The Resilient Mind - This Monk Secret CHANGES EVERYTHING! - Sadhguru

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

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.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode was created in partnership with Tom Bilyeu. Subscribe to Tom Bilyeu’s channel for more inspiring speeches:https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to This Monk's Secret Changes Everything with Sad Guru. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Every creature from a worm, insect, bird, plant, tree, everybody. All of them are trying to be full-fledged lives. if one sees what's happening beneath the earth in terms of the root systems, it is an enormous effort for a plant or a tree to become a full-fledged tree.

Well, an apple tree is not trying to be an oak tree, but an apple tree wants to be a full-fledged apple tree. That effort is on in every life. So is it in human beings. But the problem with humanity is just this, that for every other creature, nature has drawn two lines. Within these two lines, they live and die. So their idea of full-fledged is hitting the ceiling of their life. But if a human being hits a ceiling, he gets frustrated and miserable.

Because nature, this process of evolution, has delivered to us to a place where there is only only the bottom line, there is no top line. Though some human beings are trying to breach the bottom line and go below, that effort also is going on. So essentially, what human life is, is, when life was in the other forms of life that you see on the planet, nature determined a certain compulsive, instinctive ways of functioning. Once you become human, these lines have been removed.

You can act consciously. That means what you call as human potential is not of any kind of measurable limit. It can go as far as you desire or as far as you have the courage to walk. So when we say human potential, unleashing human potential, it is not about reaching the peak. It is a trajectory. Because what our life is, is a... a combination of a certain amount of time and energy.

Time is rolling away for all of us at the same pace. If you sit, it rolls away. If you sleep, it rolls away. If you do something, it goes away. If you don't do anything, it goes away. You're happy, you're miserable, it goes away. Time is running out for all of us. So it's only the energy that you can do different things with.

If you bring your energies to a certain level of intensity and possibility, What somebody does in 10 years, you may do it in one year. This means if you live here for 100 years, it feels like in people's impact that you've created, it feels like you've lived here for a thousand years, simply because you have managed your life energies in a certain way. So for me, a human being being impactful means, how conscious have you become? This is very important. Because if you're in compulsive cycles, then you have you.

energy gets wasted in so many things. If you observe people in a day, let's say let's take 24 hours, in that anyway, most people, by prescription in America, they sleep for eight hours. So eight hours means one third of life is gone. In the remaining two-thirds, they have to eat, they have to, you know, shower, bathroom, this, that, all this, another two, three hours gone. So literally 50% of life is gone. daily basis just for basic maintenance of this life.

50% of the time is gone in maintenance. Remaining 50% what they have, if you look at every single move that they make with their body, their thought process, their emotions, you will see a whole lot of it is happening in compulsive cycles. Or in other words, if you are little sensitive to life, you will realize you are the biggest issue in your life.

your life. So this is one thing that I'm trying to do with people, that you are never the issue in your life. I'm not the issue. My thought, my emotion, my body is never the issue. My thought, my emotion, my energy and my body are my instruments of function. They are not impediments in my life. But I would say for 90% of the human beings, their own body, then the compulsions of the body, the compulsions of their thought, the compulsions of their emotions, are ruling them most of the time. So when you yourself are a problem, well, you're on self-help.

Everybody wants a solution, but nobody wants to delve into the problem and see what is the nature of the problem that we have. The nature of the problem is like this. Why are we compulsive? What is it that's compulsive about us? Compulsion means we are going to the same place again And again, that means we're going in circles.

The nature of physical existence in the universe is such, whether you take an atom, an individual atom, or the cosmic space, everything that's physical is always in cyclical movement. The atoms are doing their circles. The solar system is doing his stuff. The galaxies are doing their stuff. Our own bodies are going through cycles. In fact, we are born because of the cycles in our mother's bodies.

That's why we are born. So entire physical nature is born out of cyclical moment. That means compulsiveness. So do not misunderstand compulsiveness as something bad. It's the basis of your existence. It is a good platform. But you're supposed to stand on the platform and act. Right now you have become the platform.

So somebody else will dance on you. Only when you're in a pleasant state of experience, your body and your brain works at its best. There's no argument about that. There's enough evidence to show that. So whatever impact or success or reaching goals or growth or whatever you say, on one level in the physical world, it's about how well you harness your physiological and your psychological process, isn't it?

