 Sadguru, it's a great opportunity and honor for me to interact with you. In many ways, they can't be a greater contrast between two individuals. At least in appearance, we are. I grew up in a village in Telugu-medium and you are in the spiritual realm and I am anything but spiritual, I am in the completely temporal realm. I built all my life around the principles of rationality and logic. In some ways, this is a collision of the two frames of reference and I greatly look forward to learning a great deal from you and getting a lot of insights as to how to manage the synthesis. In some ways, you are the theses and the antithesis. So hopefully, synthesis will emerge today, Sadguru. Sadguru, with your permission, I would like to broadly explore three or four themes. The first is about what is right and what is wrong and what is good and what is bad and what is morality, what are taboos? And what is the role of values and the role of institutions? That's one broad subset of themes. The second is as the blurb said politics and corruption, you cannot escape those two things unfortunately in India today. Therefore politics and corruption without going into party politics, the broader issue of politics. The third is our nation and our society. And the fourth is this collision of spiritual and the temporal worlds. Oh, you better be ready for a whole night then. If I may start off with the first line of enquiries. When you were a person of religion, you were given certain edicts, what is good, what is bad, the 10 commandments, the do's and the don'ts. But in ordinary life, for most people, particularly in the public domain, to distinguish between good and bad seems to be increasingly difficult. I always held that there are two realms, the individual, individual gain, and the second is the public good. If one is clashing with the other, if my personal gain is clashing with the public good, then that is something bad. If both are in harmony, then that is something good. That seems to me to be a workable definition of what is good and bad for ordinary interaction between the citizen or individual and the community and the society. What are your thoughts on that? See, once you start a debate as to what is good and what is bad, actually in reality this debate can go on forever without coming to a conclusion. Obviously you have debated this within yourself and around yourself for many years and still there's no conclusion. And believe me, people have been debating this for thousands of years and still there is no conclusion. Why this is so is, generally this starts from within the family, that is people who have the authority within the family. If you really carefully look at it, essentially it boils down to this, what I do is good, what you do is bad. That extends to the society, to politics, to various things. Whoever is in a position of power, who is in a position of dominance, they may not spell it out so crudely. But in so many ways they're telling you what I do is right, what you do is wrong. So ultimately it becomes about whoever is in a state of advantage is right, whoever is in a state of disadvantage is wrong. Well that principle is the basis of all exploitation and all the ugliness that you see on the planet. So instead of starting a debate on what is good and what is bad, I think what we need is what is appropriate and what is inappropriate to our times, to our society, to our existence here, to our level of economics, what is right and what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. Now if I'm just saying for example, we are a rich nation because if you have twenty-nine rupees per day you are rich in this country. We are one rich nation, another rich nation is United States. So between these two if you compare, what may be right there is not right here because the conditions are not same. People's lives are not same, culture is not same, people's emotions are not same, people's wants, likes and dislikes are not same. So what is right there may be completely wrong here. What is right here may be completely wrong there. So within the nation, when we say a nation we believe we are all Indians but here everybody has opinion of his own. It will be fanciful to think there is one person here who doesn't have an opinion of his own who goes by Indian constitution. There's not one single person like that here. Everybody has their own opinion, their own twist of what is right and wrong, isn't it? One point two billion people, every one of them has their own opinions. Two people cannot agree as to what's right and wrong. So instead of looking at right and wrong, if we start looking at what is appropriate. Okay, these are our conditions, this is our life. What is the most appropriate thing to do right now? Tomorrow if our conditions change, the appropriateness changes, then there will be no clashes. Constantly the clash between the previous generation and this generation between one human being and the other human being is your ideas of right and his ideas of right are so different. Parents and children are fighting, administration and people are fighting, management and union is fighting simply because your ideas of good and bad are very different and it's always different. Within the family between the husband and the wife, basic unit of the family, their ideas of right and wrong are very different. So once you enter that space, you are entering into an endless controversy, no possibility of a solution. But if you look at appropriateness of action, then we can arrive at what is the appropriate thing to do in our society, for our conditions, for our limitations. Sadguru, I hear you saying that, A, the cultural ambience in which you live, that matters about the appropriateness and B, it changes from time to time, generation to generation. In other words, people sometimes confuse taboos with morals, the changing fashions and attitudes with morals. But unless we have some kind of a yardstick which is measurable and somewhat universal in guiding our behavior and dealing with the society at large or perhaps even in nature, how are we going to give people a yardstick other than religious headaches? That is the challenge for many agnosts because we can't go by the Ten Commandments merely because God gave us those. We can't go by the Gita because Lord Vishnu told us so. We need a temporal yardstick. We need an institutional mechanism to be able to measure and say this is right, this is wrong, a talisman. We need to understand this. Right now, we are trying to fix human