Sadhguru: This is not a simple problem. People suffer this for their whole life without handling it.
You are whatever age you are and you still don't know how to use your thought and emotion.
If you see everything just the way it is, everything has immense value.
Life is not a race. If life is a race, you must get to the finish line soon.
Speaker (Naina): I often find myself in a situation where I'm not happy with myself.
I compare my abilities, achievements, and even my appearance with that of others.
And I think that's one reason for my low self-esteem.
How do you think I can build up on my self-esteem and get rid of the self-hatred that I have (Sadhguru laughs)?
Sadhguru: Well, this self-esteem, this self-confidence, all these things unfortunately have been sold a lot on the planet.
Why do you need esteem?
Esteem is because you want to be little one-up on somebody else all the time.
Unfortunately, our education systems were made like this – right from kindergarten,
who is first, who is second, who is third? You want to be first.
So, your sense of happiness is only when everybody is doing worse than you.
What kind of life is that? (Applause)
Why... why are we structuring our lives like this, that if everybody is doing badly, I will feel great?
I think it's sickness. Hello?
You think it's joy or sickness, please tell me?
If all of you are doing badly, I feel great because I'm number one now.
No. This should go. From an early age, unfortunately,
this is being imposed upon a child's mind that you have to be on top of everybody else.
This is like... I want you to just imagine if this happened to other creatures…
let's say it happened to the plants and trees and animals.
If an ant wants to become like an elephant, that is going to be terrible ant-elephant, isn't it?
Suppose a mango tree wants to become like a coconut tree, it will be a horrible mango tree
– because with one branch like this, no mangoes will come out of this.
A mango tree is like this. A coconut tree is like that. That's how it should be.
This has happened because in so many ways people have put these things into your mind
– what is good, what is bad, what is high, what is low, what is up, what is down.
Because of this, you have never paid attention to every aspect of life in the sense…
maybe humanities people and lawyers...
(Talks aside: What are you? Hmm? Oh, the accounting people) (Laughs).
You never paid attention to these things.
I spent a lot of time paying attention to all kinds of creatures – ants and grasshoppers and worms and everything.
If you observe, let's say an ant or let's pick up something little more than an ant, like a grasshopper.
It's easier to see him. If you look at him carefully,
whoever created this grasshopper has paid as much attention to a grasshopper as they have paid to this one.
Please pay attention and see. When the source of creation has given equal attention to ant and you,
who the hell are you to think an ant is a lowly creature and you are some super human being? (Applause)
Why are you making this judgment? Creation has not made this judgment.
You may think you are superior simply because you are in a… blatant manner you are walking on this planet but that's not true.
The fact of the matter is like this.
See, if all the worms on this planet, right now if all of them die, all the worms,
in about twelve to eighteen months, all life on this planet will cease, everything including you and me.
Suppose all the insects die today, in something like two-and-a-half to four years' time, all life will cease.
But if all the human beings die, the planet will flourish. (Applause)
Yes, we make good manure.
If human beings go away, right through this building, trees will grow, isn't it? Yes or no?
Everything will flourish. So, who the hell is telling you that you are the most significant life?
This idea that the cosmos is human centric is a stupid idea.
In this cosmos, even this solar system is a tiny speck.
Tomorrow morning, if the entire solar system evaporates, nobody will notice it.
That's how small it is. In that tiny speck, planet earth is a micro speck.
In that micro speck, Bengaluru is a super micro speck,
in that you are a very big person with great self-esteem. (Laughter/Applause/Cheers)
This is… this is not a simple problem.
People suffer this for their whole life without handling it.
Essentially it is just this – you have gotten yourself into a place where… most human beings are in this place.
You get yourself into a place where you cannot handle your own thought process and your emotion.
That's all.
You meet fifty – sixty-year-old people, they've still not figured how to handle their thought and emotion.
These are basic faculties. When the hell are you going to learn how to use your thought and emotion?
Suppose you're twenty years of age and you still don't know how to use your fingers, people will say, “You're handicapped,” isn't it?
You are whatever age you are and you still don't know how to use your thought and emotion, are you handicapped too? Hello?
Are you or are you not? Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: You are, you are crippling yourself.
Why has this happened is simply because you have made unni... unnatural divisions in the existence
which don't exist anywhere else except in human mind.
