Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 46: Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Renowned Indian Yogi and Mystic

Episode Date: November 16, 2016

Born and raised in India, Sadhguru says he spent his childhood and adolescence as a "super skeptic" who didn’t grow up "with anything spiritual or religious." He spent his days crisscrossing the country on his motorcycle, he launched successful businesses, but then he had an experience in his 20s that changed the direction of his life forever. Sadhguru is now a world renowned yogi and mystic who talks about how ancient yogic practices can be relevant and helpful in contemporary times. He's the founder of the Isha Foundation and the author of "Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Okay, we got somebody very interesting for you this week. His name is Saad Guru. He comes from a tradition that I have not spent much time exploring. I really have spent more time

in the sort of either Buddhism or secular mindfulness world. This guy is a full-on guru from India, but not your typical guru. He rides motorcycle, plays sports, but also has a large vibrant following and a best-selling book on his hands called Inner Engineering, which was edited by the woman who's gonna be editing my next three books. So she introduced me to Saaguru. Extremely interesting, dude. And I think I think you'll get a kick out of him and learn something too, so I give you said guru. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ In reading your book, you tell a story that I want to get you to retell just so that people have a sense of who you are. At a pretty early age,

if I recall correctly, I think in your early 20s, you made a trip up a hill in your hometown in India and had an experience that you say, changed your entire life. Can you describe that? Simia's a person never was in any way connected with anything spiritual or religious for that matter. So I, right from my very early childhood, I grew up as a skeptic, and as I progressed into youth, I became a super skeptic. As I crossed my teens into 20s, I became a super, super skeptic. I did not grow up on anything spiritual or religious, for that matter. And also being fed by European philosophers like Kamu, Kavka and Dostavsky and this kind of stuff,

my skepticism got reinforced by all these things. But I've been practicing yoga since I was 12 years of age. But not in a spiritual way. No. I went into yoga for all the wrong reasons. I saw a man who was over 80 years of age who was almost physically like a superman when I met him at the age of 11 which so impressed me that I went and asked him how to be like this. He said, come into yoga and he thought me something very simple and I just kept up that stuff. It definitely set me apart both physically and mentally

in any group of people. But spiritual thing was not even on my mind, I was not looking for anything like that. So this afternoon, I, you know, in my shore, the small town in southern India, there is a tradition that if we want to test our motorcycles, we went up Chamundi hill. If we fell in love, we went up Chamundi hill. If we fell out, we had to go up Chamundi hill. If we had nothing to do, we went to Chamundi hill. Between two business meetings, by then I crisscrossed India on my motorcycle.

Only the national borders had stopped me because I didn't have the necessary documentation to cross. So I made up my mind, I'll make enough money and get the needed stuff and I'll ride away. Because nothing around me made sense to me, kind of. None of the things that people were pursuing around me, been made anything to me, so I just want to ride away and see. In the process, I started one business and it became very successful. I started another one, half a dozen things were going all successful.

When everything that you're doing is successful and everybody's clapping their hands for you, slowly the planet started going around me instead of the sun. So, I, apart from being super skeptic, I became a bit cocky. So, one afternoon, between two business meetings, when there was nothing to do, I just naturally wrote up, I didn't even think about it. I just wrote up Chamundi Hill. I know this hill while I parked up and went up there and sat. Till that moment, my experience was this, that is this physical me, is me, and that somebody is somebody else. I have no issues with anybody, I'm very happy, I'm successful, everything is going great. But that is somebody else and that's not my business.

But suddenly I did not know which is me and which is not me. What was me was just all over the place. The very rock upon which I was sitting, the air that I was breathing, that atmosphere around me. What was me had exploded into everything. I thought this madness lasted for 10-15 minutes, but when I came back to my normal senses about four and a half hours had passed. I, time had just flipped in my experience for the first time in my adult life, tears. Me and tears were impossible. And here I am

sitting this entire four and a half hours tears have been flowing, my shirt is all wet. I was dripping ecstasy. Every cell in my body was just bursting, exploding with ecstasy. So after some time when I shake my hand and ask my skeptical mind, what's happening to me? The only thing that my mind would say is maybe you're going off the rocker. When I asked my closest friends, the only questions that came to me is, did you drink something, did you pop something, this kind of stuff? There was no context for what was happening within me. All I knew was, I've hit a gold mine, this much I knew.

