There Is No Planet B: ‘Colonising Mars’ Is Fantastic Gibberish
Questioner: Hello Acharya Ji, my name is Anushka and I am working in the technical and ethical AI field. Recently there is a podcast that is going quite viral. I just saw it today and it talked a lot about two things, two words that I can't get out of my mind.
The first is simulation, where it is said that we are living in a simulation. We are living in an illusion. And at the same time a very contradictory thing is said that in the future humanity will be dead. Humans will collapse. Along with that, the entire consciousness will also collapse. They have said that consciousness itself will die. In the future, there will be no one to ask questions, nor will we get the right answers. And that's why they want to create such an infrastructure that whether the Earth survives or not, humans should be saved. Their entire energy and resources are moving in that direction.
So my question here is: as you say that the western world, the West, did not receive the knowledge of Vedanta, so they used what they saw outside to create something great. But such a basic fact, a person of science who has created so much, a basic fact that even a child knows, that global warming is a serious concern. We have been learning this since childhood and today the world stands on the brink because of humans.
There is no discussion of environmental concerns, global warming or carbon emissions throughout the podcast. Instead, they are trying to say that whether the world survives or not, we will save humans. So what kind of ideology is this where a person of science is manipulating facts to present them to the world and is trying to hide such basic things somewhere? What kind of ideology is this and how do we confront it? How do we argue about it? That is my question.
Acharya Prashant: It's not about ideology. It's about the source of the stream. It's about the thinker.
What does science mean? Science is what makes the world outside known and comprehensible to you, isn't it? Why is water falling downwards? Why does sunlight take time to reach the Earth? Why is a lunar eclipse occurring? These things have always been happening. Now you have understood why and how they happen. This is called science.
So you will not gain much more clarity from within because of it. You might be very confused about yourself. The source of thought, the thinker, can be completely immersed in darkness within. Yet it is very possible that they have mastered science. Absolutely possible.
So science does not make you a better person. Not at all. But if you are a problematic person, you even use science for the most disgraceful acts. And our mistake is thinking that if someone is a scientist, they must also be a good person. That's not true at all.
External superstitions are removed by science. But the most terrifying and dangerous superstition is within. Right? It is called ego. And science does not remove it. And where there is ego, there is desire. Ego means incompleteness. Where there is incompleteness, there will be a desire regarding the world, that if some subject of the world is found, my incompleteness will be removed.
In the Gita sessions we sing that, Jab kaam bharaa ho aankh mein, tab sach nazar nahi aata. you are saying even a child knows that today the world is standing right on the brink of destruction. Everyone knows about the climate crisis. So then all these are many big people, they are climate‑deniers; why can't they see it? Aag dahake par dhuen se, prakaash dhak sa jaata hai. Jab kaam bharaa ho aankh mein, tab sach nazar nahi aata.
When desire fills the eyes, the Truth is not visible. And when is desire filled? When you know a lot about the world, but nothing about yourself. And such people become very dangerous. Very dangerous.
“Let the Earth be destroyed. We have to save humanity.”
Wow! The human you call a human, every vein of theirs is Earth. If Earth doesn’t remain, how will humans remain? There are many things. The first thing is, your stature is being determined by the diameter of the Earth. The gravity of the Earth is determining your height. The gravity of the Earth is coming from its radius. The Earth’s radius is determining how many muscles will be in your body.
All right, tell me why your muscle mass is only a particular percentage of the total mass. If you’ve ever had a body‑mass analysis done, it shows how much fat is in the body, how much skeletal mass there is, and how much muscle mass there is. It comes like that. So whatever your muscle mass is, whether it is 45%, 70%; this is what most people have. So why is it only that much? Because it is related to the Earth’s diameter. Gravity determines how much muscle you need.
If gravity were stronger, your thigh muscles and calf muscles would need to be stronger for walking. If gravity were much stronger, your body would evolve in a very different way. And the brain is also part of the body, right? The brain is also part of the body. If gravity were different, the brain would have evolved differently. The brain would have evolved differently. So what you call thought or consciousness would also be different.
