E542 Sadhguru
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 36 minutes
Words per Minute
151.08203
Summary
Saad Guru is an author, yogi, speaker, and spiritual teacher. He is also the founder of the Isha Institute, which teaches yoga and other spiritual practices. In this episode, Saad talks about the importance of the human brain, and how it relates to our lives.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
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00:00:25.260
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00:00:30.000
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00:00:53.700
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00:01:07.820
He is the founder of the Isha Institute, which teaches yoga as well as other spiritual practices.
00:01:13.820
They have a branch here in Tennessee, which is why he's here today.
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I think trying to do a lot of things, like trying to get my brain to shift from like sometimes like relaxing to being active or doing something.
00:02:04.720
Human brain is capable of doing a lot more than that.
00:02:17.440
I mean, I'm grateful that my mind is able to kind of shift gears here and there where I need it, you know.
00:02:21.180
But sometimes it's like, yeah, I think sometimes I just feel frenetic.
00:02:29.500
See, the thing is this, any machine for that matter, depending on what is the volume of friction there is within it, accordingly, it'll reduce its ability to do things.
00:02:45.620
If you take a car, let's say, if you take the best car in the world, and if you reduce the lubrication oil, it'll go dead in no time because of friction.
00:03:00.040
People's thoughts and emotions are in fructious condition.
00:03:03.180
So, ordinary things that we can do feel stressful and all, almost all human misery is manufactured in human mind.
00:03:23.660
Unless you're in a famine or a war zone or something where somebody can cause some trouble to you, rest of the time, it's all self-help, isn't it?
00:03:35.880
No, I'm saying physically, if somebody's shooting a bullet at you, that's a different matter.
00:03:41.180
But right now, we are poking ourselves all the time.
00:03:46.960
The important thing is, see, to get human intelligence to its present state, it's taken millions of years of evolution from an amoeba to make you like this.
00:04:02.840
It's just one word, but actually tremendous amount of research and development has happened to get you to this place.
00:04:09.700
But now, that brain is trouble for most people.
00:04:13.000
Ninety-five percent of the people use this brain to harm themselves because if we give you something sharp, if I ask you a simple question, do you want your intelligence or intellect to be sharp or blunt?
00:04:33.840
So, if I give you something sharp, how you hold it is very important.
00:04:38.400
If you don't know which is the blade end, which is the handle, if you hold it tight, it'll hurt you more and more.
00:04:44.400
Or if you're unconscious and you're like this, like this, like this, intense tense may come out, you know?
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Has it ever happened a knife popped up and stabbed someone?
00:05:01.700
It's the people who hold it and how they hold it.
00:05:04.680
So, right now, we've been given an intelligence.
00:05:11.100
The biologists today are saying the DNA difference between you and a chimpanzee is only 1.23%.
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So, physiologically, that's how close we are to a chimpanzee.
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But in terms of our intelligence and awareness, we are worlds apart.
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So, essentially, we have an intelligence for which we don't have a stable enough platform.
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If you don't create a stable platform, stable chemistry, stable energy, stable physiology,
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if you don't create that, your intelligence will work against you.
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Once your intelligence works against you, there is no force in the universe which can save you.
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You can call it anxiety, misery, anger, angst, whatever.
00:06:03.400
Essentially, your intelligence is not working for you.
00:06:18.600
Good that you called me here, so I, you know, I get to golf in a good golf course tomorrow morning.
00:06:27.560
Do you actually hit the ball or do you just imagine that it's in the hole?
00:06:42.840
I wanted to, so you're like a, like a sorcerer, not a sorcerer.
00:06:55.720
What is kind of the terminology that they use for?
00:07:01.580
Because right now, human beings are always trying to cripple themselves with their thoughts,
00:07:12.780
If you, if you do one thing that in your life, you're not the impediment.
00:07:23.000
There are a thousand issues you need to handle in the world.
00:07:25.160
The more you try to do, the more problems and more troubles there will be.
00:07:29.280
All those things you handle to the best of your ability.
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If you just ascertain this one thing, that you yourself are not an issue,
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just check and see for most human beings, they themselves are an issue.
00:07:44.180
Their thought, their emotion, their needs, their compulsiveness, that's what is the big problem.
