Good Life Project - Sadhguru | The Truth About Karma

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Ranked among the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, and visionary. He has been conferred three presidential awards in India, including one for his environmental work as well as the country’s highest annual civilian award for exceptional and distinguished service. He’s spoken before the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Bank, the UK House of Lords, TED, and countless global companies, and has also been invited to present at Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wharton, and MIT, among others.Over the years, Sadhguru has also launched large ecological initiatives that have created a blueprint for economic development that is ecologically sustainable. And three decades ago, Sadhguru founded Isha Foundation, a nonprofit human-service organization, with human well-being as its core commitment. The foundation has initiated yoga programs for human transformation and outreach projects to uplift rural communities. Isha is supported by over 11 million volunteers in more than 300 centers worldwide.We explore his extraordinary life’s journey today, then drop into the focus of his latest book, Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, (https://bookshop.org/a/22758/9780593232019) which has also been a concept that has fascinated me for years.You can find Sadhguru at:Website : https://isha.sadhguru.org/karma/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sadhguru/If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Nepal-based French philosopher, writer, teacher, and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, who, after having his brain study by neuroscientists, was kind of dubbed with a smile, The World's Happiest Man: https://tinyurl.com/GLPRicard-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ranked among the 50 most influential people in India, my guest today, Sadhguru, is a yogi, mystic, and visionary. He's been conferred three presidential awards in India, including one for his environmental work, as well as the country's highest annual civilian award for exceptional and distinguished service. He's spoken before the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, World Bank, UK House of Lords, TED, and countless global companies, and has also been invited to present at Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wharton, MIT, and many others.

And over the years, Sadhguru has also launched large-scale ecological initiatives that really created a blueprint for economic development that is ecologically sustainable. And three decades ago, he founded Isha Foundation, a nonprofit human service organization with human wellbeing as its core commitment. And the foundation has initiated yoga programs for human transformation and outreach projects to really uplift rural

communities. It's supported by over 11 million volunteers in more than 300 centers worldwide. We explore his extraordinary life's journey today and then drop into the focus of his latest book, Karma, which has also been a concept that has fascinated and confused me for years. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. I actually want to take a little bit of a step back in time and work our way back up to some of the current ideas. You're originally from Mysore, India, came up in a household that seemed fairly mainstream, dad and ophthalmologist, and started along what would seem to be a fairly mainstreamed, an ophthalmologist, and started along what would seem to be a fairly mainstream path, going to college, having a traditional education, leaving that. And then something happened in the year shortly after that, that set you in

a different direction. And I'm curious about that season and whether there was more of a moment or a gradual evolution that said something else is calling me in a different direction? Well, by the time I was 13, I was a super skeptic, skeptical about everything, about family situations, about society, about the economy, economic situations, political scene, around religion, everything, I'm super skeptical. So, naturally, I'm not identified with anything as such.

I'm involved, I'm very active, I'm in a lot of sport and works, but super skeptical. In a way, to make it clear to people, that's the only real work that I did, that I did not identify myself with either family or religion or social structures or culture or anything that was around me. I remained active, but I remained aloof, very involved, never really entangled with anything. Half the town were my friends in some way. But when I, you know, rode across southern India on my bicycle, later on on my motorcycle, I always rode alone because I think that was the best part of my life in many ways. So, on that afternoon, I just blew up in the sense… Well, I was practicing a simple form of yoga from the age of twelve.

But on that afternoon, between two business meetings, I had a little break, so I just went up this hill and just sat there. Suddenly, I exploded. Till that moment I thought, this is me, that is somebody else. I had no issues with somebody else, but this was me, that was them, okay? Suddenly I did not know which is me, which is not me. What was me was just all over the place. So this kind of completely shrank my experience of what is time and space, what is like hours on end would feel like moments, what seems to be everywhere was all like here, right in front of me.

So I did not know that… I did not know how to put a label on that. I did not know what it is because I did not grow up in any traditions of spiritual process or anything like that. I grew up completely agnostic and very, very, I would say, very westernized in many ways. You know, 60s, 70s, Beatles and da-da-da, that kind of stuff. Rock and roll and the works. So, this was completely new to me. I didn't know what was happening.

The first initial thought in my mind was, my skeptical mind said, maybe you're going off your rocker. Looks like you're losing it. But I knew I don't want to lose what I'd, you know, come to at that moment because it was too fantastic. So, with my closest friends, when I interacted and tried to talk to them, see, something is happening to me. I wanted some context, somebody to say that, yes, this is something good. This is not madness.

Well, the only thing that my friends could ask was, well, what did you drink? What did you pop? This kind of stuff. So, essentially, I did not have anybody who could give me any context as to what is happening to me. And even at home, people thought I'm losing it because if I sat with my… If I just sat like this, I think it's two, three minutes, seven, eight hours have just gone by, just like that. And people think I've gone, become like a stone. I'm fully aware and conscious what's happening around me. It's just time just went on fast forward in my experience.

