 It's a great pleasure to have Sadhguru with us. So tell us a little bit about your childhood. Because I was Hakfin in many ways, totally unstructured and school was a unnecessary evil that I was forced to go sometimes. The experience of enlightenment is supposed to broaden you out. Enlightenment in yogic culture, growth means disillusion. So every yogi is looking for an orgasmic existence. It is not seen as a connected to a particular act in life, but as a way of existence. So this is called as bliss body. We would like to see before we fall dead, there are more blissful human beings than miserable human beings. Welcome to the Commonwealth Club. I'm George Hammond, Chairman of the Humanities Program, which organized tonight's event. It's tonight in India, it's morning in California. And it's our great pleasure to have Sadhguru with us again. You spoke at the Commonwealth Club in 2013, and I must say you've been a very busy man since then. Namaskaram and good morning to everyone. Good morning. Welcome George. So what interested me, how this idea generated to bring you back to the Commonwealth Club was that you recently in October did a motorcycle tour of the United States. And you stopped in Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain's hometown, and you posted a small video. That video was sent to me by a distant relative of mine, Edmund Kuhl. And I said, well, this is great because I like Mark Twain and I like Vedanta theory. And so I listened to some of your other videos and I said, we really have to talk about the big ideas together, it'd be just great. So thank you very much for joining us. And tell us a little bit about your tour. I mean, I know you have a lot of interested followers in the United States, but we're going to get back to your motorcycle. But it's very interesting that you rode your motorcycle across the country. Why don't you say a little bit about your motorcycle experiences? Well, for me, motorcycling started very early on in my life and at one time I crossed India on my motorcycle. Like for almost four, four and a half years I literally lived on a motorcycle. But once I got into this work in the almost twenty-eight years I never sat on a motorcycle nor did I think about one. So when I was doing a rally for rivers where I drove in a car from, you know, southern most tip of India to Himalayas covering a little over ten thousand kilometers at that time. And we know we are rallying for changing how we treat our rivers. We change the policy in the country through that rally. The policy for managing rivers were written by us and today it's become an official policy. As a part of that when I was doing, when I came to Bangalore, they said, Satguru, why don't you ride a motorcycle and they brought one for me. I just wondered, I just wondered, can I ride after such a long time, can I really manage this? But the moment I sat in the motorcycle, I saw that I hadn't lost a day. So since then I've been having problems in getting into a car. So literally last three years I've been on motorcycles once again, once again. And we were… we did the American tour mainly to, you know, I felt the Native American populations have become invisible. We should make them visible in the world. That was the main interest. So we touched all these Native American reservations and nations as they call them. So as a part of this, when always they're… because this is a very oral culture, there is no written language, it's all oral. So they've always been saying it's blowing in the wind. So I thought if it's blowing in the wind, let me confront the wind on a motorcycle. Well, I think it's a great image and I want to go back to it because I know that that's how you went up to Chamundi Hill for your experience as well. And I think that beats a banyan tree any time to arrive on a motorcycle. You mean looking me up. So tell us a little bit about your childhood. We're bringing in authors from all around the world to try to give the American audience, as you said, to make… you wanted on your trip to make Native Americans more visible in the world. The Kamov Club, because of our… the technology, we're able to bring people in from all over the world and we're trying to make them more visible in America because there's a two-way street that's been going on and not just in the last couple hundred years, but for thousands of years between India and the West, between the thinkers in one area of the world and thinkers in another. So you as a young boy, Red Mark Twain, as you said, which, you know, your father was a doctor, right, a doctor for the railways. He was a physician, actually an ophthalmologist. Ophthalmologist. So I take it your eyesight is very good. It's still very good. So your experience with Mark Twain, how did you… did you just take it out of the library? Did they teach it in school? How did you get to Huckleberry Finn? I… When I was eleven years old, I read Huck Finn as an abridged version, a small book. And it kind of… because I was Huck Finn in many ways, totally unstructured and school was a unnecessary evil that I was forced to go sometimes and I went there only when it was absolutely necessary, otherwise I always got lost on the streets, somewhere on the way. I… to make me reach the school was a very difficult thing. Actually they put me to school when I was three-and-a-half years of age, it was kind of a whatever, they called it a play school but I didn't think it was very much play. So this maid used to hold me by hand and take me to the school. I made a deal with her, you leave me at the gate. It was, you know, not dignified that she holds me and takes me to the class. I said, you leave me at the gate. The moment she left, I went away somewhere else. I was three-and-a-half, I want you to know. And I discovered the Grand Canyon in a small town in southern India and I experimented with all kinds of creatures, I captured tadpoles, wind sacks, all kinds of things. But after a little over three months, I think somehow somebody told them and they caught me and they said I was playing in the gutter but I thought I was in the Grand Canyon. Later on, later on when I came to graduation, there was a choice of American literature to pick up from. So I, in the first year of my graduation, I picked up Huck Finn as my book to write about. So I wrote a paper on Huck Finn. So that's my engagement with him. Well, it's interesting because Mark Twain also wrote a book called The Mysterious Stranger. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one. But in The Mysterious Stranger, it's a deceptively childhood story but it's set in the medieval times and a nephew of Satan comes and plays with the boys and is very mischievous. But at the end of that book, he explains that life is just a dream. And so Mark Twain had this idea that could just be a thought, the whole thing could just be a thought. And it's very similar to some of the Indian ideas and I was wondering, I was very curious about that because a lot of people don't realize how many ideas, these transcendental ideas have come over like Emerson Thoreau, Herman Hess' book on Siddhartha. I know that you mentioned your book that you read Dostoevsky, Kamu and Kafka when you were in college, that kind of thing. And so all these people, usually just bits and pieces of the ideas from India. They don't really have a clear idea. So one of the things I'd like to do is we don't even understand the ideas of Darwin and Einstein here. I mean, it's not because they're complicated, it's because they're popular misperceptions of these ideas. And there are a lot of popular misperceptions of the big ideas from India as well. And I really enjoyed reading your book talking about how to look at some of those ideas. So maybe one thing we can talk about is a little bit about what you, how you reacted to some of the Western authors and then we'll talk about like your reaction to Alexander the Great, which I loved on your video. I'm still being trolled for that Alexander the Great idiot stuff in India. Anyway, about the… see, I mean, you're talking about ideas. So this is something very hard for Western societies to wrap around, wrap their head around this, the Indian perception because even Mark Twain went out to say, they are the most incomprehensible people, though they are the most interesting in some ways. So this is happening because, see in our culture we don't give any significance to human thought or human ideas because all our ideas are coming from a limited perception that we have had of some aspect. It is like, it is a million-piece jigsaw but you find three pieces and you think, oh, this is a buffalo, this is a bear, it's a wrong perception. So whatever ideas you have, whatever thought process you have, that is not of any significance in the Indian way of looking at things. So Indian way of looking at things is about perceiving reality as it is. Beyond your sense perception, why I'm saying beyond your sense perception is because your eyes, your nostrils, your tongue, your touch, everything, all the senses are actually culturally trained. What kind of smell is pleasant in America? We think it's not so pleasant out here. What is very, very fragrant and wonderful here, you may think it's too strong or something else. I'm saying the same with taste probably it's much more visible in India, the spirit of India is chilly, all right? Not spice, we can't exist. If you eat the spice that we eat, people will think you're suffering corona or something because you will become both runny nose and breathless, both will happen to you. So the senses are culturally trained, there are genetic aspects, there are other things I think you said Mark Twain said, the nephew of the satan visited but satanism is not a genetic trait. Satan's nephew need not be a satan, he could be something else, we don't know what the hell but he could be something else. So we don't rely on the senses, so we don't rely on the thought because all your thought is a consequence of what you have perceived through your senses and it is a individual concoction, we may produce permutations and combinations of variety of things in each mind and we think this is our idea. So we don't look at life as a bunch of ideas, we look at life as a certain there is a fundamental reality upon that a consequent reality has manifested itself. So the consequent reality we look at it one way and the fundamental reality we look at it another way, so our perception has to become more profound to understand the fundamental reality and consequent reality you need a certain one kind of perception for fundamental reality you need another kind of perception. So the whole Indian culture is fundamentally not about generating ideas but sharpening your perception. When I use the word perception, people are generally referring in the western society took me some time to understand this, people are referring to their opinions as perceptions. No perception is what you perceive, like you see this is light, this is darkness, this is your perception. Well, even this can be debated because the if there is an owl, the bird owl, I think somewhere in the Huck Finn there is something about the owl. If I remember right it's been many, many years since I read this. But so the what is light for you is darkness for him, what is darkness for you is light for him. So even about what is light and darkness there is a debate in India because we see that what we perceive, the way we perceive through sense organs is not absolute. It is only useful for our survival process but not an instrument of knowing. So our whole focus is on knowing something, not developing my own idea. So it is not about eastern idea versus western idea, west has many ideas with which they have created societies which are comfortable for them according to their ideas. But in the east, we are not concerned about our ideas. We know our ideas are nothing, they will come up today and tomorrow. The same idea which I thought is very smart when I was eighteen, when I am twenty-five it looks stupid. What I thought was brilliant when I was twenty-five looks absolutely stupid now. So our ideas are not important for us. For us, how can I, you know, bring profoundness to my perception? This is what it is about. That is why it looks so bizarrely different. Well, it's, you know, I understand that and I think for the rest of the conversation, just for the audience here, we are going to make the assumption, for the sake of the argument as we say over here, we are going to make the assumption that everything that is described in the yogic tradition is all accurate. That is the perceptions, the experiences that are described, the experiences of enlightenment, the experiences of what's happening from life to life and so on. We are going to assume that that is all accurate because it is the easiest way, I think, to now talk about that because even if we just go based on what we perceive and what our experiences are and we record them, we are still going to, we are still going to need some way of sorting them out between the people who, if there is an objective reality. If I can say this, no, you should not assume it is perfectly correct because this is a land of seekers, this is a land of seeking. There are no absolutes here. It doesn't matter who comes, even those people whom we consider as divine entities, when they came, all they got from us was questions and debate. Never could they ever give a commandment to us because you cannot give a commandment to an Indian. An Indian is an endless argument because he will argue with himself, he'll argue with everybody because he's a seeker. He's a seeker, he's always seeking and he knows the instruments and faculties that we have right now is not good enough to know everything, so he's constantly debating and arguing. So we should never assume that whatever we are saying is absolute. Well, this is our level of perception right now. Well, that's fine. I agree that there's no absolutes like that from the point of view of an individual looking out, but we kind of share this world. We each have our own individual perceptions of it and we are obviously trying. I loved your definition of a guru, by the way, as a dispeller of darkness, as opposed to someone who is telling everybody all the time what they should do with their life. It's very, by the way, very difficult pressure to someone who teaches other people like this, as you've done, because as I mentioned, for five years I watched Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaching and all the people he gave and gave and gave and all the people around were taking, taking, taking. And it's a very interesting pressure on the personality. I was wondering, since you have a sense of humor, whether that's what helps you, you know, resist this pressure of everybody asking of you these questions, just like you said about others, how do you, how do you react to that? I don't see any pressure because… let me put it this way, because when I'm… I'm very