Anger must be a beautiful thing because a lot of people have taken to it! But they have not chosen, they have helplessly fallen into it; that is the problem. Or in a way, they have chosen it unconsciously — because for most people, the most intense moments in their lives are those of either pain or anger. These are the only two intensities that they know. And every human being always longs for intensity.
The reason thrillers, action movies and sports events are so popular is because people want some intensity somewhere. Remember the film The Gladiator? Watching these gladiators was a sport, a wild sport. War was a sport. Because it is not the violence, the blood or the killing that people like. People want to see something intense. They don’t know how to be intense except through physical action, or through anger, or through pain.
The very reason drugs and sex have become such a big thing in the world is because people want to somehow experience some intensity at least for a few moments. It is the intensity which draws them. Intensity is the only thing that man is seeking, and that is the only thing that will liberate man from his present bondage.
Anger is an enormous intensity; it is an intensity which hurts you. It is an intensity which can get you into a lot of trouble and can destroy people around you and yourself in so many ways. Your attachment to anger is not because it is anger, it is just that you like the intensity of it. Though you know it causes so much damage, now and then you want to get into anger.
Isn’t it true that people like the angry man? If you go and watch a movie and the hero is a very calm and quiet man, you would not be so interested in him. If he is an angry man who stands up and does things, not peacefully, but in anger, you like him because he has got an intensity about him. You would like to do the same thing, but by trying to be angry you pay a very big price in the different situations in which you live, because people around you are going to get even more angry with you, and they will do their own things to you.
People have also done wonderful things out of anger. A lot of people still believe genuine action will come forth only in anger. Say we have to fight a battle to protect ourselves, our families, our country, or our world. Whichever way, we have to fight a war. We can fight a war without anger very efficiently, but people would like to fight with anger because that is the only way they can get themselves to do certain things which they would otherwise be incapable of doing.
In anger, at least you are becoming intense. But it is an intensity which gets you into absolutely stupid state of action. It is time to transform this intensity into higher levels of intensity where it is very beautiful.
Yoga is the technology where you are at the peak of your intensity just sitting here — you don’t have to do anything. If you can become that intense, then if you close your eyes, even the need to open your eyes does not arise anymore in your whole life because life is happening at such a tremendous intensity. People closed their eyes and did not open them for a long time not because they are not interested in life, simply because they are experiencing life in such a peak way. To do anything else did not occur to them, that’s all.
People think somebody is meditating means he is hibernating. Hibernation means lowering life. Meditation is not lowering life. It is about pushing it towards the peak. If you are in such a peak state of intensity, this is the most exciting thing you can do — just sitting.
Shiva sat like this for millennia because he is in such a peak. It did not occur to him to get up and do something. So if your “voltage” increases, then naturally you will see everything that is worth seeing. Because he took his voltage up really high, that was how his third eye opened. The “third eye” does not mean a crack in the forehead. It means things that others cannot see became available to him. It will become available to you also, if you raise your voltage.
(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)
