A Prophecy from Mt. Everest

Questioner: My name is Kuntal Joisher, I am a mountaineer. I wanted to just share something from my mountaineering climbing experiences that I have had in the last few years. I shall remember the very first time when I was climbing Everest and we go through this section which is called the khumbu Icefall.

I’m just going to take some 30 seconds to describe what the section looks like. Think of it as like a frozen River of snow and ice. Let’s say if I take a suburb from Mumbai, a suburb is filled with a lot of buildings and a lot of cars and a lot of Roads, imagine that these buildings and cars and roads are all made of snow and ice. Now you take this entire suburb and you tilt it at an angle of about thirty five degrees and make it such that it moves about two to three feet a day, with a thing where these buildings can crash and fall on you anytime during the day, that is how the entire structure is.

And I still remember, it takes about twelve hours to cross the section. So, you literally don’t know whether you are going to survive the whole trip. Like, whether you’re going to take the next step and something’s just going to come down and crash on you and kind of just completely obliterate you. And walking the very first time through Khumbu Icefall, the very first few moments were very nervous very anxiety driven like kuch ho gaya to kya hoga, mar jaoonga, ye wo (What if something happens, I will die, this or that) constant like you know thoughts racing through my mind and panic constantly there.

Suddenly took a few steps and I don’t know there was this massive Epiphany that happened, Where I’m like let’s just surrender to the mountain itself, like let’s just embrace the mountain, let’s Just surrender. And just to be honest here when I’m say surrender I don’t mean, dimaag side mein rakhake charna shuroo karoonga , voisa nahin bol raha hoon, (I will keep my mind aside and start grazing, I am not saying that) that would mean recklessness and getting myself killed, which is also like accepting that the mountain is always going to have the last word here.

And it’s so gigantic and I’m like an ant in there mera jo mountain size ka ego hai, wo thora side mein rakho abhi (keep my mountain sight ego aside for now) and let’s just surrender, let’s just accept and let’s just enjoy the experience, be situationally very aware what’s going on, keep an eye out what’s going on, use my climbing skills just in case something happens and I need to save myself or need to kind of take some action. But I still remember that act like that moment being such a game changer in my life, where for the first time I just accepted, for the first time I just surrendered myself fully to the mountain.

It just completely changed my mind-set about how everything I do even in my personal life here, sitting in Mumbai and while I’m, I don’t believe, I’m not a believer or anything but that was my first brush with spirituality or whatever you want to name it. I’m not going to name anything but just connection with the mountain or connection with you know where we live in, and it’s kind of helped me come back home and look at the whole planet in a very different perspective. And short climate crisis is a very big thing and again I’m bringing that point but it’s allowed me to kind of be in the mind -set we need to conserve this planet, we need to conserve all this immense beauty and all this amazing stuff, all these amazing experiences that we have. Imagine if this planet is uninhabitable or is like we are living in an ice age how will we even experience these things? How will we live in these things?

So, I just wanted to kind of bring up that this perspective more from the connection around spirituality and more from you know, you were talking about materialism and that’s so much you know there’s so much connection and then kind of eventual connection with even climate crisis, which is keeping our planet in a great state for centuries and centuries and centuries to come and for everyone to have these experiences.

Acharya Prashant: You see it’s a very pertinent thing you have raised and thank you for that. There is obviously beauty in physical nature, Prakriti, but even as it is lovely, beautiful, mesmerizing, tranquilizing, there will be people who will come up with stuff like so what do we do? We return to the Jungle to enjoy all the scenes and the pleasantness or somebody might say so we give up all the things that are man-made and just be there, is that what we have to do? Maybe we can go there once in two months for a weekend, just consume the beauty and come back. So, to that extent everyone would agree with what you are saying. How to make people be more participative in this description that you just gave.?

