The Resilient Mind - Pain Will Either Make You Wise or Wounded - Sadhguru

Episode Date: October 26, 2026

Sadhguru is the founder of the Isha Foundation located in Coimbatore, India. The foundation operates an ashram and yoga center that specializes in education and spiritual practices. An accomplished yoga teacher since 1982, Sadhguru is also the author of several New York Times bestsellers, such as Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. He is also a frequent speaker at international events and forums.This episode is brought to you in partnership with Sadhguru. Follow his YouTube channel by visiting: https://www.youtube.com/@sadhguru/videosExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

About if you do bad things, bad things will come for you. This has been the way of the world. You don't need the word karma for that. Because people have been trying to control people, either with fear or guilt. This has been the basis of a whole lot of things happening in the world. If you do this, you will go to hell. If you do that, you will go to heaven.

Otherwise, here itself, it will happen to you. Whatever. There is somebody up there with a stick waiting. and they will vacue, all these kind of things. Essentially, you're trying to manage humanity, control humanity with fear or guilt. Fear and guilt, I see particularly in the Western world, is like enormous.

It is in the psyche of people in such a big way. Well, karma is not about fear, karma is not about guilt, karma is about liberation. It is about freedom. Because you're a composite as you sit here, you're a composite of various memories within you. It goes back. It goes way back.

But let's start with amoeba in recent times. From Amoeba to now, the whole evolutionary process in some way is recorded in this body. Otherwise, this body would be confused every other day whether this is human or not. This is 100% clear that this is human. this is evolutionary memory, always there. There is genetic memory. There is charmic memory. There is articulate, inarticulate, you know, unconscious, subconscious and conscious memories.

Right now when we say memory, people think only of their conscious memory, which is less than 1% of their actual memory. See, for example, I can give you a thousand examples like this which are manifesting in everybody's life. So the simple thing is this. Let's say 500 years ago, how your great, great, great grandfather was. You don't remember for sure. But his nose is sitting on your face probably. Many things. Even the color of the skin and the texture of the skin, everything.

So the minutest details of what happened to your forefathers a million years ago, still living with you right now. It is living with you right now. Now, all these memories, a composite or an amalgamation of all these complex memories is what you call as myself. What you call as myself consciously, maybe just a small part of that. But that small part is happening

because of this massive memory that is there. In India, you know, like in the yoghik culture, we have this word called wasana. Vasana literally means smell. So we say your personality is just your smell. See, right now you walk there. there is jasmine, you recognize the jasmine by its fragrance. You'll recognize filth by its stink. So we recognize your personality by your wasana. What kind of vasana or what kind of

smell is coming out of you right now depends on what kind of stuff have you gathered? So now karma means to understand that there is all kinds of things. Because when it comes to memory, you have no choice what to keep and what not to keep. Whatever you think you should not remember. So always people tell me, Sadhu, my memory is bad. I say, just try to forget it. You see, you will remember it always.

It's simple. So because this is the nature of the mind, you cannot, there is no subtraction and division in your mind. There is only addition and multiplication. Whatever you try to do, it will be one more. If you try hard, it will multiply. This is the nature of your mind. So what is there in your memory is not your choice.

Whatever you see, it's all recorded. Whatever you hear, everything recorded. Whatever you smell, taste, touch, every perception that you have is recorded within you. You have no choice what to record. Here there is a flower which is beautiful. Let me just record that. There there is filth. I don't want to record that.

There's no such thing. Everything gets recorded. So if all this is there, how do I live clean? How do I live happy? You don't have to eliminate the waste. Waste is very valuable. If you know right now in this garden, they buy waste at a very, you know, a very exorbitant price. Because their waste goes into the public system, they have to buy waste from somewhere.

They have to buy filth. So whether you turn your filth into a fertilizer or you smear up on your face and walk around, that's your choice. This is why karma. So what kind of karma happened in my life till this moment? It's not always my choice. So many things have happened. But what kind of karma I perform right now in this moment is 100% my choice. Will I use this filth as manure and blossom into your wonderful fragrance?

Or will I smear it around me and walk around with filth? This is the choice everybody has. When unpleasant things happen to us, which happens to everybody in some way, If you're living in the world, I'm saying, unless you drop from somewhere else. Right. If you're living in this world, so many unpleasant things happen. Now, with these unpleasant things, do you become wise or do you become wounded? This is a choice.