involved with every life around me, not just humans, every kind of life around me, I'm very absolutely involved with whatever I'm doing. So I don't have a certain breadth of mind, this is a great advantage I have. The breadth of my mind is the same as the point of a needle, that is the breadth of my mind. So in a given moment, my mind is always like a needle, never like one vast piece of mind. Oh, like it's my mind is not a universe, my mind is just a point of a needle. That's why it penetrates into anything that it sees. So I don't have points, you know, there is no pressure, you can't put pressure on a point of a needle because it's so small. Well, that's… that's a way to solve the problem. A lot of people, of course, you know, they're under too much pressure if they stand on a stage and six people are watching them, right? And it's already too much pressure on their personality. Because they're very big people, they can take pressure because I'm like a point of a needle that people don't even know where I am. It's a very interesting way to put it because the experience of enlightenment is supposed to broaden you out, but you say it focuses you down to the point of a needle. No, I don't know whoever said broadening, but enlightenment, in yogic culture, growth means disillusion. Growth does not mean getting bigger in your size. Our idea of growth is disillusion because if you dissolve your limited persona, then you are as vast as the universe because you're nothing. Because you're nothing, in some way you're everything. So I don't have the pressure of carrying any knowledge in my head because I don't carry anything when I walk on the street, I'm totally empty in my head. So I never experience any pressure because there is no knowledge in me. Just a sharp sense of perception at that given moment. The same thing if you ask me another time, I may say something different because whatever it is at that moment, I'm not carrying knowledge, so there is no pressure. If you have knowledge, you will have to protect it, you will have to defend it. I'm not defending anything, I'm all the time ridiculing all this. You know, you sound like Socrates, you know. He said, I don't, you know, the one thing that I know, there's a story about Socrates that, you know, the Delphic Oracle told somebody from Athens that the wisest man in Athens was a man named Socrates. So the man went back and found Socrates and said, the Delphic Oracle said, you're the wisest man in Athens. And Socrates said, that's can't be true. But he thought about it and after 10 years, he said, well, it might be true. Everyone else thinks they know what they know and I'm the only one who knows, I don't know what I know. That's great. I think Socrates was an Indian. Well, there was, I thought a very perceptive scholar in the 19th century wrote about Pythagoras from the same great tradition and said, he felt the whiff of Hindu pessimism in his thinking. What he meant by that was his way of thinking that life is eternal and recurs and so on and so forth. That person must have been enjoying his life. Pythagoras was very influenced by the Indian way of life. He did visit India, if you know that. Yes, I do. So definitely because this is not pessimism, this is just understanding that we are a minuscule life in this cosmos, if you look at it. The problem, the human problem right now is, see this whole solar system is a kind of a speck in this cosmos. If the entire solar system disappears tomorrow morning, nobody will notice it. That's how small the solar system is. In that speck, planet earth is a micro speck. In that micro speck, San Francisco is a super micro speck. But in that super micro speck, you are a big man. This is the problem that human beings are having. So we are always right from our childhood, we are told you are really nothing in this existence. So make something out of yourself, but you are actually really nothing. And because you will be here and you will be gone after some time, countless number of people like this have come and gone and there is no any footprint of them anywhere in the world. Only those who are spiritually competent in some way, something beyond their physical existence, those people we remember. We remember a Jesus, we remember a Buddha, we remember a Krishna. But all the other billions of people who must have existed through these times or thousands of years, we don't remember any of them. So this is the fundamental thing of being Indian, that you are always told you are nothing. It doesn't matter you become a king, you wear a crown, you walk around, you strut as much as you want, but you are really nothing. You are just like any other creature like an ant on the planet. You think an ant is nothing. Well, you are just smaller than that in this existence. So make something else out of you, unless you go beyond what is your physical structure and psychological structure, nothing significant will happen in your life. This is the fundamental of the yogic ethos. There's a, we've seen here, everyone puts their two cents in, you know. And I must be at least somewhat Indian because I always think that the great teachers and the people who influence everyone put in three cents rather than two cents. And so that's why they're remembered is that they put in one-and-a-half times what everybody else did and they influence the way people think. See, we must understand, since printing presses come, all kinds of fools may be remembered, all right? Yeah, because... About just about anybody, something is written a thousand years later, you can pick up that book and you may see. But you must look back at history when it was not written, but still people remembered certain people. Not because of three cents or four cents, because they had no cents. Their value of life is not in cents and dollars. The value of life is non-physical in nature. It's only those people who lived. So let's talk about that. You're... And the whole yogic tradition is that our minds, our bodies, are just our biological bodies, but we actually have other bodies. We actually have other ways of expressing ourselves and you can either perceive that or not perceive that. And I'm curious from the point of view, I mean, obviously science doesn't think too much of this because they're focused on the perception of biological body. But almost all the experiences that people have had recently because of modern medicine, the much more near-death experiences, NDE's as they call it. Those NDE's that are experiences of light and India has always talked about the light body, but we know from science that light is created by atoms with photons coming out. Do you think that this light body is composed of atoms with light coming out of them and it's just a different structure, not biological? Ah, now you're walking into your minefield. Rather walking me into your minefield because now what I say, you try to analyze it or people try to analyze this with logical sense of what they have, we must understand our logic functions essentially from already pre-registered data in our minds. What you think is logically very correct, somebody will argue with you as if you are completely wrong because their logic is saying something else. What is the basis of this? The kind of data that they have taken in is very different from the kind of data that you have taken in. So it doesn't matter who is saying what. The important thing is this, what you consider as my body or what is your body right now and what is your