I have a small solution. See, man is a special species. We cannot live by what is nature made alone, we cannot just live by that, which is prakritik. So, man, human beings that is homo sapiens, man will build, man will create. We will not find gadgets and computers or even great works of art and literature on the mountains by themselves, man is going to create. So, there is Beauty in stuff that is not man-made, there is obvious beauty there, the Moon is beautiful, the stars are beautiful, the night is so damn beautiful, there’s Beauty there. There also needs to be Beauty in what we make and we are Builders, we are creators by our very Constitution, we will create. If you force man to not to create, he’ll be suffocated internally and we have created this, right? We have created all the great works of philosophy. We have created Music, we have created theatre, drama, art, we have created huge ships and we have created concepts, we will create.

The thing is to create in a beautiful way and what is beautiful? That which does not merely gratify you in the short term but actually addresses the very core of your restlessness, that is the definition of beauty, that comes from the deepest of the philosophies. And that’s why we have said, because you talked of sundarta, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, that which cuts the very roots of the falseness within you, that alone is beautiful, nothing else deserves to be called beautiful.

So, whatever we do needs to have the same kind of beauty, that the top of a virgin hill has, right? Or a beautiful mountainous River has, those are the symbols of beauty, that we have, no? The eyes of a baby deer or even the roar of a lion, those are the things that we talk of as naturally beautiful, right? A well-looking man, a world of Jewish woman, those are the things that we talk of. How about the camera! How about the car? How about the mobile phones? These too, need to be beautiful our technologies too need to be beautiful, everything that we do needs to be beautiful. And if it is not beautiful one of the very inevitable side effects will be that it will destroy physical beauty as well. Because we are not beautiful so we are destroying all the beauty around.

So, if you want to preserve that beauty, that you encountered and were mesmerized by, you will have to first of all turn human beings into something beautiful and we have the capacity to be both, terribly ugly and enchantingly beautiful. The question is, what is the choice we are making? Do we want to be beautiful? Do we want to be ugly? Do we want to pretend to be beautiful remaining ugly? All kinds of choices are possible. what is the choice we are making?

If we are ugly, mind you, that will show up in the way our beaches are. And I looked at the Bombay beaches and I wanted to run away to Goa. Having been to Goa twice in the last two three months, it’s difficult to take this as a beach. And you look at anything, you look at even the faces of just four-year-olds and you are compelled to say, “No, this is not beautiful, this is not beautiful, this is terribly conditioned, it has ugliness and distortion writ(10.40) large over it, how do we call it beautiful?”

So, beauty is what we need to aspire for, rather than just more and meaningless material accumulation. And remember, when you have beauty, there is beauty in life, there is beauty in the heart, there’s beauty in the eyes that look at the beauty, then the desperate urge to have more and more of this and that is kept in check. Not that you become a renunciate, don’t be afraid, not that you just throw everything away and walk away to the jungles.

It’s just that, then there is a beautiful harmony, having said what I am saying right here, we all will always need clothes and it’s all right for textile technology to keep progressing, it’s all right if your garments keep getting better and better. But better and better is one thing and more and more is another thing. It’s great to have the cars that we have today, electric cars are wonderful or do we want to go back to that Daddy Ambassador. It’s obviously better to have the cars that we have today but then we must know what that car is for. If we know what the car is being built for, the car will be beautiful and our relationship with the car will be beautiful. Otherwise, everything will be ugly and the car will be driven with the ugliest purposes to the ugliest destinations and will turn all the places it goes to as very, very, ugly that’s what we are doing to all our Hill sides.

We hold our camps at Rishikesh and I’ve been a regular there over the last decade and the place has lost so much of its beauty so rapidly, ten years, ten years is nothing. In ten years, I have that, seen that place being denuded of what it was blessed with, it has been raped literally.

Questioner: So, this is I mean you are meaning beauty more from a very metaphorical perspective.

Acharya Prashant: No, very, very practical perspective. I’m not trying to be poetic here. What I’m saying is you have a restlessness within and that’s a central problem. That’s what make you come out of the Jungle, that’s what makes us do whatever we do every day, right? If we are perfectly okay, we will not do much of what we currently do, then we’ll do other things. What a sick man does cannot be the same as, what he does when he is healthy, right? In your sickness, especially, if you’re mentally sick, you will do a lot of insane things and that’s how we are.

