World Mental Health Day: Sadhguru on phantoms of the mind

Once, a very modest man went for a checkup in a hospital. He was put through all the paces and all kinds of checks were done. Because of all these tests and so many other things happening, he kind of lost control over himself and what should have happened in the toilet, happened on the bed. He was a modest man. He did not want the pretty, young nurse attending to him to see this mess, so he took the sheet and threw it out of the fifth-floor window. There was a drunk walking on the street below, and this white sheet came and fell over him. He went about like a windmill, screaming and yelling. And then the sheet fell down. People. hearing all this commotion. asked, “What happened?” He looked down and said, “I think I beat the shit out of a ghost.”

Once you get into your own cycles of mind, you will be fighting ghosts that don’t exist. You can give them pretty names like stress, anxiety and whatever else, but fundamentally, these are all ghosts that you are creating and fighting. What is happening in your mind is your psychological drama. They are your ghosts. You can pop up any kind of ghost you want. But you lost control over that, and now the ghosts start playing their own game.

One thing you must clearly evaluate in your life is – what is the world doing to me, what am I doing within myself? These are two different things. Somebody might call you a fool. The word “fool” is that person’s, but what happens within you is yours. The word itself does not hurt in any way. It is not a bullet. But for every small thing that happens, a million things happen inside. If you set up this distinction, you will see, the world is hardly doing anything to you. It is not even interested in you most of the time. Most of the things are your own stuff that you think the world is doing to you. If you know this is your work, you will do your work the way you want it. If you do not recognize that this is your work, it will happen wildly, accidentally. If you take charge of what is yours, 98 per cent of your life is transformed. It is very simple, but this distinction has not been drawn. This chemical soup of a body is responding to every thought, idea, emotion and reverberation that you create. Whether you have a wonderful soup or a lousy soup depends on how much attention you pay to soup-making. If you give two people the same ingredients, one will make a fantastic soup, another, you cannot keep it in your mouth. Everyone thinks they are making the same soup but it never turns out the same. It is the same with human beings. All of us are given the same possibility but what you make out of it is yours.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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