Q: Sadhguru, you once said that you are functioning at about 3% of your full potential. Can you tell us how we can create a situation where you could unleash your full potential? And what would that 100% mean?
Sadhguru: What would the full potential be? Different people have expressed this in different ways. Krishna said, “I am the radiant sun among the luminaries. I am the moon among the stars. I am the lion among the beasts. I am the king of birds among the birds. I am the Ganga among the rivers. I am the Himalaya among the mountains.” In this language he went on, very eloquently. Jesus said, “I am the son of God; the only son.” That is another kind of language; the same thing expressed in a different way. Gautama said, “If you walk my path you will never have to turn around,” – a subtler way of saying it. In India, it is very common to chant, “Aham Brahmasmi” – that means, “I am the Ultimate Truth.” Mansur al-Hallaj, who is the originator of the Sufi system, went to India, came back and said, “Anal haq.” That means, “I am the truth,” and he got into a lot of trouble.
I am not given to that kind of language; I am just putting it very simply. Whatever mechanics of this existence, whatever dimensions of this existence, if you just provide me the needed atmosphere, I can take you to any one of them and I can fix any one of them. I am not a god, I am not a Guru – I am a mechanic. This is the 21st century where God is a bad word, and Son of God is even worse. [Laughs] Two thousand years ago, God was a sacred word; so if somebody said, “I am the Son of God,” it was all right. So if you prepare the necessary situation, I can take you to the mechanics of this existence, whatever dimension it is; whatever needs to be done, I can fix it. That is the 100% potential; that does not sound as grand and poetic as, “I am the lion among the beasts. I am the Himalayas among the mountains. I am the Ganga among the rivers.” My interest in the existence is that it works. It looks so chaotic, so unwieldy, nobody knows the beginning and the end, but it still works.
So if you are interested in that which works, you are naturally a mechanic. I can make it work on any level of existence. It is just a question of creating a conducive atmosphere, and that is challenging. If we create the atmosphere, I can make it work on any level of existence. This is all I have aspired for – and this is all there is. So what do you have to do? One thing is the foundation – the foundation of any building should be in the ground, but the Isha Foundation is sitting on my head all the time. I want to put it to the ground. [Laughs] So if you are willing to be that ground and to take the load of the foundation, if it is off my head, a lot more things could be done. That is not all, but it is an important factor right now – I am trying to unload; step-by-step, I am getting it off my head, but still it is happening too slowly because life does not stop for one moment. [Laughs]
This is a race to the grave. You may think that the physical body is going to many places. “I went to Himalayas, I went to Florida, I vacationed in this place, I did this, I did that.” But still, your body is going straight to the grave – nowhere else. The rest is your imagination. Your physical body is going straight to the grave; no deviation. That is something that I am constantly aware of. In a very codified way, not the knowledge, but the keys to everything that is worth knowing are all in one place. If tomorrow somebody with the necessary awareness comes, it will not be lost. That was the intention of the Dhyanalinga – not just what I know, also what my Guru knew and what the whole tradition knew, everything is there, not in the form of knowledge, but in the form of keys. If someone is aware enough, they can pick it up and open whatever they want in the existence. It is a dvara, a doorway to the creation. You can use it to open just about anything. But right now, the 21st century is a talking century. If you don’t talk, nobody gets the point.
People don’t understand that if I don’t talk and just sit, something more profound is happening. If I don’t talk, they will gape, get up, and leave. People are even talking to themselves while driving a car or walking on the street, because there are hands-free sets. Just twenty years ago, if you had done this on the street, people definitely would have thought you have escaped from some kind of institution – but now it has become common. You don’t get along with anybody in this century but you talk to everybody. You go on the internet and talk to all kinds of people that you have not seen. People have love affairs with those that they have not seen because it is so easy to love people that you have not seen; it is just like loving God. [Laughter] The trouble is always with people that you have seen and have known for long periods of time, or that you have to live or work with. On some faceless Facebook, you are all lovey-dovey with the whole world. That is very easy, you know.
