A Dialogue On Peace, Neuroplasticity And Education: Sadhguru & Gregoire Borst

So,

It's my privilege today to be here at UNESCO,

Who has played a significant role in using its influence to bring a culture of peace through education,

Because without transforming both the content and the mode of delivery of education on this planet,

There cannot be a culture of peace.

Just absence of violence for short periods of time is not necessarily a culture of peace.

It's wonderful that we are here today.

It's my privilege and I thank you very much for having me here today.

Thank you very much,

Sadhguru,

With those opening statements.

First of all,

Thank you for accepting our invitation.

We have a very busy schedule.

Gregwa,

Thank you very much as well.

I know you've been flying around the world and you've just landed very recently,

But I hope the jet lag doesn't make you talk about silly things.

I'm sure you don't.

But let me start off with,

Sadhguru had just alluded in terms of the fact that we are at a time when there's so much of violence that we've kind of forgotten of what we had gone through 50,

60 years ago.

One of the things that I'm going to present it as dilemmas.

So the first dilemma that I'm looking at is that we're talking about a culture of peace.

UNESCO was established in its preambles in a sort of saying that war starts in the minds of men and that's where peace has to be found.

Looking at the cell,

I want to refer to a WHO 2012 report and it had some very sobering results.

It says in many countries 25% of young children,

And this is between 13 to 15,

Suffer some form of depression.

Suicide rates are on the increase and as the assistant director general had talked about,

In a sense the deputy director general,

Pardon me,

Had talked about the rise in violent extremism.

How do we even try to think about a culture of peace when most of us are having a war within ourselves?

So how do we find that resolution within ourselves?

So the notion of the self comes in and I wanted to sort of throw this at Sadhguru and Greg Waw who's been working a lot on emotional intelligence,

Neuroplasticity as the title of the report,

In terms of how training of the brain is what they're talking about,

Contributes to us this first what I call initial necessary conditions before we even start talking about a culture of peace.

Well,

Without peaceful human beings there is no peaceful society or a nation or the world.

And above all,

When as individual human beings we do not know how to keep our minds peaceful,

We do not know how to be peaceful within ourselves,

What are we talking about world peace?

Because what you see in the world is just a larger manifestation of what is happening in human minds.

Well depression becomes a concern because it is medically diagnosed,

But there are various other forms of violence which are happening within the mindscape of an individual human being.

We do nothing about transforming individual human beings,

But we have lot of slogans and movements on the street about world peace.

Such a thing is not going to happen because unless we create peaceful human beings,

There cannot be a peaceful world because minus the human beings,

The world is just great as it is.

So it's only we,

It's only you and me which is the problem.

So what can we do about it?

My entire life's work is just this,

Individual transformation because without individual transformation there is no such thing as universal salvation,

There's no such thing because world,

Society,

Nation,

These are just words,

The reality is just you and me,

How are we within ourselves right now?

So we can talk about peace to individual people who are… but when they are pushed,

When something that's dear to them is lost or something is threatened,

They will get into different modes.

So the entire system of yoga is just this,

To create a chemistry of peacefulness because human experience,

Whether it's peace or stress or anxiety or tranquility or agony or ecstasy,

Every human experience has a chemical basis to it.

In a way,

This is a chemical soup.

Are you a great soup or a lousy soup,

That's our only question.

If we give the same soup making ingredients to all the people here,

Well,

They will not all produce the same kind of soup.

They will make hundreds of varieties of soups with the same ingredients.

That's all that's happened with us.

Fundamentally,

We are the same ingredients,

But just see in how many ways we have become.

So is there any part of education which is addressing how to handle human faculties of memory,

Of present keenness of experience and imagination how it runs and above all,

Human chemistry,

How to handle these things.

We are not doing anything for the individual human being,

But from early age onwards,

They are just piling up information about how to deal with the world.

Violence is not just war.

The very way we're treating the planet is violence.

The very way we're walking upon this planet is violent.

Our lifestyles are violent.

Now if something has to change in the coming generations,

First and foremost thing is large-scale effort to create peaceful human beings,

Individual human beings being peaceful within themselves by their own nature,

Not because of the ambience in which they are in.

Everybody is peaceful when they're in a good ambience.

When things go wrong,

When things don't happen the way you want,

To be peaceful.

This needs a chemistry of peacefulness.

As there is a science and technology to create external well-being,

There is a whole science and technology to create in a well-being.

Unfortunately,

Our education systems have completely divorced from those things.

We are just interested in getting our children into a factory-like situation where everybody is going through the same extruder and they're supposed to fall out in the same shape.

But that is not how human beings are made.

Now,

The God is going to tell us how even the shape of the brain can change.

Well,

We're definitely all the same.

I mean,

The brain in each and every individual works a bit of the same way.

What if they don't have one?

Except if you don't have one.

But most of the time we do have one.

So I'm trying to say,

Generally speaking,

We all have a brain.

We have… also have a brain in a body,

Which is I think critical.

It's like that's why we differ so much with artificial intelligence,

Is that we have a very strong connection between our brain and our body.

I mean,

Our brain controls all the body,

But the body also sends a lot of information within the brain.

So that said,

We also know that we're all different.

The brain is shaped differently in each and every people.