In a staying there for a few days like this, in an absolutely ecstatic state, to such a point, what I thought two minutes would be like seven, eight hours gone. Sometimes days passed away without me knowing. I'm just sitting there and days would just pass away. I wouldn't know. So when I realized that, this is something that is possible for every human being. People must have thought you lost your mind. My family had little problems coming to terms with it,

but at the same time, my mother saw something significant was happening to me. See, in India, for me, it was fresh. I had never heard about it, nor I knew about it, because I grew up in a completely different atmosphere, but in India, generally people are conscious of this, that yogis sit somewhere and they don't get up for days and sometimes months on end. This is something that is there in the common culture, but I grew up in such an

exclusive, you know, very westernized kind of set up. And there was no any kind of spiritual or religious atmosphere in our homes. So, I was completely ignorant or innocent of it, but it was generally there. People started gathering, thinking something is happening, they wanted miracles to happen and that kind of stuff. But as far as I was concerned, I thought, if I just sit here, and if I don't mess with my mind, I just drip ecstasy. I thought, this is all. I made a plan, the fool that I was at that time, that in maybe in three years' time, I'm going to make the entire world ecstatic. It's 34 years now. Hmm. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha They are not going to give up their investment unless you create sufficient incentive, sufficient understanding into them, they are not going to walk back. And be able to create this within themselves, every human being is capable of this.

When it comes to external situations, all of us may be differently capable. But when it comes to inner situations, all of us are equally capable because all of us are endowed with the same stuff. But unfortunately, most people don't do it. But today I can say that a million of people around the world, if they're as much as close their eyes, tears of ecstasy will dribble down. I can show you any number of people today like this. So I want to talk about other people soon.

But let me stick with you. I'm using the term in quotes because I think if I understand your story, well, you're sense of you exploded in a sense, you're in a sense of there being an eye. But can you just tell me a little bit more about what you think in 34 years later, what was happening on that hill? What happened to you?

Was that an experience of enlightenment? So the word yoga means just this yoga means union. I know in York City it means something else. It means little lemon pants Yoga means union union means as you sit here you're breathing You're breathing what it means is on one level. What you exhale, the trees are inhaling. What the trees exhale, you're inhaling. Or in other words, one half of your lungs are hanging out there on the tree. That's what it means.

This is not knowing intellectually. Suppose you experience, as you breathe, you experience the connection between you and the tree, then we say you are in yoga. This is not just about the tree. Every particle in your body is in constant communication with the entire cosmos. If this comes into your experience, today modern physics is saying this, but if this comes into your living experience, then we say you are in yoga or you are a yogi. If you bend and twist and turn, that's not called yoga, that's called asana. Asana. Yes, that means a post-chana.

A post-chana, right. So, I got it. So, you think you had an experience, or you're saying you had an experience of union. Yoga. Yoga. Yes. Oneness with the universe, would that be another way to say it? Yes, it is. And it is that experience which is propelled all these things, because I'm completely

uneducated in terms of spirituality. I've never had a scripture in my life, I've never been to a teacher, but this is just an outpouring of my experience. Your whole career, subsequent to that, is an outpouring of your experience. I don't have a career, I just, I'm just pulling it around with the world, just trying to rub off what happened to me on everybody else. Okay, so, okay, what could I, I mean, it sounds great, the idea that I could close my eyes and tears of ecstasy would drip out.

How, I have this rare opportunity, I'm sitting across from you, what do I do to get that? So it's just this, that is accumulated stuff. One is your body. This is an accumulation of food that you've eaten. Another is your mind. Some of a walking cheeseburger right now. It depends what you consume.

