In the Presence of the Master — Unreleased Sadhguru Talk, Chicago 2004

[music] The king decided to appoint him as his chief minister. The beggar said every day I will spend 1 hour in this room. Never you should ask me what I am doing there. After some time the king [music] said I would like to see what's in the room. He forced the minister to open the door. >> A lot of them are marketing themselves like this. that everything will be okay if you trust me to live peacefully and joyfully. [singing] You don't need a guru. You seek one only when you want a bridge to the beyond. If everything goes dead wrong, you'll be still okay. That's a promise I'm making. >> It took a pretty long time, too. to make my energy so >> volatile >> and aggressive and >> real heartbreaking southern I'm [music] not going to spend a lifetime holding it back these people will just come stand in front of your house and just tell you what will happen in your house you will simply sit in one [music] place all the snakes will come when we were doing the dhana linga snake started coming because he's [music] just drawn to that energy they're very sensitive some time ago I belong to those tribes it is so much closer to human energy than anything else everybody lives all those who are alive live but all of them don't live the same way simply due to lack of awareness. A lot of people make a complete mess of themselves and their life situations too. If life situations are a mess, it's okay. That means you're trying to do many things. When you're attempting to do many things, life situations can be a mess. My life has always been a mess that way. There's not enough mess, I will be into more activity. So, it's always been a mess for a long time. Situations being a mess is one thing, but you becoming a mess is a different thing altogether. When the necessary awareness is not there, it doesn't matter how carefully you try to live, you will become a mess. I will tell you my university time joke. Are you okay? Can you digest? [snorts] Let me make it up a little bit. There was an old farmer 8 years of age. because his family insisted that he must go for a medical checkup. He went, he was quite sturdy and well. He went for a medical checkup. The doctor stripped him down to examine him and he noticed the old man was not even wearing an underwear. So after all this exam he said you're built like a bull you're strong and fine for your age. He was 80 years of age but uh if you wear an underwear one thing is uh [clears throat] it's hygienic. It also keeps you warm. at your age you should be using it. Oh doctor, all my life I never used an underwear. Said it's okay. It's time you use it because it's both hygienic and it keeps you warm which you need at this age. So next day he was you you know driving his tractor plowing through the field and he felt like a big job. So he just got off his tractor, went and sat in the fields, did his job. Then he got up and looked back, said, "Sure, it's hygienic." Then he want went and got up and sat on the tractor seat. He said, "Sure, it's warm, too. [laughter] If you're not aware, you could become a mess. You know, nothing big needs to happen. Small jobs will become a mess. the necessary awareness one does not earn. If one spends time doing fanciful things with life, it all seems to be good. But slowly before you know what happened, one day you will find you're a complete mess. No disaster needs to happen. Simply it'll happen. Just the simple process of life will become a mess. Oh, nobody told me. [sighs] Everybody told me just earn your living, take care, do this, do that. Nobody told me. [clears throat] Nobody need to tell you this. If If only you're willing to not compare yourself with somebody. If only you don't spend your whole lifetime trying to be one up on somebody, then nobody needs to tell you. Instantly you will know this. But because a whole lifetime is invested in trying to be better than somebody else, you don't see it because your focus is not on you, it's on somebody else. So [sighs] no one needs to tell us that we need awareness to see that life passes. Well, it is [sighs] [clears throat] I want you to understand this maybe I am upping my demands on you. [laughter] I always am. To live well, [sighs] to live peacefully and joyfully, you don't need a guru. You got enough brain cells to do that yourself. You seek one only [clears throat] when you want a bridge to the beyond, not because you want to live well here. I know [sighs] too many people think a guru means somebody who makes their life good that everything will go on smooth [sighs and gasps] because uh a lot of them are marketing themselves like this that everything will be okay if you trust Hey, that's not the promise I'm making. The promise that I'm making is things may be okay, they may not be okay. That depends on various factors. If everything goes dead wrong, you'll be still okay. That's a promise I'm making. I'm not promising anybody everything will be okay. Everything may go dead wrong, but you'll still be okay. Everybody thinks you're a disaster, but you're still okay. Everybody thinks I am a disaster if you don't know this. [laughter] [sighs] All those people. All those people who constantly live their lives just trying to earn one more buck. All of them think I'm a disaster. Yes, in that context I am a disaster because almost everything that I do in my life is so reckless. If I lose my limber life still I'll be okay. So I don't have to hold myself back anything. [sighs] It took It took a pretty long time too. Ah, to make my