On 21 June 2022, Sadhguru completed his 100-day lone motorcycle journey from London to Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore. He rode through 27 nations, attending over 600 events and engaging a whopping 3.9 billion people online through various social media platforms. Here is what Sadhguru said about the Save Soil journey and what lies ahead in the coming months. He also reveals some very fundamental, eye-opening truths about life in general.
Sadhguru: Today is the International Day of Yoga. Yoga means union. Union is not an invention, philosophy, or ideology – it is the nature of life. Either you are in tune with it, or you swim upstream. Those who swim upstream will grow big muscles, but they will not go anywhere. That means life will not sparkle and move. At the most, they will sparkle in the world a little bit. But life will not sparkle.
For life to sparkle, it has to be inclusive. That is the way life is made. When I said Yoga means to be in union, it is not something I invented – I just spoke about it. If I say the breeze is cool and nice, I did not make it – I am only saying it. Similarly, Save Soil is not my idea. It is needed, so we are doing it.
That reminds me of what happened when I was riding to Bucharest. I was to get there by 7 p.m. for a television interview. They were ready and had set up a whole lot of things. But the weather got so bad and the roads were bad, so the ride which was to be about 5 1/2 hours became over 9 1/2 hours. We got there at 11:15. I thought there would be no interview. But the whole crew along with the anchor were still waiting from 7 o’clock to 11:15.
I got off the motorcycle and went straight in front of the cameras. When I finished, it was nearly one o’clock. The anchor said, “Sadhguru, at this age, how do you do this? Over nine hours of riding, and you just walk into the interview and speak all these things. Now you are sitting here, and you are fine.” He repeated the word “this age” three times, and I did not like it.
I said, “See, I have lived my life so intensely. I never had the time to get old.” To get old, you need a lot of time; you have to sit and get old. There are a lot of people around me who came to me about 28 years ago, when they were 18–20 years of age. Now in their forties, some of them in their fifties, they are still running around the same way. I still call them “boys,” and they are still behaving like boys because I made sure there is no time for them to sit and get old.
If you have time, it means you are not alive. Only a living dead person has time. Otherwise, life will engage you – not necessarily in activity but just in attention.
Riding a motorcycle is the kind of a thing that demands moment-to-moment attention. When you are at a certain speed and your attention is not there for one moment, you shall not be there. Even if you are very attentive, sometimes it could still be beyond you. Attention is not about a particular thing. If you pay attention only to certain things or certain people, that prejudiced attention is coming from exclusivity. Attention is like light. It lights up whatever is here.
The nature of attention is not prejudiced, but the moment you make it prejudiced, if you only pay attention to things you think are important, or things you think are yours, then life will pass you by. You may do many things, but life will pass you by. You may know the taste of your body; you may know the taste of your thoughts and emotions; you may know the taste of things around you; but you will not know the taste of life.
And life is the only thing you have. Everything else is sheer nonsense in your head. If you keep all this nonsense out, life will throb. When your life is throbbing, then this is a living cosmos.
People keep asking me, “Sadhguru, where are you getting this energy?”
I said, “Why are you denying yourself of it? The whole cosmos is energy. Why are you shut up inside your own cage?” If your life is an open doorway, there is no dearth for energy. But if you make yourself into a concrete block, then everything is painful, everything is trouble, everything is a problem. To make you happy, we have to dig the whole planet. That is why Save Soil.
If you knew how to be joyful and blissful by our own nature, where would be the need to save the soil? If human beings were joyful by their own nature, they would notice what is happening. But no one notices a thing. Everyone is asking me, “Sadhguru, how did you become a soil scientist? How did you become an ecologist?”
I am not a soil scientist; I am not an ecologist; I am not even an environmentalist or an activist. I am like a worm on this planet. I have been crawling around for 6 1/2 decades – why would I not know what is happening? Now people may say, “Oh, we have also been here.” Most of the time, you are not in this world – you have your own world. Because you have not touched the real world which is reverberating with life, you create your own petty world.
Your own world is a silly little world. You may call it family, nation, community, friend circle, club, or society. But it is a silly little world because you made it up with bits and pieces. Life is not like that. Life is the grandeur of existence. Just go and see something that is alive and coming up, how it is reverberating with life. If this experience does not come into your life, you have not lived.
This needs lust for life. I am using this word very consciously because lust is more compulsive than love; lust is more compulsive than desire. You do not need hormones induced lust, just lust for life. Then your attention will shine like the sun. Whether you are awake or asleep, it is on. Once your attention is always on, there is nothing that cannot be reached. There is nothing that cannot be experienced. There is nothing that cannot be done either. It is just a question of inclination, and how much you are willing to do.
The dangerous journey is over. But the real hard work begins from now. I have only four days in the Yoga Center; then we are traveling to UK, United States, Caribbean nations, and South America because all these nations are ready to take this forward. But these days, they are putting a condition: “If you come, we will sign and take it forward. If you do not come, we will be waiting.” I think in the next month and a half, I am traveling to more than 20 nations because the next level of action needs to happen now.
My estimate is that somewhere in the next 12 to 18 months, we can push most nations towards making some kind of soil regeneration policy. For this to happen, your voices should rise and stay raised. One day of shouting, sloganeering, and crying will not do. This needs relentless commitment. At least for next 12 months, make it your daily pooja to spread the soil message for at least 10–12 minutes a day.
