Questioner: Sadhguru, I have heard you speak about the futility of going after, you know, trying to remember past lives and all of that, because one may not know how to handle all the experiences that come with it. But spiritually and on a meditative level, won’t it be useful to pick up from that, and consciously pick up from that?
Sadhguru: I want you to just imagine yourself. Suppose you suddenly realize one of these young women was your mother in your previous life. You’ll go like this teary-eyed to her, she’s not going to like it. You can’t ignore her now because she’s your mother – all the emotions come back, enormous emotions. And all the things that were left unsaid and undone, now you want to do it, but she’s not willing. She’s a young woman. She’s not your mother. She’ll laugh at you.
Worse, this boy who’s sitting in front of you, you suddenly remembered in your past life he was your wife. See, already – you cannot deal with this, isn’t it? You cannot deal with this. Current life’s emotion itself is wringing you out, isn’t it? This life’s emotion itself with different relationships that you’ve held in your life, is just driving people crazy. If you remember all this, it is not going to serve any purpose.
Only at certain times, because of a certain work or if you want to call it a mission was on hand, we have done certain things to remind people of their past lives. But after that, never again, because it’s not important.
I met a lady. I met a man first. The aggrieved husband, I met first. The man comes to me and you know, he moved from India to United States, and he’s doing very well there, successful, everything. But now the wife has been seeing psychics and on the phone she’s on with them, on with them, paying hundreds and thousands of dollars as bills. Above all, the psychic has convinced her, in her previous life Tom Cruise was her husband. She believes one-hundred percent. So she buys a huge house in Beverly Hills, and every Saturday she’s throwing parties hoping one day he will walk in. And she is sure he will walk in, because the psychic has told her, “You just be in that area. Just keep throwing parties, one day he will walk in and carry you away.”
So he came to me and said, “Sadhguru, What to do? I have Tom Cruise’s wife at home.” I said, “Okay, you send her to me. We will see.” So I said, “Let her come to the Inner Engineering program.” We had a retreat on the Great Lakes in Michigan. So a beautiful resort, and we have a Inner Engineering retreat which we are not doing anymore. So she came for that. So as soon as she comes, she wants to meet Sadhguru, meet Sadhguru, meet Sadhguru. I said, “No, no go through the program, after that we will meet.” But she was putting so much pressure on everybody, “No, I have to meet him, I have to meet him.”
So on the first evening, you know, the evening introduction happened, next day I avoided her somehow. Next day evening, I got stuck with her, I had to meet her. Then I said, “Okay,” and we sat. Then she opened up, “I think my husband has told you already but I’m telling you this is one-hundred percent true. What do you think?” I said, “Yes, it is true. Even I am very clear, in your previous life Tom Cruise was your husband, yes.” She was very happy at last she found a guru. Then I said, “You know, I also knew him very well in his last, previous life. But he was so ugly in his last life but this time he’s turned out pretty good.” She said, “What?” [shocked].
It never occurred to her, in his previous life he need not look the same way. So this, past life nonsense can get you into a deep mess. You don’t do that. Handling this life well is important, very important. This is on hand.
And another problem that people have is, “Sadhguru, was I with you in your last life?” I said, “See, if you were with me and you didn’t make it, I don’t want to have nothing to do with you in this life. If you are a fresh candidate, let me look at you. if you’re a failed candidate, what do I do with you?” So I am saying all you will do is get into hallucinatory states of imagining all kinds of things. This is what you need to get out of because mind has a million compartments. It can make up stories in such a way that you cannot imagine possible, it’ll make it absolutely real.
See there are schizophrenic people, people who have multiple personalities. One case which has been recorded is a person having thirty-two full-fledged personalities, thirty-two. But I’m telling you, mind has the capacity to generate a thousand if you want. That is the capacity of the mind. Unfortunately, most human beings never explore it. If you give this [very little] much material to it, it can produce so much out of it. Like today you saw, you know you program the computer, it can produce every permutation and combination that is possible from that little information. That’s what your mind is doing in a much more complex way. So don’t yield to these things.
