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Lewis HowesDO THIS To Organize Your Mind & ACHIEVE ANYTHING You Want! | Sadhguru & Lewis Howes
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Chapter summaries
Why Adults Lose Their Childlike Joy
Lewis Howes welcomes Sadhguru and asks why adults forget how to play. Sadhguru says people take their individual existence too seriously, treating themselves as the center of a vast cosmos, so life takes a backseat to physical and psychological structures.
- •Humans are tiny in the cosmos yet have an individual experience
- •Taking one's existence too seriously causes the degeneration of life
- •A joyful five-year-old should be ecstatic by 30, not the reverse
- •People don't realize until death arrives that their form is not everything
Living Death: Limited Time and Energy
Lewis asks whether Sadhguru focuses on death. Sadhguru says he lives death all the time and mentions his new book on it. He explains that death reminds us that time and energy are limited, so we should prioritize.
- •Sadhguru's book, Death: A Book for Only Those Who Shall Die, was released by Penguin India
- •Most people think other people die
- •Death is a reminder of a limited lease of time and energy
- •Awareness of this helps people organize their lives around what is most valuable
Restful Wakefulness, Sleep, and the Cobra Test
Asked how to find rest, Sadhguru says wakefulness itself should be restful, like an engine that runs cool. He describes pulse rates and sleep needs among Inner Engineering practitioners, his own sleep history, and the cobra test of calm chemistry.
- •Rest is not only sleep; wakefulness should be restful too
- •Running at an easy pace raises efficiency and reduces sleep needs
- •Sadhguru says his average sleep was two and a half hours for over 25 years
- •What matters is how easily oxygen and nutrients reach the cellular level
- •The cobra test checks whether someone is truly calm
"Only What You Perceive You Know"
Lewis cites a quote from the Inner Engineering course. Sadhguru explains that the data gathered through the five senses, not intellectual information, is what lets us function. Attention to perception is what makes one person more capable than another.
- •Perception comes through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching
- •Sensory data lets us walk on a spinning round planet
- •Children drink up data through attentiveness
- •Watching a ball teaches what 100 books cannot
- •We are here to experience life as profoundly as possible
Cruel History, Remorse, and Learning from Mistakes
Asked what the world is missing, Sadhguru speaks about America's cruel history and the need for remorse and humility. Lewis then asks about his regrets, and Sadhguru says he doesn't see life as a series of mistakes to learn from and would rather learn from others' experience.
- •Unresolved history keeps resurfacing, so everyone has to come to terms with it
- •Sincerity and humility are needed to create a new world
- •Enlightenment gives clarity, but wisdom has to be earned through experience
- •Sadhguru rejects the idea that you must make mistakes to learn
- •Humans can learn from other people's experience and from history
What Suffering Is: Memory, Imagination, and Intelligence
Lewis asks what suffering is. Sadhguru says humans suffer their own memory and imagination, which are unique faculties. He cites the small DNA gap with chimpanzees to argue that people suffer their own intelligence.
- •Suffering people are mostly reliving the past or imagining the future
- •Human possibility becomes a problem if it isn't harnessed
- •Humans and chimpanzees differ by only 1.23% in DNA, yet differ enormously in awareness
- •Dulling the brain with alcohol or drugs is not a way to explore human possibility
Enhancing Perception and the Marijuana Story
Lewis asks how to expand perception. Sadhguru points to human technologies built to enhance perception, then tells of youth in Bangalore asking for marijuana to be legalized. He argues that lowered faculties mean less life and that one can be high without substances.
- •Telescopes, microscopes, and telephones all enhance perception
- •The pilot and surgeon examples show why lowered faculties are a problem
- •Sadhguru says he is always stoned without any substance
- •The body is a sophisticated chemical factory, and the question is whether you are a great or lousy CEO
- •Suffering means your intelligence has turned against you
Creating Your Own Inner Experience
Asked where to direct anger and resentment, Sadhguru says all experience happens within us and should happen our way. Letting others decide our feelings is slavery, which he ties to the meaning of Inner Engineering. He compares a mind jumping without purpose to an ailment and argues we create anger, joy, and misery.
