 In the physical world, the most important aspect is geometric perfection. One steel and concrete came, we thought we can build like this, we can build like this, we can build like this. Right now there is a fight going on between this structure and the gravity, going on. Gravity will win for sure. It's not a factory shed we're building, just for aesthetics. They were willing to invest their lives absolutely. Everything they got. Namaskaram, Sadguru. So my name is Rajaswaka Sahu. I would first like to really give a warm welcome to you from the JJ campus on behalf of the students. Sir, we are very, we architecture school students especially were really aroused and excited about this event, mainly because we are very well aware of your contributions to your Kalyam Bhattur ashram. So my question is a bit along the academic lines. Sir, we as architecture students have always been taught to build in the context, to look at the culture where your site is or wherever your project is going to be built. But now when I see today the world, in India especially, urbanization is basically blind westernization, where we simply build glass boxes which we know and understand that does not suit the climate or the context of India. So my question is that we as Indians have not yet figured out what India's modern architecture is about, while we simply copy the westerners. So I what do you think should be India's modern architecture? Why we copy the west, not just in architecture, in just everything. I see a whole lot of women in Mumbai have turned blonde. I have no problem if your hair turns blue or green or purple or red but blonde. I have no problem with that color either, it's just that they left us seventy years ago but they're still living in our minds at least as a generation. We must stay away from that. When you're completely away then you can make your hair color whatever the hell you want but not in imitation of somebody, isn't it? You can make it whatever color you want, you want paint seven colors in your hair, please do it, I have no issue about that. But you shouldn't be doing it because some color is superior to your color. That's a pathide, isn't it? Unfortunately, when I see even in United States, a whole lot of African-American people have blonde hair these days. All this fight about civil liberties, here it is in the form of hair. What you like you can do but you are not doing what you like. There's a compulsiveness about doing certain things. So this compulsiveness has definitely come to architecture also. I'm glad to see that at least in the school of the many universities that I've been to, this is the first one they're able to sit on the floor. Most people are stuck like this, you know? See, I can't sit without a chair or I can't walk without a crutch. Is it very different, I'm asking? In some way you crippled yourself, isn't it? What are you going to do if I leave you in the forest? How are you going to shift, I'm asking? Yes, because people think there is some kind of fashion in crippling yourself. So this has gone into every aspect of our life and architecture. What to say if… see, if you look back at ancient India, tch, what aesthetics? I'm sure you're all students of… many of you are students of architecture or even if you're an artist, you notice many things. This is my problem. When I look at something, even if it's little off, even if it's minutely off, my eye doesn't miss it. For all the time everything bothers me. Little, little things which are off, geometrically off. Because my experience of life is largely geometric. For me, colors, textures, everything comes later. For me, something is geometrically right, is very, very important. Because this is the essence of creation. In the physical world, the most important aspect is geometric perfection. The planets are going around the sun for quite some time, not held together by a steel cable or something. Geometric perfection is keeping it going, isn't it? If the geometry goes off of this solar system, that's the end of it. It'll all fly into oblivion. So geometry is very important. In the yogic sciences, the entire yogic sciences on the physical level is just about aligning your geometry, your individual geometry to the cosmic geometry so that at some point there is no difference between you and the cosmos. You experience everything as yourself, simply because you have attained to a certain level of geometric perfection. It's not just in the body. In your physiological structure, yes. But in your chemical structure, in your energy structure, you get your geometry aligned with the larger geometry so that you and that larger phenomena feels just the same because they're properly aligned. A machine, let's say an engine, let's say a car engine, if we say it is well engineered, essentially we are saying it's geometrically perfect. That's how it is. It is geometrically so perfect, there is least amount of friction. The same goes for this, if it is geometrically perfect, there is least amount of friction. If there is least amount of friction, there is very little wear and tear in terms of life. So architecture is dwellings and usable buildings that we build. In some way, in some way they must find their place with the