6lack Explores Power Of Music, Love & Consciousness With Sg

In a freewheeling conversation with Sadhguru, musician 6lack explores a variety of topics including music, love, and consciousness.
Considered among India’s 50 most influential people, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, bestselling author, and poet. Absolute clarity of perception places him in a unique space, not only in matters spiritual but in business, environmental, and international affairs, and opens a new door to all that he touches.

Transcript

Sounds of Sanity Discovering Inner Peace A Conversation Between Black and Sunburn Always had the same purpose of figuring out how to heal through music and how to help people through music.

If you use the sound effectively it can transform life in a very powerful way.

Even here and there if you touch those sounds those sounds will live forever in people's minds and hearts.

How does love contribute to our overall mental and emotional well-being?

To be loving is entirely your way of being and you should not deny yourself that no matter what.

Sadhguru chants Jananam Sukhadam Sadhguru chants Jananam Sukhadam Good evening,

Good evening everyone.

I said good evening.

So,

I would like to start.

I am black too.

Oh yeah,

You are black too.

Love and self-love and mental well-being have always been at the forefront of what I create.

There hasn't been a stage in my life where I haven't been in some like a sense of reflection or like wanting to figure out how to be better.

So,

With each album that I've made it never really mattered if it was a hundred people or a thousand people or a million people listening.

I always had the same purpose of figuring out how to heal through music and how to help people through music.

With that I've been able to travel and I've been able to see the effects that it has on other people and as much as I want to say responsibility I also don't want people to shy away from it.

So,

Sometimes I like to say it's just a beautiful opportunity to be able to do something that impacts people and that gives you a vehicle and that gives you a moment to make an impression.

So,

With love and with self-love and with my mental and emotional state being like the most important thing I hope that it has always like had a relatable effect on the people that listen.

I hope that you've been able to take something away from it because it's not the popular thing.

It's not the most lucrative all the time but it's the most necessary and thank you.

In your perspective how does love contribute to our overall mental and emotional well-being and how can one be in a constant mode of love and acceptance and forgiveness in spite of outside influences?

If this body becomes pleasant we call this health.

If it becomes very pleasant we call it pleasure.

If this mind becomes pleasant we call this peace.

If it becomes very pleasant we call it joy.

If our emotions become pleasant we call this love.

If it becomes very pleasant we call it compassion.

If our very life energies become pleasant we call this bliss.

If it becomes very pleasant we call it ecstasy.

If our surroundings become pleasant we call this success.

Only to create pleasantness around us we need the cooperation of people and forces around us.

But to create pleasantness of body pleasantness of mind,

Emotion and energy is 100% our business.

Hello?

You want to create pleasantness in this hall you need everybody's cooperation.

To create pleasantness within this one is 100% my business,

Isn't it?

So,

Love is a certain sweetness of our emotion.

You may direct it at somebody if they are here.

If nobody is here you can simply sit here in a loving way.

It's not about somebody or something.

It's just that maybe there is a longing to share.

That's fine.

But it's the sweetness of our emotions.

If you are sitting here and somebody sitting in that corner loves you immensely doesn't change your life.

But if you are sitting here and feeling love even for something that's not here it changes your life,

Isn't it?

Because it's your emotion.

Above all we need to understand all human experience,

Absolutely.

Our pleasantness,

Our nastiness our love,

Our hate,

Our misery,

Our joy our pain and pleasure,

Agony and ecstasy everything happens within us.

Have you ever experienced anything outside of yourself out here?

Hello?

You have?

Really?

Did you experience something here?

Anything that ever happened to you happened only here,

Isn't it?

Even this light and darkness is only happening within you.

Stimulant may be stimulation may be from outside but the experience happens only within you.

Or in other words the seat of your experience is within you.

When the seat of your experience is within you if you are sitting on that seat obviously you would make the experience the way you want it.

If I ask you a simple question will you answer?

If you say yes,

If you say no if you say silent I'll bless you for all the three,

It's up to you.

If there was a choice between being pleasant within yourself and unpleasant within yourself what's your choice?

If there was a choice between sitting here in a loving manner or in an angry and hateful manner what's your choice?

Then what?

There is no problem with anybody here.

The only problem is they are not consistent they are not sustainable.

Hello?

Sustainability is the issue otherwise there is no problem with any human being.

We have you know like for the last twenty-seven years we have programs going on in the prisons of southern India.

We did some here also in Kentucky and Pennsylvania prisons.

I met the most wonderful people but if you look at their life's actions they have done some horrible things.

Absolutely horrible things but if you keep them happy and they are with you they are absolutely wonderful people.

So I am saying all the horrible things are simply because somewhere inside you are feeling horrible.

You are feeling unpleasant.

That unpleasantness permeates in so many ways.

So one simple thing we need to understand is love is not what you do it is something that you can become.

You can become love but unfortunately everybody is trying to do love make love not become love.

If you have become love you can look at a man,

A woman,

A tree,

A dog,

An insect and be the same way or close your eyes and be loving because it's your business.

The way you keep yourself is entirely your business.

How you relate to the world around you?

See if you are sitting here in a loving manner if your child comes you grab him and put him on your lap.

If your neighbor comes you don't do that you just do this,

All right?

But with the same amount of love you can do this.

Hello?

So love is not about somebody or it is not a relationship.

Relationship is a different thing that needs management skills.

You need an MBA to manage a good… That's a different affair but to be loving is entirely your way of being and you should not deny yourself that no matter what.

It doesn't matter what the world is doing you should not miss out miss out the experience of being soaked in your own sweetness.

Every day,

Every moment the sweetness of the body,

Sweetness of the mind and sweetness of emotion and energy must be on with you every moment of your life.

Sometimes the world will allow you to find expression sometimes they won't allow you.

Depends on the kind of situations we are existing in.

In some places there is more opportunity in some places there is less opportunity but nobody can stop you from being pleasant within yourself.

Nobody.

Thank you.

