Something deep inside told this writer many times that a collision exists between external identification and the inner self giving rise to cerebral gymnastics that has found social acceptance as the path to correct living. But never ever was the thought that I was aligning with one of the finest and greatest intellectual giants of the Indian sub-continent. Sadhguru sure would license my all inclusive consciousness in race, religion, nationality, club, school, festivals among other things and a refusal of a systemic ‘yes sir’ job– which holistic wisdom triggered from an age of understanding but if not for him I would be still underestimating my own findings as against societal beliefs which skeptism is now no more. Going by the stupidity in the questions asked by his audience, Sadhguru cannot help but give a staccato type laugh leaving the shallow at a loose end.
Disregarding modern education as a tool of ignorance, he penetrates the infinite intelligence with dexterity and skill, leaving one to challenge all accepted social norms. The world of ‘make believe’ simply crumbles before an enlightened listener. At every moment of peoples’ lives they are engaged in identifying themselves with the external in the course of which man has lost his inner purity. This persistent tie up with what is not our true selves like for instance class, status, country, race, language, caste, religion, age, job, spouse, children, school, club, mosque, church, temple whatever the unending list is an unceasing attempt into attachments only to end up in sorrow and a hindrance to self discovery which is why the Buddha preferred the wilderness, Prophet and Jesus in the cave a top Mt. Hira/Olives respectively and Moses the Sinai desert. So did all other saints and sages that trod this earth from the dawn of creation.
Modern education
As Sadhguru moves on with his passionate delivery, this writer’s finding was that as the constructed social whole performs cerebral acrobatics quite forgetting who they are deep inside, the expansion of cocoons progressively increase, relegating humanity to idiocy to say the least, insanity. This certainly brought to writer's mind her post graduate days at the Colombo University when sociology handled the task of explaining such social constructs or manmade externalities. Little did I realize that several years later such constructs which Sadhguru refers to as externalities would lead me to the understanding of the untold damage it has caused in self realization. Such then is the invaluable knowledge that sociology imparts in connecting with a higher purpose - enough proof to this subject currently kept off the school curriculum which if included would be a system challenger. We live in a day and age of comfort minus peace. In short it was writer's realization of a whole socio, political, economic, cultural, educational system that has through education contributed so heavily in the loss of self realization but Sadhguru, understandably, for obvious reasons soft peddles his language skills for the limits of societal understanding in reading between the lines of pronouncements itself is his biggest bugbear, far worse than his system battle which task he leaves to a penetrating mind.
As Sadhguru himself says, the need to raise consciousness has come to the forefront as never before when we stand on the threshold of survival from which this writer deduced on the need for heavy dependence on social constructs. As civilizations progressed, identifying with externalities or such constructs also accelerated at the cost of self realization and one’s own identity with the boundary free infinite intelligence.
To quote Sadhguru, “It’s the accumulation of impressions. What you gathered in a life time is not you. Never before have we lived in a day and age of comfort but there is no peace. Science finds through physical means. Knowing is useful to survive but Knowing and exploration are two different things. Knowing or knowledge leads to phenomenal happening. Exploration takes one to the sharpness of perception. Modern education has chosen to ignore involvement. Striving for internal perception is banished. Modern education must take the blame. Success is misery and all successful people are stressed. So live sensible and not phenomenal lives. You have lived your so called successful lives through what you have accumulated and not by who you are. Every identity has distorted the mirror of your true identity.”
From birth its one big chaotic run followed by monotonous schooling, agonizing tutories only to be imprisoned in an routine 8-5 job. Then comes marriage, offspring and a repeat of the very same painful recurring decimal. Are we any better? Has the world become a place of sanity in this marathon?
“Regrettably, education has constipated the mind. It has compromised the wonderful in the person.”
Self realization yearns for expansion but education pushes one to imprisonment leading the human condition to what is narrow, limited and warped, driving people to identity politics and the refusal to perceive the geometry of existence. Education has taught people to look up to someone and in doing so invariably there’s someone to be looked down on. Sadhguru’s utterances weighs down system based education. If the right type of education was found, why do we have invasions, wars, domination, racial and ethnic religious friction? “If you conquer the world you will sit on top of it. But if you captivate the world, it will come along with you. Who drew this caricature called ‘I’. It has distorted the unbounded in you. The person is the same but identities are built that robs humans of its intended purpose of being human,” Sadhguru says leaving this writer to believe that externalities and accessories have led to the distortion of ‘I'. “The essence of life has become a process. If you go through a process, whatever you are unaware of brings suffering. Everyone seeks what they don’t have. Stop this nonsense and the best in you will be to create something fantastic, there needs to be something fantastic inside. Like the snake, tear down your skin,” insists Sadhguru. “Believably then, self discovery will be the ultimate reality.”
Disowning his belief in Shiva he proclaimed his Shiva being the people and reminds the audience not to slice life into socio/political/religious, ethnic /racial and economic identities. “My aim is to bring spirituality from mountain top to street.”