rest of the creation. I think we've lost this completely simply because we got certain liberty with material. One steel and concrete came. We thought we can build like this, we can build like this, we can build like this, whichever way we want, because of the strength of the material. Doing things with just sheer force is all right sometimes for utility. But if you do everything like that, your life will become ugly. Not only the building, your life will become ugly because you're doing things with force. Life is beautiful when we can do things with minimum force and maximum impact, yes or no? Anything that we do, we do it with minimum force but with maximum impact, then life feels aesthetic and beautiful. If you exert maximum force for minimum impact, that's a crude way to live. So our architecture has taken to this mode simply because we found material where the strength of the material is such we can do absurd shapes and still make them stand. Something which has no right to stand up geometrically is standing up simply because of the strength of the material. If we withdraw from that excitement of finding new material to more sensible geometry in the world, well, you will see world will feel much better. People will be much healthier physically and mentally if they live in such buildings. There will be many other benefits. Above all, you will cause minimum disturbance to everything around you. So when we started designing buildings, now everybody is in appreciation and in agreement but when I first started talking about it, our own people who are around me, they look at me like this and once I turn back, they roll their eyes at each other, he's gone crazy. I have… it's not the… I have a rear-view mirror, they don't understand this. But it took lot of talking and talking and talking and talking endlessly to make them understand that it will work. Some of you said you've been there, is it so? So today all the utility buildings, other things that are being built are being built in many different ways. But fundamentally, anything concerned with the spiritual process in the temple that was built there, mainly they're standing because of geometric perfection, not because of the strength of the material. For example, the dome is the largest elliptical dome of its sort. Seventy-two feet in diameter, it's not semicircular, it's elliptical like this. And there is no cement, there is no concrete, there is no steel. The simple technology is all the bricks are trying to come down at the same time but they cannot come down. It's just like if ten of you try to go through the door at once, you cannot go unless one person has some courtesy and they step back. It's my confidence in the bricks that they don't have courtesy, none of them will ever step back. So they stood there. The force of gravity, which is supposed to bring it down, held it up. See, right now this building, any flat roof for that matter, right now there is a fight going on between this structure and the gravity going on. Right now going on or not? It is going on. One day somebody will win, who do you think will win? Gravity will win for sure. But we built buildings in such a way, because of gravity, it is staying up. It is not something, if you observe things in nature, it's all... a whole lot of things are built like this. So we've never used any steel, just brick, soil, sometimes a percentage of lime, that's about it. And the feel of these buildings is very different because there is no tension in the building. There's no stress happening all the time. So I keep joking, see the building itself is meditating, at least you'll better learn something. The buildings are meditative because there's no stress in them. They're using the forces which are trying to pull them down as the force to stay up. This is something every human being should learn. What are the forces which try to bring us down? That is what you must use to go up. In a way, if you know something about aerodynamics, you would know aerodynamics is not against gravity. It is just using gravity to take off in a certain way. An airplane with the right kind of wings is not necessarily against gravity. But a rocket is against gravity. It's just the kind of thrust it has is like a forceful way of getting away. But an airplane is not made like that. Simply it's carrying tons and tons, you know? It doesn't matter how many times you've seen an airplane land and take off, you can still go on watching because there is something amazing about it that some hundred, hundred and twenty tons simply takes off and flies. If it is, see there are two kinds of flying machines, there are rotary wing machines and there are fixed wing machines. That is fixed wing airplanes and the helicopters. A helicopter is taking off with sheer force. If you don't know this, I'm a licensed helicopter pilot. So helicopter when you fly, moment to moment you have to keep it flying. But when you fly an airplane, all you have to do is take off and just leave it. Landing you must know unless you're a bin laden pilot. Landing you have to learn. Those guys didn't want to learn landing, they are different. But it's only the landing which is really the challenge, rest of it is just child's play. Actually, if