Does Fear Bring Out the Best in You? 🙏 With Sadhguru in Challenging Times - 25 Apr

10:35 - Well, this terrible task of looking at the death toll every day is not a good thing.

10:59 - But it’s important everywhere, but particularly India, because this is the way human mind goes around.

11:15 - After a few days, nothing happened to me. Nothing happened to my family.

11:22 - Even my neighbours are doing okay. I thought the virus will get them but and they’re okay.

11:30 - So, maybe this whole thing is a hoax, it’s a conspiracy from somewhere.

11:35 - Somebody spread this news, and they’ve just made up this to steal our economy, to decimate our economy.

11:46 - I’m not making this up it’s going on. So death toll is a clear sign that nobody’s making it up.

12:00 - People are not pretending to die. They’re genuinely dying.

12:07 - United States has crossed 52,000 dead. Spain 22, or 23,000, France 23,000, Germany 6000, UK crossing 20,000 and many of… parts of the world, much better but still happening.

12:34 - In India, we have crossed seven-hundred-and-seventy-five.

12:39 - But in India the death toll is dipping significantly.

12:45 - Seeing that, the state governments are encouraged and now as you know in Tamil Nadu there is a curfew, not a lockdown.

12:56 - Many other states are going into the same mode.

12:59 - More geographically contained because fifty percent of India’s virus cases come from just Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi; which is a… just a city not a state really.

13:23 - Well state legally but in geography, it’s just a city.

13:28 - Just these three locations account for fifty percent.

13:34 - If you add another three, four states like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh and Kerala; that’s eighty percent.

13:46 - That means a large part of India is completely unaffected.

13:51 - Well, that is the impact of the lockdown. That’s what it’s done, it’s contained it geographically.

13:59 - So, seeing the results states are going for more aggressive lockdowns.

14:05 - Well, of course, economic pressures are there, which will make us take certain compromising steps which we must take.

14:20 - But if it comes with absolute discipline from the citizens everywhere in the world, it will work much, much better because this is essentially human to human right now.

14:38 - Well, some tigers have got it, I’m sure you’re not planning to go and hug the tiger. So it’s okay.

14:46 - Two lions and a tiger in the American zoos, have got virus.

14:52 - There is a few cases of pet cats and dogs getting it.

14:56 - But it’s been found that in the animals it’s in a very mild form.

15:03 - But they could still be carriers. But the main culprit is the human being.

15:11 - So how human beings, individual human beings as societies, as nations, we behave accordingly, we could limit the damage to that extent.

15:22 - Both mortality rates, and the economic damage can be contained substantially if all of us behave with some discipline and responsibility.

15:36 - So it’s for that reason only I’m reading these death toll every day.

15:40 - Because if you don’t have sense, at least you may have some fear.

15:47 - Yes, unfortunately. If you are sensible, then it would be easy, but if people are not sensible, the next thing is fear.

15:58 - At least out of fear, they will behave sensibly.

16:02 - This is something that always intrigued me, why is it fear is being held as a virtue? Well, I think I’ve spoken before about this but anyway, even as I was a young boy, because I think I never was a child, maybe.

16:27 - When I’m like ten, eleven years of age or even… yeah around that much, or even less than that, I always heard my father, constantly being worried about me.

16:39 - “He has no fear in his heart what will happen to this boy?” One day I turned around and asked, “When did fear become a virtue?” He said, “See I told you he has no fear in his heart. ” Well, when you look back and see, you will see unfortunately, most religions in the world, political establishments in the world and parents and teachers always used fear as the most effective tool to get what they want.

17:26 - Fear of hell, fear of shot to death, fear of punishment fear of beating, fear of abuse, fear of shame.

17:40 - They used fear as the main tool of their trade; unfortunately, including parents.

17:52 - Well I think it is changing substantially but still it’s the underlying factor of most societies.

18:00 - Because people still believe that fear will bring out the best in people.

18:14 - I think that is the most ridiculous and disastrous idea that spread across the world - that fear will bring about the best in people.

18:25 - Fear may control human beings from doing certain things.

18:33 - But fear will not liberate people from anything.

