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March 14, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:50:05
Joe Rogan Experience #1791 - Sadhguru
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joe rogan
26:36
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sadhguru
02:19:29
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Pleasure to meet you Right there, that's good.
joe rogan
Yeah, like a fist from your face is what I usually tell people.
Well, I'm enjoying your book.
sadhguru
Which one are you reading?
joe rogan
I'm in the middle of...
Which one?
Inner Engineering.
unidentified
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Why is that funny?
Is that a funny one?
sadhguru
No, that was the...
I mean, after the three books have come, so I was thinking you must have gotten a more recent one.
joe rogan
Well, I found some of your stuff online, and I started watching some of your videos online, and they're very interesting and very educational.
And then I said, all right, let me find out what this guy's all about.
And so I got into that book.
sadhguru
That's good.
joe rogan
How did you find out about me?
Because your people reached out to be on here.
sadhguru
Well, right now we are on this soil mission.
I brought you a little bit of gift.
It's an Indian mint.
unidentified
Indian mint?
sadhguru
This leaf, an empty stomach.
If you just chew two leaves, they're not very pleasant to eat.
And then drink some maybe tepid water.
unidentified
Okay.
sadhguru
It is a great blood purifier.
joe rogan
Blood purifier?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Oh.
How does it purify your blood?
How does that work?
sadhguru
It has the necessary juices in it to do that.
joe rogan
The necessary juices.
Safe soil.
I always wondered about these things, about pots that plants come in.
Do you think plants like that?
sadhguru
Definitely not.
They would like to grow wild.
This is just a baby.
It's in a nursery.
You have to take it home and put it in your backyard.
joe rogan
Okay.
That's what I want to hear.
sadhguru
Or a much bigger pot.
joe rogan
Because once I started learning about mycology and how...
sadhguru
This is not where it would like to grow.
This is just a baby.
joe rogan
Just a baby.
Even a big pot, they don't really like that, right?
They would like to be in the ground.
sadhguru
Ground is best, no question, because there is a...
Ecosystem, which has to connect with it.
There's nothing like the ground.
But because in Texas or in Austin, it could get too cold for her.
So, she may not survive in your garden, then you have to bring her in.
joe rogan
I don't want her to die.
sadhguru
So, wintertime, maybe you'll have to bring it in.
joe rogan
So maybe I can pot it outside during the spring and then put it inside.
sadhguru
Winter, you have to bring her in.
joe rogan
Okay.
All right.
We'll work it out.
unidentified
We'll figure it out.
sadhguru
Because she's Indian, you know?
joe rogan
She's Indian.
Yeah, I know.
sadhguru
I mean, really Indian, not Native American.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
They have a lot of Indian animals in Texas, believe it or not.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, Axis deer.
It's a very common animal out here.
sadhguru
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, they imported them here.
I don't know when, but they're all over the place.
I saw one like six months ago on the side of the road.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So some things from India survived, but a lot of them died off.
Last year we had a very big freeze that lasted for a couple of weeks and a lot of exotic animals from other countries that people brought in.
sadhguru
Unless they're from the northern part of India, where it's in the Himalayan region, they may survive.
But South Indian animals like me won't make it in winter.
joe rogan
So you're on this grand tour right now, you were saying.
You just got back from...
You were in New York, right?
sadhguru
Yes, I was in… I just came from India two days ago.
Then I was in New York, Tennessee, New York and here and today.
This night I'm leaving for Caribbean because we are making, signing some memorandum of understanding with the CARICOM nations for the soil, safe soil movement.
So, they're all coming on board.
We have made a policy document specific for each country, depending on their latitude, soil types, economic conditions, and agricultural traditions of an individual nation.
Based on this hundred and ninety-two nations, we've made soil policies.
joe rogan
So this is something that you're very concerned about, and rightly so, that there's a problem with the topsoil in America in particular that we've been aware of for a long time where there's only like, what's the number, like 45 years worth of topsoil left if we go about practices the same way?
sadhguru
Generally, most UN agencies are talking about something like 60 to 80 horvests, which could be somewhere between 45 to 60 years of topsoil.
But it's not like it's suddenly going to get over one day.
It's not like a bank account.
It'll start sliding, which is already sliding.
So, sliding means on one level there is loss of nutrients in the food, and another level the yields are coming down.
We're going on increasing the inputs, the input cost is going up.
They tell me, fifty percent of the American farmers have not seen a dollar in the last twelve years.
And the highest suicide rate among all professions is among the farming community in the United States.
Really?
Yes, it is so in India also.
joe rogan
I know it's in India and I thought they attributed that a lot to debt.
sadhguru
But why debt?
Why the debt is piling up?
The banks give debt only what is suitable for that crop.
It's not like they're going to give you a billion dollars to do some farming.
They're going to calculate and give you.
Why is he not able to pay it back?
He's not able to pay it back.
One main reason is the input cost is going up year on year because the soil fertility is going down and the input cost is going up to a point where it's no more practical to do it.
joe rogan
There was also some sort of an issue with Monsanto, correct?
sadhguru
Those things are there, but...
joe rogan
You don't think that's a big deal?
sadhguru
It would be if it came big time, but Monsanto is not so big time in India yet.
joe rogan
It's not?
sadhguru
No, the policies have kind of blocked it and made it regulated.
So, we have not taken to GMO crops in a big way.
Only a few items we have taken.
Even that, people are protesting and generally farmers are aware and most people, large number of farmers have rejected it.
So, that's a different aspect.
See, the problem is always, we're always saying whom to hit, all right?
So, this is a movement which is not against anybody because in this one thing, we can all come together as one.
We may be of different nations, we may be of different racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, caste, creed, gender, whatever, and political ideologies, whatever.
But we all come from soil, live off the soil and when we die, we go back to the soil.
The only question we have in our life is, will we get this that soil is the basis of our existence here, will we get this now or will we get it when we're buried?
That's the only choice we have.
So, having said that, see, people are talking about organic farming.
These are all Urban people talking about it, they've never farmed in their life.
They don't know what it means to do organic farming.
Right now, if the world shifts to organic farming hundred percent, let's say tomorrow morning, our food production in the world will come down to twenty to twenty-five percent of what it is right now.
So that is death for most of the population.
joe rogan
So when they're talking about organic farming, they're talking about farming with no pesticides, no herbicides?
sadhguru
No pesticides, no fertilizer, all this.
joe rogan
No fertilizer?
Fertilizer is non-organic?
sadhguru
Yes, it is chemical fertilizer, right?
joe rogan
Okay, but what about organic fertilizer?
sadhguru
That is a manure.
Organic content is different.
So people who are talking about this, it's an ideal life, okay?
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
But will a farmer who is doing it for his commercial requirement, will he be able to conduct his agriculture in an idealistic way?
No, believe me.
I've been engaged with farmers.
It's not like that.
It's like you're eating good food, but if you have yourself checked up, your doctor may say, well, your calcium is a little deficient, your iron is deficient, so take these two pills.
So, you took these two pills and tomorrow you felt great.
Then you decided you don't have to really eat food, you can just eat a lot of these pills and you will be fine.
That is how we have done agriculture.
We had rich soil, in that whatever is deficient, we put a little bit of nitrogen or phosphate or something, suddenly the crops burst out.
Then we forgot that we have to put organic content.
We just started putting these salts forever, and in 25 to 30 years' time, the soil becomes fallow.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a book I read years ago called Dead Doctors Don't Lie by a man named Dr. Joel Wallach, and it talked about mineral deficiencies from topsoils.
It was a big issue, and one of the things that he brought up is that people who grow agriculture and have animals have known forever that they have to supplement the animal's diets with minerals, and that this is primarily because the food that they're getting is not minerally sufficient.
Yes.
And that's the same thing with our own food.
Because even though you can grow a lot of these vegetables, you're not getting the same nutrients that you would if you had rich topsoil.
sadhguru
Not at all.
See, the amount of nourishment or micronutrients that you got from a given vegetable, let's say in early 20th century, let's say 1920, And today what you're getting from the same thing is approximately 10% of that.
unidentified
10%?
sadhguru
Yes.
90% drop has happened.
joe rogan
Wow.
So it's enough to grow the food.
sadhguru
Especially these studies are available in United States.
Everywhere in the world there are not enough studies, but it could be a similar number, if not the same amount.
It could be something like that.
Anywhere between 10 to 25%, let's say.
For example, if you ate an orange in 1920, today to get the same stuff, you will have to eat eight oranges.
So, it's simply not practical.
So, people think this malnourishment, these problems and this starvation, these things will happen only to Africa or South America or somewhere.
No.
World Food Program predicts that by 2035, there could be famines around Illinois region.
joe rogan
Illinois?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
Really?
Because the food that they're eating is deficient in nutrients?
sadhguru
No, the thing is the soil has been so used up.
You heard of 1930s, the Dust Bowl.
Yesterday I was in New York and I was talking to somebody there.
So they're saying that some whatever volume, I don't know the volume, but some enormous amount of dust came and settled in New York City when the Dust Bowls just came up like, you know, it just blinded the whole, half the country.
So People are calculating how many whatever million tons or hundreds and thousands of tons of dust or soil landed up in New York City.
See, it stopped in New York City because of the tall buildings and stuff.
But how many millions of tons of soil, American soil, went and landed in Atlantic Ocean?
That you can never calculate, right?
joe rogan
Right.
When farmers are growing these monocrop agriculture, like if they're growing corn or soy or things like that, is that part of the problems?
It's not enough regenerative agriculture, not enough manure, animals grazing on the same lands?
sadhguru
Monoculture is a basic problem, okay?
And we've gotten into this kind of thing because we are looking at soil like some industrial machine that we put in so much and we have to get so much.
But soil is a living thing.
If you take a handful of soil, there are anywhere between seven to ten billion organisms in it, anywhere between fifty to seventy-five thousand species of organisms in it.
But now with… we are plowing with machines, it plows anywhere between twelve to fourteen inches.
Eighty-seven percent of the life on this planet, including you and me, come from the first twelve to fifteen inches of the soil.
But we are plowing the soil twelve to fourteen inches, leaving it open to harsh sunlight and leaving it like that for months.
That itself is a tremendous damage.
We have taken to this because Of monoculture, you crop everything at once.
If it was multicultural, you would crop one thing, the other thing would be still there.
And by the time you crop that, another one would have again grown up, you know?
There would be some greenery on the soil and organic activity would be going on.
Microorganisms would be alive and active.
But now, it's a single crop.
You take everything out by machines, plow it and leave it open to the sun.
That's causing a massive damage.
joe rogan
Now, if we do it another way, if you have a bunch of different plants growing there and you leave trees for shade and all sorts, is there enough land with what they're growing on now, with the amount of food that they're growing now?
Is this scalable if you have some sort of regenerative agriculture plan?
sadhguru
We can grow much more on much less land.
joe rogan
Really?
sadhguru
Yes.
See, we have been doing this for over twenty-four, twenty-five years now.
We've converted a few hundred thousand farmers into what is called as tree-based agriculture.
Earlier, we used to call it as agroforestry.
Then it came under trouble because then the whole thing went under the forest ministry.
Forest ministry is full of restrictions.
It is actually agricultural land, but it was called as agroforestry.
So we retitled it as tree-based agriculture.
So now it's under the agriculture ministry because it's farmer's land.
It's not forest land.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
So, by doing this properly, there are scientific ways of doing it.
Different crops can be done differently.
And pruning the trees at the right time and taking that… See, enough green material should be generated on the farm.
Enough animal waste must be generated on the farm.
Right now, animals have gone out of the farms and trees have gone off the farm.
So, where is the organic material?
These are only two sources of organic material that you have in the world.
You may have any kind...
because I've been in California in the last month, and whatever you say, somebody comes up and says, Sadhguru, my friend has made an app, it can solve any problem.
See, with technology, you may be able to improve the application.
I'll give that margin.
But you cannot generate organic content with technology.
It's only plant life and animal life which can create organic content.
There is no way you can generate organic content anywhere else.
It has to come from the land.
Simply there is no other way.
If I can tell you a joke, you're getting very serious about this soil business.
joe rogan
I love a joke.
sadhguru
This happened in 2060. A few scientists from the planet got an appointment with God.
They wanted to meet him.
They went there and said, hey, old man, you've done pretty well with creation, but today everything that you can do, we can also do.
It's time you retire.
God said, oh, is that so?
What is it that you can do?
So, they dug up little bit of soil and made a vague picture of a human child and did so many things and within a few minutes the child set up a life.
God said, oh, that's really impressive, but first get your own soil.
Everything, whether it's a worm or an insect or a plant or a bird or an animal or human beings, we've all come from soil.
There is nothing else here on this planet which is not… the source is not soil.
Everything, the source is soil.
joe rogan
So say if you have something that's a large monocrop like corn, it's a big one in America, and you wanted to transform the way they're growing corn and make it so that it's sustainable and that you have some sort of regenerative agriculture situation.
How would you do that?
sadhguru
See, if you want to grow monocrops, I wouldn't advise that.
That's not the best way to do it.
But for commercial reasons, you want to do monocropping, all right?
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
You're a corn farmer, you don't want to grow anything else if that is so, you must put back substantial amount of organic content.
Because even if you take a corn plant, which grows almost six to seven feet tall, and you're only eating the corn, you don't have animals on the farm largely.
If you just… the plant part of it, if you just chop it into pieces and put it back in the soil, the soil will be very happy.
You got your corn anyway.
And soil will be very rich.
joe rogan
What do they do with it now?
sadhguru
Right now, they bail it up and sell it to somebody.
Some people in some countries, they just burn it.
They use it as fuel for, you know, household purposes, or they use it in so many other ways, but it is not going back into the soil.
joe rogan
And they just use commercial fertilizer?
sadhguru
Yes.
That will last for the first 10, 20 years maximum.
After that, it'll start diminishing because you can't just grow with salts.
You need organic content.
Because the way the soil mechanics happen is it's a very complex and sophisticated marketplace.
The plants have to capture the carbon from the atmosphere and make it into carbon sugars, and that is the currency with which it can exchange for nutrients with organisms.
They won't give it free.
So even in our own stomach, you… today you know that without the gut microbiome, you cannot really digest the food that you eat without their cooperation.
Though what is happening in the soil is probably a thousand, ten thousand or a million times more complex operation.
Who we are right now as a life, we are just a consequence of what's happening in the soil.
Even in the evolutionary process, that's how it's happened.
That today, what we are right now, over sixty percent of our body is actually microorganisms.
Only forty percent is our parental genetics.
Rest is all microorganisms.
So, what we are now is a reflection of what's in the soil.
The moment you weaken the soil, life on the planet will start becoming weak.
People don't notice this.
I know this is a controversial thing to say, but I think you're known for controversy, so what's my problem?
So, I'm saying, see for example, there are certain countries which are suffering this whole coronavirus much more than the other.
I don't want to make a absolute statement about this, but one thing is something we must look at is, any doctor, you don't need a top virologist, a simple doctor will tell you, if you lack vitamin A, vitamin B6, B12, D, E, and you know, foliate and iron and zinc and magnesium in your system, you will become susceptible to upper respiratory tract infections.
This is a known fact.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, what is the deficiency in America?
Vitamin E, most Americans are 90% deficient.
joe rogan
D? Yes.
sadhguru
Vitamin A, 43% deficient.
Vitamin C, 39% deficient.
Like this, you can go on.
With all these deficiencies, we are trying to make it up with pills.
I see I was in Los Angeles last month, And there's a building-sized hoarding which says, my favorite pharmacy.
I said, when did this happen?
The next thing is you'll say my favorite hospital, next thing you'll say my favorite symmetry.
Your pharmacy and hospital and symmetry are not favorite places.
We go there only when it's inevitable.
We may have to go there, but we don't wish to go there.
When you say something is my favorite, you want to go there, all right?
That's what it means.
So, you should never have a favorite pharmacy or a favorite cemetery for that matter.
It is a place when it's inevitable, something, some trouble came, we will have to go.
But today, it's become the norm in, well, the most affluent country in the nation, where there's a variety of choices of nourishment.
In this country, without pills, you cannot exist because the food doesn't have the stuff.
So, once the food doesn't have the stuff, people won't have it either.
All animals won't have it either.
So, the very species will become weaker and weaker by the day.
In a few generations, it'll become so weak that we won't be able to sustain a common cold.
We could become like that.
So, you taking a pill will bridge you for some time.
It is not a solution for life.
When something is lacking, a pill will bridge us across a little bit.
But it is not a solution.