Whether your body and mind works against you or works for you. This is a big difference. So there is enough evidence to show only when you're in pleasant levels of experience, this happens best. So obviously, joy is first, then growth. If you're joyful constantly, and you have no fear of suffering because you understand all human experience comes from within you,

and so you have managed to create the kind of experience that you want, now growth is possible and riddled. If you have the fear of falling down and suffering, you will not go very high, isn't it? Many ways to look at it, one of the simplest ways to see it is all human experience has a chemical basis to it. Right now, let us say you're joyful. If you look at your chemistry, it'll be in a certain way. Let's say you are miserable.

If you check your chemistry, it'll be a completely different way. Now we have a technology that with which you create a chemistry of blissfulness. So my chemistry is blissful. It doesn't matter what's happening. The drama around me is happening in so many different ways. But this is a privilege that I've kept for myself. Me being joyful or miserable. Me being peaceful or disturbed.

These privileges I have not given it to anybody else. I kept them to myself. I think every human being should do that. That the privileges of the nature of your experience must be in your hand. because when you try to act in the world, there are many, many forces. All of them will not always cooperate. Sometimes they cooperate many times. They will not cooperate many times.

They'll turn against you. This is the nature of the world. That's how it should be. World will never happen 100% your way. And I'm glad it is so. Because if it all happened your way, where do I go? I'm glad it's not happening your way. little bit my way, little bit your way, little bit somebody else's way.

That's how the world should be. How many parents would dare and encourage their children not to be identified with parents, not to be identified with the religion that they follow, not to be identified with their racial and national and other prejudices that they hold? They all think these things are sacred, isn't it? Yes. These are the things which destroy human potential. Whether you want to turn a human being,

see, I see this term and it really hurts me. When people say, it's very common, only in America I hear this, I was raised as whatever, Catholic or Baptist or Christian or Muslim or whatever else. else I was raised see you must raise only cattle and sheep you don't raise human beings you have to cultivate a human being you have to give space and give support of love and support so that a human being grows because every human being is capable of a unique possibility raising means what a flock is what you raise you don't raise an individual isn't it

very interesting. So, for this, we need to come to a certain level of maturity within ourselves. The most fundamental thing is, our children need not look like us, not think like us, need not act like us, need not be us in any way. A child is not a legacy. It's a life. And it is an individual life. It has to be what it has to be.

Well, if I do not influence, right now the theory is if I do not influence, somebody on the street will influence the child. On the social media, they'll influence the child. So to cultivate a child so that they know that the intrinsic intelligence and being human is more important than being influenced by this or that, it doesn't matter what it is. Whether it's parentage or it's a priest or it's a guru or it's a pundit, it doesn't matter who. Influence is not important. What is important is the intrinsic intelligence finding its full potential. You look at your own picture when you are five years of age, it's like this. Slowly it's becoming like this.

What is it? You're dying in installments. The more conclusions you make, the less alive you become. This is all that's happened to people. They call this knowledge. This is not knowledge. This is just conclusions that you're drawing up. about everything. See, with all this scientific exploration, the fact is that even today,

we do not know one single atom in its entirety. We know how to use them. We know how to use everything on this planet. But we don't know a damn thing about anything. Over 90 percent, or 99 percent of an atom is empty. We don't know what that emptiness contains. Over 99 percent of the cosmos is empty. We don't know what that is. So this is like I give you a million piece jigsaw. But you found in your hands you have only three of them. With these three you make a picture and you're euphoric that you made a picture. Well, I'm sorry, there are million pieces to this.

Has anybody gathered all the pieces? Then don't make a picture. Say right now, what are the instruments of your experience? experience. You know you're here only because you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. This is the only way you know that you're here right now. Suppose you doze off, don't, okay? Suppose you dose off. You don't know that you're here, isn't it? Yes. Even though you're here. Your heart is beating, everything is functioning, the world is on, we are all here.

But you won't know that you're here, nor will you know that I'm here or anybody else is here. Isn't it? Yes. All that's happened is life is on, full on, even within you. Only thing is these five sensory organs have shut down. So your entire experience of life right now is happening because you can see here, smell, taste and touch. Just look at the nature of the sensory organs. In the very nature, they're outward bound, isn't it?