This is a heap of food. What you call as my mind is a heap of impressions that have happened. Between these two heaps, there is no experience of yourself. Between these two heaps, there is no experience of yourself. Most people experience their thought, emotion, ideas, opinions and prejudices as themselves. These are all accumulated stuff. What you accumulate can be yours, can never ever be you. Just because you may be sitting in front of this microphone for many hours a day, and after some time, if you start thinking that I am the microphone, then your company will say, he needs treatment.

Yes. The same goes for your throat, the same goes for your face, the same goes for your head, and the same goes for your entire body. It is something that you slowly accumulated and started using. You are using it so constantly, you think you are that. If you can sit here, which we can give you simple tools with which you can do, if you can sit here, where your body is here, your mind is out there and what is you, is little away. Now suddenly this is the end of suffering.

There can be no suffering in this state because the only two varieties of suffering that you know in your life is physical or mental. If you create a little space between you and the body, a little space between you and what you consider as your mind, this is the end of suffering. Only when there is no room for suffering, that there is no fear of suffering, you will walk your life full-stried. Otherwise, the fear of suffering has crippled humanity in a huge way. So walking or traversing the peaks of human consciousness happens because you lost the fear of suffering. So all of that sounds incredibly interesting, very intriguing. Can

you talk to me a little bit about the simple tools that you mentioned that would allow me to experience what you're describing? The simplest tool would be if you can constantly remind yourself that what your body is a piece of the planet that you slowly gathered, your mind is just the exposure that you've had. If you are in a constant state of reminder that I'm not this body, I'm not this mind, if this becomes a living reality, you will explore into an ecstatic state. But it's not going to happen right away, because I see the truth of what you're saying, but I'm not an ecstatic state. I'm an engaged and interested state, but not ecstatic.

It doesn't take time. I created a device which is called a Shambhavi which takes about 28 to 30 hours of committed time to deliver. That is what is worldwide going on in engineering, where a focused time of 28 to 30 hours, we teach people how to turn inward, beyond body, beyond mind. This is what has created over 100 million people around the world who have a deep experience

and they keep up this process because in the morning when they sit, everything is settled for them. So, what is this device you talked about? It's called an engineering. Inner engineering, which is the name of your new book, edited by Julie Grau, who's editing my next three books. So she's going to be in my life for a while.

So the device is called Don't Let The Cut Up Everything. We're looking at her because she's in the next room right now. I won't let her cut up everything, although I don't know if I have a choice. Separatopic. So the device you mentioned, inner engineering is a physical device or is a teaching tool. It's a subjective tool, gotcha.

And it takes 28 to 30 hours of what? See, one thing is to bring a certain understanding, because there is too much misunderstanding about what you, what is you and what is not you. The moment you assume something that is not you as yourself, obviously everything has gone off. You will not have to put it simply of all the gadgets that you find, I you see a lot of this room is full of gadgets of all this, the most sophisticated gadget is the human mechanism, but I'm asking you have you read the user's manual. So this is like a user's manual for this gadget, understanding how to use it, because the only and only reason people may give many exotic names to use it, because the only and only reason, people may give many exotic names to these things, all kinds of suffering from stress, to anxiety, to depression, to madness, to every kind of stuff.

But the only thing that's happened is, your own intelligence has turned against you. There is nothing else. So in other words, you know from the evolutionary process, I'll make it very simplistic. Charles Darwin went about describing maybe a deer could have become a giraffe, maybe a pig could have become an elephant in so many millions of years, but among he became a human being rather quickly. And to such a point, so quickly that anthropologists believe there could be a missing link somewhere. In terms of DNA, they say, I'm not a scientist, but some people are saying that the DNA difference between a human being and

a chimpanzee is only 1.23%. So physiologically that's how close we are towards chimpanzee. But in terms of our intelligence and awareness we are worlds apart from a chimpanzee. Or in other words you have an intelligence for which you don't have a stable enough base. So inner engineering is about creating that stable base within you, where your intelligence will work for you, not never against you. You may call it stress, you may call it anxiety, you may call it whatever, but essentially your intelligence is working against you.

