Sadhguru: Please, open your eyes.
Namaskaram to all of you, wherever you are.
Well,
I heard that some of our volunteers and meditators,
and those who are attending the
Sathsang from China are little upset
because yesterday I said, "Wuhan virus."
I want you to understand that in Indian languages,
even for a person, commonly we say the name of the
place where they've come from and then their name.
For example, my own father's name,
generally written as B V Vasudev;
B stands for Bengaluru, which is a
place and people are named like this.
Padmaja, Somaja, Shailaja always referring
to the place where they have come from.
So, I don't see what is the insult.
I really didn't see.
Even now I'm unable to see.
And international media, I was listening yesterday and
they were all using the term, I didn't see anything wrong.
But anyway, if it hurts you,
we'll call it just the virus, okay?
No issues about it.
I don't know what political and other
kinds of issues are hidden behind it.
But it is normal for us to refer to 
something from where it comes from.
So, I think it's quite normal everywhere,
particularly in Indian languages to do that, anyway.
Well, the world has crossed unfortunately, over 30,000
fatalities in the world and the numbers are building up.
Many countries moving towards
a-thousand-fatalities a day.
In spite of lockdowns, emergency hospitals being
set up everywhere, in spite of that, it is happening.
The United States is also moving towards a pretty
aggressively spreading over 100,000 people infected,
deaths are also beginning to happen.
India still doing okay,
but I think the effectiveness of it is because of District
-wise blockade that the administration is doing.
Fortunately, largely people also cooperating.
But there's one problem that from major cities
the workers who had come from villages,
rural India to work in cities;
they have become desperate to go
back to their homes because...
it's largely male population which comes like this.
They usually have a small piece
of land at home or in the village,
when they're out for six-to-eight months working in
a city, woman tend to the land, and they go on come.
But now when they know there is
no work and there is a risk to life
and they don't know what's happening to their families.
So an exodus of labour from
cities to villages is happening.
Government is doing everything possible to
set up hostels for them, food arrangements,
but they don't want anything they just want
to go back home which is unfortunately...
it's understandable, how they feel about it.
But unfortunately they could take the virus in the city.
The virus in the city to rural India,
where right now, rural India doesn't have much,
or almost nil presence of virus in rural India
that these migrant labour could take it.
In southern India, except Kerala is largely in control.
It's not rising, the blockade or
the lockdown has been effective.
But the challenges is the coming one week to
ten days we must see what happens in India.
It all depends what we do, every one of us because
there is a problem in human mind as days pass by,
nothing happened, they will become complacent.
Nothing happened means what, you
want people around you to fall dead?
Is that something happening?
Nothing happened means everybody is well.
It is not a time to become complacent.
It is not a time to relax the basic mode of behaviour
that we have set for everybody please, let's hold this.
And from all scientific predictions,
calculations, it could be a reasonably long haul.
But, those of you who are at least believing that
you're on a spiritual path, this is a good time.
Because, in today's world,
where there is such an onslaught of sounds
and colours and visuals upon our senses...
In the sense, if you were here hundred years ago,
well, you saw greenery around
you, brown earth, blue sky.
If you had to see anything more dramatic,
you had to wait for the sunset or get up early and
wait for the sunrise, rest of the day this is all it was.
Now it's not like that, if you turn on your
television colours are going on all the time
or if you just open your phone,
whole cosmos is happening there,
or just about anything that you want to see is there.
So the amount of visual input and
the audio input is so heavy today
that turning inward looks like a
very remote thing for most people.
This is a good time to check yourself
out, and also use this opportunity.
In yoga, there is a dimension
among the... in the Ashtanga Yoga...
well Ashtanga Yoga as some people think is not
a brand, Ashtanga means eight-limbed yoga.
There are eight limbs to yoga.
One of the limbs is pratyahara.
Pratyahara means taking your sensory
engagement from the outside world and put it inside.
In today's world people cannot
even comprehend what that is.
Well, many of you who've been through
periods of sadhana have experienced this.
Well even before things happened with me,
when I went away into forests just
to enjoy the forest and just to walk.
For weeks on end when I just
walked by myself in the jungles,
I just realised that just not seeing human faces, for a
few weeks there's something to you which is incredible.
There were wild animals but there
were no human faces for weeks on end.
