeah.
All right. So this is not a service. This is not a mission. This is just a simple— like a dog comes if it wants to sit down, rearranges the rug and Sits down, you know.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to rearrange humanity so that I can live among joyful, exuberant, loving human beings. I love it. Don't you want to?
Absolutely.
Yes.
I'm in.
So as a part of this, we are working towards creating a conscious planet. Lewis Howes, you must be part of that in some way. I'm trying to put together all the influencers in the world to come together, own this process, and create a conscious world because that's the only thing that's lacking. Never before in the history of humanity any generation had these kind of conveniences, these kind of comforts, these kind of wonderful things that we have today. Never before human survival was better organized than it is today. If we don't do it now, when? Many great beings have come on this planet, but when they spoke, hardly 10 people could hear. Mm-hmm.
It's true.
Today we can sit here and talk to the entire world. When we have this, if we do not transform the world into a more loving, joyful, exuberant humanity, it simply means we don't care. I don't want to go as that.
Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful way of being. This question I asked you last time, but you didn't really answer it. So I'm going to ask it again.
Really?
Yeah, it's okay. This is called the three truths. And maybe you don't have an answer and that's fine. It's called the three truths. It's a hypothetical question. So I'd like you to imagine you get to live as long as you want to live in this physical body on this earth, but then one day you got to go and you got to take all your work with you, all your content, your videos.
I'm not going to take it.
It's a hypothetical. It's a hypothetical. You're not going to take it, but it has to go somewhere. No one has access to it anymore. So it's got to go somewhere else, but we don't have access to your information, your content, your books, all of it's gone for whatever reason.
I've already taken care of it.
It's a hypothetical, right? Imagine that you only get to share 3 final things that we would have, 3 final lessons that this is all we would have to remember you by, your information. I call 3 truths. What would be your 3 truths for the world?
Oh, only 3.
Maybe that's why you didn't answer last time.
Everybody just shut up. Look and listen.
Yeah.
Really look. Right now, people are not looking. If they look, they are making their conclusions based on their identities. They're not hearing anything. They're making their conclusions. Just shut up. Look and listen. Life is all there. Yeah.
That's one.
That's all.
That's it.
That's three.
Shut up is one.
Shut up is one.
Look. And listen.
3. I love it.
If you do this, everything that I'm speaking will be naturally yours. Yeah, this all I did. I just shut up, looked at everything, absolutely investing my whole life energy in my look and investing my whole life energy in listening. And that's all I know.
Yeah.
And you, whatever I know, you will know if you just learn to look and listen. But first you must shut I love it. Shut up means not just outside, inside. Is that a good teaching?
That's great. I love it. It's perfect. It's perfect. Final question now. Now this is my final question. What's your definition of greatness?
What is my definition of greatness? If it can be defined, it's not great enough for me. As I said, definition means it has clear boundaries. Well, if you can be here without any sense of boundary, that's greatness.
There you go. Thank you so much, Sadhguru. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. It's a pleasure talking.
Pleasure.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description below. For a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
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