Rainn Wilson: I don't even know how to start an interview with a guru.
Sadhguru: Clouds are on, you just have to rain. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: How did you get to be a guru? Is there like… how do you sign up? Can I be a guru?
Sadhguru: A light cannot stand up and say, "I'm the light."
Well, you have to shine (Laughs) then you are the light. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: What would you like to say to the young people of the United States?
Sadhguru: Youth means a vibrant part of life.
You must stay young; that means, you should not make conclusions.
Rainn Wilson: I don't even know how to start an interview with a guru.
Sadhguru: The clouds are on, you just have to rain. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: A rain joke is a good way to start this interview,
but if you're gonna make a rain joke, I'm gonna make a guru joke.
How did you get to be a guru? Is there like… how do you sign up?
Can I be a guru? Can anyone be a guru? What's the path to gurudom?
Sadhguru: Well, you don't aspire to become a guru.
People, when they find that your guidance is worthwhile, they may call you a guru.
Rainn Wilson: Oh, okay. Sadhguru: You don't say, "I'm the..."
You know, the word guru means one who dispels darkness.
A light cannot stand up and say, "I'm the light."
Well, you have to shine (Laughs) then you are the light. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: Excellent, excellent. I love that, I love that analogy.
So, I've been getting to know your work a little bit in researching for this conversation,
and I'm so pleased to get to speak with you, I know we've been talking about it for a while.
And I love the message in the heart of your teachings, and I love the way...
how wonderfully self-effacing you are in your sense of humour.
I also use a sense of humor in my work.
How important is humor in
the teaching of spiritual and psychological human truths?
Sadhguru: Oh! (Laughs) I never looked at it that way. I feel…
well, if you're joyful,
naturally you will look at everything from all sides.
One side is always the lighter side. Well, if you look at the planet right now,
we are good morning, somebody is good night; one side is light, another side is dark. (Laughs)
This is the nature of the existence. In every situation there is a dark side,
there is a grey side, and there is a very light side.
It's not by ignoring the dark side and always trying to be funny, you achieve something.
Or, just by looking at the dark side, you will achieve something.
It's important that people have a more holistic picture of every situation,
because there is never going to be perfect situations in our life.
Rainn Wilson: Well, in America right now, a lot of people are looking at this darkness,
and are feeling very overwhelmed. There's political dark times,
there's racial and social justice dark times,
environmental dark times, this global pandemic
is very scary and another dark time...
So, how do you find the light in all of this darkness?
Sadhguru: I thought California is quite sunny, I thought it's not so dark. (Both Laugh)
People are misunderstanding their psychological situations as existential reality.
Existential reality is the way it is.
How you reflect it in your mind depends on how dark your mirror is.
So, it's very important to look at life just the way it is, not the way you think it is,
because you can think up anything you want.
You can make a horror out of a simple aspect of sun coming up,
you can think, "Oh, it's rising, and it's going to kill me."
There are people who do that. Sun setting, somebody thinks it's the end of the world.
Well, when the sun sets, if you do not remember yesterday, it does look like end of the world.
Winter comes - it does look like end of the world.
So... (Laughs) of course Spring will come later, that is the reality of life,
but in your mind, you can do these things. So, most important thing is,
I think Western societies have given too much importance to their own thought and emotion.
Your thought and emotion is your psychological drama.
You're supposed to run it the way you want it, but now you think it's a reality by itself!
What you think and what you feel is not a reality, it's what you're making up in your mind.
You're free to make up what you want.
Rainn Wilson: In the United States right now with young people, we're in a mental health crisis,
the likes of which the world has never seen.
The statistics about anxiety, depression, loneliness,
suicide, and suicidal ideation, among young people is through the roof,
it's almost unmeasurable.
I've loved listening to your talks, especially the ones about joy, engineering joy,
changing yourself from the inside, restructuring your internal environment.
What can you tell people who might be struggling with these mental health issues?
Sadhguru: (Laughs) See, every human experience
has a chemical basis to it.
In terms of human chemistry, this is the most complex chemical factory there is on the planet right now.