Can you roll your eyeballs inward and scan yourself? No. Let me say I give you a bad example. Sir? Our nose is located right above our mouth. Suppose you don't brush your teeth for three days. Though this nose is right here, it won't tell you you have not brushed your teeth. The whole room will know you have not brushed your teeth, but you will not know.

This is the human predicament. It's very easy to see what's wrong with this guy, what's wrong with her, what's wrong with her? It's very, it takes a lot of observation to see what's wrong with this. That level of keenness of observation is missing in most people. They need to cultivate that. People are who they are only because of what they believe and what they have a hell like that. Because without this, they don't know where they belong. To live here without belonging to anything,

but still involved with everything takes a lot. Most people belong, but they're not involved. It is like belonging is, is like an insurance policy. It's simply there. Involvement takes you. To be constantly involved with people around you, it takes you to be conscious and on. But I belong to you.

I don't have to anything. I've professed already I belong to you. I'm married to you. I belong to you. Legally, it is settled. So I don't have to be conscious of you, nor do I have to be involved with you. Still, I belong to you.

So belonging. means belonging, believing, or identifying simply means you have found a way to sleep through your life. It's called sleep. When we say, you know, people usually use this term with animals, if you said we put our cat to sleep, what does it mean to you? For real, that they killed their cat.

Yes. So I'm talking about sleep in that context. I believe this, I belong to this, I'm identified with this means it's sleep. That means you're partially dead. You made conclusions which takes away the life that bubbles within you. This is why people are walking around like they're dying in installments. Not knowing is not a notion. It's a fact.

It's not a notion. you really do not know a damn thing about this existence, isn't it? Yes. We don't even know a blade of grass in its entirety. We do not know a single atom in its entirety. We do not know a single cell in this body in its complete context. We do not. We know some things.

We can manipulate a few things. But we don't know much about it. So it's like this. Let's say we turn off all the lights. If the lights are on, you can whistle and just walk around wherever you want in this building. We'll turn off all the lights and make it pitch dark where you can't even see your own hand, like that. Now, every step that you take, will you take it in utmost alertness? Will you be fully awake or asleep?

Fully awake. Fully awake. Why? Because you don't know where's the next step. Just to live like this. If you simply live like this, naturally you are on the highway to enlightenment. Everybody assume and believe

because it's comfortable to simply believe something. The very word belief means this, that I have concretized assumptions of which I know nothing about. Isn't it? Isn't it so? Yeah. Either you know or you do not know. Where does the belief come from?

When you pretend what you do not know as I know, that's belief. But you can't believe something all by yourself. So you need a hundred people around you. That's why always believers are in groups, seekers are alone. You don't have to cultivate this. This is intrinsic to human intelligence. If you do not bullshit yourself with all kinds of things that you do not know as you know, It's intrinsic to human intelligence to seek, isn't it?

Yes. You don't have to teach seeking. You have to teach belief systems. You don't have to teach seeking. If you don't teach anything, everybody is a seeker. It is the nature of human intelligence. It naturally seeks. But people want to seek with the comfort of belief.

They want to be in the belief system and then seek. This is like tying your boat to the pier and then rowing hard, it's good, it's not bad, because it gives you good exercise. It's like being on the treadmill. Most people are on the treadmill because they are not walking or running to go somewhere. They're just trying to tone their muscles. It's perfectly fine. So if that's all you wish to do, it's fine.

But if you want to go somewhere, you can't tie your boat and then row, isn't it? If you just let it go, even if you don't row, it will go. What do you tell people about responsibility? It's just your ability to respond. You have to make up your mind. Do you want to retain your ability to respond to every situation that may arise or may not arise in your life? Or do you want to surrender your ability to respond? This is something everybody should make up their mind on.

Life is an openness. Death is closing, isn't it? Death is a closure. Life is a possibility. If you're just alive, everything is open. Tell me, can you be alive? Suppose you don't like me. So you don't want to inhale what I exhale.

Stop breathing and exist for some time. Let me see. Possible? So I'm saying if you don't like me, your dislike will not go away in 30 seconds, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. Suppose I hate you. I hate you. I don't want to breathe, inhale what you exhale. Mm-hmm. I will die within myself, isn't it?