If it worked for you, you will generate joy. And the tools in this interengineering program, they just wrap this is it helps you stabilize your attention, stabilize your, stabilize the platform which houses this intelligence. So your body too. Yes, of course. See, there is no in the yogic way of looking at things, there is no separate body and mind. Because there is more memory and more intelligence in every cell in your body than your entire brain put together, actually. For example, how your great-great-great-grandfather, ten generations ago ago was, obviously you don't remember, but

his nose is sitting on your face. How your forefathers were a million years ago, your body still remembers. Of course, your mind cannot remember, isn't it? So in terms of memory and intelligence, the number of chemical reactions the body is conducting per second is just astronomical. All this is happening because there is a deeper dimension of intelligence because we're misunderstanding just intellect as intelligence, human beings are suffering enormously. If other dimensions of intelligence which are functioning you, functioning within you become

accessible to you, suddenly life is just a play, you can just handle it effortlessly. As I told you, my schedule's run like this, people ask, where is the rest? You only, if you're suffering something, you want a break. Oh, I should explain because that was before we started rolling, but I was asking you about your crazy schedule, you're on this 28- city tour or something like that of the US and then you're on your way back to speak to executives at General Electric in India

and you have this crazy schedule. And I asked you if you were stressed and you said it's not a problem. And so that's an outgrowth of your understanding. It's not a crazy crazy schedule. It's a very effective way of using my time. I'm putting 20 hours of activity per day, seven days of the week. I am not one of those thing, God, it's Friday, because I'm creating something that I love to do.

So where is the question of becoming stressed? Maybe sometimes physical exhaustion is there that can be dealt with. Have you raised any children? Yes. And having a toddler around the house as I do, never made you stressed? No. Because I never treated my girl as a toddler. I treated her as an adult.

So I would even do this to her. You know, as a rule, I made it clear to everybody around me, nobody should teach her anything. Nobody thought her anything. By the time she was eighteen months old, she was speaking three languages very fluently, just picking it up from people. I told them nobody even teaches her ABCR 123, nothing. So when she was thirteen, she grew up very joyfully without being messed by me. When she was thirteen, she was disturbed about something in the school and she came back

and she said, you're teaching everybody so many things, you're not telling me anything. Then I said, see, I don't do anything unsolicited, you come now, all right? So this is all you need to know. You never look up to anything. Never look down on anything. That's all it takes. The moment you look up to something, you will naturally look down on something else. This is a prejudiced mind.

This will mess you up over a period of time. You don't look up to anything. You don't look down on anything. This means you see everything just the way it is. You will navigate your life effortlessly. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up.

Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out

how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. But let me just give that to this issue of stress, because I was watching, I have that 18 month old, maybe it's 20 month old, whatever. I was watching him the other day, completely naked, because we couldn't get his diaper on, because he was in the middle of a temper tantrum standing in front of the door They wanted us to open for reasons that I still cannot understand howling for a good, you know 15 to 20 minutes and

I went from annoyance to then laughing at him and then to like real stress over the fact that does he have an emotional disability of some sort? And I, you know, I'm pretty serious about meditation. I would not call myself an adept, but I do take it seriously and I was stressed. So I don't understand how anybody,

no matter how much meditation or whatever, cannot be stressed in a moment like that. A 20 month old child must be naked. He has no business to wear clothes. Unfortunately, we are messing him up. Yeah, but you don't put a diaper on a kid. You want to just piss in all of the place? You can't have that.

You don't know that. Yes, he would. He definitely does. I watched, I walked into the nursery other day and he was standing next to his nanny, peeing on her leg with the look of unbelievable beatific happiness on his face. He said, I don't know, your child might have been a better behaved child than my barbarian. It is not, no child is

special or not special. It is just that there is a certain stage of life when certain things will be done. We don't want that to be done. We want them to grow up tomorrow morning. That's a wrong way. If you have a little plant, you nurture it. You don't treat it like a tree, do you? If you have a little puppy, you treat it like a puppy, not like a big dog. Why not a child? The same thing goes.

