We Moved Out of the Jungle — Really?
Questioner: Good evening, sir. Sir, I have a question. When we were just gatherers, wanderers, we were much happier until agriculture happened and settlements happened. Then culture began. But I was wondering, if bandhan begins from the settlements, then do you think we could have made progress in technology or everything that could happen to the human, whether it's healthcare or anything, or are you suggesting maybe the older way when settlements weren’t okay?
Acharya Prashant: It wasn't so much hunter-gatherer. It was much more about being gatherers. We were not really hunters. We were gatherers. Gathering is much easier than hunting, obviously.
So what happened next was inevitable. Please understand, if we were surviving as a species even by hunting and gathering and all those things, why did we need to move into agriculture in the first place? Why? That kind of a shift no other species has shown.
If monkeys stay on trees, they have continued to stay on trees. They haven't become agriculturalists because they are doing all right on trees. And the tigers are doing all right as they are. And the proof of their all-rightness, the greatest and the only proof that is needed, is that they are continuing to exist as a species. And that's what is needed in the biological world. The only success that is needed there is material, material success. Just as we measure our success often by the kind of impression we leave on the world, nations talk of their success by measuring the average longevity of their populations. No? “How long are we surviving? What kind of impact are we leaving?”
Similarly, the only criteria of success for the animal kingdom is whether we are able to successfully reproduce and extend our lineage. And if that is happening, we'll say we are successful. In Prakriti That's a way of attaining immortality. We attain immortality in the inner sense.
If you are a real human being, you will want to attain inner immortality, which does not have to do with time. In the animal kingdom, they attain immortality by reproducing. "Let me have kids, let me have kids." And that way, I have become immortal in a particular way. Cats today look much the same as they did 10,000 years back. That old cat has immortalized itself in the form of the cat today.
So, since all species are doing well and are successful in this sense, what was the need for our damned species to start doing different things?
The need was that we were not satisfied. We did not want to devote all our time and energy just to gathering or hunting. We said, "We need more time for higher pursuits." And that's the reason we said we should have enough spare stored supplies of food items. That's agriculture.
Our means of production should not be controlled by weather or circumstance. We do not want to live under the vagaries of randomness. We want to be our own masters. So we will cultivate, we'll clear the land, we will till, we'll harvest, and we will store. So there is security on the physical front. And when there is security on the physical front, what will we do? We'll pursue higher order things. That was the purpose.
So that is inevitable. You cannot reverse it. You cannot say, "We want to go back to the jungle." And that is all right. You want to save time. You want to do something better. You know, when the industrial revolution came, and when household gadgets started becoming popular, and when the computer came, at each of these points there were wise men and economists who were saying, "You would probably have a 2-day work week now. Electricity will become too cheap to be metered. All kinds of basic tasks will be taken care of by the great surplus energy and the intelligence that we have now created, and you will have spare time so that you can do something else."
What that something else exactly was, we didn't know and that was our shortcoming. We didn't know what to do with it. So we kept doing more of what we were already doing instead of doing something else with the spare time made available. Are you getting it?
The purpose of technology or developments in science or prosperity in economics is defeated when you do not know what to do with the knowledge or money you have accumulated.
The purpose of science, technology, and economics, which is knowledge and systems, the single purpose of each of these is to elevate your insights, to make you free from within.
But what has happened is that we have continued with technological progress without progressing from within. So the man who emerged from the jungle is very much present today as well, just that he has much more power available to himself. The emergence from the jungle was for the sake of internal transformation. Instead of internal transformation, the emergence from the jungle has resulted in great external transformation.
If you look at the man dramatically, let's just visualize: there is this man coming out from the jungle and moving towards a vacant cleared space where he can now grow crops. Let's visualize this man, right? Can you visualize that man? He's almost totally naked, and there is a lot of ignorance at large on his face, right? He is also carrying a lot of scars and other things. And you visualize the man that you have today in a developed country and you put the two of them side by side, and you'll not find any external similarity. Would you?
The man coming from the jungle, he'll have very, very bad teeth. He'll have a very small lifespan. He'll not have a properly developed language. In his thoughts, he would be quite muddled. You look at this man here; outwardly he would probably be wearing a suit. He would be carrying a laptop. He probably knows many languages. He would be the master of so many technologies made available to him. Externally, everything will be different between the two of these, right? Internally, they are exactly the same.
Now this external one, the modern one, the one who has externally progressed, has great power at his hands, and that is what is destroying the planet today. Inwardly, you are exactly still the same man, and externally you have amassed so much power. Whereas,
You had emerged from the jungle not really for the sake of external amassment but for the sake of internal improvement.
You didn't emerge from the jungle so that you could collect external riches. You were doing all right even in the jungle. There was no need to leave the jungle and do something that was extraordinary and go out of your way to do something that no other species had done. There was no need. You were doing all right. But you emerged from the jungle so that you can have inner development.
But the tragedy has been that departure has not led to much of inner development. Instead, it has resulted in a lot of outer accumulation, and that's a double jeopardy. Internally, you are a chimpanzee, and externally, you are carrying cutting-edge technologies and nuclear-tipped missiles and whatnot. Imagine a chimpanzee in command of an ICBM. And it could be a democratically elected chimpanzee, and that chimpanzee has the power to push the nuclear button and launch not one but a thousand missiles and destroy the earth many times over.
J. Krishnamurti used to say, "At some point in history, man took a wrong turn." Do you see that wrong turn? Forgetting what you came out of the jungle for. We have forgotten that if you were to lead a jungle-like life, then the jungle is your place. Go back to the jungle. You came out of the jungle because you wanted to no longer be an animal. But you are still an animal. Then why have you come out of the jungle? Go back to the jungle. Don't you hear all these arguments?
You know, women should stay at home and have babies and cook stuff because that's how nature operates. No, that's how the jungle operates. And if you want to revert to that system, then you should go back to the jungle. That's what happens in the jungle. And often they keep giving examples, "No, but what's wrong with eating animals? In the jungle, everybody's eating animals. Right? So, if you want to eat animals, go back to the jungle. You emerged from the jungle for the sake of a higher consciousness. Where is that consciousness? You are still a chimpanzee but with a lot of brute power. Do you get this?
And you look at all the arguments that come from the conservative circles these days. All of them talk about all these things. "This is what happens in the animal kingdom. This is what is natural." What do you mean by natural? You're talking about the law of the jungle. We left the jungle long back. We have to behave like people of consciousness, not dictated so much by their bodies. Not discriminating between people based on their bodily characteristics. All those discriminations happen in the jungle. Yes. But they're not supposed to happen to people who have left the jungle behind.