life with morality. It's never worked. Even the Ten Commandments that you are referring to repeatedly has never worked. It's only carved in the stone. Nobody has ever really stuck to it, believe me. People who said thou shall not kill are the ones who are killing constantly. It is just that it will happen in a different gob, in a different way. So if trying to fix the human societies with morality will only bring more and more deception and above all it kills life in so many different ways. Why are we trying to fix life with morality? Essentially because we have never bothered to stir up humanity. There is something called as humanity within us. If you stir up this dimension which we call as humanity, when somebody is feeling very human he doesn't need morality. He will be fine the way he is. But instead of being a human being, he becomes a Christian or a Hindu or a Muslim or an Indian or a Pakistani or this or that or so many things, caste creed and many, many things. So instead of a human identity he takes on a different identity. Now you can do most horrible things with great pride. Yes, you can kill. Thousands, not one. You can kill thousands and feel really good about it. I did it because I did it for the nation, I did it for my religion, I did it for my caste, creed, whatever else. So your identity is shifting from your fundamental identity to make believe identities. It may serve limited purpose. We are a nation because we have to politically manage ourselves. It is not some divine dictum that this is a nation like this. We are the people who drew the lines, isn't it? Now we believe that's how it is. For certain functional realities we draw lines, but that is not the reality. So a human being should essentially be identified as a human being, not by his religion, not by his race, not by his caste, creed, nationality. No, if he sits here as a human being, you don't… you will see he does not need morality. He will be fine. And that's what is needed in the society to stir up humanity, not morality. That's a… that's a terrific message, Sadguru. Essentially what you are advocating is that go beyond the individual, go beyond the sect and the creed and embrace humanity itself and you will not go wrong in your actions. I'm not saying embrace humanity. I'm saying you are human, isn't it? I don't have to teach you to be human. You are human. The problem is somebody else has taught you that you are something else. Somebody else has told you you're Indian. Somebody else has told you you're Hindu. Somebody else has told you you're Muslim. But the reality is you're human. If you go little further, you are just a piece of life, isn't it? If you sit here as a piece of life, do you have any problem with any piece of life in the existence? If you sit here and throb as a piece of life, which is what's happening, it doesn't matter. We are talking something, whatever we may be talking. Essentially we are sitting here as throbbing as a piece of life. Rest is all made up by us, isn't it? This is the reality of existence. If you sit here as a piece of life, you instantly know that there is nothing in the existence with which you are not connected. But if you sit here as an Indian, if the person sitting next to you is P, there's problem. If you sit here as a Hindu, the next person is M, problem. Like this it goes on, it doesn't stop there. It goes into further and further divisions and divisions and divisions. So essential dimension of spiritual processes that you dis-identify yourself with all the false identities you have taken on and to learn to sit here just as a piece of life. If you sit here as a piece of life and throb as a piece of life, breathe as a piece of life. You know this happened a few years ago because you mentioned this project Green Hands, I'm bringing this on. When I said that we need to plant 114 million trees to get Tamil Nadu to 33% green kava, people said, Sadguru, do you know what is 114 million? Is it possible for any human being to plant this many? See I told them the population of Tamil Nadu is 62 million people. If all of us plant one tree, take care of it for two years and plant one more tree, what is the number? You got it. So it's not difficult, even a beggar is capable of planting one tree, isn't it? Now the problem is that they must feel for it. How do you do it? I told them, you don't worry. I went out village to village called farmers' associations together. I told them one simple thing, just sit here. Where do you want to sit? In the sun or under the tree? Choose. You know what's the choice. Everybody sits under the tree. Now I said, see are you breathing? Yes. I want you to understand what you exhale, the tree is inhaling. What the tree is exhaling, you are inhaling. Just sit here and feel it, it's happening. One half of your lungs is hanging out there. Your breathing equipment is not completely here. Only one half is here, one half is hanging out there. Just see the tree and breathe. It just caught like a fire. We have not planted one and fourteen million trees, but seventeen million trees. And Tamil Nadu's green cover has officially gone up by seven point two percent. And we didn't give up our lives to do this. This is just one of the small things we do. This is just one aspect of our activity. We didn't give up our life to do this. Just that if everybody gets involved in such a small job, isn't it? Why are they not getting involved? Because they are identified with something. If they sat here as a piece of life, nobody had to tell them. They would have anyway done it by themselves. So it is because of these wrong identifications that we are doing all these crazy things and you are trying to fix it with morality, it's not going to work. It's not worked for these thousands of years, isn't it? So the best thing is, first step is to stir up your humanity. That is done. The next thing is to see that you are just a piece of life. Even being human is your idea. Well, the theory of evolution is telling you, just sometime ago you were a monkey. I'm sorry, not me, Charles Darwin. Just sometime ago you were a monkey and the difference between you and a chimpanzee. Your DNA is only one point two three percent different from that of a chimpanzee. Not a big difference, isn't it? After all, they are your relatives still. Many of your relatives look like that, isn't it? When you don't like them. So experiencing life as life is more important than we making up something which is not true. This is what has happened to human society. This is what has