How to taste life in its full depth? Sadhguru explains, one must first go beyond the process of discrimination which is needed only for survival. The psychological process, he says, entraps one in his own petty creation.
Full Transcript:
This is the beauty of this world - if you do the right things, whichever way, it still works. You do it crying, you do it with love, you do it with joy, you do it with hatred, you do it with anger, if you do the right thing it works. This is the way of the world - as long as you’re doing the right things it doesn’t matter how you do it, it still works.
There is no such thing as only if you do it lovingly it’ll work. No, if you do it lovingly it’ll be beautiful for you, that's all. (Laughs) The process will be wonderful for you; otherwise it’ll be misery, but it still works. If you go and water these mango plants with great distress, still it works, mangos will come, it's just that you can't enjoy it, somebody else will eat it. (Laughs) If you do it very joyfully, lovingly, the first sight of the flower you will notice it, maybe you will get to eat it; otherwise you may not eat it but it still works. So, this is the beauty of this existence - as long as you’re doing the right things it works. How you do it will decide the quality of your life, not whether it happens or not; it’ll anyway happen. But if you’re… (Laughs) It once happened, there was a chicken farmer, you know, the chicken farmer, a poultry farmer. So, as a part of enhancing productivity he was always researching and one day he found a newspaper article about how a man set a record by laying 24,000 bricks in a day - bricklayer. So, he was very inspired. He cut this article out of the newspaper and he was taking it into the poultry. People asked, ‘What are you going to do? Where are you going? They said, ‘I am going to tell all my chicken how this man laid 24,000 bricks in a day.’ (All Laugh) You are hoping - it doesn’t work like this. This is not the way it works. A man laid 24,000 bricks, you tell your chicken, it’s not going to lay 24,000 eggs for you; it doesn’t work that way.
Just to find out how this one (ref to oneself) works, unfortunately people take a whole life time and still they don't know how this works. If you understand this much, that if you raise beyond your discrimination and if you’re able to look at everything as one, if you have only one eye for everything… for this (gestures) one kind of eye, for this (gestures) another kind of eye - no, not that. You have only one eye for everything. If you are like this, suddenly your body will be full of light, it works. You want light and you want to put your finger into the plughole, it doesn’t work like that, don’t try that, (Laughs) don’t try it in the ashram, okay? (All Laugh) Try it elsewhere because we don’t have an undertaker. (Laughs) We are not hoping that happens to anybody so we haven’t set up that department here. We have every other department but we don’t have an undertaking department because we are not expecting that. We are not meditating upon that for you. (Laughs)
So, this one thing, just this one thing if you can…instead of being here if you allow your spirituality to go till here (gestures), if these two eyes get submerged and you are able to see everything with one eye, not with two. You like this person, you don’t like this person, you love this person, you hate this person, you are okay with this one, not okay with this one, this one is nice, you can't stand that one - if you just transcend that; if you’re able to look at everything with one eye sadhana will go to a different dimension altogether. This one thing you must do; otherwise lighting up takes lot of effort. If you want to light up without this it takes phenomenal effort and it dissipates very soon. It's happened to you any number of times - lot of sadhana you did, you felt like poofff, crackling up but you went out, you didn’t like this person, tsssk! (Gestures) Hum? Hasn’t it happened? Morning sadhana hall you were bursting then you went into the office, you looked at this person (gestures) phewww! (All laugh) That’s why we put sadhana hall and office… (Meditators Laugh/clap) If you are able to look at both of them as same, (Laughs) if you have only one eye for the sadhana hall and the office then suddenly you could be lit up the whole day, (Laughs) not just in the morning.
Once this discrimination… See, when you are…when you are looking at your life only as a survival process, discrimination is a must. You walk out on the street, you are like any other animal in the forest constantly looking who is okay, who is not okay, where is the danger, where is…where is a friend, where is an enemy, constantly looking out. If you live in that condition survival gets taken care of, yes, but this discriminatory process if it exceeds its limits then everything in the existence becomes regimented and the chances of ever you lighting up becomes remote. It happened in the Louisiana Prison, anybody from Louisiana? Nobody? In a prison cell there were two white men and a black man. This was in the 60s. So, one of the white men said, ‘You know, I got 10 years for armed robbery but I was lucky because the gun didn’t go off. I tried to shoot somebody, the gun didn’t go off. So, for armed robbery I got 10 years. If the gun went off I would have got life. I’m really lucky the gun didn’t go off.’ See… (Gestures) (Laughs) The second white guy said, ‘Oh, even I was very lucky. I got 10 years for attempted murder because the bloat that I shot was built like a buffalo and he didn’t die. I shot him three times but he didn’t die. If he died I would have got life. Because he did not die I got only 10 years.’ The black guy said, ‘Oh, I was lucky too, really lucky because I was convicted for riding my motorcycle without a light and even I got only 10 years because it happened to be day time.’ (All Laugh & Clap)
Discriminatory mind can proceed to its extremes; it is useful only for survival. If you want to look at life, if you want to perceive life for what it really is you need one eye, not two. The two will help you to survive and that's all. It is just that over a period of time survival…the word survival might have gotten complicated. ‘No, that is not it, it’s not just survival. To carry my profession, to pursue my career, to do this, to do that I need discriminatory mind.’ It is just that you have complicated your survival process, that's all. What used to be just food in the stomach at one time survival, now it has become many, many, many things. The survival process has gotten extremely complicated. As the so called civilization happens people did not get really civilized, they complicated their savagery. Simple savagery was you saw a man, if you didn’t like him you speared him; that’s simple savagery, now it's very complex. If you don’t like somebody you will write a long article in the newspaper, not mentioning anything about him but you will maul him in a million different ways.
