If I'm Not The Body, What Am I

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 on all that he touches.

Inner Engineering is a comprehensive course for personal growth that brings about a shift in the way you perceive and experience your life, your work, and the world around you.

Transcript

What is the you that can be separated from the physical?

Is it a fact that you gathered your body over a period of time?

It's a fact that this body gathered together over a period of time and it may be that I emerge as a consequence of that,

This feeling of I,

As opposed to me doing the gathering.

Tell me,

You've been having lunch and dinner or?

Have I been having lunch and dinner?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been having like accumulation,

Has been eating plenty,

Yeah.

So what you… what you refer to as my body right now is an accumulation of food.

It's a heap of food.

Not a pleasant way to describe you but it is.

What you call as my mind,

Largely in people's experience is an accumulation of impressions over a period of time.

So if you have to gather this much of impressions and this much of body,

Something more fundamental must be there,

Isn't it?

Houston Texas is an accumulation of roadways and buildings but we wouldn't say that there was… Houston was there and the… No,

No,

I gathered… You are not a piece of geography.

You are not a piece of geography,

Are you?

You are… Well,

I may be exactly that.

I'm a physical… a physical being.

I'll tell you why from my perspective that seems like a possibility.

It's because we're across the street from the world's largest medical center and every day there are thousands of people there whose geography is changing because of Alzheimer's or stroke or tumor or traumatic brain injury and who they are changes.

It doesn't seem like there's something fundamental that outlasts damage to the tissue.

See,

You're talking about thought and emotion.

The biggest mistake we have made is we have given too much significance to human thought.

Whatever you think is only happening from the limited data that you have gathered… Yes or no?

Yes.

So the data that you and me have gathered,

However big we may think it is,

In terms of the cosmos,

It's minuscule,

It's nothing.

It's really not of any consequence.

So from this minuscule of data that we have gathered,

We are generating some thought which could be useful in making our lives,

It could be useful in creating a few things,

It could be useful fundamentally for our survival and to enhancement of our survival process,

All this.

But it doesn't give you access to life.

Thought and emotion is psychological drama that's happening within you.

You can conduct it any way you want.

You're talking about somebody had a tumor or Alzheimer's or an accident or something and the drama went wrong.

The drama can go wrong even without any of those ailments.

You ask people.

People's drama goes wrong without any accident or injury or ailment,

Just like that drama goes wrong on a daily basis for a lot of people.

We usually give that a name though,

Something like depression or a psychotic break.

That's a business.

Not one I'm making any money on.

I'm saying there's only this much.

Either your faculties are taking instructions from you or they have become compulsive for some reason,

All right?

Either your body and mind you can conduct it consciously or it's become compulsive.

That's all that's happening.

Whether you call it physical ailment or mental ailment,

All that's happened is just this,

That your fundamental faculties of existence on this planet is your body and your mind.

These two things you have lost grip over them.

So it can become this kind of ailment or that kind of ailment or whatever.

But fundamentally you have lost charge,

That's all that's happened.

If your body and your brain took instructions from you,

Would you create depression,

Would you create illness,

Would you create anything?

You would create highest level of pleasantness for you,

Isn't it?

We certainly would if there were a separate you that could gain that control.

See,

We can come to this like this.

There is something called,

Because I see that you keep referring my brain.

If you say my brain,

That means it's yours.

What is yours can't be you,

Right?

It's a colloquialism that we use because I need to refer to this one in here.

I need to specify which brain I'm talking about.

See,

When I say my hand,

I know even without my hand I can still exist.

Similarly,

If certain parts of the brain are gone,

Our ability to think and feel the way we were doing it earlier may be gone.

But still that person is not gone.

That's the question.

So if I lose a little part of my finger,

I'm still me,

But if I lose a chunk of brain tissue that same size,

I can be someone completely different.

I can use… No,

No,

You're talking about personality.

Personality is again an acquired thing.

Beyond personality,

I can lose memory,

I can lose consciousness of course,

I can lose the ability to perceive reality the way that we do now.

I might become colorblind because of a lesion,

Because damage to a particular part of my brain,

I lose the ability to understand what objects are.

Okay,

Let's come to this.

See,

Suppose somebody became colorblind because of an injury or whatever that happened to them unfortunately.

That person still knows,

I have become colorblind,

Isn't it?

He is still there.

It's true for the person who becomes colorblind,

But it's not true for… for example,

A person who is born colorblind,

They don't even have a concept that they… that they could be… they don't have a concept of color.

Let's take a person who is born blind entirely,

They don't even have a concept of vision,

So who is the you for them?

Do they… See,

Even a person who has visually impaired,

Who has never seen the world around,

He still exists within himself.

He is as much a man or a woman as anybody else can be.

It's just that if all of us were blind,

We would be quite a fine society without eyes.

Yes,

Isn't it?

Simply because somebody has and I don't have,

In comparison I have a problem.

Otherwise if none of us had eyes,

You think we wouldn't have found our way around?

We would have,

Maybe not the same way,

In a different way.

Oh,

I totally agree because in so many dimensions… There are mammals… There are mammals who were flying by,

You know,

Sound.

Yeah.

Well,

There are so many dimensions that we are blind to now,

So what we call visible light is just a one… ten-trillionth of the electromagnetic spectrum that's out there.

We only detect a little bit.

In some branches of physics it seems there might be between ten to thirteen spatial dimensions,

Not just these three and yet we're trapped in these.

We are moving away from consciousness to perception.

But my point is we're already blind to most of the world,

So I agree with you that… Okay,

So let's move back to perception.

You cannot disagree that you're life,

Are you?

You're a piece of life.

I'm a piece of life,

Everybody is.

What kind of personalities we have acquired,

What kind of likes and dislikes we have acquired,

What kinds of gods and demons we have acquired,

What kinds of other things we have acquired is a social process.

That's happened to us,

Cultural and social process.

If you were born in a different part of the world,

It would be entirely different.

Depending upon what we are exposed to,

These are impressions that we have taken in,

Phenomenal amount of impressions.

Leaving that aside,

Let's look at one fundamental.

Whatever you gather,

You can only claim it's mine,

You cannot say it's me,

Isn't it?

Whatever you gather.

How do you mean?

You mean your body is… Anything,

Anything,

Anything.

I can say this is my chair.

If I sit here every day and then I say this is me,

Then there's a problem.

I think there's a possibility that it's exactly what happens,

That the stuff that this piece of life can end up controlling becomes me.

The reason I think of this as my hand is because it's… most of the time is under the control… My hand is okay,

No problem.

My hand is okay,

Me is the problem.

What did you say,

Me?

My hand means it belongs to you,

No problem with that.

When it becomes me,

Then it leads to a completely distortion of perception.

Okay,

I think… So you're on… you're talking about identity,

What you identify yourself as?

The nature of the mind is such… It is looking for some… because human intellect and human intelligence has broken out of a certain bond which was there for every other creature that they could function like an automated machine through certain instinctual process.

What has happened with the human being with the process of evolution is,

He's… the human being has broken out of that instinctual process and there is an intelligence which has to function consciously.

But functioning consciously means every moment of life is an exploration,

Which is too scary for a whole lot of people.

So the best thing is identify with something which gives you some sense of what you are.

But this… some sense of what you are which you took on based on your social and cultural backgrounds,

What you took on makes sense for your survival process but not for explorative process.

If you explore life,

It keeps you sane.

It's a good solace.

It keeps you… it helps you to sleep well in the night but it doesn't awaken a different dimension of knowing.

It doesn't awaken the possibility of exploring dimensions which are not yet within you.

So if this has to happen,

The most important thing is to be able to sit here not identified with anything.

Because it's so hard to remain uneducated in this world because everybody is busy wanting to teach you something.

This is all I did in my life,

To remain uneducated,

Not to be influenced by parents,

By family,

By religion that's happening around you,

Culture that's happening around you,

Education that people are forcing on you,

Just to be the way creation intended you to be,

Simply.

See,

I may not fit into the university milieu but I'm okay.

You know,

Just simply the way you were born.

Not tangling up your intelligence to any particular thing,

Either your nationality or your religion or your race or your creed or your family or any kind of identity or your gender or whatever,

Simply to be able to view your life just as a piece of life.

If one does this,

Then you will see perception will explode in ways that they have not imagined possible.

Reviews

Fascinating talk! I’d like to hear more about the ‘heart’ you started to explain but the questioner interrupted. Thank you Sadhguru! 🙏

🙏🏼♥️💫

Fascinating considerationS!
www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa

What a gem!

Always enjoy listeningto Sadhguru❤️🙏🏻

Amazing! Thank you

Dimensions of perception will explode. Excellent grounding of thoughts into being

…Perception explode in ways you cannot imagine possible.

Relaxing