 How can I top that and know that's not Leo in makeup? Someone very consequential. It's such a great honor to meet you and to be here with you to talk about, I think, anything. I love that concept of you unplugged, of just opening ourselves and this great group here to any conversation wherever it might take us. But I have to tell you one thing I was struck by that I would just like to get a quick reaction from you on. When I saw the film and I noticed that the focus of Isha Foundation, conservation education and health. And I find it so interesting that conservation, nature and health are on either side of education. Because I think that the biggest problem we have today is with a lack of education on these key issues. Which if we understood then we would realize that we're not trying to save the planet. We're trying to save our lives on this planet. As you know, more than 98% of all the plant and animal life ever to exist on Earth appeared and disappeared before the advent of industrial humans. So the Earth doesn't care if we're here. But we do. And so it's fantastic to meet people who are inspiring, especially a younger generation to, let's be honest, clean up the mess that our generation created. So with that let me ask you to maybe just say a few words about the foundation about how you chose those three core values to work on. Because they are absolutely what binds us all together. Namaskar. Well, right now, just about anywhere you go in the world, there was a time when they had nothing to do. They would discuss weather. These days, from your grandmothers to your grandchildren, they're only talking about the economy. Wherever you go, everybody's talking about the economy. Nobody discusses the weather anymore. Weather had something to do with ecology. Economy has become the main theme in everybody's conversations in everybody's life. So when we say economy, we're generally talking about a more complicated version of our survival process. A complex arrangement of survival or messing up our survival process with too many complexities. Simple survival just to eat, sleep, reproduce and die one day. This is survival. This has been super complicated and there are all kinds of experts on this now. I'm not against it. But this idea that economy is today's concern, ecology is tomorrow's problem. This has to change. Ecology is today's problem. Ecology is today's concern. Our life can be wonderful or is wonderful, not because of the fluctuations of the stock market or the percentage of growth points that are happening in a particular society or a nation. Our life is wonderful because we are eating nutritious food, drinking clean water, breathing pure air. This is why our life is wonderful. This is completely forgotten. People think life is wonderful because the stock market is soaring. So my intention was to bring this into people's lives not as a calamity, not as a doomsday seya, but to bring this into people's life as ecology being today's concern. What we eat, what we breathe, what we drink, what kind of soil we walk upon is our moment to moment daily concern. It is not something that we look forward to and disaster is going to happen. How are we going to fix this disaster? That's not it. We are the disaster. We don't need any other disaster. Yes, there is no other disaster. People keep talking about natural disasters. I keep reminding and they've become hugely unpopular for this reason. When, you know, when certain calamities happened, human calamities happened, a flood happened, a volcano happened, somewhere a tsunami happened, I said, see this is not… don't stop describing it as a natural disaster. It's not a natural disaster. This is a natural process. Mother Earth has to make her adjustments. Some plates move. It's called Earthquake. She winds her, you know, she freaks once in a way. That's called a volcano. So whatever she does, we are too many. We are everywhere and we are a human calamity. Thousand years ago the same thing happened. They were just natural processes. Today it's a natural disaster. It is not a natural disaster. There are no disasters in nature. We are the only disaster on this planet. If you fix that one thing, everything is going to be okay. Very well said. Let me tell you a short story, if I may, that I think exemplifies the challenge. And one of the reasons I'm so pleased we're at an educational institution tonight to have this conversation. Some of you may have heard of Donald Trump. He was visiting a grade school. It's a true story. You can look this up. And he was bragging about the American Space Program. And he said, NASA is great. We're going to have a colony on Mars. And we're even going to land on the sun. And one of the kids said, Mr. President, you can't land on the sun. You will die. And without missing a beat, Trump said, no, we'll land there at night. So I tell you this because it exemplifies this problem that we have that too many people don't understand the world we live in today, as you just described. They think of things in terms that perhaps ultimately are not relevant, whether it's economic, whether it's someone else's fault, whether it's my little bit won't matter if I drive a little less, if I turn off a light switch, if I eat less meat or no meat, if I make differences in my own life. And by the way, I just have to acknowledge Ed Begley, who's sitting here. Just raise your hand or stand up. Because Ed has taught us, and I'm sure when he was talking with you in one of these conversations, he probably discussed this, so I'm just going to steal his lines. The incremental environmentalist, I mean, he talks about the fact that starting from a very young age, he did one thing, changed a light bulb, discovered the changes that that made him his electric bill, then discovered how he could plant a garden, and then weeks later, months later, discovered compost. One thing after another, he didn't become the great, sustainable environmentalist that he is overnight. He did it by learning and then applying what he learned. And to me, that's the biggest challenge. How do we just get more people to wake up, learn how the world really works, get them to take those steps, see that every little step matters, and what every one of us does, matters, and then to take each one of those steps. What have you found in your teaching that would help us move this country in that direction? Well, in a nation like this, everybody taking one small step is very important. No question about that. But at the same time, a nation which wields so much power in the world, it's important certain fundamental policy changes happen. Otherwise, we will be just driving on self-satisfaction but no real solution. If you're seeking solution across the world, this is necessary, policy changes are needed. When our economic engine is driving in one direction, you and me make some small changes. This is personal satisfaction for me and for you. But this will not be a solution. This will only postpone the disaster. If we postpone a disaster, if we have forgotten we are mortal human beings, if we postpone a disaster, we are handing over a disaster to the next generation. So it's very important that nations come up with policies which are ecologically sensitive and sensible to do. Individual people, of course, they must do because we are democracies. If we don't express our concern in the way we live, the nation or the government is not going to change. The administrations are not going to change by themselves. It is the people's will which is expressed in the form of administrations because after all, most nations are democratic and it's the people who elect the people who get there, all right? So when somebody said they want to land on the sun and maybe they were expecting the opposition to get there first. Probably thought they'd find oil. The media to get there first. So I think right now individual action is important for awareness because it's this individual action which will ultimately transform or culminate in the form of a sensitive administration. Without individual concern, a sensitive administration will not come. But we've reached a point on the planet where strong policies are needed. Ecologically sensitive policies are needed. You and me switching off the light is great. I don't even turn on the light so I don't switch off either. If I'm… most of the time I'm alone at home, I never turn on the light. I can walk through, you know, darkness very effortlessly unless I want to read. I just don't turn on a single light in the house, I'm just fine. The dogs are happy, I'm happy. That's about it. Every other creature is happy, lights are not on. So yes, all of us can do that. It's very important because if we are not ecologically sensitive we will not bring an ecologically sensitive administration or policy makers to the place. But a time has come strong policies are needed. Without that there will be no solutions because the turnaround time, as I said, I am not a doomsayer. But if we want to turn around this planet in terms of water, in