How it comes through the complex mechanism of food and how it becomes part of our body and a simple chemical of a tablet, they are not the same thing.
They will not do the same things to us.
And what other consequences it has, nobody can ever estimate because there are so many other consequences in a country like United States where there is a whole choice of nourishment and a whole choice of lifestyles.
You are spending nearly three and a half trillion dollars in healthcare.
That is a huge statement about America's health.
joe rogan
Well, it's very obvious if you look at most Americans.
And what's really interesting is there's been some photos that people have put up recently of beaches from the 1970s.
And you see these people on the beach with their shirts off and bikinis on and They look so good.
They look so much healthier.
They look so much different than people look today.
When you go to the beach today, you have a large...
I mean, it's a representative of America.
And in America, some large percentage of people are overweight.
And a lot of that is because of the food choices.
A lot of that is because of what's fast and quick and available.
sadhguru
One thing about obesity is...
See, when the food lacks the necessary nutrients, the body longs for more food to fulfill that need.
So, you end up eating more and more thinking you'll… I mean, the body is thinking that it'll get nourishment by eating more.
That more makes you grow horizontally.
joe rogan
Yes.
And it's also like the kind of food.
You know, if there's food that has a lot of sugar in it, your body freaks out and it just wants more of it and it can't stop eating it because it's an unnatural state to have that much sugar in something that doesn't have fiber.
Like if you're drinking a sugary drink.
sadhguru
I mean...
I don't know how to say this.
I'm not being disparaging about a nation or a society.
joe rogan
Go ahead.
sadhguru
But the food choices in America are atrocious.
joe rogan
There's a lot of bad choices.
But there's also a disconnect in America because there's so many people that live in urban environments.
They have no connection to it.
They don't know about it at all.
They just look for the term organic when they go to the supermarket and they feel like they're healthy if they do that.
sadhguru
See, I mean, this is not talking about women's choices of footwear, but I call this high heel life.
That means you're well above the earth.
You're living in an apartment which is 14 floors above the earth.
You're working all the time with insulated from the earth.
In every way, you are trying to be away from the earth.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sadhguru
Which is a wrong way.
You… people may believe they will go to different types of heavens depending on their belief systems, but we all come from the same soil.
Being connected with that is most essential because the body is thriving only because of its natural connection.
joe rogan
Well, they have classes now where people are grounding, where they go outside and they take their shoes off and walk around and lay on the ground.
sadhguru
They're paying money to hug a cow.
joe rogan
Legitimate tree hugging, like real tree hugging.
It used to be a term that we'd use to people to make fun of them, but now it's legitimate.
People are hugging trees to try to get better.
Grounding is like the principles of grounding.
The idea is that there's some sort of a connection that you get from Mother Earth that the only way you get it is to be bare skin touching the grass and the soil and that there's actually a benefit to that.
sadhguru
No, they're mainly talking about the electrical positive charge getting neutralized.
That is true.
joe rogan
It is true?
sadhguru
It is true, but it's not the most important aspect.
The more important aspect is the microbial life in your body and the microbial life in the soil are cousins.
They need to meet.
They need reunions often.
If that doesn't happen, you're living like a lab rat all the time washing yourself up with all kinds of things that nothing can be on your hands, nothing can be on your feet.
So, there is no connection with the source.
In that, the body suffers.
And today, there is substantial scientific data to show how, you know, micronutrients or lack of micronutrients and mental illnesses are very directly connected.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
Today, the WHO is predicting a mental illness pandemic.
See, what this means is, we said a coronavirus pandemic.
What this means is, if you are in this room, three people, All three of us are susceptible.
We may get it.
All right?
Now, mental illness pandemic means just that.
Any one of us can go lose it right now.
Well, we're going there.
I mean, in 2020, in Japan, more people committed suicide than they died of coronavirus.
How's that?
joe rogan
It's pretty crazy.
sadhguru
So, in a country where it's affluent, they're not dying for economic reasons, obviously.
Not because of poverty, not because of hunger, no.
Just they're not able to handle their own minds.
One important aspect, it's not the only aspect, but one important aspect is lack of micronutrients that's directly connected to the type of soil that we're working upon right now and where we grow food.
When we say where we grow fruit, seventy-one percent of the world's soil or world's land is under cultivation in the world.
So, why I'm focusing on agricultural soil?
People ask, why not… what rainforest?
Why not the ocean?
Yes, all those things need to be taken care of.
I hundred percent agree with that.
But agricultural soil is that place, agricultural land is that place, which is every day tended to by a human being.
A man or a woman is on the land tending to it.
The place that is being regularly tended to by a human being is in its worst possible condition.
Where there is no human footprint, everything seems to be fine.
Well, the problem is just this.
See, we are the most intelligent species on the planet or more intellectual species on the planet.
I would like to withdraw the intelligence aspect.
We are the most competent for sure in terms of ability to do things.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
Our competence is increasing by the day.
What a thousand people or ten thousand people could not do a thousand years ago, today one man can do.
That is the level of competence because of technology, we have that.
With this level of competence and intellect, One important thing is we must be functioning consciously.
If we function unconsciously and compulsively, we become a destructive force.
All this destruction has happened not because of some evil plan.
When you mentioned a company and said, is it them?
This is why I don't want this narrative to grow.
It has not happened because of some evil plan.
This has happened in search of human well-being.
joe rogan
In search of human well-being.
sadhguru
Yeah.
Human beings trying to be happy.
Human beings trying to live well.
That is why they turned the planet upside down, isn't it?
joe rogan
In some ways, but it's also profit.
Human beings trying to profit so they're doing things that aren't necessarily sustainable.
sadhguru
People want profit because that is the only way they can be well.
Those who are making losses, are they well?
joe rogan
Yeah, sort of.
But a lot of them, they're already well.
They're greedy.
They've gotten past the point of being well, and now they've gotten connected to the idea of accumulating vast sums of money.
sadhguru
No, that is being judgmental, calling somebody greedy.
Because, see, if I have one meal a day, which is my normal, I think I'm doing fine.
If somebody else has one meal a day, he thinks he's very poor, he wants two.
The guy who's having two thinks he's poor because somebody else is having three.
One who has a little home, he thinks he's poor because somebody has a big home like this.
So, what is greed and what is not greed?
joe rogan
Well, I'll tell you what greed is.
If you make choices where you know that the thing that you're doing, whether you're distributing a product Or whether you're causing an action that is going to be detrimental to human beings, but you cover up the data to hide the fact that it's going to be detrimental because you want to maximize your profit and you don't care about the negative impact it has on people because you're only thinking about money and you're already substantially wealthy.
That, by definition, is being greedy, right?
sadhguru
See, by definition it's like this.
Somebody is dreaming of a million dollars.
He thinks that is the ultimate goal in his life.
But a guy who has a million is wanting to be a billionaire.
One who is a billionaire, he looks at somebody who has hundred billion dollars.
He thinks at least that much he must have.
So I'm saying, instead of being judgmental about this, human well-being is sought from outside.
That is the whole problem.
See, human experience essentially happens from within.
Whether it's your joy or misery comes from within you, isn't it?
Maybe somebody or something can stimulate it from outside, but still it happens within you.
Joy and misery happens from within you.
Pain and pleasure happens from within you.
Agony and ecstasy happens from within you.
Every human experience happens from within you.
But in pursuit of happiness, we're turning the world upside down because this is the case of a You know, there was an old potato farmer.
One day he wanted to eat apples, so he went to an apple tree.
But by habit, he started digging for the apples till the tree came down on him because he's a potato farmer.
So right now, human beings have become like this.
They have gotten used to this, that they think by getting this, by getting that, by having one more thing and one more thing, they're going to be happy.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
But human experience happens from within.
If you take charge of your interiority, being peaceful and happy is a natural consequence of that.
But for convenience and comfort, we do things outside.
To create impact, we do things outside.
So this experience of if human beings were naturally joyful by their own nature, they would only do what is needed, nothing more, nothing less.
But right now, they're in pursuit of happiness.
You can't stop them.
joe rogan
Yeah, they are in pursuit of happiness, but they're also, again, in pursuit of profit because it's a number-based system, so it becomes like a game, and you get connected to corporations.
When you're in a corporation, there's a diffusion of responsibility because you don't think about your own involvement and what the corporation is doing.
You think about your role, what you do as a job, and then you try to maximize profit, and it's a game that people get wrapped up in.
sadhguru
Yeah, but that is… It doesn't make them happy.
joe rogan
You're absolutely correct.
sadhguru
No, no.
unidentified
It's in pursuit of happiness, but… Well, it's in pursuit of success.
sadhguru
See, most human beings cannot be happy if they're not successful, isn't it?
joe rogan
There's a lot of that, yes.
And then they get medicated to help them get happy.
That's a lot of people.
I mean, what percentage of people are not following by the principles that you're espousing, which are very natural and very healthy?
And they instead follow this corporate structure, the corporate guidelines.
They follow that path, and they're not happy.
So what do they do?
They medicate themselves.
sadhguru
No, today we have come to this place where if you want to be peaceful, you need a chemical.
You want to be joyful, you need a chemical.
You want to be healthful, you need a chemical.
Well, you want to be ecstatic, of course there is a chemical.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
So, what is the consequence of this?
Why this is happening?
One thing is in this generation, one thing that's happened in people's minds is the heaven has collapsed in people's minds.
joe rogan
The heaven?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
How so?
sadhguru
See, I've been talking to people.
Fifty years ago, if I spoke to people and I asked how many of you want to go to heaven, almost eighty percent would raise their hands.
Today, you go to your university and ask them, how many of you want to go to heaven?
They'll say, hehehehe.
They think it's a ridiculous question.
All right?
Nobody will raise their hand.
So, in their minds, heaven has collapsed.
There's no place to go.
So, they want to do everything here.
joe rogan
All right?
I see.
sadhguru
So, they have not found how to be joyful and ecstatic within themselves.
So, chemical usage, initially it became alcohol, then it became chemicals, it's getting stronger and stronger.
And, you know, so many people dying of those things every...
every day and illnesses, and it's costing a nation and the world a lot.
It's not just in one country, it's...
it's going across the world.
Law enforcement agencies may be controlling it a little bit, but they can never control it totally because the consumption is mass-based.
It is more people maybe consuming these things than people eating bread.
It's becoming like that.
So, this whole movement, where it's going means if you do not raise human consciousness, if you do not teach people how to sit here feeling absolutely blissed out within yourself by your own nature because This human mechanism is the most sophisticated chemical factory.
If you are a good CEO, you would produce the chemicals that will give you fantastic experience.
If you're a lousy CEO, you're giving yourself a bad experience.
Now, you're buying chemicals from outside to fix that, all right?
So essentially, you're a bad manager of your own system.
You're not taken charge of this.
Why has that happened?
Because your education, your society is talking about conquering the world, but never taught you anything about how to take charge of this.
Do you agree with me?
unidentified
Yes.
sadhguru
The most… in this room, there's so much technology here.
In this room, the most complex and sophisticated technology is within your system.
Yes or no?
Human system.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
This is.
Have you read the user's manual?
joe rogan
There's no user's manual.
sadhguru
There is.
joe rogan
There is?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
Where is it at?
sadhguru
It's built into the machine.
joe rogan
Oh, how do I get it?
sadhguru
You need to pay attention.
You're reading Inner Engineering.
Read that carefully.
joe rogan
I'm reading it.
I'm in the middle.
I'm at part two.
sadhguru
There are pointers as to how to read your own Use this manual.
joe rogan
Yes.
Let me take you back to this concept of heaven.
You know, when you're talking about people in universities that you say, how many of them want to go to heaven?
The problem is they don't have any evidence of heaven.
And so when a lot of these young people that are atheists or agnostics, they don't want to buy into anything that they believe is connected to fairy tales or they're connected to Some sort of an ideology they believe was manufactured to control people and to keep people...
sadhguru
That's what I said.
Heaven has collapsed in their minds.
joe rogan
In their minds.
But it's also because heaven is connected to religion and religion is connected to atrocities.
There's a lot of people that think of religion, they think of the evils of the Catholic Church or they think of You know, what religion has justified, the horrors of history, the things that people have done in the name of religion.
So a lot of younger, sophisticated, intelligent people don't want to believe in anything that there's no evidence for.
So when you say, how many of you want to go to heaven, say, show me a video.
Tell me where I'm going.
You have a map of heaven?
sadhguru
I'm not asking that question, offering a ticket.
I'm just telling you, heaven has collapsed in people's mind, which is a good thing, because...
joe rogan
It's a good thing?
unidentified
It is, because...
sadhguru
Because the idea that this is not the place to live well, there is another place where you will live well is a wrong idea.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
This is the place to live well.
joe rogan
You could have heaven right here.
sadhguru
Yes.
And who told you you're not already in heaven and making a mess out of it?
joe rogan
No one.
I think that's possible.
sadhguru
We are in a heaven making a mess out of it.
So right now, whether we want to fix the soil or we want to fix the human mind, we're only trying to see that you don't mess up the heaven in which we have landed.
joe rogan
Yes.
I could agree with that.
I think the problem is the term heaven.
When you say it, people think of a biblical heaven.
They think of a place that you go...
sadhguru
No, no.
Every religion has their own kind of heaven.
That's the whole thing.
I'm saying before Bible came, there have been heavens in other places.
joe rogan
Yes, yes.
You know one thing I found really interesting...
sadhguru
This is one thing good about this soil is...
See, people may even have separate heavens to go to, but we all come from the same soil.
Our bodies go back to the same soil.
So this is a unifying factor, irrespective of one's religion, caste, creed, whatever else.
joe rogan
So in your mind, this concept of heaven relates to like a harmony amongst yourself and the people, the living things around you, including the soil.
sadhguru
See, essentially it's like this.
If you feel pleasant in your body, we call this health.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
If you feel very pleasant in your body, we call this pleasure.
If you feel pleasant in your mind, we call this peace.
If you feel very pleasant, we call this joy.
If you feel very pleasant… if you feel pleasant in your emotion, we call this love.
If you feel very pleasant, we call it compassion.
If you feel very pleasant in your very life energies, then we call this blissfulness.
If you become very, very pleasant, then we call it ecstasy.
If your surroundings become pleasant, we call it success.
So, to create pleasantness in the surroundings, we need the cooperation of people and forces around us.
Without everybody's cooperation, you can't create a pleasant atmosphere.
But pleasantness of the body, pleasantness of the mind, pleasantness of emotion and energy is one hundred percent your business, isn't it?
So, if you're feeling ecstatic, You are in heaven because your idea of heaven is a very pleasant place, isn't it?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
This planet Earth is very pleasant except for the human beings who are creating unpleasantness among each other.
joe rogan
Well, this sounds like a great concept, but human beings are very complex.
Their emotions are complex, their needs and desires and their trauma and pain and insecurities.
And all mental health issues.
How does one get to that spot?
Like, what you're saying sounds wonderful.
I mean, you're a guru.
You're a literal guru.
So when you sit here and tell people these things, they go, well, that sounds easy for that guy.
sadhguru
And look at him.
He's wise and enlightened.
He's not easy or difficult.
joe rogan
You got a great beard.
sadhguru
It is not easy or difficult.
joe rogan
It's not?
sadhguru
It is a question of wrong direction or right direction.
That is, you went to an apple tree and you're digging the roots because you're a potato farmer.
That is the only problem you have.
You are the source and seat of your experiences within you.
What happens within you?
Should it happen your way or my way?
Tell me.
joe rogan
Your way or my way?
unidentified
No.
sadhguru
What happens within you?
Should it happen your way or my way?
joe rogan
Well, it's within me.
When you say within me, do you mean my thoughts?
sadhguru
Do you mean my overall experience?
Your thought, your emotion, your body, whatever, your chemistry, your energy, everything.
What happens within you?
Should it happen your way or somebody else's way?
joe rogan
Well, I think if your way sucks, maybe you should listen to other people and maybe try their way.
sadhguru
See, if it happened your way, would you keep yourself blissful or miserable?
joe rogan
You would keep yourself blissful if you were wise, if you were wise and your mind was working properly, but if you have mental health issues, if you're filled with trauma, if you're poorly educated, you're starting from a deficit, a severe deficit where you don't think correctly.
No?
sadhguru
No.
That is not the problem.
The original problem, the root of the problem is this.
Let's address one step at a time.
See, right now, the simple question is, what happens in your mind, your emotion, your chemistry, your energies must be your way, isn't it?
joe rogan
Well, it's yours, yes.
sadhguru
It is yours, so it must be your way.