Yes. This all people are doing to themselves. I like this guy, I don't like that guy, this is somebody I love, that's somebody I hate, this is belongs to me, this doesn't belong to me. They're just killing themselves, step by step. They're planning to die in installments. If you want to live, here you are. You must make up your mind whether you want to live or you want to die. You want to know the certainty of death in life.

This is called belief, this is called belonging, this is called identification, because you are trying to find the certainty of death in the seamless process of life. Fundamentally, if people understand that the source of human experience is within you. Joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, pleasure or pain, everything comes from within you. If you understand this much, if I understand, suppose right now I think I'm miserable because of you, there's no solution for my life, isn't it? Because all you have to do is walk in front of my home, I will become miserable. So simple it is. You don't have to kill me.

You just have to walk around in front of me. I will die within myself every day. If I understand the source of my joy and misery are within me, then you know what's the obvious choice? Joy. It's obvious choice, isn't it? So this one fundamental thing has to get across to all the human beings on this planet. Your experience is entirely determined by you. This is what the word karma means, unfortunately, has become something else here.

Karma means action. That means when we say your life is your karma, we are saying your life is entirely your making. 100%. What happens in the world? There are many, many forces involved. What happens within me? It's 100% me.

100% isn't it? Yes. If you don't take charge of this, then you're an accidental life. When you're an accidental life, anxiety is very natural natural incident it suppose you are driving accidentally that is you don't know what's happening and you're simply somehow going anxiety is natural or no yes any accidental moment creates anxiety so this is why consciousness

means this that you have taken charge of the instruments of life which on most fundamental level is our physiological and psychological space You've taken charge of this. Now your health, your happiness, your joy, your ecstasy, your misery, everything is in your hands. You exercise them as you want. The idea is to pay attention to something which has no relevance to you. See, people have divided the universe. This is important.

This is not important. This person is important for me. This person is not important for me. This is important for me. That's not important for me. You divided the universe. You will never know anything this way. Indiscriminate focus.

Indiscriminate attention. I am not attending to you because you are somebody with a cobra in your heart. All right. It doesn't matter who I speak to, who I am with. I'm the same way. Indiscriminate. Only when your attention and involvement is indiscriminate, does the universe open up to you.

You have discriminated. Naturally, you're closed. You know, people come to me and say, I want to walk the spiritual path. I said, okay, be here for three days. Let's see what we can do. So, no, Sadhu, day after tomorrow, my uncle's daughter's birthday, I have to go. Oh, you want to get enlightened.

And day after tomorrow, uncle's daughter's birthday also. All right, we got one and a half days. You do one thing, you do this, this and this. I said, Sarkro, but I don't like this. All right. I'll give them a little. small piece of paper and say okay write down things that you like will do only do do that we won't believe it in this entire universe most people like only three or four

things when you are so constipated in your head that you like only three or four people or three or four things in your life how do you want to open up to the existence because life is happening because of its openness this is a fundamental difference between death and life is. People are thinking it's just breath, all right, on one level. That is also openness. Whether you allow this to happen or you don't allow it to happen. Whether you did it consciously or unconsciously, but it's happening, isn't it? Openness is on every subatomic particle is in communication with everything. That's why this is going on. Breath is happening. So much is happening in connection with everything. It is only in openness you're alive. As you close doors,

you are dying in installments. Dying in installments is torture. See, life is fantastic if you're alive and fully alive. If you're dead, it's good. At least the neighbors may think so. This may sound very not so compassionate. But I'm saying everybody dies. You and me will die, all right?

If you're dead, the game is over. But if you're half dead, Oh, this is endless torture to yourself. When you are being tortured, of course, you will share it with everybody else. See, pain is physiological. It's there. If there's no pain, most people would not even know how to protect themselves. See, just because there's no pain in this, see what all you have done to it, isn't it? See, there's no pain in this.

So that's why you took it off. If there's no pain in your nose, maybe you would have taken it off. Because there are many advantages you will take in about 22% extra oxygen if you just remove this one thing, contraption. Wherever there is no pain, people are messing with it like crazy, isn't it? They call this hairstyle, they call it so many things. Suppose there was no pain in the entire body in Los Angeles. People would pull out their stomach bag and... You think they wouldn't do it?

Only pain is helping them to preserve themselves, isn't it? So pain is good. There's no physiological pain. Most people would not know. I hear in the United States there's one group. They call themselves something, I forget that word. They're actually cutting their fingers off, their hands off, on the video. Wow.