terms of soil condition, this is something most people ignore in terms of ecology, the soil. The damage we have caused to the soil on the planet is the biggest. Other things may be visible, ice is melting somewhere, it's visible. But the damage to the soil we have caused across the planet is incredible and most dangerous because this is where life evolves. You and me are just a little bit of soil. What was soil became food, what was food became flesh and blood. If we don't get it right now, one day we will get it when we are buried. Most people get it a bit too late, but everybody gets the point at some point. So these things cannot be turned around with individual action. This needs a worldwide policy. I think if we want to turn the soil around, if we take concrete action in the next five to ten years, in the next twenty-five to thirty years we could turn it around quite reasonably. But if let us say we don't take any action now and we take action after twenty-five or fifty years, let's say, after fifty years we want to act, to turn around the same soil it will take hundred to hundred and fifty years. And that means four to five generations. We will go through tremendous, terrible states of life because soil is in a bad condition. If we fix the soil, water is fixed, air is fixed, everything is fixed. Soil must be rich and on because this is the same sort. Well, very well said and I can give a little context for that. Actually in the next couple of weeks, the DiCaprio Foundation is going to be releasing a study that we've been working on, a plan, not just a study with MIT, with Berkeley, with a number of other institutions around the world called One Earth, which identifies a path to no more than one point five degrees centigrade warming, which as most of you probably know, there was an agreement reached in Paris three years ago, a climate agreement with 170 foreign nations, and the goal was to stop warming at two degrees with a hopeful goal of no more than one point five. But the target was set and the level of ambition was set for two degrees. We know that a lot of further disasters will occur if we let it get to two degrees. So how would you get to one point five was the challenge we gave these great academics and we took a look at what it would take to do it. And we came up with three things that by 2050 we need to move most of the world's energy to clean renewable energy. And when we even started talking about this even two or three years ago, it seemed like, could you possibly do that? Are the economics and the technology there? And since then, look at how many companies have committed to go to 100% renewables. How many cities? How many states? The state of California's seventh largest economy on the planet passed a law signed into law a couple of weeks ago to be 100% renewable energy powered by 2045. And we have the pathway to do it. So we know that first leg of that stool is difficult. It's challenging, but it's not impossible. The second leg is indeed to get by 2050 most of our agriculture back to what we call regenerative agriculture, which is regenerating the soil. It's what our parents and grandparents did. And interestingly, now that Cuba is opening up again, they didn't have access to a lot of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. So they continued to do this throughout the last 50 years, I mean, and obviously longer, where basically you don't dig up and destroy the soil and expose it and let all the microbes and the organisms and the organic material decompose into methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas, and then supplement it with petroleum-based fertilizers. In essence, you're sterilizing the soil, you're killing it, as said Guru says, and then you're throwing something on it to try to make it work. And instead, we just need to go back to the basic concept of using organic material that's there, harvest our crop, put the organic waste back into the soil with light tilling, with light crop practices, and in fact, you'll get better yields for far less money and be able to restore water and various other ecosystems. And the third leg of the stool is we have to save half the planet for nature. And we're obviously not going to say, oh, well, let's save the southern half and we'll schmutz the northern half. I mean, too late for that. But what we can do is take a look at all the marine protected areas we've already created, the national parks, the ecosystem reserves that exist in every single country, the natural places, even parks in cities, and stitch them together in ways that actually becomes a safety net for the planet, where effectively half the planet is preserved for nature and the ecosystem services that nature provides us. So, for example, many of you may have seen that Sao Paulo a year ago was facing evacuation of a third of the city because they ran out of water. And that was because they had denuded rainforests many, many miles away from Sao Paulo. But that's what had sequestered the rain, sequestered the moisture, nourished the soils, which then allowed aquifers to fill and rivers to flow and so forth that kept a city of 22 million people alive. When they destroyed those forests, all of that disappeared with the first drought. So now they're learning that that has to be restored, that it's not just for the sake of creatures or plants and animals that we'll never see. It's actually for the human ecosystem services as well. And that if you do that, if you actually preserve roughly half the planet for nature, there's creative ways you can do it. At the DiCaprio Foundation, we funded a program to create wildlife corridors over two of our busiest freeways so that mountain lions and other species can cross the freeways and stitch back together fractured habitat. And here in Los Angeles, it's too late to go by 10,000 more acres and say, okay, great, that's going to be mountain lion habitat. So therefore, how do you stitch it back together to get the genetic diversity to keep those species alive, to keep those resources alive? So there's many creative ways to do it. But it does take modern mapping and scientific research methods to figure out what do we need to save, because not all ecosystems are created equal. So I'll get off my soapbox here, but my point being there's three things that give us a livable planet and give us a sustainable planet for 10 billion people by 2050. And it is this 100% renewables, 100% regenerative agriculture and saving half for nature. And so your point about soils is really at the centerpiece of all that. Well, we have so much science and technology. But I think we don't have enough sense in the sense. Well, I know United Nations has made a prediction by 2050 we are going to be 9.6 billion people. At the beginning of 20th century we were just 1.6 billion people. Now at the beginning of 21st century we are 7.6 billion people. They are saying in another 32 years we will be nearly 10 billion people. Well, I think this is a responsible reproduction. We're nice, but we're just too many. If we don't get this one thing whatever we do will fail simply because the human footprint is too much. I was in a conference, you know, about ecology and stuff and I said, without reducing the human footprint nothing is going to work. They asked me, how do you reduce the human footprint? I said, you have to reduce the number of human feet. The number of feet I go down. See, the average life expectancy of a human being in the last century has gone up tremendously. In India, in 1947 when we got independence from the English the average life expectancy of an Indian was 28 years. 28 years. Today it's touched 66, 67 they're saying it's around 67 now which is fantastic in 70 years time. So what this essentially means is we have postponed our death. Wonderful. If we postpone our death should we not postpone our birth? I'm not talking any philosophy, simple arithmetic. Hello? Simple arithmetic. If we postpone our death we should also postpone our birth. On an average if in any given, if at any given time three generations of people are living here, it's great. Your parents are here, your children are here, you're here, wonderful. But right now we've come to a place where five generations are living well they're very happy, they think they are a big family but five generations is not sustainable. No way, it's not going to work. We can do as much technology as we want, as much whatever we want. The planet is designed for a certain amount of life particularly a virulent life like us. We... we're not like other creatures who don't take anything more than they contribute. They're taking and as much they're contributing. Our intake and what we contribute is what we contribute is miniscule what we take is big from let's say our grand-prayer generation let us say 1940s or 50s leaving the terrible war of the time how much they were consuming on this planet purpose per capita today how much we are consuming is at least seven to eight times more seven hundred to eight hundred percent increase. So with