Questioner: Yeah, I had a question, because oftentimes it’s like—it’s easy to feel disassociated from these people in power and say that, you know, they didn’t get there rightfully. But at the end of the day, sometimes these people in power have such a weight over your life, society’s life. If they’re people in power, it feels demoralizing to feel hopeless that the people in power are not going to be representative or do justice to what we do. So how, as an individual, can I make an impact—to put people in power and get everyone else to put people in power that represent us?
Acharya Prashant: Create a little domain—a circle, a field of your own—untouched, uninfluenced, uncorrupted. Obviously, they are lording over entire countries and continents, and practically we know we cannot go out and fight them—that's fine. But still, we can have our own little private islands of serenity and sacredness. And we should not allow anybody to enter those places. Those should be our private temples. Small places, involving just the right kind of people, for the right purpose. And then, as you grow in your inner rootedness, you might find that circle widening. And if we can have enough number of such circles, each of them gradually widening, one day they’ll all come close and coalesce into a big upsurge of real virtue.
But you cannot start with the aim of something tectonic—"let there be a great earthquake and let me bring all these structures of authority down." You cannot start with that. You need not start with that. Start with your little thing—five people, ten people, twenty people—and keep widening, keep widening and know that.
** It's human nature to strive for freedom, for purity, for sacredness. So you would not be alone in this.**
Unknown to you, in some other place, somebody else is doing the same thing. And if your circles keep expanding, one day the two circles will come into contact. And then something great will result.
Questioner: Yeah, that's a really relatable statement for me. For example, I'm very passionate about climate justice and climate change. And you know, UC Berkeley is said to be one of the very environmentally friendly universities, but since coming here, I feel like a lot of my peers actually don't really care.
And you talk a lot about climate justice and climate change. I was wondering—you know, I have this idea that climate change is my issue, and as an individual, I have to do a lot for it. And it's also sometimes disheartening, especially because you see a lot of big corporations doing most of the impact for climate change. But I know you talk a lot about how climate change is human-consciousness related, and I was wondering if you can elaborate on how our inner void and compulsive consumption are linked to environmental destruction, and how we can also manage that as purely individuals that have such a much smaller impact on environmental degradation.
Acharya Prashant: See, it's very simple. It can be explained even to a kid—and I do that. We are upset within. We are not okay within. We are unfulfilled, and we do not know why, because we are not educated or trained to have an inward focus in life. We don't look at ourselves. We don't reflect on our thoughts, actions, feelings. So we remain upset, unsettled within. And when we are that way, then we want to go out and do things. Let's go somewhere. Let's eat out there. Let's fly to that place. Let me buy new stuff. Why can't I have a private jet? Why can't I fly to my job daily?"
So when you do things outside, it's obvious it requires energy. And it so happens that the more uprooted you are inside, the more is the number of unending things that you compulsively want to do on the outside. "I'm not at rest. I'm not at peace. So sometimes I go and pick that up, sometimes I go and try putting that chair over there, sometimes I run upstairs, drop something there. Oh, what if I could have a badminton court in the adjacent lawns? So I'll cut down, uproot all the trees, and have a cemented court there." And I’ll do all these things, and I'm doing these things because I'm not all right within. Just that doing all these things requires energy.
And a thing of coincidence is that most of the planet's energy today comes from fossil fuels. So when you go out and do things, you release carbon. It's as simple as that. Now, going out and doing things is not really the problem—because if you're doing something for the right end, it usually has an end point as well. But when you do not know what you're doing, then you do it endlessly. Like corporate profits. Go and ask somebody on the board of a corporate, "Do you have an end point? This is how your P&L and balance sheet look— is there ever going to be a point where you would say 'enough is enough, it’s saturated and we are not proceeding any further'? We don’t require at least an ever-increasing number against my profits?"
Not a single person, not a single CEO, not a single stakeholder is going to say there is a definite end point. They'll say, "We require it to increase every year." Now, for it to increase every year, you'll have to consume energy. You'll have to dig out stuff from below the surface of the earth. You'll have to burn things. And you'll have to brainwash your consumers into believing that the products of your company are needed for them to have a sustainable or respectable life.
You'll destroy everything. You'll destroy your employees as well, because since you have no upper limit to your profit, you'll want to extract the maximum from your employees, offering the minimum you can to them. You would exploit the earth. You would exploit your employees. And obviously, you would exploit your customers. And all that is climate change. When you extract stuff from the earth, that requires energy. That releases carbon dioxide and methane. When you brainwash your customers, they purchase not just your useless products—they get identified as being purchasers and consumers. So they keep on purchasing everything, not just your stuff. And when you purchase, then somebody manufactures. For somebody to manufacture something—again, what is needed is energy. So,
Climate change is nothing but a product of the unfulfilled, dark interiors of this species, homo sapiens. No other species is born with this kind of unrest within.
