 I don't even know how to start an interview with a guru. Clouds are on, you just have to rain. How did you get to be a guru? Is there like, how do you sign up? Can I be a guru? A light cannot stand up and say, I'm the light. Well, you have to shine. Then you're the light. What would you like to say to the young people of the United States? Youth means a vibrant part of life. You must stay young. That means you should not make conclusions. I don't even know how to start an interview with a guru. The clouds are on, you just have to rain. A rain joke is a good way to start this interview. But if you're going to make a rain joke, I'm going to make a guru joke. How did you get to be a guru? Is there like, how do you sign up? Can I be a guru? Can anyone be a guru? What's the path to, to guru dumb? Well, you don't aspire to become a guru. People, when they find that your guidance is worthwhile, they may, they may call you a guru. So, you don't say, I'm the, you know, the word guru means one who dispels darkness. A light cannot stand up and say, I'm the light. Well, you have to shine. Then you're the light. Excellent, excellent. I love that, I love that analogy. So, I've been getting to know your work a little bit in researching for this conversation. And I'm so pleased to get to speak with you. I know we've been talking about it for a while. And I love the message in the heart of your teachings. And I love the way how wonderfully self-effacing you are in your sense of humor. I also use a sense of humor in my work. How important is humor in the teaching of spiritual and psychological human truths? Oh, I never looked at it that way. I feel, well, well, if you're joyful, naturally you will look at everything from all sides. One side is always the lighter side. Well, if you look at the planet right now, we are good morning, somebody is good night. One side is light, another side is dark. This is the nature of the existence. In every situation, there is a dark side, there is a gray side and there is a very light side. It's not by ignoring the dark side and always trying to be funny, you achieve something. Or just by looking at the dark side, you will achieve something. It's important that people have a more holistic picture of every situation. Because there is never going to be perfect situations in our life. Well, in America right now, a lot of people are looking at this darkness and are feeling very overwhelmed. There's political dark times, there's racial and social justice, dark times, environmental dark times. This global pandemic is very scary and another dark time. How do you find the light in all of this darkness? I thought California is quite sunny, I thought it's not so dark. People are misunderstanding. Their psychological situations are as existential reality. Existential reality is the way it is. How you reflect it in your mind depends on how dark your mirror is. So it's very important to look at life just the way it is, not the way you think it is. Because you can think up anything you want. You can make a horror out of a simple aspect of sun coming up. You can think, oh, it's rising and it's going to kill me. And there are people who do that. Sunsetting, somebody thinks it's the end of the world. Well, when the sun sets, if you do not remember it yesterday, it does look like end of the world. Winter comes, it does look like end of the world. So, of course, spring will come later. That is the reality of life. But in your mind, you can do these things. So the most important thing is, I think western societies have given too much importance to their own thought and emotion. Your thought and emotion is your psychological drama. You're supposed to run it the way you want it. But now you think it's a reality by itself. What you think and what you feel is not a reality. It's what you're making up in your mind. You're free to make up what you want. In the United States right now with young people, we're in a mental health crisis, the likes of which the world has never seen. The statistics about anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicide and suicidal ideation among young people is through the roof. It's almost unmeasurable. I have loved listening to your talks, especially the ones about joy, engineering, joy, changing yourself from the inside, restructuring your internal environment. What can you tell people who might be struggling with these mental health issues? See, every human experience has a chemical basis to it. In terms of human chemistry, this is the most complex chemical factory there is on the planet right now. Now, if you have such a sophisticated organization or an organism, or if you want to call it a factory, a factory, the question is only, are you a good CEO or are you a lousy CEO? That's all there is. So, if you know how to manage the chemistry of this, then would you choose chemistry of joy or chemistry of misery? Would you choose chemistry of balance or chemistry of madness? What would you choose? I know the choice is obvious for everybody. So why are they not able to choose? That's what we need to look at. Well, if you need to look at why you're not able to choose, there is... there are things to look at, what you eat, what goes into your system. Americans are eating. See, the idea of affluence for either an individual or a society or a nation is essentially this. In the beginning, somebody aspires for affluence because it'll give them a choice of nourishment. Later on, it's a choice of lifestyle. So, United States is... well, in many ways the richest nation on the planet, so they have a choice of nourishment and a choice of lifestyles. But what kind of nourishment do they choose? The kind of nourishment that they've chosen is just definitely going to freak them. So, I'm saying what you put into your system, how you sit, how you stand, how you breathe, what you do, everything is wrong. So, chemistry management, one thing is food, what you intake. To put it very simply, I'm not going into a food exposition right now, but the simple thing is, today even if you ask a kindergarten child, whether this body needs oxygen or carbon dioxide for its well-being, they know it's oxygen. At least they've read it in the book. But now, carbonated drinks in this country have been the culture of the nation. You're always drinking carbon dioxide, but even a kindergarten child knows oxygen is what you need. So, I'm surprised that the percentages are not much higher. They've used a bulk haul, the kind of food that we're eating. The... the process... the processed foods that people are eating, almost everything that they're eating is a month old. You cannot eat like that and be mentally well. Well, it just... Ah, you... you... I'm with you. Hey, it's organic. It doesn't matter, but it's a month old. So, a month old, so the... so you're saying