So you can also understand why within a similar environment you can have different outcome of different human being evolving in different type of environment.

But going back to this idea of war within ourselves,

I think more generally if we talk about peace and how basically we can foster a culture and peace in each and every individual,

There is something very interesting if you look at development.

So if you look at children,

Especially babies.

So there is like this experiment that is very interesting.

If you take a six-month-old baby and you show him two puppets,

And one of the puppets is interacting with the other,

And in one case the puppet you're using is actually having altruistic behavior.

So it helps the other puppet to open the box in order to find what is inside the box.

And then you come in with the third puppet,

And then this puppet actually act like in a selfish way or in an aversive way toward the other.

What you find is that six months old they automatically choose and systematically choose the puppet that display altruistic behavior.

So actually if you come back to this whole idea of Rousseau versus Voltaire,

This idea that whether we actually come to the world with an altruistic mind or whether it's the society that becomes that let us be like altruistic,

It's actually Rousseau was right.

It's like babies,

Like they come to the world with an altruistic behavior.

So then it means it's the way we develop or the society in which we develop that led us to develop kind of those behaviors,

Self-finished behavior that can lead then and afterward to the type of kind of behavior that leads to war basically.

So I think it's also that we have to take into account.

So the babies actually come to the world with a fantastic organ like the brain that can change all the way through childhood and adolescence and that will matter very slowly.

And we know that there are factors that will affect this brain development but interestingly we are basically altruistic and you can even show that in adults if you put the adults in a time-pressured situation what they will display is cooperative behavior.

Actually we become selfish when we have the time to think about our behavior.

So I think we need to resolve also this issue is the type of education we give to the children like will promote either altruistic behavior or self-fit behavior but let's think of this idea that originally there are altruistic like beings basically.

So I think you have given us hope.

You're sort of saying that when babies come they have this altruistic let's say the neuron,

The empathy neuron that neuroscientist V.

C.

Ramanachandran had talked about.

He calls it the Gandhi neurons.

But at the same time and so I'm asking the question is it the system but then on the other hand we are the system but we see that humans can be extremely kind and it goes according to that altruistic but at the other end of the spectrum we can be extremely cruel to a point it sometimes boggles the mind in the level of cruelty that we can exhibit.

Is there a gene or is there a neuron somewhere lurking in that brain that if triggered creates that level of cruelty or is it an external factor of the system which is a collective of all of us which at some point we can't control and so then we become part of that.

So these are the questions is there a neuron which also at the end of the spectrum which also is able to exhibit cruelty or is it part of the system?

If it's just about the neural level there is no neurons of cruelty that we can like put that aside that's clear.

The brain is like 86 billion neurons,

One million of billions of connections between neurons is way more complicated than the internet so we just have like preliminary knowledge about the brain so don't put too much like it's not a magic bullet it's not because you know the brain that you will know what to do in the world to resolve basically war or peace in the world but I'm just saying that it's within the same brain that you can express cruelty and actually altruism so it's different networks but we are in the two and sometimes we express like our bad behavior sometimes we express good behaviors but that's within the same brain so then you need to have those kind of controls and you need to teach us those controls because actually we know that what is the most predictive of becoming like an adult that is actually happy and that actually succeed through life is whatever the indicator you use for that I mean then we can discuss about that is actually your self-control is how you can control yourself.

So not in a bad way it's not like being like inhibited about anything but it's generally speaking your ability to control your bad behaviors or your bad habits or the habits you can you will create it through your and to your interaction with the environment let's keep in mind that okay the brain is a biological tissue but it's fundamentally a tissue that evolves in a social environment and it will be affected by the social environment in you in which you grow in not necessarily the educational system but also the whole environment you have around you that will change your brain and change the brain for the good or for the worse.

Oh see when we talk about the indications in the brain or neuronal activity we're still talking about a certain consequence it is not the cause.

When we say the cause in the yogic way of looking at human intelligence we see sixteen parts to human intelligence.

The front end of it is the intellect.

Right now our entire idea of intelligence unfortunately has become purely intellectual.

That means well if I ask you whether you want a sharp intellect or a dull one everybody without exception will choose a sharp intelligence or intellect.

Essentially intellect is a cutting instrument it's like a knife the sharper it is the better it is.

Knife is good for a dissection not for not good for variety of other activities.

Suppose you use a knife to stitch obviously you will leave everything in tatters.

Well this is the human effort towards peace in the world.

We're using our intellect to stitch everything together you'll leave things in tatters and who holds the knife determines what the knife does.

On a daily basis does a knife save more lives or take more lives if you see it is saving many more lives than it takes on a daily basis.

But knife by itself is not a danger it is just that what kind of hand holds it.

So this dimension of intelligence we call it as a hankara which is actually identity.

So there is a whole effort in the Indian way of doing things about establishing a universal identity.

Before a child's child starts his education process because education is seen as an empowerment before you empower a human being first thing is to have a cosmic identity.

Aham Brahmasmi it's called.

You must have a cosmic identity otherwise you should not be empowered with education.

Now we have a national identity we have a racial identity we have ethnic identity we have religious identity is cast creed goes further down boils down to family and then to individual human being.

Now all the evil on the planet all the violence on the planet all the crime on the planet is essentially a consequence of limited identifications.

