What’s on your mind?
Questioner: Why do human beings suffer more than the animals?
Sadhguru: Animals suffer physically if things go wrong. Human beings suffer because there is a discretionary intellect. Human beings suffer much more than the other creatures because most of their suffering is mental and mental suffering is self-created. S/he suffers more because s/he is a much better expert at creating suffering for himself or herself and for others.
Of all the creatures on this planet, human beings create the maximum suffering for themselves and for all other creatures, isn’t it? This is because they have a discretionary mind. They can choose to be lead the life anyway they want. At any moment one can either make himself or herself joyful or miserable.
Your mind is not a solid state, it is a fluid. You can make it acquire any shape right now. You can look at a tree and say “Oh! God is living there, wonderful”, or you can look at the tree in terror and say “Maybe devils are hanging around there”. There is no end to the mind. You can make just about anything with your mind — you can make ecstasy out of it or misery out of it. Most people have learnt how to make misery out of it because they are exercising this discretionary dimension of mind unconsciously.
The source of human suffering is just that s/he has a choice. So right now s/he is suffering his or her freedom, not the bondage. If you are suffering your bondage, it’s okay, but if you are suffering your freedom it is a tragedy, isn’t it? Right now, that’s the tragedy that a human being has made himself to be. But if you wish, this moment you can make your life heaven or hell. The choice is yours.
There is a very beautiful story. There was a yogi who was aged and nearing his death, so he went about telling everybody that he is going to heaven. So all the other yogis just looked at him and they thought, “How does he know that he is going to heaven?” As the yogi was very confidently telling everybody in the town, so all of them gathered one day and asked him, “How do you know you will go to the heaven? You do not know what’s on God’s mind whether he wants to send you to heaven or hell”. The yogi replied “I don’t care what’s on God’s mind, I know what’s on my mind, I’m going to heaven and that’s all”. In reality, that’s all it is.
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a prominent spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian,
an author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
Post new comment