So because this is a talking century – I hope it won’t be a talking millennium – we have to talk, but at the same time create an atmosphere where the needed talk happens as quickly as possible so that we don’t have to go on talking endlessly. If the talk has to be quick, it has to be brutal. If the talk has to be brutal and still people should not run away, you have to create the necessary atmosphere where people are so overwhelmed by your love, devotion and intensity that when they come here, I can go straight at them – no diplomacy – so that the talking period can be shortened; otherwise, you will end up talking for the rest of your life and still people won’t get it. If you speak gently, the conversation will go on forever. One brutal word, it stops. To say a brutal word and not make them run away, to make them realize this brutality has a profoundness behind it, you need to create a certain atmosphere, otherwise the diplomacy that you should do, I will have to do, and my time is ticking away.
If people are created who are of a certain capability, people who are stable beyond mental moods and emotions, they will be the foundation – that means it is off my head. Then a lot more can be done. If we could find 100% expression with even a handful of people, that would already be fantastic. We are not expecting to find 100% expression with the whole word; that is never going to happen. I am not so dreamy. But definitely, it is possible to create a handful of people with whom it could be 100%. If that cannot be done, we may be a success in the world, people may be clapping their hands, but if we cannot find full expression even with a handful of people, if we have to be careful with them, watching out for their egos, then as a spiritual movement, it is a disaster.
We need people who have the necessary integrity, balance, stability, and heart in them, that even if you let them out into the most corrupt situation, they will function successfully there and come out untouched. Like Gautama allowed a young monk to stay at a prostitute’s house [knowing he can trust his integrity]; I want people like that, that I could send you into a place like that and still I would not have to worry about what you will be doing. We need people of integrity. Integrity has become a dicey thing in today’s world because people have very infantile ideas of freedom.
It would be impractical to think that you are going to make every fool on the planet into an enlightened being. The world is always a play between the positives and the negatives. Some generations enjoy the positives more than the negatives; some generations suffer the negatives more than they enjoy the positives. If there is something that we as a generation can do and be proud of, we have to see that for the next generation, the positives of life hugely outweigh the negatives. This does not mean there will be not a single problem in the world, that everything will be perfect; that would not be a dream, that would be hallucination.
When you dream something, it is also a possibility. When we talk about creating something, and you cannot see the logical staircase to reach there, or you see the staircase disappearing into the clouds, you think it is an impossible thing, but it is not. It just needs a little more fire. Suppose you were born in a social or family situation where education was not possible for you, and somebody told you, “Why don’t you become a doctor or an engineer,” you would have said, “Not for me, not possible, I will go to work.” But if somebody gave you a scholarship, if somebody supported you, you could have gotten there.
So that which is not in your realm of experience and thought seems to be impossible to you. But should not whoever has the largest experience, whoever has explored the world to the maximum extent, guide where the world should go? That is how it should be, but that does not happen right now. The whole world may not go spiritual but if you at least create a possibility that is available and accessible to the whole world, then the pluses would increase to a point where people can gloss over the minuses. When life is so good, even if one little bad thing happens, you can ignore it and go on. Otherwise, every little minus pricks you so badly because there are no pluses in your life.
Particularly in today’s world, because of technology, our ability to reach people is phenomenal; never before was this possible. What we can do in terms of reach, a Krishna could not do, a Buddha could not do, a Jesus could not do. Today, we have the advantage of technology – we have audio, video, television, and the internet – we can slip into everybody’s house. Though there are many other disadvantages in today’s world, this is a phenomenal advantage. If we make use of this – if we can change the culture of this planet from materialistic to spiritual even by one percent in our lifetime, it is a phenomenal achievement because if a ship keeps changing direction by one percent, after some time, it will have made a complete U-turn. Yes, you cannot turn everyone around right now, and there is no need to. If you can just change the direction by one degree, in a certain period of time, the world will have made a U-turn. This can be done if the necessary people are there.
We still have some life in us – there is time left. You decide how far you want to take it, what you want to do. Let me see that fire spilling from your eyes – not a fire of anger, greed, or passion, but the cool fire which burns quietly and does all the work that needs to be done without burning itself up. Cool fire fuels everything but it does not burn anything up – and we have everything in our hands to do that. Today, we have a social situation in the world where as long as we don’t break the law, we can do whatever we want. This was never so before.
