06:43

How Your Genetics Can Trap You

by Sadhguru Jaggi

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In a conversation at Harvard Medical School, with Emery Brown, Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School and Nicholas Schiff, Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, Cornell Medical College, Sadhguru looks at how genetic memory can become a huge limitation on how you experience your life. *********** Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.

GeneticsTransformationConsciousnessYogaExuberanceExperienceScienceGenetic MemorySelf TransformationConsciousness ExpansionMemory RetentionExuberance LossLimitationsMemoriesSpirits

Transcript

Except for the physiological factors,

We want them to be released from their parentage.

If you are identified with your genetic memory,

You will just be a replay of your parents' life.

You have a certain kind of software,

Unless you disengage with that,

Nothing new will happen.

What I'm saying is,

There is… the potentiality of being human is just this.

As I said,

Every creature has captured a certain amount of consciousness,

But what they capture is not significant enough to become conscious of our consciousness,

Where we can begin to expand this.

Other creatures are also conscious,

But they cannot expand this.

So the reason why an individual human being may feel trapped in their own limited ways is,

Simply because they are super identified with their memory.

So one of the first steps in yoga is always this,

That you start identifying with your ignorance,

Never with your knowledge,

Because your knowledge,

It doesn't matter how vast it is,

It is a minuscule in this cosmos,

But our ignorance is boundless.

So to blow the maximum bubble that you want,

First and foremost thing is,

You do not identify with your knowledge.

That means you do not identify with your accumulated memory.

Accumulated memory on a superficial level may be just what I learnt,

But on a deeper level,

It is my genetics,

It is my evolutionary memory,

It is all the different dimensions of memory.

So one fundamental thing we do,

Which is something which would be very interesting for the doctors like you to study is,

We do certain things with people so they'll become free from their genetic memory as far as possible,

Except for the physiological factors,

We want them to be released from their parentage.

This is the purpose.

The entire eastern cultures were focused on this,

Now it's all messed up,

People have forgotten this.

Otherwise,

One thing is we are always seeing how to distance ourselves from the genetic memory,

Because we saw that if you are identified with your genetic memory,

You will just be a replay of your parents' life.

You will not be a fresh life.

If you want to be a genuinely fresh possibility,

You have to distance yourself.

There are many types of processes through which we distance ourselves from genetic memory.

You must see this,

It's so dramatic in the sense,

In twenty-four hours' time,

The human being changes completely,

The very way they think,

Feel,

Understand and perceive life.

With some of them,

Even their facial features will change,

Suddenly they look different within twenty-four hours' time.

The change is so dramatic.

So what do you do?

Like him,

I also de-link for a different purpose,

But it's in a way alienating from the genetic memory,

So that your functionality is not limited to your genetics,

That you are not a copy of the parents who produced you.

Yes,

They have given you a body,

They have nurtured you to a certain adulthood,

After that their business is done.

Now your business is to become a totally new potential of life.

That's what it is.

But this will not happen,

You will see this happening with people.

When they were sixteen,

Eighteen,

They were very rebellious about how they want to be.

But you watch the same people after they are forty-five,

They are behaving just like their parents.

They walk like them,

Sit like them,

Talk like them,

Everything coming back,

Catching up with them.

Because the genetic memory overpowers the initial desire and exuberance of youth,

Once it begins to recede,

You will see you start behaving just like your parents.

Because the genetic memory overpowers you.

So one of the first fundamental things that if one is striving towards becoming more conscious,

Is to distance yourself from your genetic memory.

If that doesn't happen,

The power of this memory is not simple.

It is… it's… to put it very simply,

In today's world it's easy to explain because it's your software.

It's not the brand of the computer that you are using which decides what happens on the screen,

It's your software.

What is the software,

That's how it functions.

So your memory is software.

You have a certain kind of software,

Unless you disengage with that,

Nothing new will happen.

You try whichever way you want,

The same things will happen.

Over and over again the same things will happen.

When same things happen,

Slowly… This is not a conscious process but it's happened to nearly ninety-eight percent of the human population.

If… if I saw you,

When you were five,

Six years of age,

Your face was like this.

Somebody had to hook you with a pin to make you unhappy.

Now somebody has to make you happy,

It's a real task.

Because the exuberance of life has sank because of the repetitiveness of memory.

The same things are happening,

You may not be conscious of it,

But the same things are happening.

When same things are happening within you,

Slowly you lose all your exuberance.

Only if something new is happening.

Now people think something new means they must fall in love,

They must take up a new job,

That's not it.

Something new needs to happen within you in the very mechanics of who you are.

If something new is happening all the time,

You will be exuberant.

Otherwise,

Without knowing why,

Slowly your face has become grave.

Your face has become grave means you're practicing the posture for the grave.

That's what it means.

Meet your Teacher

Sadhguru JaggiMcMinnville, TN, USA

4.6 (308)

Recent Reviews

Chethak

October 14, 2024

This seemed very powerful. Thank you so much teacher

E.

November 8, 2018

Listened to it at a crucial point in my life. So necessary.

aimee

September 8, 2018

Lively discussion. Thank you. A nice reminder that our past does not define us; we define ourselves by consciously creating our lives every moment of every day, not living in the past or in the future, but in this moment, this truth, right now.

Natalie

September 6, 2018

I cried the entire talk. Such beautiful words.. thank you.

oren

September 6, 2018

Sadhguru how is it that you can be so consistently wise?

Amie

September 5, 2018

Awesome, thanks

Trish

September 5, 2018

It makes perfect sense 🙏 thank you 🙏

Credia

September 5, 2018

Love this! Always giving golden nuggets of wisdom.

Judith

September 5, 2018

I would have loved to hear the specific things to do to retain childhood exuberance. I understand that I must do something new, which I have just started -a retired physician who owns and operat a small aerospace manufacturing company. Do you also mean yoga or meditation routine daily. PS How would one be able to attend your Centre. Where is it. I am in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Pamela

September 5, 2018

A great reminder. A fundamental transformation deep from within is The Solution

Tamogene

September 5, 2018

This is so true!

Claire

September 4, 2018

Wonderfully liberating!

Peace

September 4, 2018

I have broken the pattern of my genetics

Chris

September 4, 2018

Thank you as always

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