I'm not trying to get him to grow up. What I'm saying is it seems to me you're in your book and in some of your statements here, you are, you talk about the dis-utility of stress that there's not, it's not useful to be stressed. It doesn't get you anything. But I feel like there's an inevitability to stress just as a reaction to life. It can be from... This is the choice you have. People think stress just as a reaction to life. It can be from...

This is the choice you have. People think stress is a part of their life. It is not. It is just that they don't know a thing about their own thought and their own emotion. It amazes me how people live for so many years and they still don't figure how to handle their thought and emotion. If you knew how to handle your mind and body, you wouldn't cause stress to yourself. Stress makes you inefficient.

It doesn't make you efficient. There is substantial medical evidence to show you that your body and brain functions at its best only when you are in a pleasant state of experience. Now the situations that we face in our lives, they will never happen 100% the way we want them, never ever. But our inner situation at least must happen the way we want it. The world will not happen your way, and I'm glad it is so because if everything happened your way, where do I go?

Where does everybody else go? Oh, the outside world will never, ever happen 100% your way. Even if you're just two or now you're three people in the family, it'll never happen 100% your way. If it's happening 51% your way, you have the controlling stake, you must enjoy it. But what happens within you must be your way, you have the controlling stake, you must enjoy it. But what happens within you must be your way, isn't it? Stress means even you're not happening the way you want. Forget about the world. If you don't happen the way you want, you're an accidental being,

isn't it? When you exist as an accident, anxiety is natural. You're talking about how to react to life. Why are we thinking of reacting to life? Right now for most people, life has become a compulsive reaction. The significance of being human is, we are not any different from any other creature. We do the same things, we eat, we sleep, we reproduce and we die one day. Only thing is we can conduct all of this consciously when the other creatures do the same things instinctively or in a reactive way. The fundamental thing about being human is you can handle every aspect of your life consciously.

If you handled your thought and emotion consciously, would you be stressful or blissful? So I know you want a short answer, but I'm not going to give you one. The I think I fully am on board with the wisdom of responding thoughtfully instead of reacting blindly. I did say thoughtfully, consciously, I apologize for using the wrong word, but I'm on board with it anyway. And I think that... No, why I'm correcting this is, this has happened to the world today, particularly to the Western world, where you think your thought is supreme. But what I'm telling you is, your thought is coming out of a limited data that you have gathered. your thought is coming out of a limited data that you have gathered. Every new situation that comes about which you have no information,

you will be stressed. This is the nature of the thought. So you're employing only that dimension of your intelligence. The other dimensions of intelligence have not even been touched. It's like you try to drive your car on one wheel. What are the other dimensions? Now, if you try to drive your car on one wheel. What are the other dimensions? No, if you try to drive your car on one wheel, it's going to be very stressful for you and everybody else on the street.

I get that. But what are the other three wheels? See, we look at it this way. There is intellect and there is identity and there is a silo of memory, which has eight different dimensions of memory, starting from atomic memory, of memory, which has eight different dimensions of memory, starting from atomic memory, elemental memory, evolutionary memory, sensory memory, articulate memory, inarticulate memory,

karmic memory, like this eight different dimensions of memory are there. This memory is super washed. This body knows the very nature of this planet. Otherwise, it cannot exist. Otherwise, it can't make itself from a piece of, you know, you take a piece of something and make this body out of there. It's just the soil in one way or dada. People will only understand this when they go to the grave,

but actually it is just a little bit of soil we picked up in the form of food and we made this body, it's the same stuff. This has happened this way because there's an incredible amount of memory in this which makes all this happen. And there is another dimension of intelligence which is unsullied by memory, there is no Iota of memory in this. We must understand this, memory is a great thing when it comes to survival. But memory is also a boundary. It is only through your memory. Right now, I remember Dan, my friend. This is my boundary. I remember another guy there. He is not my friend because he is not in my memory.