00:07:51.600
So if you ensure that you are not the issue in your life,
00:07:55.900
then you are naturally a full-fledged human being.
00:07:58.980
You will do the best that you can do in everything that you do.
00:08:02.560
Well, your best may not be the best, but it's the best that you can do.
00:08:07.980
In your life, if you do not do what you cannot do, there's no problem.
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But if you do not do what you can do, you're a disaster.
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But the moment your thought, your emotion is tripping you all the time,
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you will not even do what you can do, isn't it?
00:08:25.460
And how do we get ourselves in the best situation to be able to do what we can do?
00:08:31.480
They tell me right now, we don't like the weather outside.
00:08:49.420
How come your inner climate is not engineered properly?
00:09:01.900
Why is it that your inner engineering has not been done
00:09:05.540
so that you have the conducive climate that you want?
00:09:09.720
So my whole work is this, that to teach people how to engineer themselves.
00:09:15.700
When I say engineer, people think it's some technology kind of thing.
00:09:21.420
What we call as engineering today used to be magic at one time.
00:09:32.000
If I sat here a thousand years ago and lights came on, what would you think I am?
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You'd have been a very, I thought you'd have been mystical.
00:10:09.960
Unfortunately, I didn't have a light bulb thousand years ago.
00:10:13.260
Now everybody has it, so it's not magic anymore.
00:10:16.720
So I'm just saying, engineering means when you engineer something well, it's more than magical.
00:10:24.940
No magic can do those things that we are doing, isn't it?
00:10:28.080
You pick up your phone and talk to just about anybody in the world.
00:10:31.800
If you did this 200 years ago, you could have claimed your God himself.
00:10:36.960
So if you engineer your interiority in the way it works for you, there are many ways to describe it.
00:10:43.660
The simple way to say this is, let's say we create a chemistry.
00:10:48.960
Today, everybody knows that all their experiences are in somehow connected to their chemical structure.
00:10:56.600
What you call as joy is one kind of chemistry, misery is another kind of chemistry, anxiety is one kind of chemistry, tranquility is another kind of chemistry, agony, ecstasy, everything has a chemical basis.
00:11:09.080
So in many ways, if you look at the biochemistry of a human being, it is the most complex chemical factory on the planet.
00:11:21.200
It is because a number of things that are happening every moment in every molecule of DNA and stuff is unbelievable.
00:11:31.540
Suppose you can create a chemistry the way you want it.
00:11:36.520
Would you create a chemistry of blissfulness or misery?
00:11:48.240
And that's all I'm teaching people how to create a chemistry of blissfulness.
00:11:52.240
So suppose you're blissful, no matter what, if you sit, stand, eat, don't eat, you're blissful.
00:11:59.480
If you're blissful, essentially what it means is there is no fear of suffering.
00:12:06.080
Only when there is no fear of suffering, will you take full strides in your life.
00:12:17.020
The fear of suffering is crippling them, not allowing their geniuses to flower.
00:12:22.620
Every human being is capable of this, but it's not happening because the fear of suffering, what will happen to me?
00:12:29.600
So if you are given this assurance, no matter what happens around you, nothing happens to you.
00:12:49.200
That is, I fixed my chemistry from inside, not from outside.
00:12:54.400
So you're saying if I get myself to a state that...
00:12:58.540
Because the state I can control is the state that I am.
00:13:01.680
So if I can keep that state as comfortable as possible, then...
00:13:11.740
See, every human being at some moment in their life, they have had blissful experiences.
00:13:21.480
The same time, they're all versions of negativity experiences also have happened.
00:13:25.800
So essentially, are you competent of being blissful and ecstatic?
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You're not like a rock where it didn't go into such an experience.
00:13:44.600
Sustainability is a problem right now because most experiences are happening in an unconscious
00:14:02.520
This is what I realized very early on in my life.
00:14:07.420
You know, one thing I realized was when I was just four and a half years of age,
00:14:15.980
Don't know anything means don't know anything at all.
00:14:18.840
To such an extent, if somebody gives me a glass of water, I don't know what is water.
00:14:29.960
Actually, even today, you don't know what it is.
00:14:34.660
But with all this scientific exploration, we still do not know one atom in its entirety.
00:14:51.240
So, if I find a leaf, I'm just looking at it for hours on end.