So, as this became more and more intense within me, then I knew that I've hit something within myself, which is very, very precious, in the sense, I realized, as I paid more and more attention to what was happening within me, I realized, if I don't mess with my mind, if the memory part of me, which is there, you know, from your childhood to whatever time in your life, all the things that you remember, your thoughts, your little bits of information, your emotions and the works, if I stay… if I don't put my hands in those things, every cell in my body just bursts forth in ecstasy, literally dripping ecstasy. Well, then I made a plan.

I said, who would not want this? And on that day, the world's population was 5.6 billion people. So I sat down and made a plan. In two and a half years' time, I am going to make the whole world ecstatic. Here I am 40 years later. One big failure. We people say we have touched over a billion people. But that is not my idea of humanity, 7.6 billion people. It's only as time went by, as I made more and more intense efforts to somehow bring people to this experience, I realized how

deeply involved and attached and identified people are with their miseries. A whole lot of people are nothing without their miseries. They are so identified with it. So, that is when I started looking, what is it? Then I saw this whole karmic structure, the whole memory patterns have set up a rut for them. They cannot come out of it unless they do certain things with themselves. That is when I started evolving spiritual practices, practices which will get people out of their rut within themselves. So especially now with the pandemic around the world, which a lot of scientists are saying may persist for four to six years, I think this is definitely the most important time in the life of this generation.

If at all, if you want to get out of your rut, set patterns within yourself, this is the time because the external situation may change in such a drastic way or dramatic way. If you are in the same rut, which might have been working with the existing situations of that time, I think like already WHO is talking about a mental health pandemic, they're talking about a suicide pandemic. Well, in the year 2020, for example, in Japan, more people committed suicide than the number who died of this pandemic. So, I'm saying we don't really need virus. If our minds get into a certain, you know, if the alignment goes wrong, well, we will kill ourselves.

We don't really need any virus or anything. So I thought one important thing is people understand how their memory patterns, their evolutionary memory, genetic memory, articulate and inarticulate memory, unconscious, subconscious, and conscious memories, how they are controlling them from within. Some understanding has to come in people to go beyond that. And that is why this book, Karma. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Another curiosity before we really dive into the notion of karma and some of the deeper concepts is when you have this experience of awakening to something and it moves you in a profound way, that sense of ecstatic existence. And then you say to yourself, I want everyone to feel this. The gap that occurs to me, there is process, you know,

that you, this happened seemingly spontaneously. It wasn't a practice or a plan or a process. Now we can probably deconstruct that and say, actually, no, that's not the reality. But then how do you, from that moment, turn around and say, there's something that I know that is teachable, that is shareable, that will help people step into the same experience as me? I kind of withdrew from everything that I was doing for a year, year and a half. I just traveled without purpose, not going anywhere, just riding across India, where I spent a lot of time looking at what made this happen. So, when I understood what is it that made it happen within me, though it was by default, I did not design it consciously, but many times you can design things by default.

You can do the right thing even unconsciously many, many times. Just by… just like that, you know, you can just do the right thing without even knowing you're doing the right thing. So, when I look back and try to look at my… everything that I've done, what is it that led me to this? I clearly saw a process. When I say I clearly saw a process, one thing is, from the age of twelve, I was practicing a certain system of yoga, which made me physiologically and psychologically very, very strong.

This is one thing, that is, every action that people perform in their life every situation that they face they are going through a certain amount of stress within themselves the stress is simply see if you talk mechanically let us say you are building something

and if you put a certain amount of weight on a certain member then you say it is stressed because it is not strong enough to take it. So, essentially, stress means that we did not prepare enough for this life. So, this aspect was never there with me because this… this everyday simple yoga made me in such a way, physiologically and psychologically, I was never stressed with any activity. I must… I must tell you, this may sound a little weird for a lot of people.

When I motorcycled, I would motorcycle for three days and nights non-stop. I rode only from petrol station to petrol station, just ate fruits and just drove day and night. This may look totally weird. I know a whole lot of medical experts will say this is not possible, but I remain fully alert and fine. And fourth day when I have to sleep, I was not in any bad condition. If I push myself, I could ride one more night if I want. I was like that. And in the last forty years, we've been working like that, that, you know, for us,

there is no day, there is no night. All the time, something is happening. So, this is important that in our societies, we are too busy wanting to conquer the world, we've done very little about ourselves. Our education systems are all about, you know, we're studying bacteria, we're studying cockroaches, we're studying frogs, we're studying all kinds of things. There is not enough understanding about this one, which is the most sophisticated and complex life on this planet. There is no attention to this. Even if you pay attention, we will open up and look at the digestive system, respiratory system, not like that. The way, see, knowingly or unknowingly, this is also our own design by default, that we created ourselves from within. We were born like this, we became

this much. This whole thing is being done from within, but it's not in our experience. That's the whole problem. If we were conscious about it, I must tell you, is it okay, Jonathan? I can tell you a joke. Sure. Because it's getting serious.