So this is my nation, this is my race, this is my religion, this is my community. How did this come? It's just your memory. So memory is a great possibility when it comes to survival. But once you come as a human being, survival is never good enough. When it's in question, it's a big deal. But once it's taken care of, it doesn't mean anything to you. Because human being wants to expand limitlessly, memory means a boundary.

So there is a dimension of intelligence within you, which is beyond all memory. The moment you touch this, being blissful, being ecstatic is a natural process. Okay, so I'll go back to my other questions as I was asking earlier, how do you touch this? What is the thing you can do that would get you there? So first thing is to turn inward.

When I say turn inward, we are not talking about dissection or contemplation or anything like this because body and mind are seen as external to you because this is something that you gathered. What you gather is an external phenomena, isn't it? So when we talk about turning inward, the problem right now is this. Everything that you are perceiving right now in the world, you know that you are here, you know there's a world around you only because you can see here, smell, taste and touch. The five senses. These five senses, in the very nature of things,

they're outward bound. You can see what's around you, but you can't roll your eyeballs in, and you can scan yourself. You can just hear this, but so much activity in this body you cannot hear. Even if a little ant crawls upon your hand, you can feel it. But so much blood flowing, you cannot feel it, because sense organs are outward bound. These are instruments of survival. With this, you're trying to live your entire life. When human consciousness and human being is not focused on survival, once it's taken care of, he wants to expand. How much expansion, if you look at it, he doesn't matter where

you are, you still want to expand, isn't it? Suppose you get to broadcast your show to the entire world, all the seven billion people heard it, but then you would like to reach people if they're people in Mars, you would like to get to them, isn't it? Of course, yes. You know, even to the other galaxies you would like to. Because this is the nature of being human, because you want to expand limitlessly. We're insatiable. This limitless expansion is possible only when you touch a dimension of intelligence which is beyond memory, because memory is a boundary. With a boundary you're trying to go limitless.

All you're doing is either conquest or ambition or simply shopping or whatever only trying to you're trying to get to the infinite and installments. It's a very constipated approach. So what's the better approach? The better approach is to turn inward, beyond body, beyond mind, because anything that is beyond survival will not come naturally. One has to strive. That's why I said, 28 to 30 hours of focused time.

And where do we do this? How do we access these teaching? This is your ashram. This is offered all over the world in many, many cities, in America or 50 cities we are offering this program, apart from that it's available online as a preparatory step on one full day in real time. So the book is also the effort in this direction, so that one more small step, one part of the program you take by yourself, even that part will work by itself.

It's a complete thing by itself, the book. But once you know, once you have an understanding that this is what my problem is, then you can take other steps. But this is a step by itself. Understanding itself will relieve you quite a bit. But after the 28 to 30 hours, is that enough to close my eyes and then cry ecstasy?

Yes. Just 21 minutes a day. You close your eyes and sit. You see tremendous things will happen. But when do I get to the point where I'm crying out of Exacy? Right there in the 28 hours. Really?

Yes. So what is, let me, you talk about this early in the book, the guru thing. As you know, in the West, we have, we have, I think some people have an innate aversion to gurus. I don't know if that's because of bad publicity or because of distrust of charismatic religious leaders, but you're definitely Embracing the guru thing not only on the pages of this book

But also just in you know the way you look you've got the beard and the whole thing the beard is not does not grow on gurus It grows on all men. I know. Why the rest have removed, they must think about it. What's that? Why the rest of the men have removed, they must think about it.

You're doing something about your face every day. I'm doing nothing about it, but I'm being blamed for something. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying you're fully comfortable with the guru title. And I guess I'm, I wonder, you put up a robust defense of it in the book, so I'm wondering whether you're fully comfortable with Guru title and I guess I'm wondering

you put up a robust defense of it in the book so I'm wondering whether you can share some of that here. The word Guru means Guru means darkness. The rule means dispel. One who dispels your darkness. Among the gurus there are various types. So now I am being referred to as a Sadguru, this is not a title, this is a description. Suppose you want to go to your doctor, obviously you don't go to your pediatrician or a geriatric or somebody, you go to an appropriate doctor, how do you know he there's a description, but this is a cardiologist, this is this, this is that, whatever. Similarly, when you say Sadguru, it's a description. You don't go to a Sadguru because you want to know some scripture.