sophistication of technology we could scale it down a little bit. You know, simple things like from our regular light bulb to LED we brought down the power consumption and like this many things we're doing. All this is wonderful but all this is not a solution it's just a postponement of disaster. So let me ask you this as a spiritual leader, as somebody who knows how to get into people's heads not just the heads. As you said, I mean old guys like us are living longer but younger people like many in this audience are the ones that might be thinking about having kids. So it's not an equal matter of just saying hey we as a species as long as we're going to live longer there should be a postponement of the births. That's one of the many inequities that exists in this discussion. How do we convince people to have fewer kids and balance that when it's not all the same? Well the very nature of how today's life is arranging itself a whole lot of people won't go for children not because anybody's advising them simply because you know there was a time before a girl is twenty she already had two-three children going. Today almost nobody has a child before twenty it's all over twenty-two, twenty-four many of them are over thirty so that postponement has happened not because of any ideology simply because of the way life is arranged just the education system by the time they finish their education they're twenty-five, twenty-six by the time they find some employment and find their footing in the world they're thirty-five by then they've become wise So if you allow enough time wisdom happens My son is twenty-seven when will it happen? So the very nature of how we're organizing life the way we have organized our education systems and our professions and the carriers this is inevitably going to happen it is just that if we do our arithmetic a little more consciously it would be great but there's an explosion of population happening in Africa there's an increase of birth rate in Africa because we have kept people poor for a long time they're starved out they don't know whether children will survive or not you know all the conditions as to why the populations multiply it is just that if you... this is why ecology and education are important if education happens education itself postpones birth isn't it? and once education happens aspirations explode aspirations keep children off first quite some time beyond that if they really want to be some great parents they want to produce some wonderful children for the future fantastic fantastic because we need children of course we can't do without children on this planet but because we're on an average most countries almost the whole population on the planet in the next thirty years average age will be over a... I mean people will be living eighty eighty-five years of age so when the whole population starts living to be eighty-five if they deliver a child at twenty by the time they're gone they have already four generations going which is not practical so this ten billion population is not necessarily because an outburst of reproductive instinct it is more because of extension of life and which is fantastic that people are living to their full life which is wonderful so that should not be you know we should not start regretting that people are living so long that should never happen we should celebrate that people are living full lives but that will happen if there's a rush of young brats coming we will start wondering why the old people are not going that's not a good thing at all for any civilization that's not a good... I mean it's inevitably happened you must understand this you may think I'm not like that but when pressure builds up it will happen those thoughts will come we should never give room for that in any given society we must always celebrate the age the experience of human beings over here not because I'm speaking for myself I'm saying our grandparents we celebrated my great-grandmother lived to 113 okay no no I'm not threatening you she lived to 113 but people celebrated her because she was such a presence and such a wisdom she has seen three generations, four generations pass but that will only happen because of the pressure from the next generation which is fighting for room to live on this planet it's very important that we must instead of projecting making a prediction that we'll have 10 billion by 2050 why don't we plan by 2050 we'll have 4 billion or 4.5 billion I'm telling you if you're 4 billion people everybody can live whichever way they want and everything will be fine and whoever is landing on Mars we should send them quickly so good points all but it still comes back to education lifting the veil off people's eyes about how the world really works to your point about getting governments to change it means that among the many individual actions we all need to take raise your hand if you plan to vote in three weeks and everyone's hand should have gone up even people that don't necessarily I have no vote in this country so it doesn't matter anymore please come and vote I've actually always felt that every citizen of the world should have the right to vote for the American president because he or she will have a disproportionate impact over all their lives and so everyone should get a vote but seriously just in the short time I've gotten to know you tonight when we were in the green room when we came here I came up and want to say hello to you and every one of them had one thing in common they said you changed my life you changed the way I see the world and the way I want to be in the world and that's what we have to do if we really want to make this planet sustainable so give us some tips about how I mean all of us can't necessarily do what you've done but maybe we can I mean you were telling me for example that your rally for rivers was an idea that came to you 59 days before you did it and I'll let you tell the story because maybe that's helpful for people here who are activists and want to start a movement and want to make something happen big which then will get governments to change policy it's the only thing that ever did political leaders are actually political followers when they really feel the pressure from citizens that's when they change so give us some ideas about how you in your amazing career have inspired people to think differently, to see things differently take action See this is in 1998 certain United Nations agencies came to southern India and the state where we are in which is called as Tamil Nadu the southernmost state I thought people were whistling and it's a good thing so they made a prediction by 2025 60% of Tamil Nadu will become a desert I personally don't like any kind of predictions whether they are for individual life or the nation or ecology because predictions are only taking cold facts and making projections what's beating in a human heart they don't know people who make predictions don't know what is beating in individual hearts and what these people are going to do tomorrow they have no clue about that so it looked like that by 2025 60% of Tamil Nadu will become a desert because Tamil Nadu has a history of 12,000 years of agriculture they've been ploughing the same land for 12,000 years this is the longest history of agricultural history on the planet and in 34 years we are going to become a desert I didn't believe that so I decided to drive myself to all the rivers and riverbeds and other things and just to have a look then I knew they were wrong because I thought it is going to happen much sooner I didn't think it will last till 2025 so I called a bunch of volunteers and about 4-5,000 of them and told them one at a time or on twitter I mean no that's not how it happens in India I just have to say I'm going to meet them they'll all come so I just made a barefoot calculation this is the number of square kilometers that this state has and we have only 16.5% green cover national aspiration is 33% green cover I said we must get it to 33% means what it takes I said in the next eight to ten years if you plant about 114 million trees in the state in about 15-20 years you will have 33% green cover so I said we need to plant 114 million trees they are all the rivals they said, what is 114 million how many zeros I said say in the state they said 62 million I said if all of us plant one tree today nurture it for two years and plant one more you got the number that's all it takes you don't need to be a man with great resources to plant one tree and nurture it even a beggar can do it even if a beggar does it he will have a growing office space so how to do it, how to water it what to do I said just go pee there if you don't have water every day you're doing something right so I'm saying this was just bare bones kind of talk because everybody knows how to come up with variety of problems how we cannot do it everybody knows how we cannot do it nobody looks at how we can do it so this talk went on then I said okay we'll meet after a month or so we decided to meet in