Keeping Life in Perspective

Have you ever been so mentally involved in trying to resolve a situation that you forget to really look at it?  Reality can often seem subjective as we glide through life, thinking, rather than trying to observe or just listen.  Many people often relate that they are able to keep a conversation intact by only picking up on the keywords being said by the other person.  Many a misunderstanding has emerged from a group of people who all viewed the same event, but even so left with different memories of its occurrence.

Many hours in a day, valuable experiences are lost because people are busy with random thoughts or automatically triggered thoughts.  Instead of being with the moment, people are “living” lives in their heads, either lost in memories of the past or fantasizing about the future.  It’s hard to stay in the present moment, because our minds just seem to wander everywhere.

Sadhguru tells us how to keep life in perspective.

Sadhguru: “Do you want to be a living being or a thinking being? Right now, ninety percent of the time you are only thinking about life, not living life. Have you come here to experience life or to think about life? Everybody can think up their own nonsense whichever way they want; it need not have anything to do with reality. Your psychological process is a very small happening compared to the life process, but right now it has become far more important. We need to shift the significance to the life process once again.

Aristotle is known as the father of modern logic; his logic was immaculate. He was intellectually brilliant, no question about that, but he tried to stretch logic to all aspects of life, and in many ways he was crippled.

There is a story, I do not know if it is a fact, but it smells true. One day, Aristotle was walking on the beach. A glorious sunset was happening, but he had no time for such petty daily events. He was thinking seriously about some great problem of existence, because for Aristotle, existence is a problem, and he believes he is going to solve it. Thinking seriously, he was walking up and down the beach. There was another man on the beach who was doing something very intensely – so intensely that even Aristotle could not ignore him.

You know, people who think too much about their own nonsense end up ignoring life around them. They are the people who don’t smile at anybody or even look at anybody in the world. They have no eyes to look at a flower, a sunset, a child or a smiling face – or if it is an unsmiling face, they have no inclination to make it smile; they have no such small duties or small cares in the world! They ignore all the life around them because they are all busy, solving the problems of existence.

But Aristotle could not ignore this man, and he closely observed what he was doing: this man was going to the ocean, coming back, going to the ocean, coming back, all with great intensity. So, Aristotle stopped and asked, “Hey, what are you up to?”

The man said, “Don’t disturb me, I am doing something very important,” and went on and on.

Aristotle became even more curious and asked, “What are you doing?”

The man said, “Don’t disturb me, something very important.”

Aristotle said, “What is this important thing?”

The man showed a little hole he had dug in the sand, and he said, “I am emptying the ocean into this hole.” He had a tablespoon in his hand.

Aristotle looked at this and laughed. Now, Aristotle is the kind who can spend a year without a single moment of laughter, because he is intellect. It takes a heart to laugh. Intellect cannot laugh; it can only dissect.

But even Aristotle laughed at this and said, “This is ridiculous! You must be insane. Do you know how vast this ocean is? How can you ever empty this ocean into this little hole? And that too, with a tablespoon? At least if you have a bucket, there’s some chance. Please give this up; this is madness, I am telling you.”

The man looked at Aristotle, threw the spoon down and said, “My job is already done.”

Aristotle said, “What do you mean? Forget about the ocean being empty; even the hole is not full. How can you say your job is done?”

The other man was Heraclitus. Heraclitus stood up and said, “I am trying to empty the ocean into this hole with a tablespoon. You are telling me it’s ridiculous, it’s madness, so I should give it up. What are you trying to do? Do you know how vast this existence is? It can contain a billion oceans like this and more, and you are trying to empty it into the small hole of your head – and with what? With tablespoons called thoughts. Please give it up. It’s utterly ridiculous.”

If you want to know the experiential dimensions of life, you will never know it with petty thought. It does not matter how well you can think, human thought is still petty. Even if you have Einstein’s brain working within you, it is still petty because thought cannot be bigger than life. Thought can only be logical, functioning between two polarities. If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than your thoughts, something more than your logic, something more than your intellect.

This is the choice you have: either you learn to live with creation, or you create your own nonsensical creation in your head. Which option do you want to exercise? Right now, most people are living in thoughts, something in a psychological space, not in an existential space. And so, they are insecure, because it can collapse any moment.”