Humans have always had a sense of wonder towards the unknown, be it the concept of past lives, or the inevitability that is death. Sadhguru responds to one such question about past lives, explaining the consequences of exploring past lives on the level of one’s memory.
Sadhguru: “I know a lot of absolutely ridiculous things are going on about exploring one’s past lives. These things are being done in such unscrupulous ways. A lady – you won’t believe – she is from Bombay, but she’s now in the United States for many years. They made it very big in the United States at one time. She’s gotten into this whole thing – mad about all this Hollywood stuff and all that. She’s got a couple of homes in Beverly Hills and elsewhere, everything just to be around there in the scene. And she’s gotten hooked onto a psychic, which charges $90 per hour for a consultation on the telephone; in person, it is more. So this psychic has been telling this lady things that she firmly believes. The psychic told her that in her previous life, Tom Cruise was her husband, and Richard Gere was her father. So the psychic said she just has to be around, and they will notice her today or tomorrow.”
Sadhguru: “The husband is going nuts because the woman is trying to somehow fall into the eyes of Tom Cruise, throwing parties and buying homes around his place. Somehow this lady landed up with me, I knew she was strong in that belief, so I said, “Okay, it must have been.” But I also knew Tom Cruise in his last life. He was one of the ugliest human beings in his last life. She never imagined that he could have a different body. She thought he would look just like that. So I said, “I knew him very well in the past life and he was so ugly, unbearably. Do you remember?” She just went crazy (chuckles).”
Sadhguru: “So this is what past life stuff is doing to people – driving them crazy with all kinds of fanciful things. They are just ridiculous psychological exercises. If you really want to see something of the past, you must be able to raise yourself into very heightened levels of awareness where it will cut through the memory lines. But what’s the point? What happened ten years ago, you suffer. When you’re in this condition, if you remember ten lifetimes ago, it’ll drive you nuts, isn’t it?
Sadhguru: “But at the same time, whatever you call as past life is just unconscious layers of the mind in terms of memory. If you bring yourself to heightened levels of awareness, these unconscious layers of the mind, which are ruling you from within, could be broken down. I don’t know if they showed you some clippings of Samyama meditation. It’s an eight-day program where we do a very intense process. If I tell you what happens in Samyama, fear or disbelief will come.”
Sadhguru: “Because in the unconscious layer of the mind, there are so many dimensions which are not in your access but which are influencing everything that you do. So if you go through a process where, with heightened levels of awareness, you bring unconscious layers of the mind into conscious states, not in terms of memory but in terms of energy and experience, you can work these things out and leave yourself completely free in a big way within yourself. But remembering something memory-wise is not of any consequence. It’ll only complicate and mess up your life.”
Sadhguru: “No suggestions are given to you. No guidance is given to you. See, what happens in the mind is never trustworthy. The mind can deceive you in a million different ways. What happens in the body is real, isn’t it? So the body has never lied to you. That’s why we always want these things to happen physiologically, energy-wise – not on the level of the mind – because the mind is capable of unlimited hallucination. It can create anything and make you believe it’s real.”
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