I'm concerned about myself not about you because my identity with this one or maybe I'm concerned about two people not about the third person because my identity is with this one.

So in terms of community in terms of nation race religion we are identified but before starting education process always in the east we established a cosmic identity because only then your intelligence will work towards integration towards a universal consciousness.

But right now we are establishing strong sense of limited identities and we're expecting peace will happen.

It cannot happen in the very nature of things because that is how our intelligence will function because essentially our intellect will protect the identity that we have taken whether it's of gender race religion nationality inevitably our intellect will work only towards protecting our identity.

So there's another dimension of intelligence which is called as Chitta.

The next dimension of intelligence is called Manas which means a silo of memory.

When we say a silo of memory there is evolutionary memory there is genetic memory there is karmic memory articulate and inarticulate forms of memory like this eight forms of memory are there.

Right now who you are is just a consequence of that memory.

The way you think the way you feel the way you recognize things everything is a consequence of this memory.

So it is not independent of this memory whichever way your memory is stored that is the way you recognize who is your friend and who is a stranger to you is just a question of memory.

Who is your parentage what is your parentage and what is your not this thing what is your nationality what is not is essentially your memory.

And beyond this there is an intelligence called Chitta which is an intelligence without an iota of memory.

Why this is significant is memory gives us many capabilities but memory is also my boundary.

I remember you this is my boundary I don't remember him that is out of my boundary.

So whatever we call as memory is a certain kind of boundary though it enables us in many ways it also sets a boundary for us.

So there is a dimension of intelligence where there is no memory.

If once you dip into this dimension of intelligence then because there is no memory in this intelligence there is an experience of universality there is an experience of oneness in the within yourself because of this your ability to erase all borders the boundaries of your individuality are erased only if this happens to large segments of people or at least people in people who are in positions of power and responsibility on this planet you will definitely create a culture of peace as long as I am identified as my nationality you as yours it's just a question of time when something a dispute comes we will fight.

Thank you Sadhguru I was really hoping that you'll move towards Chitta because that's something that has always kind of puzzled me when I've read so seen some of your YouTube.

So you published a paper with Hude on consciousness and the Chitta as you mentioned was consciousness but what is interesting is that intellect without memory and that it cannot work and that's bugging especially so.

