The Real Reason We Fall In Love? Theo Von Asks Sadhguru

In October 2024, comedian & podcaster Theo Von hosted Sadhguru on his podcast, where they discussed a range of topics during a freewheeling conversation. In this excerpt, Theo asks Sadhguru about love, sexuality, and relationships.

Transcript

Do you think that love is a choice that we make,

Or do you think there's something more cosmic involved in it,

Like when people choose to love one another?

You're a neighborhood girl sent by cosmos,

Cosmic agents.

Yeah,

That'd be nice,

Huh?

You could just wish on a star for a date.

But yeah,

Do you think that there's something,

Because love feels different whenever you're in love with someone,

Right?

So when you say whenever,

That means it's not happening all the time,

It happens once in a while.

Right,

It's a leap year.

So right now,

How much radical view are you ready for?

I'll take it all,

I think.

Really?

I mean,

It depends on how weird we're trying to get,

But yeah,

I mean,

I'm into some stuff.

Yeah,

I'll listen at least,

I'll start there.

Okay.

Okay.

So one way to look at it is the emotion of love.

Initially,

It got,

The way people know it,

It's just generally love means romantic love,

All right?

That is initiated by a rush of hormone in your system.

Okay.

Essentially,

I would say your intelligence got hijacked by your hormones.

That's fair.

So till yesterday,

That squanny little girl who in the neighborhood,

Suddenly she got a few bumps on her body.

Suddenly,

It became a whole cosmos.

Yeah.

You can't take your eyes off her.

Oh,

Yeah.

And don't think of all that now,

I'm just telling you.

Okay,

Yeah,

Yeah.

I'll keep my hands like this.

So I'm saying,

Just the hormonal rush in you suddenly makes you see everything completely differently.

A little while later,

If you look back,

It may look stupid,

All right?

But at that moment,

Anyway,

We're talking about love,

Not about hormones or sexuality.

But that instigate,

That fires it.

If you look at it by nature,

What is nature's intent?

Why is it getting you so excited about the neighborhood girl because it wants you to reproduce.

If it doesn't fire something like this,

There'll be no next generation of people.

So nature needs it.

Yes,

It's the instinct of the species that it wants to survive.

We may play all kinds of games with it,

But essentially,

It wants you to reproduce.

Leave that aside.

We've kept that as a choice now.

We want to reproduce or not is a choice.

But nature is pushing you in that direction.

Leaving that aside,

Now,

Love means you long for somebody.

What is the longing?

You want to become one.

See,

Right now,

You breathing?

I'm checking on you.

You breathing?

Yeah.

Yes.

Don't just say this to me.

Are you really breathing?

You notice it?

Yes.

Now,

This is a small plant,

But let's say that's a little bigger thing.

What the tree is exhaling,

You're inhaling.

What you exhale,

The tree is inhaling.

Am I correct?

Is it a fact or fiction?

It's shotgun on each other.

Yeah,

It's good.

It is fact or fiction?

Correct.

Fact.

So you and the tree,

For example,

It's like one half of your lungs is hanging out there.

You're not really separate.

But can I tell you a story in between?

Story inside a story.

Please,

I think that's where we are.

So this happened about 12,

14 years ago.

The place where I was born and where most of the time,

Most of the years I grew up there in schools and stuff called Mysore.

You heard of the town?

Mysore?

Mysore.

You heard of that?

Bangalore?

Bangalore I've heard of.

Very close to Bangalore.

It's a cultural city,

This one is.

Okay.

It used to be the old capital when the kings were there.

Oh,

Yeah.

It's a beautiful town.

So I grew up there.

And after,

You know,

Like after I started teaching,

I go there only to meet my family.

Otherwise,

I just kept myself away.

I never did any of my programs or events in that town because I wanted to keep the town as is,

My friends and whatever stuff.

Yeah,

Keep it separate.

Yes.

But anyway,

You know,

It became known to everybody and they all demanded you must do something here.

So I went there to do an event,

One two-day event.

Then I suddenly find from my kindergarten school,

Friends,

Teachers,

High school,

College,

Wherever,

University,

Everybody,

All these people,

Teachers,

Students,

Everybody is there.

When I look at them,

I can recognize they've all many years have passed,

But they're all there.

So after this event was over,

My English teacher came and hugged me.

And she said,

Now I understand why you wouldn't let me teach you.

Robert Frost.

I said,

Ma'am,

Why won't I let you teach Robert Frost?

I like Robert Frost.

I have poetry narrated in his own voice.

I even went to the place where he lived.

Oh,

Wow.

I said,

Why would I not let you teach Frost?

Then she reminded me,

You remember when I started teaching you American poetry and you didn't allow me to teach Robert Frost?