you put a ten-year-old boy, he will make a seven, four, seven take off. Only landing is a problem, but landing today machines are doing better than human beings. I was, you know, like when I'm flying to India, from Mumbai to New York, three-four times in a year, sometimes I'm there with the pilots talking to them and I was just discussing these things and said, to what extent are you using the autopilot? I said, Sadhguru, we feel ashamed in front of you to say this, but she lands better than us. If you just let it, it lands by itself. It has all the data how Mumbai airfield is made, if you just set it and sleep, it will land. People are talking about driverless cars, that's never going to happen in Mumbai traffic. But a driver… a pilotless airplane is very much a doable thing. It's only people's fear you have to manage, that the airplane is flying without a pilot, you have to manage the passengers, that's the only problem. Otherwise, it's very easy to make a pilotless airplane, lot of pilots are sleeping. Now they're by law, if the flight is more than some four hours or so, a pilot can sleep for forty minutes or fifty minutes, something, there is a law now, that they can actually officially sleep. Because it's a big sky, it's not going to hit anything. Why I'm saying this is, the same goes for buildings. You can make the building either come up like with some exuberance or it's standing like a depressed person. This is something, suppose you see a building like a human being, do you want to look at their face or you want to avoid their face? That's how a building should be. If you look at their face, you must feel joy. How essentially it's a geometric manipulation, how geometrically perfect it is will give that much sense of completeness to people when they visually see it. Because the human eye is one eye on the planet which catches the maximum amount of detail. Because it catches so much detail, most important part of any physical structure is geometry. And some people can consciously catch it, others unconsciously react to it. They like it or they don't like it, that's all they know. But some people can consciously see, okay, this is the reason why it feels like this. So when it comes to architecture, it should not be in terms of European, Indian, this, that. These styles are established at a time when materials were limited, all right? The material available was so limited in those regions, accordingly, they structured it. And most of the time everybody copied one architect in that area and that became the culture. That need not be the future of Indian architecture, but India having a history of tremendous aesthetics. And if you go to the ancient temples, you must come to the south because north India, most of the temples, the ancient temples are all gone. The new ones that they have built is all put up in a hurry. When they got a chance, they put it up like, you know, how they put a brahmalala suddenly in two days, like that. But if you come to the south and see, one amazing thing you will see is their sense of geometry, unbelievable. How they arrived at this sense of geometry, thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, absolute geometric sense in their mind. Well, you have seen the Kailash, I'm sure, at Elora, the Kailash temple. You have seen Bailur Hallibid, have you? Karnataka temples. Oh, it's a must-see. It's just a must-see for any human being, especially those of you who are in architecture, art, whatever you are into. Some aesthetics you are into means this is something you must see. It's more than seeing those sculptures. You must look into the minds of people who did this. If you want to look into their minds, you must withdraw yourself into that time zone, it's over thousand years ago, when there were no cranes, when there were no machines, when there were no trucks, then there are no any kind of mechanical things all by hand. Why would somebody endeavor to dump, do something so phenomenal and so almost superhuman in terms of engineering and the physical difficulty of lifting these huge rocks and doing this carving business? Why would anybody do that? What, what kind of passion should be firing those people to do this is unbelievable. If you see the Tanjaur temple, have you seen? This, this Gopuram base, I think, what 180 tons are? 180, is it? Does anybody know? I think somewhere in that range, over 120 tons for sure. And it is at a height of 160 feet. They put a ramp of ten miles, a mud ramp and they brought this single piece of stone 160 feet high above and made a Gopuram out of it. Exquisitely carved, well in Karnataka what they carved is soap stone. In Tamil Nadu, Tamil people are crazy. They carved granite into very fine structures which is far more difficult than carving soap stone. And they put it up there. What is it that's firing these human beings? Before you take up any project, you must visit this and see what kind of human beings are these, you know? Just for aesthetics, you understand? Not for livelihood. It's not a factory shed we're building, just for aesthetics. They were willing to invest their lives absolutely. Everything they got. I think we need that culture back. If we want to create a beautiful India, very important.