I mean there is something interesting about that is just that well we definitely memories could be related to the type of automatisms that you create so what you were reflecting to is that the type of memories we have about past events like will basically create some priors in the way we're going to behave on the next basically occurrence of seeing someone and I think that's also very important is if you want to be open to others if you want to understand that others can have different point of view on the same matters so what we call in psychology theory of mind so the ability I have to basically understand that you can have different mental state as me and that you can also appreciate that it's okay for you to have a different state of mind regarding a similar matter that's something that develops through life and what is interesting is that we also have a lot of automatisms in that matters and automatisms is great that allows us to be extremely very well adapted to our environment but from time to time it let us to make systematic mistakes so for instance if we take something as simple as taking the perspective of others which is like fundamental if you want to basically create an understanding of others you need to be able to take their perspective okay very simply put it like it could be a visual spatial perspective so knowing that like you see this object differently from me and that will that actually entails and that's what we've been shown that we showed in our studies that entails like basically to resist your egocentric biases so I'm interestingly looking at the world from my perspective and what I need to do is like basically be able to resist to this egocentric bias in order to take the perspective of others and so we've been like conducting studies in the lab lately in which we showed that basically taking the perspective of others costly and it's even more costly when you have stereotypes so memories of how the other behave so that actually drives you to be even more egocentric so we showed that this is the case for stereotypes related to gender this is related to stereotypes related to ethnicity this is related to stereotypes we have about just the in-group out-group so the mere fact that I'm thinking that you're not part of my in-group makes it more difficult for me to take your perspective and that's like the basic like one of the the founding block of empathy so empathy is rooted on my ability to take the perspective of others but I'm talking about memory in a much more basic way in the sense suppose we feed Gregor with Indian food for three months his complexion won't change because the body's just remembers this is how it should be or if I eat dog food for three months I won't become a dog because my evolutionary memory 100% remembers whatever you put into this this has to become only this so memory as you remember is just a small quantum of it but the real memory is there in the body not in the brain your body remembers more things than your brain can ever remember every cell in your body remembers how your forefathers were or let's say ten generations ago how your great-grandfather looked you don't remember in your brain but his nose is sitting on your face so because the body remembers so memory I'm looking at in terms of in fact from our parents we got only one cell each obviously it carried the whole memory in those two cells and here we are so memory is not just of what happens in the brain what happens in the body is much much bigger and by stabilizing the body that's what the yogic system is about by stabilizing the body the very shape of your brain and how your brain functions can be completely altered I'll tell you a simple thing we about fifteen sixteen years ago we started a school inside the yoga center and one morning I went there for the morning assembly all six seven-year-old children they're all sitting like this like this like this like this I said what's happening to these children why they were like broken tops you know why they all unsteady like this I just started the seven notes of the music twelve minutes a day you won't believe after three months I went there everybody sitting like this unmoving today I can show you children who will sit like this unmoving for anywhere between five to six hours effortlessly they won't move and this will stabilize the neuronal activity in the brain in a fantastic way our whole effort is to create intensity without intent people are always trying to change the brain even there was a quote from Mahatma Gandhi the way you think is the way you become with intent you can change the brain or the shape of the brain or how it functions definitely but we are talking about a dimension you create intensity without any intent life happens exuberantly but no intention this creates a completely different dimension this will create an ambience for individual genius to unfold in this you will see always wherever whether it's a scientific genius or a musician or a sports person the moment some genius within him unfolds suddenly his identity is not limited to small things always this kind of comes to reminds me of a paragraph in Daniel Goldman's book on emotional intelligence where he talks about the intensity to a point where you get into a zone the flow that you are completely obvious to anything that's going around you and it might extend for a couple of seconds it kind of might extend for a couple of minutes or sometimes even hours so how does that how does one and I'm going to move that to the education how does one get into that into that flow into that zone without using as you are sort of saying the brain see what we call as education is for different purposes for different people for example in India India is not one nation there are many layers of India so you cannot apply the same thing for all of them so we have three systems right now going with the issue educational programs we have is a video which is the rural education where this is mainly from the age of six they're starting on computers English language because this is designed to get them out of a social and economic pit which they're trapped in in the rural India in the remote parts of India there is no opportunity for them unless they learn English language and know some technology they cannot get out of that situation so that is made like that we have another school called Esha homeschool which is run in a completely different atmosphere this is for the more affluent this is difficult to scale up here for every child or for every and an average for every four and a half children there is one adult taking care of them they live in a household of 20 with a very committed couple who will be like their houseparent and they take care of them everything education happens in the house except for sport library and activity outside everything else happens within the home they grow up in a very intense education mode they're following some system in the country they're right now following the Cambridge system of education so that they're internationally compliant we have another school called Esha Sanskriti where if a child comes to the school they have to come with a commitment of 12 years otherwise we don't take them because here there is no academics they learn only classical music classical dance yoga Kalari Paitu which is the mother of all martial arts Sanskrit language and English language you must see this children they are intense means super intense our effort is only to grow the human body and the brain to its fullest without any intention without ever asking what will you become later on but their level of focus and commitment and the way they have evolved these children is a phenomena to watch so I'm going to transition to my second dilemma I'm going to be a little bit provocative here the present education system that we have and you just alluded to three some of them have some similarities with what we have here now the thing that kind of the dilemma here is that this present education system we talked about a lot of kids who are having anxiety depression now if we do a really good job of strengthening this education system and we assume that SDG 4 which is one of the global goals on education is that assumption is that this education system is the one that will deliver we might end up in a catastrophic situation where we have a hundred percent literacy but with extremely high levels of depressed people running around the world so my question is do we do a fundamental change in the objective of education rather than the traditional economic model that now drives like what you have alluded during our discussions earlier on is it about building human capital or is it about human flourishing for the individual which I think the third stream of school that you have talked about alludes to how do how do we tackle this so with the kind of population pressures we have doing an ideal form of schooling is utopian it's it's not possible with the kind of population pressure we have millions and millions of children need to be educated doing an ideal system in countries like India will be out of question we can only do this in small numbers scaling that up is not a possibility first of all if we have to change this we have to change our economic module what is significant in our life this has to change that's not going to change right away that's going to be too dreamy see when economics is the only value in a society money is the only value let me put it more bluntly if you say there is a big man in this city it doesn't mean he has a big brain or a big heart no he just has a big pocket that's what it means today in the world so when money is the only value competition is inevitable where there is competition of very intense kind as the competition gets more and more aggressive well many will fall on the wayside depressed broken in many many damaged human beings we will create and unfortunately as you mentioned that number is increasing to a point see in 2016 18,

600 children below 18 years of age committed suicide in India over 7,

000 of them were below 15 years of age 12 13 14 year olds if they have to take their own life I think we're doing something fundamentally wrong in our societies there's simply no question about it well if we talk about education at large I think yeah I think we're missing completely the point is I agree with you when you say that well if you ask a children education is and you let them fill in the rest usually say boring which is not what you want for an educational system education should be about basically strengthening social emotional learning for once well let's put it bluntly where we know even if we look at it from an like economics point of view but let's be taking the wrong side of the of the stick like you know that 85% of the job now won't be there 30 years from now if you continue to train the children the way we train them you're going to make them adapted to jobs that won't exist 30 years from now so what you need to foster our abilities that are not foster within the classroom being flexible being attentive being able to concentrate yourself on yourself on your body and I agree with you I mean I'm it's of course problematic from a neuroscientific point of view because I talk about the brain but the brain is within a body we know that we have neurons within the gut that the neurons within the gut if you change for instance there's like data showing that if you change the neurons within the gut from someone who has a psychopathology from you take the guts of the neurons the the microbiota of the neurons from one people that has no psychopathology you put it in the people who has psychopathology the people who got the psychopathology goes better so of course there is this direct relationship between the body and the brain so I think this is what we need to foster within the educational system like should be fun it should be like you need like basically the babies they love to learn and at some point they go at in school and they don't like to learn so we do the thing wrong so we need to change basically the educational system it should be fun for the children because if you know that if it's fun you learn more basically so I think like what we teach is not the thing we should be teaching well let's put it bluntly too I mean knowledge it's accessible everywhere get this like laptop or whatever connected on the internet the internet will always have more knowledge than you have at every given time so I'm not saying that you shouldn't have knowledge but that might not be the critical skills for the children 30 years from now and we're always talking about what will be the word of our children what will be the word we left we leave to our children I think a good question will be also what will be the children will leave for the the word 30 years from now and I think that change the perspective and what we want to do in the schools so I think that that's a critical point that if you want to change the things for the children.