18:39 - Fear entangles a human being so badly and curtails a human being so badly.

18:47 - In many way crushes a human being to become a small creature, just desperate to survive.

18:56 - Rather than being a grand being. Not behaving like top of the line life on this planet - you’re the evolutionary crown of all life upon this planet - not behaving like the peak, behaving like bottom because fear.

19:25 - Fear not just of immediate consequences but fear that you may suffer somewhere else.

19:38 - Fear of hell has been one of the big factors in controlling and managing people.

19:47 - When… well, people are also God-fearing. The many things that we do in the form of bringing up our children, educating them, turning them towards the source of creation, all with fear.

20:15 - How will you ever succeed? Because fear is debilitating.

20:24 - You need… if, if you want to blossom, if you want to know some sense of liberation within you, you need all that you have and more.

20:37 - What you have is not enough, you need everything that you got and you need more.

20:43 - Little more push from the outside otherwise, one will not make it.

20:48 - But now crushing a human being with fear and making them less than what they are and then hoping they will attain to something high is a very ridiculous thing.

21:05 - This happened. A mother is trying to encourage a young boy to drink goat’s milk.

21:30 - But the boy, not interested. So the mother says, “You drink goat’s milk, you will always remain young. You will never get old. ” The boy looks at her and says, “Mom, if that is so, how come our neighbor’s goat, only four years old and he’s got a beard? And I’ve never seen any goat ever getting old… ” Of course, on that you’re right because somebody will make biryani out of him.

22:09 - Not because he’s remained young because somebody eats him up, nobody allows him to get old.

22:20 - So, incentives are one way; fear is another way but the most beautiful way is always that you’re committed enough to bring about sense.

22:39 - To make sense to somebody it takes a lot of time and effort.

22:46 - The same thing you can get it done in fear in two minutes - I’m talking about management techniques - but because if you have to make somebody understand every aspect of what needs to be done, what could be said in one word as an order, you have to say a hundred things, look at me! What can be said in one word in a hundred different ways.

23:24 - But still, if you pull them out of the pit of ignorance today, tomorrow morning they’ll be back there once again.

23:30 - Still you have to pull them back today, tomorrow morning they’ll be back again.

23:36 - Well, that is the nature of this work but if even if somebody makes an incremental step towards a more sensible existence, you will have wonderful things around you.

23:54 - But if you get the same thing done out of fear or much more out of fear, you will have such an ugly atmosphere, the very air you breathe will be poisonous.

24:09 - When everybody around you is in fear, the very air you breathe will be poisonous.

24:15 - You must see if you’re sensitive. I worked in these prisons… no, no I…

24:27 - I did not get admission I went there to teach Inner Engineering programs.

24:33 - At one time full ten days I was there in many prisons both in India and in United States.

24:43 - Well, if you look at the prison it’s pretty well organised.

24:47 - In fact, for a whole lot of people who come from the lower strata of society, they’re dressed better than they were dressed outside.

24:56 - They have a better diet, they’re eating better obviously.

24:58 - They look more healthy and all their practices are good, all addictions are out and everything happens on time.

25:08 - Everything on time. And people turn on the lights for you, turn off the lights for you, like Isha Yoga Center, you know? They even open doors for you.

25:23 - Of course they also close it. No, no, there is so much struggle in homes today, “Lock the front door and come. ” “Huh? Why should I do it, you do it!” So no such problem, somebody else does everything for you.

25:41 - In many ways for people who come from a certain strata of life, physical, and material aspects of life are better organised in the prison than in their homes, actually.

25:54 - But the suffering, the suffering is in the air, the pain is in the air.

26:00 - If you… I have never been into these prisons and come out without tears in my eyes because the very air that you breathe is full of pain.

26:09 - I, as a part of visiting a certain historical place, you know it’s like a monument, in Tennessee.

26:21 - An old prison during the Civil War and that kind of stuff.

26:28 - I went into the gallows, they took us there as a part of the tour.

26:36 - You won’t believe maybe the last time anybody hung there was a hundred years ago I’m not sure but a long time ago.

26:44 - But if you enter that place it just hits you in the face.

26:48 - Even today, after so many years. It’s like suffocating.

