Isha Sanghamitra – Crafting a Conscious Planet

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Questioner: Namaskaram Sadhguru. I just came back home after spending three months during the lockdown in the ashram, and I am forever grateful to you and everyone there. I feel like I owe it to my Guru and to the people there to help. On this Guru Purnima I would like to ask you, "What can I do for my Guru?"

Sadhguru: What can you do for your Guru? You do not have to do anything to him, because he is not him or her, nor is he this or that. You cannot do this or that to him. You leave him alone. But as you are striving for your wellbeing, he is striving for everyone's wellbeing. If you can expand your striving from “my wellbeing” to a larger wellbeing, it would make his life a little easier, and he could be a slightly better failure than what it looks like right now!

What I mean by “a slightly better failure” is that when I was twenty-five, I realized that if I do not mess with my mind, I am just ecstatic. It can be very easily done and I knew how to do it. I sat down and made a real plan that in two-and-a-half years' time I will make the whole world ecstatic. It has been thirty-eight years since then! We see tears of ecstasy here and there, but it has not happened to the whole world.

We are still striving. I did not realize when I was twenty-five that people would be so invested in their miseries that they will not leave them no matter what. I thought that if you give them a better option, everyone will jump. But no, they will not leave the familiar, because they are so horribly invested in their insecurities and misery.

Having said that, we are not doing very badly, but we are definitely going to fail in my lifetime.

In the Evening of My Life

Though I do not feel that way, this is not the morning of my life, it is towards the evening. It is not yet sunset, there is still a lot more. Sunset is the grandest time for the sun in terms of scenery. There is still a lot of scenery left but in terms of time, energy and the size of the population, we know that we will die a failure.

You can be a part of increasing this percentage in whichever way possible. I am not asking you to do the same things that someone else is doing or I am doing, but if this matters to you, do whatever you are capable of doing.

You said that you really enjoyed Isha Yoga Center during these three months of lockdown. There are a few thousand people living in the Isha Yoga Center who are incessantly working just so that this happens to more people.

Apart from that, the amount of work we are doing in the villages of South India is tremendous, and all of this was done without even a single infection; everyone is absolutely safe. We have a large premises where people can move around, all the protocols are being followed, sadhana is happening wonderfully and even the weather has cooperated. The pre-monsoon rains came early and eased the summer off pretty well.

With all this, the last three months have been wonderful. In the last forty-five years, I have never stayed home for more than twelve to fifteen days. This is the first time I have stayed home and slept on the same bed for over eighty-five days. I have been eating good food, sleeping well and there is no travel. I am glad that it has been good for you too!

Just Doing What is Needed

If you want to do something for me, if you have time, we will tell you what you can do. If you have some talent or capability, we will tell you what you can do. If you have money, we will tell you what you can do, because all these things are needed.

We need a striving from a significant population so that we definitely hit a higher trajectory. If you want to be a part of it and put your energies into it, you can. As a part of this, many things are going on right now. Inner Engineering Online is being offered at 50% off for everyone and free for all the medical personnel and police officers. I am glad to see that nearly 85,000 medical personnel have made use of it in the last three months. This is fantastic and many of them are sharing what a difference it has made in these hard times for them.

We are offering all this and if we have to offer something for free, you must understand that all of us have to work extra to keep the free things going. A whole lot of people think that it just falls out of the sky. That is not how it is.

Many people have always been asking me, "Sadhguru how can we contribute?" But till now, as a rule, I have never openly asked for money. Only when this virus situation struck and I saw that people were beginning to starve around us, I said, "Please, we need money," and fortunately people responded. We are able to cook for 13,000 to 15,000 people every day for the last three months, and our boys are out there in the villages serving every one of them.

This may not be understood in many parts of the world but in India, if the daily wagers do not go to work for a week or two weeks, they run out. Their economy is over and the only option is to starve. We initially thought that this virus would be an urban phenomena but when it started happening in rural India, we reached out and many people have been supporting the effort by contributing.

We do not want to take up too many social causes but of course, there is Cauvery Calling and in spite of the pandemic, the work on the ground has been happening as it should happen. Over eleven million saplings are going to be planted now in the monsoon time in farmlands. This is not in some barren land. This is being planted by the farmers in their farmlands, so you can expect a ninety to hundred percent survival rate because it is being grown as a crop, not as a forest.

Tree-based agriculture is taking root, which brings long term wellbeing for the farmers. We are also looking at how to make at least one-third of human diet come from trees. This must happen everywhere but we are looking at making this happen in the Cauvery belt to start with.

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Conscious Planet – Preventing an Ecological Pandemic

We are also in the process of laying out a movement called Conscious Planet. This is about making people conscious, because unconscious human beings are the only problem you have on this planet.

Even with the pandemic, it is spreading around the world because of unconscious human beings. If only human beings were a little more conscious, we could have contained this very easily. All it takes is that the entire human population does not come in contact with anyone – they just sit by themselves for the next fourteen to fifteen days. The pandemic will be over in the world. These many people need not die, economies of nations need not be ruined, people need not be put to such hardship. All this is not necessary, if only we were conscious.

One aspect is to become conscious about how we are within ourselves. Another aspect is to be conscious about the ecology, because another pandemic is unfolding itself rapidly, which is the ecological pandemic. This could take many more lives than the virus. Much bigger disasters and challenges are waiting for us if we do not do the right things, so movements like this are essential.

Ecological challenges are a consequence of human beings ripping the planet apart in search of wellbeing. If wellbeing is guaranteed, human beings will naturally function in a much more conscious way.

We want to offer this possibility of how a human being can generate the quality of their life from within themselves. The quality of your life should be determined within, not by the outside. If at least sixty percent of the population knows how to be blissful by your own nature, there will be no ecological challenge.

Isha Sanghamitra

We are looking at how people can participate in all this. As a part of this, they have started a movement called Sanghamitra. On a steady basis, you can contribute some amount according to your situation – even five or ten rupees. This is needed because we have never surrendered our cause and the freedom of functioning as an unprejudiced organization to any major corporate or funding. This is the reason why we do not have any major funding because most of the funding unfortunately comes with strings attached. Our contributions have always been from people.

You can support by being a part of the Sangha or spiritual community which is striving. You do not have to do anything for me. Your first commitment is that you are striving to become a blissful being. Your second striving is how to support my striving to see that everyone becomes blissful. Please participate in whichever way you can.

This is our life. This is our time on the planet. What horrible things we do to each other is left to us. But what wonderful things we do is also left to us. Let us make this happen.

 

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