So both the body and the mind of a human are Earth.
Do you know what you are? A very minor activity happening on the surface of the Earth is called a human.
The radius of the Earth is 6,400 kilometers. And the Earth’s crust, which is the very outer shell of the Earth, just a little above the top soil, has some tiny insects crawling on it. And there are some doing this and that here and there. They are called humans.
Above the Earth’s soil, some such activity is going on. That activity is called the human being. What is your worth compared to a radius of 6,400 km? You’re 5 or 6 ft tall. And if you look at the radius of what you stand on, you are just a minuscule presence on its surface. And your entire presence has been determined by your planet. Your world, your eyes, the entire configuration has been determined by this planet. Let me explain how.
If the Earth were farther from the Sun, your eyes would need to be sharper because there would be less light. Because there would be less light. If the Earth were closer to the Sun, your eyes would also be different because there would be more light. So the size of the rods, cones, and retina in your eyes would all be different.
Your skin would be different if the Earth were closer to the Sun, because there would be more radiation. So the skin would also be different, just like the people who live on the equator and those who live in higher temperature regions have different skin, right? The thickness of the skin, the color of the skin, everything becomes different.
Similarly, if you were living far from the Sun, if you were on another planet, your skin, your eyes, your lips, your hair, everything would be different. Leave all this aside. I’m saying, your brain would be different. I mean, a human’s consciousness would be different if they weren’t on Earth. Earth and humans are the same thing.
Just like Earth has different layers, there is another layer above the topmost surface. You can call that layer the human layer. That’s us. But this layer has become arrogant thinking it’s different from Earth. This layer has become arrogant thinking it is different from Earth and it will survive even if it goes to another planet.
The onion‑peel thinks that if you tie it on a banana, it will still live. Brother, you are an onion‑peel. You are alive only as long as you are on the onion. The day you are tied to a banana, you are dead. Similarly, humans are alive only as long as they are on their onion, meaning their Earth. We are just a layer of this Earth. As long as we are on Earth, we exist. After that, we do not. And this is very straightforward.
How is your blood pressure determined? It is determined by atmospheric pressure. And what determines atmospheric pressure? It is determined by gravitational pull. How much your heart is beating is determined by the atmospheric pressure and the size of your body, which determines your heart rate.
If the Earth changes, then how will your heart beat? You will go somewhere else, the heartbeat will stop altogether. If you go to a place where the radius is very small, the atmospheric pressure will also be low. When the atmospheric pressure is low, the pressure in your veins which are circulating blood, will become higher than the atmospheric pressure. All your veins will burst. Just like when you go up in the mountains, sometimes blood comes from the nose, right? Why does blood come from the nose? Because the atmospheric pressure has decreased. Your body starts to burst. You go to another planet, your body will start to burst.
On the other hand, if you reach a place like Jupiter where gravity is very high, then the atmospheric pressure might be so high that all your blood vessels get compressed. And I am talking about very basic science. If you study further, the matter is even more nuanced. If you go somewhere else, you will also have trouble seeing, in breathing, in eating the plants you consume. You cannot survive by eating minerals and chemicals. Everything you eat is produced on Earth. How will it be produced elsewhere? How will it happen?
Humans and Earth are not separate. You do not live on this Earth. You are this Earth. Earth is not your home. Earth is your center. Earth is your heart.
The onion‑peel is thinking: “I just live on the onion.” You do not live on the onion. You are the onion. If anything survives after leaving from here, it will not be a human. It will be something similar to a human. You can call it a humanoid. It will not be a human. His height and brain both will be different.
All those things that you know, we have a complete mind‑body relationship in our existence. We are psychosomatic beings. Your mind is greatly influenced by the body, meaning the material. We are psychosomatic people. Psycho and Soma: mind and body. The body is material. If the material changes, the mind will change. If the planet changes, all the ghazals you have written, all these art forms will become useless for you because the mind will change. You will become something else.