So that kind of answers what my follow-up question was which was what advice would you give to someone who's having trouble with self-love?

What is self-love?

Feeling pleasant with yourself.

See,

When we use the word love let's see it this way.

Let me put the same thing in another context.

You have heard the word yoga.

Yoga means probably in United States most people think you have to twist,

Turn and become like a leftover noodle.

No,

The word yoga means union because once you have come here as a human being if you had come here as any other creature you are stomach full,

Life is settled.

Once you have come as a human being stomach empty,

Only one problem stomach full,

One hundred problems because once you come as a human being you are longing to expand.

How much expansion would settle you for good?

If you look at this well,

If you are this much,

You want to become that much.

If you become that much,

You want to become that much.

What is your currency?

It may be different for different people.

If you know money,

You are thinking of more money.

If you know wealth,

You are thinking of more wealth.

If you know pleasure,

You are thinking of more pleasure.

Power,

More power.

Knowledge,

More knowledge.

But everybody in their own way is longing to be something more than what they are right now.

Now if you look at this,

How much more would settle you?

If I make you the king or queen of this planet would you be fulfilled and settled?

I am asking you.

Because then you would look at the moon.

What about… let's get the moon.

What about our solar system?

If I give you one galaxy,

You will look at the other galaxy because there is something within you longing to expand in a limitless way.

When your longing is to become limitless,

If you try to find physical expression to that,

Inevitably you will be bitter and frustrated because it will not get there.

It will never get there unless you find another way.

When I say another way,

Right now through physical means we are trying to expand.

In this longing to expand,

We are destroying the planet through and through.

See,

Please understand,

All these environmental issues,

Planet being under threat and all this stuff is not because of some evil.

People in pursuit of human well-being… Hello?

You think some evil people are destroying the planet?

No.

All of us in pursuit of well-being,

Isn't it?

Because our well-being is never going to settle because we want all,

Not more and that's not possible physically.

Because the nature of physicality is such,

Nature of physicality is always defined by defined boundaries.

You call this a physical body because it has a boundary.

If this had no boundaries,

You wouldn't call this physical anymore.

So yoga means to approach it in the right way,

That you approach the union,

Understanding physical is not the way to go about it.

There are ways to do it,

Leaving that aside.

But people are trying through physicality.

When it finds very fundamental,

Basic physical expression,

When two are trying to become one,

We call this sexuality.

When it finds an emotional expression,

We call this love,

Two are trying to become one.

If it finds an intellectual or mental expression,

It could be called conquest,

Ambition or simply shopping,

You know.

Something that's not you,

You want to make it part of yourself.

This is the effort.

This effort is on from the simplest physical level to all levels of your faculties.

You're trying to become one with something else other than you.

But when you say self-love,

There is a danger to this because you are an individual.

An individual means you are not further divisible.

The moment there is more than one here,

Because it's become… I'm saying this,

Please listen to this carefully,

Because today it's become fashionable to have more than one here.

The moment there is more than one here,

You will go towards mental instability.

There is only one here.

This is just me.

This one is an individual,

Not further divisible.

The moment you divide this,

People will say,

You know,

I am a nice guy,

But you know my ego.

This ego is a fall guy.

Whenever you would become nasty,

You don't want to admit,

I have been nasty.

That guy does those things.

And people start creating many levels of themselves.

There is no many levels,

They are just you.

If you see this is just you,

There is room for tremendous transformation.

The moment you make a crowd out of yourself,

There is no room for any kind of transformation.

All you can do is play ball,

Throwing it here and there,

This happened,

That happened.

So love on one level is an effort to unite what is two into one.

Don't make this two.

There is no need for self-love.

Love is yours anyway.

You can become love.

You don't have to love yourself because then you will become two.

This mind is capable of becoming million if you want.

Human mind is such,

If you explore this,

You can make million people out of this same mind.

Don't do that because then you will either need a psychiatrist or an exorcist.

That definitely is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I want to touch a little bit more on self-transformation.

I like how you said that you can create a lot of different versions of yourself in your mind because I went through a phase of my life where I did start to break myself up into portions or this chapter,

This stage,

This version,

This phase.

And my very first album,

Free Black,

Was,

If I had to put a word to it,

I would say it was like my conflict stage.

It was my introduction to learning myself,

To knowing myself,

To figuring out how I felt and how to express my emotions creatively through it.

It was a moment of not feeling like I deserved much and being so stuck inside my head that even down to the imagery of how we released the album,

Everything was muted.

It was monochromatic.

My hair was covering my face.

My head was down.

And that was one stage of my life.

And then I graduated to the second album,

Which was East Atlanta Love Letter,

And we introduced color into everything that I started to do.

The first picture that I ever posted in color was a picture of my daughter.

And for anybody who was following the story,

It was a moment for all of us to kind of celebrate because up until that moment,

I didn't see any reason for a change in my personal life.

And that was my album of acknowledgement and reflection.

And then the most recent album,

Since I Have a Lover,

Is me in a state of practice.

Everything that I experienced the first two times around had finally made it to the point where I could look in the mirror and say,

Yes,

You talked a good game.

Yes,

You have an idea of where you want to go,

How you want to be,

Who you want to be.

But what are you doing every single day to prove it to yourself?

When you wake up,

What is the routine that you've implemented to show yourself that you deserve everything that you're wishing for?

What is your practice?

These were my different versions of myself.

These were the different stages of how I had to grow from conflict to acknowledgement and to practice.

So how has your personal journey and experience influenced your teachings and guidance for others seeking self-transformation and well-being?

What's your love life like?

See,

This is the nature of life.

First being,

Because you're a certain kind of being,

You do certain things.

Because you do certain things,

You may get to have certain things.

What you will get to have is not determined by you,

But in the times that we exist.

Today in 21st century,

Because of who you are,

Maybe you're driving a certain kind of automobile.

If you were here 500 years ago,

Maybe you would get a certain kind of buffalo.

