Lewis Howes: How do you create more financial, spiritual, health, and relationship abundance?
Sadhguru: You are setting up all the wrong goals.
Lewis Howes: What should the goals be?
Sadhguru: Right now, if, instead of philosophizing, reading scriptures, reading self-help books, you just pay attention to the trees around here – what are they doing? Beneath the ground, they are fighting. What are they fighting for? Is a maple tree trying to produce apples?
Lewis Howes: No.
Sadhguru: It is just trying to be the best possible maple tree it can be. That is all. As a human being, you must see how this life can blossom into its fullest. If it blossoms to its fullest, someone may become rich, someone may become intelligent, someone may become knowledgeable, someone may become loving, someone may become an artist, someone may just wander.
A fully blossomed human being is a joy to see. No matter what they are doing or not doing, they are an asset to the whole humanity. When you said, “financial abundance,” what is your idea of it? Jeff Bezos? $200 billion of personal wealth?
Lewis Howes: $200 billion for me? That is not my definition of abundance.
Sadhguru: What is it? Two billion? These numbers are meaningless. They are only socially relevant, not relevant to you. Let’s say you have $200 billion. It is only in your memory. If I erase your memory, your money is gone.
Lewis Howes: Well, it is in the bank account.
Sadhguru: It is in the account, but if you have forgotten, then what? A whole lot of people buried their treasure, and someone else found it a thousand years later.
Lewis Howes: It is true. A lot of people have lost all their Bitcoin, and they cannot get access to it!
Sadhguru: Yeah. Let me use the word “affluence” instead of “abundance.” Why do you want affluence? Whether it is an individual, a society, or a nation, everyone is striving for affluence. This is because initially it means a choice of nourishment. If you have money, you can eat what you want. Initially, that is the goal. If it goes beyond that, the next thing is a choice of lifestyle.
For example, the United States of America has the highest level of nourishment and lifestyle choices, but you are spending 3.8 trillion dollars on healthcare. That is larger than India’s economy! For 1.4 billion people, we do not have a 3.8 trillion-dollar economy. So, what is the abundance you are seeking? You want to destroy the planet. Do not think in terms of abundance. Think in terms of fulfillment of life.
If you are a fulfilled life, you will do the appropriate thing according to your capability and the times in which you live. Right now, people are doing vulgar things in pursuit of abundance. Two people are living in a fifty-bedroom house! What is the point of that? Can you sleep in fifty different places? You can have everything you can use, but the important point is this: Are you making arrangements as a means to act in the world or as a means to enhance yourself? You must decide. If your car is a little shinier than your neighbor’s, are you better?
The only thing that matters is to be everything you can be within yourself. In our lives, if we do not do what we cannot do, there is no issue; if we do not do what we can do, we are a disaster.
Are you at least as joyful as you were when you were five years of age? If you are not as joyful and as exuberant at thirty-five as you were as a five-year-old, obviously you are a disaster because that was square one of your life. If from square one, you have sunk deeper, it is a disastrous life.
Lewis Howes: So we should not be thinking of abundance and finance…
Sadhguru: Those things will happen according to the times. If you and me were on this planet ten thousand years ago, I definitely would have found a cave in India because there are many, and you would have found a big cave in Ohio or Kentucky. What would have been your idea of abundance in those times?
Lewis Howes: Yeah.
Sadhguru: I am saying, do not think of abundance because ever since we think like that, we have destroyed this planet massively, and now we want to be ecofriendly by driving an electric car. This is fundamentally because of the wrong thinking that something around you can enhance you. The only way to enhance yourself is to bring this piece of life to blossom into the best that it can be.
Lewis Howes: How does someone know what their full potential is?
Sadhguru: See, if you want this tree to grow to its fullest, do not ever look at the fruit – focus only on the root. If you count the fruits on a tree, maybe one tree is bearing more fruit than another one. That is not the point. If you nurture the root fully, it will become what it has to become. A blade of grass cannot become a tree, but is it not wonderful?
If you want to be nurtured, the first and foremost thing is to look back and see – has there been at least one twenty-four-hour period in your life that passed without anxiety, fear, and agitation? If you come to ease for twenty-four hours, your ability to use your mind and body may go up one hundred percent. As there is a science and technology to create the external situations that we want, there is a whole science and technology to create inner situations the way we want.