psychological framework right now, both these things, you did not have it in the same shape and form when you were born. When you were born, you were only this much, now you became a full grown man. How did this happen? So body is an accumulation that has happened over a period of time from the food that you've eaten. The food that you eat is just a piece of the planet that you walk upon, all right? So most people do not realize this till you bury them. Only then they get the teaching from the Magots that they are part of this earth, otherwise they think they're from somewhere else. Just because we can prance around a little bit, we think we are not part of this, all right? You are just a small outcrop. Nature's magnanimity that it has given you an individual experience. Otherwise there's nothing individual about you. Everything is gathered from elsewhere. From this borrowed impressions and borrowed body, you're walking around. If you recognize this, you would walk with utmost gracefulness and gratefulness to everything. Then you would look at life differently. Now, about this light, whatever people are talking about, near death experience, whatever, instead of commenting on that, let me put it this way. If you have to gather this much body and this much mental structure, there must be something more fundamental, isn't it? Whatever that is, whatever that is, there must be something more fundamental. So one thing that people may be experiencing as light is, there is in yoga, we see that you have five layers of body. One is food body. It's called anamaya kosha, which literally means food body. The next one is manamaya kosha. That means it's a mental body. This is a software. Food body is the hardware. Mental body is the software without which even a single cell cannot function. There is an entire software where memories of evolution, genetic memories, perceptional memories, articulate inarticulate memories, all kinds of memories are imprinted upon every cell in the body. That is why you are a unique individual character compared to somebody else because there is a certain kind of memory in this. So that is the mental body. If hardware and software is there, will it function by itself? No, you have to plug it into quality power. That is called as the energy body or pranamaya kosha, which is what they may be talking about as light. Because when energy crackles, you may see it as light, not necessarily as light, but you may perceive it as light. What is light is essentially... See, for example, because we were talking about owls, we think owls cannot see in the day. No, that is not their problem. They see too well. Their eyes are so sensitive that the brightness of the sunlight kind of blinds them out. It is not that their eyes are not good. Their eyes are too good. That is the reason why they don't want to do anything in the day because it's too much light. Right now, I am having that problem too. Too much light. Camera lights, I mean to say. It looks great from here. Maybe that's why the... One of the symbols of Athena is an owl. So they should see too much with wisdom. But it's interesting that you put it that way because if we're all individuals, and we're seeing this individually with our own impressions, how are we able to communicate with each other about the common ground? Obviously, you're communicating with millions of people about a common ground and you're focusing on experience and how to gain a better perception about things. But we're trying to communicate with each other even though we're all individuals. So there must be something in common or at least we have some language or some way of trying to generate common experience. See, in body, both of us are unique creatures. All right? In body, we are absolutely unique. If you look at psychological structure also, we are absolutely unique. Even if you put two people through the same experiences, they will come out with different conclusions and different way it influences them. So even children born in the same house, same genetic, same school, same food, but see how different they turn out. Parents cannot believe are these two children ours because they turn out so different. So in mind, in body, we are very unique. But fundamentally as life, life is fundamentally same. When I say life is same, I think I've put this probably in the book also you might have seen. I use this analogy usually to explain this complex issue in a simple way is like you blow a soap bubble. When you blow a soap bubble, well, this is my bubble, this is your bubble, it is distinctly that and we can compete which bubble is bigger than which and all this stuff. But if it bursts, then we don't say this is my air versus your air because it all becomes one. So similarly, what you're calling as my life and your life is we've blown a bubble of our own. So the external characteristics are unique and it's good, it's unique, otherwise there would be no transactional world. If all of us are absolutely same, what is the point of a conversation right now I'm asking? Yeah. We are glad there is nobody like us because one more person like you or me is trouble in the world. Absolutely. And one is all the world can take. The problem with us is that we're enjoying causing trouble. So the important thing is I was talking about these five layers or five sheets of body, physical body which is called as food body, mental body which is the body of impressions and memory, energy body which is a certain amount of energetic framework upon which the physical and mental bodies are built and then there is something called as Vighanamayakosha which essentially means, Vighan means, today the word is being loosely used as signs. Essentially Vighan means something that cannot be perceived with five senses but it's there. So when you perceive that, that is called Vighan. So there is something which cannot be perceived by the five senses. The energy body, the mental body and the physical body can be perceived by the five senses. The fourth dimension of the body cannot be perceived but it's a transition between physical nature and non-physical nature. So there is a fifth body which is called as the Anandamayakosha. Ananda literally in English translates as bliss but it's much more than that, it's more comprehensive. Another way of putting Ananda is we can say it is ecstasy or some people go about saying because the word orgasmic is used in India in a different way than the way it is used in the West. Orgasm is not connected with sexuality. Orgasm is something that must happen on your cellular level. So every yogi is looking for an orgasmic existence, not for an orgasmic experience. Orgasmic existence that every moment of his life, he is in a profound state of orgasmic experience because it is a certain way of organizing your own chemical structure that you are always in that condition. So it is not seen as a connected to a particular act in life but as a way of existence. So this is called as bliss body or orgasmic body. So why we are calling it this is we do not know what it is. All we know is it is not physical in nature but whenever we touch it, we become orgasmic. So we are calling it orgasmic body or bliss body or ecstatic body because when we touch it, we become blissful or ecstatic or orgasmic. We do not know what it is. All we know is it's not physical in its nature. So we are talking about it from the context of our experience, not from the context of its content or its quality. We are not trying to describe its quality. For