When you get all right from here (pointing to the head), it’s not that you seize work all together, it’s just the quality of your work changes in a great way. But what we start saying is, “But if we stop doing all this, that we currently do, will there nothing be left to do, only chai-pan?” No, that’s not true. You will have higher order things to do, you’ll have beautiful things to create, a beautiful life to live.

So, we have that restlessness within, beauty is that which brings that restlessness to a stop, that is the definition of a beauty, that’s why I quoted Shiva, the destroyer of falseness, the destroyer of all kinds of weaknesses. Our weaknesses drive us, our weaknesses are our engine and carbon is the emission. So, beauty is that which can lift you up from your terrible mess, that which lifts you up has to be called as beautiful. That which drags you down is to be called as the ugliest. If we don’t live in a beautiful way, we’ll destroy all the beauty that we inherited.

Questioner: What are your thoughts on Recycling in all aspects? And I want to know if it can be used in the sense of recycling human beings also.

Acharya Prashant: Obviously, it is a part of the adaptation process because it’s not as if climate change is something reversible, carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for centuries. So, it’s not as if we are talking in a futuristic way, we are in the middle of it. We talked of the sixth mass extinction, it’s not going to happen, we are right in the middle of it. It’s not even started, we are in the middle of it.

The number of species, we are wiping out every day is unimaginable. How many species do you think are getting obliterated every day? Two, four, five, a dozen, it’s in hundreds? We are not talking of number of animals or something getting killed, we are talking of species getting permanently obliterated per day, per day, per day, per day.

So, the extinction is very much here, we are in the middle of it. So, you have to adapt to it because you’re in the middle of it, you have to adapt to it, you have to adapt to it. And adaptation would mean that you need to have Support Services, you need to have different kinds of houses, you need to have societies that are not very dispersed because the more dispersed you are, the more is your need for energy, you need to have different kinds of commuting patterns, you need to have different designs of workplaces all those things will be there.

So, recycling is one of the things, recycling, reworking, all these are part of the adaptation process, however, recycling is much in the same league as hoping that Green Technologies can be a solution to the problem of climate change. You see, when you recycle, what is it that you do. Not that recycling is a bad thing to do, I’m all for recycling. When you recycle, you relieve yourself of the guilt of your carbon footprint, again I admit that the carbon footprint of the average individual, especially the average Indian individual, is anyway not that big, but still when you recycle, you console yourself that you have done your bit.

Your centre, the very centre of consumption does not change but you have found out a very economical way, there I say cheap, to relieve yourself of your inner guilt. No, I’m a nice man, what have I done? You know, I recycle, I do not use much plastic or you know, when I’m going out, I take care to switch off that ten watts bulb, a ten watts bulb, and you are certifying yourself as a proper individual, just because you take these measures. You know, it doesn’t help much, the centre remains the same and it is from that centre that the very dangerous concept of Green Technologies has emerged.

Again, I am all for green technologies but green technologies are not a part of the solution. They can be at most a part of adaptation. These are two different things. When you have a long-term chronic disease, right? There is one thing called management of the disease, there is another thing called treatment. Treatment is the same as management, there is the cure of the disease. Cure does not exist now, cure does not exist now, but the disease can get so very progressed that it can become fatal very, very soon, very soon. It is not reversible anymore, mind you, even when we talk of net zero emissions, we are not talking of reducing dimensions and Net Zero we are targeting by two thousand fifty. It is not reversible anymore.

Questioner: Prevention?

Acharya Prashant: That would involve a change in who we are, of the change in who we are. Climate Change and the very centre of human beings, am I being too abstract, when I say centre? what do you mean when I say centre, the centre of him?

Questioner: Core of our being.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, the very idea we live by, the very tendency we follow that’s what I’m calling as a centre. Those who think in terms of thoughts, ideas and to them I’ll say, “It is the mother thought you hold as sacred that you can call as a centre.” Those who can understand to them, I’ll say, “It is the very tendency that drives the human being that’s the centre, that’s the centre.” Unless, there is a shift in the centre, a solution to the problem of climate change is not possible. Probably a solution is anywhere not possible but you can at least have a great response that’s coming from you. The way I look at it is, you know, the battle is worth fighting.