See as Gregor as he said this whole exercise of heaping yourself up with information will be meaningless because the small gadget that you can carry in your pocket will say more things than your professors can speak ever.

This happened to me when I was just thirteen years of age and I was largely allergic to school so one day somebody showed me a flatbed calculator for the first time I'm seeing a calculator national Panasonic calculator hundred rupees very expensive those days so they showed me took took took took took it came out what you want any multiplication division immediately said why the hell am I going to the math class because here it is I can add multiply subtract sine theta cos theta why the hell am I wasting my life sitting in the mathematics class here is everything well at last that day is coming when children need not go to school schooling as we know it in the next ten to fifteen years time could become absolutely meaningless because everything will be available knowledge wise the schools or the mystic traditions in India always focused on enhancing and enlarging human faculty rather than enhancing knowledge that your ability to perceive has to be enhanced recently because I've been running this youth and truth campaign meeting all university students for the last one month they've been asking me Sadhguru you're answering every question we ask how is this you have an answer for everything I said I don't have an answer for anything I don't have an answer in my head for anything but I just have clarity I've worked for my clarity all my life to bring my faculties to that level of clarity that there is no mistake about what I see that you see things just the way they are I think this will be of immense value in future because information or gathering of information becomes meaningless there was a time when large populations were you know I have seen this in the villages of India when most of the population do not know how to read they're illiterate one guy some letter comes and he reads you should see the wonder actually he's looking at the paper and saying all these things it's truly fantastic people sit there open mouth gaping at him because just looking at a paper he's saying all this so that time is gone now a simple gadget will know more than the entire university knows so this time has come now is a fantastic time this is a time for human beings to truly unravel and explore their consciousness because the burden of carrying information assimilating it and expressing it in the world is gone some people are protesting people are inviting me to this artificial intelligence conferences I didn't understand why do they want me in artificial intelligence this thing I'm not a technology person I said why are you guys inviting me they said Sadhguru we we don't know what to do our jobs will be gone I said that means it's a holiday unless you know how to enjoy your vacation you're going to be in big trouble unless you know how to be productive in a relaxed way unless you know how to be productive in your vacation time because your life will be a vacation this is the same problem the workers unions of this world had in early twentieth century and mid twentieth century when mechanization came when assembly lines came everybody protested our jobs are going to go now intellectuals are protesting our jobs are going to go they are going to go there is no stopping and isn't it great you will not have a job to do and you can pursue your life instead of trying to make a living you can make a life out of this that's most wonderful time So on that philosophical note and I was just going to say when you were saying It's very practical And practical so we got a philosophical which is practical which is always also moron but here we have it what I'm really in a sense when you said the Ishafa the way that you mentioned one of the streams of education but it was difficult to scale up and in fact you just provided a solution in a sense that AI will take away a lot of the mundane jobs that we're doing that we can actually now concentrate on our children and provide the kind of nourishment that they will require as they grow up A human child is not like other creatures when they are born instinctively they know what to do what not to do and how to survive because all they have to learn in their life is how to procure food how to reproduce and how to gracefully die one day that's all they need to learn every other creature and all this is instinctively built into them there's the learning part of their life is very small it's not that there's no learning but the learning part is actually very small and even that without anybody's guidance they're capable of learning that but a human child is not made like that simply because the range of development that happens in a human being is so vast and it can be much bigger than what it is right now if only these concerns of survival are taken away from the human being how to earn my living where to get my food if this concern is taken away believe me human genius will unfold in a way that you have not imagined possible so as you said definitely all these people who lose their jobs they can focus on the children and above all see you don't have to know physics to be a physics teacher it is on a platform where everything the best physics teacher is teaching physics all you need is a loving human being who is inspiring for the children to be with this is something I've always noticed if you ask children why they took to a certain subject most of them will say because I like the teacher in my third standard who taught me math that's why I took to math somebody says in fifth standard I like my English teacher that's why the teacher that they allowed naturally the subject also they allowed this is how a child is made this is the nature of a human being because unfortunately we have relegated emotion to a second place but largely human beings are far more emotional than their intellectual because we thought intellect is sense emotion is senselessness somebody interpreted it like this we've lost it but I'm asking you the deepest and the most profound form of education I mean emotion that a human being can have is devotion tell me people think devotion means it's about God going to temple or somewhere no tell me as any individual reached a state of excellence in anything they're doing whether it's music or art or politics or business or sport or even spirituality without being devoted to what they're doing without being absolutely devoted to what you're doing right now you never get to any big place you do mediocre things so devotion or emotion has always been the forefront of human life but unfortunately we've relegated that to a second place thinking logical data process is more important this all we're doing with our intellect and that will become meaningless and I'm just looking forward I hope it doesn't take too much time and I'm still around it happens yeah like we can I generally agree like it's important also to understand that there is no real disillusion between reasoning and emotion actually the two are very very strongly connected so your brain works basically by the way you make years years like unfolding making emotion in our body in our in our brain and this recalling of the emotion that you basically made during like previous time helps you to correct your ears whatever they are in whatever subject so basically interestingly we are emotional being we drive the learning is drive actually by emotion by simple emotion by also very complex emotion such as regret relief those are actually very strong emotion to basically learn and so it's there is no position basically between the two I also agree that basically the classroom in 21th century well not about like providing the knowledge but will be probably to tailor the knowledge or tailor the abilities of each child depending of his learning curve and that's what we need to achieve we won't be able to achieve it with teaching like classes with 35 children so maybe technology is a good way to help us like on this path to make the education a little more tailored to each and every individual because we know that the more closely you're following the learning curve of the children the better they develop that's how what works best basically and they also it works based if you have a social environment as you say it like fostering a very strong social emotional environment around the children not only at school but also in the society is a very very strong leverage for their learning whatever the learning even like the learning knowledge learning is improved by the social emotional environment in which the children will develop so I think that's critical we know it's as an effect on the neuroplastic processes so social the more the higher the social emotional environment the better it is the higher the neuroplasticity so the higher the possibility of learning so I think let's not think necessarily that is this shaded one will help the other so if we like put the emotion at the center we will help everything basically today's madma Gandhi's anniversary so madma insisted the means or how you do something is as important as the goal or what you're trying to achieve this is why this whole nonviolent way of doing things so how people become peaceful how people become joyful it's a big question mark with a drink or a drug a whole lot of people are peaceful or joyful is that the way to take the world or it happened like this there was a young woman who was married and the husband is abusive verbally abusive sometimes get physically abusive sometimes get sexually abusive but she was very peaceful one day the husband looked at her after a burst of abuse said how do you do this I abuse you in so many ways but you're always peaceful she said I clean the toilet he said what even when I beat you you're peaceful what do you do she said I clean the toilet how does cleaning the toilet help you to be peaceful she said I use your toothbrush the different ways but doing it the right way is very important all right on that note I'm going to open up the Q&A there are two mics on either side we are running in time so please if you can come to the to the mic I'm sure there must be questions you must come to the microphone to the mic there are two on the on in the no microphones will not come to you you must come to the mic all right please go ahead no normally they're used to so I I'm going to be biased and the young man with the beard because we have this identity together so I'll allow you to go ahead you're trying to so we we know that everything that occurs in this world is perfectly balanced and there's this notion of being young and if you can come look at closer closer of course so yeah there's a perfect balance in this world so we know there's like perfection and there's not really something that we we have to do but when I look at the people around me or some members of the family I can see a lot of suffering sometimes and that brings me in the place of discomfort so like I'm a little bit confused about knowing that everything is perfect but at the same time when I see the world outside of me I I feel that it's not as perfect as I want it to be so how do I understand and deal better with this confusion first I thought you wanted some brain reshaping so uh see all human experience don't give it all kinds of meanings all human experience joy or misery peace or turmoil agony or ecstasy only happens from within you is that so hello yes is that so you may think it's being stimulated from outside no people are doing what they no best.

