Sadhguru: See, the greatest predicament that a human being faces, and the greatest tragedy that human beings are going through, and the greatest struggle that all humans seem to be toiling with, is just this – their sensory perception gives one-sided perception. If you see this [front of hand] you can’t see this [back of hand]. If you see light you can’t see darkness. If you hear sound you can’t hear silence. So, life becomes a heap of opposites, or contradictions. Trying to wade their way through these contradictions, how much suffering – unbelievable! How much confusion? How much struggle?
If this nearly 8 billion people, if you document what kind of suffering they’re going through in one year, or in one day – just one day – it’s enough for eternity. All this is simply because they have misunderstood instruments of survival as instruments of knowing. You must know which is light and which is darkness, if you want to walk through this. You must know which is man, which is woman, if you have to operate in the world. So, these differences are very one-sided.
All this [suffering] is simply because they have misunderstood instruments of survival as instruments of knowing
Well, in many ways I’ve said this, now it’s become a bit too common for everybody to know this, because I’ve been speaking about this for some time. Well, you’re sitting here as a man or a woman, but you came here because a man and woman came together. Your mother and father exist within you. You being a woman or a man is just a surface thing, but you’ve taken it so seriously, and you go through a whole lot of circus. Just being a man or a woman – how much circus in the world! Forget about light and darkness, that’s more complicated. Gender is the simplest damn thing, but how much struggle, how much social confusion! How many religions and scriptures have been written about this misunderstanding endlessly.
This is just that – because between light and darkness, you think they are two different worlds, because it looks like that. The day looks like one kind of world, this planet looks different during the day. During the night it’s a completely different world. But it is not, it’s the same world. I think you get that point during twilight, to some extent.
This is why it’s always important to wake up before the sun comes up, because you don’t have to do anything. If you’re just alert and looking, slowly the perception will go into you. This is why always in Yoga, Brahma Muhurtam you should be up, because twilight starts then. In twilight if you’re awake you perceive that the differences that you have made out in your mind, because of misperceptions of senses that you have settles within you. When that happens – When…
When…
A Man is Woman
Bird a Flower
Red is Blue
Life – Death
Twilight.
Arundhathi: When did this poem happen?
Sadhguru: When!
Arundhathi: Cop-out.
Sadhguru: I think this was about 2019, when I was in United States, our III – the Isha Institute of Inner Sciences, is a spectacular place nature-wise. We’re yet to build, we’ve built some, lot more to build there. But in terms of nature, it’s a truly spectacular place, and where I stay, you just cannot escape the sunset. The sun is at you because we are on top of a bluff, and there is a valley. When the sun is setting, sun is in level with you. Like, this usually happens only at the ocean. Even there, there will be a little bit… this thing. Here, sun is below you when it is setting. So, you cannot escape sunset at all, even if you want to.
So, as I was watching the sunset I saw, this is the thing that everybody is missing. It’s not about the glory of the sunset. It is a clear transition where ‘this and that’ is not there – there’s only ‘this and this.’
