In this conversation, Sadhguru and acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur discuss health and longevity.
Shekhar Kapur: Health and longevity are two things everybody talks about, but the messages that are coming across are quite diverse… [Sadhguru laughs] So I have two questions: a), what is the value of living beyond a certain age, and, b) when living beyond a certain age, is there something inherent in us that actually could keep us healthy, or do we always need outside help from doctors and hospitals? If there was something inherent in us, then maybe I would believe that nature has an intention to keep us alive.
Sadhguru: [Laughs] If nature didn’t have an intention to keep you alive, you would be dead.
Shekhar Kapur: Yeah.
Sadhguru: Even now, you’re alive not because of the medicine that you are taking or the hospital consultation that you are having, not because of the health check-ups, but because nature still intends that you should live. It’s because of the life process that you are living, not because of medicine. Medicine can play around a little bit. It cannot create life as such.
There are many ways to look at it. I’m trying to put it in a very simplistic way.
Shekhar Kapur: No, you don’t have to. [Sadhguru laughs] I’m simplistic enough, so don’t worry. If there’s no way to put it in a simple way, then say it the way you want, and I’ll ask you the simplistic, naïve question again. [Both laugh]
Sadhguru: The thing is, this very body that you carry was created from within, isn’t it? You provided raw material from outside, but the creation process happened from within. So obviously, the source of creation, or the manufacturer of the body, is within. Trying to fix health from outside is a very effortful process. If you keep access to the innermost core, health will be a natural phenomenon. Thinking that it is something that you have to manage from outside is a very wrong perception.
Shekhar Kapur: So, the idea of spirituality is staying in touch with your inner self, and your relationship to all of existence naturally promotes health without you having to think about it – is that true?
Sadhguru: Today, it is common medical knowledge that every cell in the body is naturally programmed for health. If it is programmed for health, why would it work against you? If you get an infection – an infection means it’s a kind of an invasion from external organisms – then it’ll be dealt with. It’s a kind of war situation. You need to do some chemical war on them and kill them, or whatever you have to do to recover from that situation – that’s a different thing. But more than 70% of the ailments on this planet are chronic. That means they’re self-created. They’re created within your own body, by your own system. Why would this system, which has an immense desire to exist and survive, create an ailment or something against itself? Somewhere, some fundamentals have gone off-track, isn’t it? If you keep in touch with the innermost core, which is the source of creation, which is the maker of this body, health is not something that you need to discuss or aspire for. If you keep this system in a certain way, health exudes by its own nature.
Shekhar Kapur: Would you describe that way as a meditative way?
Sadhguru: I would like to, but I would avoid the word “meditation” because it’s such a badly abused word. If I say “meditation,” everybody has their own ideas of what it is. If you knew as much as what it means to simply sit here absolutely still, if everything was still within you for two minutes in a day, you would be perfectly healthy. Just two minutes. Man is ill only because he does not know how to be still.
Shekhar Kapur: And if I’m perfectly healthy, how does death come?
Sadhguru: You must live healthy and you must die healthy. “So if I’m healthy, how will I die?” Health has got nothing to do with death. Death will happen when your life energies lose their vibrance. Right now, they are vibrant in a certain way because of a certain software input. This software, we traditionally call prarabdha. Prarabdha is a certain dimension of your karmic information. It has a certain amount of information latched onto your life energy, so it keeps working in a certain way. Once the prarabhda karma, the information which is allotted for this life, has worked itself out, the energies start becoming feeble. If the energies become feeble below a certain level, they cannot hold on to the body; they have to leave the body. Or if the energies become intense beyond a certain level, they cannot hold on to the body. Only in a certain frequency of intensity, your life energies can hold on to the physical body.
So, if your life energies become feeble, they leave the body. That’s dying of old age. But most people don’t die of old age; they die because they broke the body in some way. That’s dying of ill health. Or you might break the body by crashing your car or breaking your heart. [Both laugh]
Shekhar Kapur: I’ll probably go because of that. Yeah.
Sadhguru: Either a broken heart or a rotten liver… We don’t know what. [Both laugh] But in some way, you made the physical body inhospitable for life; so, life leaves.
Shekhar Kapur: See, you’re making a big distinction between the body and life, as if life is something else; and that’s something that everybody struggles with…
Sadhguru: No, no, no. You tell me. Did you accumulate this body?
Shekhar Kapur: Yes, I did, by eating.
Sadhguru: So, I’ll ask you again the same question. Whatever you accumulate can be yours, cannot be you, isn’t it?
Shekhar Kapur: Yes. Correct.
Sadhguru: So, I’m definitely making a distinction between what is you and what is your body because your body is just an accumulation. For now, I’m not disputing whether it’s yours or not. A day will come when that’ll also come to dispute…[Both laugh]
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Awesome article! aum sadhguru