Juhi Chawla and Sadhguru discuss the nature of the human being. Sadhguru looks at how society today seeks to mold human beings into a fixed format, where as a human being is supposed to blossom by his own nature.

Full Transcript:

Juhi Chawla: Sadhguruji, I want to say, I have attended your Inner Engineering program, I have seen some DVDs, I have read your books. And everywhere there are your brilliant views on various issues. It could be from the making of a nation to the making of a toy car, from the running of a household to the running of parliament. You have brilliant views on every issue that one can ever question. Yet I know very little about you and it… You know here’s a brilliant mind with an… for lack of better words, I would say ‘out-of-the-Box’ thinking - so different, so refreshing, so enlightening. I am fascinated and I want to know about your life. And I’d like to know that… I mean, were you just born brilliant (Laughter)? Did it begin from that very moment?

Sadhguru: I… I… I was a normal birth. I didn’t come in a box (Laughter). My mother had a normal child.

Juhi Chawla: No, I’m really fascinated, intrigued that we’re all here… but you know, the way you think, we wait to hear what you have to say. We’ve all been little children and we’ve all grown up but we’ve grown up and been educated in schools and… but I find our way of thinking, our way of being very conditioned, like almost systematized. Whereas, so where…where did it all begin?

Sadhguru So, what is… I mean the question that you’re asking is, do people grow up and blossom or are they brought up by somebody? You will see the general expression is, “I was brought up in this place, I was brought up in that way.” Especially in the West, you will see, “I was brought up Christian”, “I was brought up Jewish” – these are very common words. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous and humiliating that a human being has to be brought up. You bring up cattle, okay? You don’t bring up a human being. A human being is supposed to blossom by his own nature. That is why he’s on the top of the pile, at least on this planet, in the evolutionary scale. And most human beings don’t seem to understand that or they are not allowed to understand that by a whole lot of people and they need to be brought up. Bringing up means somebody is molding you. Molding means it’s a predetermined shape. And no flower that blossoms is the same way as another one, which blossomed yesterday. But a mold means it’s always going to be the same. If you make a mold, the idea of making a mold is that we want to have the same form, again and again and again.

Right now, generally that seems to be the work unfortunately of the current education system, the so-called religions that are operating in the world and of course the family. They want you to be in a certain mold, they don’t want you to blossom like a wild flower because they’re afraid of anything fresh happening among them. They want something that is familiar. They don’t want something unfamiliar to be born among them. So, if you have succumbed to that system, then yes, you’ve been molded into a certain form. If you allow your humanity to blossom, then you will see, you don’t belong to any mold. This is the beauty of being human that there is no a particular way to be. If you were a dog you would be one way, if you were cattle you would be one way, if you were a sheep you would be another way, if you’re bird - another way, a grass… a grasshopper - another way. But to be human means there is no particular way.

What is human is not defined, nor described, it is… it is just that for every other creature on this planet, nature drew two lines; within that they have to play their game. For a human being, only the bottom line is drawn, there is no top line. But socially, people are trying to draw a top line for themselves. But nature has not drawn a top line for you, it’s a limitless possibility and this is what is freaking human beings right now. Because they can’t decide what they can (Laughs)… need to be. They’re trying to be like somebody else. Only bottom line is set, top line has been removed – this is evolution.

Juhi Chawla: But wait, we still didn’t quite get to… So, having said all that, we’ve… I still didn’t quite get it that… So how was it when you were a child, were you… were you put into a school to go the systematic way where you learnt your Maths and Hindi… sorry, Maths and language and you know and did you keep up with it…

Sadhguru: Do I… Do I look that edu… educated? Don’t insult me like that (Laughter). Actually you know, when I go and stand in the line… in the immigration lines, in particularly in America, they look at me and say, “Can you speak English?” I say (Nods his head affirmatively) (Laughter) because I have that uneducated look, it’s not easy (Laughter). Do you know… Do you know what it takes to remain uneducated? Education is just twenty years of going somewhere and getting one certificate. To remain uneducated, it’s very difficult because from the day you’re born, your parents, every other adult, the school, the damn thing – everybody is trying to educate you…

Juhi Chawla: Yes.

Sadhguru: …about something that’s not worked in their life (Laughter & Applause).

Juhi Chawla: And then did you also, like we all went through these confused teenage years of not really knowing where we’re going, I mean did you clearly know your path?

Sadhguru: Not at all. I was, right from three or four years of age, I was always a million questions hanging in… in my head. I have (had?) a question about everything - everything to everything. Questions means, very fundamental questions about existence itself, my own existence

So, when I was three, four years of age, suddenly I realized I know nothing. Know nothing means – somebody gives me a glass of water, I do not know what is water. I know how to use it, I know if I drink it, it will quench my thirst and so many other ways of using it but I do not know what is water. I’m saying even today, you do not know what is water. It’s the only thing available in all three states on the planet. Three… two thirds of the planet is water, two thirds of your body is water. If we think life, we think water. But do you know what it is? With all the scientific exploration, we do not even know a single atom in its entirety. Today, our idea of science is, learning how to use everything. Yes? We know how to use an atom, we know how to break it, we know how to fuse it but we really do not know what it is. Any one thing, tiniest thing in the creation, we do not know in its entirety, this is the fact of life.

Juhi Chawla: Well even something simple as what you started with, saying that looking at water. I mean, straight away I was taught water - H2O and what it can do and it… you can mix it with colors and it becomes that. You can drink it and it quenches your thirst. But I never looked at it and said you know, “I don’t really know what is water.”

Sadhguru: Because nobody looks at anything. See, everybody is looking like this, nobody has any attention for a piece of life here. They’re like this (Gestures). If you pay attention to one life, one blade of grass, one grasshopper, one human being, something else will happen. That’s why we said ‘life and love’ because if you pay attention to one human being, some love will happen within you, okay? If you miss life, at least some emotion in that direction must happen to you. That will happen only if you pay attention to one. If you’re looking at like this (Gestures) …These days it’s become a fashion because you’re in love on Facebook. You love the whole humanity. To love one human being… if you want to love one human being, it costs life. To love the whole humanity, it doesn’t cost anything. It’s even better to love God because it’s always easy to love somebody who is not here now (Juhi Laughs), it’s so easy.

But if you have to love somebody who is sitting next to you right now, it costs life. You know how difficult it is to love someone who is next to you right now, how easy it is to love someone who is dead or who is in heaven? Isn’t it so? Let’s face it. Because if you have to love one, one thing is you have to pay attention. Without attention, it will not happen. And above all, you have to give up something that is you, to accommodate another, otherwise it will not happen. The English expression, it’s very good – “You must fall in love.” You cannot rise in love, you cannot stand in love, you cannot fly in love, you have to fall. Something of you should fall, otherwise it will not work. You will not know it. So, you want to have a fake sense of life, then you don’t pay attention to anything, everything is information. Nothing is a living experience. Everything is from the textbook or from the cinema or from the internet. Nothing is from life’s experience.