another town so here a much larger crowd gathered the meeting I arranged this is a place where we were meeting is a place where there are about five to six very large rain trees I mean it's a kind of tree you don't see here but these rain trees an individual tree will occupy almost a acre it's like huge trees so about five six rain trees fabulous shade and cool place but I arranged the meeting in hot sun at 11 o'clock in the morning so this is Tamil Nadu sun you know we are the hot so I stood I sat there along with them and everybody you know when they come for these meetings all the ladies get properly dressed up with silk saris and nice makeup and everybody sitting like this full of joy Satguru is talking to us and I went on talking just simply kept it just gossip initially like this and slowly just looking at me I am also sitting in hot sun and maybe he's enlightened but what's wrong with him I waited for that moment until one and a quarter hours when they were really wilting away see if you're walking around moving you won't feel it when you just sit in the sun it gets you so when I saw that they're really going down I said okay and let's go here and we all went and sat under the tree and ah sounds of ecstasy you know everybody ah first time in their life they're noticing the trees ah so fantastic I sat down and I started a simple process this is a a certain spiritual aspect to it experientially I made them feel with their eyes closed what you exhale the trees are inhaling what the trees exhale you are inhaling one half of your breathing apparatus is hanging out there they sat like this some many of them tears in their eyes simply sat like this and now you can't stop them from planting trees they're just on and on and on 33 million trees they planted so I keep telling them you are a big failure we said 114 million we said 114 million you planted only 33 million they're going on and on planting more and more so with children you know children like to have pets because there are no more so many brothers and sisters we can't afford that so pets are easy because they die sooner than human beings yes so every time your dog or cat dies every 12 years you have a heartbreak so I came up with this idea you have a tree as a pet it grows bigger than you lives longer than you always there you can always go back to your village to visit this as a part of this we started what is called as a green school movement that if a school plants 10,000 trees we will give it a certificate it's a green school today over 6000 schools are green schools in Tamil Nadu and the best thing is this pond over 400 over 400 activist groups which all came up because of we call this project green hands because of green hands over 400 groups came up they're all in competition planting more and more I thought that's great that's the best thing to happen because and simple things in Indian weddings Indian wedding means you generally have to eat three times your normal diet that's an Indian wedding okay and as if that's not enough they will give you a bag of sweets and fruits and coconuts and everything to take home just in case you didn't spill out so we change this and today hundreds of weddings not enough for my satisfaction but hundreds of weddings they're giving saplings and saying instead of taking all that extra food and eating more and more you plant the sapling if you don't have a space right there they will ask you if they don't have a space we'll plant it for you and we'll plant it for you in this place we are also these days geocoding them where your tree is as a part of the valley for rivers today we are planting in the next three to four years time or let's say three to five years time we have signed MOUs to plant seven billion trees will that be a failure yeah because I I keep telling people that you know I'm I've kind of given up on my life anyway I will die a failure because when I was 25 years of age I suddenly realized one day if I simply sit here all I have to do is that I don't mess with myself if I simply sit here every cell in my body bursts out in ecstasy when I realized this I made a plan at that time on that day the world's population was 5.6 billion people I made a plan in the next two and a half years I can make the whole world blissful well we have touched over 500 million people today but that's not my idea of success so I will die as a failure but as a blissful failure so it's okay this is my wish for all of you your vision for what you wish to do should be such anyway it cannot be completed in this life I want you to die as a joyful failure this means I finished everything I wanted means you are a constipated mind yes you set up one constipated goal for yourself finish it and think you are a big success no it's good to die as a failure as long as you are joyful the great Italian artist Michelangelo famously asked God to grant that he may always strive to achieve more than he does and that's obviously inherent in what you're saying I don't know how we're doing on time did we want to take some questions or comments from the audience and I'm not sure how you guys want to facilitate that but let's make this more of a conversation with 400 people we actually do have a question here this is for Sadguru or perhaps Terry we'll see we're a way of life the first question that comes about clean air regulation in the state of California I'll take that one well it is a process but people around me recognize it only when the process reaches a certain level of visibility but it's a process right now maybe there is a process building up for rain let's say most people don't see it donkeys know it snakes know it insects and worms know it human beings won't see it till it pours down on them they don't see it so it is a process if you're sensitive you can see the process before it bears flowers and fruits so most of the world sees only when a bright flower comes out but it's an ongoing process you can recognize it at a very early stage if you look for certain basic parameters so enlightenment is a process well when it becomes mature it may bear a certain type of flowers the world recognizes but that's not the most important thing the process is the most important thing this question asks they say when people die they are in a better place aren't they he's looking at you dude it depends who you're talking about if it's a better place you should go there first if you're very sure that you're definitely in a better place after you die you should not postpone such a great opportunity no you're wishing other people to go that's not right see largely the nature of human mind is such just about everything it corrupts because we have a cerebral activity which is like an unguided missile which goes all over the place just about every aspect of life whatever people held sacrosanct in the previous generation this generation rubbishes and walks all over it like this everything that you can think of human beings have corrupted in their minds at least even if they don't do it in behavior even if their behavior is controlled in their minds they have corrupted everything one thing that is pristine and cannot be corrupted is death because you can claim whatever the hell you want but you don't know a damn thing about it people who are dead sure that they're going to heaven after this I don't think they should postpone it by a day if they're so sure they're going to such a fantastic place why should they postpone it I don't understand this at all especially if they have an appointment with God not to postpone it it's just that you don't know a damn thing about it it's it's an empty space out there so it's best it's kept that way for variety of reasons unless your life lights up from within it's best death remains as it is because if you manage to corrupt that then you will have nothing to live for this may sound very negative but I'm telling you if you are not mortal just see what would happen to you if at all if you want to give you the worst kind of punishment death penalty is not the worst thing suppose we gave you eternal life penalty punishment you cannot die just think about it because it's mortal we're trying to extend it a little bit more suppose you just cannot die that will be the worst thing to happen so don't corrupt that one thing you know nothing about it it's best that way because if you do not light up the innermost core of your life there is no way you will know anything about it you can believe whatever stories you want whatever somebody says even if it is true as far as you are concerned it's just a story isn't it hello it's just a story if you strongly believe in a story you will do idiotic things yes those people who believe 100% they are going to heaven and what are the pleasures there they are the ones who are blowing themselves up yes because you believe all those things are there from last generation to this generation the aspiration of going to heaven has come down dramatically they are all trying to do it right here they are trying to do everything right here