Sadhguru discusses the recently discovered Higgs Boson or "God-particle". He states that people's idea of science is limited to the latest gadgets available in the market. This discovery has at least popularized physics as a quest for knowledge. He talks about four specific dimensions of life as depicted in the yogic lore and where this discovery fits into this spectrum. Telling us about the limitations of using intellect as a tool for exploration, Sadhguru urges one to look within for the source of creation.

Sadhguru points out that science has become all about using life around us to our benefit. This kind of exploitative science should be restricted.

"You can only make a living from what you get; you make a life from what you give."

Sadhguru explains that fundamental science was very advanced in ancient India but people never converted it into technology that would exploit nature. In the yogic culture, nature was always seen as 'mother nature'. He concludes that this attitude of exploiting everything for our benefit must be checked or it can become our nemesis.

Full Transcript:

Sadhguru: It's a very good thing that they called it ‘The God particle.’ It seems somebody wanted to call it the goddamn particle (Laughter) so they just put God particle and that’s a very clever ploy… marketing ploy. You must be glad that scientists are becoming market savvy. They have always been in a subtle way, now they are getting little overt.

So, you know for most people their idea of science is just the new telephone model that’s coming up, the next model of I-phone is their idea of science. All these people who never, ever were interested in any kind of physics, now talking about particle physics, world over, everybody is talking about particle physics, that’s an achievement. Breaking a proton and coming up with the boson is that an achievement that needs to be seen? But it's definitely an achievement that suddenly the whole world, at least the educated part of the world is thinking particle physics that’s an achievement. That’s a good achievement, at least people are thinking of science as not a way of milking the existence, not entirely, at least a little bit. They’re willing to spend ten billion dollars just to know something; I like that. There is right now no technological use but they’re willing to spend ten billion dollars and thirty years just to know something. That sounds very spiritual to me. usually doesn’t cost that much but… (Few laugh) So having achieved one thing, having made a social goal, scientifically what does it mean?

In yoga we see it this way; there is…existence is like this, there is something called as ‘sthoola’, ‘sookshma’, ‘shoonya’, ‘Shiva’. ‘Sthoola’ means the gross existence, physicality is sthoola. Everything that you can see, everything that you can sense through five sense organs, everything that you can see, smell, taste, hear and touch is considered sthoola. This can be analyzed with your intellect and understood and grasped. And this is always made of, as we know today of ‘anu’ or ‘atoms’ because it's physical in nature. It's a complete block of… building block of existence is an atom and if it's made of an atom, once enough number of atoms are there we can touch it, we can smell it, we can taste it, we can see it if it becomes big enough, initially in a microscope, after that with our bare eyes we could see it but if it goes beyond the perception of the five senses but still it is physical in nature, we call it ‘Sookshma’.

So when you enter into sookshma, it is still physical but you are not able to grasp it; do what you want you cannot grasp it through five senses nor can you analyze it through your intellect, that dimension if we approach it, we call it ‘Vishesha gnan’ or ‘Vishesha gnana,’ that means an extra-ordinary knowledge. Gyan or gnana means knowledge, Vishesh gnan is extra-ordinary or significant knowledge. So visheshgnan is referred to as ‘Vigyan’.

The word Vigyan is being very loosely used today but essentially it means this those dimensions which cannot be perceived through five senses, if you perceive them, that is Vigyan. So today science is entering those spaces because never, ever is anybody going to see… a Higgs boson. They are only going to see its footprint. Even now they only saw the footprint; they did not see a Higgs boson. But because they see the footprint, they believe he is there. Somebody has gone by, they left the footprints. We have not seen the man but we know it's gone by. If we go into the forest, we see the pugmarks and we say, ‘Okay there is a tiger.’ We haven’t seen the tiger. In fact in a tropical forest it's very difficult to see a tiger but we will see pugmarks here and there. Just like that they saw the footprints. So they are entering vishesh gyan.

If you go further it will become ‘Shoonya’ that means absolute emptiness. There your intellect will be completely useless, your senses will be completely useless because there is no physicality. Where there is no physicality your sense organs and intellect will become absolutely redundant. If you go beyond shoonya there is something that we refer to as Shi-va. When I say Shiva don’t imagine that calendar man from Shivakasi. (Few laugh) Shi-va means ‘that which is not’. If you touch ‘that which is not’ – we have always seen it is not physical in nature. It is not physical in nature means it does not exist but it is opaque. How can that be? It is not in the realm of your logical mind.

Today modern science believes the whole existence has to oblige to human logic which is a very limited way of approaching life. The whole existence will not oblige to human logic. You think you can fit the whole existence into your head. No, no, your head fits into the existence, the existence will not fit into your head. Your logic can analyze the physicality of the existence. Once you cross the physical dimension your logic is completely out of its realm.