00:14:56.320
If I sit up in my bed, I'm staring at the darkness for the whole night.
00:14:59.860
But my dear father, being a physician, he started thinking I need psychiatric evaluation
00:15:06.180
because this boy is staring at something all the time.
00:15:19.040
So, I'm not able to look at the other thing because I still don't know what this is.
00:15:29.860
My mother said, you must pay attention to the teachers.
00:15:35.800
So, I went on and paid attention to the teacher.
00:15:38.600
The kind of attention they had never received in their entire life.
00:15:45.020
Then, you know, initially I saw, I kind of understood what they were trying to say.
00:15:51.440
Then I saw, actually, they're only making sounds.
00:15:58.240
See, right now, if I start talking in one of the Indian languages.
00:16:05.240
If I speak one of those languages, as far as you're concerned, it'll be just sound.
00:16:14.080
So, language is a kind of a conspiracy between two people.
00:16:19.700
You utter another sound, I make up the meaning.
00:16:36.980
Teacher after teacher, they come and make noises and noises and noises.
00:16:58.500
This school where I studied over 50 plus years ago,
00:17:02.160
they came to invite me for their 125th anniversary.
00:17:07.620
I said, see, you know, they came and said many things.
00:17:13.620
I said, please see, I was not just a not good student.
00:17:25.880
Then they said, no, no, our school has produced film stars.
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If you don't know anything about cricket, they'll take away your passport.
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Then I suddenly remembered in this particular classroom what happened.
00:18:01.440
I must have been around 12, little over 12 years of age.
00:18:05.460
One day, a teacher comes and asks me a question.
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I've slowly graduated to a place where initially I was not attaching meanings to the sounds.
00:18:16.340
After some time, I'm not even hearing the sounds.
00:18:18.440
If I see somebody, I see just a blob of energy and all kinds of things happening.
00:18:23.160
But I'm just fully attention, but I can't even hear what they are saying.
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So, he asked me a question and I'm just looking at him without a single word.
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And he tries to get an answer out of me for over 35 minutes.
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When he doesn't get it, he comes and holds me by the shoulder, shakes me violently like this and says,
00:19:00.280
Because I don't have an answer for one damn thing.
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We don't know where we come from, where we go, what.
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But if you really sincerely ask a question, you don't know.
00:19:42.240
Then till that moment, looking at everything, the visual contact with life around me, from
00:19:48.840
an insect, to one ant, to a leaf, to just about anything, looked absolutely engaging and
00:19:56.780
See, it's made in such a way, if you pay enough attention, you can spend a lifetime studying
00:20:01.940
an ant, and you will still not know fully what it is in a hundred years of life.
00:20:08.180
That's how profound and sophisticated and complex life is.
00:20:12.920
So, I'm excited about anything, and everything looks amazing to me, but then I realized when
00:20:19.000
I close my eyes, this whole thing exploded to another dimension.
00:20:24.900
When I say within, not just thought emotion, as a life.
00:20:27.680
What is happening within is so phenomenal that I had no need to open my eyes.
00:20:33.340
If I close my eyes, I just keep it closed for hours and hours.
00:20:39.780
It's like a whole nother universe, I guess, when you close your eyes and you start to look
00:20:46.680
I want to ask you first and say thank you very much for being here today, Sadhguru.
00:20:51.060
I'm very happy to see you and spend time with you.
00:20:54.380
Some of my best friends are extreme fans of yours.
00:21:00.080
Yeah, my friend James Becerra is a huge fan of yours.
00:21:02.960
He's been to, I think, some institutes maybe that you have in India.
00:21:29.840
If I say it in a few words, they may not understand.
00:21:36.460
See, religion is a very external thing for us in India.
00:21:40.260
We don't have a religion or the religion like that.
00:21:46.520
We see that every human being has to pursue his pursuit of truth, wanting to know what is
00:21:55.640
And the only goal is to find liberation from the mechanics of life, which sometimes give you a high,
00:22:04.440
sometimes give you a low, sometimes makes you feel like top of the world, sometimes crushes you.
00:22:12.580
To figure this, we have methods and methods and methods.
00:22:17.300
Everybody who follows one method, they may think, this is my way.
