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The New Year is a tremendous opportunity and possibility for newer visions of life.  Unfortunately, if you feel the world around you, you will see that your experience is a cacophony of voices, thoughts and emotions. With all the conveniences and facilities we have thanks to science and technology, the human being today remains in absolute confusion – an utter mess. When man is mired in this level of confusion, the pain and suffering that he creates for himself and for others is untold.  This is the reality today. There is no clarity.  Most people in the world live their lives without even understanding what it is that they really want for themselves.  Or if they do know, they neither have the will nor the vision to create it.  Most of the time, they are just settling for whatever is within their reach and easy to get.  If something is easily attainable, people go for it without seeing whether they really need it in their lives.

At any given moment, if you go only by your experience of the past, or if you trust only your logical mind to decide what is possible, it will always point you towards a mediocre possibility.  We are always trying to create our lives based on the current reality around us. But where we want to go tomorrow need not necessarily be connected to where we are right now – what we want the most in life need not have anything to do with our present situation. If we enslave our visions to current situations, then we are once again settling for what is attainable, what is easy.

If a man has a vision of the highest possibility for himself and the world around him, it is not beyond man’s capacity to create it. For a person whose vision is clear and who seeks it every moment of his life, the highest things will come and fall at his feet. It is only because man is a bundle of confusions that what he really wants never comes to him.  When you have a vision, you are not concerned about whether it is easy or difficult, whether it is attainable or unattainable. In short, you are not concerned about the result. It is just that you have a vision and you give your life for it. This is also one of the easiest ways to attain the highest.  It is a spiritual process by itself.  You give yourself to what you want without caring whether it is going to happen or not.

People are always asking about destiny.  ‘But Sadhguru, how much of my destiny can I control?’  I always reply: ‘Your destiny is your creation.’ Even now you are creating it – unconsciously.  Every thought, every emotion, every impulse, every reaction that you generate within yourself is creating the course of your destiny. This life doesn’t ignore anything. Everything that you do, the life within you takes seriously. Everything that you say, think, feel, every impulse, every reaction within you is being recorded. Life is not making a selective recording; it is just recording everything. Because everything is recorded, this huge heap of information within you, without any particular direction or awareness, is creating a whole lot of confusion.  So if the question is ‘what will happen to me,’ the answer is, ‘whatever you create will happen to you.’ But don’t wait for it to happen to you. Make it happen.

I was once at an international conference on how to alleviate poverty on the planet. Lots of responsible people were participating, including several Nobel laureates. At one point, a participant said, ‘Why are we trying to solve these problems? Isn’t all this divine will?’  And I said, “Yes, If somebody else is dying, somebody else is hungry, it must be a divine plan. But if your stomach is hungry, if your child is dying of hunger, you’ll have your own plan, isn’t it?”

So wherever we have to do something about our lives, we have taken it into our hands. Wherever we don’t want to take it into our hands, we talk about divine will or destiny. Now when I talk of yoga, I am talking about a science where you can take the very process of life and death into your hands. Even now you are choosing your life, but you are choosing unconsciously. That is what karma means. It means you are creating your destiny in total chaos, in total awareness. But whatever you do unconsciously you can also do consciously. That makes a world of difference. It’s the difference between ignorance and enlightenment.

Taking destiny into your hands does not mean everything will happen your way. The outside will never happen hundred percent your way because there are too many other variables involved. Wanting the outside to happen your way is not about creating destiny; it is about conquest, tyranny, dictatorship. Creating destiny does not mean you have to control everybody’s life on this planet. It is just that you create the possibility for every human being to blossom into his ultimate nature.  ‘What about the stars, the planets? Don’t they decide our destinies?’ This is another question people ask. I tell them, if your destiny is decided by the planets and stars, it means you cannot even commit suicide! At least others can commit suicide if they are fed up with life. You can’t even do that because the stars first have to approve. Even that freedom is denied to you. Then it’s really a horror-scope, isn’t it?

What should be deciding the course of human nature? Should inanimate objects decide? Or should you, as a human being, decide? If you are well established in yourself, let every planet go wherever the hell it wants to go, you will still go where you want to go.  It would be better if people were less concerned about other planets, and a little more concerned about this one. If they were more concerned about the well-being of this planet, at least we would live a little better!  It is time to create a vision of what you think is the highest and simply seek it with undivided attention. This is a simple way of knowing life here and beyond. Blessed is the one who has such clarity in vision. May the New Year bring you a vision of the beyond.

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