I'm saying what we get to have is not ours,

It's the times in which we are existing.

But unfortunately,

Most people start their life with what they want to have.

For that,

What they should do and because of that they become something.

This is just trying to run the life in the reverse manner.

First being,

If you take any other life,

You take a bird,

It is a certain kind of being,

Because of that it will do certain things.

Because of that,

Maybe it will get certain things,

Maybe it gets protected.

Many others have been killed and eliminated,

Some have been protected because of the things that they do.

So,

Instead of being,

Doing and having,

Most people today are trying to go from having,

They want to have this,

So they do this and they get here.

Even if they get there,

Then there is no joy to life because it's a struggle within oneself.

See,

There are challenges in the world.

The more you try to do,

The more challenges.

But if you yourself are a big challenge,

How to deal with life?

There are so many people and situations which will throw challenges at you as you try to do more and more in the world.

Endless number of challenges.

But I should not be a challenge in my own life.

I should not be an impediment in my own life.

There are thousand impediments in the world.

Well,

Some we will cross gracefully,

Some we will struggle,

Some we will not cross maybe.

Always there.

So,

You want me to talk about myself?

I must tell you a little abridged story about it.

You have few minutes for this.

See,

This is one thing.

Because you go to school,

Almost everybody goes to school today.

In your school,

They reward only your memory,

Not your attention.

If you remember the damn textbook,

They will say you are number one.

That stupid textbook if you remember,

Chad GDP has more memory than you,

So that is first then.

This happened to me when I was just four-and-a-half years of age.

One day I suddenly realized I don't know anything.

Don't know anything means I don't know anything at all.

If somebody gives me a glass of water,

I don't know what this is.

I know how to use it,

But I don't know what it is.

Even now you don't know what it is actually.

With all the scientific knowledge that we have,

We do not know a single atom in its entirety.

This is a fact.

Not one atom do we know in its entirety.

We know how to fuse it,

We know how to break it,

We know how to make a bomb out of it,

But we don't know what it is.

So when I realized this,

If I find a leaf,

I am just staring at it for hours.

If I sit up in my bed,

I am just staring at the darkness for the whole night.

My dear father being a physician,

He started thinking I need psychiatric evaluation.

This boy is simply staring at something,

It looks like he has lost it.

In this condition,

They sent me to school.

My mother said,

Pay attention to the teacher,

Don't look here and there.

I went and paid attention to the teacher,

The kind of attention they had never received in their lives.

And initially I kind of understood what they were trying to say,

But after some time I realized,

Teacher after teacher,

Every forty-five minutes new teacher is coming.

All of them are just making sounds,

Sounds and sounds.

I am making up the meanings in my mind.

Then I said,

Why am I making these meanings?

Let them… let me just listen.

So without making meanings,

I just started listening to all the sounds that they make.

After some time it really became very amusing.

A big smile spread on my face.

They were not amused at all.

What I am trying to say is,

Right now language itself… See,

Because language is a conspiracy.

If I say this sound,

You are making up the meaning,

Isn't it?

Suppose I start speaking a language that you don't understand,

Just sounds,

Isn't it?

India… India is a nation where originally there were about 19,

000 languages.

Today in use are 1300 languages,

Okay?

So every other person speaks a different language.

Most of the time they are making sounds as far as you are concerned.

So when I just paid attention to these things,

Slowly I know… I know their past,

Present and future but I don't hear a damn thing that they are saying.

Then I became a super skeptic about everything because I paid attention to everything around me – the home,

Atmosphere,

The family,

The society,

The economic conditions around me,

Social fabric,

Politics.

I just paid attention,

Attention,

Attention and so I became… If you pay attention to just about anything around in your life,

Enough attention,

You will see too many meaningless,

Nonsensical things are happening all over the place.

So I am a super skeptic.

In this condition,

I… I crisscrossed India on my motorcycle because I was restless and wanted to go somewhere and I traveled without going anywhere from one end of the nation to another and then turning around and riding to another corner and riding back like this,

Seeing and enjoying the terrain and the feel of it but not going to any place as such.

Why I am saying this is,

After this I wanted to really ride away,

Then I decided I'll start my businesses.

I started a business,

It became very successful in a short time.

I started one more,

One more,

About half a dozen businesses.

For those days,

It was considered too successful.

So everybody clapping their hands and saying,

You're doing great but I was planning to leave.

So one afternoon,

I went and sat on a small hill.

Anybody been to India here?

Oh!

You need to see India.

It's a unique nation.

So a city called Mysore where there's a small hill,

Where I know this hill very well,

I've camped there and I've known this place very well.

In the afternoon between two business meetings,

I just went and sat there and I am a super,

Super skeptic.

I don't believe anything other than what I can see.

I was sitting there with my eyes open.

Till that moment,

This was me.

This is somebody else.

I have no issue with this somebody but this is me,

That is somebody.

Suddenly I did not know which is me and which is not me.

I'm sitting here and what was me was just all over the place.

I know it sounds insane.

Even I thought so.

It was all over the place and I thought this lasted for ten,

Fifteen minutes but when I came back to my normal senses,

It was four-and-a-half hours had passed.

For the first time in my adult life,

Tears,

Me and tears were impossible.

My shirt was wet.

Like that tears have been flowing,

Every cell in my body bursting with ecstasy,

Dripping ecstasy.

Then I shake my head and think,

What is happening to me?

The only thing my logical mind could say was,

Maybe I'm going off my rocker.

Then I asked my closest friends,

What do you think?

I'm just experiencing something like this.

Hey,

Come on,

What did you pop?

What did you drink?

Did you find the mushrooms in the hill?

So,

I knew there was no context.

Then I experimented for a few weeks with this.

Then I found that if I can sit away from my own psychological process of thought and emotion,

If I can sit little away from it,

Suddenly within minutes,

I will be completely blissed out.

In a way that what seems like a minute in my experience is many hours.

So,

Then I sat down and planned.

I'm telling you my problems,

Okay?