It's you who's going into these states.

So essentially what's coming from within you,

At least what's come from within you,

Must happen the way you want it,

Isn't it?

The world,

The world will never happen hundred percent your way,

Never ever,

Believe me.

I've been around long enough.

Even if you're just two people in the family,

It won't happen hundred percent your way.

Fifty-one percent your way means you have a controlling stake.

Hundred percent your way,

Nobody will be with you.

But what's happening within me must happen my way.

If what's happening within me is not happening my way,

If somebody can decide whether I'll be happy or unhappy,

Somebody will decide whether I'm peaceful or not.

This is the worst form of slavery.

We are giving it all kinds of names.

Misery,

Any kind of misery essentially means your intelligence has turned against you,

That's all it is.

Your own thought,

Your own emotion,

Your own intelligence has turned against you.

If your intelligence is working for you,

Would you keep yourself blissful or miserable?

Please,

What's your choice I'm asking you?

Hello?

You must choose right now.

If you could decide what happens in your thought and emotion,

Would you keep yourself blissful or miserable?

Blissful for sure.

What you want for your neighbor may be debatable.

What you want for yourself is hundred percent clear,

Isn't it?

So this is all it is.

There are no complex reasons.

You have not taken charge of your faculties.

Your thought,

We gave you a most complex computer,

But you did not read the user's manual.

That's all the problem is.

This may look a little blunt,

Not so humane,

But this is the way it is.

If you learn how to keep your body,

How to keep your thought and emotion,

You staying blissful is a natural consequence,

Isn't it?

Hello?

I'll work on that then.

Thank you.

Namaskar,

Sadhguru.

My question is on the third aspect of today's discussion,

Education.

History is full of examples of individuals who have achieved success in their respective fields,

And these individuals have really not had too much of formal education,

Or if they've had some formal education,

They've dropped out of college early on and pursued their ambitions.

So to this background,

Could you elaborate as to what should one pursue?

A formal education?

Should one strive for assimilation of knowledge,

Or,

You know,

A pursuit for wisdom,

Considering that the jobs of today are not going to be there tomorrow,

And the knowledge economy that we're talking about doesn't seem to exist in the future?