Going to another planet means thinking of collective suicide. That species will be different. That will not be you. If you survive by going somewhere else, remember: if any planet had such favorable conditions for life to flourish, it would have flourished by now. All those planets are barren. What does this indicate? That the possibility of life flourishing there is very low in itself. Now you want to artificially colonize it. Where life never naturally developed, you want to artificially establish life there. If the place was so good, why hasn’t life existed there until now?
Now we have all these low‑flying satellites, you know, they have taken pictures. Look at the pictures of the surfaces of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and then ask yourself: “Do I want to settle here?”
They also want to settle there. There’s no soil, brother. Most people, if they have seen pictures, have seen the surface of the Moon. Our Chandrayaan went. Or during Neil Armstrong’s time, it looks like a rock. No, brother, it’s not even like that.
There are many planets whose surface is made of gas. There are some that are a bit far, cold ones, where gases are also frozen, where even carbon dioxide has solidified. You want to live there. There are many places where continuous storms blow with temperatures of hundreds of degrees. You want to live there.
But if the Earth is completely destroyed, all right? So we will have to live somewhere else. Just like some people used to live on the ISS, (The International Space Station). How did they manage to live there? They managed by consuming a lot of resources. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is: how many could live there?
So the people who are talking about going somewhere else and setting up their world there, they’re not saying that everyone will go. They’re saying that they will go because they have money. You won’t go. I won’t go. They will sit on their rocket taking their entire family and a few dozen children and people like them, and they will fly away because this is a highly resource‑intensive task.
You and I won’t be flying away. The billions of species on this Earth, including humans, will be left behind to die. And who is being saved? The one who set the earth on fire will be saved. Why? Because we have made him our ideal, our god. He will survive. He will take all our resources and fly away, and somehow spend the remaining 10 or 20 years of his life on a space station or the surface of some planet.
There are only a handful of people who can, for example, successfully live on Mars to some extent, very few people. But that dream is being shown to all of humanity as if the entire population of 8 billion people on earth will go, and all the other living creatures will also go; and 70% of the animal population lives in the ocean. So perhaps we are being told that we will take all the water from our oceans as well, all the creatures and the water mass in it, we will take all of that there. The aquatic life we will load onto rockets and take it to Mars. Right?
The common man is not going. Forget the common man. Until you are in the top 0.00000000001% there’s no scope for you to go anywhere from Earth. It’s a very expensive task because people are not going to leave; the talk is about settling there. It costs billions of dollars per person. Where will you get that from? And even after that expense, the life you will get will not be of a human but of a humanoid.
Those who are selling you this dream, see through their gimmicks, they are criminals against humanity. They are saying all this; so that climate change. So that your attention doesn’t go there and you feel good: “If the earth is going to end due to climate change, then let it be. We have to go to another planet.” Right?
Your house is on fire. To make you unaware of this, the dream of another house is being sold to you.
And why is there a fire in the house? Because there are people warming their hands by that fire who are encouraging you: “Start more fires. Have more children.” And if you have more children, there will be two benefits, first, we will get cheap labour for our factories; and secondly, there should be consumers too, and have more children. Neither is climate change a problem, nor population explosion, nor consumerism.
America, the average American, if every creature on earth consumed as much as he does, six earths would be needed. And all these people are selling the great American dream everywhere. And they want you to remain completely unaware. You should have no idea that you are sitting on the mouth of a volcano, and the volcano has already erupted. They do not want you to get even the slightest hint of it.
A person is ready to stoop to any level for their petty self-interest. What do you think? The things you consider dear in your life, will they continue as they are? They will not. There are tides; there is lunar activity; and there is a lunar month. You don’t see synchronization in these? And you are going to a place like that. There is no moon, and if there is no moon then there is nothing like a month being only 28 or 30 days, is there? And that thing also relates to the human body. Now what will happen? What kind of world will there be? And what kind of life will be there?