fresher foods. Not fresher foods, fresh food. Fresh food. Yes, that's what the body needs. Food like you... you pick it and you just eat it from the garden. No, not that fresh. You don't have to be. You must wash it also a little bit. So, what is anxiety and is there a way out of it? See, there are two basic faculties in a human being, which are significant and which is unique to a human being, which makes us who we are. One is we have a vivid sense of memory. It's because of that our life is rich. No other creature on the planet has as vivid a sense of memory as we have. Because of this fantastic sense of memory, we have a fantastic sense of imagination. If there was no such elaborate detailed memory in our minds, we would not be capable of imagination. Imagination is just extrapolation of our memory. So, what is it that human beings are suffering in the life? In their life, they are suffering what happened ten days ago still. We are complaining to the nature, why did you evolve us? You must have left us as an earthworm. We would have been happy. At least we would be eco-friendly. That would be of great value in California. That's funny. That's great. The work that your institute does, Isha, is in health and nutrition, in education and also the environment. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you guys are doing with the environment? Well, with the environment, you know, this whole thing began in the year 1998. Certain experts from United Nations came and they made a prediction that by 2025, 60% of the state in which I am, the southernmost state in India, will become a desert. I don't like any kind of predictions, whether they're astrological, environmental, political, economic, I don't like predictions because predictions are being arrived at from dead cold statistics. You're not looking at what is beating in the human heart, because human beings, what they're thinking right now will be the future, not what they've done in the past. So, I didn't like the prediction, so I thought I'll check it out for myself and I drove around the state just seeing different regions how they are. And then I found that they were wrong because I saw it's going to happen much sooner than 2025. It wouldn't take that long because three major rivers had gone totally dry. Many, many streams, small streams which are tributaries have gone dry and desertification is happening at a rapid pace where palm trees are all, their crowns are falling off, not able to find water. Always in the tradition it was said, if a palm tree dies, that means you're heading for a disaster because it finds water wherever it is in that minor, minutest quantity it can survive in a desert. So, if the palm tree crowns start falling off, it means that there is definitely a disaster coming because borewells are going like 1200, 1400 feet below and sucking out all the water, all vegetation is dying because no tree is able to put roots to 1200 feet. So, then I saw how to do this and I spent six years planting trees in people's heads, which is the harshest terrain on the planet. Once we successfully did this for six years, then transplanting it on the land became easy. I did a simple process. So, I was just looking at how to do this as an experiment. I just took a hill which is behind our center, which has been sheared off all the trees maybe 25, 30 years ago and become largely bamboo and shrubs, but the trees are all gone. Somebody has taken it away. So, as an experiment, I did this in over 23, 24 days with about 4,000 to 4,500 volunteers. All I did was give them two meals and teach them a song to sing and we planted over six million trees. They're up now today. If you come and see, all these trees are about 20 years old in the forest and our temperatures in the center has come down by three to four degrees in summer. You know, that's a kind of difference it made. So, I just experimented whether we can really move people to do this and then we took up a campaign. So, when I try to talk to people in the villages, they wouldn't understand what am I talking about because they have daily problems. They have problems of survival, they have problems of agriculture, economy, so many things. Who is talking about this future, futuristic because everybody thinks ecology is futuristic. They don't understand it is relevant for today. So, I did a simple process. I got thousands of people, made them sick and put them through a certain, well, for lack of words, we can say a spiritual process where they sit and breathe and experientially know what I exhale the tree inhales, what the tree exhales I inhale. So, what I'm exhaling, the tree is inhaling. What the tree is exhaling, I'm inhaling this is a reality. So, one half of your lungs is actually hanging out there on the tree. Once I made them experience this, oh, now you can't stop them from planting trees. They're planting trees, planting trees. Just from our organization, we planted over 38 million trees. But over 200 other small organizations came up because of this movement. This was initially called as Project Green Hands. Over 200 other organizations came up everybody's in competition wanting to plant more trees and more trees. It became a kind of a cultural thing. So, definitely the green cover went up. I love your teachings and the way that you have this intersection of understanding a human being, understanding the user's manual of the human being and from the inside. And at the same time, your passion and work on the environment affecting literally millions or tens or hundreds of millions of people. That's very inspiring. Thank you very much for that great environmental work that you do. I just want to ask one last question before we finish. And that is, what would you like to say to the young people of the United States who might be watching this video? Stay alive, stay young. That's about it. What else? The one thing they need to understand is, youth means a vibrant part of life. They must remain vibrant. Not go into beliefs and conclusions and because the more conclusions you make, the more old you will become. What is old age is simply too many conclusions about everything. If you do not conclude about anything, you're willing to look at everything and experience life the way it is, you will stay young. So that's why I said, one thing is through this virus pandemic, you must stay alive. This is a big responsibility. You must stay alive and make sure everybody around you is alive and you must stay young. That means you should not make conclusions. You're willing to look at everything fresh all the time. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Hope we catch up and meet when the virus... virus willing, we will meet. Virus willing, we'll meet, we'll ride motorcycles together. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Namaskar.