So, fight it like Krishna taught you. Probably a defeat is already pre scripted but fight it in the most honourable and valiant way possible, so that you can die like a man. So, the level of public awareness is just so low and the indifference is just so high, that probably a victory isn’t going to happen and it’s not in us, carbon dioxide is there, it’s already what? 440 PPM, 280 is what we need, it’s 440 PPM and it’s increasing and it’s increasing at an accelerating rate.

So, what victory are we dreaming of? Victory is not going to happen. It’s just that maybe this is an opportunity to correct ourselves one last time before we have wiped out, another Titanic story. You know, before you finally sink have one last great kiss. You are anywhere going to go, the ship is stuck and you cannot redeem it anymore, it’s sinking, we are sinking, the planet is gone, the planet is as good as gone.

I’m not trying to be a doomsday kind of, no, no, not that, I’m only stating the facts, I’m only stating the facts, we are gone, we are finished, we are finished. And we do not even want to survive. There is something within us that is so terribly angry at its own existence that it wants to die, we are suicidal. As a species, we don’t really want to exist, otherwise, we couldn’t have been living the way we do. I’m not just being metaphorical and all hot air. Were we really serious about survival? Would we live the way we do? Would we ignore the data we do? We don’t do that.

Questioner: Maybe we just think, we are invincible or something.

Questioner: Or inconsequential.

Acharya Prashant: Or inconsequential, I would rather go with that. Or simply invalid, we don’t deserve to live. It’s a mass suicide mission mankind is on. We don’t want to exist. The only problem is some want to exist and we are taking a billion other species down with us. What, that again, that little bird got to do with it, why have we destroyed her nest? Why have we just totally de-feathered her? She did nothing. Why is the entire planet suffering for the mindlessness of this one species?

Questioner: But if we send out the message that hay, doomsday is coming, then there will also be significant amount of people who will be like,” let’s just enjoy, let’s just do more materialism, let’s just consume more, anyways it’s going to die, let’s just you know do more and go.”

Acharya Prashant: I don’t think that would be the response, even as I say, that mankind is suicidal, I always remain sanguine about the other centre, the other centre. We all have the potential to be great, beautiful, realized, that potential exists and it’s that potential, I would always bet on even against the odds though mostly I lose the bet, but I would still prefer to never give up.

We don’t have an option. Kids are still being born, they deserve a future, don’t they? And I’m not talking of merely human kids. Kids are being born even till this date and they have done no wrong, why must they suffer? The issue of climate justice is very important, the ones who are responsible they are not suffering and the ones who are least responsible are suffering the most, right? Think of all the cyclones and hurricanes and tornadoes and which other countries that suffer most. Think of the Pakistan floods, third world countries have not done much and yet, they suffer the most.

So, climate justice, it involves people within this species and it also involves people outside this species, it says that we don’t take them as people. Is this discussion invigorating or depressing?

Q: Invigorating, off course.

Acharya Prashant: That’s the thing. I hope that this does not turn off a lot of people rather makes them, makes them realize that they can be better. It’s not a problem that technology can solve, it’s a problem only spirituality can solve.

Unless we become better people, there is no way we can even begin to address this problem. There is no technological solution to the problem of climate change. You cannot have green technologies. You know, people are talking of machines that will suck out the carbon from the….it says that those machines will emit more carbon than they. The machines that really suck carbon from the atmosphere are called by the simple names of trees but those machines you are not ready to admit. Instead, we want to make huge machines that will, come on come on it’s absorbing carbon. Do we understand the size of the atmosphere? What kind of machines are we talking of. What will power those machines? Do we really have Technologies, Green Technologies, that can power such huge machines.

Most of the world’s energy is still coming from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are anywhere going to run out. Why not switch to other Technologies? Though, I’m not saying switching to other technology is a solution, we said technology is not the solution but still as an adaptation, just to convince ourselves of the beginning of our sincerity, why can’t we begin with these things? But even if we develop the greenest of technologies that’s not the solution.

