Translator: Paulo Oliveros Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you.
Power of ideas.
Every great movement in our history
presented their power of ideas with three words.
The French Revolution: Egalitè, Libertè, Fraternitè.
The great Christian, before that:
Father, Son and The Holy Spirit.
The American ideal: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.
Our own time, New Age movement: Mind, Body, Spirit.
But all those three words were right in their time.
But they lacked something.
Either lacked our relationship with the natural world
or they lacked our relationship with our own self
or they lacked our relationship with the human world, human society.
So power of ideas, I come to this TED event
with three words,
a new trinity for the Age of Sustainability.
And those three words are:
Soil,
Soul
and Society.
I put Soil first
because we have forgotten that we have come from the soil.
We have forgotten that we will return to the soil.
We do not remember
that soil, which nourishes us, feeds us, looks after us.
Soil for me represents the entire natural world,
the entire Earth.
But we humans have thought that we somehow are very special species,
and we rule the Earth.
And we control Nature.
And we can use Nature as we like
because we are the rulers; we are the -
pinnacle of evolution.
I want to say that we are not the rulers of Nature.
We are not the superior species.
We have come from the Earth,
and all the species upon this Earth are our kith and kin.
The birds flying in the sky: our brothers and sisters.
The deer, the snake, the elephant ...
The King of Spain goes to Botswana to hunt an elephant.
Shame on such monarchy.
They are our brothers and sisters.
We are Nature. Nature is not out there.
The trees, the mountains, the forests, the animals, the birds: we are nature.
Nature means to be born, natal, nativity, nation, native,
they're all words coming from the same root.
So we are Nature,
and what we do to Nature out there, we do to ourselves.
And therefore, let us create a new consciousness
that we have to revere Nature.
James Lovelock,
the great scientist of our time,
inventor of Gaia hypothesis and theory,
he said, "I revere Gaia, Mother Earth."
So if we forget the Mother Earth,
then all our "libertè, egalitè, fraternitè,"
all our "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness"
will go nowhere.
Therefore let's remember the Soil first
and then become the Soul.
And many scientists, Richard Dawkins, and many others say
that there is no such thing as spirit, there's no such thing as soul,
we are only brain.
I want to dispute that.
I want to say that Earth is soulful.
We are all soulful.
Even animals have soul,
trees have spirit,
and therefore we are soul-ful.
And if we do not take care of ourselves, and our soul, and our spirit,
and ourselves, then we cannot take care of the soil or the Earth.
So, caring for the Earth
and caring for the soul are interrelated.
And we all have great potential.
Our soul, our spirit, ourself.
That potential is at the moment dormant.
There was a great philosopher in India called Ananda Coomaraswamy,
he said that an artist is not a special kind of person,
but every person is a special kind of artist.
(Laughter)
We are all artists. Potential artists.
But our artist, our special being, is dormant, suppressed.
We have to let it come out.
Let it unfold. Let it evolve.
Every one of us is a potential Van Gogh.
Every one of us is a potential Shakespeare,
a potential Gandhi, even a potential Buddha!
But we have forgotten;
we think we are only workers in the office,
managing the computers,
and using mobile phone, and just getting 9 to 5 job,
and just getting our salary, and then time comes we will retire
and go to our grave.
We are more than that!
If we take care of our soul, we can be a Gandhi.
You are all great leaders.
Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma, she is like us.
For 16 years in house arrest, but her spirit, her soul ...
she takes care of the soul, she meditates.
And so, let us take care of our soul.
Taking care of your soul is not selfish.
If you are not healthy, if you are not well,
if you are not happy, if you are not fulfilled,
if you do not have well-being, how are you going to help anybody else?
And therefore, care of the Earth, and care of the Soul,
are two aspects of same reality.
And then we come to Society.
We cannot forget our human community.
We have been too narrowly focused in our small, small identities.
As you heard I went around the world,
walking, without money, for peace.
How did I walk?
If I had gone as an Indian, I would have met a Pakistani,
or a Russian, or a British.
If I had gone as a Hindu, I would have met a Muslim,
a Christian, a Buddhist.
If I had gone as, say, socialist, I would have met a capitalist.
I did not take any of those labels.
I said, "I'm going to go as a human being,"
and I met human beings everywhere.
No Russian, no American, no British, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Jain.
These are all secondary identities.
Our primary identity
is identity that we are members of the human community.
We are members of the Earth community, and we are members of human community.
And once we have that big vision, and we expand our consciousness,
and we say that I am a miniature, I'm a microcosm of macrocosm,
and this wonderful diversity
of religions, of nationalities, of race, of color, of philosophy, of politics,
they are wonderful, we need diversity.
Without diversity there's no unity.
But let us remember, diversity is not divisions.
Our modern mind is dividing.
They are not respecting diversity, they are just focusing on the divisions.
So let's embrace diversity
and celebrate, like a pilgrim celebrates.
There are two kinds of people.
One kind of people are tourists.
And tourists always complain.
(Laughter)
And, the other kind of person is a pilgrim.
And pilgrims always celebrate.
I want to invite you to join me as a pilgrim
and not as a tourist.
We have been living on this Earth like a tourist,
always self-centered, me me me, my comfort, my success, my money,
my house, my holiday, me.
