Q: I feel that I can’t do anything right and that I’m a liability to others. What can I do about that?
A. You need to constantly hold your attention on what you want to do, without diverting it even for a moment. Start by trying to commit your attention on something for an hour, then a day. If you maintain your attention and there is enough intensity to it, every door in the universe will open to you.
The problem is that right now, you have many priorities. This does not mean that you should do a particular thing. What you do is immaterial. But there should be only one priority. If you keep it that way, why should you be a liability?
In Tamil Nadu, there is a much-valued tree called pungai maram (Indian Beech). It does not bear any edible fruits. Nor can you brush your teeth with its twigs, unlike the neem tree. But it is hugely valued, simply because it quietly does its own thing. It is said that this tree is most loved by the singing birds of southern India.
There are scientific claims that certain trees generate more oxygen than others, and that they therefore draw more life towards themselves than others.
We value life for its beauty, exuberance and intensity, not for its usefulness. So, do not look at yourself or others as assets or liabilities. Just keep yourself exuberant, joyful and beautiful within.
Just be life – full-fledged, in every way. Everyone loves to be around a full-fledged life.
Q. How do I free myself from the jealousy?
A. As long as you feel insufficient the way you are, the moment you see someone whom you think has more than you, you feel jealous. When you are very joyful, are you jealous? No. Only when you are unhappy, you are jealous. Do not worry about jealousy. If every moment of your life, your energies are bubbling with ecstasy, how will jealousy be there? Instead of trying to battle jealousy, it is better to work towards making your experience of life complete.
You feel you are not sufficient simply because you are not well within yourself. Anyone who is not feeling blissful is actually ill. Maybe you are in a state of socially accepted wellbeing – because the majority of people are with you, and this is a democracy – but you are ill in terms of life. No attempt has been made to look at yourself carefully and understand that the seat of your experience is within you. If the seat of your experience is within you, and you have to decide and manage how well you live here, the first thing is to turn inward and look at the nature of who you are.
If that does not happen, your wellbeing is accidental. When your wellbeing is accidental, jealousy, hatred, and insecurity are a natural part of your life. It is like we are burning something and there is smoke. Do not battle with the smoke. You have to battle with the fire.
Q. Is there a conflict between Science and Spirituality?
A. Unfortunately, people think that science means doing things only with the physical existence. You are not existing here as just a physical body. You are much more than that, isn’t it? Just putting a heart, liver and kidney together will not make you a human being. There is something else in you. If you attend only to the heart, liver and kidney and forget about that something else, you cannot refer to yourself as a scientific person — you are totally oblivious to another level of reality. So, science should not be understood only as the physical sciences.
If you create a proper process for the spiritual process, it is also a science. There is absolutely no conflict between whatever you refer to as modern science and the spiritual sciences. Knowing how to be within yourself and transcend the limitations of who you are is also science. In fact, initially, science was only thinking of providing human beings with more conveniences and comforts. It is only today that science is thinking of breaking barriers and going into new frontiers. So now, science and spirituality are both seeking liberation.
If your life is well taken care of outside, then you have more time and energies to focus on the inward. So in fact, the external science and technology is of great service to the spiritual sciences because only when people’s physical needs are taken care of, when they feel that they should have been fulfilled and yet they are not, that is the time for spirituality.
Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of the world’s largest people’s movement, Conscious Planet – Save Soil)
(Have queries for Sadhguru? Visit bit.ly/3GKogSX to subit them)