But it's not happening your way right now because it's in a compulsive reactive state.
OK. So, anybody can cause anything within you.
So, if I decide what clothes you must wear, what food you must eat, what you should do every day, you will call this slavery, isn't it?
joe rogan
Or the government.
sadhguru
Don't go there.
So, right now, someone else, something else can decide what happens within you.
Isn't this the most horrible form of slavery?
That someone can decide whether you're happy or unhappy.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's not good.
sadhguru
That's not good.
joe rogan
That's not the best path.
sadhguru
So the problem is just this.
An intelligence which needs to be conscious is unfortunately unconscious and compulsive.
So the only problem that you have is compulsive reaction to life around you.
What is needed is a conscious response to life.
So this simple thing people have not handled from their childhood.
unidentified
Right.
sadhguru
So when you don't handle this one thing, everything will be wrong.
Everything will be accidental.
Your success and failure, both are accidental.
joe rogan
So what do you say to someone, maybe they're 30 years old, and they've had this life of mistakes and regret and maybe alcoholism or gambling or some other problems, but they want to be conscious.
They want to be blissful.
They want to be enlightened.
They want to be a happy person, filled with love.
What path do they take?
What steps do they take to correct the journey they're on?
sadhguru
Why is it, though human beings are not the strongest creatures on the planet compared to other species, why is it the human beings are dominating this world?
Simply because of our ability to use tools, isn't it?
joe rogan
And our intellect, our ability to manipulate our environment.
sadhguru
Yes, but even then, if we didn't have knowledge of using tools, the buffaloes would have mowed us down, all right.
unidentified
Yes.
sadhguru
So, your intellect, they don't care.
It's your ability to use tools.
You made an arrow, you made a gun, you made so many things.
joe rogan
You made a house.
sadhguru
Yes.
Everything, all instruments.
Right now, microphone or telephone or whatever else, these are all instruments to enhance.
We are this much, because of our instruments, we become that much.
Right now, there is one little screw here in this furniture.
I will ask you, you're a strong guy.
I will ask you to unscrew this with your hands.
joe rogan
Can't do it.
sadhguru
You do it.
You may lose all your nails.
I'll allow you to use your teeth.
Maybe you lose some of them.
joe rogan
It's going to be a problem.
sadhguru
But it'll be right there.
But if I give you a screwdriver, boom.
joe rogan
I can do it easy.
sadhguru
In a minute, you'll get it out.
So this is the power of the tool.
So as there are tools for doing things in the external world, there are tools to handle this.
Because you don't have a toolkit, This machine, which is the most complex machine, is going crazy.
Right now, you're reading in engineering, it's a toolkit.
You just use the tools.
Don't worry about the philosophy, don't worry about belief system, don't worry about your concept, somebody's concepts, your beliefs, somebody's beliefs.
Just use the necessary tools.
Being peaceful, joyful, loving is a natural outcome of that.
joe rogan
Okay, well, what are those tools?
Like the scenario that I laid out.
You have a person who's 30 years old.
They have a history of trauma in their life.
They're very unhappy, very depressed.
Maybe they're alcoholics.
They're trying to get their life in order.
sadhguru
Today, I want you to understand this.
The Yisha Foundation and this inter-engineering process that we are doing around the world, in 2021, I think, I think it's 2021, Our video views are 2.2 billion.
joe rogan
2.2 billion video views?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
That's a lot.
sadhguru
Yes.
Why?
Because it's worked.
Because of what?
It has worked, I'm saying for people.
unidentified
It's worked?
sadhguru
Yeah.
We have over 16 million volunteers working with the foundation.
Why are they doing this?
Because the only reason is it has worked.
What is it that's worked?
I did not teach them a morality.
I did not teach them a philosophy.
I did not promise them miracles.
I did not pull gold chains out of thin air and give it to them.
No, nothing.
Simply tools to fix themselves.
Just how to sit, how to breathe, how to manage yourself.
This is all.
joe rogan
Yes.
But you're entertaining.
That's also one of the reasons why you have that many views.
How many views do we have?
If you're a guest.
Pull your mic down so we can hear you.
unidentified
On YouTube, I guess?
joe rogan
Yeah, let's just go with YouTube.
sadhguru
No, no, it's okay.
That's not the point.
joe rogan
How many views?
I don't know.
sadhguru
Say four billion.
It's okay.
joe rogan
I don't know.
unidentified
Probably about the same.
Sounds about right.
joe rogan
Yeah, and we're not teaching you shit.
No, that's not true.
Other people are, that are on here.
But I see what you're saying, that it works.
But what I'm saying is, what are those tools?
This is all very mystical and difficult for people to grasp.
sadhguru
There are mystical aspects also, but that is not for everybody.
Only for those who are interested in those things, who want to pursue that aspect.
For the rest of the people, for somebody, if their backache goes away, his life changes.
For somebody, if his headache goes away, his life changes.
Somebody drops his alcohol consumption, addiction, his life changes.
Somebody, some compulsive thought that maybe drives him crazy, that goes away.
These are simple things.
This is just a small screwdriver is all he needs.
He doesn't need a total overhaul.
Mysticism is a different aspect.
It is like you're not just interested in living well.
You want to know the very root of life.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
That's a different aspect.
That's not for everybody.
That is only for those who seek that.
But for common people, all they want to do is they want to live peacefully, joyfully, with some sense of purpose to whatever they're doing in their lives.
For this, it's very simple.
You're talking about a case of a 30-year-old person who has this problem, this problem, this problem.
I have millions of them with me.
30, 40, 60, all kinds, from 16 to any age, all right?
So if it did not work, they wouldn't be working for the foundation.
We are a volunteer organization with 5,600 full-time volunteers and over 16 million part-time volunteers.
Everything is done by volunteers.
joe rogan
Well, obviously, you're doing something, right?
sadhguru
It's working.
That's all I'm saying.
joe rogan
So what is it?
sadhguru
See, people don't know how to sit.
People don't know how to eat, what to eat, when to eat.
They don't know.
They're just eating like instinctively.
See, instinctive existence would be fine if you had the intelligence of an animal.
With this level of intelligence, if you function instinctively, you will be destructive to yourself and to everybody around you.
That's what is happening in the world.
joe rogan
Instinctively is fine if you have an animal.
Well, listen, I have an animal.
If I left a lot of food around, he would just eat himself to death.
sadhguru
Oh, animals?
joe rogan
Yeah.
sadhguru
They won't do that.
joe rogan
My dog would.
sadhguru
See, dog has become like you.
Inspired by you.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a problem.
Wild animal.
sadhguru
Wild animal will eat what it wants and then it'll move on.
joe rogan
That's true.
That's true.
Yeah, humans have really messed dogs up.
They've turned them into people.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Dogs are actually the human version of animals.
So when you say it works though, like for a person that is listening to this, that is seeking some sort of a path to a better life, what would you recommend they do first?
sadhguru
The simplest thing they need to understand is Human experience is caused from within, not from outside.
Right now, see, Somebody can abuse you, let's say.
They're just words.
Right now I'm going to abuse you in a language that you don't understand.
You know, India has 1300 languages I can choose.
joe rogan
1300?
sadhguru
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow, I didn't know that.
sadhguru
So I'm going to use some Indian language and abuse you with a smile on my face.
You think I'm saying something very sweet to you.
joe rogan
Go ahead.
sadhguru
Yes.
So my abuse is not hurting you at all.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
It's only your reaction which is going to hurt you.
joe rogan
Got it.
sadhguru
Right?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, in whichever language it is, whatever nonsense it is, it is only your reaction which hurts you, not my words ever.
But you think my words are hurting you, this you must change within you.
You need to understand it's your compulsive reaction to life which hurts you, not what other people are doing.
If somebody hurts you physically, that's a different matter.
It's a survival issue, you need to take care of that properly, okay?
Physical hurt is different.
Physical pain is actually very good for you.
Because if there… Physical pain is good for you?
Yes, I'll come.
If there was no physical pain, most people would not know how to survive.
joe rogan
Because they wouldn't know what not to do.
sadhguru
Yeah.
In the name of, see, even though there is so much pain, see how tattooed people are, how poked up they are all over.
If there was no pain, yeah, they've got all kinds of holes all over the place, all right?
It hurts, I'm saying.
I'm not commenting on their fashion.
I'm saying it hurts.
But in spite of that they're doing, if there was no pain at all, They would have pulled out their intestines and walk on the street like a handbag, all right?
joe rogan
Probably.
sadhguru
Yes.
If there was no pain, people would not even know how to survive.
So in that sense, pain is good for them.
It prevents them from doing something absolutely destructive towards themselves.
So physical pain is a survival mechanism.
That's a different aspect.
But rest of the pain is caused in their own mind.
I can cause physical pain to you, but can I cause mental pain to you?
joe rogan
You can initiate something that might make me react.
sadhguru
No, I will do nonsense, all right?
I will do total nonsense.
But it's you who causes that pain within yourself by reacting in a certain way.
So if I initiate things in a language that you don't understand, You're just fine.
joe rogan
It doesn't work.
sadhguru
So it is not my words or my actions which are causing pain to you.
It's your compulsive reaction which is causing that.
joe rogan
This is a beautiful concept, but for a lot of people, they develop these patterns of behavior and thinking that are very difficult to break.
So how does one come up with the practices that would allow them to consistently and continually understand this and apply this to their life?
sadhguru
See, the patterns are formed not only in the psychological structure.
The patterns are formed in the chemical structure of the body.
The patterns are formed in the energy structures of the body.
The patterns are formed in the karmic structures of one's system.
So, the memory patterns establish themselves in every way and make you that kind of person, all right?
But that that kind of person you are is something that you created unconsciously.
If you can create something unconsciously, you can also create the same thing consciously, isn't it?
joe rogan
So you can fix the same thing consciously, you mean?
sadhguru
No, I'm saying if you create one kind of persona unconsciously, you can also create another kind of persona consciously, isn't it?
joe rogan
Yes, you can make a conscious choice to create a healthy persona.
sadhguru
So right now, because the patterns are so well established, it's like a rut in the street, a road, all right?
If there is a deep rut in the road, even if you steer it this way, it drags you that way.
So, that is what is happening in people because they have formed patterns, strong patterns.
Even if they once in a way think, oh, I must give up the drink, they come off for two days and again they slip back into the same thing because there is a chemical pattern, there is a karmic pattern, there is a psychological pattern, there is a compulsiveness built into the body itself, the whole system.
So, that is working that way.
There are various tools and technologies as to how to break these patterns.
But they must be willing to subject themselves.
You can't force them to do it.
It is not something by force.
It can only be done when somebody is willing, when they have a genuine desire.
Then there are tools.
If you don't have the desire, even if I give you the screwdriver, you'll turn it the wrong way and tighten it further, I'm saying.
joe rogan
Right.
I see what you're saying.
What actions should someone take besides recognizing that the way they react to things is a conscious choice?
That they choose to either be upset or not be upset or to react to these external...
sadhguru
No, don't go there.
See, upset, not upset, that is not the point.
Are you a conscious response?
Or are you an unconscious compulsive reaction?
This is the only thing.
Reaction or response?
Response means, right now I say something that you may not like.
Now you can respond the way you want.
Not because of what I said.
You continue to say what you want.
This is your response.
joe rogan
You don't have to react.
sadhguru
If you react, in some way unknowingly, you'll become enslaved to me.
Isn't it?
joe rogan
That's what a lot of people love to do, right?
That's why they start fights.
sadhguru
They're always reacting.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
They think reacting is the way to live.
Well, if you react, you'll become somebody's slave.
I must...
I must tell you this.
On a certain day, a yogi was coming this way, coming to Joe Rogan's show.
On the way, somebody stopped him on the street and abused him in every possible way.
He listened to everything carefully, not ignoring them, listening to very alert, listening to every word of abuse.
Then he looked at the time and he said, see, I have a show, I need to go.
I'll finish that and come back.
If you have something more to say, you can tell me then.
Now these guys don't know what to do with him.
If these are that kind of people, they will say hundred things.
If you say one thing, they will… next thing is they'll beat you.
But now if you say a hundred things, he says, I'll come back for more.
You don't know what to do with him.
Why he is like this is, he's decided that he is the master of his destiny.
No matter who does what, he will go where he wants to go, intelligent man or no?
A man who goes where he wants to go, no matter what anybody else is doing to him, that is a smart man, isn't it?
joe rogan
It's definitely a better choice than just being a reactionary.
sadhguru
If you're a reaction, you'll go away their way.
Somebody will take you their way.
Somebody will take you this way.
Somebody will take you that way.
Such a person will ever achieve anything that they wish to in their life.
joe rogan
They might get lucky.
sadhguru
See, those who achieve things by luck always live with the fear of losing it.
joe rogan
Yes.
They panic, right?
And they're always worried, and they get greedy.
sadhguru
Because they're scared.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
This came by chance and it may go away by chance.
joe rogan
Yeah, they have famine mentality.
sadhguru
If you have done it by knowing what you're doing, if you lose everything today, you can create it again.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
Because you know the mechanics of how to do.
joe rogan
Right.
And likely you won't lose it.
sadhguru
You won't lose it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So what should a person do?
Should they start taking yoga?
Should they start thinking a certain way every day about their life and the way they're responding to things and whether or not they're reacting or being conscious?
sadhguru
Is that guy falling off the sky or is he doing yoga in your studio?
joe rogan
He's getting abducted by a UFO. That's a flying saucer.
sadhguru
I get you.
joe rogan
What do you think about flying saucers?
What do you think about like...
sadhguru
We'll come.
Let's do yoga first.
Okay.
unidentified
So...
joe rogan
We'll get to that?
sadhguru
We'll get to that.
joe rogan
Okay.
sadhguru
So right now we're trying to fix the soil.
Then we'll go to another place.
joe rogan
Let's go with yoga first.
sadhguru
So, the word yoga in United States, it scares me.
Because here, yoga means you must look like a leftover noodle twisted out like this, like that.
unidentified
Right.
sadhguru
The word yoga means union.
joe rogan
Union.
sadhguru
Union means, right now, we were talking about the soil.
As you sit here, you're just an outcrop of soil.
You may not realize this because you're sitting on a chair, you're wearing shoes, and because you can prance around.
But if you were made like a tree, you would clearly understand you are part of the soil, isn't it?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
Or most people will understand when you bury them.
Then they know they are part of the soil.
Otherwise, they just don't know that they are part of the soil.
They think they came from somewhere.
A lot of people started talking.
I'm… From some other planet, this talk is also going on.
But essentially, you're part of this, but you're not experiencing it that way.
This is not only true with soil, this is true with the entire creation, with the cosmos itself.
Today, modern science has come to this, that as you sit here, every subatomic particle in your body is actually in communication with everything else.
Is this an image of cosmos that you have?
joe rogan
Sort of.
It's just random stars, and occasionally you'll see a shooting star.
sadhguru
So, this is a part of everything.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
If you don't want to go that far, at least this is a part of the planet.
There's no question about that.
That's very clear.
But such an experience is not there.
If… can I tell you my… how this happened to me?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, when I was four, five years of age, I suddenly realized I don't know anything.
I don't know anything means I don't know anything at all.
If I look at a glass of water, I don't know what this is.
I know I can drink it.
I know in how many ways I can use it, but I don't know what it is.
Even today, with so much scientific exploration, we still do not know one atom in its entirety.
We know how to use it, we know how to break it, we know how to fuse it, we know how to make a bomb out of it, but we don't know what it is.
Even today, we don't know what it is.
So, if I found a leaf, I'm just staring at it for five, six hours at a stretch.
If I sit up in the bed, I'm just staring at the darkness for the whole night.
My dear father, being a physician, started thinking I need some psychiatric evaluation.
He started saying, this boy is staring at something all the time, it looks like he's lost it.
My problem is, I'm looking at this, I still don't know what this is, I'm not able to shift my attention to anything else.
In this condition, they sent me to school.
My mother said, don't look here and there, pay attention to the teacher.
So I went and paid attention to the teacher, the kind of attention they would have never received in their entire life.
I'm paying absolute attention to the teacher.
Initially, I kind of understood what they were trying to say.
But after some time, I realized that they're just making noises.
I'm making up the meanings in my mind.
Even now it is so, isn't it?
Language is a conspiracy between two people.
The moment I talk another language, I'm just making sounds as far as you're concerned.
So, when I just heard, they're just making sounds, I'm the one who's making up the meanings.
I stopped making meanings.
