How To Be Intense?
“Right now, you have given too much significance to the thought and emotion that happens within you, not the life that is happening within you. Is your thought more significant than you being alive?”
—Sadhguru
Questioner: What is intensity? How to be always intense?
Sadhguru: Life is intensity. Do you see the life within you does not slacken even for a moment? What slackens is your mind and your emotion – sometimes on, sometimes off. Watch the breath, does it ever slacken? If it slackens, it means death, isn’t it? When I go on telling you in so many ways to be intense, I am just talking about you becoming like life. Right now, you have given too much significance to the thought and emotion that happens within you, not the life that is happening within you. Is your thought more significant than you being alive? The great French philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.”
Most people believe that they exist only because they are thinking. No, because you exist you may think, or you may not think, isn’t it? Your aliveness is far more fundamental and more significant than your thought and emotion. But you only listen to what your thought and emotion are saying. If you go by the process of your life, it is intense whether you are awake or asleep. Is the life within you slackening when you sleep? Otherwise you will not wake up tomorrow morning, if it slackens. No matter what you are doing, whether it is something that you like or not, is your life slackening? No. It is only your mind that says, “I like this, so I will do it with passion. I don’t like that, so I will not do it with passion.” But your life is not like that, it is always intense.
If you are constantly aware that all the other things are passing things and I am fundamentally life, you will remain intense. There is no other way because life does not know any other way to be. Life is always intense. It is only thought and emotion, which is deceptive.
When it comes to looking at the nature of your thought or your emotion for that matter, any number of times in your life, it has made you believe so many things and after little bit of time it makes you feel like a fool for what you believed yesterday. Today your emotions tell you that this is the most wonderful man, then tomorrow your emotions tell you that this is the most horrible man and both seemed 100% true. So both your thought and emotion are tremendous instruments of deception. They can make you believe just about anything.
Just look at your own beliefs – none of them will stand any kind of investigation. If I ask you three questions, your whole belief system will collapse. But your mind will make you believe different things at different stages in your life and firmly believe that is true.
So intensity means just going by the way of life. If you just exist here as life, pure life, it will naturally go to its ultimate nature. You are creating a huge hurdle in the process of life reaching its natural goal by becoming a thought, emotion, ideas, opinions, prejudices, anger, hatred and so many other things. If you just remain a piece of life, you will very naturally reach your ultimate nature.
It is not something that you have to strive for or struggle for. This is the reason I have always been saying – just maintain your intensity, the rest will happen. You do not have to look for the way to heaven. Just maintain your intensity. There is nobody who can either take this life to its ultimate nature or stop it. We can delay it or we can just allow it to go very quickly without any obstructions. This is all we can do.
Any spiritual process is about allowing it to happen as quickly as possible. You do not have to call for gods to come and help you, you just have to become life and nothing but life. If you can just exist here as life is, you will naturally be there.