because first of all the idea of a heaven is a very perverted idea full of pleasures unfulfilled minds will come out with such things so death is that dimension of your life which has brought profoundness to who you are because you are mortal you are here today everything is fine tomorrow morning poof gone just like that no trace if you pay little attention to this aspect that today I am here tomorrow I could just vanish and not leave a trace anywhere if you just pay enough attention to it if your attention is skin enough then your life will light up because that's where the key is everybody thinks death is the antithesis of life no it's in your mortality all the secrets of your life are hidden we have a question from a mother a mother from the land of Rumi from the land of Persia from Iran and she's concerned that more and more youth are becoming atheists they do not believe do they not believe in God they don't believe in religion they don't even believe in spirituality and she asks how can I as a mother bring awareness of the spiritual to my child it's a very positive thing that belief systems are collapsing and it's an inevitable process because human intellect is firing like never before in the history of humanity for a long time for an entire village or a community only one person used to think for all of them today everybody is thinking for themselves they're thinking right or wrong that's a debatable thing but they're thinking for themselves the fundamental of thought is thinking for yourself even if you sound absurd to somebody else within yourself you're logically correct am I right when two people argue have you seen always the other guy looks absurd what rubbish he has no logic but within himself he is logically correct he's thinking this one is absurd so the very nature of thought is such you might have found your own logic which may not be congruent with everybody else's but within you you're logically correct this is the fundamental of thought once you're logically correct belief becomes very difficult because belief does not agree with the system of thought that you may have you could be indoctrinated but indoctrination works only when you're kept in a flock if you're allowed to go out if you look here and there and think it'll collapse it's a very good thing in the last 25 years the number of heavens and hells that have collapsed on the planet is fantastic because this aspiration that I will live well somewhere else is a disastrous aspiration that is why we are making a hell of ourselves and making it a hell for everybody else around us because we think somewhere else we're going to live better this idea must go if you want to live well it's here if you don't get this if you want to live the highest possible life it is here that you can do it if this does not sink into human minds and hearts well all these people who are going to live well somewhere else they're going to cause hell to you here they're making sure you suffer here because there everything is going to be great so this idea must go so essentially when people say I'm religious naturally they refer to themselves as believers when we say belief essentially we are talking about I am not at straight in my life that is I am not willing to admit what I do not know as I do not know is there any problem that is it okay for you as a human being what I know I know what I do not know I do not know is it okay no whatever I do not know I believe and this belief we have introduced into human mind because it gives you confidence this confidence without clarity is a disaster as human beings get more and more empowered with technology and science this disaster will become larger and larger when we are not clear at least we must be hesitant isn't it hello when we can't see clearly at least we must walk with some politician no we can't see a damn thing but we are confident this is a disaster so we think that confidence is a substitute for clarity no there is no substitute for clarity either you see things clearly only if you see things clearly you will navigate your life well if you can't see things clearly then you are confident suppose my vision is not clear but I walk with great confidence obviously I am going to step on all of you and walk around isn't it that's what we are doing hello as human beings that is what we are doing stepping on everything that's precious to us which is the basis of our life in many ways and we are stepping on everything because we have no clarity and we have enormous confidence these disastrous ideas that first of all we thinking this universe or this cosmos human centric is a disastrous idea as he was mentioning Terry was mentioning in the beginning before we came life happened on this planet in glorious ways before we came we've been here for just a little bit of time alright well in many ways we are the peak of evolution that means in terms of capabilities nor the creature has been the way we are it's fantastic but the existence is not human centric if you talk to an ant an ant will think god is a big ant yes I'm sure if you talk to an elephant of course he knows god is a big elephant and even we think so in India so so this idea that human being is made in god's own image and every other creature is here to serve you this one disastrous idea if it was not planted in human mind today we need not sit here and talk about ecological concerns this idea every other life is here to serve us no you just see an ant is going just ask him if he's here to serve you he says hell with you man step anywhere near his community and see what he does to you you know the ants in pens business right oh he'll give you works because he thinks the most important life on the planet is him it's all right for him to think like that with so much intelligence we are supposed to think beyond this an ant thinks he's the biggest life on this planet most significant life on the planet is him that's why he responds so violently if you go anywhere near his community but we are supposed to think beyond that we are endowed with an intelligence which is able to think but we are refusing to think because we believe so belief essentially means whatever we don't know we make it up and concretize it so when we want to believe we always need people around us if you are the only person who believes something that nobody here believes you look ridiculous you always need a thousand people who believe the same thing so when I mean she whoever the lady she use both spiritual religious and atheist everything together you must understand thieves and atheists are same people acting to be different one person believes what he does not know in a positive way another person believes what he does not know in a negative way both of them neither have the courage nor the commitment to seek what is the nature of this existence what is the nature of my existence what is the nature of the larger existence what could be the source of all this this wonder and seeking is missing in both of them one believes god is another believes he is not how do you arrive at these things can I tell you a small story this happened in New York city an eighty year old boy came back from home okay came back from school home he had a very progressive mother at home obviously she was single he came home and asked his mother mama is god man or a woman she being a progressive woman she thought through all the gender politics that are happening and how we tried to settle it in the previous election and you know the result and then she said both so the boy went into deep thought after some time he came back and asked mama is god white or black so she thought through all the racial politics in the country how in the last election we tried to settle this issue and all those things after much thought she said both then the boy went into very profound thought then after quite some time he came back and asked mama is god straight or gay she thought through all the politics involved with that aspect of life after much thought she said both the boy jumped in joy I got it I got it Michael Jackson I don't know how you arrived at yours but the thing is why can't human beings be sincere enough what I know I know what I do not know I do not know what is the problem I do not know is a tremendous possibility only if you see I do not know the longing to know the seeking to know and the possibility of knowing becomes a living reality otherwise you believe something I believe something initially we are all okay but when really it comes to things we are going to kill each other the fight on the planet is not between good and evil as they are projecting it to be it's just one man's belief versus another man's belief religious or otherwise isn't it so one major aspect of conflict on the planet is you believe one thing I believe something else why can't we say what we know we know what we do not know we do not know what's the problem So I have a question for Terry once you say that spiritual process has begun because you is in the very nature intrinsic