energy so volatile and aggressive. I'm not going to spend a lifetime holding it back. It took a long time and [clears throat] a real heartbreaking sad. There's nothing wrong with well-being and comfort. At the same time, I see a lot of people don't have the capability to be well and comfortable and still keep themselves intense and focused. They just get lost in their simple comforts that they have. If you can get lost in sofa cushions, you shouldn't sit on a sofa, isn't it? [snorts] There's nothing wrong with the sofa question, but if you're getting lost in it, you shouldn't sit on that. You better sit on a rock cuz you can't sink into it. Keeps you up. So, I'm not really against well-being and comfort and even luxury. I'm not against it. But most people don't know how to hold themselves. When they don't know, they must maintain a little balance between the two. That reminds me, there used to be a beggar. Slowly people began [music] to realize that uh he's not just a beggar. He's a very wise man and people started going to him to consult on [music] various matters. His reputation spread. The king heard about him. He also started going to him and he found he was truly wise. >> [music] >> The king decided to appoint him as his chief minister. The baker said, "I am willing to become the chief minister if I'm useful to you. But you must give me one room in the palace where I'll keep certain [music] things and every day I will spend one hour in this room. Never you should ask me what I am doing there. Never should you go inside and see what is there. King agreed. What's the problem? You keep your room. I want I don't want to know what is in the room. Time passed. Every day the beggar went into this room, spend 1 hour, came out and conducted his ministral [music] duties. Slowly though the minister was so brilliant and wise, king was greatly benefited by his [music] services. Slowly it started bothering the king. People started telling him he's got something in that room. Maybe he's just stealing you and storing up all the gold in that room. like this one after another rumor spread. After some time, the king said, "I would like to see what's in the room." The beggar said, "Uh, you have agreed never to look, but if you do look, that's the end of my services here. I'm leaving." That made the king even more think there must be something out there that he's trying to hide. It got the better of him. And he forced the minister to open the door. So the minister said okay and took him inside. He opened the room and went inside. It was a bare room and a coat hook. The beggar's rags were hang hanging there. She looked around everywhere. No gold, no [music] heaps of money or anything. Just the rags that the beggar used to use many years ago. And uh the king asked, "There's [music] nothing here." "This is all there is. Why these rags?" he asked. The minister [music] said, "Every day, 1 hour, I take off all these rich clothes. I wear those rags and sit here never to forget who I am. That's kept me balance. That's given my balance. I never got lost in the wealth and the luxury that you given me. Now that you broke the promise [music] that you made, I need to go and change it into his rags and left. So it's good [sighs] that for a little while you keep everything aside, all the nonsense that you gathered in your life and just be bare, just a bare human being. In many ways, that's what meditation is. All your frills you cut off and just sit there as bare life nothing else. Sguru in your book you have mentioned about snakes having [music] importance in spiritual evolution biological evolution. Uh they are not even like mammals they are just reptiles. [music] Then how how are they important spiritual in spiritual evolution? say [music] one thing instead of going through the evolutionary scale suppose now people are here if you want to trace down their evolutionary scale it'll be too much of conjecture isn't We'll have to guess and second guess many things. But if you just look at people's quality, how sensitive they are and their sensitivities towards what you can easily see where they are, isn't it? You understand what I'm saying? No. Now what I'm saying is see if you try to trace down their evolutionary thing whatever what these people have gone through even if I look through it if I look through their whole lifetimes as far as you are concerned it's all conjecture isn't it but now people are sitting here [cough and clears throat] depending upon how sensitive each person And what are they sensitive to? Some are life sensitive, some are ego sensitive, some are you know they're sensitive to different things, isn't it? So fundamentally looking at how sensitive they are to life energies. We can say you know where they are right now. What is a possibility? Isn't it? So if you look among the animal kingdom [clears throat] a few creatures are extremely sensitive to certain energies one of them is snake of all of them snake is very very sensitive I don't know if you're aware of this there are tribes in India who are who are generally known as snake charmers by English speaking people. That's not what they are. They have certain capabilities. If you come from central India or south India, you would know that this snake charmer community is the community which walks through the streets early in the morning simply predicting everybody's future openly free of cost. You know that they'll just stand in front of your house and tell you what's going to happen in this house and go away. Are you aware of this? No, North Indians won't