happened to human psyche that they are not sitting here as life. They are sitting here as so many things which they are not. They realize this only when they die. Sadguru, as a parochial aside, I wish the foundation is in Andhra Pradesh so that we would have got the benefit of the tree plantation. I am in Andhra Pradesh right now. I hope these seeds will truly spread. Sadguru, that brings me to the question of ensuring that the moral conduct is actually upheld while spiritual gurus, religion itself and societal norms have a value. They don't seem to be sufficient. Only in India whenever we talk about corruption or some other misconduct in public life or in private life, we talk of morality and values instead of talking about institutions. As far as I am concerned, there is no corruption in India. Where is corruption in India? There is only banditry. I don't see any corruption. Because corruption means you come to me and you want a favor to be done. I am willing to do it but you know, under the table I want two rupees from you. This is corruption. I break your head and I take everything that you have. This is not corruption. It's just planned. So when we talk of all these evils in public domain, oftentimes we talk of values in this country rather than enforcing a certain code of conduct. There is something that troubles people like me because if indeed values without any external compulsion can be internalized and they can guide the behavior of every single human being, they probably guide the behavior of a large majority of people because if there is peace in this country, if all of us are going to go back home after this session with reasonable degree of certainty that there will not be any victims of violence, it's because the society has these norms and values. There is always deviant behavior in society unless the laws of the land, unless the enforcement mechanism is strong enough to enforce a certain code of conduct and prove that there is punishment for bad behavior and reward for good behavior, I am afraid values in themselves will not for long sustain us. Not at all. Now this is something that we need to get from you because over emphasis on values at the cost of institutions sometimes may actually become an excuse for doing nothing to build institutions. It's a bit like this water in the glass. The water is obviously the one that is giving life. Without that we can't fix the thirst. But without the glass, without the container, the water is not usable. While water is what gives life, the container, the institutions are what make the life, the value usable. So my appeal to you is give us your views and if you broadly think that this is the right approach, what institutional mechanisms we need to build in your estimate to build higher levels of public integrity, higher levels of civic conduct. See one important thing that India needs to do is to simplify the laws in a way that everybody understands it. Right now it's so, so complex and so ambiguous. Nobody really knows what it is. And because there is so much ambiguity, it creates so much grey areas which breeds corruption endlessly. If there is no ambiguity, somebody just couldn't come and ask money out of me to do some work, isn't it? There is so much ambiguity. These laws were largely created by the English because they wanted ambiguity so that they could interpret it whichever way they want. If they want to pick you up tomorrow morning, they want to pick you up and there's a good enough reason. We have still kept the same laws and even today it is true the law can just come and pick you or me up now and I don't know what I have done but you can pick you up and they can produce something, number, whatever, criminal procedure code, some damn number that I am not aware of and they can say you did this. Because it's such an ambiguous law, this is good to control foreign nations if you occupy them, not for our nation to move ahead. Too much ambiguity. To give you an example, I'm sure there are people involved in various kinds of real estate, it is one of the big activities happening. If you want to... I don't know how long it takes in Andhra Pradesh, normally in Tamil Nadu it takes twelve to fourteen months to get an approval for a building. Many things would have changed in fourteen months time. You may be no more interested to build in fourteen months time. You go through some sixteen departments and you have to put people to follow this file every day where it is going and of course there is a fixed fee, beyond the fee. All that you do still fourteen months. In the end, you have spent so much, you have spent so much time with vengeance you break the law. Understand? Just with vengeance because you... you spent so much money. If you said ten thousand square feet, I want to build fifteen thousand square feet because anyway I've paid you, what is the big deal? It comes to that. So all laws are flouted without any problem. In United States we are building, you know we are building a big center. Here if you go, they have a code book, building code. Your... your architect anyway has to be certified. He must know the codes. Apart from that a code book is given to you about two-and-fifty pages. You better read it. You build whatever you want, no department, no sanction. You build whatever you want. But before occupation, he will come for an inspection. If it's by the code, it's fine. If it's not by the code, your building goes down and you go in. Simple. So now the amount of government machinery that is needed just to sanction a building is cut down to just a few people rather than these various departments. If I'm a citizen of this country, why do you think I'm naturally a criminal? Why are you sanctioning what I should do, what I should not do? Just tell me this is the way to build in this country. I will build that way. If I don't, bring it down. I'm just saying this, one example. You can see million examples like this in the country where loss and unnecessarily complicated and ambiguous which is essentially breeding ground for corruption. Sadhguru, the saying in Andhra Pradesh is in Tamil Nadu you give a bribe and your work gets done. Don't tell me. In Andhra Pradesh you give a bribe and still you're harassed. So there are still grades and grades in this corruption phenomenon in this country. Sadhguru, before we go into the issue of politics and corruption because all of us love to hear politicians. I wouldn't allow that because it's become a fashion and a fad and almost a compulsion that wherever you go