During a talk at IIT Chennai, Sadhguru looks at how the subcontinent was a place where there was phenomenal infrastructure for inner wellbeing. Today, this infrastructure has largely been dismantled. He looks at why it is important to recreate this infrastructure for human consciousness.

Full Transcript:

Speaker: So we have understood that you're so blissful by just seeing you and hearing you talk, but going through the history we find it so rare. Why is it so rare that we get enlightened people?

Sadhguru: It is not rare, it is just that lot of them were not famous, that’s all. They just quietly lived blissfully, it's not rare. There's substantial history in this country where every generation saw any number of enlightened beings in the past. Today it is rare because… See, suppose you… you went to just the outskirts of Chennai hundred years ago, it would be rare to find a person who can read a Tamil letter, forget about an English letter. Yes? If you walked into a village you had to search the whole village to get one man who can read a Tamil script; local language, not even a foreign language. Today if you go there, almost hundred percent everybody can read Tamil, at least sixty percent I believe; at least fifty percent can read English language. Yes? Why did this happen? Because there's infrastructure, isn't it? There's infrastructure of education, so it happened. And fortunately in the past there was phenomenal infrastructure in this country for inner well-being. This is the only society which built a lot of infrastructure for inner well-being, but today there's very little infrastructure.

So this is one of the commitments that we have for the world, that we want to build infrastructure where it's purely for inner well-being of the human being. Right now we are on the way to build what's called as Aadhi Yogi Alayam in United States; about fifty we want to build. We’re building the first one here in India, which is a 65,000 sq. ft. hall without columns; it is… it's a large hall like this. We already built one in United States. We want to build fifty in fifty states and now in UK just we were finalizing plans for this one; I came yesterday. Because there is no infrastructure for human consciousness; that’s the reason why it's not happening. Here and there one man could read in the past – why? Because there was no infrastructure. If that man has to go to school he has to travel hundred kilometers, so he did not go. That whole village did not go, only one guy went somehow. So the same now – if you have to know something about yourself you have to go to Velliangiri Hills, Isha Yoga Center; you never made it, isn't it?

Participant: I went.

Sadhguru: You went, oh. You're those ardent ones. (Laughter) So I'm saying if there was that kind of infrastructure in every street. In every street there was infrastructure for inner well-being, beyond faith, beyond religion, beyond denominations, just as… as there is a milk booth, do you understand? As there is a milk booth, as there's a public tap… I won’t talk about toilets, there aren’t any. (Laughs) So as there is a milk booth, as there is a public tap, as if you want a auto rickshaw it is there. Just like that, if you want to turn inward there must be infrastructure in the society, isn't it? If there is no infrastructure how will you produce those people? You will not produce them. That’s what is missing. We need to put that back. (Talks aside: Is this girl…)