Well, I noticed something very,
very different in my system,
a kind of energy and exuberance which...
which was kind of, you know, making me walk
a-few-inches-above-the-ground, kind of feeling.
Though mostly these weeks I was largely starved.
No, I'm just laughing at that pains of
hunger now, because they're very painful.
But still, I was energised in such a way that I would
be walking almost few inches above the ground
that kind of feeling.
And I realised it is when I look at trees, animals,
the engagement was one kind you know, it's just looking
at it, appreciating it, or simply looking at it for what it is.
But when you look at human faces,
knowingly unknowingly there is a
certain amount of transaction happening,
like, dislike, approval, disapproval so many things are
happening you don't even have to participate in it.
If you just look at someone, it just happens.
So it is from then that I started kind of
closing my eyes more and more because
if I just close my eyes for hours on end in a day,
consciously closing your eyes, not sleeping
- You will see there is a new
dimension of energy available to you.
This is what pratyahara means that
you took away the sensory engagement
with the world and turned it inward.
This is a good time if you're willing
wherever you are, to experiment with this,
that, if not the whole day, let's say six hours a day
or twelve hours a day or whatever is possible for you.
You can even start with one hour or two hours.
Just keeping your eyes closed, not looking at anything.
Initially your mind may go all over the place.
It's okay, don't try to control it,
let it go wherever it wants.
I want you to understand it doesn't go
anywhere. It's just replaying old stuff.
"Oh my mind will go somewhere",
no your mind doesn't go anywhere.
This is the illusion you have to break that
you believe, your mind is going somewhere,
which means you're misunderstanding
psychological process for an existential reality.
Psychological process is just made up by you,
playing your own stupid, badly
directed cinema and believing it's true.
This is a good time, its a good time that you try to do
this in a day, a certain amount of time, whatever that is.
You close your eyes and sit, but something,
something happens somebody made
some noise, somebody did something.
Not like that, especially when you think something
important is happening, you must close your eyes.
Yes.
Because engagement with the world
has to become conscious, that's all.
If engagement with the world is conscious,
however much you're engaged
with the world, it doesn't leave you...
you know, disturbed or freaked out.
When your engagement is compulsive and reactionary,
then you will see smallest
things are throwing people off,
most human beings, just earning a
living, raising a family, dying one day.
For this, how much turmoil people
are going through is unbelievable.
It's not even fair, just to do simple
things that every other creature is doing.
Right now, look at the sparrows, evening
family affairs they are settling with a birdbrain.
But they are managing it in their own way.
For this human beings are,
with such a big brain freaking out.
This is because their engagement with
the world is compulsive not conscious.
This is a good time for you to experiment with
this, that you bring some pratyahara into your life.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, it doesn't matter.
You don't need any training. Just sit with eyes closed.
It's alright, mind is running away, let it run, don't
try to stop it, because there are no brakes on it,
all the three pedals are throttle, whichever
way you touch it, it'll only run faster.
So don't do anything, it will run.
It will run because it has a certain karmic momentum.
If you just leave it for some time without
tending to it, it will slow down and it will stop.
Do not worry about stopping
the mind, not stopping the mind,
all I'm saying is, do not engage with the outside
world, for whatever number of hours that you can,
start with an hour, push it to six-to-twelve hours a day,
you will see, you will have the
necessary energy to hit the peaks.
Right now the biggest problem
why human beings are not able to become blissful
and exuberant within themselves is lack of energy
- if they're joyful for three minutes
then they will sink, like that.
Actually, there are sayings like this in the society.
Socially people believe that if you
become very exuberantly joyful today,
tomorrow you will be miserable.
This is generally said in the society
- "Don't be so happy, because
tomorrow you will become miserable."
Because their batteries are like that, that today if they're
very exuberant, tomorrow it will become depressed.
So, pratyahara is a key element to
create that kind of an energy system
which can take any experience of life
in its stride and doesn't put you down.
Good time to turn to pratyahara.
The important thing is, if you engage with
your thought process, that is not internal,
that is also engagement with the world.
"No, no, I did not look at
anybody's face, I was just thinking."
This is also engagement with the world,
because your thought doesn't belong to you.
The content of the thought is all from outside.
You are running a private world in your head.
But there is no private world, there existentially there
is only one world, you either live in it or you don't.
Your private world is a madhouse that you made up.