Hour after hour, teacher after teacher, they come and make noises and noises and noises and go.
It became so amusing to me, a big smile spread on my face.
They were not amused at all.
joe rogan
You were five when this was happening?
sadhguru
Yeah.
They sent me to school when I was three and a half.
joe rogan
Did this accelerate over time?
Did it start off slowly and… Yes.
sadhguru
The thing is, I don't know one thing from the other.
I look at the sky, Tremendous things.
I look at a tree, I see every leaf and it drives me crazy.
I can't figure out where this coming from, what's happening.
Endless amount of things.
If I look at a pebble, I'll keep on looking at it for hours because I don't know what it is.
Because there is so much to it.
If you take an atom, you can spend a lifetime looking at it still not knowing what it is.
That's the nature of the creation, all right?
It's that complex.
So, my schooling went on like this and I slowly started going there only when it was absolutely necessary, otherwise I had my own excursions going.
So, about eleven, twelve years ago, this school where I studied over fifty years ago, they come to me and say, Sadhguru, you must come.
It is our hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the school.
You must come and speak.
I said, see, why me?
Because I was not just a not good student.
I was not even a student.
I was barely there.
Why… why are you asking me to come?
I'm not a good example for any of your students.
They said, no, our school has produced ministers, our school has produced cricketing stars, sports stars, film stars.
You are the only mystic, so you must come.
So, I went.
I went and stood up to speak in the same quadrangle, the oppressive buildings around me.
And I looked at this classroom and I suddenly remembered and I narrated this to them.
See, I was around twelve years of age.
And one teacher came and those days, because I don't know anything, what's there to talk?
For days on end, I don't utter a word.
I just go to the sports field, I play intensely, any game that is there.
And classroom, home, I don't say a thing because I don't know anything.
unidentified
So, what is there to say?
sadhguru
So, this teacher is asking me some question.
I'm looking at him.
I know his past, present and future sitting there, but I don't know what he's talking about.
Initially, I hear the words, after some time, I'm just seeing him like a blob of energy, like that.
And I know that guy through and through, but I don't know what he's talking.
About thirty-five, forty minutes, he tried to get an answer from me.
I didn't say nothing.
So, he came, held me by the shoulder, shook me violently like this and said, you must be either the divine or the devil.
I think you're the later.
See, till then my problem was I didn't know what is this, what is that, what is that, what is that.
But it was clear this is me.
Suddenly this guy confused me about this also.
I looked at myself, what is this?
Is this divine devil?
What the hell is this?
This question had never come to me till I was twelve.
I had a question about everything in the universe.
But this was clear, this was me.
Suddenly this guy confused me about this also.
Then I tried to stare at myself, it didn't work.
I started closing my eyes.
And initially it started with minutes, it went into hours, it went into days.
Sometimes I just closed my eyes and sat for days on end.
This changed the whole experience of my life.
When I was twenty-five, I just burst into an experience where Suddenly, every cell in my body was dripping ecstasy like that.
joe rogan
Suddenly?
sadhguru
Yeah, I was sitting on a rock and just I burst out like this.
For the first time in my life, adult life, tears were coming.
Tears and me were impossible.
I lived like that.
So, I was just wondering what's happening when I… I thought it's 10-15 minutes.
When I came out, it was four and a half hours.
My shirt was wet with tears.
I thought, what's happening to me?
Am I going off the rocker or something?
That's the only thing my skeptical mind could tell me because I was a super skeptic about everything in the universe.
I had a question about everything, about the family structure, about the society, about religion, about politics, about economics, about everything.
joe rogan
So, what do you think was happening?
sadhguru
I'll tell you.
Then I talked to my closest friends.
Hey, something is happening to me.
I'm just blissed out.
You know, if I just talk to them, tears are coming to me.
I said, what's happening to you, man?
What did you drink?
What did you pop?
This is a question.
Then I knew there was no context to my experience.
So, I spent… started spending more and more time by myself.
And I realized, if I just take my hands off my mind completely, Then I see that every cell in my body just bursts out with blissfulness.
Then I established this properly within myself, how to do that?
Then I sat down and made a plan.
At that time, the world's population was 5.6 billion people.
I made a plan.
In two and a half years' time, I will make the whole world ecstatic.
Here I am 40 years later.
It took me time to realize people are so deeply invested in their miseries that even if you offer them the best thing, they will go round and round and round around that not getting the point because they're too deeply invested in something.
They don't realize as you sit here and through your misery or joy, life is slipping away.
Every heartbeat is life going away, isn't it?
It's not the clock ticking.
It is life ticking away.
As we sit here, moment by moment, we're getting closer to our grave.
People don't understand they're mortal.
This is the biggest problem.
On a daily basis, they're not conscious.
That as I sit here, my time is running out.
I need to make the best out of this.
If I'm conscious that I'm mortal, if I know my time is running out, I would keep myself in the best possible way.
I wouldn't have time to quarrel with somebody.
I wouldn't have time to do nasty things to somebody or to myself.
I would do the best to myself unnaturally.
When you're feeling wonderful, you do wonderful things to everybody around you.
A happy person, a very joyful person is naturally a pleasant person to everybody.
When you're feeling nasty, you will share it with people, of course, the same nastiness.
So, this process I decided we must somehow share this with people.
So, I started building devices.
I was practicing yoga since I was 12 years of age, a simple form of yoga.
That also I got in for all the wrong reasons.
joe rogan
All the wrong reasons?
sadhguru
Yeah, in the sense, I was around 11, 12 years of age.
This was my...
joe rogan
The story about the well.
sadhguru
Yeah, you know the story.
So I got in for the wrong reason, thinking I'll become a superhuman like him, but it is something else to me.
joe rogan
Tell the story to people so they hear it.
sadhguru
You know, this is an ancestral home where we are about thirty-five, thirty-six of cousin brothers and sisters who live in different cities.
We all come and converge in our ancestral home for the summer vacation, usually thirty to forty-five days, max.
So, it's one rollicking place, all the kids totally out of control and doing all kinds of things.
The young boys, one of the things is there's a drinking water well in the backyard, which is about eight… eight feet in diameter, about hundred and fifty feet in depth.
In summer months when we go there, it's at least sixty, seventy feet below the ground level, the water.
So, we jump into this well, you have to go straight.
If you go this way, Your brain will become a smear on the wall, actually.
You have to go straight.
joe rogan
Did that ever happen?
sadhguru
It's happened to other people, not to me.
My brains are still here.
joe rogan
You, yeah.
But you know...
sadhguru
No, not in our house it didn't happen.
It happened to other boys.
And when you want to come up, there is no step, anything, you just have to hold the rock and come up.
You know, you're just about one centimeter, half an inch is what you have in the rock grip.
Your entire weight is on these four fingers.
So, your nails will start bleeding out of sheer pressure.
So, I could come up pretty well.
I was coming up very well out of that.
So, I'm very proud and I can do it better than people.
So, one day we are doing this act and a man who is over seventy years of age was watching us.
Without a word, he just walked and jumped into the well.
I thought the old guy is finished.
But he came up faster than me.
I didn't like it.
I said, how?
He said, come and do yoga.
So, I followed him like a puppy.
So I got into yoga for all the wrong reasons.
I'm saying this because even for wrong reasons, if you do the right things, right things will happen to you.
This is a beauty about this world.
joe rogan
So this was, how old were we at the time?
sadhguru
Twelve.
joe rogan
So this was along the same time that you were having these realizations about the nature of things.
unidentified
It was, they all sort of came together, like it's a very fortuitous When I look back, it's all like a set plan, all right?
sadhguru
At that time, it was all wonderful accidents happening.
joe rogan
Yes.
That's a thing that happens though sometimes, right?
When you're on the right path, like wonderful accidents do sort of seem to happen.
sadhguru
See, the thing is just this.
If you're designed to fly, if something is designed to fly, If the stronger the wind is, the higher it flies, you know?
I'm a licensed helicopter pilot.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
sadhguru
Yeah.
Everybody thinks winds are a bad thing.
No, winds are great.
Only when you're landing, if it's crosswind, it's a little bit of a issue.
Otherwise, Without headwind, you can't really fly, all right?
Too much.
A storm is a different thing.
But headwinds are good, that's why the airplane flies, all right?
It's because of that there is aerodynamics and it flies.
So, if you're designed to fly, this is what is important.
What yoga means is, you get yourself geometrically correct.
What being geometrically correct means is, see, every physical creation in the universe has a geometry to it.
If the geometry is in such a way that it has least amount of friction, then it functions at its best.
When would you say, suppose you start your car engine and he said, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, would you say this is well-engineered car?
You start it, you don't even know, you can't feel the engine.
Then you said, this is a good car because it's… only unless you make it roar, you can't feel the engine.
That means everything is going smoothly with least amount of friction.
So, it is a geometric perfection which does this.
So, everything that is physical in the universe needs a certain perfection of geometry to function at a certain level of competence.
So this geometry, today there is something called as constructional theory they're making it, yogic sciences are deeply invested in this.
That is, how an atom is made, how an amoeba is made, a single-celled organism is made, how you are made, how the universe is made, the fundamental design is not different.
It's the same design.
The complexity and sophistication is multiplying many, many fold, but essentially it's the same design.
So, this is what today we're calling as the carbon chain on this planet.
Whether it's a microorganism or a tree or the atmosphere or the water or a human being, everything is one chain.
If you break one link, everything could collapse on your head, you know?
That's what we're talking about when we talk about soil.
One link has become very weak.
If you don't strengthen that, the entire chain could collapse.
Because a chain is as strong as a individual link, and this one link of the soil has become super thin.
If you push it any further, the whole thing, the very chain of life could collapse.
So, it is the geometry which keeps it going.
For example, this planet is going around the sun.
There is no titanium...
titanium chain or a cable holding it to the sun and swinging it around.
It's just the perfection of geometry.
If you just get it off, Its path finished, it'll fly off somewhere else, it'll burn itself out.
Only because of certain geometry, it has hit a certain geometry, they're all They look like perpetual machines, they're not perpetual.
In our experience, they're perpetual because our lifespan is so small.
But otherwise, it's not perpetual.
At one time, it was not there.
At some time in future, it will not be there again.
That's a different matter.
But right now, it has hit a certain geometric perfection that it keeps going as if it's forever.
So, yoga, one aspect of yoga is this, to get your body to a geometrically congruent state with the rest of the creation.
If you're geometrically congruent, suddenly your experience is not that of an individual, but that of being universal.
So, to put it very, very simply, it's like this.
See, we can do an experiment, can we?
joe rogan
Sure.
sadhguru
Just put your hands together.
With your eyes closed, what you do is, you rub your hands very briskly for thirty seconds.
Now hold it three, four inches away from each other.
Something happening between them, huh?
joe rogan
Is it?
sadhguru
Don't you feel something?
joe rogan
I feel the heat of each hand.
sadhguru
Not the heat.
joe rogan
Because they're warm from friction.
sadhguru
No.
Isn't there a sensation between them?
joe rogan
Yeah.
sadhguru
Yeah.
So right now, see right now, what is the difference between you and the chair on which you're sitting?
It's only the sensations which tells you, how do you know this is me, this is not me?
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
Here there are sensations, here no sensations.
So essentially what you call as myself is a certain boundary of sensations.
Right.
It's a sensory boundary which determines what is you and what is not you, isn't it?
unidentified
Yes.
sadhguru
This water, is it you?
joe rogan
It'll become me when I drink it.
sadhguru
If you put it into the boundaries of your sensation, it becomes you.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
And that's how this whole thing has come, right?
When you were born, you were this much.
Now you become this much.
It's the food that you've eaten, water that you took and everything into the boundaries of your sensation.
Now you experience it as myself, 100%.
unidentified
Right.
sadhguru
So if you lose 10 kilograms… Would you think that 10 kilograms of me is gone?
No, isn't it?
joe rogan
Well, you would if you look in the mirror.
sadhguru
No, no.
In your experience.
joe rogan
Your experience is exactly the same.
sadhguru
Exactly the same.
joe rogan
Except maybe you feel healthier.
sadhguru
Because what is within the boundaries of your sensation is you.
unidentified
Right.
sadhguru
If you do anything vigorous or intense, Suddenly, the boundaries of your sensation is breached and you experience something more.
Why there is such a big draw towards sexuality or people are rubbing each other all the time is just this… Rubbing each other?
Yeah, in a way.
I'm saying it is because somewhere for one moment, they are something more than what they are.
Somebody or something which is not themselves becomes a part of them at least for a moment.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, this breaching of sensory boundary is yoga.
If you sit here and if you can spread your sensory body as big as this room, you would experience everything in this room as yourself.
See, right now, your heart, your liver, your kidney, the five fingers of your hand, this was not you some time ago, isn't it?
When you are a baby, your finger was this much.
Now it became this much.
That means these fingers, the way they are, they were not you just some time ago.
But today, they're hundred percent you, isn't it?
How did this happen?
Because this material got accumulated within the sens… boundaries of your sensory body.
Sensory body, if you make yourself exuberant, either because of joy or blissfulness, sensory body expands.
If you expand your body in such a way, it's as because the universe, you will experience the whole universe as yourself.
This is yoga.
So, the twisting, turning, holding the breath, doing this, doing that, all these things are to loosen up the body in such a way that your physical body and your sensory body are not stuck to each other.
Sensory body can expand.
Today, you know, if somebody lost a limb or something, they have something called as a phantom leg.
Even if the leg is gone, they're still experiencing the leg because the sensory body is still not there.
So essentially, physical body is acting like a scaffolding for the sensory body which gives the experience of life.
If your sensory body was totally dead, you wouldn't experience anything even if you had your body, all right?
So if your sensory body expands, you'll experience this whole room or this building or this town as yourself.
So, this is what yoga means.
This is the purpose of yoga.
Because once you experience somebody or something as a part of yourself, nobody has to teach you any morality, be good, don't harm them, don't do this, don't do that.
These teachings will be irrelevant for you because anything that you… nobody ever thought you, this little finger, don't bite it off.
It is a poor little finger, nobody had to tell you this because it's you.
What you experience as myself, with that you have no conflict.
This is what yoga means.
The mechanism of getting there, there are various mechanisms.
There are actually 112 proper technologies as to how one can get into that space.
joe rogan
112?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
You talked about, in your book that I was reading, you talked about the different kinds of yoga and you told a very funny story about God getting them all together.
sadhguru
The four yogis.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Would you mind telling that?
What are the different types of yoga?
sadhguru
There's… See, you can do… employ your body and perform action and do yoga.
This is karma yoga.
Karma means action.
Using action to attain unity with the existence.
If you use your intelligence to get...
attain unity with the existence, then it is called as jnana yoga, yoga of intelligence.
If you use your emotion to get there, that is called as bhakti yoga, yoga of devotion or emotion.
And if you use your energies by refining and expanding your energies, if you do it, that is called as Kriya Yoga, the science and technology of expanding one's energies.
So, these are the only four ways you can do, because these are the only four things you have, rest is all imagination.
You have a body, you have a mind, you have emotions, and you have energies, life energies within you.
Beyond this, rest is all made up in terms of your beliefs and imaginations.
These are the four realities.
You can only work with what you have, you cannot work with what you don't have.
So these four things, is there anybody who is only body No mind, no emotion, no energy, or only mind, not the other three.
All of us are a combination of the four.
It's just that in one person the body may be dominant, in another person the mind may be dominant, in another person emotion like this.
Different combinations of the same four ingredients are there in different human beings and different persons.
So accordingly, yoga has to be mixed.
This is why the significance in the Eastern cultures of having a live guru who's looking at you and making the right concoction.
Let's say you came to me when you were twenty, naturally your body would be very dominant.
We would give you one type of yoga.
Now you returned when you're forty.
Now maybe your mind is more dominant, maybe your emotion is more dominant, maybe energy is more dominant, body could have receded a little bit.
So accordingly, it has to be mixed.
So it is not like a common prescription, everybody do this, everybody do this is not going to work.
It needs to be mixed the right way, otherwise it won't work.
This is one reason a whole lot of people on the spiritual path feel.
First three months, they seem to be going somewhere, after that they're stagnant because nobody to...
Gauge that and, you know, tweak that thing according to their needs.
joe rogan
So they need a guru.
They need someone to...
sadhguru
See, the word guru is a four-letter word today in America.
joe rogan
Yeah, because there's a lot of fake ones, right?
sadhguru
That's why I'm a Sadhguru.
It has eight alphabits.
joe rogan
Will you tell a story about God getting all the different types of yogis together?
sadhguru
Okay.