You don't go to a Sadguru because you want to know some other ritual or religion. You go to him because he does not know, he's uneducated. There's only one thing he knows. I know this piece of life from its origin to its ultimate. I am not a scholar, I am not educated. So, Sadguru is not a title, it's a description. But in today's world, in the Western world, especially, people may not realize this, they think this is some other kind of Guru. So Guru is not a, I know it is a four-letter word, but not that kind of word.

Not that kind. And do you expect, you know, because I think a lot of us when we hear the word guru, we think of adulation, worship, bowing down, kissing of feet. Is that the way people treat you? Because I got the sense when I met you, you like just shook my hand and you seemed pretty casual. But is that what is expected from you and for you in a religious context?

You think, is my feet? I won't be able to walk. It's not a good thing. Nothing is expected from my end. People are made different ways. Above all, cultures have taught them certain things. It's a cultural thing, more than anything. For example, in India, it's not just for a Guru. Any elder means people will bend down and touch their feet. If you want to walk out of your home, if your father is sitting there, you go touch his

feet and go. This is a very common thing everywhere. Now of course, the bending half and touching is knee. They're not going that far because most people can't bend. So this is not nothing to do with the Guru, this is a cultural thing. This part of the world, people think that this is only for a Guru. No, your mother, father, grandfather, whoever is there. This is done any elder in the house means you always, it's a way of showing your respect

to them. So do you understand why, or will or will me rephrase that? Why do you think there is on our side of the planet some reflexive mistrust about gurus? And what can you do to dispel that? I think many cultures have adopted this kind of attitude. Anything that you do not know must be wrong. If one thing is, if you think what you do not know cannot exist, that is a crown of ignorance. Today in America at least they are using the word Guru. Freely they are saying a golf Guru, they are saying a basketball guru, they're saying a business guru, all kinds of things They're using the word all over the place. It is just that they're using it little loosely

But I think there's nothing wrong about it. Maybe in the arena of business if somebody takes away your darkness Maybe he's your business guru If you don't know how to hit a ball and somebody thought you how to hit a ball straight Maybe he's your golf guru. I don't say anything to hit a ball and somebody thought you how to hit a ball straight, maybe he's your gov guru. I don't see anything wrong with that. And you are not what we would think of. Despite the fact that you have some superficial things that would... What is it?

No, no, let's come to this. You want me to invest on blades and razors. No, no, no, I like the beard. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying it looks like a guru thing. No, but I'm saying you wear it well. No, no, I could not get away with it. I'm saying a beard does not grow on a guru alone. Oh, I get all men, but gurus are more likely to wear the beard that way. Why, why is it that? Let's are from Brooklyn. Why is it that others have removed? This is something that

they must think about. Do you think I should grow a beard? No, I'm not saying you should or should not. But I'm saying you should know why you're removing it. Well, that's a fair question. That's a fair question. See, if I don't have a mirror in my home, okay? After 10 years, if you see me, I'll still look the same.

But you every day have to spend 10, 20 minutes in front of the mirror and of course someday you may bleed. Yeah, no, not uncommon. But okay, so just to get back, I wasn't, I didn't mean to go back to pick on you about the beard thing. What I meant to say is you are not the typical guru in every way because you're really into golf, for example,

I've seen videos of you driving around on a motorcycle and dirt bikes and you do all sorts of... I live on this planet. Yeah, you live on this planet in a full way. I did not drop from the heavens. I grew out of this planet, so I belong to this planet. Some people like to pretend like they're dropped from elsewhere. That's their problem. And you also, you are a teacher of people who are very much of this world. And for example, in the business community, as I understand it, you taught it. You spoke in a Google, at Harvard