To exercise this choice, there must be a little space. When I say a little space, where is your memory stored? People think here, your brain has very little memory. Okay? Every cell in the body carries a trillion times more memory than your entire brain. Because if I take one cell from you, we can, you know, create you completely in a lab. That means what? Well, your parents, your father and mother gave you only one cell each.

They were not very generous. Only one cell each. See, a whole man came out of it. So in that one cell, all this memory, head to toe, everything was there, isn't it? Yeah. No mistake. Texture of the hair, texture of the skin, the nails, the works. Every detail to the minutest detail, was it packed in that one cell or no?

Yes? So every cell in your body carries a trillion times more memory than your entire brain carries. Wow. So if you do not use that, if you just use one part of your body. body, then everything seems to be stressful. Everything seems to be a struggle. Today, everybody complaining about everything. Everything is stressful.

You are a toddler, you have stress of diapers. You are a teenager. You have hormonal stress. Your middle age, you have a crisis. Your old age is geriatric stress. Right. Which is not stress. Entire life is stress.

Tell them, okay, you die. Oh, that is enormous stress. So this is not because there is something wrong with anybody's life. It's simply because it's like you have a car. It's supposed to go on four wheels. Try to drive on one. Okay, one may look like too much. Try to drive on two.

Well, within 10 miles your tires will burst. Because too much stress on one point, other things are not being used. This is all that's happening to human beings. See, when we say mind, are we stressing our minds? No, there is an entire, there is a mind across. this body. What is it that you call as a mind? A certain combination of memory and intelligence is mind. In yoga, we see physical body, mental body, energetic body, etheric body, bliss body like this, everything is body. Because it is right across, it is not in any one place.

Only intellectual activity is here. Okay? Right now, because modern societies, particularly Western societies, have become such slaves of their intellect. Because of that, they think everything is here. Intellect works only with the data that you have gathered. You cannot function beyond your data. That means you will remain so small. Because even if you've read the libraries on this planet, what you know in terms of data is minuscule compared to what this cosmos is.

With that minuscule, you think you're very intelligent because you're analyzing and processing. Anyway, all these people who think they're intellectually very smart are going to feel dumb, stupid in the next. next five years because your phone will be far more smarter than you. Already people are calling it a smartphone. See, why would you call somebody or something smart? Only because it's smarter than you, right? Right, yeah. Otherwise, you wouldn't.

So right now, too much dependence on intellect because our education systems are crafted like this, not exploding other dimensions of intelligence at all. See, intellect, if I ask you this simple question, Would you like your intellect to be sharp or blunt? Choose, choose quickly. I'm going to bless you. Yes.

Sharp. So essentially, intellect is like a knife. If you want to dissect something, it's very good. Yeah. So now the only instrument that you have is a knife in your hand. You want to stitch your clothes. If you stitch your clothes with the knife, what will happen? You will be in tatters.

This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything. with their intellect, the harder they try, the more tattoos they have become. With all this education, tell me, uneducated people are more unhappy or educated people are more unhappy. No, generally illiterate people in the rest of the world, tribes and this and that, even in India, many, many people. Whenever I visit, I go to Guatemala almost every year, and I visit small villages, and the kids

seem so happy. Because they didn't go to school like me. They don't have much, but they have family, they have community. What do you mean they don't have much? I mean, they don't have much in terms of the material world. They are not environmentally disastrous. That's what you say. Right, exactly.

Yeah. They don't have a lot in the material side of things, but they have a lot in their hearts, richness, connection, community, love, and they seem very happy. Essentially, uneducated people or illiterate people are happier than the educated people. With education, your life should have become better. better, isn't it? Unfortunately, they're becoming unhappy simply because they only have sharpened their knife. And a sharp knife in your hand and you're unconscious, you're cutting yourself all the time. All the time cutting yourself.

That's painful. You don't need any outside help. So people come to me and say, Sat Guru, my boss is horrible, my mother-in-law, she's not even human, my wife, she's such a pain, my husband like this. I say you come here to the yoga center. I'll make sure your boss, mother-in-law, wife, husband, nobody enters this place. Just you. I'll give you a nice place to live. Good food to eat.

