Speaker: Do you think that from ancient times till now or do you think that things in India have changed?
So if that they have what brought us to the change we are in and how do you see this development
process of great individuals, how do you see that being manifested in the modern times?
Speaker 2: And if I may add how can these ideas – it’s something that I’m assuming
that they are not so prevalent in today’s systems…
Sadhguru: I’m sorry?
Not?
Speaker 2: I’m assuming that these ideas of individual development focused on an individual
are not so prevalent in today’s system…
Sadhguru: No, we’ve gotten into mass production of everything (Laughter).
Speaker 2: Yes.
So how can we actually bring it back and how should India then – if I ask a larger question
– how should India as model of development…?
Is it just aping the West or can we bring back those elements of individual development?
Sadhguru: See, for anything to happen you need a certain ecosystem, certain economic,
what to say, a certain economic depth to… for people to able to do it.
You must understand this, the generation that we were growing up, our parents were just
crazy that you must somehow get one degree and get into a government job.
Your parents are not doing that, they are thinking little more easy, they are trying
to explore things, they want you to do a startup, they want you to do a business, they want
you to get into sport, this was never there.
They were just saying get a job somehow otherwise you’ll be on the street.
This was the level of economics of the time.
Today there is a little more economic space where parents are looking at their children
little differently, still we are little compressed in the heads but little more ease than what
it was forty, fifty years ago.
Ask all your professors - they were just pushed, pushed, get a job, get a job first thing.
Today your parents are not looking like that, looking at what can you create, what can I…
what can our children create, what can they live, how about their happiness –
nobody ever thought about our happiness
okay (Laughter).
So it needs a certain economic depth for any society to experiment, to have little more
freedom to do things otherwise putting them through the extruder and getting them out
in some form in which they’re useful, this is what the society will do, this is a natural
consequence of fifteen, twenty generations of extreme poverty.
This is…
This mental structure and this economic structure is a consequence of fifteen to twenty generations
of extreme poverty.
Very bad poverty means India has suffered poverty like nobody else.
People may show, you know, pictures of Africa and stuff - you must know this,
in Africa there have been famines, there have been wars, unnecessary wars and tribal wars which have
caused this in small scale, in India the level of malnourishment and poverty that’s happened
in the last two centuries is most painful.
No other nation on the planet has suffered as much as this country, no other country
has lost as many people as we have lost in the last century just for hunger
and lack of nourishment.
Even today it is true - though we are much better today, even today unfortunately it
is true that we have the highest number of malnourished people in the country.
More than sixty percent of the rural population even today, they have not grown… their skeletal
system has not grown to full size.
When they are in that state, you’re only thinking how to make a living, you’re not
thinking of how to open up human genius, you’re not interested in all that.
You’re not thinking how to become self-realized, you’re only thinking how to make a living.
So this has happened to us because we’ve been an occupied nation for too long.
We’ve been ripped off in every other way.
There’s no point blaming somebody, we didn’t take care of it at that time, it went out
of our hands but two-hundred-and-fifty, three-hundred years ago everybody wanted to come to India,
why?
-Because it was the richest country on the planet.
We occupied a thirty-three percent space in the economic space of the planet at one time.
Today probably we are two or three percent.
Hmm?
So because of this extreme poverty, we have a certain mindset but I think in a generation
or in next fifteen, twenty years, a whole lot of people will come out of this because
there’s little more ease, little more space to play with, little more space to push it.
When a earthworm, with one-millionth of your brain can earn a living, with such
a big brain, earning a living, is it such a big problem?
It is the most…
It's… the grossest way to approach life is – “how will I earn my living?”
Everybody can earn their living.
The only problem comes in your life when you want to live like somebody else, that's a problem.
But earning a living is not a problem.
If you just make what is considered survival minimal, don't go on exaggerating it, then
you will see, you have a whole lot of time and opportunity to create what you want in your life.
But people keep on raising the bar of survival so much that they will not get to do anything
in their life except surviving.
In the end, they don't know why they survived (Laughter/Applause).