people are talking politics. How horrible the politicians are, whether they know about it or they don't know about it from a tea shop to an office and wherever else it's happening. If you are a responsible citizen what democracy means is it is the people's government. These politicians did not land from the sky. They're one among you who stood up to do something. Now for whatever reasons they've become the way they've become. You do not know how many have become like that, how many not. We are generalizing because we have a certain pleasure in painting everything very bleak and black. If your nation is important for you and if you believe that you have handed over your nation to a bunch of crooks and you are sitting here and it's entertainment for you, I think it is you who needs to be punished, not the corrupt because democracy cannot be a spectator sport. It is a participatory process. If I say participatory, most people's understanding of this is if I come out once in five years and vote, my responsibility is over. No, democracy has various instruments through which you can participate on a daily basis in the governance of your country, your state, your city and your street. There are various mechanisms. Oh, I don't know. Why you don't know because you're not cared, isn't it? Why you have not educated yourself to know is you have not cared because the idea of the nation has not gone deep enough in this country. Still our identifications with our religions, our caste, our creed, our family is more predominant than the identity of the nation. This is the reason why these things are happening. I don't know if I can share this but let me try it out because this happened in Andhra Pradesh. I was traveling with a lady who comes from a political family in Andhra Pradesh. I saw the way things were going on in the family and staff and I just joked if you are given a choice, probably your father will break the country into four pieces and give it to the four children that he has. I was amazed and shocked. I didn't know what… I don't know how to articulate this expression. The person was actually genuinely said, What is wrong with that? Our father loves us. It's my birthright. Yes. Now what we need to understand is we as a nation are moving from feudalistic existence to a democratic existence. The system has changed but our mind has not changed. We are still feudalistic. People are complaining, not everybody. A lot of people are complaining. Their complaint is only that we didn't get the chance to be corrupt. We are at the receiving end or the giving end. They are not complaining that there is corruption. Really I'm telling you. I have been interacting with people on all levels and I know they are not really complaining about corruption. It is just that we have to pay and they are taking. I would like to be on the other side. If you want to test it out, tomorrow morning remove all the police from Hyderabad city, just see how many people actually stop at the red light if there is no police man. My average is 90% won't stop. Some fools like me will stop. I'm driving in Coimbatore or wherever, red light, I stop. Everybody is going zook-zook next to me and they are looking at me. Who is this fool? Who is blocking the traffic? They are looking at me. What's wrong with you? No police. So essentially our integrity has gone down. It is not even a question of integrity. It is just that within ourselves we are still very feudalistic but we are trying to be democratic. So democracy in India is still in an evolutionary state. There is a lot more evolution and nobody has done to educate people as to what is democracy. Not enough work has been done. It has not been brought into our education systems. Social organizations, the government itself should have taken it up in a big way to educate people via democracy. See the moment we vote for our religion or caste or creed or even family, if you vote there is no democracy anymore. There is only feudalism, isn't it? Democracy will be a functional democracy only when you go and vote and you don't know who your wife voted for, who your husband voted for and you don't want to know. Only if you have this kind of integrity, democracy will work. You tell your whole family, all of you vote for this person. This is not democracy. It's finished. I am saying that has not been understood at all. We had a set of by elections in Antapradish recently in eighteen assembly constituencies in one Lok Sabha constituency. It is widely believed that something like four hundred to five hundred crore rupees was spent at the very least. It's not spent, it's invested. Sadhguru, you made some extremely important comments about democratic evolution while we all have aspirations to expect that we'll suddenly become a great liberal democracy overnight without working hard at it. It's somewhat unrealistic is the gist of what you're saying and I'm grateful for those comments because that appreciation is very critical, particularly for those of us sitting here in the middle classes who are so impatient about what's happening in the country. In that context, Sadhguru, somebody said, the best way of getting justice is rendering justice to your adversary, to your opponent. The quickest way of getting justice because he will then understand your point of view and he will then come to an agreement which is just to both of you. Oftentimes I think in dealing with public affairs in this country, we have forgotten that there is this acrimony, this bitterness, not only among political parties but also between the media and the political parties, between the public and the political parties and the governments, a lot of anger and a lot of polarization. One thing I would like you to advise is Sadhguru. If you ask a politician, look, why are you doing what you're doing? You're a good man, you're an ethical man. A, he has many alibis. He'll tell you a hundred reasons why he genuinely had to do what he did in order to survive in office. In other words, honest and good conduct is not conducive to survival in political office increasingly in the country. And B, in any country, even in the United States or Britain or Germany or Japan, there's always a clash between what the voters want in the short term and what the nation needs in the long term. And the politician has the difficult task of bridging these two. And he cannot survive without the voters' goodwill and the nation cannot survive without the politician's wisdom. How do you bridge this gap, Sadhguru? They like the question. They