A Guru Always Takes You for a Ride (2 page)
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Authors: Sadhguru
So this lion was feeling very insecure. He is a lion as far as the world is concerned, everybody is afraid of him, but within himself, he is a mouse. Then he thought, 'The only other person who knows that I am a mouse is the sage. If I finish him off, nobody will know that I am a mouse, I will be a real lion.' With this intention he walked into the cave. The sage was sitting and meditating.
The lion slowly approached him. As he came closer, the sage realized it, looked at the lion and said: 'It was not right of me to turn a mouse into a lion,' and he turned the lion back into a mouse and said, 'Get out of here, fend for your own life.'
It is nature for a cat to eat a mouse, for a dog to eat a cat, for a bigger animal to eat the dog. Unless they evolve to that position, if you give them that position, they will only suffer and they will bring suffering upon everybody." So Shiva told Parvathi this story.
This traditional, what to say, temptation, that they have created in people - if you ever see a holy person, if you ever see a sage or a saint, first thing is, ask for what you want, it will happen. I am telling you, never ask, because if he is wise he will not give. But sometimes he is just in a state where he says okay. If he says okay, you are in trouble, because you will get something that you are not ready for. If you get things that you are not ready for, life does not become better, life only becomes a turmoil in so many ways.
So when you sit in a certain space, when you sit in a certain energy, if you notice a certain person or a place is creating a certain level of energy, it seems to be a little bigger possibility than what you are, that is the time when you don't think of anything, when you don't ask for anything, you simply sit. If you simply sit, you will get the necessary nutrient to evolve very fast, to mutate from one dimension to another. Once you grow into a certain possibility, everything that is possible in that dimension will anyway happen to you. If you do not grow into that possibility, but just aspire for that, then you are just bringing heaps of trouble upon yourself.
So meditation - whether you are in a temple, Dhyanalinga, or sitting with a Guru - is not a time to ask. It is a time to imbibe and allow this one to evolve into a higher possibility, so that if it evolves, what has to happen to it will anyway happen.
Question:
Sadhguru, I feel that there is a very fine line between being trustful and being naïve. How can I manage this?
Sadhguru
:
A month ago I was in Hyderabad. After I spoke in one of the meetings, the local newspaper next day reported: “Sadhguru denies God." The heading of the article was ”Sadhguru denies God,” or something like this, and it went on to describe how I deny God. Why these things happen is simply because instead of using your naïveté, I am constantly trying to help you to be doubtful about everything. I am telling people, “Anyway you have a doubt about everything; you don't trust anybody in your life, please see this.” You don't really trust anybody in your life. Even people with whom you have lived for ten years, twenty years, if they do one act that you cannot understand, immediately all kinds of suspicion will arise about them, isn't it? Yes or no? If they do just one thing that you cannot understand, any number of suspicions will come to your mind.
A Guru is always a suspect. So, naturally, there are more suspicions about him than anybody else; unfortunately that is the reality. That is why the possibility which is so close is so far away. So I am not asking you to be trustful, I am always asking you to doubt. Doubt is fine with me, but suspicion is a sickness. Doubt means you are looking as to what is the truth; suspicion means you have made a conclusion about it. Doubt means you don't know; you're looking. That is a good state to be in, you're looking constantly. Naïve means, you are suspicious and constantly wondering, “Is the other person much smarter than me, and still taking me for a ride in spite of all my suspicions?” These people think they are naïve - they are actually suspicious.
There is really no naïve person in the world; there are suspicious people who are dumb. Dumb and suspicious. Suspicion is not intelligence. In fact, the lower the level of your intelligence, the more suspicious you are in your nature. Somebody who is intelligent naturally trusts people around him, at least in the day-to-day affairs. People who have a small mind are suspicious about everybody around them, have you noticed this? The less intelligent they are, the more suspicious they are always, because they cannot figure out one thing from the other. They are constantly afraid that somebody will misuse them. They constantly fear that somebody is going to take them for a ride.