know. Central India and South India, these tribes are very much there. And Pradesh, anybody from Andhra Pradesh, Burkas, they're very much there in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, not so much in Tamil Nad. Tamil Nord became very atheistic and banished everything. But their trademark is temple. You know the Tamil Nad states symbol itself is temple. But they became very atheistic and they banished everything. So these people will just come stand in front of your house and just tell you what will happen in your house. They're not doing it for money. It's just their listening. They're just practicing their arts. You know, they're also very close to snakes. Snakes are very dear to them. Let's say you have a farm. You call one of these guys and you tell him there too many snakes. Why don't you remove them? In one afternoon, he will just sit in one place. He will have 100 200 snakes. All of them will come to him. He'll catch them, put them in a bag and take them away. He will simply sit. He won't go and catch. He will simply sit in one place. All the snakes will come from everywhere. He will catch them one by one, one by one and put them into your gunny sack and take them out. Because if you just create a certain vibe around you, snakes will simply come. They just get drawn to that kind of energy. When we were doing the dana linga, you know, the vishudi part of the consecration, snake started coming, you know, this particular snake just keeps coming. We pick it up and go live it somewhere and come just keeps coming back and coming back because he's just drawn to that energy like that. They're very sensitive. If certain rituals, certain consecrations, certain other things are being done or even if somebody becomes meditative in a particular way, snakes will gather around him. So because of their sensitivity to this we are saying they're closer otherwise this sensitivity wouldn't sensitivity wouldn't come and in the other parts of the world some misunderstanding has happened about the snakes and somehow Um, snakes were labeled as uh evil. One thing is it's just the way a snake manages its locomotion which creates fear in people. Because as far as you're concerned, locomotion means like this, like this, like this, like this. You can understand four legs or six legs, everything. Even a centipede you can understand. But no legs, that's scary. See, that's the human mind. If snake had legs and came walking, you wouldn't be so scared of the snake simply because he's [laughter] that's human mind. Unfortunately, anything that's not like us, something wrong with it. You are white, if somebody's black, something wrong with them. You are brown, if somebody's yellow, something wrong with them. You know, it's like anything new, something must be wrong with it. Just kill. That's been the way. Especially with the snake, anywhere it appears, everybody screams, kill, kill, kill. By understanding the nature of the snake, people responded to the snake in a completely different way in the east. Snake got a very prime place in the spiritual process. There is a certain amount of symbolism involved in it. But also you see Shiva wearing snakes around him. Even in this culture or any other part of the world for example they're talking about snake being devil's agent who brought temptation to life the original sin I think this whole original sin is made up by some breeze on the way to sell they'll produce. Otherwise, if you just look at it with openness, if snake is the one who brought the sense of Eve being a woman and Adam being a man and put them together in some way. The story is about that is how life started on this planet. Or in other words, snake happens to be the inducer of life on this planet. Yes. Whoever is the inducer of life, it's up to you to decide whether he is divine agent or devil's agent. Those who are against the very process of life, such people would think induction of life is devil's work. If you're for life, you would definitely see induction of life must be divine work, isn't it? So snake is actually a divine agent that's very asking for trouble kind of talk. >> [clears throat] >> They have always been around me right from my childhood. Sometime ago I belong to those tribes where snakes were not pets. They were more than your life. They were all over you because snake is one animal which is very comfortable with human energy. The sense if you go in the wild and pick up anything, even if you pick up a little insect, it'll struggle. It doesn't want to be in your hands. Snake is one animal. If you know how to take it, you can just pick up a snake like that, a wild one, and it'll come comfortably into your hands. It is just that uh you need to be extra extra alert and alive to it. You just pick it up, it'll come. Not holding it by the head. Just pick it up like that. It's easy. He just comes with you. But if you show a little disturbance, he will strike you. If you don't show any disturbance, if you very gracefully go with it, you will see you can just carry a wild snake just like that. Not restraining him by the head. Simply you can carry him like that and he'll be fine with you. There's no other animal which can be comfortable with you like that. Human being means the moment they smell you they're uncomfortable. All wild animals isn't it? So you know that the moment they smell a human being they are alert and uncomfortable. Snake is the only animal which is somehow comfortable with you. So based on all this it is so much closer to human energy than anything else that you can find.