What soil has given you is not just food;,it is soil which is your body, it is soil which is this cloth, it is soil which is everything here, isn’t it? Anything and everything.
Well, this dirty soil has been your medicine also. The first antibiotic, which we call as penicillin, comes from soil fungus. It’s estimated the advent of penicillin could have saved more than 200 million lives in about 50 years time. It comes from soil. Streptomycin, without which millions would have died of tuberculosis.
My grandmother, my father’s mother, died at the age of 22, when my father was just about 4 years, or just over 4 years of age. She got tuberculosis – a wealthy family, but there’s no treatment. So, they made a small house for her on top of a small hill, because there was a belief that if you live on a hilltop, if you breathe pure air, you may get healthy. So, they put her there, and she got worse and worse – in about 8 months’ time she passed away. This was the normal process in the previous generations.
This penicillin and streptomycin, together, might have saved something like 400 to 500 million lives in one generation. All this is from soil, and there are any number of other things. Why go like this separately? Just everything that you know as life, everything that you know as material that you’re using, is soil. Yes or no?
A time has come where if we don’t attend to it [soil], it may freak on us
A time has come where if we don’t attend to it, it may freak on us. There is no “may” anywhere anymore – it will freak on us. If we don’t make a serious effort to turn it around, it will freak on us.
The word “yoga” means this, spirituality means this, that your experience of life is not limited to the boundaries of your body. If it was so for every human being, how could you miss the terrible screaming of the land? The land is screaming.
I’ve sat for hours and days in forests, not just being alive, but being high, intoxicated, drunk with life, because life is buzzing with great exuberance. Most of the life you won’t see. But the same, if you walk on various other parts of the world, the land is screaming with pain. It’s not something that you make up in your head, life is screaming!
A butcher who chops off large animals, he doesn’t hear the scream of the animal. Hello? There are many people who kill other human beings, they don’t hear the screams and pains of those people. Those who rape and murder, you think they heard the screams? Maybe the ear heard, but he doesn’t go anywhere. So, a butcher who slaughters animals, he doesn’t hear the scream of the animals. One who chops off trees and whatever else, other live things, he doesn’t hear that. Similarly, one who is busy destroying life invisible, he doesn’t hear that – that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
So, we’re at a crucial time. If you do things right in the next 10 to 15 years, you will have the satisfaction of seeing something significant happening. It’s not fireworks will happen, it will happen quietly. It will happen very quietly.
If you do things right in the next 10 to 15 years, you will have the satisfaction of seeing something significant happening
You need to understand this – even when major events were happening, let’s say, India’s freedom struggle is happening. Worst kind of exploitation has happened to the country, and to the people. People are being treated like dogs; everywhere in India boards, “Indians and dogs not allowed” – most places, restaurants, clubs, all important places. And if you go to any office, you may be anything, you may be rich, you may be educated, but if you want to sit on a chair, you need a permit from the government that you can sit on the chair, otherwise you have to sit on the floor. You had to have a permit, a printed permit, otherwise you can’t sit on a chair. Even though they treated you that bad, only about 20% of the people, approximately, fought for freedom. Other 80%, “Anyway, somebody’s fighting.” Are you going to be that 80%, I’m asking?
When things have to be done, you must stand up and do it! In Kannada there’s a saying, [Speaks in Kannada] That means, if somebody’s dead, there’s a corpse has to be carried. In India, always you need 4 people to carry a corpse – that’s a respect, minimum 4 people must carry. When 4 people are carrying, there is one guy who’ll not take the weight, who’ll simply go like this. Are you that guy? Please don’t be that one, because you will die unfulfilled in your life. It doesn’t matter – extra weight is tough, but it’s fulfilling that you are not that guy who escapes that thing… don’t be that! As a generation of people, we should not be that. That is when we can have the kind of world that we want to live in, otherwise, we will live in a world that is created by tyrants of various kinds.
Tyranny means you have no concern for any other life than yours
Don’t think only Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, somebody, somebody – tyrants are there everywhere. It may come in the form of industry, it may come in the form of the political leader, it may come in the form of yourself – who knows? Tyranny means you have no concern for any other life than yours. That’s tyranny, isn’t it? Hello? Tyranny does not mean you’re a dictator in a country. I don’t think most of you have the capability to be a dictator, it’s not easy. Tyranny simply means, you have no concern for any other life but yours. This is tyranny!
I want you to not just do something for these 100 days and make this movement happen – that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you to become a sensitive life. Because without sensitivity, there is no life. That’s about it. Being human means many, many possibilities, highest level of sensitivity – if you don’t exhibit that, then your humanity comes to question.
This is not about Save Soil movement. Your humanity comes to question, your spirituality definitely, a big question mark! Because if you don’t feel for anything, how is it going to work? “I only feel for this one [self].” What does it mean? My boundaries are set, isn’t it? My boundaries are set like a concrete block, nothing beyond that. Don’t become like that. This is a great opportunity for you to make yourself little more conscious than where you are right now.