example, we say sugar means sweet. This is our experience. This is not the quality of the sugar. The we feel on upon our tongue, see if you put sugar on a stone, the stone does not think sugar is sweet. Maybe many insects may not think it is sweet but on our tongue it is sweet. So from our experience, we say sugar is sweet. In that context, we are calling this as bliss body, ecstatic body, organic body because we do not know its quality. All we know is when we touch, we are blissed out. It's a very interesting way of describing it because I haven't heard described exactly like that before but basically you are saying is that the three other bodies that are physical, when they touch this, what they experience in these three bodies is the bliss as opposed to the consciousness itself as bliss. It's very interesting. Your description also to talk about it from that point of view, we are all sharing what is human civilization but an endless sharing of our experiences and what we think other people should do now. As you say, some people are dictatorial about it until everybody else, this is what you must do. But in your books, you've said that. But it's interesting because in a way the Hugh Hefner's of this world and the Don Wands of this world have gone around telling everybody to have a certain kind of orgasmic experience. A sexual orgasmic experience and the Yogis are saying there's something much better than that and it has the same quality in your mind but it also generates this enjoyment in your mind and in your internal things. So let's assume again for the sake of the argument that science will eventually be able to analyze the three levels that you said are physical and that they're physical. So I assume that the description of reincarnation moving from one body to another is that you leave the biological body behind and you go with the other two. So I wanted to tell you one story about an indie near-death experience that I found most entertaining of all because most people have this very strict idea about what's supposed to happen always. There's a man, I almost don't like telling this story because he went into a coma for three months because he got in a motorcycle accident. I don't tell me the story now. I'm a motorcyclist. I'm a motorcyclist. Actually today after this meeting I'm riding. Oh, okay, well, maybe I better skip now. So he goes into a coma for three months and during the three when he came out he said he had been a follower of a Buddhist guru and when he said when he was in this near-death experience in the coma that his guru came and explained to him that his life wasn't complete yet, that he must go back and complete the work of carrying on his guru's work. And but he also met another being, a more feminine spirit who said, no, it's time for you to go to the next level. You should come with me. And he said that they basically argued for the whole three months over which one he should do and eventually he came back. But I thought it was an interesting experience because most people just say, I'm being welcomed, I'm being told to do this, but here there was an argument over it. Well, about science coming to it, let me clear that fast. I must tell you this, that today we've brought this forth with certain universities in America researching on people who have done simple in engineering practices. After 90 days of practice, what happens? One of the things that they have said is, in 90 days of practice, your BDNF levels could go up up to 300%. That means your mood and your experience is kind of fine. And the increase in the endocannabinites is about 70% than what it was before. That means you're naturally blissed out. I'm saying we are creating a chemical soup. This is the most complex chemical factory. Now we are learning to manage it well so that being blissed out is a natural consequence. Science is coming to it. Now they have also opened a center named after me in the Harvard Medical School regarding conscious planet about cognition, consciousness and compassion. They're calling it that way. But about this man, I don't like that it happened when he was on a motorcycle, but it's... Isn't it unfortunate a whole lot of people come to more sense when they're in coma than when they are conscious and alive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. About... about he, a Buddhist master coming and calling him and this woman coming and calling him. That's typically American, okay? That's California... you think this guy we must be from California? He is very from California, absolutely. You got it right on your head. Obviously. So that is fine, but what I'm saying is, you are near death all the time. It's not that it has to happen because you crashed your motorcycle or your surgery went wrong or something else. We're always near death. We are looking at life like this, the yogic way of looking at it, inhalation is life, exhalation is death. I think this book has not come to you yet. In the month of February in 2020, I published a book called Death, The Inside Story. I have that one too, I'm just going to ask some questions. You beat me to the question, just go right to it. I thought that's published only in India, I thought it's not in United States. We have it here too. Okay, so the important thing is this, see one dimension of life which has remained uncorrupted by human mind is death. You can say as many stories as you want, but if it… even your experience if it was real, you would be willing to go when it's time, joyfully you would go. So the test whether really you had near death experience and you realized something about it or not is, will you die with a smile on your face or not? This is a clear test, all right? For this, there is a pre-test which we can set up here. We call this the cobra tests because cobra and a few other creatures have this sense, even the bees have this sense, they look at you only from the point of your chemistry. So right from a very early childhood I've been handling cobras and you know, in India this is a land of king cobras, you can go in the jungle and just pick up a cobra just like that, not holding him by his head and all this stuff. Just in the middle, in the middle of his body you can just pick him up, he will just come without any resistance. But if you show a little bit of anxiety within you, if you show a little bit of fear within you, he will go for you because he senses danger from you. So he is only experiencing you as a chemical soup. So whether your soup is good or not, if you want to test, there's a cobra test or there's a death test when you die, will there be a smile on your face or not because you transit from one dimension of experience to another in a comfortable manner that can only happen if your experience of life in some way has transcended the physical accumulation that you have. I am stressing on the accumulation because your body is an accumulation. What you gather can be yours, can never ever be you, isn't it? It's like saying this, this cloth, this piece of textile is me. The same thing, this textile that you call as my body, which we owe together with so many things, now you think it's you, that is a fundamental mistake. Once you have made that mistake, then you are thinking up all kinds of things because the basis is wrong, it can never come to the right thing. So the important thing to see is what is life, what is death? Don't think on those terms. What is you? What is the nature of your existence right now? If one experiences