Sadhguru, a spiritual teacher and founder of the soil mission, warns of global topsoil depletion—just 45 to 60 years left at current rates—causing nutrient loss in crops and farmer suicides, with 50% of U.S. farmers unprofitable since 2012. He dismisses organic farming as impractical, citing micronutrient drops (90% lost since the early 1900s) and predicts famines even in affluent regions like Illinois by 2035. Monoculture farming strips soil of life, but regenerative practices—like tree-based systems—can reverse decline. Beyond agriculture, Sadhguru argues joy stems from inner awareness, not external success, linking modern mental health crises to societal reliance on chemicals and unconscious reactions. His experiments in Tibet and Wyoming reveal non-Earthly life forms generating extreme energy, transcending human logic, while he urges a 30,000-km ride starting March 21st to combat soil degradation as a moral imperative for future generations. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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, 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.
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.