So, this is on a certain day, four yogis are walking in the forest.
One is a Gnana yogi, yoga of intelligence.
Another is a Karma yogi, body yoga.
Another is a Bhakti yogi, emotional and devotional yogi.
Another is a Kriya yogi, master of energies.
So suddenly a storm picks up and they start running to find a shelter.
The Bhakti yogi who has, you know, who knows the geography of temples in the area, he says, let's go in this direction, there's an ancient temple there.
So they all ran there.
Then they found an ancient temple where the walls had collapsed long time ago, just the roof and in the center there's a deity.
They all rushed into the temple, not out of love for the deity or God, but just to escape the storm.
Then the storm started lashing from every direction.
So they got closer, closer, there was no other place to sit.
So they all four of them hugged the deity and sat down.
Suddenly God appeared.
They all wondered, why now?
We did so much yoga, you didn't come.
Now when we're just escaping the storm, you turn up.
So they looked at him, why now?
So God said, at last you four idiots got together.
I've been waiting for this for a long time.
Body going one direction, mind going another direction, emotion another way.
How will anything happen?
These four things have to come together.
This is very important.
But today, the way it is happening, the yoga, it's become very more… More like exercise.
If you want exercise, there are so many ways to do it.
Go have a swim, maybe play tennis, maybe climb a mountain, you'll get much better exercise.
Yoga is not for exercise.
It'll also give you that.
It'll give you fitness also.
There are different types of yogas.
For fitness, there are certain kind of yoga.
You must come, we can do this with you.
It's called Angamardana.
That means mastering your limbs.
Without any equipment, you can master your limbs in such a way that you become very resilient.
People are asking me, Sadhguru, you're sixty-five years of age, how will you do this thirty thousand kilometers on a lone motorcycle yourself, riding like this across twenty-six or twenty-seven countries?
I was just joking with them, and I said, see, this is an advertisement for a yogic back.
You will see, I will ride.
joe rogan
How did yoga get started?
What do you think was the origin of it?
Because it's an ancient form of, however you want to call it, an ancient practice.
And it's obviously very beneficial to so many people that practice it.
How did it get started?
sadhguru
See, there is nothing in the universe which is not yoga, in the sense.
There is nothing in the universe which is not one with everything else, except human mind.
This is what we're talking about soil also.
There is nothing on this planet which is unconnected.
There is nothing in this solar system unconnected.
There's nothing in this universe unconnected.
So, everything is in yoga.
The question is only whether you realize that or not.
If you realize that, if you experience that, then we call you a yogi.
A yogi means not somebody who is twisting and turning.
Yogi means one who is experiencing the union right now, that though you're an individual, your experience has gone beyond your individual nature.
You're experiencing the universality of your existence.
Your individual nature is a psychological condition.
See, physically, this is what we've been talking about, soil, nourishment, everything.
Physically, if people don't understand this, if you close these two holes, you know...
joe rogan
Your nose holes?
Yeah.
sadhguru
Keep your mouth also closed, close this and see.
If you're not connected with the oxygen bubble around you, you won't exist for two minutes.
So, where is your individuality, I'm saying, physically?
With food, water, with everything else, we can say it in so many different ways.
But physically, you know there is no individuality to your body.
Only psychologically, this individual nature, we have taken it too seriously, simply because it's the magnanimity of creation that… which has given us an individual experience.
Actually, in this cosmos, we are like a speck.
If you… if you look at the solar system itself from somewhere a million light years away, the solar system itself is a tiny speck.
In that planet, earth is a micro speck.
In that micro speck, Texas is a super micro speck.
In that, Austin is a super, super micro speck.
In that, you are a big man.
This is a serious problem.
joe rogan
Right.
You take yourself seriously when you're really connected to everything and you think of yourself as an individual when you're not.
You're really a part of everything.
sadhguru
Your individuality is just a psychological thing.
joe rogan
You want to see a funny meme that points to that?
Call up that Sam Tripoli meme.
Do you know what memes are?
sadhguru
I think so.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're funny things that people...
It's kind of a new form of comedy, but this one relates very closely to what you're saying, and it's this right here.
You are here, crying in the shower before work, pointing to the outer regions of the Milky Way galaxy.
sadhguru
Yep.
Funny, right?
So, this tiny micro, micro, super, micro spec.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
Thinks it's the center of the universe.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
This is a serious issue.
joe rogan
It's a big problem for a lot of people.
And, you know, what's the function of that, though?
Like, why does the human animal think that way?
sadhguru
See, as I said, this is the magnanimity of creation.
Though you're a tiny speck, you have an individual experience.
This is the greatest gift that we have.
We can sit here, even wonder about the universe, not knowing where it begins, where it ends.
All right?
So, this is a tremendous gift that we have been given an individuality, but you're taking it too seriously.
For this, the only cure is that you're always conscious that you're mortal.
Your time, you're on a limited lease of time.
If you know this, you will not take your individuality seriously.
You will enjoy it the way it is.
joe rogan
The problem is our culture thrives on individuals taking themselves seriously.
sadhguru
This is why the most affluent country on the planet, look at the amount of miseries people are going through.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a lot.
sadhguru
You know, I remember this.
I was in 98 for the first time when I came to United States.
I went there to the U.S. Embassy in Chennai to get my visa.
So, this is… you had to… at that time, you had to go at like 6.30 in the morning.
It would start at that time, seven o'clock, they will start seeing you.
I went there because, you know, the Consul General, a fine lady, she had heard about me.
So, instead of just doing at the counter, she asked me to come to her office.
So, I went there and there she asked me, see, you're going to United States, we've heard so much about you in India, but you know, if you want to teach in United States, you need a teacher, you know, yoga teacher certificate.
Are you certified?
I said if I had asked for a certification from my guru, you would have cut my throat.
So, I don't have a certificate.
I live yoga.
I don't… I don't… I'm not certified.
Then we had a long chat and then I was coming out by about maybe 7.45.
Then I see outside the US Embassy, at the… outside the compound, one young man, young boy, like maybe in his early twenties, sitting and crying bitterly, he's crying his heart out.
I couldn't ignore him.
You know, my car was already there and then I got off the car and went to him and I said, hey, what's the problem?
His visa got rejected.
The guy is so bitter, he could kill himself.
He's in that kind of condition.
I said, why man?
India is a big country.
Get lost here only, huh?
You will go to United States and get lost somehow.
You can also get lost in this country and try again if you want to go.
I'm not saying you should not go.
But okay, they didn't let you go, so what about it?
But that's not how it is.
People think going to United States is everything.
Ask the people who are living here how many complaints they have.
They are miserable because they are here.
joe rogan
Isn't that crazy?
sadhguru
That's what I'm saying.
Because human misery is not in India or America.
It is within you.
joe rogan
One of the things that struck me from your book was that you didn't read a lot of the writings on yoga until you were much older.
You were practicing yoga, but you hadn't read any of the ancient texts.
sadhguru
I have never read any ancient texts, not even now.
joe rogan
Really?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
You don't have any desire to find what they were thinking?
sadhguru
No, because my own clarity has never failed me.
I don't want to confuse myself because we don't know in these many thousands of years who all have added whatever nonsense they've added to it.
joe rogan
Right, that's a problem.
Like human beings.
sadhguru
Over a period of time, you know, every scripture has been meddled with by people.
But anyway...
All scriptures, it doesn't matter where they got the information from, how they received it, but written by human beings, all right?
Language is written by human beings, there's no question.
People may say, God dictated it to me, but still, even if I dictate something to you, you can still write it wrong.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, I'm saying, Those books I never read.
The only book I read is this.
unidentified
Your body, your soul, your experience, you, whatever.
sadhguru
This mechanism, which is in my experience, because nothing else is in your experience.
Just see this.
You can't experience what's here.
You can only experience what is here.
joe rogan
Do you find that that's kind of contradictory in some ways to your existence because what you're doing is expressing your experience to other people?
sadhguru
No, no, no.
I'm not expressing...
unidentified
You're not?
sadhguru
No.
I see some experience.
What is that?
Joe Rogan experience.
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's the name of the podcast.
unidentified
Okay.
sadhguru
So, I'm never...
You know, here and there when people ask questions, I may say something.
But as I said, there's no philosophy, there is no teaching, there's no belief system, just methods.
You sit like this, you breathe like this, you do this, this and this, this will happen to you.
You experiment.
Forty days, you do it.
If it works, you keep it.
If it doesn't work, throw it and move on.
joe rogan
But do you see that you've written all this down for people to learn from?
sadhguru
No.
joe rogan
You haven't?
Why'd you write it down?
sadhguru
I have not written down anything.
You have books.
What is in the book is more like a brochure.
joe rogan
A brochure.
sadhguru
It's a 300-page brochure just introducing you.
We will never write down what you have to use.
That has to be transmitted.
joe rogan
Right, but you are writing your own personal experiences and people benefit from that greatly.
sadhguru
That is more for inspiration.
A book is for inspiration, not for instruction.
joe rogan
And you don't think that there's any inspiration to be gleaned from other people's experiences?
sadhguru
There is, of course.
See, if you're looking for inspiration is one thing.
If you're looking for instruction, don't look in the book.
joe rogan
No.
sadhguru
No.
Inspiration is different to get you fired up.
Once you're fired up, you want to know.
Now don't go on reading books.
That'll not get you anywhere.
joe rogan
Action.
sadhguru
You have to start delve deeper into yourself.
For that, we can give you methods how to go deeper.
See, like we were talking about the screwdriver, how to do the thing, you know, with the right kind of tool.
If you use the wrong kind of tool, I give you a spanner for the screw, which is in the furniture.
It's not going to help.
It's a tool, but it's not going to help.
The right tool.
That's all.
That is all my work is, to give them the right tool.
I will not use the tool for them.
They must use it.
Only for a few who completely give themselves.
For them, I may also turn the screws for them.
But largely, we just give you the screwdriver.
It's up to you.
joe rogan
But even when you were younger, you didn't seek inspiration from some other people's experiences?
sadhguru
No, somehow it didn't work like that for me.
For me...
Everything was a question mark.
I'm saying, if I see a leaf, it's a question.
If I see… I look at my father, it's a question.
If I look at my mother, it's a question.
They were wonderful, loving parents, but I had questions about everything, nothing negative, just a question because question is a tool to dig deeper.
Question is not a way of insulting somebody.
I ask you a question, This is not to corner you, to insult you, to do something.
Question is the only way to dig deeper, isn't it?
Like, you know, like people have their experiences, their opinions about everything in the universe.
For example, before coming here, a whole lot of people calling him, Sadhguru, don't go on Joe Rogan's show.
Why are you going there, Sadhguru?
You know what he is.
I said, whatever he is, let me go and find out what the hell he is.
Why are you telling me who he is?
All right?
Well, no, no, he thinks this, he thinks that.
Well, if he thinks I'm a chimpanzee, I will prove I'm a very good one.
I'm saying I have worked in prisons, you know, like we have a program called Inner Freedom for Imprisoned.
Both in the United States we worked, but then we stepped out of U.S. In India, our programs are mandatory in all the South Indian prisons.
joe rogan
Really?
sadhguru
Yeah.
And I've worked with really hardcore, you know, criminals who have been convicted for murder and more.
They have done terrible things, but when they are with me, they are such wonderful guys, lively and fantastic guys.
But if you meet them when they are angry or dissatisfied, they may be terrible.
If you meet them when they are happy and joyful, they are fantastic people.
So, I'm saying every human being has opinions about everything.
This is one thing I've done in my life is people who are with me for twenty-five, thirty, forty years with me, right next to me, I've… it's very difficult for people to understand this.
I have not formed a single opinion about them.
Every day I look at them fresh.
This is very important, yes.
So when I sit here, I look at you fresh.
It doesn't matter what you have done.
Because what you are going to be tomorrow is what is important, isn't it?
joe rogan
When you're experiencing these prisoners, do you think that that's part of the problem with having had a horrible past, you know, having been a criminal, having been a murderer, is that you can never really get past those experiences in a lot of people's eyes.
They don't experience you fresh.
sadhguru
See, the societies are made in a certain way, where unfortunately certain people can't fit in, all right?
Not necessarily because it's a very American thing, this is a good guy, this is a bad guy.
I don't look at life like that.
It is just that in a given moment, if somebody makes one wrong judgment, he utters something or he does something in that moment, that may end up in the prison.
I've met hundreds of them, thousands of them.
Most of them are absolutely wonderful guys.
There are a few who are mentally, pathologically somewhere else.
That's different.
But rest of them… It's a given moment.
They make wrong judgments because that's all they know at that given moment.
joe rogan
Do you think that the practice of yoga can reform people?
sadhguru
Oh yes, of course.
I will tell you.
I will tell you this.
See, when I first went into the prison in Coimbatore to teach, don't mistake me.
And it was very difficult to get in.
I discovered that in the heart of Coimbatore City, there was a prison, central prison.
So, I said, let me go and see who is inside.
I want to work with them, about twenty-eight years ago.
And then I found it took me over two years to get inside.
It's so difficult to get in.
You need qualifications, you know.
I was not qualified.
It took all kinds of permissions to get inside because this was a high-security prison.
Then once I got in, everybody said, all the prison officers who knew me, they said, Sadhguru, you're wasting your time here.
Every Sunday, Christian priests come.
All these guys do is mischief.
On Hindu festivals, Hindu people come.
They do more mischief.
And Muslims come, more mischief.
Other kinds of service organizations come, more mischief is all you will get.
You'll just waste your time here.
Please don't do this.
I said, you just give me two hours.
So, there were twelve wards in the coimitor prison, each with about two hundred prisoners.
So, I took the long-term prisoners, one ward with two hundred people.
So, when I went there, I… they wanted to put them in the… see, normally prism is there, they push them into one hall and say, sit down here.
So, the Guru has come.
I said, no, just… I want to meet them on the ground outside.
So, they are all sitting there like this.
Okay, the bohus, this guy was come.
You know, they have a certain… there's an anger and angst against the society which has locked them up.
It's very difficult for people to understand what this is.
I've not… not once I've gone into prison and come out without tears in my eyes because everything seems normal on the surface.
There is pain in the air.
Just this is so important for a human being to be free, you know?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
Just nothing else.
Food is good.
They get food better than probably their homes.
Everything is controlled.
They're all very fit, actually much more fitter than the outside people.
But there is pain in the air.
Just it's so painful.
So, I went there and we played a game with them.
They were just surprised that I'm playing a game with them.
We played dodgeball with the guys.
Within about 10-15 minutes, they forgot they're in a prison like little children.
They're screaming and yelling and playing like crazy.
And then I told them, see, I want to stay here for 10 days and work with you.
You won't believe 80% of them in two hours' time, they're all crying.
They said, don't go, you stay with us.
And then we started the program.
Since then, continuously, last 27 years, programs have been going on.
Most of them are, you know, school dropouts.
They're not really very literate and educated.
But they wrote thousands of poems.
One… one guy who killed three people in the courtroom, so he was… In the courtroom?
In the courtroom, he killed three people.
Some vengeance issue, you know.
So, he's on the death row.
See, prison is quite a normal society during the daytime.
It's evening six o'clock.
They have to go inside and the doors are locked.
Even if the medical emergency, nobody can open those doors unless a magistrate gives permission.
The local officer cannot open the gate.
Even if the guy is dying inside, it cannot be opened, no matter what happens.
That's the law.
So, he wrote a poem which stuck in my mind.
He said, every day when the cell door closed, I thought this is my grave.
But now I see it's become my Bodhi tree.
And the gate… when the door closes, I close my eyes and I'm in a completely different space altogether.
This is my freedom.
And now after… after about six years, he was executed.
And we also took local industry and promised them that, you know, when they come out, there'll be jobs for them, those who can come out after a few years.
Because in India, life term is twenty years, not life-life.
And in twenty years, if there's good behavior, fourteen years they'll get a remission.
So, many of them who have been there for murder, in fourteen years' time they will come out.
So, nobody gives them a job.
Everywhere everybody looks at them suspiciously.
So, we set up the local businesses to include them into their factories and businesses so that they're not going to commit murder every day.
It's just happened once in their lifetime.
joe rogan
So, how does yoga reform these people?
sadhguru
This is all it is.
See, tell me, if you're feeling very happy right now, will you go and beat up that guy?
joe rogan
Jamie?
No.
Even if I was mad.
sadhguru
Even if he's somebody that you don't like.
I love Jamie.
No, it's not him.