like the question, they may not like the answer. First thing is I would like you and everybody else to drop the word justice from their language because there's no such thing as justice on the planet. What is justice for you will be injustice for somebody. Usually the word justice is used to enforce revenge on someone whether it's legal revenge or illegal revenge. But whatever, if somebody does a killing, he thinks he's got what he deserved. Somebody thinks so, isn't it? That's why they do it. So let's not go by justice. Let us simplify the laws and enforce the law. Right now nobody has any right to think about justice. We must become a law abiding society first. After that the luxury of justice will come when sometimes when the law itself is cruel we can break the law and deliver justice. Right now the way we are in this country there is no luxury like that. Here law must be enforced first. Simply enforce the law. It may be unjust but enforce it because without a semblance of order there will be no luxury of justice in any society. Right now we have no order. Where is the question of justice? Revenge will be labeled as justice. Now how to bring this about in a society? As I said, one most important thing is to simplify the laws. And if you want to live in this country everybody must understand the basic laws what the laws are. Most of the people existing in this country do not know what the basic laws are. Every time you ask they will throw their hands up. They think somebody should tell them no we must make it a law that if you want to live in this country at least this many basic laws you must know. If you want to drive on the street you must know what are the laws of the street, isn't it? Similarly if you want to live in this country you must know this, this and this. Not that you heard from your neighbor, not like that. Proper education everybody knows that these are the laws. If you break it this is the punishment. Everybody should know, isn't it? And then enforce it. It's not as simple enforcing. Making the law itself is complex. Enforcement is a super complex thing because here comes justice in justice. So for a certain period of time we must be willing to surrender justice and just take the law. People who are enforcing law sometimes will enforce it in unjust ways. You must endure that. If you don't endure that you will have a disorderly society, a lawless society. Then revenge will be the way but we will call it justice. We will go about labeling it as justice, taking revenge on each other. Many things are happening. People are shooting each other and they think they are rendering justice because the law is not sensible. So in making this happen in creating an orderly society, not a just society, I want you to understand this because this is a serious sacrifice that we must be willing to make if we want to move ahead. This is a very serious sacrifice that I don't ask for justice. Enforce the law on me. Whatever the law, I'll go by it. It may not be just but I'll go by the law right now. If the law is very unjust we can look at restructuring in the law but beyond the law no justice. Nobody has the discretion to deliver justice. This has to be established. This one thing we have not done yet. See the problem with us is if you travel 100 kilometers in India people look different. They dress differently. They speak differently. Different languages. Our food is different. Everything is different. But still for over 10,000 years the whole world has referred to us as one nation. Though we were over 200 political entities at some time still you know we've been doing trade with Syria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Jerusalem, Greece, all these places for over 8,000, 10,000 years even at those times they referred to this country as Hindustan though there were 200 entities it was referred to as one nation as Bharatvarsh or Hindustan or whatever the name. Because somewhere people saw this as one nation though it was ruled by many kings because there was one ethos which is something that the politicians and administrators and the people have never paid attention to. The only thing which keeps us as one nation is a certain fundamental spiritual ethos which is not on the surface but which is always there. In the sense people recognize this as one nation from outside because they all believed in something. This nation has never been a nation of believers we have been a nation of seekers because spiritual process has been the main thing here people are not believing in God they are seeking mukti or liberation or freedom there is a difference between a seeker and a believer a believer means he's made a conclusion a seeker means he's wide open he's realized that he does not know that's why he's seeking this one quality set us apart from the rest of the world so outside world recognized as one nation though there were so many political entities we need to understand even today it is only this spiritual thread which is keeping this as one nation if you right now it's being systematically hack-dut if you break this one thing after twenty five thirty years you will wonder why are we one nation and we will break if you do not strengthen the fundamental spiritual ethos of this nation if you hack it down with beliefs and other kinds of identities you will see you will break up into various nations you will not be one nation Sadguru I hear you clearly and I entirely agree with you that unless unity and order are kept even above liberty if necessary if there is a clash we are in danger I totally concur with you as a true democrat and libertarian but whether spiritualism could be the glue to keep the country united when there are so many meanings of spiritualism in the name of spiritualism if a certain religious persuasion or a certain philosophical tradition is propagated in a very pluralist country like India the dangers to disunity are even greater I am not even talking about morality issue I am not even talking about rights issue the dangers to disunity are far greater some people could argue if you over emphasize a certain spiritual tradition if the emphasis is on the humanist tradition that you have always been advocating beyond a certain religion or beyond a certain philosophical tradition then that will be perfectly alright unfortunately in this country this mix of religion and politics has done as a great disservice so how do you distinguish between religiosity and politics and spiritualism which is true and all-encompassing let us first of