Business School, as we discussed earlier, you're going to go speak to some people from general electric. How did that come about? And what is your message to people in the business world? My effort, especially in the last 20 years, I've been engaged with the business world in a big way in India and internationally. I've been at the economic forum and various other major economic summits in the world. The effort has been for me to move people because today businesses have grown, many businesses are as large as a nation by themselves, you know. They are big enough to be a nation. The important thing for me is to move them from their individual ambition to a larger vision

of creating well-being. I am not talking about charity, I am talking about structuring a business itself, the fundamental consciousness with which you operate, this has to change. At one point, at the economic forum, they asked me, looking at the nature of my work, said, Guru, what is it that we can do for you, that will change this world? I told them, see, I will name 25 people, give them to me for five days. You will see in two to three years time a significant change on this planet. They ask me who these 25 people are. I said, I named 25 heads of major nations on the planet.

Give them to me for five days. Because for the first time, for the very first time in the history of humanity, we have the necessary resource, necessary capability and necessary technology to address every human problem on the planet. Only thing that's missing is an inclusive consciousness, that you have not experienced the unity of life. Suppose you had experienced everything as myself, then we would have solved everything, for example, in 2012 they tell me, in that year,

some statistic show, that we produced enough food on this planet for 18.6 billion people. But we had only some 6.5 billion people on that day, but still half the people go hungry. Obviously somewhere, what is missing is human consciousness, not resource, not capability, not technology. Human beings are missing. I would love to be a fly on the wall during a four day retreat with you and the leaders of the 25 largest nations. That would be amazing.

If that happens, please invite me. The one company that I know is never going to invite you to speak is Gillette. You're never going there. Any other company? Fine. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. Before I let you go, though, is there anything that I missed, any point that you'd like to make that I didn't give you a chance to make. So today I'm here in United States. I've been traveling around the world for many years, but now I'm looking at it this way, that I'm trying to curtail my activity in the rest of the world except in India, and to spend significant amount of time in United States because United States has attained your leadership position in the world, not just militarily or politically like that.

See, for example, if you wear blue trousers, half the world is wearing blue trousers without knowing why. If you tear up your pants, they are also tearing up their pens. If you would carbon dioxide in a bottle and drink it, they are also drinking it. When the world is looking up to you like this, I think it's a tremendous privilege. And this must be conducted with responsibility. Today, in people's images, it may not be exactly true, but in the youth

of the rest of the world, if you say America, they think free-flowing alcohol. If you say America, they think drugs everywhere. If you say America, some wacky life that I can live. If you say America, people think war. It's time that we create this image for America. America means healthful living. America means joyful living. America means responsible living. America means a great way of life for everybody. If we set this up, the world is looking up to you.

See now you have a 20-month-old child. I'm sure the woman the child came in. at least a few things you try to reach. Because he's looking up to you. A little child is looking up to you. You can't do wacky things. You have to straighten up. Now the entire world is looking up to you. America, it's time.

You do the right thing so that the entire world will do. I think if we get America to meditate, we can get the entire world to meditate very easily. That's why I'm here. I'm on your team. I fully support that mission. I'm trying to do the same thing. Let's make it happen. Saaguru, thank you very much. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Great to meet you. You may remember that was mentioned that Saga Guru's editor is now my editor for the books. I'm going to be working on going forward. Her name is Julie Groushe. And after we conducted that interview with Saga, we were really pointed out that the reason why he may have been a little bit elliptical about the meditation he practices is that actually in his way of teaching it really does need to be taught in person. So it wasn't, she pointed out, it wasn't that he would try to avoid

the question for say, it's just that it's a practice that really does need apparently to be taught in person. So just adding that in there for your information. I want to thank you for listening. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast possible internally here at ABC News, Lauren Efron, Josh Tohan, Sarah Amos, Antichal, Steve Gones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dance Silver. If you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring on the show, the best way to do that is hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I love hearing from you and I really do listen to the suggestions so please keep in coming. And if you want to learn a little bit more about how to

meditate you can check out the 10% happier app. We'll be back as we are every Wednesday with a brand new episode. Until then take it easy. Hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1dory.com slash survey. www.cabrary.com-survey.