There’s common sense, there is sense and there’s something beyond sense. With common sense, your survival process gets handled. You don’t have to be brilliant, you just have common sense. You will survive pretty good. You could turn out quite street smart, actually.
With common sense, your survival process gets handled
If somebody very intelligent is walking down the street – let’s say Albert Einstein is walking down the street, a street urchin can easily con him. Albert Einstein doesn’t have the wily nature of the one who is walking the streets every day. Very easily you can deceive him. You may have enormous intelligence about something else. So, because the street kid has more common sense – common sense is restricted to a certain habitat, in that habitat, it works. In another place, your common sense doesn’t work.
You know, you’ve heard of ISRO. They’ve sent a Mars probe now, at 10% of the cost that NASA would do normally. Because it’s all indigenous, and they built it up in their own ways. SO, they were interviewing people to be taken in for a job in ISRO. Shankaran Pillai applied. He is very street smart. A lot of common sense. So the interviewer asked him – which is closer, moon or Mumbai? They are in Bangalore. Shankaran Pillai looked up in the sky, and he said – Moon. He said, what – how do you say that? He said – well, I can see the Moon, I can’t see Mumbai.
So this kind of sense goes well in certain things, but if you want to transcend, you need a different kind of sense. This kind of sense is good on the survival mode, when you’re in a survival mode on the street this kind of sense works pretty good. If we try to go all over with this kind of sense, we’ll become one big mess. So going beyond one’s senses, and knowing. Why is it needed? It’s not needed, if you are thinking in terms of a need. If you are using the word ‘need’, as whether it is necessary for my survival or not? It’s not needed. But unfortunately, if you had come here as a chimpanzee, it’s definitely not needed. But your tragedy is you have evolved into a human being. Wanting to live like a chimpanzee – doesn’t work! That’s the whole problem.
Human intelligence and awareness has come to a place where it cannot limit itself to the ambit of survival
Human intelligence and awareness has come to a place where it cannot limit itself to the ambit of survival. It has to look. Now what we are doing as a solution for this problem – it’s not a problem, it’s a possibility. Every possibility – those who are not willing to take on the possibility, for them it seems like a problem. It’s a phenomenal possibility. But most human beings are treating it like a problem.
So, how they are solving the problem is – raise the bar of survival. Keep on raising it. What was your idea of survival 25 years ago? What was your idea of survival 15 years ago? What is your idea of survival today? It’s raising the bar, isn’t it? Two meals a day was survival, when you didn’t have anything. If you have known such a state, it’s good to know those things. But now maybe Mercedes is survival. In every different segment of society, survival has been raised to a place where billionaires are still struggling to survive, among their community. Yes?
I have had this opportunity, at close quarters, to see multi-billionaires – but they are still beggars. Every day their mentality, their mindset, is just that of a beggar who sits on this street and thinking okay, what will, what is today? How many more pennies can I gather? It’s the same stuff. It’s just the numbers have increased, but the experience of life is still the same. Because you raise the bar of survival. Now your whole life, it doesn’t matter what you do, still goes in survival.
In your life you must fix it, how much is survival. You must fix it somewhere
Everybody, I won’t fix this for you. In your life you must fix it, how much is survival. You must fix it somewhere. Now. Not after 25 years, when you get there – no. Now we must fix – this is my survival, then what I want to do. My survival is taken care of, what is it that really matters to me in my life. Whatever that is. If we don’t structure our lives like this, forever you will be fighting with phantoms.
Why I’m saying you’re fighting with phantoms is – in other countries, where the bar of survival has not been raised so high, people can change the course of their life when they wish. I find, in the most affluent nation on the planet, everybody is enslaved for 30 years minimum. Their house loan is for 30 years, car loan is for 5 years, another thing is something, their insurance this, this, this. They’re just fixed. Tomorrow morning if they find something really compelling that they want to do, they cannot do. They can only do it after 30 years. We did not come to affluence for this.
The idea of affluence is, you have the freedom to change the course of your life – do what you want to do. You don’t have to be stuck with what you thought was the best thing when you were 20. At 20, you may think this is the best thing. At 40, the damn thing means nothing. If still the same things mean a lot to you, that means you’re stuck. You’re not growing, isn’t it? A whole lot of people are stuck at 14, not even 20. Same things. Still they’re excited about somebody’s body part, they’re still very excited about it. It’s ridiculous. When you’re 14 you’re excited, I understand. You’re 45, 50, 60 – you’re still in the same bin. It’s a tragic way to live. Because, essence of life is that we are able to explore as much as we can, when we live here. To know and experience everything possible, that is there in this life.