all make a distinction between what is a religion and what is spiritual process a religion arises because they have a set of beliefs a belief arises because somebody says this is it whether it is ten things written down or twenty-five things written down or three things written down that's not the point something written down somebody says this is it nobody listens then we say God said it everybody sits up and still some people don't listen those in the back benches don't listen then we tell if you don't listen God will come and burn you out then they also listen so this has been the method of the religion that is essentially you believe something let us understand the word belief when you say I believe something what it means is you don't know what it is but you assume that's what belief means the English word belief literally means something that you do not know you made a strong assumption about it that becomes your belief so essentially it is ignorance institutionalized Sadguru, pardon me for a brief intervention I entirely agree with you but if that ignorance is not universal in the sense that my ignorance is different from the other person's ignorance my God is different from his and therefore there is yes, yes I'll come to that no two human beings will believe the same thing okay you believe one thing I believe one thing now today we are both friends tomorrow if you I think this is it because my God said it if you negate it initially I'll tell you please don't do it if you don't listen tell me whom should I protect you or my God I will naturally take the side of my God and we wish to you know put you in a different posting up in the heaven so the moment you believe the moment you believe something that you do not know you have started a conflict the conflict might not have erupted but it will erupt someday so that's that is the reason why I am saying one should understand the distinction between believing knowing and seeking knowing obviously has not happened so the only option that you have is to seek so when you say I am a religious person you refer to yourself as a believer that means you have assumed something and concretized the assumption and you want to concretize it assumption in ten thousand people around you when you say I am a spirit I am on the path of spirituality you will say I am a seeker when can you seek only when you have realized you do not know you can seek no seeking can be genuine if you assume something and then seek you do not know that's why you seek if you come here and you do not know can you fight with somebody you have no cause to fight with anybody you have nothing to protect because you do not know so spiritual process will remove conflict entirely not in the society essentially it removes it within you because social conflict is just a manifestation of the conflict that's happening in individual human minds if I am fired up that you are transgressing on my beliefs I will gather hundred people and then start something on you okay but it is what started in my mind which manifests in the society not otherwise so essentially the very root of conflict is taken away spiritual process also means this that from the false identities that you have taken coming to the reality of who you are as we already went through this if you are identified or if you realize you are just a piece of life and this life cannot happen here without being connected with the whole existence and if this becomes a living experience for you only if it becomes a living experience for you you must take the responsibility of other people's lives not otherwise so always in this country in this culture if somebody has to become a king first thing is he must take a spiritual step because he needs inclusiveness if he does not care if he does not include these people as his it doesn't matter what his intentions are he what he does will not be good to the people so this inclusiveness if has to come spiritual process not only has to touch the population but first it must touch the leadership we were doing a program for a group of very prominent people about eight years ago and one person who is a very well known and very important person in the administration stood up and asked Sadhguru, that's fine what about the country I said see the many things you can do but the most important thing is some transformation is needed within the leadership because a leader means if you become a leader of the people every thought that you generate every emotion that you generate every action that you perform is going to impact millions of people it's a tremendous responsibility and a privilege when you have such a privilege the first thing that you should do is enhance this fix this in the way it needs to be fixed now you are going with the idea of you can fix it with morality but I'm telling you morals themselves your moral and somebody else's moral will clash somewhere as somebody's belief and somebody else's belief will clash your ethics and somebody's ethics will clash somewhere I'm saying this not to provoke you but I would like you provoked you are when you have a set of ethics and you think this is it you are also a kind of religion I'm the only religious person here because I have no values I have no ethics I have no beliefs all I know is if I look at people like this I do not know which is me and which is not me I see myself as everything and that's all I know this will not clash with anything this is guaranteed it will not conflict with anything Essentially Sadhu what you are saying is there can only be an approach not necessary in answer and there is no one definite answer I said there is one classic answer which will handle everything because if if one set of beliefs when they took it it actually worked for them you understand but as it grew as the numbers gathered then conflict erupted similarly one set of morals or ethics when you take it initially as an individual it will work wonderfully for you as if you gather huge numbers behind you people with these ethics will clash with people with some other kind of ethics no ethics people So you cannot really have another set of commandments you have to think of a uniform framework which everybody can understand and appreciate Sadhu you have made a very passionate plea for spiritualism beyond religion something like a pantheistic approach to life rather than belief in a particular God and therefore no spiritual process has always been not a religious process you need to understand this this is the only godless country on the