Then I sat down and planned that in the next two-and-a-half years,

At that time the world's population was 5.

6 billion people.

In two-and-a-half years' time,

I'm going to make this world blissful,

Every one of them,

Because who wouldn't want it?

Just sit here and be blissed out,

Who wouldn't want it?

I thought everybody will go for it.

Forty years now,

Hmm?

Well,

We've touched over 2 or 2.

5 billion people now,

But that is not my idea of humanity.

So,

I know I will die a failure,

But as a blissful failure,

Because my way of being is not connected to what I do or what I cannot do.

I'm learning just as much as y'all are learning today.

I want to touch a little bit on spreading the message of bliss,

But in the midst of a lot of traffic and a lot of outside energy and a lot of pressures of the industry.

I remember,

For me personally,

When I came into,

Really,

The Interscope offices when I was getting ready to sign my first deal.

And I was trying to figure out,

How do I set the tone?

How do I let it be known why I'm here?

And how do I clear space for me to be able to continue what I feel like my purpose is?

For me personally,

It came in the form of telling them I was an album artist,

And that can mean a bunch of different things to different people,

But for me it meant,

I want to focus on the story of what I'm doing.

I want to focus on the entire message of what I'm doing,

And I don't want to necessarily be here just to go to radio.

I don't want to be here just to make money.

I don't want to be here just to pump out a bunch of products.

I want to focus on telling my story,

And that requires a certain amount of living and experiencing and learning.

So I went through that process for those three albums,

And in the midst of figuring that out,

I just found myself in that state of confusion,

And I found myself in a state of being overwhelmed,

And I was trying to be and do so much for so many other people that eventually I looked up and I was burnt out,

And I felt like I had overextended,

And I was holding this message and this flag,

And I was trying to bear it so hard that I just completely forgot to,

Like you said,

Sit with myself and find that bliss and find that happiness.

What advice would you give for navigating through what we're all,

Pretty much everybody in here is a creative in some kind of form,

But navigating through that with the norms of the industry not necessarily being considerate of that?

See,

Music,

In its essence,

Is one instrument which can touch life profoundly.

It should be never seen as an industry.

There is an industry around music,

But music is not industry.

I know industry might have become overwhelmingly large compared to the art form of it,

But I don't think as musicians you should ever allow that to happen.

Because industry is business,

It's commerce,

It has to do its thing,

And commerce is needed to take it to the wide world.

A musician cannot do it by himself.

All that's fine,

But still,

For me,

Instead of speaking for everybody,

Let me speak what it means for me.

Well,

Your kind of music,

I may be a bit too old for that.

When I was in sixties,

We started with heavy rock and roll and Rolling Stones and Gerald Tull and,

You know,

All that,

And B.

B.

King and all that stuff.

I'm still listening to B.

B.

King because he spills magic out of his fingers.

So,

Completely western music,

Though I grew up in India.

One day in the university,

There is an open air theater where about,

You know,

Eight,

Ten thousand people can sit.

I'm just riding on my motorcycle,

My motorcycle is loud enough so that it blurs out everything.

I like the music of the engine.

That's my constant companion.

But then I heard some strange kind of sound which got me by the gut,

Literally.

It just literally drew me and I just rode towards the open air theater and there was some small security in town.

They tried to stop me,

I just rode straight through.

This open air theater,

Me and my friends have been using,

Which is like an arena,

To ride the motorcycles up and down the steps.

Okay,

I never thought of attending any event there.

In the last few years,

I have been doing events there.

So I just rode to the edge of the arena and stood there and they were playing some kind of an instrument.

I did not even know the name of the instrument at that time.

Very slow,

Simply dong,

Hmm,

Hmm,

Like that.

It just… I just sat there with tears flowing down.

I couldn't believe it.

What are they doing to me?

It's like they grabbed me from inside out.

This was the beginning of Indian classical music for me.

Then all this body shaking music went out of me.

Suddenly it just got me from inside.

As I became more and more meditative,

This classical music became more and more prominent for me and I started seeing what sound can do.

In most of my programs today,

I use music in such a powerful way that simply by uttering a sound,

You can make people burst out in so many different ways.

So we need to understand this.

Even according to modern science today,

What seems to be solid material is not really that.

It is reverberation of energy which makes it this way.

Where there is a vibration,

There is bound to be a sound.

Not all sound is audible to our ears.

Only a small frequency of sounds are audible to our human ears.

What is above that is ultrasonic,

What is below that is subsonic.

Many animals,

Elephants,

Whales and others are communicating in subsonic sounds.

You don't hear that.

Similarly,

There are some who are doing in ultrasonic sounds like the bats and others,

Which you cannot hear either.

We are only hearing a range of sounds.

But sound is the basis of existence.

There is a whole yoga called Nada Yoga.

Nada means sound.

There is a whole yoga as to how to approach your ultimate nature through the use of sound.

There are scriptures talking about first there was a word.

See if I say a word now,

Let us say I say some word for which you don't understand the meaning.

It's just a sound,

Isn't it?

Word is human mind interpreting it as a word.

Otherwise it's just a sound.

Sound is existentially true.

Words are made up in human societies.

So if you use the sound effectively,

It can transform life in a very powerful way.

Not just about creating emotions and this and that,

It can be both self-transformation and transformation for everybody who comes in touch with it.

So for all this,

The most important thing is a very intense and keen sense of attention.

And if you touch those sounds,

Even if not in everything,

Even here and there if you touch those sounds,

Those sounds will live forever in people's minds and hearts.

There is music when I say B.

B.

King,

The guy is going boom,

All right?

Because some sounds touched everybody.

Doesn't matter what culture,

Where you are,

What time,

You listen to it after hundred years,

Still that sound touches you in some way because sound has this power and musicians should pay that attention and try to find that sound which will touch every human being who is sitting here.

Not only human being,

Right now some of the Indian musicians are experimenting with animals and they find animals are keen listeners.