to human intelligence once you see I do not know the longing to know will get ignited you cannot stop to look everywhere so that's a spiritual process once you say I'm spiritual you say I'm a seeker once you say I'm religious you say I'm a believer isn't it Well and I might add for that lady for her child she was worried about him or her becoming an atheist but as you say it's a process it's not an end especially if it's a child I mean when our son was very little I mean as a baby they think we're God and then he gets to be he's talking to his friends he's talking back how did you do that and all of a sudden we know nothing and we're the devil that's a fully religious process exactly and then we gave him then we gave him a puppy and we're God again so you know it's a constantly evolving process be patient part of the problem that we're aware of in terms of the earth has to do with compulsive human behavior and I'm going to ask two versions of this question first is for Terry to identify what is an environmentalist and as a scientist and as a policy person what you consider to be most harmful to the planet and ask what you would recommend in terms of redress what is the advantage well the first thing might seem trivial but it's something that certainly most Americans can do in the last 10 years the average American has gained 10 pounds because of our diet salt, sugar, fat, meat and giving up some of that especially the meat would probably be one of the best things we can do to save the planet and one of the consequences of that is that we would burn 350 million more gallons of jet fuel carrying all that excess weight so if we were to lose the 10 pounds myself included if we were to lose that 10 pounds think how much better off the planet would be in every sense how much greenhouse gas we could reduce how much other deforestation and other things that we could reduce you know I think as I said before to me it's really eco illiteracy is the biggest problem because all of these other problems do have solutions as you said if we become seekers if we start to pay attention to what's real if we push back on the climate denial industry it's not just a matter of seeking what's real it's avoiding the temptation to find the easy answer that's convenient for us you know oh it's okay if I do this or that it won't hurt it won't harm the planet or gee my economic interest is more important than the planet so not only will I do certain things that actually are not good for me or my community but I'm going to lie about it to everybody else I mean that's definitely part of the problem but if we educate more people you can't lie to people that know better you know as you said before if only one person expresses a belief everybody else goes you're crazy and they certainly don't follow that person so unfortunately in this country when it comes to climate change when it comes to a whole host of environmental issues some of it is pure ignorance it's a lack of education it's a failure of our formal and informal education system but it's also unfortunately a great deal of money that is being used to intentionally mislead us and we have to learn to look past that to trust what we know what we've learned and what we can always go back to and confirm that should then guide us but if there's one single thing well let's say two number one is voting because I mentioned before people you've got to get them to vote and then you've got to educate them but that will in turn lead to more enlightened votes and that doesn't necessarily always mean the way I would vote or the way somebody else would vote I'm a Democrat who worked for a Republican I can see both sides of a lot of different arguments but I do think that the more educated people become about these issues not only will they then vote in a more enlightened and thoughtful way but they'll educate others they'll share what they know when they're confident of it enough for Sadguru often in your videos you talk about compulsive behaviors and habits mostly related to the body other than relying simply on willpower is there a beginner's technique to start the process of breaking these compulsive habits how do I say no to ice cream that's another way to put it compulsiveness is the only reason why human life has become what it's become is not because of the content of our life simply because we are able to change the context of our life because we can do the same things that every other creature does consciously they are born, we are born, we they grow up, we grow up they eat, we eat, we sleep they reproduce, we reproduce they die, we die that's all that's happening we may think many things about ourselves but if you look at generations of people who have come and gone this is all they did yes, they ate, they slept they reproduced and they died and here we are because of their reproduction this is how it's happening to every creature only thing is the same simple things that another creature can do we can conduct it consciously that's why we are so different see, we attach the word being only to the human we did not call an ant being, a tiger being an elephant being only human being that means you are supposed to know how to be all others live out of their instinctive compulsiveness that is their nature but you are a human being means you know how to be, that means you are beyond your instincts you also have survival instincts but you are able to be beyond your instincts and where your intelligence has flowered to a place where instincts need not rule you, you can be beyond your instincts so this is the essential quality for which we are distinct for which we stand out if we do not show that ability to be conscious then we become compulsive so compulsiveness is not a quality compulsiveness is just absence of consciousness it's like darkness darkness is not a quality by itself it's absence of light so similarly compulsiveness is just a consequence of lack of consciousness so instead of seeing how to make people conscious if we try to with willpower try to get rid of our compulsiveness we will become weird in so many ways which is happening so many weird things are happening in human behaviors simply because they are trying hard to change themselves if you become conscious you will perform according to your intelligence and your competence isn't it and that's how it should happen with willpower if you try to do it then you will go somewhere else it looks like you fixed everything around you except the human being yes, the most important ingredient is mist everything is fixed in the world except the human being so becoming conscious what it means is you can't try to become conscious to be conscious you need a certain level of intensity of energy and intelligence to function for this to happen all it needs is to crank up human energy to a higher level of intensity it's like voltage see if the voltage is low let's say there is only one light lighting up this entire hall if the voltage is low you saw only three people here so you thought only there are three people in this hall you crank up the voltage a little bit you saw ten people suddenly you see ten people exist you really cranked it up then you see hundred people out here they were always there but in your experience only what you are conscious of only what you are conscious of exists in your experience rest of it doesn't even exist so consciousness means this that your life energies you kept it at the highest level of intensity so that you are naturally conscious of everything when you are conscious of every aspect of life you will function according to your intelligence right now when you are not conscious your intelligence will not perform your instinct will perform that means you will be compulsive in nature if you perform or function according to your instinctual nature it is a backward step in evolution all this cerebral development which took millions of years has gone waste most people are only suffering it they call it stress, they call it anxiety they call it madness, they call it depression well you can give it any number of exotic names you want but essentially your intelligence is turned against you that's all it is if you remove half your brain I'm sure you would sit here very peacefully yes this happened a few months ago a television anchor in South India a 34 year old woman she jumped off fifth floor and committed suicide let a note nobody is responsible for my death my brain is my enemy well she articulated this very clearly this note went all over on the Indian television my brain is my enemy well it took millions of years to develop this brain to this level of capability and now it's become your enemy well she articulated it but almost 90% of the humanity is experiencing it isn't it you can call it stress what is it you don't know how to conduct your thought and emotion isn't it hello when are you going to learn I want to know you meet a 50 year old 60 year old they still don't know how to conduct their thought and emotion when the hell are you going to