Nothing to do. Just be happy. That's all. You must be just joyful. I'll make random checks on you. If I find you unhappy or miserable, then I won't feed you because I don't believe in feeding misery. If you remain joyful, I will feed you. for the rest of your life and take care of you, like you're my prized guest.

But if you show misery, we won't feed you. Well, you leave them in one room for 24 hours. You will see in how many ways they'll twist themselves out is unbelievable. Because when you're alone, if you're miserable, obviously you're in bad company. Right. I'm with you. I'm miserable. I think it's because of this guy I'm miserable.

This guy I'm miserable. I'm sitting here alone and miserable. Now who? Right. Who is causing misery? No, essentially one must understand human experience is caused from within, not from outside. Right.

What we do, arrangements we do outside in the form of home, family, automobile, this, that. These are arrangements to facilitate our activity. They are not going to make you happy or unhappy. But right now, the country. Car sellers are telling you, only this is joy, this car, I'm sorry, I'm not against any brand. I like the brand. They say, this car is joy. Another somebody else says, this car is love.

Oh, all the best. This is power. This is, yeah. Power is okay car has power. But where is love exuding from the engine or joy extruding from the engine? All right. Power, all right. But right now, if you, you know, this is something I've been noticing.

it's only in recent times, probably last 10, 15 years. If you look at any car, I look at every advertisement, whether they're selling an automobile or a machine or a crane or an earth mover, because I'm interested in anything that works, not that I'm going to buy them. So when I look at it, car ads, nobody's telling you what's the engine, what's the transmission, what's the power, what's the torque, nothing.

They're talking about the leather, they're talking about the wood paneling, they're talking about the stereo, hey, you buy, you buying a sitting room? You want to buy a drawing room or do you want a car? If I want a car, I would look at the engine, how it is made, what does it do? No, nothing, only because they're buying a car for neighbors and we. They're not buying a car because they love to drive a good machine.

It's always about being better than somebody else. So this is unfortunate, cultivation that is happening from kindergarten. If you are going to school, what your parents will say? You must be number one. If you are number one, what about all the other 3040 kids who are there? They must be below you. They're losers.

They're losers. So your joy is only in other people failing. When your joy is about other people's misery, that's not joy, that is sickness. Right now, the whole world is invested in this. It's not just America. America kind of displaced it like that. Not that it's not there everywhere else in the world. Everywhere it's there.

But here it's being shamelessly displayed. They are little shy everywhere, less of the world. But still they got it. See, there is only one crime and there's only one evil in the world that is limited identity. How much crime you will commit simply depends on how empowered you are. If you are highly empowered and your identity is very limited, you will do terrible things. So the most important thing is to enhance or to expand one's identity. See, for example, traditionally in the yogic culture in India,

before we start education for a child, the first and foremost thing is that he must take a cosmic identity. One thing is there is a mantra which says that, that he has to say it again and again. He has to look at the sky and say it. He looks at the earth and say it. Look at the air and say it. Look at the fire and say it. All the elements of water and say it. Because these are all the composition of the cosmos.

You look at empty space and say it. You look at water and say it. You look at fire and say it. You look at the earth and say it. So that you understand your identity is limitless. Why this is being done is. Why this is being done is education is seen as an empowerment. You should not empower a person who has a limited identity because he will cause havoc.

I'll take the worst example which will get me into trouble. See, everybody talks about, you're not even supposed to mention this name, Adolf Hitler. Well, many people have been there who caused enormous pain to other human beings. But I don't think anybody managed to organize it, mechanize it, and really does. deliver it like a factory of misery like this man did, all right? It's a factory. Yeah. Literally a factory of misery, manufacturing misery, properly organized. But do you think there aren't thousands or hundreds and thousands of people with the same mindset in the world? They are. Only thing is they're not empowered like him. Competence is the only thing that's lacking. Tyranny is there in

people's mind. There are as much tyrants as Adolf Hitler. You may find them in a school teacher, You may find them in your parents. You may find them all around you in your neighborhood. Only fortunately, they are not as potent at that man. That man is super competent. That is what the problem. So right now, human competence becomes a terrible problem simply because you have a limited identity.

So you invest your identity in a family. You invest your identity in a community, race, religion, nationality. Tell me, in the name of nations, in the name of race, in the name of religions, in the name of communities. How many terrible things have we done in this world? Just take 20th century. Okay, one century past, 21st century is just progressing now. 20th century take it in the name of race.