planet this may be shocking the people who believe and every day go to the temple you need to understand this we have 33 million gods in Goddesses because we understood the technology of God making we understood God is our making so if you want you can make the tree in your garden a God if you want you can make a rock into your God if you want you can make your mother into your God if you want you can make your car into your God anything you want you can make it into your God so we understood all we need is if we look at life closely enough there is no piece of creation without the hand of the creator in it when I say this suppose we take an atom we know how proton neutron everything is doing but we do not know what makes it happen like this there is some force making all this happen now if you as much as eat a banana this banana becomes a human being over a period of time within yourself there is an intelligence which is making this happen this intelligence which we call as a source of creation this source of creation is in every piece of creation if you recognize it well an atom could be your God an ant could be your God an elephant could be your God anything because we understood this we went on creating now people say India has too many Gods I feel they don't have enough Gods we had 33 million Gods and Goddesses when our population was so now you can make it 1 billion yes since then because of external invasions and things they made you feel ashamed of your Gods you stopped being creative if you had 1.2 billion Gods and Goddesses if every one of you have actually you have this option there is something called as Ishta Devata if you don't like any of the Gods that you have you can create your own I have my God you have your God will we ever fight? no only if my God has a following of 100 people now we are going to fight my God is only my God we are not going to fight so this is a simple understanding we came to long time ago because all you want is you want an entity to relate with without any inhibitions this is a human need you can't take it away people want an entity with which they can relate without any inhibition whoever may be around you your family your friends still there are inhibitions you can say something you can't say something you want somebody with whom you can be just yourself this is a fantastic therapy for you and it works wonderfully well there is no person on the planet whose life is as sweet as the life of a devotee not a believer I am saying a devotee because in devotion he finds he is so sweet his life is beautiful for himself and he will never do anything beyond that his sweetness will anyway spread so the important thing that we need to understand here is we are always thinking the way we are creating things in our mind is more important than the creator's creation which is a completely wrong thing because this intelligence itself comes from creator's creation now who is the creator you think like this only because you are a person this is your personality because you are human you think one big human being is sitting up there and doing things for you that is a childish version but if you created your own God you know very well you created and still it works wonderfully works for you now the important thing is to make a distinction a clear distinction between belief systems which are labeled as religions of the world and seeking, wanting to know modern science has grown the way it's grown only because people were seekers isn't it if you turn outward and seek you get labeled as a scientist if you understand if you want to know life the best thing is to probe the life that you are you will become a spiritual person but both are seeking so we call this spiritual sciences because you are seeking systematically you are not assuming anything this is needed because we fight because we've assumed isn't it it's our assumptions which are quarreling the fight is never between good and bad though people would like to project like that the fight is always between one man's belief versus another man's belief religious or otherwise Sadhguru, to go back to the practical realm of politics and governance we have a real challenge in the country today there's no point skirting over that you go to any party leader any legislator in the country an MLA or MP or any chief minister or position leader privately they all have the same lament they say look I want to do something good but without spending crores or rupees to buy the vote I'm not able to get elected without putting up crooks and criminals as candidates in many places my party does not have a chance of getting those seats but once I get those people in this manner I am helpless because then I'm caught in a vicious cycle I cannot get out of it now what do I do I know this is a self created problem after all the political process that ought to be the solution has become the problem over a period of time partly because we centralized power partly because we gave an illusion to people that a monarch is elected a king is elected not a representative to get things done through due process of law partly because we have not really ensured even simple delivery of service as a birth certificate, a ration card without some bakshis or safaris nothing happens so we have a complex mess you don't have money you are not born just understand you are not born absolutely you know one famous cricket star when he was actually test cricketer he told me of a story in Bangalore there was a death in the family he went to the municipal office for a death certificate and he wanted immediately they said no you can collect it tomorrow by paying 50 rupees then he asked the lady at the counter look I have to go on a West Indies tour tonight as a test team he was a very famous test cricketer I will give you 100 rupees now can you give the certificate now she said yes so one thing nice about corruption is it's totally socialist cricket star or influential person or a poor person it applies universally there is a huge problem if you play 250 rupees you can get it even if the person is not dead absolutely add a few more zeroes you can actually kill the person but Sadhguru given this context unless some big changes are initiated one trusting of people to take care of their lives and their communities locally empowering the community so that leadership emerges and they understand responsibility and limits but with a danda some things go wrong you punish them very firmly but people start taking responsibility now you must define