Yes! Nowhere else does it exist except in human mind.
Ah, because you're a little girl. Can I call you a little girl?
Participant: Yes, you can. Sadhguru: I'm telling you, the boys, she's not a little girl.
For me, she's a little girl (Laughter).
When my daughter was growing up, she grew up with me traveling all over the place.
When she was three-and-a-half months of age, she's traveling with me alone.
I am driving all over India with her in the... (Laughs) strapped to the seat of the car.
So, she grew up like this. In… every day we're in some different family.
People are wonderful, but there is a problem with the adults.
The moment they see a child, they want to teach the child something that's not worked in their life (Applause).
You should see this urge is so compulsive, the moment they see a child, they have to teach...
they have to teach (Laughs). So, I made one rule, "See, you can play with her as much as you want,
you can talk to her, but nobody is going to teach her anything."
"But Sadhguru, she won't learn anything. ABC, at least one, two, three?"
I said, "No one, two, three." Then they said, "She won't know how to count even her fingers."
"I don't care. If she doesn't know how to count her fingers, as long as she knows how to use her fingers, I don't care.
She thinks she has a million fingers, what's my problem?"(Few laugh)
But they want to teach one, two, three, ABC, Mary had a little lamb. (Few laugh)
I said, "I don't care whether Mary had a lamb or no lamb. (Laughter) You're not going to teach her anything."
So, nobody taught her anything. She is all ears.
Everybody treated... because if you have nothing to teach, you have to teach… treat somebody like your equal.
So, she grew up. By the time she is two-and-a-half, three years of age,
she can speak in terms of remembering about seven hundred to eight hundred names,
all adults, she thinks they're all her friends (Laughs),
because everybody spoke to her like she's an adult.
And I would not have sent her to school but my schedule went totally crazy, and I had to put her in some school.
So, when she was twelve-thirteen years of age, one day, she came back home and
something that happened at school disturbed her.
So, she came and... came to me and said,
"You're teaching so… everybody so many things. You're not telling me anything."
I said, "See, I don't do it unsolicited. Now that you have come, just sit down.
This is all you have to know – never look up to anybody."
She looked at me like this, "What about you?," kind of thing.
I said, "Especially me, because the moment you look up to me, you will miss it completely.
If you look at me just the way I am, there is a lot of value to it.
If you look up to me, what will you do? Probably take my picture and nail it to your wall,
like you nailed so many people who are of value in this world. You just look at me for what I am.
Don't look up to me and never look down on anybody. This is all.
Never look up to anything. Never look down on anything." (Applause)
If you see everything just the way it is, everything has immense value.
Everybody has a place and value to their life, isn't it?
Every creature has value – because we did not realize that, how many things we have destroyed in this world?
Simply because we think this is valuable, this is not valuable.
There is nothing here that is not valuable. Everything has its value. Maybe you're not able to see it.
So, don't set yourself up like this – you versus the rest of the world. It's a bad competition to get into.
You want to be number one on this planet. It's a horrible place.
Everybody below you and you up, is it a good place to be?
I think it's a sick place.
This attitude of wanting to be ahead of somebody needs to go.
Well, for fun in a game or something, you compete, that's different.
Life is not a competition. Life is not a race. If life is a race, you must get to the finish line soon. (Applause)
If... if you think life is a race, you must be at the finish line today. I can tell you how. (Laughter)
You want to go there?
No. This is not a race.
This is a tremendous privilege that we have come as human beings.
This means, our ability to experience life is of a much larger proportion than any other creature on this planet.
That is the significance of who we are.
Yes? We can experience life in many more vivid ways than how an ant can experience,
how a grasshopper can experience, how somebody else can experience. This is our privilege.
Instead of experiencing life, we are trying to win the race.
If you win the race, you should be in the crematorium today. (Few laugh)
You don't need any self-esteem. In this culture, if you don't know this,
there may be people with names like this,
there will be one Ramadas, one Krishnadas, one whatever.
What this means is people are consciously taking the name of being a slave,
because a joyful willing slave is a tremendous human being.
Only somebody who's been enslaved by somebody is a different matter,
but willingly, I'm willing to do whatever is needed in this world, is a wonderful slave, isn't it? (Laughs)
I am one. (Laughs/Applause)