26:53 - The fear, extreme levels of fear and suffering what people have gone through just lives in the atmosphere like that.

27:03 - So this is the most important thing if you really want to change the world.

27:08 - If you want to change the atmosphere in your home, in your society and in the world as a whole, the most important thing is, people should feel pleasant within themselves.

27:22 - Well what to do? People are committed to misery and they keep going back and going back, you have to to pull them back and pull them back.

27:28 - If not for their sake, at least for you to live in a healthy atmosphere.

27:33 - Yes! Because otherwise if they all living in misery and fear, it will create such a poisonous atmosphere for you.

27:42 - Poison do not take it literally because now there are social media champions who will immediately say, “Let me test the air in the gallows. Nothing is wrong with this, same composition of oxygen and carbon dioxide. ” This is because nothing subtle has ever been felt by you.

28:03 - Right now all of you are alive. I’m glad this is a time of reading death toll, but you’re alive.

28:14 - It’s wonderful that you’re alive but for most human beings, the only proof of their aliveness is their heart is beating.

28:25 - See we can pull out the heart from your body and still make it beat on machines - that doesn’t mean that person is alive, that person is for sure dead.

28:36 - Or some electrical impulses or breath, well ventilator can breathe without you.

28:45 - So only physical proofs of your body being there - there is no proof as such.

28:54 - Nobody has established a proof that really there is life within you, we are only looking at the consequences of life, because you’re alive you’re breathing, your heart is beating and whatever else is happening, the medical parameters, that is fine but does it mean to say, beyond this body you don’t exist? Such people are assuming they landed on the planet, just like this.

29:21 - They don’t understand we slowly gathered the body.

29:26 - When you were five years of age you were the same person, ten years of age same person, twenty-five years of age same person, hundred years same person, as far as you’re concerned.

29:35 - Well, you might have gathered more memory, more experience, more wealth, more nonsense.

29:41 - But, in your experience, you’re still the same person. So you’ve always existed.

29:47 - Beyond the size and shape of the body. So when this is the case tell me where is the proof of your aliveness? Because most human beings don’t know what aliveness is, they are only…

30:04 - as if they’re checking somebody else, “My heart is beating so I am alive” - how stupid is that? It is all right when we’re checking somebody, somebody’s lying down here, we check their breath and say, “Okay he’s alive,” you check your own breath and say, “Yeah I’m alive. ” Uh, you’re a… have to… you have lost it, you know, there’s no question about it! So there are such people, they’ll say, “Where is the poison, show me!” So, if I say if you, you know if you handle the water in such a… certain ways, on the level of molecular level, it turns poisonous.

30:48 - Then they say, “Okay, I’ll give you a sealed bottle, turn it into poison, let me see. ” Well, there are certain creatures who thrive on poison we know that, it’s not that we don’t know that.

31:02 - But you need to understand life need not be poisoned chemically.

31:07 - You can poison yourself with fear, you can poison yourself with anxiety, you can poison yourself with a wrong thought, wrong emotion.

31:17 - Just a wrong posture can poison you. Yes. Just a wrong way of sitting is poisoning you.

31:25 - Otherwise, why do you think for thousands of years we invested in the science of yoga? Well if you think it’s nothing, I want you to understand it’s the only thing.

31:36 - Just look back and see, it is the only thing other than basic survival aspects like eating, sleeping, reproduction and excretion.

31:47 - Apart from these things the only thing which has lived for 15 - 20,000 years is yoga.

31:53 - Not because of propagation, simply because of its efficacy.

31:59 - So, if you do not understand the nature of your own existence, then you will create all these things.

32:08 - So, this is not about being fearful, this is about becoming sensible, knowing we are mortal.

32:15 - Always knowing every moment of our life, virus or no virus we’re still mortal but with sense, with sensible behaviour, with responsible handling of life, we can minimize many possibilities and at the same time enhance various other dimensions of our life.

32:39 - Because right now, it’s clearly demonstrated around the world, nations which took the responsibility of taking sensible action - mortality is minimum.

32:50 - Nations which arrogantly tried to do something, they’re paying the price, unfortunately.

