Sadhguru sheds light on the concept of universal motherhood – valuing and nurturing all life beyond our biological children. Referring to the essence of Yoga, he challenges the limitations of exclusivity, suggesting Yoga as a transformative approach to global issues.
Question: As a mother, I resonate with the idea of being a “mother to the world.” Could cultivating a sense of universal motherhood actually be a key to solving many of the issues we are currently facing globally?
Sadhguru: Let us assume someone is the worst kind of human being. If they step outside, would the sun refuse to shine upon them? Would the trees withhold oxygen because they think this person is no good? Definitely not. When the whole creation does not pass judgments, who are you to do so? What authority do you have to decide who is good or bad, or who belongs to us and who does not?
The importance of motherhood is not in reproduction – it is in experiencing another life as part of yourself. For that, we are bowing down to motherhood. As your children grow, maybe you start forming judgments about them too, labeling them as good or bad. But at least when the child was in your womb, and for a certain period after birth, you were experiencing another life as part of yourself. This is Yoga.
Yoga means union. As a mother, you are experiencing a certain level of union. This is what we are bowing down to. Your children do not look up to you and love you because you gave birth to them, but because you have embraced them as part of yourself.
Not the biological delivery but the extent to which you are able to include the child as part of yourself is what empowers you as a mother. Anybody can reproduce, consciously or unconsciously. The true significance of motherhood is in your ability to include life around you as part of yourself. That is what determines the depth of your experience of life.
Every advertisement in the world promotes being exclusive because they strive to sell their products to you. But if you are inclusive, life happens. If you are exclusive, only your psychological drama happens. So, have you come here to just to go through psychological drama, or to experience life as profoundly as possible? That is what it is all about. When you are caught up in your day-to-day nonsense, you may not realize that.
If someone were to hold a gun to your head, or if your doctor were to tell you that you only have a few more months to live, you would know that the most precious thing is life. The question then is, why wait for such a situation for you to know the value of life? Life is about how you experience it. Is your experience of life a superficial or a profound one? We are looking up to mothers because in some way, they have had a profound experience – at least for a period of time, she held another life as part of herself.
This did not happen because of reproduction but because you were willing to include another life as part of yourself. Why are you not willing to do this every moment of your life? Why does everything have to be biological? Biology is the most basic aspect of your existence. If you wish to remain in the basics of life, it is your choice. But there is something within you that always wants to be more than what you are right now.
Regardless of who or what you are, there is a longing to be more. If you do not facilitate that, even though everything may be going well by societal standards, without knowing why, your face will become long. Many individuals are in that state. When was the last time you heard your own laughter? For you to laugh, does someone have to tell a joke or tickle you?
When you were a child, you were bursting with life. As you grow older, many things, including your physical and mental agility, may decrease. But your aliveness need not go down. When aliveness goes away, we call you dead. You may not be as agile as a five-year-old child, but you can definitely be as alive.
Your aliveness goes down because you are building walls around you, concretizing your individuality. This is what Yoga means: a conscious obliteration of the boundaries of your individual nature so that you become a universal existence. This is the beauty of being human. You can sit here and hold the entire cosmos within you if you wish. No one can stop you. You can make the entire world yours. But many live as strangers on this planet, as if it is not theirs.
This cosmos is so vast that neither scientists nor religious people have figured out where it begins and where it ends. In this vast cosmos, our planetary system is but a tiny speck. Within that, the Earth is a micro speck. And within that micro speck, your home town is a super micro spec. But, within that, you think you are a big person. This is a serious issue – it means you are unaware of the context of your existence.
Let me ask you another question. Where were you before you were born? You were dead for a very long time. And again, after you die, you will be dead for a very long time. You are here, alive, for just a tiny bit of time. In that short span, how many problems arise? These problems do not exist; they are all created in your head. Human suffering is manufactured in the human mind, as are human limitations.
Loss of potential, not fulfilling what you could be, it is the worst kind of loss. Unfortunately, this is the reality for nearly 99.9 percent of humanity, simply because they have a very limited understanding of existence. In this context, being a mother to the world is very important. If you live every moment of your life with the inclusive emotion of being a mother to the world, your life will change.
