Introspection generally refers to looking inward to examine our own thoughts, emotions, motivations, and more. Nowadays, many people consider introspection to be an important tool to analyze our own experiences and to use what we learn to improve ourselves. But how useful is this kind of analysis? It seems possible that in some cases introspection might lead to overthinking, where one is just ruminating on past experiences with no constructive outcome. So should we engage in regular introspection, or are we better served using our attention in other ways? In this video, Sadhguru address a question on introspection inviting us to first look at things from a distance.
Sadhguru: “If you hold it at a distance, you clearly know what it is, you don’t have to think about it! It’s like this. Let’s say tonight you want to fly from Delhi airport, you’re going. Then your flight time is coming, but there’s a huge traffic jam. How do you experience a traffic jam? Deep suffering, though you may be sitting in your dream car, all right? Now somehow you got to the airport, got into the airplane, and it flew. Then you went up, then you looked down, still the traffic jam was on. It looks so beautiful. White lights, and red lights, string of them. Really beautiful.”
“Have you seen this? All that happened is little distance, isn’t it. Once there is little distance, how to deal with introspection that’s no more a problem, you know how to deal with it. And major realisations have happened like this. See, even now…if I ask you to walk up and down this stage and determine whether this planet is round or flat,what is your experience? It’s flat. This argument would have continued for another thousand years. It got settled because we started traversing the oceans, then we could see it seems to be round. Then we started flying; clearly, the shape was very obvious. Then we went and stood on the moon and looked down – 100% clear. Something so simple we couldn’t see when we’re walking on the planet, isn’t it? This is the same thing.’’
Sadhguru further explains that the mind is just one aspect of human intelligence, noting that many people have given immense importance to the human intellect without exploring the others.
Sadhguru: “Unfortunately, the European idea of a mind is, it’s sitting here. No, essentially you call something ‘mind’ because there’s a certain volume of intelligence and memory. That’s what you’re calling as mind, isn’t it? Do you remember five generations ago how your great-grandmother looked like? No. But her nose is sitting on your face. A million years ago, how your forefathers were, still, your epithelial cells remember what was the skin tone. So, every cell in your body carries a trillion times more memory than your brain can ever process.”
“Now, we are talking about most complex chemical factory. If you look at what one molecule of DNA performs in a minute, all the factories on the planet cannot do, all the computers on the planet, super computers on the planet, cannot do that many functions, that’s how it’s functioning. So, both in terms of intelligence and memory, is it spread right across? At least your neurological system is spread right across, you can see that. So, mind is not in one place.”
“There is a body of mind, there is a body of memory, there is a body of physicality, there is a body of energy. So, if you just look at one part of who you are, and try to meddle with that constantly, if you don’t know how to make the other things function, and other things are functioning by accident, it’s like somebody is trying to drive with a hand brake on. A lot of people do this, they don’t realise. They think press the throttle, press the throttle, it’ll go. No, it may catch fire. A car can catch fire if you drive with brakes on.’’
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