The human body is 70% water, and the earth’s surface is also 70% water. Can’t you see that we are the earth itself? And you are going to a place where there isn’t even a drop of water, where a separate plant will be set up to somehow provide just enough water to drink and stay alive. But we are 70% water in our bodies, and 70% water on our planet too. There is a strong connection, brother.
The activity your vocal cords perform and the density of the air have a relation in this, because the wave you need to create has to move using air as the medium. So the energy that should be in that wave will depend on the density of the air. How will you talk to someone else in another place? You want to go to a place where you can’t even talk. What are you thinking? You will stand there and talk to each other? Oh brother, our waves are not electromagnetic waves, they need a medium. If there is no air, how will you talk to each other?
And your eardrums, you know, you can now stand upright, the reason is that there is a fluid here and here (inner ear) that helps maintain your body’s balance. And how does it work? It works by measuring pressure; atmospheric pressure. Now when you spin around like that, you feel dizzy; you start to fall. When you stand and spin around repeatedly, why do you feel dizzy and start to fall? Because the fluid gets completely disturbed. So even if you stop, the fluid goes like this, It’s like the water in a bucket; if you shake the bucket, the water keeps moving for a while, right? Similarly, that fluid keeps moving, and then you feel dizzy. And that fluid works by taking atmospheric pressure into account.
When you go on a plane, a slight change in pressure affects your ears. And when the pressure changes completely, what will happen to you?
Okay, you go to your pathology lab. You get your body composition and all minerals and vitamins measured. If you see how many types of minerals the body needs, you will be surprised, many dozens. In India, there isn’t much health-awareness; otherwise you would start counting zinc, magnesium, and manganese in the body. The bacteria in our body are very important for us. So many dozens of elements will emerge. Then many compounds will also emerge. There are many iodides. This is what you need, and you are made from them, because they are present in the soil here. And if they were not present in the soil here, you wouldn’t get them, and you would have a deficiency and die.
Wherever you are going, the minerals, elements, compounds in the soil there are present, and if they are not present, how will you live on packaged food? And let me tell you, you don’t just need food to live, you also need a lot of good bacteria. We are symbiotic beings. You think that a human being is an individual; but a human being is not an individual, it is a system in itself.
There are countless other species within us that are working. Only then are we able to function. Now, if you take a lot of antibiotics, your health will deteriorate. Tell me, why? Because they will kill countless types of bacteria inside you, and then you will become completely messed up. And those bacteria are not only in the intestines. Those bacteria are also in other parts of the body and play a very important role. Many of those bacteria, where do we get them from? We get them from the soil. Some of them we even get from the air. Wherever you go, you will also find these other species. How will you live without them?
But in the world we are living in, there is a crisis of maturity. Everyone has become infants, the infantilization of intellect, this has happened. People who are 60, 70-years-old are talking like children. Their faces also become like those of children. They have completely become children. People just don’t grow up anymore. There is no maturity. You must have noticed. And in fact, people take pride in saying, “Look, I am 60-years-old, but I still talk like a 20-year-old.” That is not youthfulness, it is regression. It is a kind of retardation. And the things you are mentioning that are happening in the world, that is the crisis of maturity. There is no maturity of any kind. Absolutely like things a 5-year-old child would say. It’s an airy-fairy cartoon show, like picking up a doll from one planet and placing it on another. It’s like a cartoon show, right?
Questioner: Acharya Ji. Children still raise questions and ask. But what kind of public is this that has placed such people in power who say that the climate crisis is just an illusion?
Acharya Prashant: This public is the creation of such people. These people who are saying the climate crisis is just a hoax, they have a vested interest in making this public like this. It is such people’s hand in bringing the public down as much as it has fallen.
Who controls popular media? Hardly a dozen people in the world. And you are consuming media day and night. Right? The media is used to infantilize you, to make you immature. The ridiculous things shown to you on TV are not shown without reason. There is a deep point behind it. The point is to dull the human mind so much that it is no longer capable of understanding or thinking deeply. After that, you can sell anything.