Now, if you have such a sophisticated organization, or an organism,
or if you want to call it a factory, a factory, the question is only,
are you a good CEO, or are you a lousy CEO? That's all there is.
So, if you know how to manage the chemistry of this,
then would you choose chemistry of joy, or chemistry of misery?
Would you choose chemistry of balance, or chemistry of madness?
What would you choose? I know the choice is obvious for everybody.
So, why are they not able to choose? That's what we need to look at.
Well, if you need to look at why you're not able to choose,
there are things to look at – what you eat, what goes into your system.
Well (Laughs) Americans are eating... see, the idea of affluence
for either an individual, or a society, or a nation, is essentially this:
in the beginning, somebody aspires for affluence because it'll give them a choice of nourishment.
Later on it's a choice of lifestyle.
So, United States is, well, in many ways, the richest nation on the planet,
so they have a choice of nourishment, and a choice of lifestyles.
But what kind of nourishment do they choose?
The kind of nourishment that they've chosen is just definitely going to freak them.
So I'm saying, what you put into your system, how you sit,
how you stand, how you breathe, what you do - everything is wrong!
So, chemistry management: one thing is food, what you intake.
To put it very simply, I'm not going into a food exposition right now, but the simple thing is,
today, even if you ask a kindergarten child
whether this body needs oxygen or carbon dioxide for its well-being,
they know it's oxygen - at least they've read it in a book.
But now, carbonated drinks in this country have been the culture of the nation.
You're always drinking carbon dioxide, but even a kindergarten child knows oxygen is what you need.
So, I'm surprised that the percentages are not much higher.
The abuse of alcohol, the kind of food that we're eating, the...
the processed foods that people are eating, almost everything that they're eating is a month old.
You cannot eat like that and be mentally well, it just...
Oh, you... you... (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: Mm-hmm, I'm with you, yeah. (Sadhguru laughs)
Rainn Wilson: Hey, it's organic! Sadhguru: It doesn't matter,
but it's a month old. (Laughs) Rainn Wilson: So, a month old, so the...
so, you're saying fresher foods.
Sadhguru: Not fresher food - fresh food. Rainn Wilson: Fresh food.
Sadhguru: Yes, that's what the body needs. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: Food like you pick it, and you just eat it from the garden.
Sadhguru: No, not that fresh, you don't have to be, you must wash it also a little bit. (Laughs)
Rainn Wilson: So, what is anxiety, and is there a way out of it?
Sadhguru: See, there are two basic faculties in a human being which are significant,
and which is unique to a human being, which makes us who we are.
One is, we have a vivid sense of memory; it's because of that our life is rich.
No other creature on the planet has as vivid a sense of memory as we have.
Because of this fantastic sense of memory, we have a fantastic sense of imagination.
If there was no such elaborate detailed memory in our minds, we would not be capable of imagination.
Imagination is just extrapolation of our memory.
So, what is it that human beings are suffering in their life?
They're suffering what happened 10 days ago, still.
We are complaining to the nature, “Why did you evolve us?
You must have left us as an earthworm, we would have been happy - at least we would be eco-friendly.”
That would be of great value in California.
Rainn Wilson: That's funny, that's great. The work that your institute does, Isha,
is in health and nutrition, in education, and also the environment.
Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you guys are doing with the environment?
Sadhguru: Well, with environment, you know, (Laughs)
this whole thing began in the year 1998.
Certain experts from United Nations came, and they made a prediction
that by 2025, 60% of the state in which I am,
the southernmost state in India, will become a desert.
I don't like any kind of predictions, whether they’re astrological,
environmental, political, economic – I don't like predictions,
because predictions are being arrived at from dead, cold, statistics.
You're not looking at what is beating in the human heart,
because human beings, what they're thinking right now will be the future, not what they've done in the past.
So, I didn't like the prediction. So, I thought I'll check it out for myself.
And I drove around the state just seeing different regions how they are.
And then I found that they were wrong,
because I saw it's going to happen much sooner than 2025.