00:22:24.580
I mean, this part of the world will have difficulty understanding.
00:22:28.280
In the same house, if there are five people, they will be worshipping five different deities.
00:22:35.580
There is no problem about it because, you see, it's up to you.
00:22:38.760
If you can relate to this plant, you can worship this plant.
00:22:41.760
If you can relate to your mother, you worship your mother.
00:22:44.200
If you can relate to the cloud, worship the cloud.
00:22:46.780
Because the important thing is how you feel about it.
00:22:52.540
I mean, this is a very common terminology here.
00:22:58.760
See, for example, somebody says, I love somebody.
00:23:08.440
You may realize after some time how perfect somebody is.
00:23:23.060
So this is a fundamental aspect that we see our subjectivity determines everything.
00:23:29.560
So it's not that, even going to that example of love, it's not that you love the person
00:23:46.240
The important thing is, your experience of life should become profound.
00:23:50.960
If a plant can do it, if a tree can do it, if a dog can do it, a man or woman can do it,
00:24:00.380
Whereas the important thing is, every day as life goes by, your experience of life should
00:24:08.120
Profound means you have deeper roots into life, not living on the surface.
00:24:13.100
Because if you're living on the surface, one gale and you get blown away.
00:24:24.040
So fundamentally, it is to live and to live totally.
00:24:31.000
Because the word religion essentially implies you have to believe something.
00:24:36.040
India has always been recognized as a land of seekers.
00:24:41.320
A seeker means you can be a genuine seeker only if you realize, I do not know.
00:24:48.360
If you see, I don't know something, you don't have to label yourself as a seeker.
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The human intelligence is such, it'll start seeking.
00:25:11.240
Whether it is science or spirituality, the fundamental is I do not know.
00:25:16.300
Only if you see I do not know, the longing to know will come and the possibility of knowing
00:25:22.560
Everything that you do not know, if you believe, it will give you confidence.
00:25:28.700
If you need confidence, you must believe something.
00:25:31.600
But confidence without clarity can become disastrous.
00:25:37.080
See, right now, let's say this room is pitch dark.
00:25:47.400
If you have no confidence, at least gently you will feel your way through.
00:25:51.320
But if you are confident, you will blunder through everything.
00:25:55.180
This is what is happening to a whole lot of people.
00:25:57.300
Because they have confidence where there is no clarity.
00:26:00.640
The confidence is not a substitute for clarity.
00:26:07.840
Confidence means you assume something and invest your emotion in it and you become confident.
00:26:15.180
Do you want solace or do you want a solution to life?
00:26:19.920
Do you want solace or do you want a solution to life?
00:26:30.060
Do you want to be convinced or do you want to...
00:26:35.840
Or do you want to just be convinced about something?
00:26:38.360
See, right now in this room of all of us said this is it.
00:27:03.140
I've heard you talk recently about how evolution is not biological anymore, where we are as human beings, right?
00:27:52.120
One important thing is the relationship between the sun and the earth.
00:28:02.320
The whole system of evolution happened because when those very smart algae or fungi, we don't know which one, which one got smarter first.
00:28:20.280
Some billion years ago, they learned one trick, how to manufacture food from sunlight.
00:28:32.580
It is that photosynthesis, which is the basis of all life on this planet.
00:28:36.540
The plant life came and then animal life, everything happened.
00:28:40.420
But the fundamental thing is we learned how to transform sun's energy into food and energy for ourselves, for life.
00:28:51.480
So, today, we are also, we may not be directly solar powered, but everything that we eat is solar powered.
00:28:57.580
If you don't go out in the sun for a year, you know, you become paled out.
00:29:02.500
So, it is the solar energy that's important, which also controls the movement of the earth around itself, this 365 days or whatever.
00:29:16.580
And the moon's movement around the earth, which is 28 days or 27 plus something days.
00:29:29.760
If our mother's bodies were not in sync with the cycles of the moon, we wouldn't be born.
00:29:39.540
Because a menstrual cycle is related to the moon.
00:29:49.560
We are not doomsayers, but there is a yogic doomsday.
00:29:53.160
This calculation was made maybe some 26, 27,000 years ago.
00:30:06.620
every year, the moon is moving away from the planet,
00:30:31.520
that human women will not have menstrual cycles.