- •Anger and misery are created from within, not inflicted from outside
- •Others deciding whether you are happy or unhappy is the worst form of slavery
- •Inner Engineering means making yourself work the way you want
- •Thoughts and emotions that beat you up from inside are an ailment
- •Fear of suffering pushes people into comfort zones and limits life
The Intellect Is a Knife: Using Only One Part of the Mind
Asked how to rid ourselves of the fear of suffering, Sadhguru uses the metaphor of the intellect as a knife. The yogic view sees the mind in 16 parts, and education uses only the intellect. Relying on it alone can produce blunders even when everything is done right.
- •A sharp intellect is good for survival but cannot put life together
- •Yogic tradition sees the mind as 16 parts
- •Education is intellect-oriented, so people use a knife for everything
- •Doing everything right intellectually can still end in a blunder
Sadhguru's Past Anger and the Limits of Righteous Anger
Lewis asks when Sadhguru last felt anger. Sadhguru says he has not given anyone the privilege of making him angry, though he was constantly angry from age 11 or 12 until about 23 or 24 over injustice. He argues that righteous anger cannot be sustained and that action should come from love.
- •Sadhguru says he has not given anyone the power to make him angry or miserable
- •He was angry around the clock in his youth because he saw injustice everywhere
- •Righteous anger takes something horrible to stimulate action
- •Anger can't be kept up forever and can destroy you
- •The right things should be done all through life
From Religion to Responsibility
Lewis asks how to wake people up when things are calm. Sadhguru says Inner Engineering is a movement from religion to responsibility, since there is no 'up' in the cosmos. He says solace is for those in extreme hardship, while the well-off need solutions, and that joy is the normal human state.
- •Responsibility lies with us, not some force up there
- •Ideas of God come from having no explanation for creation
- •Solace differs from solutions for life
- •Psychological disturbance is not normal; health, balance and joy are
- •Life should get better as we grow, like a plant becoming a tree
The Monkey Exercise and the Mechanics of the Mind
Lewis sums up that our inner engineering is left broken, and Sadhguru says society hasn't given enough significance to the life we are. He gives a 'don't think about a monkey' exercise to show the mind has only addition and multiplication, with every pedal a throttle.
- •Children know a phone model but nothing about how they function
- •Telling the mind not to think of something makes it happen
- •The mind has no subtraction or division
- •All three pedals are throttle, with no brakes
The Three Truths: Seeking and Unblocking Beliefs
Lewis asks Sadhguru his three truths. Sadhguru says books and videos are only inspirational and seeking will live on, since it is the fundamental nature of every human. He says beliefs block seeking and that his work is to unblock people so they become seekers.
- •Books and videos only inspire and can't convey truth
- •Seeking is the fundamental nature of every human being
- •Beliefs about right, wrong, God, and devil block the seeking
- •His work is to unblock people so they become seekers
Inner Engineering Access and Immunity Practices
Lewis asks where to get Inner Engineering and what habits help happiness and immunity. Sadhguru gives the website, mentions an added immunity session, and says exuberant energy supports the immune system. He suggests barefoot time in the garden, turmeric in warm water with honey, and the 12-minute Simha Kriya.
- •Inner Engineering is at innerengineering.com, at half price during the pandemic and free for frontline workers
- •A bonus session on immunity practices is being added
- •Spend an hour barefoot in the garden with the earth, calling it Mother Soil
- •Turmeric in warm water with honey three to five times daily
- •Simha Kriya takes 12 minutes and may improve immunity within two weeks
Defining Greatness and Closing
Lewis thanks Sadhguru and asks for his definition of greatness. Sadhguru says becoming extraordinary means becoming ordinary life. Great people break the limits of their persona and let love direct them, and he has no intention of being great. The conversation closes with plans to meet.
- •Inner Engineering's 'ordinary to extraordinary' means becoming more ordinary than ordinary
- •Great people operate beyond their personal context
- •Inclusiveness should direct one's actions rather than the reverse
- •Transformation means breaking one form to become a larger one
- •Sadhguru says he is just fooling around