I didn't go through all this very seriously. I just went through it like effortlessly, you know. It happened one day in a Sunday school, a nun was handling the class and she told little Mary about teaching about God, the Creator of all. And then in the end, she asked, Mary, who made you? Mary gave it a thought and she said, a little part of me, God made. There's a nun was shocked, what, a little part of of you God made, what about the rest?

Mary said, God made only a little part of me, rest of it, I made it myself. This is something people have not understood. It is like for every other creature on this planet, nature has fixed ninety percent of their life, giving maybe approximately ten percent latitude for individual characteristics. But with a human being, only ten percent is made, ninety percent is left in our hands to make whatever we want to make ourselves to be. So if we don't take charge of that, we will become very accidental, very apprehensive. Once you live accidentally, anxiety becomes a natural process.

So, this is one thing I built a very resilient body and mind, so that whatever situations I faced, I have one problem with me that I can't live without danger. Every day I need to do something where there is some amount of danger. So, all the time I am putting myself to risk whatever I am doing. But I went through these things without any stress or struggle, both in body and mind. I think that is one thing that's missing for a whole lot of people, that for every little thing I'm… You know, like, when we are young, when we are growing up as children, we did not know what is stress, all right?

Today, school-going children are stressed because we have not paid any attention to the inner well-being of the child. We have brought up human beings just thinking we'll conquer the world. Well, we can conquer the world and still be miserable. That's what is happening right now. So, this resilience of the mind gave me a platform. Resilience of the body and mind gave me a platform. After that, simply only one thing I did, just not identified with anything. Alert and involved with everything, but not identified. This is all a human being has to do. The problem is everybody is trying to identify with something because they fear freedom. Everybody talks about freedom, but everybody is seeking bondage all the time because they will feel comfortable only when they're in some sort of

bondage. They will call this love, they will call this family, they will call this club, they will call this society, but essentially they need some kind of bondage, otherwise they cannot live because people fear freedom. So if you're not identified with anything, every moment is like a new world for you. There's an absolute freedom to experience it whichever way you want. That is the only thing I did, a resilient body and mind, which came to me because of a certain practice and not getting identified. I think if human beings can do this, everybody can come to all our program, in a way are structured around this,

to build the body and mind to a certain capacity of determining how pleasant this is right now. When I say how pleasant, see, this is all human beings are working for in unnecessary devious ways. People want pleasantness of body. If body is pleasant, we call this health. Everybody wants it. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If our mind becomes pleasant, we call it peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call this pleasure. If our mind becomes pleasant, we call it peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call it joy. If our emotions become pleasant, we call it love.

If it becomes very pleasant, we call it compassion. If our very life energies become pleasant, we call this blissfulness. If it becomes very pleasant, we call it ecstasy. If our surroundings become pleasant, we call it success. It is only to create pleasantness of surroundings, you need the cooperation of other forces around you. For pleasantness of body, pleasantness of mind, pleasantness of emotion and energy, it is one hundred percent yours. This is why karma is very important, that it's your doing. How you're experiencing your life right now is your doing. What is around you may not be 100% your doing. You have some stake in it, but it's not all yours.

It is the times in which we are living. Right now, you are sitting in a room that you are sitting. I am sitting in a place that I am sitting. This place is a consequence of the times in which we exist. If we were here a thousand years ago, maybe you would be sitting with headphones in a cave and I would be sitting somewhere in a jungle. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. What occurs to me in all of this is also, as you're speaking about our need to identify, you know, and really it's our need for certainty, our need to latch on to something that we feel is in some way, shape or form solid, whether that is delusional, mythological, or not. Soren Kierkegaard wrote, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which always resonated with me.

But in order to experience freedom without that anxiety, as you're suggesting, these practices that you had been doing for years before you started to move into this space and this realization about identity and freedom were inadvertently training you to be okay in that space and to have the strength of body, the strength of mind, the strength of energy to not disintegrate into a place of anxiety in a way that the vast majority of people in the world today haven't done that work. Unfortunately, no. No. You mentioned the word karma a number of different times now, and I want to dive into that.

It's the focus of your most recent work, and it touches into everything that we're saying here. I think probably a good starting point for that is really to ask the question, what are we actually talking about when we talk about karma? Well, today is the age of technology. Everybody is on a computer or very, very phone is a computer. It's no more a phone. It's a massive, it's an instrument with massive capabilities.

See, suppose you buy a computer, let's say the best one in the world, but it doesn't have any software. It's just a brick, isn't it? It's as good as a brick, it's no use. At least a brick you can make a wall, this computer is no good at all. Only because you loaded software on it, it's all this. So similarly, we have a certain part of us which is like hardware, but it's the software. How does software happen to you? You have your five senses.

