Enlightenment, Sadhguru says, was never referred to as an achievement, only as a realization of something already there. He explains, it is only because we have enshrined our thoughts, emotions, ideologies and beliefs that we are unable to see the truth of creation in its entirety.

Full Transcript:

Sadhguru: Always we’ve never referred to as enlightenment as an accomplishment, we’ve never referred to enlightenment as some kind of an achievement. It is only a realization. Realization means what? Something that’s already there, you only saw it today. You were just dumb. You’re… Right here, you didn’t see it all your life, suddenly one day you saw it - this is realization. This is not a discovery, this is not an invention, this is not an achievement, this is not any kind of attainment - this is just a realization.

So realization doesn’t need any knowledge - just takes eyes to see, that’s all. You don’t have to have knowledge about this tree to see it and know that it’s there. You just see it. If you see it, absolutely see it without any interruption of thought, emotion, ideologies, belief systems - simply you saw it the way it is in its entirety, this is realization. Now we are not even talking about a tree, we’re just talking about ourselves, we just realized something about ourselves - it’s the dumbest thing (Laughs). But even that dumb thing doesn’t happen to they’re dumber than that (Laughs). They are striving hard to see that it doesn’t happen because they have enshrined their thoughts, they have enshrined their emotions, they have enshrined their ideologies, they have enshrined their belief systems, they have enshrined everything that is not true. So, truth won’t happen to them, that’s all. When you say a thought, it is something that you concocted in your mind. Yes? When you say emotion, it is something that you concocted within you. An ideology - maybe ten of you together did it. A belief system - maybe you have a million people with you but you made it up. When you are giving such significance to things that you made up, things that are, things that which is the making of the Creator not available to you because you are too busy with your own creation. Your petty creation has become larger than this grand creation which you can’t figure anything about. Somewhere your own thoughts, your own emotions, your own ideas, please see they’ve become far more important than any other cosmic phenomena that’s happening right now. Moon is coming up - who cares? What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling is more important. It doesn’t matter the galaxy is a blossoming right now - who cares? What I think and feel is more important. My thought and my emotion is more important than all this. So when you have such a skewed attention span towards life realization itself looks like a tremendous achievement. So if realization happens without the necessary fundamentals, then naturally holding on to the body will not happen. The body and the being are bound to come apart because the realization is just that – that you’ve realized that what you thought as you is not really you, it’s a piece of earth and what is you is something else and it has no business with this actually. So if you want to be realized and still be… walk around - you can be around but you can’t walk around - if you want to walk around, then you must know all the nuts and bolts of life and the life making material. You must know the mechanics of this system, then you can know how to anchor yourself to it, otherwise realization normally spells that you don’t stay with the body, doesn’t matter really to yourself but it matters to others.

If a realized being can walk around there’re many, many things that can be done. If ten thousand realized beings walked around on this planet, everything would be done – everything - the right way, the way it’s best for life on this planet. We’re striving (Laughs), we’re working.

So how do you acquire this knowledge? That takes time and striving. Knowledge will not happen in a moment, realization can happen in a moment. Knowledge will not happen in a moment, any knowledge will not happen in a moment. One has to strive, one has to invest their lives into it, otherwise it’ll not happen. Conditional investment is what I mostly get. Very few people are unconditional investment, others are all conditional investors – “Yes Sadhguru I want to do it but…” By the time we kick the but out (Laughter), you know life gets over (Laughs). There’re very few people no “buts”, they’re just here and that’s it. With them we’ll build knowledge (Laughs). Hmm? Whoever please.