The solution is a fundamental change in the human being. If we continue to remain the people we are, what do you think the Covid pandemic had nothing to do with climate change? Everything, it had everything to do with climate change. Because our population exploding, we are getting deeper into the jungles, because the jungles are getting hotter, the creatures over there have to get into the human habitations, therefore, these two are now coming in contact and hence the virus would spread. Yesterday it was the Coronavirus, tomorrow it would be some other virus.

Because these two, men and the Beast, who used to live peacefully in their own demarcated provinces are being forced to come in contact. You are breeding more and more kids, so you need land, right? So, what do you do? You get into the jungle, you hack down the forests. Where will those creatures go? Obviously, they will enter your villages, your towns and then there is contact and then the virus spreads, you’ll have more such events. Remember, even if we are to say that, “It’s not really that we that mankind as a whole got into the jungle, it is believed that, it was a team of researchers that entered a particular cave containing those bats that had the virus.” Now, what kind of research do you want to do and to what end?

Questioner: So, I get your point of there needs to be a shift in the centre and more spirit, like becoming a better human being through a spiritual path or whatever we want to call it. So, that’s a Global change, that needs to happen, if we need to do anything about climate change, eventually right that’s the first step before we are not even acknowledging that climate change even or climate crisis even exists, there are so many deniers. So, we are not even to that position but I still feel like as part of this discussion, if we can even come up with hey yours is here’s what someone can do sitting as an individual in their homes, hey, this is what I can do to probably can do something at least. Is there something like every one of, I’m not saying more from a spiritual shift, right that’s a much harder battle to win but can we do something on the side as well each one of us that is easier to do?

Acharya Prashant: Talk about it, talk about it and when you talk confess that talking is not sufficient. See, you cannot remain the same person in the same home doing the same things living the same way and yet hope to do something about this historical threat. We are still not waking up through the magnitude of the tragedy, that’s the reason I opened this by using the word sixth mass extinction.

We are still not gathering the full import of what that means. That’s not about a few people dying here and there, that’s about the entire race getting wiped out and we are responsible for that. That’s not happening due to incidental reasons, it’s called man-made climate change, it’s anthropomorphic global warming, AGW, we are doing it and we are not getting it.

So, how can we even talk of just cosily remaining and scones in our chairs and beds and lives and carrying on with our daily business and as a sidey thing, doing some teeny-weeny bit for it. Won’t work, won’t work, but if you do want to do some sidey thing, I’ll request you to talk, so that the words reach at least those people who are prepared to do the real thing. You can’t do much, then at least spread the message, let people know what’s going on, let people know that nothing is more important than this, everything is going to be wiped out what will remain.

So, how can anything else will be more important? This is the thing, nothing else matters. It’s like you know the Titanic has been hit and people are so busy partying. Nobody wants to heed, there’s already a hole in the…. and water is gushing in at a terrible rate each passing moment. There are no repair shops around, technology is not the solution.

So, what do we do? Are we doomed to die? We can do something, we can do something. Try not to be the one, you currently are. It’s an opportunity to be a better self and only that is a solution. It’s in some way, mankind is being forced to choose extinction or divinity. Either be great or be gone. You cannot survive the way you are. If you remain the way you are, you are gone. The only way to remain is by remaining as great people. Choose to be great, choose to be beautiful, choose to be sensible, choose to see and then there might be a chance.

Questioner: Thank you so much Acharya ji, for all your time, really, really appreciate, you sharing your thoughts around all the questions we had and around all these topics. Very much appreciated. Do you guys want to share?

Questioner: Yes, it’s very enlightening.

Acharya Prashant: Thank you.

Questioner: And I think more such philosophical discussions should happen, not just within homes but with larger community spaces. I think it is very important that we go back to the roots of what philosophy means and that is to spread the wisdom of knowledge amongst people, so that we get a better centre. Thank you so much for this.

Questioner: I feel that these are certain things, that we all know of but we don’t like think of it. After this conversation, it’s really gonna stay in my mind at least and I hope that this helps the audience as well.

Questioner: And I hope that BigBrainco Google make some videos around this topic.

Acharya Prashant: Many many more videos, many more videos. You guys have very important role.

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: Wonderful.

Questioner: Thank you so much.

Acharya Prashant: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you everybody.

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