Sadhguru reveals humanity’s biggest challenge at this point in time, outlining the root of the problem and how only human consciousness can prevent the impending disaster.
Questioner: What worries you most about the state of the planet today?
Sadhguru: I am not the worrying kind. The planet is not in any kind of peril – it is human beings who could go through terrible experiences if we do not take care of a few things. In that sense, what we need to be concerned about is the topsoil. The topsoil is responsible for 87% percent of life on this planet, including us. There has been a huge degradation in the quality of that soil in terms of its organic content and the amount of life that should be happening within it.
The biodiversity in topsoil has been dropping drastically in the last 50 to 70 years. The only way we can take care of the topsoil is by putting back substantial organic content into it, which can only come from green litter from trees and animal waste. But we are eating animals in billions every year, and trees are largely gone. If we do not put a substantial amount of the world’s soil under shade, other species will reduce in numbers, and they may only bounce back when human beings are gone.
If all the insects on this planet disappear, all life on this planet will end within 4 to 6 years’ time. If all the worms disappear, all the life on this planet will disappear in 18 to 24 months, including you and me. If all the microbes, viruses, and bacteria disappear, life will end right away. But if all human beings disappear, the planet will flourish. We need to understand that we are not the center of the universe. This is one of the most disastrous ideas that has entered human mind.
Religions and philosophies are propagating that every other life is here to serve human beings because a human being is made “in God’s own image.” If you go to a colony of ants and ask them, “Do you want to serve human beings,” they will come up your legs and teach you a lesson. Every creature has a complete life of its own. They are not here to serve us. But their very nature of existence is serving our existence.
We must be grateful, respectful, and caring about them because we have a capability to create and destroy. Right now, we are largely exercising our capability to destroy, not to create.
This is because most people do not have an experience of the planet. Their whole experience is always of the 65 degrees Fahrenheit that their air conditioners are set at. All they know are the four walls in which they are living. When you live like this, you are becoming physiologically and psychologically fragile. One who is really living on and experiencing the planet is far more natural, more life. Unfortunately, most human beings misunderstand their social and psychological setup as existential realities.
Rain, sun, flood, rivers, oceans – this is all the world. Your ideas are all psychological, and they can change every day. You can go through ten psychological phases right now if you are willing, but most people are stuck to one scape.
What happened when you were 12 years of age, what your idea of the world was, and what was most important to you; what happened when you were 18, 30, 40, 50, 60 – if you are willing, you can go through all of it within five minutes. Every human being has the necessary intellectual infrastructure to go through 60 years of experience within five minutes and evolve quickly. This is what evolving consciously means.
This is how we launched some of the massive movements in India like Project GreenHands, Rally for Rivers, Cauvery Calling, and now Conscious Planet. For example, I saw that there was not enough green cover in the southern states where we were. It was 16% and our national aspiration is 33%. Initially, I tried to tell people, “See, we need to plant trees,” but no one paid attention. So I made them sit in the hot sun at eleven o’clock in the morning in southern India. Then I moved them under the shade of a tree, and everyone let out a huge sigh of relief.
I set up a certain process which is still going on. I said, “Just breathe and see – what you exhale, the tree is inhaling; what the tree is exhaling, you are inhaling.” There is a certain way to make it a living experience within someone. Once they sat there and experienced it, they realized that one half of their lungs is hanging out there. Now you cannot stop them from planting trees because they know it is their lungs.
This is the most important aspect of Yoga – an absolute experience of the inclusiveness and immensity of life. If you want to make human beings supportive and productive to life, this experience needs to happen to everyone.
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