If you make certain sounds,

They are listening so intently.

So Conscious Music Circle is co-presenting this event.

What work are you and your team doing within the music industry and how can this community of people who haven't been to India,

Who haven't,

Who are just learning about you,

How can we get involved?

I am not a trained musician,

I know nothing about that but I have an ear too,

I mean.

I have attention.

If I listen to something,

I know whether this is going to touch somebody or not,

Clearly.

So in that sense,

Well today there is so much music happening around the world,

So many varieties of music.

There are cultural aspects which you are trying to fulfill,

I understand that,

That has to be respected.

In different cultures,

Different kind of things are appealing to people,

Talking about that day's issues,

Problems,

Solutions,

All this aspect is there.

But music is beyond all the causes that we hold.

It may serve some cause but music must be seen as something which is above that because sound is the most fundamental thing in the universe.

Everything else is made up by us on top of it.

So our causes are there,

Our purposes are there but music should stay above that.

I want to go back into emotions and dealing with how to express yourself when you're struggling with expressing your emotions.

I went through a good portion of my life feeling like I was coping and one coping mechanism was just feeling like everything that I needed to solve,

I would just figure it out on my own.

I wasn't really into using the community around me.

I wasn't really that into having outside conversations.

It was all just self-reliant and it kind of put me in a space to where I got to my adult life and it just started to show up in my relationships.

So the things that could have been easy conversations,

That could have been easy solutions,

Started to become just hyped up and over-exaggerated because I would just be so in my head that it would go from,

Okay there's something important on my mind but I'm having a good day today,

So I won't say it today and then two days would go by and I would be like,

Okay I'll say it Wednesday but only if it's like the right time in the right place and then Wednesday would come and I would put it off until the next week and then by the next week it would like… You never told her I love you,

Is it?

It would just blow up in my face and things continued to blow up in my face until I was able to look in the mirror and really just acknowledge that there was a lot of self-improvement left to be done and luckily I had a partner who was hyper-aware enough to be able to say,

Hey I see you and you might look like you have everything together to everybody else but to me you look like a mess right now.

So with like struggling with those emotions,

Is there any way to cut all the fat off or get past the being in your head part?

So let's understand what is emotion first of all.

Leaving personal stuff,

Let's fundamentally understand what is emotion.

Because emotion has such power over human beings,

People start thinking it's a force by itself but please look at this carefully,

The way you think is the way you feel,

Isn't it?

Right now I sit here and I think he's a horrible guy,

Now I have nasty emotions towards you.

Now I think he's a wonderful guy,

I have sweet emotions towards you.

Can I think he's a wonderful guy and have nasty emotions towards you or can I think he's a horrible guy and have sweet emotions towards you?

The way you think is the way you feel but why they look so different is because thought is agile.

This moment I can think you're wonderful,

Next moment I can think you're horrible just because you did something that I don't like but emotions are a bit sappy,

They don't turn around so quickly.

It takes three days to turn around or three years to turn around,

Depends who you are,

All right?

But emotions are not agile like thought.

Thought changes direction,

Emotion goes,

Crashes into this and that.

So the way you think is the way you emote.

So what we need to do is how do we think?

Most people don't think,

They just have mental diarrhea.

It's just running.

Why is there a mental diarrhea like this?

Why would there be a physical diarrhea?

Something that should not go into the stomach has gone,

Isn't it?

Hello?

Bad food?

What has happened to this?

The fundamental is this.

See this body,

You were not born like this,

You were born this much,

Now you've become this much.

How?

The food that you've eaten.

So this body,

What you call as myself right now is an accumulation over a period of time.

Everybody,

I'm saying.

Whatever we have eaten has slowly gathered.

What is this mind?

All the impressions that we have gathered,

Slowly accumulated.

Anything that we accumulate,

We can say this is mine,

This belongs to me.

But you cannot say it's me,

Isn't it?

Right now,

If I say this pot belongs to me,

This is my pot,

You will think Sadhguru's got some problem.

But let's listen some more,

Everybody is saying his voice.

After some time I say this is me,

Then you will say let's go.

It's clear.

Hello?

The moment you claim something that is not you as myself,

It's very clear it's a case.

This you are doing every day.

Food appears in your plate,

You say this is my food,

You eat it and then you say it's me.

This is where it starts.

The moment you identify yourself with something that you are not,

After that mental diarrhea cannot be stopped,

Do what you want.

The harder you try,

The faster it runs.

Because in this mind,

There is no subtraction and division.

There is only addition and multiplication.

If you… if this thought is going on,

I want to remove it,

There is no such thing.

If you remove it,

It will become ten.

But you can distance yourself from that.

This is what I said in the beginning.

If once you create a little space between yourself and the psychological process,

You will see the chemistry of the body changes so dramatically.

Today we have a research center in the Harvard Medical School which is studying all this.

You must see what they are putting out.

There are many things,

I will not go into the science of it.

One thing that would interest you is there are endocannabinoids in the body.

That is body produces its own cannabis,

You know that.

Oh,

You didn't give it an opportunity.

You're banking on the weed.

Okay.

But within this body there are endocannabinoids,

That body produces its own cannabinoids and this is at its peak.

It's considered at its peak in a sexual orgasm.

But in a simple practice that we teach,

It has been measured and found it's much higher than that.

Simply sitting here,

Not doing anything,

Simply sitting here,

You can change the chemistry of the body simply because there's a little distance between yourself and the psychological process.

Both physiological process and psychological process is something that you slowly gathered over a period of time.

Is that so?

Yes?

What you gather can be yours,

Can never ever be you.

Am I correct?

Hello?

This can be yours but it can't be you.

Just like that,

This can be yours but it can't be you.

For example,

For thousand years there has been an argument whether this planet is round or flat.

Hello?

What do you think now,

Round or flat?

Hmm?

Flat.

Because if you walk up and down,

From your experience the earth is flat.