Truly Sadhguru resents being dubbed a preacher nor one that calls the flock to prayer. He is an anti dote to human suffering. Very pragmatic, perceiving, rational and positively emotional – a seeker and not a believer, not a messiah nor a holy man - certainly not a recluse but still wracks his head in appealing to the wholesomeness within man now gone into oblivion in a well fortified system he valiantly fights to expose. When his following tries to hug Sadhguru and reaches out to touch his head he laughingly protests, “oh no! This is not liberation but molestation. You need to find your own liberation only through your own striving and I cannot get you there.”
Describing himself as a mystic and highly respectful of the scriptures Sadhguru with clasped hands venerates these personalities that celebrated humanity.
To the cluttered mind, mental access to Sadhguru’s deliveries will not be that easy. It has to be read and re-read with clarity of thought which comes not with ease. Social constructs of sociology which Sadhguru refers to as externalities distort the mind’s mirror. He insists that these externalities be removed for one to find out who he or she is. Till such time it will be a state of knowledgeable ignorance and that’s for sure dangerous.
Interaction with symbols
Interestingly, Sociology’s insightful study into symbolic interaction where interacting with symbols or in Sadgurus jargon external identities propagates a fake system that has come to stay with societal licensing. As a result, norms have become wrongs and vice versa. The eternal involvement with power, status, wealth, class, ethno/religious/racial identities and so on rob internal purity intended for man. Accelerating the interaction with symbols was civilizational growth as the need for contact with symbols increased to consolidate one’s self in power, class, status whatever. For instance, money education, wealth and status among other things are achieved by interacting with symbols of a 'yes sir’ job, limousine, seam bursting bank accounts never mind the moral deviance into getting there. The scales of balance too were tipped into what this writer would call gradually diminishing moral decadence even reducing the number of saints sages and prophets so readily available in a historic past when the need to identify with external symbols was limited for wealth, class and status were not yet ready to make headway.
Dismissing himself as a totally uneducated person, he frequently recalls of how his highly educated father attempted in many ways to educate Sadhguru. “There were times that I would stare into vacant space for hours or look at a wild flower for long.” – understandably the way with mystics. The day before schooling his mother even said, “Now don’t go to school and just keep staring at the teacher.”
“The teacher never spoke,” chuckled Sadhguru. What he meant was the teacher’s failure to deliver substance. “How could she when she herself was educated in a way only to gain information and not involvement? The latter enables one to see the dimension beyond. Life itself is not an industrial project. It is only involvement that transforms us. Education builds boundaries, not an inclusive consciousness which connects one with infinite wisdom. Exclusion is what education teaches us. Involvement leads to expansion and education to imprisonment of social constructs where we are, compelled to live in our imposed, finite and limited understanding.” As for him education is nauseating and when referred to as an educated person, he would always say, please do not insult me.” Obviously then, his focus is on enlightenment, far beyond education’s limited boundaries for only such a mind develops a larger happening beyond man-made territorial constructs of compartmentalization, an absorbing mind of wholesomeness, inclusion, interaction with the infinite wisdom where a sharpened perception strikes reality of the kind which is now mistaken as ‘the reality’.
The all inclusive consciousness Sadhguru vehemently insists reminded this writer of another of India’s illustrious sons Rabindranath Tagore who found poetic grandeur and integrity of substance in the following lines – ‘where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls’ the walls of divisiveness that fragment and not bind man, of cold calculated moves instead of the grandeur and elegance of existence enabling him a fall from grace.
Sadhguru is not wrong when he talks of education constipating the mind and denying man of a universal identity. Logically one cannot develop a consciousness of inclusion. Limited identity disables peace. True enough this writer believes modern education to fail in man. So much of divisiveness, social stratification, the identities of nation, religion, ethnicity, socio, political, economic differences, gender disparities, wars, global tensions arising out of education denies man the best in him. “We are the most comfortable generation without peace.” he exclaimed.
Sadhguru runs his own school and follows a holistic approach for children to tap their fullest potential. The Isha Foundation is his endevour. Children not more than 12 at Isha when interviewed said when asked the difference between their school and the systemic ones, “Here we don’t fight, here we do not compete. There’s no homework and there’s plenty of time to play. No tuition classes. We are respectful to one another. We have tests not exams.”
When asked the difference, a girl replied, “An exam is difficult unlike a test. Even at the test we are asked what we know and not what we don’t know.”
It brought to writer's mind how Sir Winston Churchill at a test to enter Eton spilt a bottle of ink on his mathematics paper and wrote, “I wish I was asked what I knew rather than be pressed into what I do not know.” Though he himself collaborated with much profundity, ironically it was that same Churchill who in later life was entangled in a whirlpool of power, engaging in social constructs and symbolic interaction to make his birth enclave - Britain the world’s most powerful nation. Whither education?
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