Question: As a life science teacher, I have responsibility for the way that students think about how life works. When my experience of yoga conflicts with conventional science, I do my best to tread lightly and consider the fullness of the moment. I would be grateful for your insight on these moments of tension and the power that we have as teachers to shape the thinking of others.

Sadhguru: You should not shape the thinking of others because if you successfully shape –usually you cannot succeed – but if you succeed in shaping the thought process of another person, that means you produced a carbon copy of yourself. That is not the intention of education.

The greatest thing that you can do when it comes to life sciences is, in every class that you handle, make sure that you say, “I don’t know” at least thrice. Let the children learn that they do not know, because ignorance is and will always be a much bigger possibility than knowledge.

In the yogic culture, we always train people to identify with their ignorance because knowledge is a very limited thing, but ignorance is a limitless possibility. Let children be in touch with that which is limitless, not the limitedness of the teacher or the textbook.

Question: Can you pursue spirituality in Samsara or is it easier not having temptations, bondages and emotions at all?

Sadhguru: As long as you are on this planet, you have to eat, breathe, excrete, wash yourself and look for food. Whether you look for your cherries in the share market or look for Himalayan berries, you are still looking, isn't it? You are still doing the same thing on a different scale. What scale of life you want to handle is your choice. It is an individual discretion and has got nothing to do with your spirituality.

Spirituality is an inner dimension. Whether you live in Bombay or in the Himalayas, it is the same spirituality, but where you want to live is your discretion. You may want to live in the mountains because you like the atmosphere, not because the mountains are more spiritual. Spirituality is because of us, not because of the mountains or the city. That is a choice that has nothing to do with spirituality. Anyway you have to live somewhere, so choose some place that is conducive to you.

Question: Many temples have pillars with sexually explicit carvings. Why have they done this in public places – that too, in places for worship which are considered divine?

Sadhguru: What is divine for you? What is your idea of divinity or God? That which is the source of your creation in an ultimate way is God or divine. But what is the immediate source of your creation? It is sex. You may not want to think about it but you are here today only because your parents went into it. This is the culture which does not think in terms of right and wrong, it just looks at life the way it is. It looks at life in its eye – we are neither celebrating it nor are we making it dirty. We are neither making it a virtue nor are we making it a sin. We are just making a statement.

The temple is an instrument to a higher possibility – it is a tool to bring out the ultimate in you. The temple is not a place of prayer to call God to help you. God cannot help you if you have an allergy to this. Because you are born out of it and your children are here because you indulged in it. If you think it is wrong, then yours and your children’s existence is wrong. If you think in that manner, all of our very existence is in sin.

These images are always in the outer periphery of the temple because the idea is, you spend a certain amount of time with all these images, see that this is the reality of your life, see the limitation of it, and see if you can go one step higher. When you step into the sanctum, you are free of these things. You symbolically leave all these things at the outer periphery of the temple. When you go inside, you do not go in with these things.

So this symbolism was created – all these things should be left outside. The temple was created as an instrument to a higher possibility, so make use of it with the right kind of intention and do not go by your own morals.

(In his Ask Sadhguru column, the spiritual leader talks about intelligence being important to live life sensibly)

(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)