They're posting it online. There's a group like that. Wow. Can you imagine this? No. In spite of so much pain, if there was no. No pain. Almost everybody would have cut themselves off in the name of fashion they would have cut themselves into ribbons. So pain is a good thing physically because that is your

preservation, self-preservation mechanism. But suffering is something that you do in your mind. So pain that happens in your body, you take it in your mind and multiply it a thousand times or a million times, depending on how capable you are or how stupid you are. you are and suffer it a million times over. Right now, most human beings are like this. What happened 10 years ago, they can still suffer? What may happen day after tomorrow? They already suffer. They are not suffering life. They think they're suffering life. They're not suffering life. They are suffering the two most fantastic faculties that human beings alone have,

A vivid sense of memory and a fantastic sense of imagination. See, one thing is the survival processes become easier than ever before. Believe me, in the morning, if you need a bucket full of water, if you had to walk a mile to the river to get one bucket of water, and your family needed 25 buckets of water, you would have no time to mess yourself. Now you have a lot of time to mess yourself because our survival is better organized than ever before. Another thing is most human beings do not know how to manage their biochemistry without physical activity.

I have seen a whole lot of people, particularly teenage boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 16, who come to me with some severe violent problems within themselves. If you live them like that, they may kill themselves or kill somebody else. They're in that kind of state. Many of them have even killed their parents, you know. It just happened all over the world. And in 2017, when I came to know that in India, which is not so much suicidal in that sense, because there's a huge family support and stuff like that,

in spite of that, in 2017, 18,600 children below 18 years of age committed suicide. out of which 7,200 are below 15 years of age. So 12, 13, 14 year olds who must be bubbling with life or wanting to take their own lives. Why? Obviously we're doing something fundamentally wrong with the society, isn't it? Yes. Our goals and our stupid ideas of what is success is driving them nuts.

Because we are trying to use our children like race horses. When you understand life as a race, If you're in a race, what's the objective? You must reach the finish line quick, isn't it? Yes. What is the finish line of your life? Death. There you have it.

This may not be a conscious process. But life within you is understanding it like that. When you see, you must understand this, whether you are conscious of it or not, any human being. Right now, if you make yourself miserable, you must understand you're sending a message to, every cell in the body that I don't want to live. You might not have articulated it in your head yet, but when you become miserable, you notice

suddenly your body seems heavy and it's like, doesn't want to get up from this chair. Have you seen this? Yes. When you're happy, you're willing to bounce at everything and do everything bend backwards if necessary. Why this is happening is the message is gone to every cell in the body, this guy wants to die. They're all thinking, okay, what can we do to help him? But by then, of course, you'll recover. So you want to die, you want to live, you want to die, you want to live. The body is getting confused because you must understand this is a very intelligent body. It's taking instructions

from you. Every cell in the body has enormous sense of memory and intelligence. If you keep sending wrong messages if they act you're dead because you're sending contradictory messages you are not dead you're half dead you can give it any number of exotic names essentially you have turned your intelligence against yourself this is supposed to work for you but now you've turned it against yourself it's working against you see do you agree with me that our lives today as a generation of people has become far more comfortable and far more more convenience simply because of our understanding of science and our exploitation of that knowledge as technology yes we are the most comfortable generation ever in the

history of humanity no question about it isn't it yes we are super empowered because of the science and technology as there is a science and technology for our external well-being there is a whole science and technology for inner well-being. Unfortunately, most cultures have ignored this and thinking that if we make all the external arrangements well, everything will be okay. The United States of America is a huge statement that this is not how it works. The most affluent country on the planet, 70% of the population are supposed to be on prescription medication.

We can talk if inspiration is a good idea. If inspiration is what you need, encouragement was what you need, I'm willing to talk. But talks will not bring solutions. They will bring some clarity. Solution will come only when you take a proper inward step. That's what in engineering process is. We are doing everything possible to deliver it in as simple and as practical measures as it can be done. There was a time it was thought in such a complex way.

Today we have simplifies it, broken into five different pieces, offering it as five layers of program, so that people can experience it in small doses and slowly step by step they can go. I'm seeing as you come into more and more affluent societies, their steps are far more baby steps than other people. That's interesting. So we have broken it into many steps so that small steps you can take one by one. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your. mind by listening to our other episodes.