It does not take millions of people to do this. Fifty really committed, stable people who don’t have basic questions on an everyday basis, are all it takes. You must settle your basic questions and from then on your questions should dig deeper. People come up with the same nonsense every day. If you are asking the same stupid question for ten years, then this speaks of your intelligence, or rather the lack of it. “Is he going to exploit us? Is he going to use us?” If I wanted to exploit you, I could have made it in such a way that when you walked into that free introductory and I would have told you, “Drop everything that you have here and walk away,” you would have done it. At least trust my efficiency. If you take that idea from your mind, you are on stable ground. If you cannot settle these basic questions, you must leave or just be on the fringe; just come and go, fine.
So, if you settle these basic things within yourself once and for all, this will bring stability, a new ground for you to stand upon within yourself. Then the next steps will naturally come. Every rung will be a challenge, so you have to stabilize the ground on which the ladder is standing. I am not asking you to run up the ladder without checking every rung. But if you keep disturbing the ground on which the ladder stands, then however good the quality of the ladder is, it is useless. You take your time on every rung; that is perfectly okay. If you are maddened by this, you run up the ladder without bothering whether it is going to withstand your weight or not – that is also okay. If that is not possible for you, check every rung and go. But this one basic thing, the ground, you must settle. If you don’t settle that, it will be just waste of time.
Time is not a commodity that comes and goes – it just goes. Time is life. We cannot afford to squander it. I would even say, there is no such thing as time, there is just life. If we create such people with the necessary integrity, stability, and balance, we can start exploring.
I am not given to that kind of language; I am just putting it very simply. Whatever mechanics of this existence, whatever dimensions of this existence, if you just provide me the needed atmosphere, I can take you to any one of them and I can fix any one of them. I am not a god, I am not a Guru – I am a mechanic. This is the 21st century where God is a bad word, and Son of God is even worse. [Laughs] Two thousand years ago, God was a sacred word; so if somebody said, “I am the Son of God,” it was all right. So if you prepare the necessary situation, I can take you to the mechanics of this existence, whatever dimension it is; whatever needs to be done, I can fix it. That is the 100% potential; that does not sound as grand and poetic as, “I am the lion among the beasts. I am the Himalayas among the mountains. I am the Ganga among the rivers.” My interest in the existence is that it works. It looks so chaotic, so unwieldy, nobody knows the beginning and the end, but it still works.
This is a race to the grave. You may think that the physical body is going to many places. “I went to Himalayas, I went to Florida, I vacationed in this place, I did this, I did that.” But still, your body is going straight to the grave – nowhere else. The rest is your imagination. Your physical body is going straight to the grave; no deviation. That is something that I am constantly aware of. In a very codified way, not the knowledge, but the keys to everything that is worth knowing are all in one place. If tomorrow somebody with the necessary awareness comes, it will not be lost. That was the intention of the Dhyanalinga – not just what I know, also what my Guru knew and what the whole tradition knew, everything is there, not in the form of knowledge, but in the form of keys. If someone is aware enough, they can pick it up and open whatever they want in the existence. It is a dvara, a doorway to the creation. You can use it to open just about anything. But right now, the 21st century is a talking century. If you don’t talk, nobody gets the point.
People don’t understand that if I don’t talk and just sit, something more profound is happening. If I don’t talk, they will gape, get up, and leave. People are even talking to themselves while driving a car or walking on the street, because there are hands-free sets. Just twenty years ago, if you had done this on the street, people definitely would have thought you have escaped from some kind of institution – but now it has become common. You don’t get along with anybody in this century but you talk to everybody. You go on the internet and talk to all kinds of people that you have not seen. People have love affairs with those that they have not seen because it is so easy to love people that you have not seen; it is just like loving God. [Laughter] The trouble is always with people that you have seen and have known for long periods of time, or that you have to live or work with. On some faceless Facebook, you are all lovey-dovey with the whole world. That is very easy, you know.