Anybody.
joe rogan
Oh, anybody?
sadhguru
When you are joyful, will you go and simply beat up that guy?
No.
joe rogan
No.
sadhguru
Something nasty happening within you, anger, anger, frustration, something.
That's when you do ugly things, isn't it?
unidentified
Yeah.
sadhguru
This is true for every human being.
joe rogan
Yeah, sure.
sadhguru
So you just label somebody as a criminal.
What you need to understand is there's a deep-rooted unhappiness or frustration or something that's built up because of social reasons or parental reasons or genetic reasons.
There's so many, okay?
Not one aspect.
Somewhere this life is unhappy, frustrated, angry.
Now it wants to do something unpleasant.
If this life is feeling very pleasant, why will it do unpleasant things?
So, this is all.
We have focused too much in this world on trying to produce good human beings.
Good human beings have caused terrible things.
People who think they are good, they have done the worst possible things.
joe rogan
Right.
There's a lot of that.
sadhguru
Thinking they are good.
But if we focus on creating joyful and sensible human beings, a whole lot of trouble will go away in the world.
This is what yoga is about, that you're pleasant within yourself.
When you are feeling pleasant, you do pleasant things naturally.
joe rogan
Yeah.
This environment where people learn to be pleasant or you help them cultivate that pleasantness.
unidentified
It is not an environment.
sadhguru
It is you understand human experiences coming from within me.
See, right now, let's say we are working together and I'm oppressive, whatever, and you think you're unhappy because of me.
But if you realize, see, my unhappiness is my doing, you will undo it, isn't it?
You think your unhappiness is because of me.
It goes on and on because it's under my control now.
The day you realize my unhappiness, the source of my unhappiness, unhappiness is me, not somebody else, and you take charge of that aspect, there is a method to do that.
Once you do that, You're happy.
Once you're happy by your own nature, then you will do what is most needed.
Because once you're very happy, you have no pursuit of happiness.
Your life is an expression of joy, not in pursuit of happiness.
This is the shift that needs to happen in the world.
Right now, people are in pursuit of happiness.
If your life becomes an expression of your joy rather than being pursuit of happiness, you will start… stop squeezing the world the way you're squeezing it.
This soil, this environment, these problems, everything is in pursuit of human happiness and well-being.
joe rogan
Do you think that the physical practice of yoga, meaning the exercise aspect of it, alleviates tension and allows people to relax enough to look at their life in a different way?
sadhguru
If they do it properly, yes.
When I say properly, see people are trying to do it like an aerobic exercise.
No.
We teach what is called as classical yoga.
You don't have to do all these very difficult postures and all that.
Most yogis master only one posture.
People don't know this in this country.
joe rogan
One posture?
sadhguru
Only one.
joe rogan
Like what posture?
sadhguru
Anything.
They will choose one posture.
And they will just master that.
So actually, in the… you know, the traditionally, what yoga says is, if you master one posture, that means generally, Two hours, forty minutes.
If you can sit one way without any sense of discomfort, irritation, agitation, nothing in your system, this is your posture.
You just master that one posture.
Then the rest of the yoga is internal.
Physical body is only that much.
joe rogan
So, most yogis just have one thing that they do?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
And they can do it for hours?
unidentified
Yes.
sadhguru
If you can sit here, see, what it means is, your body is not in the way.
joe rogan
Your body is not in the way.
sadhguru
Yeah.
See, right now, you want to be happy.
But your thought is in the way.
Your emotion is in the way.
Your body is in the way.
So, once you put the body away, you must understand, in yoga, there is no such thing as mind.
Right?
There is physical body, there is mental body.
If your body is not in the way, suddenly you discover that even your mind is not in the way.
joe rogan
How do you think they figured this out?
Getting back to this, you kind of went around that.
sadhguru
This happened over 15,000 years ago.
The first yogi, he's referred to as the Adi yogi.
Today, to honor him, we have set up a 112-feet-tall bust of Adi yogi in India.
You must look him up.
joe rogan
112-feet-tall bust?
sadhguru
Yeah, you can look him up, Adi yogi.
joe rogan
What part of India is that?
sadhguru
In southern India, in Coimbatore, in Tamil Nadu.
So, this is 112 feet because he gave 112 methods as to how.
unidentified
So, this is what to say… 15,000 years ago we figured this out.
sadhguru
Over 15,000 years ago.
We are saying this over 15,000 years ago because they talked about certain celestial happenings.
Those happenings have been confirmed today as well over 15,000 years ago.
And we have iconographic proof of something like 12,400 years.
Yeah, that's Adi.
unidentified
Whoa!
sadhguru
112 feet tall.
joe rogan
Great hair.
That's a crazy statue.
sadhguru
How old is that statue?
This was designed by me and built by all volunteers inside the center.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So is that a building?
So can you go inside of that?
sadhguru
You can go inside, but there's no building inside because it's metal.
It gets very hot inside.
joe rogan
Oh.
Wow, that's beautiful.
sadhguru
The idea was when I designed this, it took me two and a half years to design this face.
You're not seeing the face very clearly.
Let's see if you can get a picture where the face is clear.
unidentified
It's very beautiful.
sadhguru
Yeah.
So I wanted intoxication, stillness, and exuberance on one face.
So it took me two and a half years to design this face.
What do you think?
It has these qualities?
joe rogan
I think you nailed it.
And how was this constructed?
This is all metal?
sadhguru
It's all metal.
joe rogan
How was it made?
sadhguru
So we made this, it took us some 680 tons of steel.
Now we're doing another one near Bangalore, the same one, but now we're doing it with almost 170 tons less because now we've figured out the design much better.
joe rogan
Wow.
Wow.
That's incredible, though.
I mean, it really is gorgeous.
And that's all, is it welded together?
Like, how is it?
sadhguru
See, you can see some patchwork here.
You're not seeing it.
But actually, the metal pieces are all about this much size.
We could have removed that.
We could have, you know, brazed that and removed that.
But when I looked at it, the roughness of it looked better than a smooth face, so I just left it as it is.
So there are patches.
joe rogan
So you can see the construction method when you're saying that.
sadhguru
You can see the construction material.
Not really that visible, but you can see for an observer, you can see that, which gives a kind of roughness to the statue, not very smooth.
So, this yogi that devised these 112… So, when he came, he appeared somewhere in Himalayas, and people saw that he was dancing wildly in ecstatic states, completely oblivious to everything around him, or he sat still.
For days on end, weeks on end, he just sat still unmoving.
So, initially lot of thousands of people gathered some miracle is happening, but slowly because he didn't perform any miracles, no fireworks happened, people got bored and they left.
Only seven disciples hung on because they saw the greatest miracle is the man is not getting up for food, water, toilet, nothing.
That means he's beyond the physical nature.
He's just sat there for months on end sometimes.
The only sign of his aliveness was tears of ecstasy were dribbled… dribbling down his cheeks.
That was the only sign of life.
Otherwise, he looked like he's dead.
So, when he came to his… some moments when he came to his consciousness, they pleaded, they wanted to learn, what is it that is happening to you?
So, he tried to be dismissive, he didn't want to be in touch with them.
But when they hung on, when they persisted, then he put them on a preparatory kind of work.
They went through the preparatory work and then he started expounding for many years, what is the science of how human mechanism is made.
And you won't believe this.
Hundred and… hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin talked about evolutionary process.
Over fifteen thousand years ago, he spoke something which is parallel to Darwin's theory of evolution.
Even today, every Indian knows about… Indian person knows about this.
There are ten avatars.
Avatar means not the movie that you saw.
Avatar means a manifestation.
So, ten avatars are, first avatar is called machya avatar, which means the life was in the form of fish or it was water, it was in the water.
The second one is Kurmaavatar, which means it's a turtle.
That means it became an amphibious life.
The third one is a wild boar.
It's called Varahavatar.
It… you know, other small things happened, but the mammals came.
Then the next one is called Narasimha, who is half man, half animal.
Next one is a doft man, Vamana Athar.
The next one is a full-grown man but a volatile man.
He's so angry and so crazy, a fighting man that always he went about chopping off people to he got so angry and he lopped off his own mother's head.
So the next one is a peaceful man, he's a Rama Athar, he's a peaceful, gentle man.
The next one is a loving man, Krishna avatar.
The next one is a Buddha avatar who is a meditative man.
The next one, the tenth one is supposed to be the mystical man.
These are not individual people to be seen.
These… this is the evolution of life on the planet.
If you look at Darwin's theory of evolution, somewhere it runs parallel to this, from waterborne life to amphibious life to this way, half man, half animal, dwarfed man, like this it has grown.
So, he talked about this and he said, see, if you want to evolve further, then something in relationship to the earth and the sun must change.
Otherwise, physiologically you're not going to evolve further.
But you have a consciousness with which you can transform yourself absolutely.
And become completely different from what you are right now.
Right now, you're available to all the forces of nature.
Right now, in many ways, you're enslaved to what's happening around you.
You can rise above this and evolve consciously.
But physiological evolution has come to a standstill because planetary moment and who you are right now, the planet and the solar system is functioning like a potter's wheel to make this happen.
This life… Like a potter's wheel, you know?
Potter's Wheel.
joe rogan
Oh, Potter's Wheel.
unidentified
Yeah.
Okay.
sadhguru
It's functioning like that.
It's gotten you to this place.
So people ask, can we develop more intelligence?
Can we become bigger than this?
He says, no.
Physiologically, your evolution has come to a place.
Unless there is some serious change in the relationship between the planet, And the sun, that will not happen, but consciously you can evolve.
So then he propounds one hundred and twelve ways as to how you can do it.
Hundred and twelve distinct ways how you can do it.
So that is how yoga started.
joe rogan
Who do you think this person was?
sadhguru
He's Adiyogi.
They called him… because he never introduced himself, they called him yogi because he was the first one.
They called him Adiyogi.
Adiyogi means the first yogi.
And he's also referred to as Shiva.
Shiva means one who is not, that which is not, in the sense, see, today modern science is speaking in these terms.
In an atom, for example, over ninety-nine percent of it is empty space.
There is proton, neutron, electron, all that covers less than one percent.
Ninety-nine percent is empty space.
So it is in the cosmos.
Ninety-nine percent is empty space.
See, right now you look at this ceiling and you think it's full of star-like lights, but actually there's more empty space than lights, isn't it?
But because our visual apparatus are in a certain… certain way, designed in a certain way, it gives more prominence to light because that's what we see more clearly.
So, he said, everything is like this.
So, if you transcend your physical nature, you become a Shiva.
That means you are nothing.
But nothing is the most powerful dimension of the existence because it is in the lap of the nothingness, everything is happening.
What you call as everything is just one percent.
joe rogan
Do you think this was a real person, a real individual or do you think it's representative of the learning of yoga and the best way to establish it, to express it was to make it a person?
sadhguru
It's a real person because the places where he came, what he spoke, everything is recorded in history, largely by lore.
Today people are trying to write it down in books because in India we don't believe in scholarship.
We believe in experience, inner experience.
So it's always transmitted as a oral tradition for a long time.
These days people are writing down in many ways.
unidentified
It was a real person because… Pretty spectacular human being if they could do all the things.
sadhguru
Absolutely.
See, when he came down south, in southern India at that time, people were way shorter than the northern people.
So, they say he was twice the height of an average South Indian woman.
So, they say he must have been… because an average South Indian woman, tribal woman were like four, four and a half feet, so he must have been seven or eight feet tall, that people said he was twice that.
And they say when he stood next to your horse, he was as tall as the horse's ears.
joe rogan
But do you think these are exaggerations?
sadhguru
Exaggerations could be there, but because his physical size doesn't mean anything for his yoga.
So there's no point exaggerating that aspect, I'm saying.
See, if he was a warrior, somebody may exaggerate him.
But for a yogi, what is the point making him a big guy, physically?
joe rogan
To make him divine, so physically unique.
sadhguru
No, that is the whole thing.
See, in India, The Indian culture has only spiritual paths.
There is no real religion per se, because a religion needs a belief, all right?
Spiritual process needs a quest, a seeking.
If you are on the spiritual path, we call you a seeker.
If you ascribe to religion, we call you a believer, all right?
Belief means something that you do not know.
Because an authority speaks, you believe that.
It could be your father who says that this is the truth and you believe him as a child, then it may be a priest, then it may be somebody bigger, or it may be in a book.
You believe it because it comes from an authority.
But the nature of that culture, the Eastern culture sees there is no authority for us.
Truth is the only authority.
Authority is never the truth.
So that is the essence of Eastern mysticism and Eastern spirituality, that it is… you're always a seeker, never a believer.
joe rogan
So you think that yoga just emanated from this one incredibly unique human being that was larger than everybody else that had supernatural abilities that existed 15,000 years ago?
sadhguru
No.
See, now you're making a superhuman being out of somebody.
joe rogan
By making an eight-foot tall person who can go for days on end without drinking water.
sadhguru
See, there have been people like that, all right, in every culture.
There have been physically large people.
But his physical size...
Has nothing to do with his capabilities.
joe rogan
Right, but the capabilities are super physical too, aren't they?
sadhguru
No.
See, this is what it's about.
Yoga is not about being superhuman.
Yoga is about realizing being human is super.
That's what is important.
So, that's the whole thing that he's saying.
unidentified
How...
sadhguru
Being human is so super, if you explore your humanity to its fullest, you will become so fantastic.
Being a human being itself is a fantastic feat.
You don't have to act like a superhuman being.
He did not perform any miracles.
He did not do anything.
He just taught them how to be beyond the limitations of one's physical and psychological structures.
That's all.
joe rogan
Do you think if this person didn't exist that yoga still would have been invented without him?
sadhguru
Of course, somebody else would have.
After that, many, many yogis have come.
But he is the… maybe even before there were people, but they did not speak or they did not gather disciples who would take.
So, he sent his seven disciples in seven different directions.
One was sent to southern India, who is… today, we hold him as the father of southern mysticism.
He is Agasthi Muni, who came down south and he did maximum amount of work there.
Every human habitation he touched at that time and brought Spiritual process as a living practice, not as a separate practice.
Just the way you sit, just the way you do things, just the way you address each other was made into a spiritual process.
See, right now in India, if people go to the temple and whatever their favorite deity, if they worship, they will stand like this.
If anybody comes also, they'll stand like this.
If a dog comes also, they'll do this.
If they see a rock also, they'll do this.
If they see a tree also, they'll do this.
joe rogan
For the people just listening, you're holding your hands together in prayer.
sadhguru
It is not in prayer.
joe rogan
Well, this way.
Whatever you're doing with your hands.
sadhguru
Yes.
This is done to everybody.
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
All right?
unidentified
Okay.
sadhguru
So because spiritual process is not alien to the life that you live, the way you live has to become spiritual.
It's not that you have a spiritual practice and you have a separate life.
It is the same thing.
You… you integrate it into your life.
So, he did that.
Another one stayed with him.
Another one came to the northern part of India.
Another one went to Central Asia.
There are, you know, there are certain footprints of his.
Another one went to North Africa.
Another one to South Asia.
Another one came to South America.
Wherever these yogis went, suddenly those cultures where they went saw a sudden upsurge in the knowledge of geometry.
Wherever you see extraordinary sense of geometry, which is not in line with the tribal existence that they had, that means a yogi came there.
joe rogan
Sense of geometry meaning like the structures that they built?
sadhguru
Yes, structures that they built, the artifacts they created, the way they arranged things around themselves.
Suddenly they had a different sense of geometry because yoga is essentially a cosmic geometry.
joe rogan
Cosmic geometry.
sadhguru
To align yourself in line with the cosmos so that it reverberates as the same.
joe rogan
Which brings us to UFOs.
sadhguru
See, there is some substance and a lot of imagination with this UFO business.
Because we are always thinking life, you know, like all this… I'm saying this not with any… There are many people who could have experienced something, who could have seen something.
I'm saying generally the popular imagination of a UFO, craft will come and land, somebody will come out of it.
So you're thinking like this because that's how human beings operate, all right?
That we will go land somewhere, then the door opens, we come out.
How do you know that's how they also do it?
That's not how it is.
I have living experience with certain extraterrestrial life forms.
joe rogan
You do?
sadhguru
Yes, there are a whole lot of videos which I've spoken about.
I have a reputation of being very logically correct.
Now I don't want to lose it by talking about it to everybody.
But in exclusive groups, I've spoken in detail.
I've made other people experience these things, very profound experiences of life which is not of this planet.
But it's not like a craft will land, they'll open the door, they'll come out.
This is all your own thing.
You parked the car, you opened the door, you locked the door, you came out.