No other species is responsible for the climate disaster. We are. Why? Because only the human being has a hollow in her heart—a hollow that she keeps trying to plug in using all kinds of material things. A new haircut. A new pair of shoes. A new husband. A new job. This, that—and all of that is energy. "I'm not feeling well. Not feeling well." Your feelings are carbon. Because in feelings, as we said, there are no facts. You do not know what the facts of your insides are. All you have is feelings. And feelings are blind. To feel so much is to experience so much—without understanding anything.
When you feel something, do you ever understand it? You feel you have a headache, right? That doesn't mean that you understand how the brain works and why it is aching. So we feel a lot, but we are not at all in touch with facts. And this feeling—given the kind of respect we give to feelings—makes us run hither and thither. And all that is carbon emission.
There can be no scientific, no economic, no political, no technological solution to the climate disaster. Not at all. Because this is purely a spiritual crisis.
Questioner: I agree that overconsumption is one of the biggest problems for climate change and climate justice. But sometimes it's not even overconsumption. You're consuming the bare minimum. But like you were talking about—technological advancements—how do we stop our society from going stagnant? Because innovation, every innovation in every field now requires some sort of large carbon footprint. Is there a way to coexist with innovation, spirituality, and climate justice?
Acharya Prashant: No, I do not see how innovation is out of tune with mitigating the climate disaster. Right now, what you call innovation is nothing but a particular kind of innovation that would further the capitalist objective. We don’t just innovate—we innovate only in particular directions. Directions that would enable us to have more profit. So we are not having real innovation, mind you. We only innovate where there would be an ROI on the innovation. So it's not as if innovation necessarily goes hand in hand with consumption. That's the kind of innovation we are seeing—but that's not the rule.
This idea that unless there are more profits and these things, we would not progress—are we even testing this idea? You see, man does not exist for the sake of financial growth. Instead, financial growth is for the sake of the human being. Right? True? Do we realize, first of all, what we truly want? Now obviously, to an extent, money is important in that. But isn’t there a point beyond which the returns start diminishing? If you live in a third-world country with very little financial resources, then obviously having money would contribute to your welfare—we all agree, right? You would get better nourishment, you would probably get a roof over your head, your students would get better schooling—your kids. That would all start happening. We understand.
But a point comes when more money or more consumption does not contribute any more to your welfare. The curve starts flattening. Is that not so? And then there might be a point when the curve actually starts dipping—negative marginal utility. So why do we continue to believe that unending growth in per capita income or per capita consumption is the …………for human progress? It’s not that way. It's an assumption that we need to challenge.
There are several countries where the per capita income is very modest, yet the average life expectancy is better than some of the first-world countries. Innovations are happening at the same rate, or at a faster rate, than the Global North. Japan is known to have people who live the longest. Are Japanese richer than Americans? No. In terms of per capita income, no. But they are more peaceful and happier. So is capital, money, financial growth needed for its own sake? Or is all economics actually for the sake of the individual? And do we understand what the individual really needs?
We are not saying the individual needs mystical salvation—no, we are not coming from there. No spiritual mumbo jumbo here. We fully understand that we need money. But being rational people, we would also want to plot money against welfare, and see where the curve attains saturation. And beyond that, if you're still invested in earning money, then you are wasting yourself, your life—and also destroying the planet. That's what is happening. That's what climate change is.
Questioner: So I had an interesting point to add to this because the other day I was taking a class on human happiness here at Berkeley, and we were discussing how in the US there is the curve that you just described. For an average American, the curve sort of stagnates at $75,000 annually. After that, the diminishing effect of money, as you say, sort of proves to be true. And it's interesting how within that same class, we were discussing how, sure, wealth is a factor of human happiness, but the primary factor of humans being happy is human relations—connection—your connection with oneself and with others, and how fulfilled you are in those connections. And yeah, it was just something I wanted to add.
Acharya Prashant: Wonderful, wonderful. Lovely, lovely. You see, is that something that the Forbes 500 chaps would want you to propagate? No, no. If you're happy in your relationship with yourself and with worthy people around you, would you find it necessary to go out and burn rupees or dollars so that you can have some piece of unconscious happiness?
They'll not want you to know this—that money serves no purpose, rather a negative purpose beyond a point. And just as—I'm glad you brought up this $75,000 figure—just as I'm hearing it for the first time, I'll look more into it, and it's very interesting. Just as you could come up with a figure beyond which the returns start diminishing, similarly, there is an established figure on the per capita material consumption that is sustainable for the planet.
We also have very established, very scientifically proven figures on the per capita emissions that can be sustained by the planet. So all that is very well known. It's just that the policy makers themselves are financed by the ones who want us to endlessly consume. And that's the problem with the democratic model. You see, I'm the top manipulator, and I want these people to vote for me, so I leave them worse off psychologically than they ever were. I’ll condition them, I’ll indoctrinate them, I’ll radicalize them. I’ll leave them worse off—that’s what democracy does to an ignorant voter. Do you understand?
