Questioner: They say ‘seize the moment’. How can we do that and live every second to the fullest?
Sadhguru: See, it’s become a fad in the world today, or it’s become a fad in India today, that anything that bounces off the American coast must be valuable, okay? Even yoga is popular today in this country because it’s a rebound from the American coast. It’s always been here for thousands of years – that doesn’t matter. A lot of people think yoga was invented by Madonna.
I was speaking to a group of people, and I was just telling them something, and as an example I said, see, even a kindergarten child today knows that carbon dioxide is bad for your body, isn’t it? But somebody packs carbon dioxide in a bottle, and says this is the ‘real thing’. Even bottled carbon dioxide is okay, if it’s marketed properly, and thrown at you from a certain direction.
So, they started saying, ‘live in the moment, live in the moment.’ You do one thing – live somewhere else, and show it to me. Hmm? Can you live somewhere else? No, people are giving you a teaching, you must look at it, what is the basis of this teaching? Somebody says, ‘live in the moment.’ Okay. Live somewhere else, and show it to me, how not to live in the moment. Is it a possibility? Then why such a teaching? Oh, most people on the planet are beginning to understand this teaching as, you do not think about your past or your future. If you do not think about your past or your future, life will teach you a big lesson. If you do not think about your future, or remember the past, will life teach you a very bad lesson, or no? It will! You better think about your future, isn’t it?
So, it took millions of years to evolve this brain to this level of capability. Now, people do not know how to manage this. Now they are saying, do not use it – seize it, do not think about the past, do not think about the future. The beauty of human intellect is – you can look back a million years, and you look forward a million years, if you want. Yes?
Elephants are supposed to have great memories. They will only remember things that affected their life. We are not like that, we can remember things that affected anybody’s life, or did not affect anybody’s life. Yes, or no? So, our basic difference between who we are and what the other creatures are, is that we are capable of projecting into tomorrow, and we are capable of projecting into the past.
So, if ‘seize the moment’ means you do not think about the past and the future, what they are saying is, become an insect or a worm. Just ‘seize the moment’ – all of them are doing it. Are they doing it? Insects, worms, animals, birds – aren’t they seizing the moment? They are, completely. Every life is. Even you are – only thing is, you have an intellect. To be in this life, and still float around a bit – this is a privilege! This is a freedom that you have. You want to surrender that simply because you do not know how to handle it? Just because you do not know how to handle your intelligence, you want to destroy it?
Actually, some – unfortunately, this is coming from a serious scientific community, a segment of them, they are saying when the child is born, if you remove certain part of your brain, all criminality will go away, there will be no criminals in the world, everybody will be peaceful and happy. This is disastrous! If you remove the whole brain, everybody will be fantastic! No problem at all, they’ll never know any stress, or distress, or anything – happy. That’s not the kind of happiness you’re looking for, isn’t it? That is not the kind of happiness you’re looking for. Well, if you’re dead, you will be really peaceful – why all this struggle? Why try to surrender your intelligence? If we shoot you through your head, you will be peaceful. And maybe the world also will become peaceful.
So, let’s understand this, that these are all patchy things picked up here and there and doled out to the world for commercial purposes. How can you not live in this moment? Why do you need a teaching, ‘Live in the moment’, tell me? What you need is methods to manage your mind. You don’t need a teaching about life, because you are life! If you are not life, I must tell you how to be life. Are you life? Are you life, or no? You are life, isn’t it? When you are life, why should I tell you what is life? Only methods to see that this life finds its fullest possibility.
You don’t have to teach it to be life, because life – ‘being in the moment’ or ‘seize the moment’ essentially means to be alive, isn’t it? So, you think your mental activity, your intellectual competence and capability is not allowing you to be alive. No, it is the basis of your aliveness, it is the crown of your aliveness in many ways. The life evolved from a very basic form of life to the way it is today, and now what you’re carrying as your cerebral cortex, which makes you think about all kinds of things, this is the crown for the life on this planet, isn’t it? Yes, or no? This is the crown of life, and you want to give it up because you don’t know how to handle it, or it’s not fitting tight enough, or it’s too tight. Don’t do that.
If you want to live – which is the only longing life has – it wants to live to its fullest capacity. To live, if I say – you know, there was some time ago, where I wrote a note and said, ‘Isha Yoga means to live, and to live totally.’ So, people think, “Oh, I must party 7 days of the week.” No, no, no – what you do around you is not life. What happens here [within] is life, isn’t it? What happens within you is life, isn’t it so? What happens around you is just the ambience for life, it is not life. This is life, isn’t it?
To explore this fully, the full depth and breadth, in all its dimensions if you would know it, you will see, if you simply sit here, it is the most beautiful thing you can do. What you do and do not do is your choices. We are sitting in the same room, we are breathing the same air, we will eat the same food, but this moment how I am within myself, if you give me the whole world, I will not make a deal with it. If you give me the whole world in exchange, I will not make a deal, because it’s bigger than that, and every human being is capable of this.
When it comes to external situations, we are all differently capable. When it comes to inner dimensions, all of us are equally capable. It has not happened only because you never paid attention in that direction. That is the only reason – not because you are less capable.