Rainn Wilson: Wow! Sadhguru: It wouldn't take that long,
because 3 major rivers had gone totally dry.
Many, many streams, small streams which are tributaries, have gone dry,
and desertification is happening at a rapid pace.
Where palm trees are, their crowns are falling off, not able to find water.
Always in the tradition it was said, if a palm tree dies, that means you're heading for a disaster;
because it finds water wherever it is, in the minutest quantity – it can survive in a desert!
So, if the palm tree crowns start falling off, it means that there is definitely a disaster coming.
Because borewells are going like 1200, 1400 feet below and sucking out all the water,
all vegetation is dying because no tree is able to put roots to 1200 feet.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah. Sadhguru: So, then I saw how to do this,
and I spent 6 years planting trees in people's heads,
which is the harshest terrain on the planet. (Both laugh)
Once we successfully did this for 6 years, then transplanting it on the land became easy.
I did a simple process. So, I was just looking at how to do this – as an experiment I just took a hill,
which is behind our center, which has been sheared off all the trees,
maybe 25, 30 years ago, and become largely bamboo and shrubs, but the trees are all gone.
Somebody has taken it away.
So, as an experiment, I did this in over 23, 24 days with about 4,000 to 4,500 volunteers.
All I did was give them 2 meals and teach them a song to sing.
And we planted over 6 million trees! They're up now today, if you come and see,
all these trees are about 20 years old in the forest, and our temperatures in the center
has come down by 3 to 4 degrees in Summer. You know, that's the kind of difference it made.
So, I just experimented whether we can really move people to do this.
And then we took up a campaign.
So, when I tried to talk to people in the villages,
they wouldn't understand what am I talking about, because they have daily problems.
They have problems of survival, they have problems of agriculture, economy – so many things!
Who is talking about this future... futuristic... because everybody thinks ecology is futuristic.
They don't understand it is relevant for today.
So, I did a simple process. I got thousands of people, made them sit,
and put them through a certain... well, for lack of words, we can say a spiritual process,
where they sit and breathe, and experientially know,
what I exhale, the tree inhales; what the tree exhales, I inhale.
So, what I'm exhaling, the tree is inhaling; what the tree is exhaling, I'm inhaling – this is the reality.
So, one half of your lungs is actually hanging out there on the tree.
Once I made them experience this, oh, now you can't stop them from planting trees. (Laughs)
They're planting trees, planting trees...
Just from our organization we planted over 38 million trees,
but over 200 other small organizations came up because of this movement.
This was initially called as Project GreenHands. Over 200 other organizations came up,
everybody is in competition wanting to plant more trees, and more trees,
it became a kind of a cultural thing. So, definitely the green cover went up.
Rainn Wilson: I love your teachings in the way that you have this intersection of
understanding a human being, understanding the user's manual of the human being from the inside,
and at the same time, your passion and work on the environment
affecting literally millions, or tens, or hundreds of millions of people.
That's very inspiring. Thank you very much for that great environmental work that you do.
I just want to ask one last question before we finish, and that is,
what would you like to say to the young people of the United States who might be watching this video?
Sadhguru: Stay alive, stay young. That's about it – what else?
One thing they need to understand is, youth means a vibrant part of life.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah. Sadhguru: They must remain vibrant,
not go into beliefs, and conclusions, and...
because the more conclusions you make, the more old you will become.
What is old age? It's simply too many conclusions about everything.
If you do not conclude about anything, you're willing to look at everything and experience life the way it is.
You will stay young, so that's why I said, one thing is through this virus pandemic, you must stay alive.
This is a big responsibility. You must stay alive, and make sure everybody around you is alive.
And you must stay young – that means, you should not make conclusions,
you're willing to look at everything fresh all the time. Thank you very much.
Rainn Wilson: Thank you, sir. Sadhguru: Hope we catch up and meet
when the virus... virus willing, we will meet. Rainn Wilson: Virus willing, we'll meet,
we'll ride motorcycles together. Thank you, sir. Sadhguru: Thank you. Namaskaram!