Pravin Gordhan: We are a twenty-two-year-old young nation and with a legacy of issues,
which come from our past, but some of it we create ourselves in the present.
But amongst the things that our past systems were based on is race.
So a very topical issue in South Africa today is whether we are non-racial or whether we’re racists
So, how do we become non-racial
and create the state of mind, where we see all human beings, regardless of color,
as our equals and extend our respect to them?
Secondly, we’re trying to bind ourselves into the second... single nationhood
that… And I think most of us…
Usually, when there’re big events like the FIFA World Cup in 2010, we all suddenly become
unanimously South African.
Then we forget it for a while.
Sadhguru: We need more football (Laughter).
Pravin Gordhan: Well… Or some cricket games that we can win against India
Sadhguru: Ahh (Laughter)!
Pravin Gordhan: ...but we’ll come back to that.
So, in this... in this use of what you call the technology of yoga and inner well-being,
how do we get and overcome… get rid of and overcome some of which...
sound tendencies, which we’ve learnt and perhaps are endemic in our systems,
and leapfrog, if you like, to what might sound like an idyllic state of non-racialism,
of mutual recognition of each other as equal human beings and as builders of this common nationhood?
Sadhguru: The word yoga literally means union.
What union means…
There’re many, many ways to look at it.
There are poetic ways to look at it, there are philosophical ways of looking at it,
there are mystical ways of looking at it.
But let me make it very simplistic, common sense way of looking at it (Laughs).
All of you, take your right hand and touch your left hand and see, please?
Just touch it.
Is that you?
Hello?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: Touch the chair on which you’re sitting.
Is that you?
Participants: No.
Sadhguru: How do you know this?
What is the basis for you to know, “this is me, this is not me”?
That’s a question (Laughter).
How do you know?
Participant: ____ (Inaudible).
Sadhguru: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re… you’re reading things, hmm (Laughter)?
How do you know?
There is sensation.
There is sensation here (Gestures), there is no sensation here (Gestures).
Or in other words, what you’re saying is, “Whatever is within the boundaries of my sensation is me,
whatever is outside the boundaries of my sensation is not me”, right?
So the definition of who you are is just this –
“Anything that is within the boundaries of my sensation is me,
what is outside my boundaries of sensation is not me.” Am I right?
There is water in this glass. Is this you?
Hello?
Participants: No.
Sadhguru: If you drink it…
Pravin Gordhan: It could be…
Sadhguru: If you drink it…
How did you gather whatever number of kilograms you carry right now, how did you gather this (Few laugh)?
Just by ingestion, isn’t it?
What was not you yesterday, you made it yourself,
simply by including it into the boundaries of your sensation.
Right now, whatever is here in the form of your limbs and your body, this is definitely you, isn’t it?
But this was not you yesterday, a part of it at least.
When you were born, you were so much (Gestures) now you’ve become this much (Gestures), how?
Just by ingestion. Yes?
The food that you’ve eaten, the water that you drank and everything.
So what is not you, you can make it a part of yourself, if it comes into the boundaries of sensation.
If you have experienced a very loving or joyful moment, so loving or joyful that tears came to you…
Did it ever happen to you?
That’s just ten people.
Participants: Yes (Laughter).
Sadhguru: At such a moment, if you place your hand or hold your hand just eight-ten inches away from yourself,
you will see, right here you will feel sensation. Have you ever noticed this?
If no such wonderful thing happened to you, let me do something horrible to you.
We will chop off your right leg.
If we take away your right leg, the leg will be gone but it’s possible for a certain period of time,
your sensory leg could still be intact. You know this? It’s called the phantom leg.
All the sensations of the leg are still there, though the leg is not there.
That means sensory body has a presence of its own.
So this sensory body…
If your life energies become very exuberant, your sensory body will expand.
If your life energies become little subdued, your sensory body will contract.
This might have happened to some of you – you’re feeling depressed, somebody...
someone came and touched you on your shoulder, you can’t feel it.
They have to shake you, otherwise you don’t know because you are in a subdued state of energy.
Now, what yoga means is,
to slowly galvanize the life energy in such a way that
it becomes so effervescent within you, your sensory body will expand.
Let us say, you’re sitting here right now, your sensory body became as big as this hall,
then you will experience everything in this hall as a part of yourself.
It doesn’t matter what color it is, it doesn’t matter whether it is even human or otherwise,
it doesn’t matter whether it is animate or inanimate, both ways,
everything you will experience as a part of myself, simply because your sensory body has expanded.
If you make your life energies very super effervescent,
then this sensory body can become as large as the universe.
So, if you experience the entire creation as myself, then we say you are a yogi.
The word yoga means union.
Yogi means one who has experienced or living a state of union within himself or herself.
Now, will this solve the problem of discrimination?
No, because you will not understand what it is that people call as discrimination
because you will see everything as myself.
You will experience everything as myself.
If you... in... even for a moment...
If you don’t live it, even for a moment, right now you sat here, right now you experienced
that all these people who’re sitting here actually a part of you –
as you experience the ten fingers of your hands, you experience these people around you as a part of myself
– after that, do I have to tell you, “Do not kill them, do not rob them, do not discriminate”?
All these teachings will be meaningless to you.
This is what yoga means.
So will it be a solution for all the disparities that we have invented in our minds?
Every difference, we’ve made it into a discriminatory process.
Every opportunity we get, we are seeing how to put someone down.
This is not just about color, this is about everything.
This is just about everything.
How to put somebody down is the only way I can raise myself –
this has been the unfortunate history of humanity in many ways.
There’ve been many great things also but largely, this has been the process.
Because in day-to-day life – sometimes it gets organized and super cruel,
but it is happening every day, in every home, in every transaction –
one person is trying to make himself or herself better than the other.
One person is somehow sees the one way to become better is to somehow reduce this person
in stature, in character, in capability.
In some way reduce somebody and you’re up.
If I cut everybody’s legs off, then I am the champion runner here, okay (Laughter)?
So, this kind of mindset has been there because the human effort is to somehow expand, to become bigger.
If you do not know how to become bigger, the best thing is to make other people smaller.
So, this need within the human being, that you have to make someone small for you to be big,
will go away when that someone also you have known as a part of yourself.
This experiential dimension will definitely erase the very basis for discrimination within your mind.
Once it’s gone in your mind, how can it manifest in your society?
After all, the societies that we have built are just larger manifestations of our minds.