the word community there is a challenge on that a village, a ward whatever that is not community my religion is my community my caste is my community my family, my mama and his sons are my community my village is not my community my ward what word are you talking about? I don't know my community is my blood so the definition of community has to change which is not easy work because we have not done that work these things work best if it is done when the euphoria of nationhood happens you are absolutely right Sadhguru this is an extremely complex task we messed up quite a bit but now we have a challenge in our hands we cannot give up in despair obviously and we cannot wait at the infinitum for a change because India does not have the luxury of another century or two centuries to transform the democracy we have to make it happen as fast as is humanly possible we have been developing for too long exactly we have been developing too long so given that unless you create a situation in which the kind of people who sit here who ought to be willing to take responsibility politically in any sane society they are not willing to because they know it is a losing proposition it is a thankless proposition it is a losing proposition but if you create conditions in which they can take responsibility and a good person good in every sense of the term not only morally but in terms of competence in terms of delivery, in terms of vision in terms of leadership is now shunning public life if you create an electoral model where you actually make it easy for such people to get elected then things could change I will give one illustration, Sadguru we all talk about criminals in politics every state has some numbers murderers that in this state actually in 1999 we came out with a list of 42 notorious criminals contesting elections at that time in the state that actually was the beginning of a process which led to a law in 2003 but what is important is not description of these criminals why are these criminals in politics in the first place we have skirt in the questions the first thing is when there is no normative justice I am not talking of the higher justice I am not careful with my words even the justice in the court of law available to ordinary citizens the criminal whom we revile has actually become the undeclared judge he became the savior of the ordinary people therefore he earned the respect and the money of the people two once the criminal has that influence he wants to be in politics because he can control the police in a system where the police are in the hands of politicians three once in our electoral system money power, caste power and muscle power together ensure a higher chance of success the political parties are after you and four in a system where nothing gets done in an ordinary course Danda seems to get at least some things done and therefore people are trusting a criminal to get at least something done in a wooden and inflexible system so without going into these issues merely saying criminals are there let all politicians say criminals doesn't really take us far so my appeal to you is could we evolve a framework could we make at least this class of people recognize what is the complexity of a political process and what are the things the levers we could find to bring about the fastest and most genuine transformation of a polity as you articulated you know kind of defined the problem I would like to stretch it a little bit before I answer this question that is criminals are not entering politics because they want to control the police or this or that essentially a policeman or a criminal means both of them carry the Danda that's why the Danda goes on both there now one serves what all of us have agreed as law another serves his own understanding of how the society should be and whenever those who carry the Danda enforce the law do not wield it effectively enough in reasonable amounts of time then naturally people will look to somebody else who has the Danda who will wield it quickly you get justice quickly see this whole thing about criminal is a big word but today in India it's become very ambiguous who is criminal who is not as it is you know so many people who are respected businessmen are in prison Tihar jail is full of they are planning to build a you know Marriott hotel in Tihar because so many business people top level people are there it's time they did some modifications and so many more are going to go the judges go with the activism with which they are going many many more will go because many of them to do their basic business every day have to deal with this kind of people otherwise they cannot do their business so the word criminal is a strong word and we need to understand this in the Indian context as I said our action should be appropriate to the situation where we are in we cannot talk like Switzerland where if you put it on the notice board this is the law everybody will follow it that's not where we are we need to be you know we need a lot to keep things going we are still there let's understand we are there whether we like it or not that's where we are so what is the solution solution is simple enough but not so easily now it's very easy to say all of you vote by your this thing whoever the best man who is the best man I don't like any of them so what do I do lot of youth don't go out and vote they think that's a solution no that's not a solution whom do I vote okay the best criminal best means what you don't know so now we have come to a place in Tamil there is a saying Nalla van venama valla van venama that means do you want a good man or do you want a capable man it's not possible to her both at the same time I am not saying it's not possible but if that is the choice what is your choice if you are interested in the nation you want a capable man if you are interested in your own morality and ethics and values you want a good man good people who sit in important positions of power very significant positions of power and who do not have the capability to make their goodness be manifest in their things they will do more damage than a criminal if a criminal heads this country out and out criminal heads this country probably India will become prosperous he will rob the world right now he is robbing you but if he becomes the prime minister maybe he will rob the world and many prime ministers presidents and kings and emperors of the past have all been robbers and still are many of them they are robbing effectively elsewhere and people are happy