There is much more to it, let's not go there, but at least in day-to-day affair, you have five senses. What you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you touch. All this enters you. And most of the time, it's entering you unconsciously. Only certain parts of the day, you may be conscious about what's getting into you. Rest of the time, it's just happening, you may not even notice. Suppose you're in Boulder, I cannot say this, but if you were in New York, anyway, you're a New Yorker, so I can say this. In New York City, if you walked 50 yards in Manhattan, you would find probably 123 smells. That would probably be in your first step, actually. So, but all this number of smells, you're not conscious of. Only if something reaches a certain level of acuteness, either pleasantness or unpleasantness,

reaches a certain point, then you may notice that. Rest of it, you're not noticing, you're not actually experiencing, but it's all being recorded. Everything that goes through your sense organs is in some way registered in your system, or at least a residual impact of that experience is there in the system. It is there in your mind, it is there in your subconscious, it is there in the body, it just imprints itself everywhere. Now, as you build this unconscious software, slowly you will develop certain tendencies. And these tendencies are just part of your survival process.

That if this kind of smell comes, without thinking, you will take a step this way and keep going that way, you know, without even thinking about it. Like, it may be a sight, it may be a smell, it may be a sound, whatever, you know, thing, you just respond to it because karma or accumulation of memory gives you a certain sense of automation and in turn efficiency. But at the same time, it's a rut over a period of time. If you just want to survive, if you just manage certain karma, you will easily survive without thinking too much about it, without knowing, without consciously thinking that your teeth need to be brushed. If you wake up in the morning, this will brush like this. Then if you get up, then you'll just eat your breakfast without experiencing anything. A whole

lot of people are doing this because they've established their karma in such a way that their life is in an automation mode, which makes them feel that they are far more efficient. Efficiency will happen, but life experience will not happen. And efficiency curtails you to a small ambit of things that you're doing. If your interest is to expand the process of life, because that's a natural longing in every human being, whoever you are, whatever you are, somewhere deep inside you, there is a longing to be something more than who you are right now. What that more is, each person may decide according to their currency in their life. If somebody knows only money in their life, they are thinking more money.

If somebody knows knowledge, they are thinking more knowledge. Somebody knows love, they are thinking more love. Somebody knows pleasure, they are thinking more knowledge. Somebody knows love, they're thinking more love. Somebody knows pleasure, they're thinking more pleasure. Whether a man is going to the bar or the temple, they're all seeking something more, always. Something more to experience, to enhance life. It may not be a conscious longing, but always seeking something more. But the karma will set you to a limited ambit, but there is something deep inside you wanting something more. Just like unknowingly you chained yourself and you keep tugging at the chain, this will

cause purposeless misery. A whole lot of people don't know why they're miserable. Simply, they have lost their zest. When they were children, they were bubbling with life. Now, at that time, nothing was in their hand. You know, a child is like a slave. Somebody says, go to sleep, it has to go to sleep. Somebody says, wake up, it has to wake up. Somebody says, go to school, it has to go to school. This is the life of a child, unfortunately, but still a child is bursting with joy. Now your life is your own, you are the boss. But what misery, untold misery human beings have created, simply fundamentally this, you want to go somewhere, but by default you have chained yourself.

This is what we are referring to as karma. This is the past karma. But what we are forgetting is, the present karma can be a way of unlocking the chain. If we don't do that, even if everything is happening the way we planned… See, most people are miserable because what they planned has worked. Well, they wanted a job, they got it. Now, they're getting blood pressure in the job. They wanted to start the business, now it's freaking them. They wanted to get married, now it's taking their life. You know, it's not that something that they did not want is doing it.

What they wanted has unfolded in their life and that's their misery. Because what they want is not money or marriage or this or that. They want profoundness of experience. They thought education will give it to them. They thought money will give it to them. They thought success will give it to them. They thought love will give it to them. But essentially, it's the profoundness of experience that you're seeking. And that is what past karma will block for you. It will block profoundness experience of experience, give you a certain sense of automation and efficiency, which makes you think you're doing well. But one thing, you know that by experience you're not doing well. Everybody thinks you're doing well. You are not doing well. Only you know that. So when you reach this place, when you understand something within me is holding me back from living my life the way I want, then understanding karma becomes very relevant.

Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. As you're sharing that, an image came into my mind, which was, especially with your reference to a child versus us now, and the analogy to technology. When we're a child, we effectively have a hard drive, which is 99.9% empty. So there's a spaciousness about that. There's a sense of openness and possibility about it. But as we start to load up that hard drive, even with things that we're consciously loading in or things that simply just happen to be downloaded on an automated basis, whether it's things that we want to be on there or things that we don't want to be on there, either way, there's less and less space available, less and less spaciousness available on that drive. And I feel like a part

of what we're talking about here is also this feeling of spaciousness that is, that is we so yearn for. Jonathan, let me technologically update you. By the way, my team does not let me touch technology. So I may be the wrong person to talk about all of this. I'm saying you don't have to store everything on your hard drive. You can put it on the cloud, you know. That's what I'm talking about. Everything that you carry, you don't have to carry it on your head. It is there.