TV, social media, social media algorithms, what do they favor? Wisdom content? Really? No. What you are watching on TV, what does it do? It makes you even more foolish. The more someone watches TV, the more foolish they become. Day by day, even their hardwiring is changing. Experiments have been done on this. You watch more TV; you keep becoming completely foolish. And especially those programs on TV, those are made targeting women. They are there so that they remain foolish from here (mind).
So the public is prepared by these very people. These few people have prepared the public. So the public will be foolish. Right? You think your mind is yours. Your mind is not yours. Your mind has been shaped by about 12, 15 or 20 people in the world. Your mind is not your own. You have been made a fool. You think that your life is your own. Your life is not your own. You are doing everything that distant powers want you to do.
I’m not telling you anything very deep. The things I am saying, you will find out even with a simple search. I don’t know how many books will tell you directly. If you read a little about evolution, they will tell you how any species evolves with a dialectical engagement with external conditions. Right? So even a seventh or eighth-grade child might know this.
What is being talked about? If there is another planet, there won’t be humans on it. Then, if there is another planet, there will be aliens on it. In all your science fiction, what do you show? That if someone comes from another planet or galaxy, it’s a human. Do you ever show, do you show it’s an ugly alien? That’s what you show.
So, on another planet, there’s an ugly alien. You would become the same if you somehow managed to get there and survive. First of all, you can’t even reach there. You would just be like a fan. When those people are sitting in their rocket and escaping, like a fan, you are standing below taking a selfie: “This is me, and this is the rocket.” And all around me, this world is burning, and they are escaping in their rocket, and I’m still standing below taking a selfie like a fan.
They might also be running. So many people would bow to them saying, “Sir, sir, sir, please sir, autograph sir.” He has sold an insect. He hasn’t sold it; he has installed an implant on your skull. Do you know what its name is? Positivity. They say, “Don’t be realistic, be positive. Don’t see the Truth, weave dreams; a dawn-dream. Don’t look at the Truth; ride the horse of desire and fly in the clouds. This is positivity.”
Whatever I am saying, they will call it “Very negative.” The person is talking about completely negative things. While what I’m talking about is reality, grounded talk. What I’m talking about is science, if you want to call science negative, then do so. What I’m talking about is psychology, if you want to call it negative, do so. It is philosophy, if you want to call it negative, then do so.
When the Titanic was sinking, people requested to play music. A human is that entity. They were very positive people. They were saying that we do not even want to know if it is sinking. “Nothing is sinking. Bring on the music.” And that music was such that it flew into the sky. They sat here, there was the moon, stars, fairies. And the water was nice and cold, Atlantic cold. So cold that an iceberg was floating on it, and they were wearing all their nice warm sari outfits. What are they doing? Listening to music. And 5 seconds, 10 seconds later, that nice cold, freezing cold water. Your frozen grave was made in that. This is positivity.
“Human consciousness is too precious to be left to the fate of a single planet. Single planet. So we need to spread the seeds of humanity across planets and the galaxy.” What did you eat? What did you drink? Is this human consciousness, this planet itself?
They are saying that human consciousness is such a precious thing that how can we leave it on just one planet. “What if an asteroid comes and collides with that planet? What will happen to human beings?”
The fundamental ignorance in this is that you think humans and Earth are separate. No, they are not separate. From the perspective of science, it is not. And from the perspective of spirituality, it is not either. Considering oneself different from nature is called ego, which is the fundamental illusion.
But doesn’t it sound so impressive to hear, “Human consciousness is just too precious to be tied to the fate of a solitary planet. Let’s hedge our risk. Let’s take humanity to diverse planets, so that we survive even in the case of catastrophic events involving a couple of planets. We will still survive because we have diversified.” Are you doing stock trading? Don’t you understand the difference between existence and trading? You took living to mean trading.
Just remember one thing, we don’t live on this planet; we are this planet. Either two of us live together or we go down together, because we are not two at all. We are one.
