Does Karma Conflict with Inclusiveness?

Kangana Ranaut: Sadhguru, you say that we must try and break karma bondages, but at the same time you urge people to be inclusive and involved in everything that they do. How can these two things exist together? 

Sadhguru: Namaskaram, Kangana. How do you see some contradiction in these two things? Karma means the residual memory of all the things that we do – physically, mentally, emotionally, and energy-wise. In other words, it is a certain unconscious software that you create. It is a certain amount of memory which rules your life on various levels. 

 

There is physical memory, psychological memory, emotional memory and energy levels of memory, and all these things put together can rule your life if you allow them. Memory, however much it is, is limited. It is a limited boundary. 

So karma is a limited boundary, but within those limited boundaries, karma is very useful. It facilitates many things. It makes you pretty automatic, so that you can respond effortlessly to a lot of things. 

However, when you want to expand, a boundary is a problem. For example, if you just draw a boundary around your home, when you want to expand, it is very easy – you just have to move out. But suppose there were certain threats to your existence and your survival, and you built a thick fortress around you. 

You will feel safe when there are threats. But if there is no threat to your life in any way, then you naturally want to expand. When you to want to expand, moving this huge wall and expanding your boundary will become very difficult. Most likely, you will not expand simply because of the wall. 

Similarly, karmic memory is a certain wall that you set up. You must loosen it up and bring inclusiveness into your system. Inclusiveness is not an idea of being friendly with everyone. The nature of the existence is inclusiveness.

As you exist here, what the tree is exhaling, you are inhaling. What you are exhaling, the tree is inhaling. But most human beings are unaware that this transaction is going on. If you are conscious of this transaction, the experience of just sitting here and breathing would be absolutely fantastic and ecstatic. If you are unconscious, you are still being nourished by the oxygen that the tree is letting out, but you are missing the experience.

Inclusiveness does not mean you have to do something different. You just became conscious about the nature of the existence. What happens to the tree and the soil happens to you. What you think of as “myself” is actually just the soil that you are walking upon. So inclusiveness is not something that you have to do. The nature of the existence is inclusiveness – you just have to become conscious of it. Karma is the nature of your individual existence. You have to become conscious of the limitations of your karmic boundaries. If this awareness comes, the rest is handled by life itself.

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