This is your thinking, all right?
It is not necessary other life should operate the way we operate.
It is nothing like where we are.
It's something totally different.
So, people have seen things here and there, some of it could be mistakes, some of it could be exaggeration, some of it could be just total lies.
But definitely some people have seen something, some people have experienced something.
There's no denying, everybody will not be lying.
There is no denying, it is there.
But we are thinking just the way we are, they will also be.
All we can think is a little bigger ears, little bigger eyes, maybe three eyes instead of two.
This is just exaggeration of what we already know.
Leave the imaginations aside, is there life beyond us?
It would be very pompous to believe that in such a vast cosmos, we are the only evolved life on the planet.
In the universe is itself a very pompous belief system.
Definitely there is more life.
You know, we have done things with it in the past.
joe rogan
We've done things with it?
sadhguru
Yes, we have done some experiments with such life.
We have made people experience this very strongly.
joe rogan
When you say we, who do you mean?
sadhguru
We as a group, we have done certain things.
joe rogan
You?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
So how?
sadhguru
Don't go into it.
unidentified
Why not?
sadhguru
I have a reputation of being very logically correct.
joe rogan
Well, if you're logically correct about extraterrestrials, wouldn't that be beneficial to people that are hearing this?
sadhguru
No.
joe rogan
Why?
sadhguru
There are… see, our logic is related to our existence, the way we are made, all right?
The way the existence is made doesn't fit into our logic.
This is the biggest mistake that modern societies are making.
You're trying to fit the existence into your logic.
No, your logic has place in the existence.
Existence cannot be… you can't fit it into your logic.
Because your logic functions between binaries of two.
You and me have to be there for logic.
The whole spiritual experience itself is not logically correct because the experience of life is beyond two.
There are no binaries in spiritual process.
When I use the word spiritual, I am not using the word spiritual the way religions are using.
They're talking about a spirit which goes and comes and whatever, not in that sense.
If you experience your life Beyond your physiological and psychological construct, then you're spiritual.
joe rogan
So you mentioned it, which is already the most difficult thing to do.
Now to talk about it, you feel like would somehow or another discredit you.
I don't understand that because...
sadhguru
See, because...
There is only thus far that your language goes.
When you speak something, human languages, I have to be logically correct, otherwise you cannot speak.
joe rogan
But how are you experiencing this thing?
Can you just tell me how you're experiencing these things?
sadhguru
See, in certain spaces, There are very strong presence, which is when you feel the texture of that life, you know it is not like anything that we know here.
Obviously, it doesn't belong here.
It is… it has a different source than the life that we are.
When I say the life that we are, See, this is the yogic sciences.
This will confuse people if we go that far because people are thinking yoga is for backache, yoga is for health, yoga is for slimming down.
joe rogan
We've already established that's not the case.
sadhguru
So, yoga means you know the texture of life.
joe rogan
Unity.
sadhguru
That is one thing.
I'm talking about the texture of this life.
If you know the texture of this life… See, people ask me, how do you know all this?
I don't know anything.
There's only one thing I know.
I know the nature of this piece of life from its origin to its ultimate.
Because every other life is in some way built the same way, people think I know every other life.
No, I know only this life.
But fortunately, every other life from a single microbe to a human being to every other creature in some way is a reflection of this life because it's all connected.
Even the evolutionary sciences are saying the same thing.
Even the religions are saying the same thing, all right?
So, in that sense, I know the texture of this life and that life and every other life here.
But there are some lives which don't have the texture, which are totally different.
joe rogan
And how are you experiencing these lives?
sadhguru
You want me to say something ridiculous now?
joe rogan
No, no.
I don't think it's ridiculous at all.
sadhguru
No, no.
If I say something which is illogical, it'll seem ridiculous.
joe rogan
I don't think it's illogical.
sadhguru
It will be logical because it will not fit into the framework of human logic.
joe rogan
Well, the framework of human logic is based on our own experience and interpretation of the life that we lived.
It doesn't mean that other people haven't experienced or interpreted something that is beyond our comprehension because we haven't experienced it personally.
I think that's logical.
sadhguru
We have done experiments where we attracted a certain life which doesn't have any texture of earthly life.
joe rogan
And how do you conduct these experiments?
sadhguru
I used certain people to invite them into their bodies.
And what happened there is totally unbelievable for people because I'll tell you a simple thing.
I invited a certain life into one person's body.
I kept… the weather was already like nearly zero, kind of sub-zero kind of atmosphere.
It was in Tibet.
And I kept a bowl of water about three inches above the head.
And when this life entered and I tried to hold it within that body, you won't believe this bowl which is three inches, the person is lying down on the ground, on wet soil, you know, they just put a bed sheet and this person is lying down.
This bowl is about three inches above the head on the ground.
The water started boiling.
There are over 200 people watching the water boiling, all right?
Because it created so much heat, then I let it go because it could burn up the person, you know, fuse out that person in some ways.
Because the moment it felt trapped, it created such heat.
The water is actually boiling three inches away from the bowl.
joe rogan
Did you film this?
sadhguru
Huh?
From a distance, they've filmed it, bad filming.
You know, they were not really looking for it, but it is there.
joe rogan
And how many times has this happened?
sadhguru
We did this about two times we did it properly.
Another time we did a mild one.
After that, I thought I will go spend time there, which has never happened.
And above all, It doesn't serve any purpose like that.
joe rogan
It doesn't serve a purpose to experiment?
sadhguru
It is more to know.
It doesn't serve a purpose as to how you can use because it could be I have to admit, I was stepping into an area where I don't know a damn thing.
Okay?
So you could make a mistake and take somebody's life or your own life or something like that.
joe rogan
So whatever these life forms are that you're experiencing, you can only experience them through another person's body?
sadhguru
No, no, no.
Not like that.
Only because I experienced, I wanted to demonstrate it to the people who are watching.
joe rogan
And how did you know that it was a thing?
Like, how did you know that you could experience it that way and exhibit it, put it on display for the people that are watching?
sadhguru
Wow.
See, your whole perception right now for most human being is limited to five senses.
Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching.
This is how you know the world.
If something has no smell, no taste, no touch, You won't know?
joe rogan
But there could be an infinite number of senses that we're not aware of, that we don't possess.
sadhguru
So, these things are faced in many places, but there are certain places where there is an unreasonable level of concentration.
So, one place is this Kailash, Manasarov region in Tibet.
In last two years, we've not been able to go because the Chinese have closed this because of this corona virus or whatever.
Probably next year, it'll open up.
Last year, we went… we viewed Kailash and Manasarov from eight to ten kilometers away at the Nepali border.
We went there and even from a distance, what it does to people is unbelievable.
joe rogan
So it's just one concentrated hot spot of activity.
sadhguru
Yes.
And that too, it's like clockwork.
Exactly at 2.30 in the morning, it starts.
Boom!
Activity like that for about one and a half hours, one hour, 40 minutes like that.
After that, it just goes down.
It's almost like a busy airport.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, things are happening.
But not like crafts or anything, just bunches of lives, just up and down, things happening for about one and a half to two hours max.
joe rogan
Do you think they're extraterrestrial?
Do you think they're interdimensional?
Do you think they're spirits?
sadhguru
They're not spirits.
joe rogan
No?
sadhguru
No.
Anything that's related to the planet, we will just know immediately.
joe rogan
It's not a… It's something that's from somewhere else.
sadhguru
It is definitely from somewhere else.
These are crazy things, man.
Why do you want me to speak about this?
joe rogan
No, I don't think they're that crazy.
I think they're only crazy because we haven't experienced them.
If you tried to explain many of the things that we take for granted because they're normal to someone who's never experienced them, like if you tried to experience fire to someone who'd never experienced fire, it would be the craziest idea that you could run across them.
That there's a thing that's not alive, but it consumes things and it could kill all life on this planet, but it could also serve a purpose to heat your home and cook your food.
sadhguru
This is what I'm saying.
In yoga, there are three types of fires within you.
It is Jataragni, Chitagni, Bhutagni.
Jataragni means the fire of stomach and the reproductive aspect, these two fires, which keep your survival going.
Chitagni is the fire of your intelligence, which propels a human being to do so many things.
Bhutagni is the fire of five elements of earth, earth, water, air, fire and space.
These five elements which is the composite of what everything physical is.
So these three fires, only if you keep them in control.
Right now, you know, for example, we're talking about the soil.
These whole civilizations have been built because of our gastronomic fire and our intellectual fire.
The same gastronomic fire, if it's unquenched, it can burn the world down.
Right now, UN agencies are predicting that by 2035, there'll be dozens of civil wars across the world because food shortages will cause that.
Because this fire is not met means people will set fire to each other.
joe rogan
How did you know that these entities or whatever these things are that you experienced existed?
sadhguru
So I was talking about five senses.
See, for your sense organs to experience anything, you need a contrast.
Only because there's light, you know darkness.
If it's all dark, you wouldn't know what is darkness, what is light.
Only because there is night, you know what's a day.
Only because there is a woman, you know what's a man.
Everything is by polarities.
If there are no polarities, your eyes, your ears, your anything, your five senses cannot function.
So, it is based on the information that these five senses has given you that your whole logical intellect has developed.
Without this information, This will not do anything.
It's only from the data that you got by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, your intellect is functioning in a certain way.
So, right now you can see this part of my hand, but you can't see this part.
If you see this part, you can't see this part.
This is the nature of your vision, isn't it?
Now, if you hear that sound at that moment, you don't hear the silence.
So, everything is like this.
You see only a part of it through sense perception.
Because of this, your logic is all in pieces.
So, with logically, if you arrive at any conclusion, it is like I gave you a million piece jigsaw.
You found five pieces, you put them together and say, oh, this is a bear, this is a bear.
No, you're in Texas, this is a horse, you said.
Because with five pieces, you arrived at some conclusion.
This is what intellect means.
This is why in yogic sciences, we don't attach any significance to what you think and feel because out of a million-piece jigsaw, you found a few pieces and you're making your conclusions.
It's not of any relevance for one who wants to know.
It may be of relevance for one who wants to survive.
It may be of relevance for one who wants to win a race with somebody else.
Okay, your horse… you figured out the horse better than somebody else, you win the race.
But it's not of any relevance for someone who wants to know.
For a seeker, it's of no relevance.
So, how to go beyond sense perception, how to know life beyond sense perception is the entire aspect of yoga.
Because as long as sense perception is on, you and me distinctly separate.
No way.
That is you, this is me.
Only if you go beyond sense perception, we were doing this, beyond your sensory limitations if you go, something that not you becomes you.
Right now, with food it's happening.
Something… see, when it's on your plate, you call this my food.
When you eat it, you say it's me, isn't it?
Something that's not you became you.
So, this is yoga, that you understand the sense perception is dividing the world and this division is needed for your survival process, but this division is no use for you to know life.
The way it is.
So, the yogic sciences are focused on how to transcend the sensory perception, how to suspend your senses and simply perceive life without the division.
If you do that, everything that is here will be in some way known to you.
And there is so much here that people don't see.
If you talk about it, you look like a mumbo-jumbo witch doctor, so you don't talk about these things.
joe rogan
But how did you know that it was going to be in that area?
sadhguru
It's not that I knew it's in that area.
I had heard stories about that place, but I thought I'll just go there one time just to see because it's a magnificent place.
By any standard, it's a beautiful, beautiful place.
So, it's a little over… the lake is around 4,400 feet above main sea level.
The Kalash Peak is almost 19,000 feet.
So, once I went and the magnificent nature of that… See, the mountain is a place, this is a yogic tradition that when a yogi gets to know certain things, he knows he cannot share it, his experience.
He cannot share it because nobody will understand it.
Because it cannot be understood, it can only be experienced.
So, what he will do is, he will store it in an energy form in a place where there is not too much foot… human footprint, at the same time, it's not completely inaccessible.
There are many places like this in India.
There are places like that in other parts of the world also.
One fantastic place that you must visit is in United States is Matotipila.
Where's that?
Matotipila is in Wyoming.
joe rogan
Wyoming.
sadhguru
Near what?
Rapid City, huh?
They call it the Devil's Tower.
You heard of that?
The Devil's Tower.
joe rogan
Is that from Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
sadhguru
I don't know about that movie, but in many Western movies, it's always there.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
sadhguru
This is called Matotipila.
joe rogan
In that Steven Spielberg movie, that's a very significant place because that's where the aliens land.
sadhguru
Oh, is that so?
joe rogan
Yeah.
sadhguru
So, this is a powerful, powerful space.
In America, this is one space I found which is naturally tremendous.
And see, this is Kalash.
unidentified
Wow.
sadhguru
It is something else.
It is the greatest mystical library on the planet.
joe rogan
That place?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
Kalash.
What do you think is going on there?
What do you think is going on there?
Why is it all concentrated?
sadhguru
One thing is Adi Yogi himself was there.
He lived there.
So he stored all that he knows there.
And many other yogis later on, many Buddhist teachers like Padmasambhava and Manjushri, all these people and even the Jain monks, they all went and stored their energies there because the knowledge that they know, they don't want it to be lost.
It can't be transmitted to people because you will not find the suitable people to do that.
So, you place it somewhere where in future somebody who has the capability will access this.
I'll tell you one experience.
I'm going into the mumbo jumbo world.
Why, man?
I came for...
joe rogan
It's not mumbo jumbo at all.
sadhguru
I came for safe soil.
You're getting me somewhere else.
joe rogan
We're doing both.
I don't think it's mumbo jumbo.
sadhguru
See, this happened.
I was...
This is what?
I'm just thinking the years.
I'm not good with years.
Must be 10, 11 years ago, maybe.
2008 or...
Even before that.
I'm sorry.
2003 or 2004. I started running temperature.
I was in India.
No, first I was in California.
I was in Los Angeles.
I started running temperature.
And I come to speak in the Thai group, you know, there is an Indian group, entrepreneurs group.
And I spoke there and the president of the Thai group invited me to their home again to speak again to another exclusive group.
I was speaking there, I'm running very high temperature and I'm… you know, my clothes are all wet with sweat.
So, one man raised his hand.
I thought he wants to ask a question.
I said, fine.
He said, you need to go to the emergency room right now.
I said, yes, I know, but I'll finish this talk and go.
Then I finished the talk and then I went to the hospital like I was running very high temperature.
So, they gave me this, that and they said, this is some kind of typhoid.
So, I met one wonderful doctor who was a tropical medicine expert.
He said, this is some strange kind of typhoid.
So, he gave me a whole lot of antibiotics, this, that.
I took that and then I went to UK where I had a four-day residential program.
All the four days I was running very high temperature.
But I finished that program.
In this 40 years, I've never canceled one program because I was not well.
I've never done that.
So, I went back to India.
I had a television shoot, I had to shoot fifty-two weeks of material in about four to five days.
So, from whole day I'm shooting and if I sit down for thirty-forty minutes of shoot, I'm like my whole… all my clothes are wet with sweat, I have to change my clothes because I'm sweating so much.
And then after shooting the whole day on the second or third day, I came home and I was like, feeling like my brains are getting fried up, so hot.
Then I took the thermometer and put it, it said 107. I thought, oh man, I'm killing myself right now.
So, with my entire… my clothes, everything, I went and stood under the cold shower.
Then I called the doctor and said, you know, it was reading 107, I stood under the cold shower.
So, this is the smartest thing you've done in your entire life.
If you had been in that for another few minutes, you would have a stroke or you would have something, for sure.
Then they said it's some kind of what?
Malaria.
And they gave me malarial medicine.
I had typhoid medicine, then I got malaria medicine.
Then they said three different types of malarias they're diagnosed in one month's time and they changed the medication, changed the medication.
And then I went to Australia.
I was running temperature.
I was in Singapore, I was running temperature.
I came to India for two days, I was running temperature.
Then I came back to United States.
So, it was my daughter's vacation, so I told her I'll take her to some lake house.
Somebody had a friend of ours, so I said I'll take her on the lake.
So, I have a port, you know, IV port running by now.
I have antibiotic every day running about three, four hours a day.
With IV port on, I'm riding a boat and taking her around and everything going on.
unidentified
Wow.
sadhguru
By then, I have done about 18 blood tests and about four MRIs.
All kinds of bizarre things they're saying and changing the prescription and giving me this medication, that medication.
Temperature didn't go down.
It just went on and on.
Then I was in North Carolina on this lake house.
Around 2 a.m., I knew that I was just kind of collapsing, kind of, you know, dropping off.
Then I called out and they called for an ambulance.