See,

I hear such things in conferences always,

But I never hear parents talking to their children like this,

Formal education is no good,

Drop out of the school.

You never.

.

.

You never hear any parents saying that.

Only in conferences and academic places people say these things,

But to their own children they never say that.

They always say pursue the education,

Pursue the education.

Because there are many realities,

All of which we cannot change right away.

There is an economic reality,

There is a social structure.

This is the way we decide who is capable of what.

How do you decide somebody who has not gone through any program that he is capable of this,

He has to prove it himself.

Will the society and the times in which he lives in,

It's very important,

The times in which we live in,

Will it allow that opportunity for that person,

Or will he be just crushed on the street?

So,

Formal education is just that passport.

It doesn't empower you to do anything.

It's a passport,

It puts you in a right place.

Whether you will make it or not from there on is up to you,

But it gave you an entry,

It opened doors for you.

But if you don't have formal education,

Then you must be that kind who doesn't knock on the doors,

Who break down doors and goes inside and anyway makes things happen because you are of a certain competence.

But that is not the case with every child that is growing up.

It is best that they go through formal education.

But what is formal?

What is formal education?

The shape of that we must change.

But if you make dramatic changes just like that,

Many things will collapse,

Many human beings will be crushed in that change.

So it's very important this change is affected in a gradual and sensitive way that we must be constantly watching and according to the needs.

When the times allow us,

We must change.

If you change when the times are not ready,

A lot of suffering will be unleashed because of that.

So,

It is not for us.

.

.

See,

We should not take a stand,

It's for or against.

My father was joking with me,

You.

.

.

Getting you to school was so difficult,

Now why are you starting these schools?

I said,

At least I have created one or two schools where children love to be there,

You know.

They're.

.

.

They love to be there.

The other schools are little more educational,

Academic,

But these two schools which we have created,

Children want to be there.

Children are crying when they have to go back home.

They're coming ten,

Fifteen days ahead of.

.

.

Before the vacation closes because they want to set up the school.

I said,

They love the school,

So it's fine.

But you didn't send me to your school where I could love the school.

So,

I escaped the school in every possible way.

Now the important thing is,

It might have worked for me.

For me,

Sitting on a tree and observing many things worked wonderfully for me.

But everybody in my class had gone up the tree and sat down there upon the tree,

Oh,

Probably they would have devolved into becoming monkeys.

No,

I'm not trying to depreciate them,

I'm saying it wouldn't have worked for everybody.

So,

Formal education is a common prescription,

Which is cruel upon many children.

That is why we've been pitching with Indian government to reduce the academics.

Now,

About a month ago,

Central government,

The federal government announced that only fifty percent of the time at school,

If children are there for seven hours,

Only three-and-a-half hours will be academics.

Rest of the time it will be sport,

Art,

Music,

And variety of other skills,

Which is a very positive thing to say.

They've announced the intent,

But to provide the necessary equipment and training for the teachers to be able to handle that half the time without a pedagogy is not going to be easy.

It's going to be many years of work to create that opportunity.

I think it's just the objective of the formal education that we need to change,

Not necessarily the formal education nor the universal education.

I think it's what we do when we are at school with the children,

Like whether,

Of course,

There is everything you said,

But like something,

Let's take the French educational system.

We start to talk about the brain to the children at age 13.

What they train every day when they go at school is the body and the brain.

They don't know nothing about the brain.

The brain,

If you talk about the brain to children,

If you tell them that the brain will change due to learning,

It actually promotes implicit representation of intelligence that is actually malleable,

That you can change,

Basically,

Intelligence for whatever it is.

It's actually a very strong leverage for learning.

We know that for a long,

Long time,

And we don't put that in place in the educational system.

I think it's just a matter of fixing new objectives to the educational system and putting a stronger focus on domain general,

Basically,

Processes that are emotional in part.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Noor.

I'm Syrian.

I've lived in Paris since many years.

So I have two questions related to the Syrian crisis,

Children of Syrian crisis who lived like many years,

Seven,

Eight,

About six,

Seven years in the direct violence come from war in my country.

Ten million people who were displaced inside outside the country.

So this many of children have not opportunity to go to school or to go to normal school as you were mentioned.

So my question is,

What do you think in your opinion the suitable case,

A suitable solution for their case and related to their memory,

How could we affect their memory to be not carrying all that violence in their mind or their life?

Thank you.

This question is for?

This question is addressed to whom?

Anyone who would like to answer?

Well,

The unfortunate situations like this,

Whether it's Syria or many other nations which have seen this in the last century,

Unfortunately,

It keeps repeating itself.

And in these situations,

The most vulnerable are the children always.

Well,

About erasing their memory,

It's not necessary to erase their memory.

It's very important when terrible things happen to us,

We must remember,

But we should not become resentful.

If we don't remember,

We keep repeating the same things.

When World War II ended,

Well,

All these organizations and setups came up because the millions of people who died in this part of the world at that time,

Everybody was determined never again a war should happen.

That was intent of United Nations,

UNESCO and various other organizations which came up.

But since 1950,

They tell me,

Please correct me if I'm wrong,

They tell me there's not been a single day on the planet where there has not been some kind of organized battle going on in some part of the world,

Not a single day's break,

That's what they tell me.