So, complicating…constantly going on complicating the survival process will present you with many problems and of course you could find solutions, you could busy yourself in inventing problems and finding solutions. What is the solution ultimately? You will see, if you go like this the only relief…both for the people who believe they are finding solutions and people who are directly, who are straight forward about creating problems and people who create problems in round about ways, for both of them the only relief ultimately will be to ‘rest in peace’ because that’s the only time they will know what it means to at least lie down in one place without rolling within themselves all the time. Not one moment of stillness will you ever know. If you have not known the beauty and immensity of being still, to put it simply you are actually ill. If I sit like this (gestures) naturally you will think I’m ill, isn't it? Is this not what's happening with your mind? This is illness. Your only comfort is even the doctor is not able to see because two shaking people can't see each other shaking. (All Laugh)
If you want to hide your inner shaking you just came to the wrong place, do you understand? (Laughs) If you want to gloss over your inner shaking then you just came to the wrong place because… See, once you…once you even…even for a moment, it may not be happening to you all the time, even for a single moment if you happen to realize that you have at any time seen a being or a human being with some kind of a spark in him which is more than being human, after that you should not be thinking how to make use of this. You should not be thinking how to make money, how to find comfort, how to milk this to the best of my benefit, how to get my health alright, how to do this - no, you must just take that little spark and see how to burn. You must just burn! Anything else if you do you are wasting a phenomenal opportunity. It is like you…you had a spacecraft, you could get into it and go away into the cosmos but instead of that you thought it's a firecracker and you set fire to it and you’re happy looking at it going up. Firecracker is a great thing, I am not saying no, firecracker is a great thing, it's a wonderful thing but is it comparable to a spaceship which can take you to another dimension altogether? It is nowhere comparable. So, if you have felt that at some moment in these many years of being here, many of you, that you have found somebody with a little spark, for one moment if you have tasted that spark, seen that spark, after that you shouldn’t be thinking how to do this, how to get this, how to do that - no, because if you think about how to do this or that, these two (gestures) will become too active. The two will become active. Once the two becomes active you will only forage on the surface, you can never sink into the depth.
The process of taking this around, the process of offering this to people across the planet, in many different places, in all kinds of situations is becoming more and more ridiculous and more and more interesting also. (Laughs) As you…I am…I am seeing you know, in large groups of scientists, large groups of highly educated individuals, when I offer this I find unfortunately they have made it most difficult for themselves, compared to anybody else on the planet, to even realize what is the nature of this. It looks like these are the people who are definitely going to spend their whole life never ever finding the handle for this mechanism, simply because they think they are educated, they think they are civilized, they think they have read the philosophies of both East and West; not just any one culture, they have read both. They have read all the holy scriptures of all the major five religions on the planet. They can quote but these are the people who will spend a lifetime, unless you really shake them out of it, without ever getting a handle on this life. Simple folk may do it effortlessly. If you can't get a handle on this life do you believe that you have any grasp of the whole cosmic scape or any other aspect of life? You think it's possible? It is just that you will become dedicated to your psychological process. What's happening in your mind, your thought and your emotion becomes of paramount importance.
When your thought and your emotion becomes paramount importance, to put it very simply, what it means is your petty creation has taken precedence, it has become far more important than the grandeur of the creator’s creation, that's all it means. That is a very, very small way to exist on the planet. Smallest way for a human being to exist is to be caught up in his creation because what you can create here, whoever you may be, however powerful you may be, however capable you may be, what you can create is so petty compa…. compared to the scape of creation that’s already happened. If you want to know life, if you want to taste life, if you want to suck the sap of life it's never going to happen through your psychological process.