Sadhguru: We must understand
the need for violence
is essentially fear.
The more fearful you are
the more the tendency for you to become violent.
You will see people who are fearful,
first thing is they’ll get verbally violent.
If they have
if they …if they find that
whoever is in front of them is physically of less capability,
they will also become physically violent.
Where there is no fear,
the need for violence will come down dramatically.
So
why the fear,
what is the fear about?
Essentially the basis of fear is just this
in this
a vast expanse of creation
this cosmic space
if you are identified yourself as a little body,
this small little person in this vast cosmos,
fear is natural.
Most people are living in ignorance
and trying to avoid fear
but if you really look at it
you are in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe you think ‘I am in Los Angeles or New York’
but actually in this cosmos you are in the middle of nowhere;
your GPS cannot tell you where you are .
If you really look at it, this tiny piece of life
if you are identified only with your biological self -
this tiny piece of life should shiver in terror.
One way of avoiding this is
not look at all those things, things
think you are the greatest nonsense on the planet
and go on,
that’ll work for some time
and when lif e…when life and death gives you a taste of it,
then fear will come anyway.
But transcending fear - what it means is,
if you bring your life in such a way
if you allow your life to happen in a certain way to you,
if your experience of life transcends
the boundaries of your physicality,
if you handle your body in such a way
that your body is as competent as it can be
in the physical world
and your inner experience is beyond
this physicality of who you are,
you will see fear will become equanimous.
One thing is you’re physically competent
which makes you physically efficient
and competent to handle the physical world.
One who is physically fit
walks into physical situations without much fear
simply because of physical competence.
This must be done right from very young age.
Half the children going to school,
you see they’re turning like pumpkins,
drinking corn syrup
So when you become like a pumpkin as a child,
then Halloween works for you,
everything is fearful.
If you are fit and competent
and you are ready to fight the dragons,
then your physical self is competent.
Because of that a whole lot of fear is taken care of.
And the other dimension is,
your inner experience has transcended your physicality,
then there is no fear at all.
Now you have transcended violence on both levels
because physical is always under threat,
we need to understand this.
Physical is not a permanent fixture,
physical is under threat.
When we say we are mortal, what it means is,
physicality is under threat always.
That’s the nature of physicality.
Physicality is not an indestructible process,
physicality is a fragile process.
We can make it strong but it's still a fragile process.
So if these two dimensions are handled
that physical competence of a certain caliber
and an inner experience which is beyond physicality,
fear is handled.
If fear is handled
transcending violence naturally happens.
This is what Kalari is trying to do -
a discipline which brings an enormous physical competence,
at the same time there is a meditative dimension to it
which is striving to bring that experience
beyond physicality
it is not about fighting somebody,
it is about bringing yourself to the ultimate possibility
that you can bring your body and mind to;
and then work on your spiritual process
to transcend these two things.
Transcendence is not an avoidance -
this must be understood.
Transcendence means
you are building something as a solid footstep
over which you can stand
or you can use to step over.
because the fear is essentially
because of fragility of physicality,
and because of this fear the need for violence.
Violence means just this
when my physicality is threatened
I choose to destroy your physicality
that’s all violence is.
So if my physicality is not threatened,
the need for destroying your physicality
has considerably gone down.
There may be other reasons
but still considerably gone down within me.
If there is no threat to my physicality,
the need to destroy your physicality
or harm your physicality has gone down dramatically within myself.
That is one level
and another level is
to have an experience beyond my own physicality,
that even if my physicality is threatened
the need to destroy the physical nature of the other
has gone down because
my experience of life is beyond my physical nature.