There is common sense,
there is sense
and there is something beyond sense.
With common sense,
your survival process gets handled.
You don’t have to be brilliant,
you just have common sense,
you will survive pretty good.
You could turn out quite street smart.
Actually, if somebody very intelligent is walking down the street,
let’s say Albert Einstein is walking down the street.
A street urchin can easily con him.
Albert Einstein doesn’t have
the wily nature (Laughs) of the one who is walking the streets every day.
Very easily, you can deceive him.
He may have enormous intelligence about something else.
So, because the street kid has more common sense
Common sense is restricted to a certain habitat.
In that habitat, it works.
In another place, your common sense doesn’t work.
You know, you heard of the ISRO?
They have sent a Mars probe now, at ten percent of the cost what NASA would do normally.
Because it’s all indigenous and they built it up in their own ways.
So, they were interviewing people to be taken in,
for a job in ISRO.
Shankaran Pillai applied (Laughter).
He is very street smart, a lot of common sense.
So the interviewer asked,
“Which is closer, moon or Mumbai?” (Laughter)
They are in Bangalore.
Shankaran Pillai looked up in the sky
and he said, “Moon” (Few laugh).
He said, “What?
How do you say that?”
He said, “Well, I can see the moon, I can’t see Mumbai” (Laughter/Applause).
So, this kind of sense goes well in certain things.
But if you want to transcend,
you need a different kind of sense.
This kind of sense is good on the survival mode.
When you are on a survival mode on the street,
this kind of sense works pretty good.
If we try to go all over with this kind of sense,
we’ll become one big mess.
So going beyond one’s senses and knowing,
why is it needed?
It’s not needed,
if you’re thinking in terms of a need.
If you are using the word need as
whether it’s necessary for my survival or not, it’s not needed.
But unfortunately
If you… If you had come here (Gestures) (Laughter) as a chimpanzee,
it’s definitely not needed.
But your tragedy is you have evolved into a human being.
Wanting to live like a chimpanzee doesn’t work,
that’s the whole problem.
Human intelligence and awareness has come to a place,
where it cannot limit itself to the ambit of survival,
it has to look.
Now what we’re doing as a solution for this problem
It's not a problem, it’s a possibility.
Every possibility, those who are not willing to take on the possibility,
for them it seems like a problem.
It’s a phenomenal possibility
but most human beings are treating it like a problem.
So how they are solving the problem is,
raise the bar of survival.
Keep on raising it.
What was your idea of survival twenty-five years ago?,
what was your idea of survival fifteen years ago?,
what is your idea of survival today?
it’s raising the bar, isn't it?
Two meals a day was survival when you didn’t have anything,
if you… if you have known that… such a state.
It’s good to know those things.
But now, maybe Mercedes is survival (Few laugh).
In every different segment of society,
survival has been raised to a place,
where billionaires are still struggling to survive among their community (Few laugh).
Yes?
I have had this opportunity (Laughs), at close quarters,
to see multi-billionaires, but are still beggars (Few laugh).
Every day, their… their mentality, their mindset is just that of a beggar,
who sits on the street and thinking,
“Okay, what will… what is today?
What… How many more pennies can I gather?”
It’s the same stuff.
It’s just that the numbers have increased
but the experience of life is still the same.
Because you raised the bar of survival.
Now, your whole life, it doesn’t matter what you do,
still goes in survival.
Everybody
I… I won’t fix this for you.
In your life, you must fix it.
How much is survival, you must fix it somewhere,
now.
Not after twenty-five years,
when you get there.
No.
Now you must fix,
“This is my survival. Then what I want to do?
My survival is taken care of, what is it that really matters to me in my life,
whatever that is?”
If we don’t structure our lives like this,
forever you will be fighting with phantoms.
Why (Laughs) I am saying you’re fighting with phantoms is
See, in other countries, where the bar of survival has not been raised so high,
people can change the course of their life when they wish.
I find,
in the most affluent nation on the planet,
everybody is enslaved for thirty years minimum.
Their house loan is for thirty years,
car loan is for five years,
another thing is something,
their insurance, this, this, this.
They’re just fixed.
Tomorrow morning, if they find something really compelling that they want to do,
they cannot do.
They can only do it after thirty years (Few laugh).
We did not come to affluence for this.
The idea of affluence is, you have the freedom to change the course of your life,
do what you want to do.
You don’t have to be stuck with what you thought was the best thing when you were twenty.
At twenty, you may think this is the best thing.
At forty, the damn thing means nothing (Few laugh).
If still the same… same things mean a lot to you,
that means you’re stuck.
You’re not growing, isn't it (Laughs)?
A whole lot of people are stuck at fourteen, not even twenty (Laughter).
Same things, still they are excited about somebody’s body part (Few laugh),
they are still very excited about
It’s ridiculous (Laughter).
When you are fourteen, you were excited, I understand (Laughter).
You are forty-five, fifty, sixty, you are still in the same bin (Laughs),
it’s a tragic way to live
because essence of life is that we are able to explore as much as we can when we live here,
to know and experience everything possible that is there in this life.