See, right now, every cell in this body remembers what's happened for millions of years. See, you definitely consciously don't remember ten generations ago how your great-great-great-grandfather looked like. You don't… you have no idea. Obviously, there's no photograph, you don't know who he was. I'm sure most of us do not know. Beyond three generations, we don't even know their names, all right? But his nose is sitting on your face. Your body remembers. Your body remembers not just ten generations, a thousand generations ago. Your forefathers, what was the tone of their skin,

still your body remembers, isn't it? So there's enormous memory in the body. You don't have to make it burdensome. You become burdensome not because of memory. You become burdensome, your experience becomes burdensome only because you're getting identified with it. Yeah, I mean, the notion, what you also just referenced is something you write about which

is this this notion of both individual and collective karma you know we have these imprints on the individual level but also a collective level a level of lineage a level of community most of which we're completely unaware of the collective karma that we have today as a generation of people, not only this generation's karma, the previous generations, what they have done also is with us. But this will only determine the external situations in which we live. The internal situations that we have, now, well, there's a whole lot of psychiatry and other things telling you about your genetic influences in your mind and your body. Well, we have already touched that.

There is evolutionary and genetic memory that you cannot deny. But is there a way to transcend that? Is there a way to use this to your advantage or do you have to succumb to this? Let me put it like this. Right now, this bank of memory which you call as my body and my mind, see, your very body is a whole memory. Why is it? Suppose, suppose any human being, let's say from tomorrow I start eating dog food. So, in a month's time, will I become a dog? No. Whatever I put into this, here there is evolutionary memory which ensures whatever I may eat, it will convert that food only into human form. Now, let's say I've come

to America and I'll eat only American food. Will the skin color and everything change for me? No, it will not. Because my genetic memory will make sure whatever I am, wherever I am, my body remains the same kind of, you know, all the parameters will remain the same. So, the important thing is, we must understand there is a way to rise beyond that. This is why human life is important because all other animals are really tuck in their body real tight. There is no such thing as me and my body in their experience. Body is them. Unfortunately, most human beings are also living that way. But see, if you just close your eyes and sit here for two minutes,

not even two minutes, a few seconds if you sit here, you can clearly see beyond the body, you're still there. When your eyes are open and active, you may be feeling like you are the body. But if you close your eyes and look at it, you can clearly see, oh yes, my body is here, this is me. And it's very clear that you were born this way and now you became like this because of what we have consumed. The body is something that we slowly accumulated.

What you accumulate can be yours, can never ever be you. What you call as my body is an accumulation of food. What you call as my mind is accumulation of impressions and experiences that we have gathered. Anything you accumulate can be yours. It cannot be you. I can say, this vessel is mine. That itself is problematic. But if I say it's me, then you know I've lost it. This is all that's happened.

Because the stage upon which you're supposed to dance has become a quicksand. Karma is the stage that you have. You as a person, you as Jonathan, as a person, exists only because of your karmic memory. If you just wipe it out, there is no this person anymore, isn't it? So, your person, your persona, the basis of who you are is just the complex amalgamation of all these memories. This is the stage upon which you can dance and live. But now, because of your identities, the stage can become sticky and won't allow you to dance or worse, you can just sink into the stage and unnecessarily suffer this immensely. See, right now, human suffering, I don't know to what extent you are exposed

because in New York City, people walk without looking at each other. But every day, I am with thousands of people. The variety of sufferings that human beings have created for themselves is unbelievable. Unbelievable. How many ways they have learned to suffer.

When you really look at it, what is all this? Essentially, the problem is just this. They do not know how to handle their own faculties. What happened ten years ago, they still suffer. What may happen day after tomorrow, it simply means you are not suffering life. You are suffering two most important faculties of being human. One is vivid sense of memory. Another is a fantastic sense of imagination. This is what you are suffering. If you did not have these two things, if you did not have such a vivid sense of memory, human life would not be so

rich. You would be like any other creature probably. Nobody has as much capability for memory and the detail of memory as a human being has. Because of that, we are able to project it as imagination. But both these fantastic faculties, we suffer and we think there's something wrong with life. Essentially, we are misunderstanding psychological process for existential. Can I read a poem that I wrote about Manhattan when I was there? Please. Manhattan.

Like termite mounds, these dwellings of humans rise. Like termite mounds, these dwellings of humans rise. Like termite mounds these dwellings of humans rise. Every one of his own purpose lives and walks this busy mace. Every one of his own purpose lives and walks this busy mace. Many a good man has lived and died, held in the spell of this dizzy haze. Many a good man has lived and died, held in the spell of this dizzy haze. The lure of the mace transcends all class and grade. The lure of the mace transcends all class and grade. The prostitute and the saint,

the musician and the actor, and of course the slick businessman, all, all come to do their own trade. The prostitute and the saint, the musician and the actor, and of course, the slick businessman, all come to do their own trade. If you walk a mile, you can smell it, all the stench of prosperity and poverty, food and filth, sin and sainthood, life and death. If you walk a mile, you can smell it all, the stench of prosperity and poverty, food and filth, sin and sainthood, life and death.

