NDTV​ ​Consulting Editor Barkha Dutt engages Sadhguru in a conversation during the Penguin Random House “Spring Fever Festival” in Delhi. Sadhguru looks at how spirituality is a process of enhancing our perception beyond what is required just for our survival, so we can perceive life the way it is.

Full Transcript:

Barkha Dutt: Do you think of yourself as a yogi, a mystic or a guru?

Sadhguru: I’ve not wasted time thinking about myself (Laughter/Applause).

Barkha Dutt: What would you rather be thinking of?

Sadhguru: I don’t think usually. Really. For me, see th… This whole thing, because of the type of very mediocre education that’s being delivered today, we have raised thought to heaven unfortunately. Thought is a simple thing. I know this is against everything that you believe in because you are also a believer (Laughs).

Barkha Dutt: No.

Sadhguru: Believer in thought.

Barkha Dutt: Yeah.

Sadhguru: Yes.

Barkha Dutt: I believe in being able to ask questions.

Sadhguru: Yes.

Barkha Dutt: That’s what I do for a living.

Sadhguru: Oh (Laughter)! That’s good.

Barkha Dutt: So I must believe that it is possible to ask questions.

Sadhguru: You… you ask questions for a living, my life is full of questions (Laughter/Applause). Now… now the thing is what you call as thought is coming from the limited data that you have gathered from the experience of your life. Every person is the same thing. How much ever we have gathered, it’s still too small compared to the size of this cosmos and the way the phenomena of life is happening. From this limited da… data, you can recycle things and generate thought. Or in other words, nothing new ever happens. Same permutations and combinations of the same thing will go on forever.

Time 52:40

The essence of what we’re teaching in the name of Inner Engineering is to engineer yourself in such a way, every moment of your life is a new possibility. If it has to become a new possibility, what is needed is perception. When I say perception, people think opinions. No, I am talking about perception, as you see here (Gestures), similarly enhancing your perception so that you perceive life. Right now when we say thought, emotion, we’re talking about expressing life. Expression is not so important, once in a way we can express but perceiving it is important because this phenomena is too fantastic, it’s not a small thing. The greatest phenomena that’s happening here is life itself. So if you want to know this phenomena, the only way you can know, the only doorway for you to know life is yourself. See, right now can you see me?

Barkha Dutt: Yes, I can.

Sadhguru: Can you… Can you use a finger and point out where I am? (Barkha Dutt gestures towards Sadhguru) Oh, you’re wrong. You know I’m a mystic from South India (Laughter/Applause). Now this light is falling upon me, reflecting, going through your lenses, inverted image in the retina, you know the whole story. Where do you see me now?

Barkha Dutt: Still in the same place.

Sadhguru: No.

Barkha Dutt: I do.

Sadhguru: You see me the way I’m projected in the firmament of your mind. You cannot see me here (Gestures) in the very nature of your visual apparatus. Where do you hear me right now? Within yourself. Where have you seen the whole world? Within yourself. Now if there is a grasshopper here, he doesn’t see me the way you see me, he sees me differently. He sees the whole world differently. Now you… you can think, “Oh, he’s no good.” This is the fundamental problem that we think his perception is no good. No, no, his perception is very good for his survival. Your perception is very good for your survival but it’s not good enough to know the nature of life.

Barkha Dutt: But I…

Time 54:40

Sadhguru: So now, “what do I know” means I have enhanced… enhanced my perception the way it is important to know the nature of life, not just for survival.

Barkha Dutt: But if Inner Engineering as a spiritual technology is something that works, I ask you again, why do we need gurus? Because that means the answers are within us.

Sadhguru: You’re speaking so much language, did you learn A, B, C, D ___ (Unclear)

Barkha Dutt: I think so.

Sadhguru: Do you remember when you’re four years of age, that damn “A”, how complicated it was?

Barkha Dutt: Yes.

Sadhguru: ___ (Unclear) two versions to it. You had to write it a hundred times to get the damn “A”. Today you can close your eyes and write. So it doesn’t matter how simple something is, without a certain guidance, could you have picked up A, B, C, I’m asking? No. Similarly, when something new you have to approach, if you don’t have the right kind of guidance, you won’t pick it up.