learn no wonder you are planning to go to heaven because you are not even completed your kindergarten here in your lifetime see if you do not know how to conduct your body how to conduct your thought and emotion this means you have not figured how to use the basic faculties of your life isn't it hello most basic faculties of your life let's say you are 50 and you still don't know how to walk you are yet to learn what is it but we are taking this as normal this is the real disaster for humanity is we thinking it is normal people don't know how to handle their thought and emotion at the age of 50 or 60 it's quite normal well this is normal if you are in a madhouse yes only one who is abnormal is the doctor of the end everybody else is perfectly normal right now we are turning this world into a madhouse compulsiveness means a madhouse when people function compulsively they will do insane things nothing that complements human intelligence will be done yes for this you need consciousness are you capable of being conscious obviously isn't it so have you not seen the same thing that you do one day you are in a certain way food appeared in front of you you ate very consciously another day you ate possible or no both are possible or no so the difference is just that you have toned up your energy so that consciousness is not an effort that's the way you are made that's the way a human being is manufactured alright it's a conscious being that's why we are calling you a human being you know how to be you really knew how to be would you choose to be blissful or miserable obviously blissful so this is all the litmus test is in your life if you wake up in the morning and if you are not blissful this means you have become compulsive if you food appeared in front of you and you cannot burst into a little bit of laughter before eating it not because you are practicing laughter simply because you are conscious you are conscious that this is your body but appears on your plate hello if you are conscious this this me appears in green red blue way all kinds of stuff I look at it I can't help laughing it's not that you have to laugh before you eat you will go mad if you try to do that but if you are conscious everything in the universe is absolutely fantastic too fantastic there's nothing more brilliant than a blade of grass on this planet hello well said I want to close with a two part question so the first is you've seen a lot of different farming techniques and there's an organic farmer from Southern California that would like your advice practical advice a gardening tip and then the other question says how can we arrive a conscious connection with mother earth every step we take on her so I'm not a farmer my wife has a vegetable garden which is very prodigious and we eat from it I kale this afternoon from our garden very gratefully and I learned a lot from Ed and Michelle but I would say instead I'd look at a trend if the gentleman who asked the question is an organic farmer or it could be a woman whoever it is, he or she is an organic farmer that think about ten years ago what the word organic meant it was sort of hippie-dippy and it was in little small shops and co-ops and things like that and then whole food started to embrace it and every major supermarket chain has to have an organic section and Amazon bought whole foods because the world is going in this direction people are realizing they want organic food they want clean healthy food where they know where it came from so I would just say bless you keep doing what you're doing because the world is going to need a lot more of what you produce and ultimately we can end this concept of killing the soil of chemicals, petrochemicals and creating something that some people call food I see that we have started using these words which have become part of our daily life like for example this always bothers me the word waste everything that we have everything that we have from the food that we eat the clothes that we wear everything is essentially a piece of this planet hello everything is including this body and everything is just a piece of this planet there is never anything here that you can call waste you're allowed to use it and when you put it back it must become soil once again well Cornelius is here he's the shit king well I'm nothing is wasted how much percentage of United States shit do you have in your control well some big percentage of the shit from all the cities in United States Cornelius owns it he's not responsible for it but he owns it it's a long story it's a long story so I'm saying there's really nothing that is waste here it's just earth now we make many things out of it some things like us the moment we buried within a few days becomes earth very easily but we are putting ourselves in a box I don't know why I just cannot understand why are you in a box you must be in a rush to become part of the earth putting you in a box you're preventing this body from becoming earth unfortunately we evolved a system in our center anywhere around us if people die we just bury them and plant a tree on them so the thought their relatives and friends are this tree you make very good manure if you did not know this anything that you put out of your body makes fantastic manure Cornelius and the body itself is fantastic manure you know so this aspect of what is organic what is inorganic this really nothing like that everything is planet whatever you made out of it we made some things which unfortunately cannot quickly go back into earth it takes some things take a thousand years or more these days we are talking about but most of the other things if you put it down to earth within a matter of a decade decade or two it will be earth again so that's what is fantastic even you you may be thinking many things about yourself as far as mother earth is concerned she looks at you and she thinks you as a recycling process she throws you out and sucks you back she throws you out and sucks you back you think I'm a great guy I'm a great generation but she thinks nothing she just throws you out and sucks you back hello just a pop-up so this idea that we got from somewhere that we can grow food in some other way other than organic way is kind of unbelievable I'm trying to wrap my head around it I don't know how anybody came up with this idea but when this idea started taking root in India I was into farming I was living on a farm about 30-35 years ago 40 years ago the fertilizer companies were coming and giving talks in villages about the virtues of fertilizer how it can do things I was just sitting there and looking at them and I couldn't wrap my head around this how the hell and they were telling all the farmers this unfortunately worked they were telling the farmers see in Indian farmer is like this because largely it is rain fed cultivation irrigated lands or a certain percentage rest is all rain fed we had a system of rainfall that we could almost farmer would know on this day it will rain they would be ready they know on this particular day of the calendar it's going to rain and it always rains so he's got his plow ready everything ready for that day that's how it was but these guys came and advised you must remove all the trees because trees suck away the fertilizer it's expensive if you have trees they will take up all the fertilizer it won't go to your crops so you must take away the trees and trees just vanished in the last 40 years and such a scale for example the Ganga basin Ganga is the largest one of the biggest rivers in India it is metaphorically it is the river for the Indian people Ganga covers 25% of India's geography and 33% of India's agriculture is in the Ganga basin in the Ganga basin in the last 40 years time we removed 92% of the trees in the Ganga basin today every year we're putting back about 100 million trees that's just started yet to grow tree doesn't happen overnight we can plant but it will take 20 years to see make it look like a tree so this policy the commercial companies went about propagating that if you have trees you will not succeed in your farming and this led to suicides farmers started committing suicide because if his crop fails he has nothing to fall back on otherwise every farmer used to have a line of trees at least on one side because looking at the winds and the monsoon winds so that the seeds don't spread all over the land they always planted their trees on the eastern side because the southwest monsoon was the strongest wind so they always planted on the eastern side of the land and they want to conduct their daughter's wedding one tree they cut it's already named it was like this in the southern villages this tree is named after their daughter for her wedding this tree is growing when she was born it was planted it is growing when for her wedding comes they're going to chop down this tree and that's how it gets financed now the son has to go to the university there's another tree things went bad they went fell back on the trees but they just removed everything because