this, there is no life, death questions. It is all settled for once. It's like how you drive your car is much more important than the car you drive, or a motorcycle in this case. Your method of doing it, your decision making. You also mentioned, I think in the death book about... No, no, no, I would like to tell you, in seventies and eighties when I was riding, I was riding a two-stroke single-cylinder, 250cc, Chakraslavakian motorcycle. And today I'm riding modern machines, and it's a world of difference. So, the machine that you're riding also is very important. Well, I mean, certainly you write a lot about how to work your body in order to have a better vehicle as well, but somebody can rework their body and then be very miserable anyway. On a very highly sophisticated motorcycle, you can still crash and become comatose and imagine both a monk and a... both a monk and a woman. Either way, it's still possible. So, you in the death book, you mentioned that sleep is a little bit like, you know, death, that falling asleep is a little bit like that. And if you're... if you do that, if you... in a way you said you can die with a smile on your face, do... do people fall asleep with a smile on their face too? I mean, it's the same... same sort of idea? Yes, in a way, it is... it's not absolutely true, but partially true. It is true, I would say. Largely true. Because... how one sleeps in many ways, because essentially sleep means you're absent in a conscious way. You're still alive, but you're absent. Death also means you're absent, but you're not alive in... in terms of your body and everything. You're gone. So, actually when... when you put an animal to death, you say you're putting it to sleep, which is a very good expression actually, because you're actually putting it to sleep, because sleep is absence, so is death, absence. So, if you can go into sleep consciously, joyfully, it's fantastic. So, this is one of the sadhanas that all the seekers do, is the point of transition from wakefulness to sleep, they want to conduct it consciously, because if they can conduct that moment consciously, they know they will be able to conduct that moment of transition from life to death also consciously. So, when we say consciously, what we are saying is, death is a limited process, as life that you know right now is also limited process, so is death a limited process. So, the content of life, the life that you are, not the body that you are, not the mind that you are, not the character that you have become, but the life that you are is a much bigger phenomena than what your physical body does, what your intellect or your mind does, your thoughts, your emotions, your drama. This is psychological, physiological, social drama. You can conduct it in a pleasant manner, in a whichever way you like, all right? Whatever is your taste and your pleasure, because different people like different things, it's fine with us. But the most important thing is, what is the quality of life? When the life is same, where is the question of quality, this will arise. Because even life is same between you, me, a dragonfly and a grasshopper, fundamentally life is same. So, where does the quality arise? Quality arises in the volume of life that you gather, in the sense, the whole yogic processes unfortunately, the way yoga has become in the West, it makes me cry. The way it's being thought and understood. See, essentially one aspect of yoga, the most vital aspect of yoga is to enhance the life that you are. How do you enhance the life that you are? Let's go back to the same analogy, you and me are blowing soap bubbles. We should do it one day, okay? I do it. My daughters are still young enough. No, I'm saying between you and me, we must do it one day. Oh yes, okay, we'll do that. Suppose your bubble is so big and my bubble is so big. Now I say, see, this is my bubble, it's fantastic. But what has happened to my bubble is my walls have become very thin, but it's a huge bubble. My bubble will burst much more easily than your bubble, but it has a significance because it's big. So, this is what it means that as you make your life bigger and bigger, the life that you are, as it becomes more and more enlarged, I'm not talking about enlarging your social footprint or, you know, your physical presence or your mental prowess, these are different aspects. These are faculties that we have, but the life that you are when it becomes significant, you know life better than most people simply because it's become a significant part of you. Right now the most significant part of you is not the muscles that you carry, not the mind that you carry, not the information or knowledge that you carry, the most significant aspect of your life is life itself within you. When this happens, the other walls become very thin. Anytime it can burst, once it bursts, it's gone. So essentially what most people in the west don't understand this because these questions keep coming to me. They want... because they've read some Buddhist texts, they want nirvana. Nirvan means non-existence. Are you ready for becoming non-existent? No, no, the western idea of dying is you will go somewhere else where the accommodations are better than California. And there are no fires. And there are no viruses, yes. Well, one thing I thought to be practical for our audience, I thought we would try to put at least one smile on their face for when they go to sleep tonight, so that they can go to sleep with a smile on their face. I thought it's morning, George, I thought it's morning. Let them not go to sleep now. Well, you know, after stretching their intellects, maybe they will fall asleep. But if you... one of the things you wrote about, you talked about where you're going to go and whether it is better than California, it's like, you know, it reminds me of a joke that Groucho Marx used to say that, you know, I wouldn't belong to a club, any club that would have me as a comedian. And I always think about that kind of exclusive thinking. When I read the descriptions by some yogis about Brahmāloka, you know, it's like, it's a place which is so exclusive that it won't even take me, you know. So, but one of the things about the fear I think that people have about death obviously comes from this whole idea of hell and punishment. And you wrote a great line about, you can't really be forced to suffer. And you have, you quoted Buddha, and this is an inner engineering, you quoted Buddha as saying that he will go to hell afterwards because he doesn't have to suffer so he can help the people there. He won't suffer when he's there. It reminds me of when I wrote an essay maybe 40 years ago, and one of my conclusions was, you can send a man to hell, but you can't make himself. See, if people understood that, I think a lot of people are living their lives afraid of what's going to happen afterwards. See, the simple thing is this, that right now, if you look at your life, your pain and pleasure comes from within you. I may take a pin and prick, but the pain comes from within you. Pleasure also comes from within you. Joy and misery comes from within you. Agani and ecstasy comes from within you. Or in other words, what I am saying is, the source of human experience is within you. So, what is within you, I believe must happen your way. It should not happen my way. Your experience should not happen my way. Your experience of life should happen your way because the source of experience is within you, the seat of your experience is within