If these people can vote for me only if they are uneducated, then as a policy maker I would deliberately keep them uneducated if I want to come back to office. If these people will vote for me only when they are radicalized, I’ll ensure I keep radicalizing them deliberately so that they keep voting for me. And that’s a huge flaw in the democratic model. The entire world is experiencing it, and we’ll need to correct it.
Questioner: Yeah, I also wanted to ask more on—you know, as you brought up a really interesting point about how climate change is not—it's more spiritual than anything else that we know of, and how we are ourselves the contributor to climate change, consciously or unconsciously. I was wondering, then, if that is the case—as you said, democracy has its own flaws—who really is responsible for driving the spiritual change within folks? Is it us ourselves, or who exactly should we look up to?
Acharya Prashant: The culprit is the fellow who understands yet does not act. The electorate, we said, is ignorant in general. The ones in power have vested interests in keeping the electorate ignorant. Then who can be termed as responsible for the state we are in? The ignorant person is as good as someone asleep. If somebody is sleeping, you don't go and blame them, right? They don’t know anything at all anyway. Who is to be blamed then? The fellow who knows and yet does not act—he is the one to be blamed. And this is the person all real positive change will come from: the fellow who knows and acts.
Unfortunately, we have too many people who do not know but act vigorously. And there is a great deal of people who know—first of all, people who know—they themselves are a rarity. And even among this rare class, those who know and have the love, the guts, the responsibility to act—they are absolutely rare. Those are the people that will bring about change.
Questioner: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And honestly, like, I feel like I try to be that person sometimes, but it's really difficult. I’ll give an example. Like, I live in the dorms and here, you know, the water or whatever—it takes a long time to heat up. And sometimes I’ve seen my friends, you know, turn on the shower, go and do something else, and come back so it’s warm. And I was telling my dad about this, and I was like, “Yeah, like I don’t really like how people do this.” And he’s like, “So you wait in the cold shower and you just, like, you just deal with it because you don’t want to waste water?”
And my dad tells me that, you know, the way to get a—like, you can’t be the person taking all the burden and all the blame for climate change and dealing with it. Obviously this is a very small example—it’s just water—but, like, how does one person manage that burden and, you know, even educate other people when oftentimes climate change is something that’s not an impending issue for most people? It’s not very urgent. So for many people, it doesn’t feel like they have to do anything. And so oftentimes people who do know and who do act—it feels like they’re the only ones who do care, and they can’t get other people to care.
Acharya Prashant: Wonderful thing to bring up. You see, we said climate change is the thing that emanates from the hollow within the human being’s heart. Right? So this would suggest—and so has been my experience—that addressing climate change directly does not help. Because you are addressing the emission; you're not addressing the source of emission. The source of emission is not really the exhaust tube of the automobile—it is the heart of the human being that has to be addressed. And if you address that—let’s say, without even bringing in these two words in the discussion, “climate change”—you might still find that the fellow has become in general more sensitive towards their surroundings, her actions, her relationships, her entire being.
See, that’s the problem with climate activism. We want to behave as if climate change is an isolated problem. We do not want to, or we fail to, see the clear very strong relationship between human unfulfillment and the burgeoning emissions. It's not as if we have been especially unfulfilled only since the last 100 years or so, when the CO2 ppm started rising. We have always been like this. Just that till around 1850 or 1870, we didn't have the technological means to burn so much fossil fuel, or burn anything, or reproduce so much and sustain such large populations. We didn’t have the wherewithal.
So just by virtue of our incapacity, the Earth somehow managed to remain saved. But after the industrial revolution, we developed the might to do things on a never-seen-before industrial scale. We were always like that. You know, wherever we went, we brought destruction in our wake. It's not that we are destroying species and eliminating entire species just today—we have been doing that for centuries. Just that the rate has exponentially grown. We went to Australia—what happened to the native species there, both animals and human beings? We went to America—what happened to the natives there? Wherever we go, we go with a sword and a torch. We are destroyers.
We are destroyers because we are unhappy within, unfulfilled within, joyless and loveless within.
If you address that in a person, you might find that the issue of climate has been taken care of without even bringing in the word. You never talk to that person about climate, and yet you find that the fellow has become more responsible. The fellow does not even know that his carbon footprint has shrunk—and yet it has. Whereas when you are on the side of activism, then you keep harping on this thing—you know, "Please manage your water consumption," and, "See, you must shut down these lights," "Oh, use less of this, use less of that." And all that is just so boringly moral. Who would want to hear that?
So be it the vegan activists, or the climate activists, or the plastic activists—they are abhorred. People run away looking at them because they are so predictable. And what is predictable becomes boring. "Now she will come and pontificate on this and that. I've had enough of that. No, I don’t want that." Why not speak to people about their lives, about their love, about great literature, about the pressing issues in the world? Take them deeper into themselves. There is such fabulous literature available on the wisdom side. Why not have a club that discusses such literature? And a very silent byproduct of this thing will be that people will become more climate responsible. A very silent by product.