What all have we done to each other? In the name of religion, what have we done to each other? In the name of nationality, what all have we done to each other? Just look back and see, we have literally killed half the world's population in 20th century. of a philosophy, of an ideology, people have killed, all right? So limited identity and empowerment is a disaster. But we are continuously cultivating this all the time. So I said family is crime because family is the first identity that you take.

After that comes community. After that comes maybe race or religion or nationality. Right now, nationality is reasonably the largest identity you're taking. within this nation it looks nice that you are committed as an American to the well-being of America. But just see who is fighting who in this world. A good Indian is fighting a good Pakistan.

A good Hindu is fighting a good Muslim. A good American fighting just about anybody. Because you never fought a war here. You go out and fight all the world. Well, you will find reasons to why you fought the war and the heroic nature of it, I know people who lost their lives believing that they're doing the best thing in their life.

Yes, but I want you to know that man that you think is horrible, that terrorist, that miscreant, that militant, or whatever you want to call him, that guy also, like a suicide bomber, see, anybody for every human being or even for an aunt, its life is precious. You try to catch him, see, he'll do everything possible. to save his life.

So somebody to throw away their life like this, obviously what they believe in means much more than their life. Crazy. Right? Yeah. It's not crazy. See, if they do it your way, it's heroic. If they do it their way, it's crazy.

I'm not trying to support terrorism or something. I'm just telling you it's limited identity. Genocides have been committed because of limited identity. Nations have been raised down because of limited identity. Evil things we have done to each other on individual level simply because of limited identity. So this is what yoga means. Yoga means union. That means you consciously obliterated the boundaries of your individual nature and your experience of life expanded.

Once you sit here and you experience everything around you as a part of yourself, after that you do not need any morality, you do not need any commandments, thou shall not cut that tree, thou shall not kill this man, thou shall not rob this, This is meaningless to you when you have experienced something as a part of yourself. So the entire system of yoga, when I say yoga, I mean yoga, all right? Not the yoga that's happening in Los Angeles studios. I have nothing against them. But I'm saying we've reduced it to something just one aspect.

Yes. Twisting and turning your body. It's good for you. You will become flexible and maybe healthy. That's good for you. But I want you to understand. Would you not wish that Adolf Hitler was a sick man instead of a healthy man? So I am saying health becomes a curse.

Really? Competence becomes a curse. Individual intelligence becomes a curse. Why? Because you have limited identity. Which in that context, I said, family is crime. Family is a wonderful place where people are supporting each other. Like you said, is it not important?

If you create a world where everybody is supporting each other to do their best, well, that's happening in the family. That's the most beautiful aspect of the family. But why is it only limited to those four people or five people or whatever? If you've heard even political leaders in India, for example, wherever our prime minister goes to United Nations, he will say, Vasudeva Kutumbakam. This means the world is my family. It's a chant that always he says, the world is our family.

Because this has to be inculcated from childhood. that your identity is not about a few people who are born around you or a couple of people who bore you. Your identity is the air that you breathe is your identity. Yeah. This is your life. Yeah. So if you identify with the air that you breathe, what is it that's not you and what is it that's you? Everything's you.

Yes. If everything is you, your intelligence is a bone. Your competence is a bone. Your intelligence, your competence, your capability is everything. Everything is a gift to the world. But if your identity is small, all the wonderful things that human being has becomes a curse. See, right now, our intelligence, so much science, technology we developed. But the cutting edge of science and technology always goes into military equipment, isn't it?

First, at least. Many of these things will never come to you on the street. It's always there, all right? Only when every other nation has, maybe then it'll come to you. Sure, sure. Till then, it's just kept there. So our intelligence is going into destructive force. Why?

Limited identity. But right now, can I just open up the borders of this nation and say, I love everybody? We are not there. Why? We are not it there. The world is not it there. We cannot do that, all right? We still need nationality.

We still need all these things. But we can hold it little lightly. We don't have to hold it like it is absolute. It is not absolute. It's something that we have done. Our idea of family is our body. making. Our idea of community is our making. Our idea of race, religion, everything is our making. Our idea of nationality is our making. So don't treat it like it's an absolute. Thank you for listening.

Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.