- The processed foods that people are eating,
almost everything that they're eating is a month old.
Ah, you, you
- I'm with you, yeah.
Hey there human with me Rainn Wilson.
Hey SoulPancakers, how you doing?
It's me, Rainn Wilson.
And recently I had an incredible opportunity,
I had the chance of a lifetime
to speak to a real actual guru,
like a guru from India with millions of followers
and tremendous spiritual wisdom, his name is Sadhguru.
And he's Yogi, a mystic, a visionary,
he's named one of India's 50 most influential people.
And his work has touched millions of people
throughout the world, through his transformational programs.
So, how often does the shlubby guy like me,
a former sitcom actor get to sit down
and have a conversation with a real live guru,
enjoy the conversation.
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 gonna make a rain joke,
I'm gonna make a guru joke.
- You can.
- 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 gurudom?
- Well, you don't aspire to become a guru.
People, when they find that your guidance is worthwhile,
they may call you a guru.
So, you You don't say I am the...
You know, the word guru means, one who dispels darkness.
Light cannot stand up and say I'm the light.
Well, you have to shine, then your 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
and 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 if you're joyful,
naturally you will look at everything from all sides.
One side is always the lighter side.
So just, well if you look at the planet right now,
where 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.
How do you find the light in all of this darkness?
- People love misunderstanding,
their psychological situations 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 of 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,
there are people who do that.
Sun setting somebody thinks it's the end of the world.
Well, when the sun sets,
if you if you do not remember 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.
- Hmm, very well said.
So, 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?
- 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.
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 and 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 the minutest quantity,
it can survive in a desert.
- Yeah.
- 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 23, 24 days,
with about 4000 to 4500 volunteers.
All I did was to give them two meals
and teach them a song to sing.
And we planted over 6 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 the 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 tried 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 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 the 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've planted over 38 million trees.
But over 200 other small organizations came up
because of this moment.
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,
the green cover of the state was around 16.5% on that day,
and it went up by about 7% in 15 years time
according to official gazette,
but according to the Google Maps is gone up over 11%.
- So, I love that you undertook this process in two ways,
one very practical in terms of planting trees
and one, also practical but different
in terms of shifting people's minds and perspectives
about their relationship to trees.
- Because there's only one problem on the planet,
human being, is there any other problem?
- No, that's very well, said, yeah.
- Human being means highest level of intelligence
and awareness on this planet.
But, should intelligence be a solution or a problem?
It should have been a solution for everything.
But unfortunately, we've made it a problem,
because that is the nature of intelligence.
If you don't hold it right within yourself,
it can be super destructive.
All the destruction on this planet today
is being done by the most educated people, isn't it?
Illiterate people don't have a real foot print,
they're actually very eco friendly.
Educated people are struggling to be eco friendly,
but they're anyway destructive,
simply because we have understood education
as a way to exploit something.
Human life can be improved, biodiversity can be enhanced,
just by shifting to what is called,
tree based agriculture or agroforestry.
Now, this has various economic impacts.
Right now, we have proven that in seven to eight years time,
the farmers income has gone up anywhere between 300 to 800%.
In India, the farm situation was so bad,
millions, if not millions, hundreds of thousands of farmers
about 300,000 farmers have committed suicide
in the last 22 years due to economic stress.
Economic stress is happening because the soil is depleting
and you're going on putting more and more inputs
and it's not giving what it should give you.
And now he's driven to a debt trap
where he takes his own life.
So this can be changed only by enhancing the soil quality.
Because without soil being rich, there is no life,
the very body that we carry is soil.
If there is no rich soil, there is no healthy body,
this must be understood.
It's very, very, very important.
- I love your teachings
in the way that you have this intersection of understanding
a human being, understanding the user's manual
of the human being 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 wanna 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 is simply too many conclusions about everything.
If you do not conclude about any 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' willing,
we will meet .
- Virus willing, will meet, we'll ride motorcycles together,
thank you sir.
- Thank you .
- Thank you.
Wow, what an incredible conversation,
what an amazing force of nature Sadhguru is.
So many mind blowing life's big questions.
So, what I wanna know is what questions
resonated for you the most?
What topics that he covered?
Please let us know in the comment section,
and we can continue this amazing conversation.
Thanks so much for watching.