So there are… because this is a dialectical culture, the same science has been expressed in story forms. I… I cannot go into the whole story, it's a long story but when I told this story to one of the top scientists in the world, when I was speaking to him and I explained this, ‘See this is how it is. This is the nature of the existence.’ This is from the yogic lore but we are always told not to believe the lore till it becomes a reality in your experience. And this is the reality in my experience, if you go like this, this is what will happen. So when I spoke to this very top-level scientist who is a Nobel Laureate and I was telling him that this is what it is…

There was a group of them and when I explained this is how it is within me, what do you think? They said, ‘Sadhguru, if you can give a mathematical backbone to what you are talking, this is Nobel Prize stuff. (Few laugh) Can you give a mathematical background?’ I said, ‘I’ll never bother about the mathematics. It's true for me and it's transformed everything that I am because it's true for me; everything that I ever was changed simply because I touched this dimension within me. I don’t wish to work equations for that and anyway Nobel Prize wouldn’t mean anything to me. I would be too embarrassed by such things.

So this story I will… because I will make it so brief there could be holes in it. If I make it elaborate enough there will be no holes in the story; it's a perfect theory. And we have proved it within ourselves that it is true but you want to build a ten billion dollar instrument under the ground to prove the same thing; it's up to you. This can be experientially proved within yourself if you are willing to go into the depths of what this (Referring to oneself) is because this (Referring to oneself) is made exactly the same way the whole universe is made. If you go deep enough into this and you know how this is made, by inference you know how everything in the universe is made, by inference and even now science is also only inferring.

Today modern science has admitted that it's an ever-expanding universe or an endless universe, rather ever expanding is a yogic term, they are calling it a (an?) endless universe. If it's an endless universe, trying to travel across the universe and find out the nature of the universe is untenable, isn't it? Simply out of question. The only way you could know the nature of the universe, nature of the creation and the source of creation is by going inward because whatever you ate in the morning whether it's a (an?) idly or a dosa or a banana has been transformed into a human being in the last few hours. Nobody else can do this except the source of creation.

So if the source of creation is right here if you want to know anything about creation, isn't it the best place to consult? If you want to know anything about creation, isn't the source of creation the best place to consult? And if you had to go to heaven for this you could give it up; if it is right here why don’t you consult? Simply because you’re too enamored by your own thought. You think you are going to capture the whole universe with your thoughts. It is a foolish way to approach. The only reason why science has survived is because of technology. It keeps throwing out technologies. If no technologies were coming out of science, they were just talking about all the things that they have been talking, people would have beaten them down for the money that they spent. And it's happened in the past when there were no technologies and people just spoke science they were beaten down, isn't it?

So science has its value in terms of utility but science cannot open up the existence for human experience. It will not, it can never do it because they are going with intellect. Intellect, as an instrument works only to dissect. The only way intellect can approach anything is to break it up and see. If you ask a scientist to find out something about this flower (Showing a flower) first thing is he will break it up into pieces. I think I should ask a scientist to make me understand one of you. (Laughter) He will talk about dissecting you then. If you break this (Referring to the flower) up you may know many parts of this, you may know the structure of it, you may know the chemistry of it but you will not know the beauty of it, you will not know the completeness of it because the flower is an expression of a plant finding its fulfillment. It's the highest thing for the plant. For its life this is the highest happening; it's the flowering of that life. You will not know that. You will not see the hand of the Creator in this if you break it up but as a whole, if you are willing to pay attention, absolute attention; if, in your approach you make this flower more important than yourself and keep your focus on it you will see the whole universe in this. If you break it up you will have petals, you will have other parts of the flower and you’ll come to vulgar conclusions and then you will learn how to make use of it.

So right now unfortunately our approach, what we call as science has become like this ‘How to use everything in the universe for our benefit?’ If you see a tree… In America they call it wood. I was (Laughs) this happened when I (Laughs) when I was in college. This happened about four years ago when I was in Mysore, for the first time I conducted a program after many, many years and all kinds of people turned up. My teachers from school and college turned up. They wanted to see… (Laughter) what has happened to me. (Laughs) So after I spoke there and we had two-day event and then my English teacher came and hugged me and she said, ‘Now I know why you wouldn’t let me teach Robert Frost.’ I said, ‘Why Madam, why would I let you not teach Robert Frost, I like Frost?’ She said, ‘No, do you remember you wouldn’t let me teach Frost?’ Then I remembered. One day she came and she opened the book and she introduced Robert Frost as a glorious poet and then she started off, ‘Woods are lovely, dark and deep.’ I said, ‘Stop!’ (Laughter) And I said, ‘A man who calls a tree, a wood, I don’t want to listen to him.’ She said, ‘No, no, Robert Frost is a great poet.’ I said, ‘I don’t care how great he is; a man who calls a tree a wood, I will not listen to him.’ I didn’t let her teach. I didn’t let her teach Frost. So after many years she comes up to me and she says, ‘Now I know why you wouldn’t let…’