So whether they gave us a break or not,

But we know continuously things have been happening.

So everywhere children are being subject to these things.

And if they transform their experiences of brutality and fear into resentment and hatred for those that they believe caused these things,

You will breed another generation of hatred and that generation to contain it from not indulging in violence is going to be very difficult.

So it's very important that now that it looks like in Syria at least it looks like the conflict is going towards a kind of a closure.

I think immediately educational institutions,

Government,

Non-government organizations,

United Nations,

They must set up large-scale schools to if at all if you can call them schools.

Yes,

Schools,

Some way to engage the children beyond their experiences now that has happened in the last few years.

This is not an easy task,

But the international community need to get into this.

And the most important thing is every human being at a very early age needs to understand this one thing that my body and my mind should take instructions from me and nobody else but me.

If this one capability if we bring into a child,

A child becoming peaceful,

Loving and joyful is a natural consequence.

Right now somebody else decides what kind of emotions I have,

What kind of thoughts I have.

So if somebody else is going to decide then there is no control over the situation.

We have just not focused on this dimension of the human being that the first and foremost aspect of all educational systems should be a child learns how to use one's thought and emotion and physical body.

Right now we are encouraging compulsiveness in so many ways.

Essentially this is a movement from compulsive existence to a conscious existence.

Even if we want to see that there are no future conflicts on the planet of the scale that we are seeing in the 21st century,

20th century we thought we are done with it,

But 21st century has been a continuous conflict from the date started from year 2000 it has been on.

If we don't want to see these kind of conflicts,

The most important thing is human faculty should be in individual hands.

Right now it's in the hands of social leaders,

National leaders,

Religious leaders,

They can incite emotion and thought in a certain way.

It's very,

Very important human faculties are always in individual hands and nobody else but you.

So in fact it's been one year that I am living here and before coming here I was in India and when I was in fact working in a company and I had a colleague of mine so we were close friends and he used to always keep reminding me of my habits like when we used to have lunch he used to always say to me that I don't know how to eat the way I used to sit he used to keep bothering me about it the way I used to stand the way I used to think about the situations I was and he used to always tell me I did not have clarity and at some point in time he spoke to me about you and I was quite ignorant about a lot of things and I was going on with my own world in my mind so there was this one day we were together in office and I was just like so what did you do yesterday so he said that he was at a funeral and I said okay and if I may ask you whose funeral you had been to so he said it was his mother's funeral and I was shocked to know the way he managed to deal with that situation and I think he has done some of your programs and he really follows you a lot so he spoke to me about a few things that he learned from you he spoke to me about runanubandha and some I really did not understand much of the question yeah so the thing is that you you have been into the service of mankind so has mahatma gandhi and so is the friend I just spoke to you about so in a way you have been transforming lives and is it is it that one finds one's true self in the service of others oh I am not in any kind of service I'm just working for a very selfish reason because I want to live in a joyful and wonderful world so I'm just working for that I'm just working for what I want and this is all every human being needs to do that why are you stingy on your selfishness why don't you be universally selfish what do you think is best for life why don't you wish that it happens to everybody let me tell you because you have brought this question up this is about 36 years ago I was sitting on a rock on a small hill doing absolutely nothing and suddenly every cell in my body burst out into an ecstatic state uncontrollable what I thought was 10-15 minutes for about four and a half hours tears of ecstasy flowing then I realized you don't have to do anything if I don't mess with myself if I simply sit here I will burst into ecstasy then I tried with one or two people I tried to make them sit and it happened to them also then I made a plan at that time the world's population was 5.

6 billion people I made a plan in two and a half years time I'm going to make the whole world ecstatic because you don't have to do anything if you simply learn to simply sit here without messing with yourself you will become ecstatic but see 36 years hello well we've managed to touch maybe 400-500 million people but that's not my idea of the world so I'm prepared for a life of failure I know I will die without fulfilling my dream but I'll die blissfully because how I am within myself is not determined by the success or failure of what I do this is all that needs to happen to humanity that you're expecting outside the whole world to work out the way you want it before you are peaceful and happy it's never going to happen that way the easiest thing to do is to make this human being individual human being peaceful and joyful then we work in the world depending on times depending on how far people allow us to that extent see I want to I want you to know many great beings have come on this planet you mentioned mahatma well there have been buddhas and sages and sages mahatma well there have been buddhas there have been jesus's there have been krishna's and ramas and so many many many sages and many fantastic human beings but when they came if they spoke hardly 25 people would hear because they didn't have a microphone but today I can sit here and talk to the entire world never before this was possible so this ability to communicate is for the first time in the history of humanity so this is the time to change human consciousness this is the time to change the very shape of what a human being is and what human society is because never before we could communicate like this this is the very first time but if we don't do it now this time will pass and then it's very difficult as a generation of people we are the most empowered generation ever it's my dream that we also become the most fantastic generation ever the possibility is in our hands but between a possibility and reality there is a distance do we have the courage and commitment to walk the distance that's all we're trying to do you must walk you're a young man you must make sure that no matter what happens to your life what happens to your life what life throws at you you cannot decide what you make out of it is 100 percent yours yes what you make out of it is 100 percent yours if this one thing you take charge you have created a peaceful joyful human being this is the beginning of a peaceful and joyful world thank you very much