We would have argued for the rest of the time but then we started navigating the oceans,

Then we saw it seems to be round and we started from the same place and ended up in the same place,

So it must be round.

Then we started flying,

We looked down,

It was quite round.

We went,

Stood on the moon and looked down,

One hundred percent it's a ball.

It's a little space,

Little distance.

Similarly,

If you create a little space between yourself and your psychological process,

It is crystal clear to you how it happens.

Right now you are sitting inside that and trying to figure it out.

No,

It doesn't work like that.

People misunderstand confidence for clarity but confidence without clarity is a disastrous process.

How to get confidence?

Just make conclusions about everything that you are confused about.

Hello?

Make conclusions and will it work?

See,

Will confidence work?

You try this,

This is an I-75,

Tomorrow I will also be on it,

You can try it,

Please don't do this,

I am just joking.

You say whatever builds confidence in you,

One slogan,

Some people have religious slogans,

Other people have ideological slogans,

Say one of those slogans and just run across I-75.

You may make it.

Just by sheer chance or because of compassion of some driver,

You may make it.

But if you try every day,

We know where to pick you up.

Yes or no?

So confidence is like this because it is like… See,

If you flip a coin and make all the decisions in your life,

Fifty percent of the time you will be right.

But if you are right only fifty percent of the time,

There are only two professions left for you.

You can either become a weatherman or an astrologer.

Everywhere else you will be fired.

Thank you.

So I don't want the entirety of the conversation to be me picking his brain and me sharing my personal experiences.

So I do want to get ready to break for questions.

But before we do that,

Junior,

Where are you at?

Oh,

Man.

Thank you so much for this talk.

It's been incredible.

I would love to know what inspired… You know,

One of the most interesting things I found that you've been doing recently is that you had a trip across the country where you were essentially,

You know,

Trying to spread the message about some of what you taught us today,

Which is the efforts of saving the soil,

Right?

Not across the country,

From London to southern India,

Twenty-four nations,

Twenty-seven nations.

You did great.

Clap it up for that,

Please.

Incredible,

Incredible.

And so I want to know what was the general feeling and the general consensus of some of the conversations you were having?

Was it… Were people able to understand and to take seriously what you were telling them and how dire the situation actually is?

Were there any moments of resistance or any memorable moments of the opposite?

Many moments of danger.

You would have killed yourself a hundred times over because I not only rode the motorcycle,

I did six hundred and ninety-one events along the way in hundred days,

Averaging nearly seven events per day and riding sometimes nearly twenty-four hours,

Many days over eighteen hours and I'm sixty-five at that time,

Last year.

Has there been any negativity,

Resistance?

No,

Because I designed and constructed this whole movement,

It is not against anybody.

It is not against fertilizer industry,

It is not against chemical industry,

It is not against the farmer,

It's not against the government.

So once people saw it is not against anybody,

Everybody became a part of it,

Which is very important because if we want a fight,

We can choose against who it is.

If we want a solution,

We want all of them,

Otherwise there is no solution.

I am not looking for a fight,

I am looking for a solution because I think this is a generational responsibility.

If this one thing we don't do,

I am telling you,

If soil regeneration on the planet does not happen,

Doesn't matter how much wealth and education and whatever nonsense they have,

The next generation,

I am saying those who will be born in the next ten years,

They cannot live well no matter what you do.

They cannot live well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much,

Appreciate it.

I am the guy who likes B.

B.

King.

My name is Michael Render,

They call me Killer Mike,

I am from right here,

I am from about four miles that way.

I just like to know your thoughts on the importance of older generations being the direct teachers of children because a lot of times in our ego,

In our teenage-dom,

In our young adultism,

We simply don't have time for it.

But in my opinion,

If we get those that are 45 and up to spend more time with children that are from zero to 13,

14,

I feel like we'll almost be escaping political lobby because we'll be raising people that know how to do it already.

So much appreciation for you to telling us how to do it as adults,

But what advice do you give us as adults to teach children the way so it simply becomes the way and not a way we have to lobby?

And thank you,

I appreciate your considerations.

And what's up,

Black?

See,

The times are such today.

Let's say when I was growing up,

If 30% of the influence on us as children came from school and outside,

70% of the influence was parents.

But today,

Most parents don't even have 25 to 30% influence once the child is ten,

Eleven years of age because it is not the school,

It is not the friends,

It is a whole world,

Www,

Three worlds influencing them and we don't know who they are and what they are saying,

What they intend for your children.

You have no clue about it and you have no control about it.

So the parental influence,

Grandparental influence has become very small.

So in these times,

Building a social consciousness which influences a child from elsewhere is more important than we trying to influence them because if you try to influence them,

You will lose them.

This is the reality unfortunately.

I wish it was not that way but that's how it is right now.

So about making our own gardens and things,

Yes it is relevant.

See,

I do my own garden,

It's very cute but it's not a solution because agriculture is a huge machine on the planet.

Fifty-four percent of the earth's land is farmed right now out of which nearly sixty-seven to sixty-eight percent of it we grow food for animals.

Can you beat that?

If we see how we change our diets to whatever extent we change it and how we grow our food,

This can be brought down.

This is one thing we have been pushing out in India.

Today,

One-hundred-and-sixty-three thousand farmers have taken to this full on and we are working on another five million farmers right now to make tree-based agriculture.

That is,

Within the regular farms,

Trees can be of great help if you choose the right species and there is a whole science to it how to do it.

You can produce much more on the same land with trees growing,

Far more nutritious food.

See,

If you ate one orange in 1920,

What nourishment you got from it.

Today,

If you have to get the same nourishment,

You will have to eat eight oranges today.

Did you eat eight oranges any one day?

It's never happened,

All right,

For anybody because the nutrient value has come down that much going on using chemicals and ploughing the land and leaving it open to the sun.

So,

We are working on this in various levels.

One thing is to bring robotic machines into farming where mass application of anything doesn't happen.

See,

Today,

If your doctor checks your blood and finds some calcium deficiency is there,

We gave you just one pill.