Manhattan. I hope I've done some justice to your city. It certainly paints a big part of the picture. You know, when you describe it that way and also when we zoom the lens out in the context of this larger conversation, what I'm curious about is, what we're really talking about to a certain extent also

is consciousness, is awareness and choice and understanding that every thought, every interaction, every breath that we take adds to that karmic record, adds to the imprint, to whatever that may be. We exist today in nearly every country, certainly in the US, in a culture where there are certain systems, certain rules that lift up certain people and that would oppress people on a systemic level. And people are born into these systems, how does the notion of karma,

how does the notion of choice, of free will, of conscious action and self-determination interact with the notion of the lived experience of millions of people who walk through each day in a system that feels inherently unequal and unfair. See, is it not true in this country, people who are seen as slaves, who are in largely chains and were made to work like animals, took their karma into their hands, that today, at least by law, they are on equal footing, at least by law. In social practice, it still might not have been achieved, but by law, they have become equal. So, if they did not take charge of their karma, if they just thought this is the way it is…

I think Amanda Gorman, I just heard her once, the poet. So in one line that struck me when she read that poem that day is, Just ease is not justice. Once you understand that, will you not take your karma into your hands? Past karma, you cannot change. Nobody can fix an yesterday. Today, you can only experience it the way it is.

But tomorrow has to be created. So, karma is the most dynamic way to exist because you come to terms with everything that's over and you experience it the way it is right now. Only if you experience what is there right now, the existential reality of what is there right now,

you can plan your tomorrow how it should be. If you are too muddled by the past, you cannot create a tomorrow. It's important we understand yesterday cannot be fixed. Today can only be experienced. Tomorrow has to be created. Well, when there is a system, you must understand a system means it's either one single wheel, like solar system we call it. It's either one single wheel, like solar system we call it. It's either one single planet or many planets.

So, either one single wheel or many, many, many gear wheels depends on the complexity of the system. Some will learn to ride the wheel. Some will get crushed by the wheel. This is the nature of a system. Now, how to create a system where maximum number of people will ride and very few people will be crushed is all we can look at. Is there a wheel that everybody will learn to ride? No.

Such a thing has not happened till now. In some utopian world, if it happens, it's fantastic. But it's not happened till now. It is just that we must just strive that maximum number of people will learn to ride the wheel rather than be crushed by the wheel. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. One of the tools that you talk about as a way to step into a place of, I was about to use the word agency, but agency implies identity. So now I'm questioning everything, which is probably a good thing.

That's a very good thing. I must tell you, when I was young, I barely went to school. I just somehow went through the university without ever being in those classes. But all I had was, I had a cloud of billion questions. So, always there was a dark cloud, unanswered billion questions hanging around. I think now when I look back, that was the greatest asset I had because I questioned just everything, including my own existence. Yeah.

One of the tools for both questioning, I guess, and reorganizing is karma yoga, which functions, I guess, on three levels, the physical body, the mental body, and the energetic body. Tell me more about how these tools interact with the notion of karma and how they work with each other.

What a body means is, today in English language, at least, we use it this way, we say a body of work. Essentially, somewhere, either consciously or unconsciously, we understand body is an accumulation of memory. Why? Let's say an animal's body is the way it is, why our body is the way it is, that is the kind of memory it has in its evolutionary process. This is the kind of memory we have in our evolutionary process. This is why this form, this is why this shape and everything else, all the possibilities. So, when we… in yoga, we have no such thing as body and mind as modern language is talking about.

There are only bodies – physical body, mental body, energetic body, etheric body, bliss body. There are only bodies. Everything is body. So, are there five separate bodies? No, no. There is only one body. It is a composite of these five things that this body has become. If this body did not have energy, if this body did not have mind, if this body did not have the other aspect, we would say it is a dead body. Isn't it? It is a body because all these aspects are there integrated. That is why this is

a full-fledged body right now. So, these are just bodies. Are they sitting separately and interacting? No. You cannot touch one without touching the other. There's simply no other way. See, right now, if I touch my hand like this, my right hand touches my left hand. Without my mental function, without my energetic function, is it possible for me to feel this hand upon this hand? Simply not possible, isn't it? So, they're not really of separate existence, only for the sake of understanding, because human intellect tries to understand everything. And the nature of the intellects is this.

See, suppose I ask you, do you want your intellect sharp or blunt? Everybody will say sharp. Why? Because we understand it can only penetrate life by dissection. It's a knife. It has to cut through everything. So, by cutting through everything, you can know certain things. But there's a whole lot of life you cannot know by dissection. Well, there's somebody very dear to you and you want to know them fully, so will you dissect them? The moment you dissect them, even mentally, they will go away. They will be no more close to you.