32:59 - So it’s very important to understand at this point because the lockdown is coming to an end, at some time it has to come to an end, because no government, no political force can ever keep people under lockdown forever.

33:13 - Six weeks is a miracle if you ask me. It’s really a miracle, six weeks largely we’ve been successful except for a few irresponsible groups, largely we have been successful.

33:26 - Phenomenal achievement, both for the administration and for the people of this country and many other nations too which are participating in similar process.

33:36 - Not by force, just by, you know, bringing sense to people telling them, “This is it.

33:44 - You have to understand, otherwise you may not exist. “ So, there is never a old goat.

33:56 - That doesn’t mean they stayed young. Well, there is, you know when we… when we were training for hang gliding flying and things like that, there used to be a saying, “There are old pilots and bold pilots, there are no old bold pilots. ” So this is a time like that. If you’re too bold you will never be old, that’s a advantage.

34:29 - Questioner: Namaskara Sadhguru, “Earnest greetings to you. I’m Dr. Gayathri from Mumbai, had this question to ask.

34:38 - Ayodhya and North India as such is the land of the Lords, from Lord Ram to Krishna, all have taken birth there and considered so sacred, but still North India is always under conflict, lot of violence, abuse, addiction cases are more prevalent in that part of nation despite being so holy.

34:57 - Why is it so?” Sadhguru: Well, if you look at Rama’s life, more closely if you look at Krishna’s life, obviously people around him of his time also were very violent people.

35:32 - No qualms about doing all kinds of terrible things to each other.

35:40 - It’s only because of that, probably, that the significance of a man like Krishna, with his sense of balance, playfulness, involvement, wisdom, and above all, a tremendous sense of grace that he exuded, all became significant.

36:03 - If everybody was living absolutely well without tyrants doing terrible things, I don’t think he would have shined as he did.

36:13 - Because of all these terrible people, becomes very significant.

36:19 - See, here the yoga center is full of flowers.

36:23 - I don’t know how many of you are noticing the fragrance and the beauty of these flowers.

36:29 - This is a very very intricate and fantastic flower called Krishna kamalam, most people wouldn’t have seen this flower, very intricate thing.

36:38 - Well it’s in many places in yoga center. If you are…

36:45 - If you are in a tourist mode I am saying, I have nothing against tourists and tourism, we need it.

36:52 - Right now it’s under great hit, so definitely we need, but tourists usually are you know, these days, no not even that (Gestures).

37:03 - That’s gone. Those days are gone of taking pictures of other people and things, this is all about you now.

37:11 - So if you’re in that kind of mode, you will bhoop (Gestures) going like this.

37:19 - You will not sense anything subtle. You will not stop because the Krishna kamalam will not come and pop up in front of your face and take a selfie.

37:33 - It’ll just be there, gently exuding its fragrance.

37:37 - You need little sensitivity. If you’re not smelling the flower, maybe you have the virus.

37:47 - And some of you may notice, “Ah, some fragrance, some fragrance, ah. ” Well, the Krishna kamalam is exuding one kind of fragrance, the… you know, the sampige exuding another kind of fragrance and the jasmine exuding another kind of fragrance.

38:09 - There are variety of flowers exuding different kinds of fragrance.

38:14 - I am very sure even here, there are just a few people, or let’s call them noses.

38:22 - There are just few noses which poke their nose into every flower and they know the difference.

38:30 - Others, “Ah flowers, something. ” Most others don’t even know, for them only dinner time is coming.

38:39 - The smell of the food draws them. I’m not trying to demean and make fun of everything but that is the reality of life.

38:51 - If in this garden so many flowers, most people wouldn’t have noticed, what is what.

38:59 - But suppose you are walking in a desert where everything is harsh, just sand.

39:06 - In the middle there was just one lotus flower, would you miss it? No way you will miss it. In a way that is what happened to these people.

39:18 - Krishna, because around situations are tyrannical, people are doing terrible things, one man rises above all those things.

39:27 - Not a saint who sits in the mountains, not a saint who doesn’t live a life.

39:34 - Somebody who is absolutely involved with everything but still well above everything.