What happened was till then we were reading only English literature and poetry.

So she's introducing an American poet to us.

And she said,

There's Robert Frost,

Eulogizing him,

How many wonderful things he is.

And then she starts off.

Woods are lovely,

Dark and deep.

I said,

Stop.

She said,

Why?

I said,

A man who calls a living tree a wood,

I don't want to listen to that guy.

It's a living tree for me and you're calling it a wood.

It's a commodity.

It's too informal for you.

No,

It's like you,

If I see you and say,

Oh,

A ball of meat.

If I'm a cannibal,

I'm saying.

Yeah,

It's a little disrespectful to what we're really looking at here.

It's not a question of disrespectful.

You have become so transactional that you don't know what it means to transcend anything.

So transactional.

You're seeing the usefulness of the tree as wood.

You're not seeing it's a living thing.

When you don't recognize life as life,

You lose life of your own because life is not happening individually for you.

It's happening as one big hole.

Like we just now said,

What you exhale,

The tree inhales,

What the tree exhaled,

You inhale.

If I cut out half of your lungs and pull it out,

Would you call it a balloon?

That's a good question.

No,

No,

You wouldn't at all.

Yes,

So life is not happening separately.

From microorganism to a plant,

To a tree,

To animal,

This is one big phenomenon.

It's only in your mind,

Intellectually,

You're separating these things.

Why?

We already went through this.

You want your mind to be sharp.

Sharp instrument is good for cutting.

I'll give you a knife.

You can dissect whatever you want.

But you want to stitch your clothes.

If you stitch your clothes with a knife,

What'll happen?

That is how the modern fashion has arrived.

Everybody's got torn pants.

It will ruin it.

No,

It's a new fashion.

Oh,

Now it would look good.

Now it would look,

If you stitch your,

Yeah,

Nowadays it would really look pretty fire,

I guess.

Right?

Not that it'll look good,

It's torn.

It's torn.

If you try to stitch with a knife,

It'll go into ribbons,

All right?

So right now it's the same thing.

Your mind is a sharp instrument.

It is good for dissection.

It is not good for unifying everything.

Unifying does not mean you and me have to sit together and put the universe together.

It is anyway one large phenomenon.

It is you who is separating it.

If you stop separating it,

It'll be one.

When you say love,

It's a strong emotion to make those two pieces of creation which have become separate,

To make them one.

We're trying hard.

Good,

And so being separate,

It's a good emotion.

At least it's bringing you close to one person.

Otherwise you're an island by yourself.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Oh yeah,

You're an island boy after that.

Yeah,

Oh yeah,

Yeah,

You wanna find someone else,

Right?

So it feels like that makes sense.

Essentially,

This life is happening is a large phenomenon.

We don't get it,

But actually as a life,

We are just a pop-up on this planet.

Oh yeah.

All the countless number of people who walk this planet before you and me,

Where are they?

They're all topsoil.

This will also become topsoil.

You just have to wait for some time.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So now it is all one life.

In your mind,

You separate it.

Then in your emotions,

You try to stitch it,

Which is a struggle.

Generally for most people,

Moments of great joy and fulfillment will happen in love.

Rest of the time,

It's only anxiety and pain most of the time,

But for those few moments,

They're willing to go through all the pain because those few moments are so precious.

But I'm saying,

Why are there so few moments?

Hmm.

This love is about for a moment,

You felt like you're one,

All right?

Either physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Sometimes even energetically,

You felt like you're one.

I'm saying you're anyway one.

If you remove the barriers of your mind,

You're anyway one.

You can sit here dripping ecstasy,

Not love.

Okay.

You'll seek love because you think love will bring blissfulness and ecstasy.

That's the truth,

Yeah.

You think it's gonna bring something different.

Yes,

But I can teach you a simple way.

You can sit here with eyes closed or with eyes open and be totally blissed out.

People ask me,

Sadhguru,

Of all these things that you're doing,

What is your greatest achievement?

I say tears.

So what tears,

Why?

Today,

Millions of people across the world,

If they close their eyes in the morning to do a simple practice,

Tears of ecstasy every day drips.

Wherever I go,

Whichever part of the world I go,

Not a day passes for me without me seeing tears of love and ecstasy.

Wow,

Really?

This is the greatest boon you can have in this world where everybody's trying to pull and push each other.

Every day you're meeting people who are in tears of love and ecstasy.

Reviews

❤️🙏🏼😌

I just journal about that after my meditation session

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

I see the connections ⚡️✌️💜

This is a 10 out of five. They didn't give us enough stars.

Wow tears of love and ecstasy everyday
That's amazing and beautiful
Thanks Sadhguru
Love and Peace to you

Thank you 🙏