So, they will be very suspicious, but they are clueless. So, they call themselves naïve. They are not naïve, they are suspicious but with the brains of a caterpillar.
Now, the question is how do I know whether I've been taken for a ride or not? Let's come directly to it. That's the question, isn't it? Let me tell you, you are being taken for a ride, because you are still not yet in that state where I can either expose or impose, or even tell you what it is about. It is like - I don't know if you have seen, but if you come from an Asian family, you might have seen - in India especially, mothers have a whole technology as to how to stuff the child with more food than he would normally eat. You know this technology? Now, they will put some amount of rice and side dish. The child says, “No this is too much, I am not going to eat that.” They say, “Okay, you eat one half of it.” This half as the child begins to eat; they will mix everything together again. Let's say the child has eaten half of this half, then they will mix everything together again, and then again the child says, “No, it's too much.” Again they make it half, “Okay, okay; only half of it I will give you.” Like this they will go on, and in the end, showing some birds, animals or moon, all kinds of distractions, unknowingly the child will eat up the whole plate full of rice. Definitely the mother is taking the child for a ride, isn't it? Yes?
Similarly, the Guru is also constantly taking his disciples and devotees for a ride, because if you really tell them what they are supposed to swallow, they will just say this is impossible and will run away. So, because you like everything in installments, I am taking you for a ride in installments. But it will never happen in installments. It is whole or nothing, but your willingness comes in installments. Do you see the first day you arrived at the introductory talk, what level of willingness you were, and today what level of willingness you are? Slowly we have taken you for a ride, isn't it? Making you a little more willing, a little more willing, a little more willing. The way I am talking to you today, if I had spoken to you on that day, you would have left never to see my face again. Isn't it so? So we are taking you for a ride.
Yogi, mystic, visionary and poet, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serve as a reminder that yoga is not an esoteric discipline from an outdated past, but a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times. Probing, passionate and provocative, insightful, logical and unfailingly witty, Sadhguru’s talks have earned him the reputation of a speaker and opinion-maker of international renown.
With speaking engagements that take him around the world, he is widely sought after by prestigious global forums to address issues as diverse as human rights, business values, and social, environmental and existential issues. He has been a delegate to the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit, a member of the World Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders and Alliance for New Humanity, a special invitee to the Australian Leadership Retreat, Tallberg Forum, Indian Economic Summit 2005-2008, as well as a regular at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He was awarded the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar (IGPP) for the year 2008 for Isha Foundation’s Project GreenHands’ efforts.
With a celebratory engagement with life on all levels, Sadhguru's areas of active involvement encompass fields as diverse as architecture and visual design, poetry and painting, ecology and horticulture, sports and music. He is the author and designer of several unique buildings and consecrated spaces at the Isha Yoga Center, which have wide attention for their combination of intense sacred power with strikingly innovative eco-friendly aesthetics.
Listeners have been ubiquitously impressed by his astute and incisive grasp of current issues and world affairs, as well as his unerringly scientific approach to the question of human wellbeing. Sadhguru is also the founder of Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the wellbeing of the individual and the world for the past three decades. Isha Foundation does not promote any particular ideology, religion, or race, but transmits inner sciences of universal appeal.
Isha Foundation is a non-profit human-service organization, supported by over two million volunteers in over 150 centers worldwide. Recognizing the possibility of each person to empower another, Isha Foundation has created a massive movement that is dedicated to address all aspects of human wellbeing, without ascribing to any particular ideology, religion or race.
Isha Foundation is involved in several path-breaking outreach initiatives: Action for Rural Rejuvenation (ARR) enhances the quality of rural life through healthcare and disease prevention, community revitalization, women empowerment, the creation of sustainable livelihoods, and yoga programs. Isha Vidhya empowers rural children with quality education. Project GreenHands (PGH) initiates mass tree planting and creates a culture of care for the environment to keep this planet liveable for future generations.
Isha’s unique approach in cultivating human potential has gained worldwide recognition and reflects in Isha Foundation’s special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.