fertilizer companies insisted you have to remove trees otherwise fertilizer will not be effectively used and in the last ten years over three hundred thousand farmers committed suicide in India simply because there is no fallback when crop fails there is simply no fallback for him he's just lost the money that he's borrowed from the banks or money lenders he can't pay back unable to bear that he just come and takes this extreme step so why I'm saying this is is there some other way to grow food other than organic there isn't there simply isn't there is no such thing as organic forming and some other synthetic forming there is no such thing you're just pumping up the organic plants with something just to make it look like food it is only looking like food in the last twenty five years the nutrient drop in Indian vegetables is forty percent you can eat the same amount of vegetables you're getting forty percent less nutrients and everybody is sick now in America you're talking about how to give up meat in India every doctor is advising meat you will not get nourishment the same fertilizer story at that time the fertilizer companies did that now the doctors are telling everybody if you do not eat meat you will not get nourishment in a way they're not totally off because vegetarian diet has no nourishment simply because of the way it's grown it's only looking like food it's not food it's trash that they're selling to you is there some kind of forming other than organic forming there simply isn't leave us with some inspiration oh did I depress you I thought that's what he was doing all night my heart is full but well as already Terry pointed this out at one point the people are going about saying planet is in peril planet is not in peril the idiotic humanity is in peril planet is not in peril it will adjust its sound planet knows how to come back it's just that it's not that we're also not going to be extinguished but we will bring huge suffering upon ourselves talking about 1.5 degree centigrade of rise which is a kind of a compromise decision we will heat it 1.5 degrees well when this happens the worst hit part of the planet will be Asia because it is believed out of 200 and odd islands in Indonesia it is believed over 60% of them will sink water rises anywhere to 2 meters about 6 to 7 feet if it raises over 60% of the islands will go down where will this populations go if an island sinks what's our problem the problem is there are too many people on the island isn't it if we do not do this consciously nature will do it to us in a cruel way correction if we do not do the corrections consciously nature will enforce it in a cruel way not because it wants to make you suffer that's our choice it is just that it's a correction and when corrections happen some things will be cut out when some things are cut out that is a painful process so we have to do this consciously this is the time this is the time I am saying because this is for the first time in the history of humanity that we can sit here and communicate to the whole world at this point of time if we cannot do the right things what the hell are we doing it's all right a thousand years ago even if we thought right we could not tell everybody we could not communicate to the world everybody did their own thing but for the first time we are able to communicate to the entire population on this planet every human being on the planet can be reached in the next half an hour or one hour if you wish when this kind of possibility is there this is the time to do right things and we have to do the right things both in terms of human consciousness this is the most important thing because without human beings becoming a conscious entity when they are in compulsive modes you cannot stop them see people are trying to curtail human aspiration it's not going to work people drive Tesla to their office but they got a beast parked in their garage all right yes so you cannot curtail human aspiration but you can definitely control human population now this looks like a single pitch from my side and everybody saying oh but we must understand this without lowering the human footprint believe me on this planet you thinking in the next 50 years you will make everybody sensible and control their aspirations what they seek now not practical because the world has not developed in a an equal way what is California what is India what is Bangladesh what is African countries these are different worlds by themselves only now these people are coming to their fulfilling their aspirations you go and talk to them about these things they will look through you and they will do what they have to do because they are just now fulfilling their small aspirations you are not going to control their aspirations it's not going to be controlled like that but population can be brought down and for this you need the cooperation of the existing populations the religious leaders particularly because you know we I think we need to come up with something maybe the heaven is over populated if you say this there won't be room no space out there so slow down here is a so but we want something inspirational yes the thing is just this humanity has the intelligence and for the first time the competence to fix things on this planet like never before we are the first generation who have the necessary competence intelligence technology and communication capabilities the first ever generation who has this competence we have to exercise this competence and there is no one mantra one mantra if you want we must raise human consciousness consciousness means just this physicality means this is my body that's your body no way do things things can be same till you bury them alright this is you this is me this is my body that's your body this is my mind that's your mind this is how it's always going to be and it's wonderful but there is no such thing as my life and your life this is just a living cosmos you captured a little that's all if you want this to become a life of some consequence the important thing is how big or how much life do you capture within this body within this mind simply depends on how open everything is left in you this is what consciousness means consciousness means a limitless existence physicality means a limited existence mentality means a little bigger existence but bigger than physicality but still limited because our mind and the structure of our mind is determined by what memories we carry and whatever memories we carry of knowledge and experience are still a minuscule compared to the nature of the cosmos but consciousness means that if you touch that dimension which we are referring to as consciousness you've touched an intelligence which is beyond memory that means you've touched an intelligence which is not bound by anything every human being has to come in contact with this dimension of intelligence within us only then we will function in a way that our well-being is not detrimental to something else not just another human being to everything else this is not an ecology class this is the nature of existence if your experience is limited to something everything else basically you will damage if your experience includes everything then everything that you do every action that you do every breath that you take will be in contribution to everything else so bringing this consciousness not ecological consciousness just human consciousness because you're touching that dimension of intelligence which is not bound by memory not bound by limited experience of life whatever we think we know all of us have limited experiences of life isn't it huh? however you will even if you've read the libraries of this planet still our experience and knowledge is very limited the only way we can go beyond this is our identities rise beyond race, religion, nationality physicality mentality beyond this if we touch something within ourselves only then our identities are beyond that once our identity is not limited to something narrow then the way we function is very very different this human being is a tremendous possibility in my perception I think we are just geared we have everything in place to become the greatest generation of humanity ever on this planet because no generation was ever empowered like we are are we going to just sit on the threshold and watch or are we going to make it happen is in our hands let's make it happen remember we're the only university in the hemisphere that offers a master of arts in yoga studies and it's all about consciousness I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and express gratitude to the Doshi family and the university Mr. Chappals said so only university are offering yoga studies we must understand yoga does not mean twisting and turning yoga means consciously obliterating the boundaries of one's individuality it means union that's what yoga means when you obliterate the boundaries of your individuality that's where the solution for everything is and we are extremely privileged to have Ed here among us Thank you