They found your B12 is not there,

We just gave one small pill.

For how long?

As long as we find it's deficient.

So,

We need to do the same thing with plants and crops that medicines or pesticides or whatever,

They are medicines for the plants,

Must go in a doctored manner,

Not mass application.

We have been spraying pesticides in airplanes,

Literally killing everything.

We must understand this,

The nature of how the biology on this planet is,

The fundamental biology of a single-celled animal like an amoeba and you,

They are not different,

It's the same thing.

If I can use a chemical and kill a single-celled animal,

It also can kill you,

It's only a question of dosage.

The dosage that we are giving may not kill us but it is killing something,

It is killing us in installments,

Not at once.

So,

Using poisons in large scale is a crime that we have committed.

Maybe we didn't have the knowledge at that time,

We did what we did.

It is not about blaming this person or that company or this company,

The thing is right now we need to make the correction.

This correction will not happen unless it happens on the policy level in the government,

Federal policies and state policies and this policy implementation can only be done by the farmer.

Scientists and academics and politicians cannot do it on the ground,

It's only the farmer and farmer's economy is so fragile.

If you do not know this,

Maximum suicides in this country happens in the farming community.

They are… You know,

Their whole family is shooting themselves because nearly fifty percent of the American farmers haven't earned a single dollar in the last twelve years.

They are just going into deeper and deeper debt.

Over forty percent of the American farmers don't own the land,

They are renting the land.

So,

This is a dangerous situation.

Now you are waiting for the wheat to come from Ukraine.

What happened to us?

When we have a whole continent here,

We need wheat from another place in Central Asia?

This has happened because we've been destroying this wantonly.

It is time to turn around,

It's still not late.

If we are committed to this,

Within ten to fifteen years we can make a significant turnaround which we have proven on land for the last thirty years with hundreds and thousands of farmers but still it's a drop in the ocean because policies have to come in.

Now Indian government is investing in this.

Since we started this campaign,

They have invested one tranche of about 2.

4 billion dollars,

Another one of 1.

3 billion dollars in the last two years which is not enough but it's a good beginning.

Every nation has to do this,

Some European nations are beginning to do.

United States has done very little but it is very important U.

S.

Sets an example.

If U.

S.

Sets a good example,

The world will take to it.

Caribbean nations have… are you know very deeply committed to this and they are going.

Many African nations are looking at this,

Asian countries are looking at this but it's very important European Union and United States must set a big example and make this an international mandate that if you own land,

See for example,

If you go to any old part of any city,

People have built homes next to each other,

Okay,

Sharing a wall.

That means there is no concept of a window,

One door to go in,

One door to come out,

All right?

But today if you want to build a house in Atlanta,

If you have 10,

000 square feet,

You can't build 10,

000 square feet,

You have to allow some space for yourself,

For your neighbor and all these things.

So there are laws in urban land but in rural land,

If you have hundred acres of land,

In the next ten years,

You turn it into a desert,

There is no law to ask you,

Why are you doing this?

We are asking for laws.

If you have an agricultural land,

Minimum three percent organic content you must maintain because land is not your property,

It's a legacy,

Soil is a legacy that's come to us from previous generations and it's our fundamental responsibility to hand it over that way to future generations.

We are not the last generation,

Though many of the young people call themselves generation Z,

We are not the last generation,

Hello?

My name is Jazz.

I want to say thank you to both of you for coming out tonight and speaking with us.

I want to know from both of you,

What are the practices,

The habitual practices that you do that help you be more mindful of your inner spirituality?

You came here for work and you started off with meditation and I really appreciate that.

So I'd like to know,

What are your practices?

Do you meditate daily,

Multiple times a day?

And then you,

Black,

What are your practices that you do that don't include any vices?

Because I feel like a lot of times,

Nowadays,

A lot of us turn to vices to kind of cope,

Deal,

De-stress,

But what are your practices,

Your daily practices that help you be more mindful,

That make you be more calm as you go on in life with the stresses of everyday life?

For me,

Journaling,

Writing down what I'm grateful for,

Even if it's something as simple as the air that I'm breathing,

The food that's on my table,

My daughter's laugh,

The conversation that I navigated in the right way,

Like giving myself,

Almost like tasking assignments,

But since we're out of school,

There's nothing to actually force us to do anything.

So it's like,

If you want to just chill,

If you want to just relax,

If you want to have a lazy day,

It'll happen.

But for me,

Writing it down,

Therapy was a great outlet for me because before that,

I didn't really have a mentor.

I didn't really have an outside person to go to for advice.

So opening myself to having somebody tell me about myself was another thing that sharpened me a little bit.

But yeah,

Besides journaling,

Besides therapy,

Besides making sure I take care of my body,

Obviously yoga,

Meditation,

Unplugging,

If I need to turn off notifications.

Well,

I haven't had notifications on my phone for the last six years.

So if you text me,

It don't pop up.

If you tweet me,

It don't pop up.

If you Instagram me,

It don't pop up.

I have to go in and actually make an effort to see it.

And that just keeps like a certain.

.

.

I tell him.

Unplug,

Brother.

But no,

That keeps like a certain amount of.

.

.

Just like space for me to just enjoy my day and enjoy myself and be present.

So those are a couple of things.

Meditation,

Writing it down,

Stepping outside,

Taking time off,

Being off the internet,

Spending time with the people that I love.

Those are the most common things and that's been like the rotation for me lately.

They sound normal,

But it's easy to slip out of it and to,

You know,

When you wake up in the morning,

First thing you do is get on Twitter,

Get on Instagram,

See what the news is,

See what somebody said,

Who's on Shade Room.

I've been trying my best to just like get all of that out of my life and at the very least,

Save it for the middle or the end of the day when I've built up a capacity to really handle it.

And if I start my day in the right way,

If I take care of my body,

If I have the right conversations,

Then I feel more conditioned to handle anything else that happens.

What do you do?