I wrote a book called "You Are Therefore I Am."
I challenged René Descartes of France, French philosopher and scientist,
who said, "I think, therefore I am."
Can you live just in your mind?
Can you eat your mind? Can you eat your thoughts?
Without the Earth, I cannot survive.
Earth is, therefore I am.
So I wrote my book "You Are Therefore I Am."
The others are, therefore I am.
So we can expand our consciousness
and say "I am in miniature, in microcosm
the whole universe, the whole humanity."
And I can embrace and celebrate that society,
then there'd be no wars,
no Iraq, no Afghanistan, no Kashmir, no conflicts, no poverty
because we are members of one Earth community.
We are members of one Earth family.
That is the society.
Mrs. Thatcher said, "There is no such thing as society."
I said, "How did you survive until now?
There was no ..."
(Laughter)
"How did you survive?"
So, society exists, and we are members of that society.
So this way, Soil, Soul and Society is interrelated -
three words in our interconnected world.
If we want to create a sustainable future for humanity,
then we have to realize that we are creatures of the Earth.
But we have a tremendous potential,
and we can allow that potential to resurge.
This is why I called my magazine, which I edit, called "Resurgence."
Let your leadership resurge.
Leadership is not going to come out of 10 Downing Street.
Leadership is not going to come out of even White House.
We had a great hope from Obama, he wrote a book called "Audacity of Hope."
Where is that audacity?
Hope with timidity.
So, leadership is not going to come out of Paris, London, Brussels, Moscow
or any of those political centers.
You are all of us, every one of us, are a potential leader,
and with that we can come out if we let go of this little ego.
We are too narrowly focused in our ego.
And we think the me me me me me, my success, my name, my fame,
my money, my house.
If we come out of that ego, like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa,
Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama,
all these wonderful examples we have,
mentors we have, to follow.
And when we let that dormant leadership come out, then we can be who we are.
Truly who we are. We have to be who we are.
We don't have to copy even Gandhi.
We don't have to even copy anybody else.
But if we want to bring about a change in the world,
as Mahatma Gandhi said,
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
You cannot preach change to others unless you have that embodiment of change.
Embodiment - you have to be the change you want to see in the world.
And once you have that,
then there's integrity between your words and your action.
And then you have a power to communicate.
Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Dalai Lama,
all these great leaders were able to communicate what they embody.
Communication is not just about words.
TED lecture's wonderful.
I'm speaking to you, wonderful.
But if there was no backing with these words in my life,
there'd be no good words.
And so be the change you want to see in the world,
and then you communicate, and organize, and that way we can transform the world.
We can say that we can create a world like Nature.
I talked about Soil, Nature. Nature is wonderful.
You plant one seed in the ground, in the soil, an apple seed.
That one seed, little tiny seed, put in a real investment,
better than HSBC or Barclays, or Lorax.
The real bank is The Earth Bank.
And you invest and deposit your seed in the soil.
It will come out.
How much interest do you want?
(Laughter)
Thousands upon thousands of apples.
Not one year, not two years, not five years, but 50 years.
What generosity of Nature.
What abundance of Nature.
And we think Nature is no good.
GMO, we will create GMO. Nature cannot feed us.
We go for drugs. Nature cannot take care of us.
Nature, that seed which was so bitter, so small, you could not eat it,
that seed created apples,
fragrant,
aromatic,
juicy,
delicious!
And so generous, so generous.
Anybody comes to an apple tree -
I'm an orchard keeper.
My wife June, who is here, and I,
together, we have planted 15 apple trees.
And every year we have so many apples we cannot eat them.
So we share with them.
And you go to an apple tree,
whoever you are, whoever you have come from,
apple tree will never ask you, "Have you come with your VISA card?"
(Laughter)
Never!
"Have apples free of charge."
You are a saint? Mother Teresa? Have apples.
You are a sinner? Have apples.
No discrimination in Nature.
The modern scientists have said, "Nature red in tooth and claw."
I think it's a mistaken science. It's a wrong kind of science.
We want a science which does not say Nature is good or bad, Nature just is.
Some people say Nature is competitive.
Some people say Nature is cooperative.
I say Nature is not; it's a human projection.
Nature is just Nature. Just it is.
It is wonderful, it has colorful flowers, bluebells, at this moment.
Go to Dartmoor, I made a film on Dartmoor -
Natural World program for BBC 2, "Earth Pilgrim."
Bluebells, primroses, hawthorns, wonderful nature blossoming.
But remember, there are also brambles there.
We have to celebrate everything.
We have a garden, and we do gardening every day, every particular seasons.
We always have to weed the docks out.
There is no such thing as just one-sided Nature.
Nature is balanced: yin-yang, dark and light, complement.
Left and right, complement, together.
So, my friends, I give you this new trinity of Soil, Soul and Society.
For a new world of sustainability. It's a world of interconnectedness.
And this trinity is a trinity of wholeness,
it's a trinity of completeness, it's a trinity of relatedness.
We are all related, all human beings are related.
All creatures upon this Earth are related.
We are one manifesting in millions and millions of forms.
So let us celebrate that diversity,
and let us call this new trinity for our age:
Soil, Soul, Society!
Thank you!
(Applause)
Thank you!