Do you think that plants and animals have feelings? Maybe you are even growing your own food, and you are struggling with how to reconcile caring for plants with having to eat them? In this article, Sadhguru provides insights into how to approach this dilemma with sensitivity and inclusiveness.
Questioner: Sadhguru, I am a plant mom. I grow my own food naturally, and I also motivate others to do the same. I am also an animal mom. The responses of the animals are more visible, but I believe that plants respond as well, and I can connect to a few of them. So, how can I eat them?
Sadhguru: You are asking if you can eat your “children.” Eating what you consider to be your “children” is good because you will not eat more than you should. You will minimize it and be more sensitive to what you are consuming.
Before we empower any human being with certain possibilities and initiate them into a powerful process, we always make sure that they take this step within themselves: “I am a mother to the world.” Without that, we do not empower because empowerment without inclusiveness is a dangerous thing. Whether it is about your individual nature, your family, community, country, race, religion, or whatever else – all these things have become deadly forces. They have killed the greatest number of people on this planet in the last many millennia.
When you say, “My tribe, my clan, my race, my religion, my nation, my this, my that,” it is essentially a lack of inclusiveness. The moment you are not inclusive, it is best that you are not empowered. Without empowerment, you will cause little damage. With empowerment, you will cause tremendous damage.
Right now, as a generation, we are super empowered. What a thousand men could do a thousand years ago, one man can do today because we are empowered with science and technology. When this is the case, it is better to be like a mother to the world and be sensitive to every life. You cannot survive without eating. You have to eat. If you have to eat your own “children,” how will you eat? Initially, you will suffer, but after some time, you will come to terms with it.
If you have to destroy something that you care for, you will do it as minimally as possible. You will never do more than what is needed. If this happens with our food, activity, and everything, in many ways, we have turned the world around. Do not fall into the trap of oversimplifying things, thinking that animals are screaming, so they respond; and plants are not screaming, so they do not respond. Who said they are not screaming? Every microbe in the world is screaming in their own way.
When I was on the Save Soil journey, everyone was asking me, “How do you know all this? Are you a soil scientist or an environmentalist?” I am not an ecologist, nor a soil scientist; I am definitely not an environmentalist. I am like any other worm on this planet. If you ask a worm, will it know what is happening to the soil around it? It definitely knows because it affects its life. It is also affecting your life, but you have become too insensitive to realize it.
You do not notice it because what is happening in your “bone box[1]” has become more important than what is happening with life. Otherwise, it is noticeable. If you are seeing something as part of yourself, naturally you will be sensitive to it. Leave all this plant mom, animal mom – this is a very simplistic way of looking at it. But genuinely, is there anything in this world that is not part of you in some way? In the years you have lived, you do not know which plant, creature, or microbe your exhalations have gone into.
In some way, you are connected with everything. Becoming sensitive to life and being inclusive about life around us is very important. As a woman, if you think the only way to be inclusive is by being a mother, it is fine with me, but do not become a “mom” because moms usually do silly things. They are genetically and internally wired to be absolutely prejudiced. It is the nature of a mom to be super prejudiced in favor of her children, which is very important in order to protect them.
[1] Skull/head
You enjoy it as long as it is in your favor. When it turns against you, you will see how bad it is. That is survival instinct. Do not spread that everywhere because survival instinct is always “you versus me.” A human being is capable of an intelligence that is beyond survival process. That is what needs to rise. These two basic things are within you: your instinct to survive and your longing to expand.
You must empower the longing to expand, not the instinct to survive. Because with this level of intelligence and empowerment, if you empower the instinct to survive, it will be a very destructive process.