I live my life wild.

No discipline.

I don't know where I will sleep,

Where I will wake up.

If I sleep on the same pillow two nights,

It's a luxury.

I'm always somewhere else.

So,

I don't have any discipline except that my day normally extends to eighteen to twenty hours,

Trying to slow down a bit but it's only picking up speed and momentum but because I made myself in such a way that nobody other than me determines what happens within me.

So,

Nobody can frustrate me,

Nobody can make me unhappy or angry.

So,

I have no issue if they wake me up at 2 a.

M.

In the morning and ask me something,

I have no issue because the most important thing is first of all,

I made up my mind very early.

You know,

In my life I've never applied for a job ever nor did I go for any job interview or even think of a job.

Always my family worried,

How will you make a living?

I said,

I don't know.

All I know is if nothing works,

I'll go… You know,

I spent weeks in the jungles of southern India all by myself.

I learned to survive there.

I said,

If nothing works,

I'll go into the jungle,

You won't see me but I will live,

Don't think I will die.

I know how to live.

So,

I don't see activity and people and challenges and impediments as anything that fundamentally disturbs me in any way.

It's just that some things will make your work better,

Some things will impede things.

So,

In that context I'm looking,

That's all.

I'm never looking at any activity or any person as somebody who can make my life or break my life because I've taken that and kept it in my hands,

Absolutely.

Or in other words,

I'm just conscious of every thought and emotion that happens within me so I can think wild and feel wild and let myself go where I want because it's only happening according to the way I want it.

I think this is something you must do.

As I said earlier,

If you create a little distance,

You will see,

You will understand the whole mechanics of how this works.

But if you're in it,

It looks like it's such a complicated affair.

It is not complicated.

It is just that individual people are complicating it within themselves and about being mindful,

No,

I'm not mindful of anything.

I'm generally mindless.

Yes.

I don't have a single thought on my head.

I don't have any knowledge or knowing when I walk on the street.

I just walk like I'm a five-year-old boy,

Just joyfully looking at everything.

There's a bird or a butterfly,

Man,

Woman,

Everything I'm looking at carefully,

Not with any intent,

Simply looking because I have eyes.

I must see everything that I can see.

So,

If you have keenness of attention,

Both internally and externally,

I don't think you have to struggle with who will disturb you,

What will disturb you,

What will throw you off.

No.

See,

Balance,

Inner balance is the most important thing.

You may have intelligence,

You may have genius,

You may have talent,

You may have many things.

You may even have a lot of wealth.

Once there is no balance,

All these things will turn against you.

Your own intelligence will turn against you,

Your wealth will turn against you,

Your relationships will turn against you,

Everything will turn against you.

Above all,

Balance.

I'm well balanced.

You know,

I came riding to Atlanta,

I'll ride back on a motorcycle.

I'm going towards seventy,

But I'm still riding and because balance,

Both inner and externally,

You were balanced.

It's very,

Very important.

If you're balanced,

Whatever you have,

Your intelligence,

Your capabilities,

Your talents will naturally find the best expression possible.

Or in other words,

If you're well balanced,

Everything that you can do in your life,

You will do.

What you cannot do,

Anyway you will not do.

But if you're not balanced,

What you can do,

You will not do.

In your life,

If you do not do what you cannot do,

There is no problem.

If you do not do what you can do,

You're a disaster.

It's my wish and my blessing,

You should not become such a disaster.

Is there a practice?

She was asking,

Her name is Jez,

What can I do?

So,

There is a simple process that you can,

You know,

You can download this process,

Twelve,

Fifteen minutes a day you can do,

Especially if you do it just before going to bed.

It's a simple way of creating little distance between you and your body,

Between you and the psychological process.

It's called as Isha Kriya.

Initially you listen to it and do it,

It's guided for some time.

If you do it for let's say maybe fifteen days or a month,

After that you can even do it without any guidance,

You can do it by yourself.

Every day just reminding yourself and linking your breath to it,

Because breath is an important part of who you are,

In the sense,

Nobody has forgotten,

We all came from our mother's wombs,

Hello?

Not forgotten,

Long time ago,

So I'm asking.

We came from our mother's wombs.

When we were in our mother's womb,

There was a maintenance pipe connected and she ate for us,

She breathed for us,

Everything we got from that.

We came out of our personal mother's womb,

But even now we are in a womb.

See right now,

All these things unfortunately the modern science has made it mundane,

There is no experiential thing to it.

We are in this atmospheric bubble.

For your body to be here this way,

There is a certain pressure it has to maintain,

Certain amount of gaseous percentages it has to maintain.

If it becomes all nitrogen you will die,

If it becomes hydrogen you will die,

If it becomes carbon you know you will die.

Everything is in proper balance,

Right amount of pressure,

Little more pressure your lungs will collapse,

High pressure something else will happen,

Low pressure something else will happen.

It's just holding you like this.

Is this not mother's womb?

From one womb to another womb you come.

Yes or no?

Even now constantly maintained,

But we don't feel it because we study science like it's some ABC.

There is no feeling towards life around us,

Simply everything ecology is some kind of a subject.

No,

We are part of the ecology.

Hello?

When did we become separate from the ecology?

So this is important that you feel it.

Once you see something as a part of yourself,

Nobody has to teach you any morality,

Any values,

Ethics,

Nonsense.

What you see as a part of yourself,

You will anyway take care of it,

Isn't it?

This is what yoga means,

Not twisting and turning,

Not lululemon.

No,

No,

I am not against any brand,

I am just saying that's not what yoga is about.

When you do yoga,

We always say when you do classical yoga,

You must wear an organic cloth which is loose,

Which doesn't touch your body.

But in America it's just the reverse,

Skin tight nylon stuff you are wearing.

See,

We do everything wrong and we hope something right will happen.

That's not the way life works here.

Unless you do the right things,

Right things won't happen to you.

Reviews

Riveting. Thank u 4 this conversation and thought provoking dialogue! www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa