Sadhguru on Philosophy of Inclusiveness

Sadhguru speaks at TED Conference on his philosophy of inclusiveness. It is the boundary of sensation that determine what is you and what is not you. Externally, we are all different, but on the inside, no human being is better than another - we are all the same, and all equal. This idea is the foundation for human empathy. Sadhguru explains his life story, and how he came to teach this philosophy of inclusiveness.

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.

Transcript

On a certain day,

Two cows were grazing on the English meadow.

English cows.

One cow asked the other,

What is your opinion about the mad cow disease?

The other cow said,

I don't care a hoot,

I'm anyway a helicopter.

Being a mystic,

Being a realized being is just like this,

A cow realizing that it's a cow and it becomes a celebrated cow.

Holy cow isn't that?

Is it that simplistic?

So let me tell you my story.

So as a child,

One thing that I realized was that I was utterly,

Absolutely ignorant.

And everybody around me seemed to know just about everything.

I did not know anything at all.

So because I did not know anything,

I had to pay enormous attention towards everything.

My sense of attention became like this,

If I see a leaf,

I could just sit there looking at this leaf,

Just staring at it for hours.

If I sat up in my bed,

Just staring at the darkness,

I could just do this for the whole night.

So this attention brought a completely different level of involvement and interaction with just about anything and everything around me,

Animate and inanimate.

But everybody else seemed to know everything and they were just going about their life busy and happy,

But I was just staring at every little thing.

Then I saw that I realized that even they did not know anything,

It is just that they had their assumptions and belief systems that they were happy with,

Either of their own or what was handed down to them by someone else.

And they not only knew about what is here,

They also knew about other worlds,

About gods,

About heavens and everything.

And here I was struggling to figure out what is what.

So this so intrigued me that I started planting myself outside a main… a major temple here in Mysore because I wanted to really see after having a meeting with God,

After having a conversation with God,

How people will be.

So I stood there intensely observing every face that's walking out of the temple and generally I heard local gossip,

Sometimes in Indian temples your footwear walks away with someone else and then I see here people cursing the creation and the creator.

I always found people walking out of restaurants as… always had more joyful faces than people walking out of temples.

Divine versus dosa,

Dosa seems to win.

I could not come to terms with this and so I slowly became more and more and more skeptical about everybody and everything around me,

Skeptical about social structures,

Political systems,

Religious beliefs,

Even scientific theories because none of them match with my experience of life.

On a certain day I started moving towards Chamundi Hill,

You must see this place.

And there is a tradition in Mysore,

If you have something to do,

You go to Chamundi Hill.

If you have nothing to do,

You go to Chamundi Hill.

If you fall in love,

You go to Chamundi Hill.

If you fall out,

You go to Chamundi Hill.

I had just fallen out and I had nothing to do so I started moving towards Chamundi Hill.

And I went up and sat on a rock there.

Till that moment in my life I always thought this is me and that's somebody else and something else but for the first time I did not know which is me and which is not me.

Suddenly what was me was just all over the place.

The very rock on which I was sitting,

The air that I breathe,

The very atmosphere around me,

I had just exploded into everything.

That sounds like utter insanity.

This I thought lasted for ten to fifteen minutes but when I came back to my normal consciousness,

I was about four-and-a-half hours,

I was sitting there,

Fully conscious,

Eyes open but time had just flipped in my experience.

For the first time in my adult life,

Tears were flowing down and I've always been peaceful and happy,

That was not an issue but here I was drenched in a completely different kind of blissfulness,

Every cell in my body bursting with ecstasy.

When I shook my head and trying to get some logical explanation for what's happening to me,

The only thing that my very smart mind could say was,

Maybe I'm just going off my rocker.

This experience as it deepened and it started repeating itself,

If I just sit here,

What is moments for me seem to be hours for others.

I think it's a minute,

Hours have gone.

On a certain day I happened to be sitting in a certain place,

I actually thought it's about twenty-five,

Thirty minutes but when I came to my normal senses,

Thirteen days had gone by,

I was sitting right there,

India being what it is,

A whole crowd had gathered,

Garlands around my neck,

People touching my feet,

Somebody wants to know what will happen to his business,

Somebody wants to know when his daughter will get married.

All the things that I hated were just happening around me and I had to move away from this place just to avoid this crowd around me and as this experience deepened into me,

One thing that happened to me was everything that I believed was me,

Suddenly was not me.

This was always me and suddenly I found this is just an accumulation of food that I've eaten,

What I accumulate can be mine but can never be me.

This was just a huge heap of impressions in my mind and this body and mind not being me but just being mine,

A distance arose between me and my body,

Between me and my mind.

This also facilitated a certain experience within me that suddenly the equation of time and space was suddenly not applicable for me,

I was seeing that what is here is there,

What is there is here,

Past,

Present and future got mixed up,

It was one majestic chaos but utterly beautiful.

So my skeptical mind not able to come to terms with it was I was… started conducting experiments.

These experiments are too weird to talk about and the results too fairytale-ish for anybody to believe but one thing that I arrived at was that existence is not human-centric and all human experience is self-made.

Most people believe that their experience is molded by what situations in which they exist but all human experience is one-hundred percent self-created from within.

I think today a lot of science is beginning to agree with that and having realized that if all experience is created from within,

If the basis of your experience is within you,

The seat of your experience is within you as it is,

What kind of experience of life would you want to have?

For yourself,

I'm sure you want it to be at most pleasantness,

Whatever you may be doing.

What you want for your neighbor may be debatable but what you want for yourself,

Definitely you want at most pleasantness.

As I realized the basis of my experience is within me,

I shifted from staring at things to sitting with my eyes closed.

This was a dimensional shift in my life from staring to sitting with my eyes closed.

I got so fascinated with this human mechanism,

I wouldn't want to open my eyes.

For days on end,

I'm just keeping my eyes closed,

Wanting to see everything about this one.

And what I realized was,

If I take a piece of bread and put it into this system,

This piece of bread becomes my body in a few hours and I begin to experience this as myself.

This amazing process,

As I became more and more aware of it,

I saw the very source of creation,

The very maker of this body,

The manufacturer of this body is within.

Once I saw this and I could see that I could rewire my brains completely in twenty-four hours,

Changing myself beyond social upbringing,

Family situations,

Even genetic qualities in me,

I could see I could just completely change everything about myself in twenty-four hours,

I'm a different person.

Under twenty-four hours,

I'm a different person.

I was like a conscious schizophrenic trying out different things.

On a certain day,

I just… in a field hockey game,

I fractured my left ankle and I went and sat down in a place,

I was in excruciating pain and by then I had also become a chronic asthmatic and I had a very severe bout of asthma and this pain and this inability to breathe together,

They were quite something.

At that moment it occurred to me,

If the maker of this body is inside,

Why is it that I cannot mend this from inside?

I sat down with a certain resolve,

If this is true,

I must be able to allow it to mend itself,

Otherwise I must be completely on a wrong track.

I sat down with my eyes closed for about little more than an hour.

When I came out,

My asthma left me never to come back again and above all,

My fractured leg was perfectly okay in little about… little more than an hour's time.

Armed with this experience,

I started creating methods and systems through which every human being could access that intelligence and that capability within the system which can make a piece of bread into a human being.

This intelligence and this competence within the human system,

Which is not just about thought process,

Exists in every human being but unfortunately remains untapped.

And I went about creating systems that people could make use of today,

These technologies for inner well-being,

These methods to engineer your interiority the way you want it.

Millions of people are making use of it,

Enjoying the benefits of that,

But the essential part of this is that there is such a high level of intelligence and competence on every millimeter of the body,

Every point of the body,

Not just in the thought process.

This is completely untapped by human societies.

There are ways to do this and as I went into this process,

What I saw was,

What is it that determines what is me and what is not me?

I am capable of taking a piece of bread and making it into myself.

If I look at this body,

It is just a piece of this planet that I have borrowed,

But why is this separate and this is separate?

Then I found that it is just the boundaries of sensation which determines what is me and what is not me.

Here there is sensation,

So this is me.

There seems… I don't feel the sensation,

So that's not me.

As I looked at this boundaries of sensation very,

Very closely from within myself,

This was a space of my life where most of the time I remain with my eyes closed.

I realized that the boundaries of sensation can either be stretched,

Expanded or even made smaller than what it is right now.

You can sit here and not feel anything that's happening here right now.

This happens in sleep to some extent.

Or you can sit here and extend your boundaries of your sensation for this whole hall and anything that is within the boundaries of your sensation,

You will always experience as myself.

There is a glass of water here and this is not me,

That's very clear.

But if you drink it,

You just included it into the boundaries of your sensation and that becomes you.

So if you throw the boundary of your sensation out in an expanded form,

You can sit here and experience everybody in this hall as yourself.

You can stretch it further,

Experience the very cosmic scape like you experience your own body.

This sense of inclusiveness,

If it comes into you,

When this came into me,

I suddenly realized that to be loving is not somebody's teaching.

To be compassionate is not an idea.

To be in empathy is not some esoteric principle.

This is the way a human being is made.

If only he does not constipate his consciousness with limited identifications with things that he is not.

If you do not identify with anything that you have accumulated over a period of time,

Including your body and mind,

Every human being is capable of this.

When it comes to external situations,

Each one of us are differently capable.

But when it comes to inner situations,

Every one of us is equally capable,

No human being is better endowed than the other when it comes to the inner realm.

It's only in the external situations that we are all differently capable.

If this inclusiveness enters human life,

If you can sit here and experience people around you as yourself,

I don't think I have to teach you to be good.

I don't think I have to teach you to love.

I don't think I have to teach you to care because caring for this one is very,

Very natural.

This is ingrained within the very nature of the existence.

This inclusiveness definitely has to touch humanity.

So this became my life,

My work and my endeavor to develop methods so that people can experience this inclusiveness.

If this inclusiveness is experienced by humanity,

Particularly by the leadership,

People who wield power and different aspects of responsibility in the world,

Definitely we could find solutions for everything because today we as a generation of people,

This is very significant.

For the first time,

We are capable of addressing every human problem on this planet of nourishment,

Health,

Education,

Ecology,

You name it,

We can address it all.

We have the necessary resource,

Capability and technology for the very first time.

But are we going to do it simply depends upon how inclusive is our experience of life.

If you stand here and you experience this planet as yourself,

I don't think I have to tell you,

Take care of it.

Every human being would do his best.

When we do not have this inclusiveness,

What we could do,

We will not do.

In our lives,

If we do not do what we cannot do,

That is not a problem.

But if we do not do what we can do,

We are a disaster.

My hope and my work is just to see that we as a generation of people do not become that kind of a disaster,

That what we can do,

We will definitely do.

And right now what we can do compared to what we could do hundred years ago is so incredibly different,

So incredibly different.

But what's missing is an all-inclusive consciousness,

A call… all-inclusive experience of life.

If only we bring this about in the leadership,

In the people,

Only then we will seek solutions that are relevant for all.

Otherwise,

We'll go about dabbling,

Creating… in the name of creating solutions,

We go about creating more and more problems.

If we truly have to create solutions that are relevant for all,

An experience of absolute inclusiveness has to happen to humanity and it's possible.

Thank you very much.

Reviews

Perhaps my favorite of Sadhguru’s MANY offerings. I do adore the 3 types 36 minute, 20+ minute and 15+ minute mediations, the exceptional text “Inner Engineering” regarding unconditional JOYfulness is fabulous and his text, “Karma”, a worthy read too AND I LOVE this talk, specifically, too!

Sadhguru’s numerous talks, www.insighttimer.com, www.isha.sadhguru.org, www.innerengineering.com, www.Ishafoundation.org, www.ishahomeschool.org and other efforts (U-tube videos) remind me that, “As there is a science and technology to create external well-being, there is a whole dimension of science and technology for inner well-being.” Self responsibility rocks! www.compassioncourse.org, ahimsa

Thank you Sadhguru

Nice and helpful 😊 thanks 😊

Such privledged knowledge is not likely to be understood by the many even though potentially available to them as well. The exposure of these experiences of treasure seems to me an act of faith, love and even desperation which override all hesitation brought by fear of being misunderstood and judged. This is impressive. Thank you.

Inspiring and hopeful. So much of our brain/consciousness goes untapped. Thank you for this and for the gift of you 🙏🏼💕

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the world. I appreciate you.

Simply amazing.

Wow! So much to contemplate. Thank you 🙏🏻🌹🙏🏻🦋

This is absolutely mind-blowing! Namaste! 🙏

Truly elevating!

This blew my mind. Wow. I would love to see this human speak in person.

‘Inclusiveness of consciousness’ naturally engages our love & empathy for each other 💗

Note to (all the) self: This is an everyday kind of listen. The heart ❤️ of the matter.

Beautiful and inspirational! Thank you! 🙏❤🌌

Inclusive would force people to give up their privilege. In US they aren't willing to do that because racism is seen as colored people's issue.

Excellent perspective 🙏💝

Excellent. Insightful. Simple.

Life is Inclusive!
Amazing talk
Oneness Speaks🙏

Absolutely terrific. I feel clarity when I hear This man.

Feeling inspired. Looking forward to "doing nothing" as soon as possible and looking in!