So if a tiger comes here now from the mountains I mean, if you come from Srilanka, that’s different. (Few laugh) If a tiger comes down from the mountain, looks at you (Gestures) he will think, ‘Wow! Dinner.’ (Laughter) So you look at a tree and you think ‘Wood.’ It's all right for a tiger to do that because that’s all he knows but it's not all right for you to do that, isn't it? But right now that is all science has become. Anything we see how to make use of it, anything we see how to make use of it. Even an invisible atom we won't leave. Even the goddamn boson (Laughter) already people are talking about in how many ways it could be used. We could make a ‘boson bomb’ do you understand? If we make a boson bomb, all of you will just vanish; we don’t even have to deal with your dead bodies, yes, because you will cease to exist just like the boson. Instead of shooting you dead or burning you to death, if we make all the protons in your body collide with each other, ‘phew’ you will just vanish. You want the technology? But they will tell you, ‘No, no, no, it could… there could be medical uses to it. We could do this, we could do that.’

Yes I know all that but just the idea; it doesn’t matter what, you cannot look at anything without thinking, ‘In what way can I make use of it’ is a very gross way to exist. With this level of existence you will have everything and you will have nothing. This is modern life. People have everything like never before and they got nothing in their lives, nothing that you can call of any worth. People who have everything and cannot feel life in any significant way, when they die or when the moment of death comes they will see that they spent these whatever number of years without living a moment because ‘what can I get, what can I get’ is a sure way not to live, because from what you get you can only make a living, it's only by what you give that you make a life. So giving does not mean money or something else or something else, it is just that this moment if you look at this tree how totally you can give yourself to this tree, that is how intensely you know life. If you sit here and calculate ‘What can I get out of this tree’ you will completely miss life, completely. Life will evade you.

So this kind of science which denies you life should be restricted if you ask me. I know I am going to be hugely unpopular because somebody is going to twitter and say ‘Sadhguru says science should be curtailed.’ (Few Laugh) It's all right. I am telling you a science which is driven just by ‘What can I get out of it’ needs to be controlled a bit, otherwise human beings will have everything and they’ll have nothing. When that is your experience then you will destroy everything. Today the planet is not being destroyed because of something else. It is just unbridled use of technology, isn't it? It could have been used for our well-being but it's working against us because we have not worked the other dimensions of life, we are just going with this ‘What can I get, what can I get?’ If you go with this, there will be no planet left after some time. But even if the planet is left, suppose we rope in another ten planets still it will not be enough. We will still have nothing, we will have everything.

This is my experience. Science should have been just a quest to know, not to exploit the creation. It is just a longing to know. Human longing to know, wants to find expression in every possible way. Physical science is it’s one of the ways, perfectly fine but once it starts serving the masters who sponsor it, then, if businesses sponsor it, they are looking for profit from it, if nation sponsor it they are looking how to make more powerful weapons out of it, all the time. You must understand this the cutting-edge science always first becomes cutting-edge military technology, only after that it comes down to other uses. How many lives has it taken, how many more do we want to take? That’s the question.

So this goddamn particle, one good thing it's done is the whole world is thinking particle physics, I like that. (Laughs) That’s nice, but do you know the boson is named after Satyendranath Bose? You know this? No? It's an Indian mathematician, a self-taught mathematician. As Albert Einstein acknowledged, he said, ‘The western sciences couldn’t take a single step without the Indian mathematicians. The fundamentals of mathematics came from the East but always here the other ethos of the culture said, ‘You should not do anything that’s exploitative to nature’ because nature was seen as ‘Mother Nature’. You don’t go about raping Mother Nature. You take only what you need, nothing more. Because of that attitude this science was not converted into technology and that is the wisest way to handle science – just as a quest, a tool, a way to know and nothing beyond that and technology must be really controlled. What is absolutely needed, that's all that should be done. This unbridled usage – already people are talking how to use the boson that they have not seen, when we can use the atom that we have not seen. So it doesn’t matter what you see, you are thinking of how to use it. This attitude unfortunately has been further fueled by the attitude of science. This needs to be checked, otherwise it will be our nemesis. It will for sure be a goddamn everything. (Laughs)