It came and they took me to a local hospital in Kashirs in North… in Carolina.
And these doctors looked at me, this is… they looked at all the blood tests and this is too esoteric for us.
You better go to Atlanta.
So, I went to Atlanta.
There they said it's best you go to some physician in New York.
He's the best guy, you must go there because by now almost seven weeks I've been running continuous temperature, I've been traveling all over the world.
So, I went to New York and they said, you know, you must get admitted, we'll check.
Then I got admitted, by then I can… you know, I'm having difficulty walking, I'm just really go… like become weak.
Then… and by then my lymph nodes have swollen up so badly, excruciating pain.
So, they said they may have to do surgery and they have to do a biopsy first and see what is it, is it malignant or whatever.
Then I'm in the hospital, next day morning for the… it's a general anesthesia, they have a pre-check for anesthesia.
So in that funny gown which is open on all sides, you know, I'm wearing that holding like this and trying to walk holding onto the wall.
I got into the elevator to go to another floor.
In between in one floor, the lift stopped.
A Chinese man got in.
So the doctor who was with me introduced, he's the one who is going to do the surgery for you.
Then the Chinese doctor felt the lymph nodes like this and said, it's very deep, you must inform the family.
Then I went for the test, for the anesthetic tests, then I said, I'm going home.
Doctor said, no Sadhguru, this is very dangerous, you can't leave the hospital.
I said, no, I'm going.
I said, I'll go.
I don't want to go through the surgery.
So I went back.
A friend had an apartment in Manhattan area.
I just closed my eyes and sat for four days.
My temperature went down.
The swelling went down.
In twenty-one days, I was in Kalash, trekked.
You know, my muscle mass had gone down, my legs had become like this.
Always I've been walking, trekking, playing games.
I have some muscle, not like you, but I have some muscle to keep me going.
But my muscle mass went down so much in these eight weeks, I just shrank like that.
With great difficulty, I trekked there, I could barely speak.
And I sat there for two hours.
I took one strand of what is there on that mountain.
You won't believe.
In two and a half hours, I was almost ten to fifteen years younger than what I was at that moment.
People around me will vouch for it, how suddenly I'm a different man.
After eight weeks of fever and all kinds of treatments without knowing what it is, So that is the power of that mountain.
It's not just to heal you of your health or something.
It is tremendous amount of everything that one can know in the universe is stored there in some way.
It is your ability to pull it out.
joe rogan
But you were… you were covered in Manhattan, right?
sadhguru
Yes.
joe rogan
What makes you think it's that mountain?
sadhguru
See, I closed my eyes and I did what I have to do with my system, which gave me a respite.
But still, I was not fully there.
Still very weak and like that.
But I just bounced back in two and a half hours' time.
joe rogan
But I don't understand what it has to do with that mountain.
sadhguru
See, this is what it is.
What you think is you is not just contained in the boundaries of this body.
If you are willing to open up that boundary, the whole existence is with you.
joe rogan
So you opened up your body after all those weeks and you don't think it has anything to do with the antibiotics you were taking or you were finally getting some rest?
sadhguru
Antibiotics didn't give me a respite at all.
joe rogan
But you never rested, right?
sadhguru
I'm very restful, even if I'm traveling.
joe rogan
But you were constantly working, right?
You were explaining all the different things you were doing and that you were constantly taxing yourself.
sadhguru
No, I don't tax myself.
joe rogan
But that was taxing.
You were sweating through your clothes.
sadhguru
Yes, that's because of fever.
joe rogan
Right, but you never rested.
sadhguru
This swelling, which they said without looking inside, they will do biopsy and most probably they'll do surgery along with that, which was excruciating pain, just went down.
joe rogan
But it went down after you rested, right?
sadhguru
Not rested.
I sat with my eyes closed.
I didn't sleep.
I sat.
joe rogan
But you didn't do anything for four days.
sadhguru
If you want to explain it, this is why I said, see, I'm going into Mumbojo.
joe rogan
No, no, I believe you.
I'm just trying to piece together why...
sadhguru
So I'm saying when doctors, every qualified doctor is saying that I'm in a state where you'll have to inform the family because I'm in a life and death situation, you don't recover just because four days you sit there with eyes closed, all right?
joe rogan
You don't think so?
sadhguru
No, not because of rest.
joe rogan
You think that there was something supernatural or something else?
sadhguru
See… What is the term you would use?
I never use the word supernatural because everything is within the aspect of nature.
joe rogan
Okay, what would you use?
sadhguru
So, which aspect of nature are you in right now?
That is the thing.
See, one aspect of your nature is survival, for example, for every human being.
Because of survival, you try to build boundaries around yourself.
Whether it's a national boundary or an individual boundary, your house boundary or your personal boundaries, these are all, you know, self-preservation boundaries.
But there is also something within you which wants to expand, which doesn't like boundaries.
Why people suffer the prison like that is just the boundaries.
Nothing else wrong, it's much bigger than your home, the prison.
Actually, your kind of company, I'm saying if you're in that kind of life, it's your kind of company, food is good, you're far fitter than most people on the outside, you don't have to do a job to get your food.
It's actually very good.
But lack of freedom kills a man totally.
joe rogan
I want to go back to experiencing these different life forms that you experienced.
You had heard that they existed in this place.
sadhguru
Generally, yes, a lot of people who have been there have been talking about it, but a lot of talk is of that nature.
See, as I said, I'm a super skeptic.
I don't believe anything that anybody says.
You have to experience it.
Nor do I disbelieve.
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
Somebody says something, maybe it's true for them.
I will respect that, but it's not that I have to believe it unless it happens to me.
joe rogan
Do you think that a certain state of mind or being is what puts you in touch with these other life forms?
sadhguru
No.
Let's see these two things you're saying in the same context and that's how normally it's used in the society.
People think a state of mind is everything.
See, mind itself is a very limited process in the sense.
See, right now, generally in the Western world, you think mind means your intellect, thought process.
Your thought process cannot generate anything other than the data that you already possess.
unidentified
Correct?
sadhguru
Can you think of something that's not at all there in your data?
joe rogan
Imagination.
sadhguru
No.
Your imagination is just an exaggeration of the data that you already have.
joe rogan
Okay.
sadhguru
If there is no data, you cannot imagine.
joe rogan
So this thing that you experienced was beyond imagination.
sadhguru
I'll come to that.
See, right now, when you say state of mind, you're talking about whether you're equanimous or you're disturbed or you're happy, unhappy, or you're able to penetrate something, you're not able to penetrate something in terms of intellect.
But all these are dependent because it is like your computer.
If you remove the data, it's just a blank screen.
So, if I remove all the memory that you have, you're just a blank screen, isn't it?
So, right now, your ideas of right and wrong, your ideas of your nationality, your ideas of your race, your ideas of your religion, your ideas of your family, your ideas of yourself is all in the memory bank.
If we just take out that memory chip… Nothing.
So, your whole intellect is functioning from that because you can see… because you cannot see the end of the universe.
If you could see the end of the universe, you would say, it's just me here, nobody else.
Because you cannot see, because you're here, maybe there are people there.
This is an imagination, all right?
But imagination is rooted in the data that you already have.
You cannot imagine something new.
You use two words together, state of mind and state of being.
Being means this.
See, right now you have a body.
But when you were born, you were only this much.
Now you became this much.
How?
The food that you've eaten, isn't it?
Now you have a mind.
When you were born, you were just like a little baby, suddenly you become all this.
How?
Whole accumulation of impressions, isn't it, through five senses?
What you have seen, what you have heard, what you have smelled, what you have tasted, what you have touched, from this you have formed a whole lot of information with which you have a mind of your own.
How rich that information is makes you look that smart in a given society, all right?
If you're well informed, just because you have a good data chip, people think you're smart, not necessarily.
So, essentially smart means always in comparison to somebody else.
So, these days everybody's saying they have a smartphone.
See, when would you call somebody smart?
Only if they're smarter than you.
So, if you say smartphone, obviously it is smarter than you, simply because it has more memory than you, isn't it?
And it has more multiple functionality than you.
joe rogan
More access to information.
sadhguru
Yes.
So, that is intellect, but intellect is not everything.
When it comes to intellect, would you like your intellect sharp or blunt?
Tell me, I'm going to bless you right now.
joe rogan
You're going to bless me?
unidentified
Hmm.
sadhguru
Do you want it sharp or blunt?
joe rogan
I'm going to go with sharp.
Sounds better.
sadhguru
So that means your intellect is a cutting instrument.
It's like a knife.
The more sharper it is, the better it is.
So with sharp knife, you can dissect and know things.
So I want to know Joe Rogan right now.
Shall I dissect him?
Will I know him if I open him up?
Will I know him that way?
joe rogan
No, you're going to have to experience.
sadhguru
Yes, that's it.
So, dissection may show me the… how your heart is, how your liver is, how your kidney is, but you won't meet Joe out there, all right?
So, by dissection you can know physical things.
By dissection you cannot know anything which is beyond that, all right?
The life in you cannot be perceived by dissection of any kind.
So, now with an intellect which is a knife, With this knife, if you try to stitch your clothes, then you will be like today's fashion, everybody's in tatters.
So, to stitch, you need a different kind of tool.
To cut, you need a different kind of tool.
Right now, with the cutting tool, people are trying to do everything.
You know, this happened to me.
At that time, I was crisscrossing India on my motorcycle where I was just in my early twenties.
And whole night I've been riding, early morning I come into a small place where there is a street side tea shop where I had sat down and had a tea and those days this motorcycle chain, you know, if you ride one six hundred, seven hundred kilometers really fast, it becomes slack.
You have to remove one link.
Today, modern motorcycles are made differently, it's very different.
Those days, like, around 700, 800 kilometers means it'll become slack.
So, almost every day, I have to remove one link from the chain, and I have a spare chain with me always because it'll go off.
And in a day at those days, I'm riding 1,000 to 1,200 kilometers per day.
Those days when roads were not great, and our motorcycle was just 250cc, single-stroke engine, all right?
I'm sorry, two-stroke engine.
So, I was having my tea.
It's not very difficult to fix the chain, but it's messy.
Your hands get dirty, you need soap and everything.
I was having tea and I saw the opposite, there was a small shack.
He had Mubarak Mechanical Works, he'd written.
Strapling young youth, I told him, hey, come here man, can you fix my chain?
He said, oh yes, sir, I can fix it.
I said, okay.
Then he came out with a chisel and hammer.
I said, wait.
I got up and went and I looked into a shack.
He doesn't have any other tools.
Only thing he has is chisel and hammer.
He can fix it, but after that nobody can fix anything on that motorcycle.
So right now, most human beings are like this.
They are trying to fix everything with their intellect, which is a cutting instrument.
With a cutting instrument, if you try to fix everything, all that you will have is a bruised life.
That's what they're having.
If they're failures in their life, they're suffering.
If they're successful, they're dying of tension.
If they're poor, they're suffering their poverty.
If they become rich, they suffer their taxes.
If they're not married, they suffer that.
If they're married, oh, don't tell me, all the things that they do.
Everything, because you're trying to handle everything with a cutting instrument.
Naturally, you're fully bruised and bleeding by the time you're done with life.
So, the perception of life is beyond intellect.
Intellect is not perception.
Intellect is coming out with permutations and combinations of information that you already possess.
joe rogan
So, you experiencing whatever this life form was is beyond words because it's beyond anything… See, because words are a product of our intellect.
sadhguru
Language is a product of our intellect.
That's why I said, if I speak, I'll end up speaking illogically.
Because intellectually, you cannot think illogically.
If you think, you can only think logically.
Somebody may not agree with your logic, but you can only think logically within yourself, isn't it?
Nobody thinks illogically.
You may think the other guy is illogical, but he thinks you're illogical.
But within your mind, you're never illogical, isn't it?
joe rogan
Right.
sadhguru
Because the thought process is like that.
That is the nature of the intellect.
You have to add.
Two plus two is four.
Maybe you added two plus two is five.
You got it wrong, but you're still thinking it's logically correct, isn't it?
joe rogan
Right.
So this experience that you had, whatever it is, we don't have the tools to express it in a way that a person who has an experience can understand it.
sadhguru
You have the equipment.
You have not even opened the wraps.
Everybody has it.
There's nobody who doesn't have it.
joe rogan
Do you have to experience it to know what this equipment is?
sadhguru
No, it's just that...
See, where people are invested, that's what they know, isn't it?
joe rogan
Yes.
sadhguru
So, that's all it is.
They're invested.
Largely, most people are invested in trying to be better than somebody else.
Because right from their kindergarten school, their parents, their teachers, everybody told you, you must be number one.
That means you always enjoy other people's failures.
When you enjoy other people's failures, I don't call this joy, I call this sickness.
joe rogan
That is a sickness, and that's a sickness that a lot of people possess, the enjoying other people's failure sickness.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sadhguru
See, why is it that you enjoy a billion dollars?
I'm a billionaire, somebody enjoys it.
Why?
Because nobody else has it around you.
If...
let's say I'll...
somebody who's aspiring for a billion dollars, I'll give you billion dollars, but for everybody else in the town, I'll give them ten billion dollars.
Will you be happy?
You will not be.
You'll be very unhappy with your billion dollars.
Because your whole problem is you want to be on top of everybody.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
Why do people have that?
What do you think that's...
What is that left over from?
sadhguru
See, this is because, as I said, your whole life is limited to your sense perception.
Sense organs can only perceive in comparison.
See, right now, you're six feet tall.
You're not.
I'm just telling you.
For some time, let's assume you're six feet tall.
Now, you stand like a tall man, you walk like a tall man, you feel like a tall man, you think like a tall man.
You went to another society where everybody is eight feet tall.
Suddenly, you walk like a short man, think like a short man, feel like a short man.
So, your entire perception is always in comparison when it comes to sense organs.
This is what yoga is about, going beyond the senses because this thing that you perceive in comparison is only useful for survival process.
It is not good enough to know the nature of the universe.
These are all realms which only interest people who just want to know.
There may be no use, but you want to know.
So there is that aspect in every human being.
Whether you have kept it alive or you kept it buried is a question.
joe rogan
That's that old quote, comparison is the thief of joy.
Is that Thoreau?
No.
Is it?
Oh, that's right.
I thought maybe Thomas Jefferson originally attributed to?
unidentified
Roosevelt.
joe rogan
Listen, man, I really enjoyed talking to you.
Thank you very much for being here.
sadhguru
Yeah, thank you for having me.
But you know, this soil is a serious situation.
joe rogan
It's a serious situation.
sadhguru
And from March 21st, I'm riding 30,000 kilometers and I'm 65. What I see is in the last two years, I've been talking to so many people, influencers, scientists, politicians, leaders.
Everybody knows there's a serious problem.
And everybody knows what is the solution also, generally.
But I think everybody was waiting for some idiot to come and bell the cat.
So, here I am.
unidentified
Okay?
sadhguru
So, next 100 days from March 21st, 100 days we want the whole world to talk about soil because I'm addressing the COP15 where 170 nation representatives are there, where we are presenting these documents.
Before that, we want to raise three to four billion people to talk about soil.
Once 60% of the electorate has spoken in the world that soil is a deep concern to them, believe me, every government will get active on the job.
Because in a democracy, the only currency is numbers.
joe rogan
Where can someone follow this online?
Do you have a website?
sadhguru
Yes.
SaveSoil.org is there.
joe rogan
SaveSoil.org?
sadhguru
Yes.
There's an Instagram and Twitter and Facebook.
joe rogan
And you have an Instagram as well?
sadhguru
Yes.
We have what is called as You Can Become an Earth Buddy.
If you become an earth buddy, every day you spend five to ten minutes to enhance the message, to reach as many people as possible.
So, people must understand this.
People are… everywhere I go, people say, Sadhguru, the social media is stressing me intentionally.
This is rubbish.
See, many, many great beings have come in this world, but when they spoke, hardly ten people could hear them.
This is the first time you can sit here and talk to the entire world.
When you have such tools in your hands, if you do not transform humanity, if you do not do what is absolutely needed for this generation, it shows that we don't care enough.
I don't want to be that one who didn't care enough to do something which matters because right now we are consuming the soil and food that belongs to the unborn child.
This is a crime against humanity.
joe rogan
I hear ya.
sadhguru
Let's make it happen.
joe rogan
Let's make it happen.
It will help elevate your signal.
And thank you very much.
I really, really enjoyed this.
You gave me a lot to think about.
unidentified
I'm gonna continue to think about this.
Thank you.
joe rogan
Thank you.
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