At least within yourself, they may not know. But within you, they will never be close to you because you have dissected them. Ah, there is another way to know. This whole problem has happened because our education systems are using only one dimension of intelligence, which we call as intellect. Intellect can only function with the accumulated data. Intellect further perpetuates your karmic limitations because it functions with the limited data and gives you a projection of permutations and combinations which makes you feel you don't have to go anywhere else. Everything is right here.

See, people are doing this. If you read ten books, you become a scholar. If you read one book, you become a representative of God. This is happening everywhere in the world because the moment you accumulate certain knowledge and identify with it, your intellect makes you feel like you know it all. Everything has been perceived because it functions within the accumulated data that you have. Or in other words, essentially, it creates a false impression that your psychological reality is existential yeah that lands as true um you know i i think the people the question on my mind the question on probably a lot of people

listening to this and probably a lot of people you interact with on a regular basis is these ideas all resonate. And what do I do with them? Where do I go from here? It makes sense to me, but what now? See, it settles a little bit of your curiosity for the day. That's not the answer. Because tomorrow morning, see, this is the nature of the mind. If you evolve it to one point with certain number of answers, it will raise the

next level of questions. And then it will be deeply disappointed because it's not able to get any purchase in that arena of questions. So, let's not jump into conclusion so quickly. All I'm saying is, it's very important that every human being understands the mechanics of how I'm existing right now as a person. You can think your brains out as much as you want, how creation happened, how the cosmos happened. Well, you will only do guesswork because you have no substance, all right? You have no data about it.

But how this person happened, the way he or she is, for this there is all data right here. The question is, can you access it? So, there are ways to access it. There are methods with which you can access it. I must tell you this. I'm going to speak something which people may just dismiss as rubbish or I hope they will start looking little deeper into their lives. Because I'm entering a land which is not logically correct.

I have a reputation of being very logical. When this experience happened when I was twenty-five years of age, in a few weeks, a massive amount of memory came my way. That kind of memory which could have broken my mind, you know, I was like totally gone in the sense, I must tell you this. That day when this thing blew up in my face like that, I sat there from 3 to 18 in the afternoon till about 7.30, 7.45 like this, and I thought it's only 10-15 minutes and tears were flowing in my eyes for the first time.

As an adult, I'm shedding tears. Tears and me were impossible. I just lived like this. But here, I am just melting away like that. Then, that was a day, you know, like I was… I had built a few businesses and one of them was a construction company. And in four years, four and a half years' time, we were doing extremely well. Everybody clapping their hands that we were doing extremely well,

everybody clapping their hands that you're doing so well and all that stuff. So, I went on my motorcycle and I parked in front of the… our office, which was there in one of the main streets in Mysore city. And my partner was sitting and negotiating something with somebody. I stood there, I didn't turn off my motorcycle and I don't know if you are interested in such things or your people are. Those days, we rode the Czechoslovakian motorcycles where we kept the idling at zero always. That is, without revving, you can't keep the engine on. If you just cut the throttle, it'll go off because it's arranged like that.

That's part of something else. So, I'm just doing run, run, run and sitting there, just watching this whole transaction happening. Suddenly, something that I built this business with such involvement, suddenly it was so far away, I couldn't even think of walking into the office and sitting there and start that negotiation process with buyers and sellers and whatever works. So, I just engaged the gear and left.

So, my partner was looking at me, what happened, why I'm leaving. I just left. There's a beautiful lake in the city. I went and sat at the edge of the lake. I sat there till about 11.15, 11.30 in the night because I didn't want to go home and face my mother. Well, I could face everybody else because suddenly, everything and everybody who were so much a part of my life, suddenly they were all looking like faraway people. So, with this faraway look in my eyes, I didn't want to look at my mother.

So I waited till it's late enough and then I quietly went, switched off the engine and pushed the motorcycle inside so that she doesn't hear my coming. And then I slipped into the house. But you know these Indian mothers, she's still waiting. She won't go to bed without serving food. So, she came and I just looking down, not looking at her face and just gobbled up something and I left. Why I'm saying this is, suddenly everything which was my life till then, suddenly was like some other faraway story, simply because the volume of memory that

descended upon me… Because everything that you call as your life is by memory right now, isn't it? Who is your friend? Who is your foe? Who is this? Who is that? Everything by memory. Suppose I download hundred times more memory into you right now, that you have right now, well, suddenly, this memory becomes one percent. What was hundred percent of your life becomes one percent. That's what happened to me. So, at that time, if I did not have a very resilient mind, I can clearly see I could have broken.

It's very much possible because the volume of experiences and memory that kind of descended on me was of such volume such immense volume and it descended with such force that it just knocked out everything that was everything to me till that moment so

this needs to be done properly this needs to be addressed properly it is not to… It's not good to make quick conclusions about this. Okay, this is karma. I will change this. I will change that. No, that's not the way.

