Take a moment with Naval Ravikant, a prominent entrepreneur and investor with a keen interest in life’s profound questions, as he converses with Sadhguru about crafting a conscious existence. This engaging interaction isn’t just about personal fulfillment; it’s a deep dive into how a more conscious approach can lead to a hugely enhanced experience of life.
Naval Ravikant: Sadhguru, welcome. The theme here is Conscious Planet. So, we’re going to talk about making the planet more conscious. Does that mean saving the world or saving the individual?
Sadhguru: The idea that the world is lost and that you or I have to save it is a very clichéd way of thinking. The world is not lost; it moves here and there, but it finds its way. How much going off course can a given generation afford? If you go too far, it will become very messy. If you go off course less, your experience of life will be better. No matter what we do – whether it is business, spirituality, sport, art, music, or anything else – if we do it consciously, it will be of a better quality. If we do it unconsciously or accidentally, we will be unnecessarily anxious, and we will not even enjoy our success.
Whatever small or big things we do in life, the purpose of activity is success. But, unfortunately, successful people often carry very stressed and miserable faces, which is sending a wrong message to the next generation. For instance, in a family where the parents are successful but always stressed and anxious, you will see the children do not want that kind of success. They would rather smoke pot. It has happened again and again because they wonder what the point of all this is.
It is very important that our success is a conscious process. The way we think, emote, how we are, how we speak, and what we do should be a conscious process. Once it becomes conscious, if you are consciously crafting your experience of life, would you make yourself blissful or miserable? What would be the choice? Blissfulness?
Naval Ravikant: Absolutely.
Sadhguru: This is the same choice for everyone. Everyone wants the highest level of pleasantness within themselves. Then why are they often not able to achieve such a simple thing? The issue is that people have not learned how to conduct their own thoughts and emotions, which is most fundamental. If your own hand were smashing your face, it would be considered a serious ailment. If your thoughts or emotions are smashing you from inside, it is not any better.
Whether you call it stress, anxiety, or any kind of mental ailment, it essentially means your intelligence has turned against you. You do not know how to conduct your mind consciously. The mind, which is the greatest miracle, has become a misery-manufacturing machine for many people. Whether you make a miracle or misery out of your mind depends on whether you conduct yourself consciously or unconsciously.
Naval Ravikant: So, how does one control one’s mind consciously?
Sadhguru: I’m not talking about controlling the mind. Why should you control the mind? You must liberate the mind. Right now, the fear of suffering makes people try to control everything. But where do you think the suffering is manufactured?
Naval Ravikant: In the mind.
Sadhguru: So, misery is manufactured in your mind. Why is your mind creating misery for you? Obviously, you have a brain but you do not have a keyboard. Something is happening accidentally. To create inner experience, we are trying to manage the entire outside situation. Let me put it this way: If your body becomes pleasant, we call this health. Most people go to the doctor and take certain measures when they are sick. But in their day to day life, they do not take care of how they sit, how they breathe, how they eat, and what they do.
Everything else depends on your health. If your body becomes very pleasant, we call it pleasure. If your mind becomes pleasant, we call it peace. If it becomes very pleasant, we call it joy. If your emotions become pleasant, we call it love. If they become very pleasant, we call it compassion. If your very life energies become pleasant, we call it blissfulness. If they become very pleasant, we call it ecstasy.
If your surroundings become pleasant, we call it success. To make your surroundings pleasant, you need the cooperation of people and forces around you. To make your body, mind, emotions, and energies pleasant is one hundred percent your business. If you do not know how to be, then no matter what you do in the world, you will become desperate.
The world is being destroyed in pursuit of human happiness and wellbeing. It is not some evil people destroying the planet. It is all of us in pursuit of happiness. I’m asking you a simple question: Whether you experienced joy or misery, did it happen within you or outside of you?
Naval Ravikant: Within.
Sadhguru: Within. So, this is the case.
One day, a potato farmer wanted to eat apples. Being a potato farmer, out of sheer habit, he started digging for apples, but he couldn’t find any. He became furious and dug harder and harder, until the apple tree that was standing there came down upon him.
This is the story of humanity right now. In search of happiness, we are digging up the world. Whether you want joy or misery, you can only find it within yourself. It is not even a finding: You manufacture joy or misery within yourself. If you are conscious, you will definitely manufacture joy; but because you conduct your life accidentally, it leads to all sorts of other outcomes.
Naval Ravikant: So, how do we find this inner joy and peace that you speak of? Is it the science of Yoga?
Sadhguru: Unfortunately, today people think of Yoga as you looking like a leftover noodle. Yoga is not about twisting and turning. The word Yoga means union. What does union mean? Today modern science is telling you, the whole existence is one energy manifesting in a million different ways. The religions of the world have been trying to tell you for a long time, “God is everywhere.” These are not two different realities. One is approaching it logically, another one is approaching it emotionally. These are different ways of looking at it. Essentially, it means that what is here and what is there is not different. If this becomes a living experience for you, then we say you are in Yoga.
For example, what you exhale, the tree inhales; what the tree exhales, you inhale. If all of us actually experienced the fact that part of our lungs is out there in the trees, we would have taken the necessary actions. But we do not experience that. Everyone thinks they are a world by themselves.
Whatever number of people are in the room, each one of them are living in their own world. If you experience this, that if you sit here, you see everything as part of yourself – not mentally, intellectually, or emotionally but experientially...
For example, whatever you ate for lunch today didn’t look, smell, or feel like you, but it has become you in a few hours.
Naval Ravikant: Yes.
Sadhguru: If you ate an apple, it has become a human being now. Something that is not you has become you. This is the reality all the time. But right now, you think this body and mind is you. The experience of individuality is a privilege that has been showered upon us by the magnanimity of creation. But human beings have taken it too seriously. You think your individuality is absolute. Probably most people won’t get it till you bury them. Right now, you can think that you and the soil you walk upon are different. But when we get buried someday, we will become part of the soil effortlessly. Even now we are part of it, but that’s not in your living experience. This is the human problem.
Consciousness means that you become conscious about the nature of your existence. Once you are conscious about the nature of your existence, you would know how to be. We are the only creatures on the planet who are referred to as beings. We don’t call a tiger a tiger being, a camel a camel being, or any other animal a being. They are creatures because they live and die between the two lines that nature has set within them. As human beings, we have the ability to be whichever way we want to be.
But how many people know how to be?
Only if you know how to be will your doing become a conscious expression of who you are. Because we don’t know how to be, doing becomes compulsive. In this compulsiveness – because your being is not significant enough – you want to leave a footprint in the world. But those who want to leave footprints shall never fly in their lives.
Naval Ravikant: So, you talked about consciousness, you talked about being. What does an individual to do? Everyone here is stressed, hurried; they have lots of things to do, lots to achieve... What little change can they make?
Sadhguru: Would they be happy if they had nothing to do? No.
Naval Ravikant: So, is it just the recognition that whatever you are doing is fine?
Sadhguru: No. What I am saying is, if you know how to be, you will do what is needed. In a given situation, you will do your best. According to their capacities, different people will do different levels of activity, and that’s fine. But right now, you think this body and mind are you. Because you don’t know how to be, if you do something small, you are stressed. If you do something big, you are stressed. Whichever way, you are stressed.
People are stressed about just about anything. If they are poor, they are stressed about their poverty. You make them rich, they are stressed about the taxes. If they are not educated, they are stressed about that. If you put them into school, they are stressed. If they are not married, they are stressed about that. If you get them married, they are stressed as well. It goes on like this endlessly. The problem is that people have not learned how to hold their own faculties.