00:30:41.440
The women are going to be angry if they don't have them, I bet.
00:31:12.940
So, approximately 24,500 or 25,000 years later,
00:31:19.020
Because it is a fact that moon is moving away from the earth,
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As earth's gravity's influence becomes less and less,
00:36:22.220
the form of our body, the shape and how it works.
00:36:45.940
So we are a consequence of this planetary system.
00:36:50.060
Now, this happened approximately 14,000, 15,000 years ago
00:37:15.200
Why can't human system be evolved to a bigger possibility?
00:37:32.720
some fundamental change in the planetary system
00:37:38.140
You have reached the peak of physiological evolution.
00:37:41.400
But of course, anything that we said in the past,
00:37:44.220
It has to come from our universities and laboratories.
00:37:51.880
If you want to increase the capacity of your brain,
00:37:56.140
one thing you can do is pack more neurons into your head.
00:38:13.540
but brilliance can't do anything without balance.
00:38:20.520
So, one simple thing to do for these children is,
00:38:27.080
See, when you give a medicine to slow down something,
00:38:32.080
You don't have a tablet which will go and act only in that place.
00:38:42.900
the thing you need to do is take them out into the mountains,
00:38:54.320
Or if you can teach them the classical system of yoga,
00:39:15.720
See, right now, as you sit here in a restful state,
00:39:19.500
20% or more of your energy is spent on your brain.
00:39:28.900
Yeah, but it could be a little less over here too.
00:39:45.780
the volume of energy it'll consume will be such,
00:39:48.460
even your physical growth will not happen properly.
00:39:53.820
So today, neuronal scientists are explaining it this way.
00:40:00.640
unless there are fundamental changes in the planetary system,
00:40:13.020
If you're thinking of growing horns or something.
00:40:40.200
Most studies say our brain capacity is only used 8 to 12% in average human beings.
00:40:59.420
Because I didn't go to school much, so I don't know what grades they gave me.
00:41:09.040
So if we only are using up to 20%, but you believe that we can evolve that.
00:41:16.420
If you push it to 100%, you'll be five times at least, probably many, many fold more than
00:41:23.360
what you are right now in terms of your intelligence and capacity, which some human beings are displaying.
00:41:33.720
See, for example, the number of things I'm doing, probably, I don't know what you know
00:41:37.260
about us, the number of projects and things, all being done by a volunteer organization.
00:41:47.680
Running a volunteer organization means nobody's trained for the job.
00:41:57.280
And you can't fire them for inefficiency to try to run something like this.
00:42:04.620
Over 18,000, I mean, 18 million volunteers across the world.
00:42:17.240
We are the largest ecological movement on the planet right now.
00:42:20.360
We're the largest replantation program on the planet right now.
00:42:38.620
And also, our programs are going on all around the world.
00:42:46.420
At any given time, I can run 14 tracks in my mind.
00:42:54.560
From a door bolt to a window to everything, I get engaged.
00:43:03.820
But this is how it's been for the last 30, 40 years.
00:43:16.280
You wind yourself up and then you want to unwind?
00:43:23.320
Which, unfortunately, very sad consequences are happening to people
00:43:27.200
because somewhere they have also realized this.
00:43:29.120
The most important thing is if you want to be stress-free,
00:43:34.360
If you want to be stress-free, you must be intoxicated.
00:43:37.780
Intoxication does not mean your uncle Jack Daniel.
00:44:15.160
There is no time or room for incompetence in this life
00:44:19.900
For what possibilities human intelligence creates,
00:44:25.060
What possibilities human intelligence can create,
00:44:58.740
But if just intoxication means you'll sit around,
00:45:06.460
If exuberance and intoxication is there at the same time,
00:45:17.020
If these three things happen within you at the same time,
00:45:28.680
Our activity is global and all kinds of troubles
00:45:32.020
because we don't subscribe to any particular…
00:45:35.380
See, we don't subscribe to any particular religious group
00:45:40.800
So, just about everybody is against us one way or the other.
00:45:49.460
Though we've not done anything against anybody,
00:45:53.800
but you grow in size without being aligned to anybody,
00:46:06.760
I took two and a half years to design this face.
00:46:14.920
This is to acknowledge and also inspire people.