you. The problem is, you are not sitting on the seat, you're crawling all over the place. You do not understand from where this experience is being generated. See, right now, let us say I will abuse you, I won't, I'm just telling you, because a lot of people are abusing me on the, you know, Twitter trolls all the time, so I am telling you, I will abuse you. In an Indian language, you think I'm saying an endearment because you don't know the language. So, I'm saying the insult itself does not hurt you. It is the way you react, which will hurt you, right? So, if I call you an idiot in an Indian language, you don't know, you think I'm saying good morning to you? So, it is not the words, it is not the actions, it is not nothing, it is the way you're responding or the way you're compulsively reacting, which hurts you. So, the human experience is caused from within you. If you understand this, if you know this by experience, will you create pleasantness or unpleasantness for yourself, definitely pleasantness for yourself, what you want for your neighbor sometimes is debatable, but what you want for yourself is very clear highest level of pleasantness, isn't it? So, what is, what is heaven and hell is in human mind, whatever is the highest level of pleasantness is heaven, whatever is the lowest level of suffering is hell. When you know human experience is happening from within you, obviously these are two descriptions of what a human being can go through, either when they're alive or post that, either within the body or when you're disembodied, both ways it can happen. The advantage when your body it is, you have a discretionary mind, you can choose right now, you can choose the company that you are in, either to enjoy it or to suffer it, there is a choice. But once you've lost the discretionary mind, which we call is death, when that happens, then whatever is your tendency, you will tend to go in that. Suppose it's your tendency to always negatively react to things and suffer, now once you've lost your body and your discretionary mind, your suffering will become million fold simply because you can't decide to come out of it. Right now, you go somewhere, you meet somebody, you don't like something, was something that they said, you will suffer something. But when you're driving back, you say hell with him and you start playing the music and enjoy yourself or do something. Because you have a discretionary mind, but once this ability is gone, if you start suffering, you can't stop it. If you start enjoying, you can't stop it. So both joy and misery become extreme. So this is called as hell and heaven, because you've lost your discretionary mind, you're happening by your tendency. So this is why in life, it's very important when you have a conscious discretionary mind, you create a pleasant tendency within yourself so that when you lose it also, you will be extremely pleasant because pleasantness and unpleasantness will get multiplied million fold when you don't have a discretionary mind. See, why if you give a simple lollipop to a child, he enjoys it so much that it is like the end of his life because he doesn't have the same sense of discretion that you have. That is why his sense of joy is so high. At the same time, if you take away the lollipop, his sense of suffering is also very high because again he does not have the same level of discretion that you have. But once you're disembodied, you are not just a child kind of loss of discretion. Your discretion is completely absent. You go one hundred percent by your tendencies. Yeah, that's a very good description of first, why things happen the way they do, but also why people are afraid of this eventually. And as you mentioned and plenty of other teachers have mentioned as well, turning within and making sure that you stay connected to your more substantial self is one way to… They can try slipping with a smile on. But see, smile… smile should not be what you do. Smile is a consequence of a certain experience within you. Right now, people are trying to create consequence, which is the fundamental flaw of Western societies now which has become universal across the planet is people have become goal oriented. That means they want the fruit, not the root, they're not interested in the root, they just want the fruit. You know when I was living on a farm doing agriculture at one time, somebody came, one hotshot sales per… this thing and they come and tell me, see they got some spray which is something, something, I don't know what some enzymes and stuff. And you said, they said on my mango trees, I just have to spray it on the fruit and it will become so big and so sweet and everything. Then I looked at this because my wisdom says I have to nourish the root of the mango tree, not the fruit. I said, why don't you spray it on your brains and see, let's see what happens. Is it going to become big and sweet? Then we will see. Did you get a good reaction to that? I heard after one and a half years after that they gave up that effort of selling this product. Well, one of the things you said earlier reminding me of something else you wrote about about people always complaining no matter what people are complaining in. One of the things that I thought of maybe several decades ago was that you can act, people are always going to complain no matter how good the situation is. And you can kind of tell the level of any civilization by what people complain about. So maybe that would be the best way to judge people. Right now in America they are saying, I want to have a haircut when there was a lockdown, I'm saying. People are dying around you and you want to have a haircut. That says a lot. You come from my generation, we didn't want to have a haircut when we were young. Exactly. And it wasn't just to save money. No, no, no, it was a very important thing. So I still stayed young, so I never had a haircut. Well, I want to cover one other topic first before we go to the questions. We have some questions from the audience and that is we got to almost nothing that I wanted to talk about but we still covered almost everything. So that was great. But one idea that I was thinking for the future and in terms of just what everybody is sort of hoping for is some kind of human civilization, say maybe the 22nd or 23rd century, where we finally have knitted together the good ideas from all the different civilizations, just like in India, all kinds of good ideas have been knitted into Indian civilization because there's all subset civilization. And I'm not talking about like making civilization homogenous. In America we have New Orleans and we have Chicago. And for 200 years they've been part of American culture but they're still very, very different. So no one should worry that you'll get that homogenous. But one idea that I wonder about is what idea from each culture or which ideas do you think will make the most major contribution towards that civilization? And I want to ask you what you thought from India would be the idea or the part of the civilization that would have the biggest influence on that world civilization that at least don't influence, you know, part of the population but at least the leadership of the planet? I think the most important contribution that India can make is this is not a land of believers. We are a land of seekers. That means there is a fundamental realization that it doesn't matter at what stage of life we are, there is too much in the universe that we do not know. I do not know is