Genius or method?

'Success is determined by how one applies the mind and body'

FOR any activity to be a success, there is a process and a method, but there is also a genius. Leaders probably cannot articulate their genius; they can only articulate the methods they have employed. Because genius is not something one can speak about, it is just that their lives speak about it in so many different ways.

This question of method versus genius troubles people. You may have a perfect method, but you may remain mediocre for the rest of your life. Methods are good insurance to fall back on, but without this spark of genius you may not fire up in any big way. So is genius something one is born with? Or is it something one can develop? Is there a method for that also? There is.

This reminds me of a beautiful situation that happened with Henry Ford. I am very much interested in any machine that works, so naturally I have been to most large machinery plants, particularly automobile industries. On one of my tours to the research wing of Ford Motor Company in Detroit, I was talking to a senior scientist who has been there for more than 35 years and who holds more than 52 patents for different things being used in automobiles worldwide today. In the course of this visit, he told me a story.

Henry Ford found that a lot of things happening in the Ford Motor Company were not efficient and were all over the place. He decided to hire an efficiency expert.

The expert came and went from office to office, person to person, straightening up all the key people in different ways.

But one day he came and complained to Ford, “See, I have been fixing up almost everybody here, but there is one guy who just doesn’t listen. And most of the time when I walk into his office he’s got his feet on the table and is smoking a cigar. He does nothing. And he’s one of the most highly paid in the company. I checked on him, I spied on him. He does nothing. He’s unwilling to take any instructions from me.

You got to fire this guy.” Ford asked, “Who is this?” When the expert mentioned his name, Ford said, “Don’t disturb him. Last time he had his feet on the table and was smoking a cigar, he came up with a billion-dollar idea. Don’t you disturb that guy.”

So, if we do not set up a situation such that somewhere there is some spark beyond the method, then mediocrity will be the way of life. But method is always an insurance to fall back on because genius may not be sparking every day, every moment.

A few years ago, a group of doctors from United States visited India. They went to visit my father without asking me because they wanted to talk to “Sadhguru’s father”.

In the course of the conversation, they asked him, “How was Sadhguru when he was a child?” My father thought about it and said, “He was such a dull boy, but suddenly he’s become a genius!”

There is a method to incubate and activate a genius within you. There is no human being without the genius. But is it sparking or is it buried under a huge method of life? Method need not necessarily mean the business processes. For almost every aspect of life – how to eat, what to eat, how to do this, how to live – people are trying to evolve methods for everything. In all this heap of methods, the spark of genius simply gets buried. There is no human being who does not have it. It just needs an appropriate atmosphere for it to fire.

To create an inner atmosphere where this will fire, one important aspect is paying some attention to the basic vehicles with which you travel this life. I’m not talking about your Mercedes. It’s the body and the mind. Not enough attention has been paid to these things. Your level of success in life is essentially determined by how well you harness your body and mind.

Ranked among the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru was conferred the “Padma Vibhushan”, the Indian government’s highest annual civilian award, in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.