39:41 - Nobody could miss him. How could they miss him? He is too beautiful to be missed in that atmosphere.

39:46 - Suppose there were 1000 people like him – that’s not possible, it’s never happened such a thing.

39:53 - But suppose even they were ten, they would have missed him.

39:59 - Only one, so he shines. Well after he’s… after he is gone, did they get the point? No, because maybe not exactly halfway down but towards the end of his life he went to Gujarat.

40:14 - You know that. And there things happened tragically, and his own clan fought among each other and killed.

40:25 - Almost every one of them died in battles among themselves.

40:31 - Because they had gotten used to fighting battles with somebody all their lives, suddenly no enemy, so they decided to fight among themselves.

40:41 - What to do with a lifetime of practice that you have of fighting and killing – when there is nobody to kill, you kill among yourself.

40:51 - So that’s how it ended unfortunately. But the significance of their lives are not gone of course.

40:58 - In… I think in India there is a saying, “If you keep a lamp which spreads light to everybody, just beneath the lamp always there will be darkness. ” So this happened but if you take it to a larger expanse, if you take it elsewhere, you will see the places or from the geographical location, from where the major religions have come, where Jesus is born, where Judaism was born, where even Islam was born, well, last 2,000 years has not been shining light for anybody.

41:39 - Huge amount of violence, probably cruelest things happening.

41:43 - The soil is soaked with blood, that whole region, still continuing.

41:49 - I don’t think one single day passes without some effort to kill somebody because of long-term hatred going on.

42:01 - So, individual people fighting for something is a different matter.

42:06 - But large groups of people either race, religion, or nations continuing to fight for a 1,000 years means we have lost it.

42:18 - Fights will happen unfortunately. Should not happen, but it will happen, human beings sometimes spill over.

42:25 - You must come to your senses. But over 2,000 years if you’re fighting, well you have really lost it. No question about it.

42:35 - So the same thing, at least the Yadavas and the Uttar Pradesh people are not going to that extent, they’ve brought the organized fight to individual level of fighting – little improvement.

42:50 - At least they’re not fighting clan against clan. This has come down.

42:54 - It’s become more economic, more individual, more lack of discipline, those kind of things.

43:00 - Well, we must see, we need to discipline them.

43:05 - Today somehow in their land they have even elected a yogi.

43:14 - Hope he brings some discipline to the land.

43:17 - I think he’s trying, whatever. I don’t want…

43:21 - This is not a political statement, it’s just ironic.

43:23 - A land which has seen so much violence and so much all kinds of things now chooses a yogi as their Chief Minister, which is a little tongue-in-cheek for me.

43:41 - But this is not about making a statement about him or the people, but this is how the world has been, especially wherever a shining light came around that people didn’t get it, far away people got it.

43:59 - Close by people didn’t get it. Because they’re little blinded by that light, they can’t see a thing.

44:06 - People who far away could see the value of who those people are.

44:10 - But those who are close by generally missed the point, need not be so in future.

44:18 - But that has been the general history of human beings that when something is closeup, they miss it; when it’s far away, they hanker for it.

44:33 - So, unfortunately, they did that to Krishna also, but Krishna moved to Gujarat.

44:39 - He is very popular in Gujarat even today. And from there, post his time they sent his image to Kerala. You know this? Oh.

45:00 - This is… there are claims and counterclaims about this, but the first temple that was built for Krishna, when he was still alive they built a temple for him.

45:11 - So when things went wrong and battles happened and this temple could be destroyed, then it is said Vyasa took the idol that was in the temple because he didn’t want it to be destroyed and took a sailboat and sailed down the coast to Kerala.

45:36 - That is why it is called Guruvayur, because a guru who used the wind to come down south and established it in Guruvayur.

45:46 - Even today from all over the country all the Krishna devotees are bee-lining to Guruvayur because that is supposed to be the original deity in his form.

46:00 - So, it lives in many places, but closeup little problem, but maybe there also it will shine now.

46:08 - If people have chosen discipline as their head of state for that state, maybe they’ve got the desire to change, which is a very welcome change.

46:30 - Sadhguru chants Yoga Yoga Yogeshwaraya.