Questioner: Is there rebirth?
Sadhguru: With certain aspects, it is best that you know them only by experience. If you want to explore rebirth, first you must die. When you ask, “Is there rebirth,” what you are asking is “What is the nature of my existence? Am I just body, or am I much beyond that? What is this, that is me? Or in other words, you are asking “Who am I? What is my essential process of life?” These are very big questions.
If you cry with this question, unable to bear the pain of ignorance, I have many ways to answer you. If you just casually say, “Is there rebirth,” then I cannot answer your question because whatever I would say or do, you would not understand. If I say yes or no, half the people will believe me, half the people will disbelieve me. Whether you believe me or disbelieve me, it will make no difference to you anyway.
Right now, you do not know life beyond this body and mind, so do not imagine anything. Just learn to conduct this life in the highest possible way within the limitations of this body and mind. Even in this body, in what beautiful ways you can exist, you are not allowing that to happen. Then how can you handle what is beyond the body, what is going to happen after death? If you get more interested in the next birth, the life that is here now you shall miss.
It is always the desire of the mind to search for something that is not here. There is so much of life in things that are here. About that, your attention is always inadequate. There is not enough concern about how your life now should be. But you are concerned about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen after ten years. What you should understand is, somehow, mind always attempts to escape from reality.
If you could simply be, you would either become enlightened or understand “I am a fool”. Anything else is not possible. So the mind keeps doing something or the other—about tomorrow, about next birth or something else. If it keeps quiet, it will understand that it is an utter fool. If this is understood, you have taken a very big step in yoga. The moment man experientially realises he is a fool, wisdom will flower. Till he realises this, how can there be wisdom? Foolishness will dominate.
So when what is happening in your mind in this moment is not in your control, if you think beyond life, beyond death, you will just waste time, energy and life because you do not have the necessary intensity to penetrate dimensions which are beyond your present level of experience.
Your present level of experience is limited to the five sense organs. With these, you cannot experience anything that is not physical. The only thing that you can experience in the world is that which is physical. So if you want to know that which is not physical, when you say, “Is there life beyond death?”, when you ask this question, you are saying, “I want to know that which is beyond the physical body”. If you want to know that which is beyond the physical, see how to go beyond the limitations of the sense perception. Sense perception is the source of your survival but can be the basis of transcendence.
Sadhguru,
Isha Foundation
www.ishafoundation.org
(The author is a prominent spiritual leader)