I would advise people to spend… Your life is worthwhile. You are a worthwhile being. If you are a worthwhile being, you must spend a little bit of time upon this one, not upon gathering this, gathering that. In America, whoever I ask, they're all busy. I say, what are you busy about? Oh, we got to pay bills.

Sir, why did you make so many bills? Oh, that I can't help. It's a compulsive process. See, the very idea of achieving certain level of affluence is, either in individual life or in the life of a nation is, so that we can choose what to do and what not to do. If every day, if I have to go back, go and do some menial job to earn my bread for the day, I have no choices. The idea of seeking affluence is that you will have choices. But today, you ask anybody, by the time they're 30,

you ask, what is your condition? I have a student loan, I have a car loan, I have a house loan, and second house on the lake I have bought, so for that loan. And how many years? 35-40 years. So, even if the greatest thing happens in your life, you can't change the direction of your life. You know, people say that, you know, there's some people talking about, next time Jesus comes, he will come in America. I said, that is fine. If he comes in America, it'll be great for you. But first time he came, he said, come follow me. Only twelve people followed and one guy freaked, all right? This time, if he comes in America and says, come follow me,

how can you go? You got to line up at the bank. Wherever you go, your debtors are going to catch you and take you back. They will not let you follow him. Because you have structured your life like this, you have ruled out all possibilities. The very benefit and the privilege of having affluence in a society is

that you are going this way, if you find something very significant this way, you can go this way. If you find something, say, very significant this way, you can go this way. All these choices people have eliminated simply because they're just raising the bar of their survival in such a way that they're selling away their freedom. As I said in the very beginning, because they fear freedom. At least the bankers must be chasing you.

If nobody else is chasing you, then you feel good. And it gets back to what we were talking about in the beginning of our conversation, which is we work so hard to get to that place in life where we believe that we'll finally be able to buy ourselves back into the state in which we existed when we were young children. And it's a little bit strange. You wrote something in this recent book. You wrote, the miracle that I am, the miracle that

I want to manifest on this planet is that it is possible to be involved and immersed and engaged in this world and yet remain untouched by it. This for me is the only miracle that counts, which I think kind of ties into what we're talking about to a certain extent. This is a thing that people always ask me because people are seeing me as a guru, a spiritual leader. Sadhguru, all the other spiritual leaders are performing miracles. You're not doing anything. You're just putting us Sadhguru, all the other spiritual leaders are performing miracles. You are not doing anything, you are just putting us to work all the time. Yes, I am. See right now, let's say I will produce a pigeon from my pocket, I'll pull out a pigeon

from my pocket. What happened? Well, I'll give it to you. You have a bird, I have a shitty pocket. What else has happened, I'm asking. Now, I can ditch you away, where I can show you today, hundreds of people around me.

In the last five or ten years' time, they've not had a moment of anxiety, moments of agitation, anger, freaking out. Nothing has happened. But they're fully active, engaged, handling complex situations all the time. But they are free from this thing. This is a miracle we need, that human beings have necessary freedom within themselves. When I say freedom, see, suppose I try to determine what headphones you must use,

what microphone you must use, what kind of clothes you must wear, what food you must eat, you will say, this is slavery, I don't want this nonsense. But now, if you come to a state that somebody can decide whether you can be happy or unhappy, somebody decides whether you can be peaceful or not. Isn't this the most abject slavery? Free nation.

Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So sitting here in this somewhat cross-country container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Well, if you're exuberant and ecstatic, everything is good life. Whatever. Right now with this pandemic, everybody's complaining.

I know people will hate me for this. In India, especially now, the situation is unfortunately grim. See there is life and lifestyle. Right now, you're too identified and committed to your lifestyle and you're butchering your life. I'm saying, the most precious thing that you have is life. That is what you should be identified with. That is what you should be absolutely committed to.

Lifestyle is a consequence of the times in which we exist. Well, as we already said, if we were thousand years ago, well, you would be an American caveman, I would be an Indian caveman and we would be fine. Hello? You think they were not fine? They were fine actually. So, we would also be fine. So, essentially, your commitment, is it to your life or is it your lifestyle?

The beauty about being committed to life is, when I'm committed to life that I am, I'm committed to every life because that's a natural consequence. See, when we sit here, this is my body, that's your body. This is my mind, that's your mind. They'll never be one. Do what you want. But there is no such thing as my life and your life. You captured some, I captured some, but it's the same life. So, if your identification and commitment is for your life, naturally you're absolutely inclusive. If your identification and commitment is to your lifestyle, you become very exclusionist. Hmm. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you very much. Namaskar. having his brain studied by neuroscientists, was kind of dubbed with a smile, the world's happiest man.

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because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Apple Watch Series 10 ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual

results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Time and actual results will vary.