If people are created who are of a certain capability, people who are stable beyond mental moods and emotions, they will be the foundation – that means it is off my head. Then a lot more can be done. If we could find 100% expression with even a handful of people, that would already be fantastic. We are not expecting to find 100% expression with the whole word; that is never going to happen. I am not so dreamy. But definitely, it is possible to create a handful of people with whom it could be 100%. If that cannot be done, we may be a success in the world, people may be clapping their hands, but if we cannot find full expression even with a handful of people, if we have to be careful with them, watching out for their egos, then as a spiritual movement, it is a disaster.
We need people who have the necessary integrity, balance, stability, and heart in them, that even if you let them out into the most corrupt situation, they will function successfully there and come out untouched. Like Gautama allowed a young monk to stay at a prostitute’s house [knowing he can trust his integrity]; I want people like that, that I could send you into a place like that and still I would not have to worry about what you will be doing. We need people of integrity. Integrity has become a dicey thing in today’s world because people have very infantile ideas of freedom.
It would be impractical to think that you are going to make every fool on the planet into an enlightened being. The world is always a play between the positives and the negatives. Some generations enjoy the positives more than the negatives; some generations suffer the negatives more than they enjoy the positives. If there is something that we as a generation can do and be proud of, we have to see that for the next generation, the positives of life hugely outweigh the negatives. This does not mean there will be not a single problem in the world, that everything will be perfect; that would not be a dream, that would be hallucination.
When you dream something, it is also a possibility. When we talk about creating something, and you cannot see the logical staircase to reach there, or you see the staircase disappearing into the clouds, you think it is an impossible thing, but it is not. It just needs a little more fire. Suppose you were born in a social or family situation where education was not possible for you, and somebody told you, “Why don’t you become a doctor or an engineer,” you would have said, “Not for me, not possible, I will go to work.” But if somebody gave you a scholarship, if somebody supported you, you could have gotten there.
So that which is not in your realm of experience and thought seems to be impossible to you. But should not whoever has the largest experience, whoever has explored the world to the maximum extent, guide where the world should go? That is how it should be, but that does not happen right now. The whole world may not go spiritual but if you at least create a possibility that is available and accessible to the whole world, then the pluses would increase to a point where people can gloss over the minuses. When life is so good, even if one little bad thing happens, you can ignore it and go on. Otherwise, every little minus pricks you so badly because there are no pluses in your life.
We still have some life in us – there is time left. You decide how far you want to take it, what you want to do. Let me see that fire spilling from your eyes – not a fire of anger, greed, or passion, but the cool fire which burns quietly and does all the work that needs to be done without burning itself up. Cool fire fuels everything but it does not burn anything up – and we have everything in our hands to do that. Today, we have a social situation in the world where as long as we don’t break the law, we can do whatever we want. This was never so before.
It does not take millions of people to do this. Fifty really committed, stable people who don’t have basic questions on an everyday basis, are all it takes. You must settle your basic questions and from then on your questions should dig deeper. People come up with the same nonsense every day. If you are asking the same stupid question for ten years, then this speaks of your intelligence, or rather the lack of it. “Is he going to exploit us? Is he going to use us?” If I wanted to exploit you, I could have made it in such a way that when you walked into that free introductory and I would have told you, “Drop everything that you have here and walk away,” you would have done it. At least trust my efficiency. If you take that idea from your mind, you are on stable ground. If you cannot settle these basic questions, you must leave or just be on the fringe; just come and go, fine.
So, if you settle these basic things within yourself once and for all, this will bring stability, a new ground for you to stand upon within yourself. Then the next steps will naturally come. Every rung will be a challenge, so you have to stabilize the ground on which the ladder is standing. I am not asking you to run up the ladder without checking every rung. But if you keep disturbing the ground on which the ladder stands, then however good the quality of the ladder is, it is useless. You take your time on every rung; that is perfectly okay. If you are maddened by this, you run up the ladder without bothering whether it is going to withstand your weight or not – that is also okay. If that is not possible for you, check every rung and go. But this one basic thing, the ground, you must settle. If you don’t settle that, it will be just waste of time.
Time is not a commodity that comes and goes – it just goes. Time is life. We cannot afford to squander it. I would even say, there is no such thing as time, there is just life. If we create such people with the necessary integrity, stability, and balance, we can start exploring.
- Excerpted from a talk by Sadhguru
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