Blake Mycoskie: Most humans on the planet, how conscious are they?
Sadhguru: In today's world?
Blake Mycoskie: Yeah, in Los Angeles; you spend time here.
Sadhguru: Oh, let's take the whole world, I don't want to make a judgment on Los Angeles.
In the whole world, it's unfortunately a very minuscule percentage, minuscule.
Why is this so?
Why is it people are not conscious?
The fundamental reason is they have taken themselves too seriously.
They don't understand that they're just a pop up on the planet.
They'll pop up and pop out, but big fuss about that.
What is “me” has become too important.
What is “me” means, my physical form is me, essentially, isn't it?
So once my limitations become very important, there is no way to be conscious.
You’re just becoming self-defeating in the process, it doesn't matter how hard you try.
The only and only reason why the entire world is not naturally enlightened is,
they're dead serious about their lives;
they've not come to ease with their life, they’re too serious about it.
See -I mean, you’ve just been through Inner Engineering online process
-if you take the very solar system, in this cosmos, this solar system is a tiny speck.
In that speck, Planet Earth is a micro speck;
in that micro speck, Los Angeles is a super micro speck.
In that, you are a big man.
This is a serious problem; it’s not a small problem.
So once you create this problem, then you cannot be conscious,
you can only be mentally alert, because it's all about survival.
The more mentally alert you become, more you tend to become like a carnivorous animal.
You know a carnivorous animal is very mentally alert, because every day he has to hunt his food.
You know, I've spent so much time in the jungles in India, you must see a tiger, how alert he is, how alert he is!
Because if he's not alert, he's not going to get food, he's going to die of starvation.
He's got to be super alert to earn his food.
Most people think tigers can kill what they want
- no, it's very, very difficult for him to get his prey,
because all the herbivorous animals are faster than him,
and they sweat in the body so they can run longer.
He can only do one burst;
in that burst he must catch, otherwise he gets hot, his body gets too hot, he cannot go.
He just sits there helplessly because his body gets overheated.
You must watch this whole game how it goes on, how frustrated he is that he can't get his food.
He knows his energy levels are going down and as time passes by,
he will become more incapable of getting his food, you should see the anxiety on his face.
So he's super alert,
this is the nature of a carnivorous animal.
Once your alertness, mental alertness goes that way,
you become like a predator, always looking what you can get, what you can get, what you can get,
it may be in whatever levels of life that people are involved in,
but all the time they're trying to grab something, because mental alertness creates that.
I'm not saying you should not be alert, but if you're conscious and alert, then it works in a different way.
But if you just ramp up your mental alertness,
you will become like a hunter all the time, waiting, crouching for something.
Blake Mycoskie: And you've…
If I heard you correctly, many people who are pursuing consciousness
end up just becoming more mentally alert.
And so,
how does one strive to have more consciousness,
but if it's not something you can work at or work towards, what is the path?
Sadhguru: See the very question; when you say “to pursue consciousness.”
how will you pursue consciousness?
Blake Mycoskie: Or I guess a higher consciousness?
Sadhguru: No, in which direction will you pursue?
Because you are consciousness, isn't it? Where is the need to pursue this?
See, we can pursue certain levels of competence in the world.
See, we can pursue a skill; we can pursue certain levels of competence in the world,
which will make us little better with whatever we are doing, but you cannot pursue consciousness.
This (Gestures) has to come to ease,
then only it’ll become conscious;
when it becomes very alert, it becomes like an animal.
So becoming an animal means it's not that something wrong,
but in the evolutionary scale of things you're going backwards.
See the most significant aspect of being human is this,
that you can determine the nature, the scope, and the pace of your evolution, unlike any other creature.
This is the most important aspect of being human,
that you can determine the nature, scope and the pace of your own evolution,
which no other creature can determine
-for them, nature pushes them at whatever pace it pushes them.
That's what yoga means, tools of transformation; so that you can hasten your evolutionary process.