Sadhguru: I know the eastern minds have also absorbed this in a horribly distorted way,
but… right now if you told your friend or your relative,
‘I am going to the ashram for three days,’
they would become very kind towards you and ask, ‘Why, what went wrong?'
(Laughter) Something must be wrong with your life,
you are going to the ashram to heal a wound, to solace yourself,
Something must be really wrong with your life or you must be too old for life
Otherwise why would you go to an ashram?
So this has crept into this culture also.
Essentially, if you’re alive only in parts or if you are partially alive…
to be partially alive… to be partially alive is a terrible torture.
Many of you have been through these science classes,
I am sure you opened up frogs and cockroaches, did you?
Hmm?
They were nice lively beings but you opened them up
because you wanted to find their heart and liver and kidney.
Half alive; being half alive is torture; have you seen this?
Always being half alive is torture.
This is the torture that a large segment of humanity is going through right now
because they’re half alive.
Only one part of them has become alive; only their physicality and mentality has become alive;
the rest of it is yet to become alive.
Half alive people will suffer everything - they will suffer ignorance, they will suffer education;
they will suffer poverty, they will suffer affluence;
they will suffer being alone, they will suffer being in a relationship.
If they are not married they suffer; if they are married they… they … (Gestures)(Applause).
If they don’t have children, they suffer that
as if… children if they are there, they can come and bite you; they do.
No children - what are you suffering?
But that also they suffer.
Just show me one thing that human beings are not suffering right now;
Just show me one aspect of life that human beings are not suffering right now.
They’re suffering just about anything,
not just life; they are even suffering death before it happens.
See he is thinking of building a pyramid for himself (Laughter).
That which is and that which is not, everything they suffer.
This is not…
You are not suffering loneliness, you are not suffering company,
You are not suffering money, you are not suffering poverty
What you are suffering is you are half alive.
You are desperately trying to make yourself fully alive through money, through drink,
through sex, through going on a trek, coming to the ashram (Laughs).
In so many ways you are somehow trying to make yourself fully alive which is yet to happen fully.
Here and there you feel a burst of aliveness but again it ebbs down.
So, when people are constantly half alive, pleasure becomes an important part of your life
very important part of your life - without it you cannot exist.
Pleasure becomes paramount in your life, when you are only half alive.
When physicality is all that you know, pleasure becomes of immense importance in your life.
If you become fully alive, you will become so blissful, joyful, ecstatic without reason,
burst of ecstasy within you without any reason.
It's almost embarrassing (Laughs).
Now the thought of pleasure just evaporates.
Looking for a drink,
looking for some kind of pleasurable thing just evaporates out of your mind
because you’re fully alive.
When you’re fully alive, pleasure disappears,
When you are half dead, pleasure is an important, important thing.