the basis. Why it's like this is in the yogic culture, we always identify with our ignorance because our knowledge is so minuscule. If we have digested the libraries on the planet, still our knowledge is very minuscule but our ignorance is boundless. So we always identify with our ignorance. If this comes to the world, there will be more humility and grace on this planet. That's perfect answer. I have an idea called the imaginations horizon. That is that you're always projecting out where you want to go next with yourself. And ironically, the further you expand or the more you go, the more you know, the further you can see ahead so your imagination is further out. You can have a fight between your imagination and your thinking. By thinking, I can't get to where I want to be. I can't get there. And the further out it goes, the more miserable you could be. And I call that misery your conscience. It's what irritates you all the time. And so you've turned your imagination into a conscience rather than, you know, a way to look forward further and further. And it's the same idea in the sense that if you realize that you don't know everything, you're going to get that is the further out you see, the more you'll realize that you aren't aware of many, many things. George, is it okay because the time is almost getting over if I say something which is not so civilized but you know, I'm like this. I don't have to pretend, I don't have to pretend I'm civilized because I'm not. All right? I'm very proud that nobody could civilize me. So I want to say that imagination, imagination is a rear view mirror. It's not the windshield because your imagination is dependent upon your memory. The exaggerated version of your memory is imagination. So let us not misunderstand a rear view mirror for a windshield because windshield is for you to look through. Rear view mirror is to know what's behind you but giving your perspective of how to travel so that you don't bang into your past. So that something productive, imagination is a productive end of our memory that we are able to produce something of a memory bank that we have. So I would say neither your memory nor imagination should be a compulsively intrusive in your life. You must be able to sit here neither with memory nor with imagination. This is why I'm like, I know I'm just surprised that you even read the death book because I read one novel or something once in two years because if I have time, I'll close my eyes and sit. I will not stare at a book. Most of the reading I did, I did in one or two years when I was youth, when I was restless and I thought I will know something by going to a library. I sat there and read all kinds of stuff but since then I've not found that useful because if I close my eyes, I have a sense of perception of looking at any aspect without really focusing on anything because this is not about trying to understand something. This is just developing a sharpness of perception. You don't try to perceive anything. Whatever comes your way, if your perception is sharp, you will perceive it, that's all. So windshield is not a place where you think of things. When you travel for long, it happens the windshield gathers dust and bugs and stuff and whatever. This is past ticking to the future, you know. We have to clean it up, otherwise we will not see properly, otherwise disasters will happen. So imagination is not a projection of future. Imagination is just a rejig of the past according to the way we want. It's a productive past. Past is a dead past. You make it little productive using the experience of life but let us not ever think imagination is a real projection of life. No, it's a projection of our mind. It's all right to do that. It's good to imagine something but it is better to simply perceive what is there because that's where reality is. Well, we have just time, a couple minutes left for one question which I condensed from many questions that came in and they're all about the Isha Foundation and they want you to imagine its future in the next 5, 10, 15 years, just what you were talking about. You were talking about the perception but you can't project the future. But how do you see Isha Foundation? Where is it going next? One thing I think people should pay attention to that aren't familiar with the foundation is all the different projects that you've done in India, the charitable projects and so on. But you're some of the people who were watching were curious to hear you say something about the future of Isha. So as you know, if there's a building, the foundation should not try to go anywhere. It should stay where it is. Only if it is there, stable, the purpose of a foundation is stability. The purpose of a foundation is not to go somewhere into space. So my focus is not Isha Foundation, my focus is the world's population. Right now, Isha Foundation is a platform which is very essential for a long time I resisted creating an organization because I thought we could function without an organization. Then it became impossible as more and more people came in, it became necessary to have a legal structure and a framework to handle money, to handle properties and to handle various aspects of delivery. So it is a foundation, it should not go anywhere, it should just stay stable and where it is. But my dream when I first experienced this unexplained levels of orgasmic blissfulness right across my body, I realized if I just sit here without messing with my mind, I will be blissful every moment of my life. So I set up a project that in next two-and-a-half years, you know, there's no fool like a young fool, I was twenty-five and I made a plan. In two-and-a-half years time, I will make the entire world's population blissful. At that time, the world's population was five point six billion people. I planned how I will make them blissful. See, nearly forty years, thirty-nine years, here I am. Now people say I am touching around one billion people, but that's not my idea of the world. Today there are seven point six billion people. I know I will die of failure, but I want to increase my percentages that we would like to see before we fall dead there are more blissful human beings than miserable human beings. If that much happens, it's great, but foundation should not go anywhere, it should remain there stable as it is. I think those are the good orders. Thank you very, very much. We really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us. Thank you, George. It's a pleasure talking to you. And we must do some Mark Twain stuff on the Mississippi River sometime, a riverboat or something together. We should go on the riverboat together in the midst of it. Absolutely. That's a great idea. Any time, any time. Do you know I floated down the Kaviri River when I was seventeen, I floated down the Kaviri River for over thirteen days on a bamboo raft. Oh really? Yes. I'll bet you had some very great adventures. It was such a nice image. Huck Finn to the core. Huck Finn to the core. Maybe Huck Finn grew up and became civilized, but I never... Yeah, exactly. At the end of the book, he heads out for the territory because he can't stand civilization. Thank you, George. Great. Thank you very much. And so ends another event at the Commonwealth Club and it's 118th year of enlightened discussion. Hope to have you back again or at least meet you on the Mississippi River again. Thank you so much. To all of you at the Commonwealth Club, thank you very much for having me. Namaskar. Our pleasure.