Sometimes, of course, it gives you some pleasure,
but living in a illusionary made-up
world is not going to last for long.
Especially if... you know, people
are always saying I got disillusioned.
This is my blessing, you must get
disillusioned as quickly as possible.
Because disillusion means all
your illusions got destroyed.
Should this not happen at the very beginning of life?
It should happen at the earliest time,
that all your illusions fell apart.
My blessing is may you live in the
majestic beauty of this creation,
not in your own illusion,
however sweet it looks right now.
Please question.
Participant: Sadhguru the first question is
from Giordano. Namaskaram Sadhguru.
Sadhguru: Where is he from? Can we ask or no?
Participant: It's not mentioned
Sadhguru. Social media question.
Sadhguru: Okay, we cannot ask him,
because we cannot say where they came from.
Participant: "If living here as a
yogi is so ecstatic and blissful,
why would one want to escape the cycles of rebirth?"
Sadhguru: You must take away the word escape.
Well, I'm asking all of you
– I'm sure every one of you have been to school.
Well, for some of you school might
not have been a pleasant experience.
But for many school was a good experience,
especially those of you who didn't care to
learn much or come first and things like that.
You just enjoyed the company of your
friends and play and fun and whatever.
School was a good experience.
So when you finished your schooling, did you escape
from the school or did you pass out of the school?
We don't know, maybe Giordano
escaped from his school.
That means he didn't pass.
Generally, most people pass,
and they go to the next stage of life.
When you're in school, however good the
school is, would you want to go to the college?
Definitely.
This is the nature of the human being.
However, good this is, you want
to go to the next phase of life.
Something is good so I will do the same thing
forever, that's a foolish way of looking at life.
That is not coming because life is so fantastic for you,
that is coming out of the fear of stepping into the
unknown, totally unknown, absolutely unknown.
This happened.
At one point, bad times came and Shankaran
Pillai became a construction worker.
Construction worker, carrying bricks up many floors.
Then his coworker, another
person who was also labour there,
noticed Shankaran Pillai is carrying more
bricks than what is asked by the foreman, more.
Everybody's carrying eight bricks,
Shankaran Pillai is carrying twelve bricks.
So eight bricks itself is quite heavy
and you're going up many floors.
When they go there, they just throw it down and come.
The pleasure is coming down empty handed.
So, at lunchtime, this other
labourer asked Shankaran Pillai,
"Why are you carrying twelve bricks?
What is needed is only eight.
If you carry eight, you will get you full labour.
Why are you carrying twelve?"
Shankaran Pillai said, "You don't know.
That fool of a foreman, I am carrying
the same set of bricks, up and down."
Brilliant, eh.
So there are many people like this, they're carrying
on with the same stuff,up and down, up and down,
punarapi jananam, punarapi maranam, going on and on.
This is happening, simply
because life is compassionate.
Creation is compassionate.
It sets screens for your memory.
If these screens are broken,
you will be so miserable right now.
If you realize you've been doing the
same stupid stuff hundred times over,
and still you're doing the same thing with the same
misunderstandings, you will want to kick yourself.
So, one who has broken these screens and
not become miserable because of that...
This is why, opening up once memory
beyond the present realm of experience,
first needs a very strong psychological
foundation, not spiritual, psychological foundation.
Because if you don't have a very
stable psychological foundation,
if the screens of memory break,
people will have a shattered mind.
When people are struggling with one
lifetime of experience, not even lived fully
by the time they're 30, they're struggling
with their emotions, their thoughts,
their memories and they're miserable.
Suppose you open up three lifetimes of memory,
you believe these people can handle it?
They'll go totally off.
So because of this, life's compassion, creation's
compassion is holding memory blocks separately.
So you don't realize you're doing
the same thing again and again.
It doesn't matter how beautiful exuberant wonderful it is,
if you repeat the same thing over
and over again... I'll do one thing.
Whatever is your favourite music, I will play it.
Not here, I will play it in your mind.
Non Stop. Next twenty one days.
With this fantastic music you will go crazy.
Because it's playing non stop.
So anybody who realizes, the same
things are going cyclical again and again,
will naturally want to break the cycle.
It is not you're trying to escape.
You have found a stairway to something beyond.
If you go, if you leave one phase of life and go to
another phase of life, that is not called an escape.
That is called a promotion.
Or liberation.
