Sadhguru: You know, we are doing this programs in the prisons in India, in South India and
also in the United States.
Have you read something about it?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: See, prison is in many ways one of the most horrible places to live on the
planet.
Whatever conveniences, comforts somebody has created, is not the point.
But somebody locks you from outside, that is a huge thing.
That is not a small thing.
One will not understand what this is unless you go there.
I have spent sufficient time there.
It is a different kind of suffering.
It's a very, very different kind of suffering.
First of all, criminal is a man.
Whoever who brand as a criminal is a man who has more longing for life than other people.
He wants to live.
In his hurry to live, he will trample certain things because of which he becomes a criminal,
isn't it?
His longing for life is deeper than other people that he cannot go in the line like
everybody, he wants to jump the line – that is why he becomes a criminal.
So when this man is locked up, denied many things, the suffering is very, very different.
When we were last time doing a program in Pennsylvania prison, there is a man there,
who has been there for thirty years.
In Pennsylvania state, life is life.
There is no remission of terms.
He is serving three consecutive life terms.
He has been there for thirty years.
He is not yet fifty.
Just after high school, he got into some trouble and he shot three men and three consecutive
life terms he got.
Thirty years he has been there.
He is very healthy and fit.
He is going to live for another thirty, forty years and he is going to be right there.
He knows that very well, no question of remission and there is no death sentence.
Even if he kills another ten people in the prison, he will get another ten life terms,
no death sentence.
So this made him so violent from the day he entered the prison.
So they put him in a single cell, something like five-and-a-half by eight or something
like this, of that size.
One bunker bed and one closet.
That's all.
What he said was, he was all in tears and he said, “Thirty years of my life, I have
never sat down in one place.
I am unable to sit.
Thirty years of my life, I just walked up and down these eight feet, like a wild animal,
because I could not sit.When I got tired and fell asleep, I fell asleep.
Otherwise I never sat even for a minute, I just walked, paced up and down this eight
feet.”
He even ate his meals walking.
He could not sit down.
He said, “For the first time now I am sitting and I am sitting joyously.
Thirty years I spent like a wild animal.
Now at last I can sit like a human being.”
It is not a small thing.
You won't understand unless you are there with them.
The suffering is… it's a different kind altogether.
So now, from the prisons of India and United States, we have over 2,000 poems written by
the inmates.
The moment they start meditating, they burst forth into poetry.
This prison poetry is going to be published in the next few months.
Such wonderful poems they wrote, so touching.
Their… their suffering and their liberation through meditation, they just express this
in so many ways.
So even for somebody who lives in a situation like that, it is a tool to live joyously.
So for you it will definitely work if you are willing to make use of it.
I want to see that you live truly as blissful human beings, it is possible.
I know it is possible.
If you are willing, you will know it is possible.
And it is just that major, major things have been done, enormous amount of money is being
spent in creating arms and ammunition.
Enormous amount of money is being spent in, you know, tobacco and alcohol and pleasures
and entertainment and everything, but never before has humanity, except when somebody
like Gautama came, the king Ashoka dedicated huge sums of money to spread the meditation
in the country.
That is why Gautama became popular, because the king took it up.
The Emperor Ashoka took it up and gave him the resources and the people to spread meditation
because he saw this is what needs to happen.
But otherwise, most of the time humanity has never invested in spreading tools of joy,
inner joy for themselves and for everybody.
People have not invested.
Many wonderful yogi's have come, many wonderful sages and saints have come, but the necessary
support did not come.
Gautama was one of the fortunate few that the king gave all his resources, including
his family, to completely be dedicated to this path and make it happen for everybody.
It's a real tragedy that humanity never invested in seeking joy within themselves.
But humanity invested enormously to destroy each other, to kill each other, you know,
even today, after all this, still the maximum investment is still going into the arms industry
in the world, isn't it?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: It's, it's so unintelligent, forget about anything else.
It is so unintelligent, that we have to invest in that direction, not in well-being.
It's time you invest your time, life and your resources to make, you know, the right kind
of things happen in the world, isn't it?
For yourself and for everybody.