Questioner: Namaskar Guruji.
I have a very small question.
Do karmas…
Sadhguru: Questions are like that only (Laughter).
Questioner: Do karmas exist and how do they affect our destiny?
Sadhguru: Let’s understand this, karma means action.
So, when you say “karma”, you’re referring to action.
There’re four types of actions that you’re performing right now as you sit here.
Your body is doing something - physical action.
Your mind is doing something - mental action.
Your emotions are doing something - emotional action.
Your energies are doing something - energy action.
These four dimensions of activity
are happening every moment of your life both in wakefulness and sleep it’s happening.
Since today morning,
since the time you woke up, I will excuse you for the times when you were sleeping,
from the time you woke up till this moment,
how much of this, what percentage of these four actions are you conscious of?
That’s a question.
How much percentage do you believe you are conscious of, from morning to now, these four types of actions?
Well below one percent, isn’t it?
So, ninety-nine plus of your karma, your action is unconscious.
Suppose unconsciously, I’m taking something and throwing like this (Gestures) all over
and this keeps coming and falling on my head.
I think it’s being dropped from heaven because I’m unconscious that I am throwing all these things.
When ninety-nine percent of your actions
or over ninety-nine percent of your actions are unconscious,
you always think something is being done to you, isn’t it?
Why forever people have been talking about being conscious is just this - if you raise it to two percent,
suddenly it looks like your destiny is in your hands.
If you have mastery over your physical body,
fifteen to twenty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands.
If you have mastery over your mind, fifty to sixty percent of your life and destiny is in your hands.
If you have mastery over your life energies, one hundred percent of life and destiny is in your hands.
Now your intelligence
or your mind-structure finds expression in many ways.
I know in English language, if you say ‘mind’ – one word, it’s supposed to cover everything.
In the yogic way of looking at things, we look at human mind as sixteen parts.
Right now, I won’t go into the sixteen, we will make it into four segments.
The four segments are called buddhi, ahankara, manas, and chitta.
Buddhi means the intellect.
Intellect is a sharp knife.
The sharper it is, the better it is.
So the way of the intellect is, it has to dissect everything to know anything.
This is the nature of the intellect.
Because our modern education has become fully intellect oriented,
other dimensions of intelligence have been completely ignored by the so-called education today.
Everything is by intellect.
What this means is, if I really want to know you well, I have to dissect you (Few laugh).
Yes, this is the only way intellect can know something.
See, if you give this beautiful flower to a scientist,
what he will do is he will rip it apart into many pieces and tell you many things about this flower.
Only thing is he will not experience the flower the way it is, for what it is.
He does not know what a bee knows but he knows many other things because this is the nature of the intellect.
If you really love somebody, you must dissect them, you get me?
I’m telling you, that is the way we’re going right now.
Our entire education system, our cultures are becoming intellectual.
When it becomes intellectual, whatever is given to you, helplessly you will dissect it.
This is why people are having such problems with human relationships
because if you dissect and look at anybody, nobody seems okay, including yourself (Few laugh).
Yes.
If you include them, if you embrace them, you may know some beauty about who they are
but if you dissect them, everybody is ugly.
Yes or no?
Participants: Yes
So, the next dimension is called ahankara.
Ahankara means it’s your identity.
I know it’s largely interpreted as ego, no, it is your identity.
Whatever identity you have taken, your intellect will do everything to protect that identity, always.
If you strongly think, “I am a man” it will try to protect your masculine gender.
If you say, “I’m a woman” it will try to protect your feminine gender.
If you say, “I’m an Indian” it’ll protect that.
If you say “I’m an African” it’ll protect that.
Whatever identity you take, your intellect will try to always protect that. It works around that.
So whatever kind of identity you take, it is a certain type of prejudice.
“No, no, I’m very broad-minded.”
All right, you have a broad prejudice (Laughter)
but it is a prejudice.
The moment you’re identified with something, you cannot help it,
because your intellect functions around it.
The next dimension of the intelligence is called manas.
Manas means it’s a huge silo of memory.
There are eight forms of memory, let me not go into all that, but it is clear, there is evolutionary memory.
That is…
See, if you eat a mango, it goes inside and becomes a male body.
If a cow eats a mango, it goes inside the cow and becomes a cow’s body.
This is because there is a certain type of evolutionary memory in you.
If this memory was not strong, suddenly you ate a mango and you could become a monkey one day.
Such a thing never happened ever to any creature because the evolutionary memory is so strong and there,
it would… never wavered for a moment.
You may think many things in your mind
but the evolutionary memory never wavered for a moment in your life, isn’t it?
No matter, even if you ate dog-food, you did not become a dog.
Yes?
The next is a genetic memory.
Now when we say memory, we always think it’s here (Referring to the brain), no.
Every cell in your body carries a trillion times more memory than your brain is capable of.
Do you remember how your great-great- great-great-great-grandfather looked like?
You don’t, but his nose is sitting on your face.
It is.
Million years ago, how your forefathers were, your body still remembers, isn’t it?
You’re living in Africa now, it never got confused.
Even the tone of the skin, it did not get confused.
It is continuing.
If you live here for million years more it will still continue, remembering how it was, isn’t it?
There is a genetic memory.
So, there is conscious memory, sub-conscious memory, unconscious memory,
many layers of memory but there is a silo of memory.
If the memory and the intellect get de-linked, then intellect is no use.
Your intellect looks smart only because it’s continuously fueled by the memory that you carry.
So today, being smart means you know what, when you go to the next dinner party,
you know what you do,
this’s what everybody’s doing these days, they’ll open up the internet (Few laugh), do you understand.
They’ll Google it out and see galaxy Z-65.
Some detail about galaxy Z-65, nobody knows whether it really exists or not.
Some detail about it, like what is the distance, how many million light-years is it
and when in the dinner-party just casually throw it out “You know galaxy Z-65” (Laughter)?
Yes, people are looking smart like this only, every day (Laughter).
So, without memory your intellect is no use.
That is why we’re trying to ramp up our memory all the time
because without memory you look stupid in front of other people
but there’s another dimension of intelligence called chitta which is unsullied by memory.
There is no iota of memory in it.
It’s pure intelligence.
Now, what is memory means is all your boundaries are set by your memory.
Please understand this.
You say, “This is my country” how?
You have fixed your memory like this.
You say, “This is my body” -
this body has a structure and a framework only because of the memory it carries, isn’t it?
Yes or no? You understand what I’m saying?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: Right now, it’s taking this human form,
whatever food we put in, it’s taking this human form because it has a certain type of memory.
Never it’s going to become like an elephant. You can try but (Few laugh).
People try but it doesn’t work because there is a proper structure or boundary of memory.
Your ideas of every kind of boundary is only fixed by the memory that you carry
but there is an intelligence within you where there is no memory.
If you touch that dimension of intelligence
then this longing to expand will disappear in you because you’ve found unbridled access to the cosmos.
In yoga, the yogis have a mischievous way of expressing this.
They say, “If you touch your chitta then gods will become your slaves.”
This is a mischievous way of saying it (Laughs).