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Video Information: 12.02.23, Interview with Aarti Tikko from The New Indian, Greater Noida
Context:
~ Why our consumptions are destructive?
~ What are the facts about destructive consumption?
~ What are causing global warming & climate change?
~ How are food affective global warming & climate change?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
~~~~~
Video Information: 12.02.23, Interview with Aarti Tikko from The New Indian, Greater Noida
Context:
~ Why our consumptions are destructive?
~ What are the facts about destructive consumption?
~ What are causing global warming & climate change?
~ How are food affective global warming & climate change?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00When you say mass extinction, what do you really mean? We were just some years ago,
00:10we were 6 billion people. Now we are 8 billion people. I mean, we're continuously growing.
00:17What is mass extinction?
00:20There is a certain natural rate at which species go extinct every day. So there is a rate.
00:30That rate has increased by almost thousand times in the last 100 years.
00:37Even as we have been speaking over the last hour or so,
00:46thousands of species have gone extinct in just this time slot.
00:52I'm not talking of individual members of those species being lost.
00:57I'm talking of entire species disappearing forever.
01:02That's what is happening and that's happening because of reasons that are man-made, anthropogenic.
01:15So we have raised the average temperature of this planet by 1.5 degrees centigrade
01:26and the temperature is increasing at an increasing rate.
01:33The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere should naturally be around 280 ppm.
01:43It has shot up to around 450 ppm now and all that has happened only in the last 50 to 100 years.
01:52I said 6th extinction phase. Of the previous 5, 3 were caused due to an abundance of carbon dioxide.
02:06The same thing that we are seeing today.
02:11I have to speak of it because nobody speaks of it.
02:15Ideally, if we were a conscious species, this would have been all over the media.
02:22This would have been the thing that organizations, colleges, schools, governments, international institutions,
02:31all should have been taking up as the topmost priority.
02:36We are not doing that.
02:38If you just read the kind of forest cover that we are losing every day,
02:49it would come as a horrible shock and a lot of that is exactly because we have gone up from 6 billion to 8 billion.
02:58Every new addition, every fresh addition to our species actually means a death warrant
03:09for at least 10,000 members of other species.
03:15The moment a human kid is born, several thousand other organisms,
03:22animals, plants, are condemned to death.
03:29That's where we stand and the global temperature that has risen by 1.5 degrees
03:36is not going to stop at 1.5 or even 2 or probably even at 3.
03:43It might rise to 4 or 5 degrees centigrade and the results are going to be catastrophic
03:50and all that is going to happen within our lifetimes.
03:56I'm talking of the next few decades.
03:58So human species will be wiped out?
04:01Probably not. Probably a few would remain to lament.
04:08I notice that you are simultaneously also lamenting that we are too many, 8 billion people,
04:17and at the same time you are saying mass extinction on the horizon.
04:24Are we complaining that?
04:28That's a natural fallout and we are not seeing that.
04:34The earth simply does not have enough resources to sustain 8 billion or 10 billion or 11 billion of us.
04:44How many can the earth sustain?
04:47It depends on the quality of life that you define for yourself.
04:51You see, we don't merely exist.
04:54We exist to consume.
04:57That's what a human being does.
04:59If you look at a chimpanzee or a deer or a lion,
05:04its consumption footprint has not changed over the centuries or the millennia.
05:10A monkey today consumes only as much as it used to several thousand years back.
05:17But human beings, today the existence of a human being means a very different thing to the planet than it did 5000 years back.
05:28So it's not as if the earth cannot sustain 8 billion human beings.
05:33It can, but not at the current levels of consumption.
05:35At the current levels of consumption, not even a dozen earths suffice and that's mathematical.
05:42That's not subjective.
05:44That's not something that I'm saying or fearing.
05:48That's pure arithmetic.
05:50Anybody can work out the numbers.
05:52Not only that, such a bad philosophy has been fed into us by our education system
06:00that we think that the purpose of life is happiness and happiness comes through consumption.
06:05So not only are we consuming, we want to consume even more and the more you consume,
06:12the more prosperous you are taken to be and the more respectable you are.
06:18And if a nation consumes a lot, it is considered a developed nation.
06:24GDP has become the criteria of development.
06:30So all that potents a lot of horror in the horizon.
06:38So what should be the yardstick to measure development of human society?
06:44We live within ourselves.
06:46So we require only as much stuff outside as would be conducive to inner development.
06:53So we don't need air conditioners?
06:55You do need air conditioners if you think that without an air conditioner,
07:01your meditativeness would be obstructed.
07:05All religions in the world claim to know this truth.
07:12They claim to know the enlightenment.
07:16Like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, all of them seem to know.
07:22So are we saying that religions across the world have failed to pass on this knowledge system
07:34or this awareness or this consciousness?
07:38When you say religion, what exactly do you mean?
07:42How many people read their religious books?
07:46In the name of religion, what you mostly have is culture and tradition.
07:52How many Christians are scholars of the Bible or have even gone through the Bible at least a couple of times?
08:01How many Hindus have actually even seen a copy of the Vedas?
08:08Forget about reading, forget even about touching.
08:11How many Hindus have actually even seen a copy of the Rig Veda?
08:16So what do you mean by religion?
08:17Religion is simply hearsay.
08:20Religion is grape wine, religion is gossip and rumor.
08:23Religion is something that you have seen your parents and their parents do.
08:28So of what good can be such religion?
08:30This is just rumor mongering.
08:33Somebody says, oh religion says this, religion says that.
08:36Where does religion say that?
08:38And to top it all, you have a class of priests who have their own vested interests
08:43and that class exists across all religions.
08:47And they present religion to you as it would suit your ego and their interest.
08:55So there is no religion.
08:57Religion can possibly provide an answer if one can penetrate the outer shells of religion and enter its core.
09:09That's where you find stuff that is life affirmative, that is joy giving.
09:15But nobody is going there.
09:20So in a way, are you saying that science has encouraged more materialism, more consumption
09:29and taking us to the path of mass annihilation?
09:33Science is beautiful, science is lovely.
09:36In fact, people are uneducated even in science.
09:40We need much, much more science.
09:42See, the problem does not lie in the fact that science exists.
09:49In fact, science needs to be strengthened much, much more.
09:55Than religion?
09:57Please understand, these are two different domains.
10:00In the external domain, if you want to know, you need science.
10:04If you want to understand how this screen functions, that camera functions, that gadget functions,
10:10how are these pillars able to hold this ceiling where it is, then you need science.
10:19So science has its own legitimate domain.
10:23We live within us.
10:26Third, fourth time we must return to this fact.
10:29And that's a domain that science very respectfully refuses to enter.
10:34Science does not go into the state of the subject.
10:38Science studies the objective universe, this object, that object, that object.
10:44The subject, that is me, is something that science respectfully refuses to touch.
10:51That's where spirituality begins when you want to ask, who am I?
10:57Who is the one looking at science?
11:00Who is the one wanting to reap the fruits and rewards of science?
11:06So science is a great thing in my hands.
11:11And what I'll do with science depends on my inner state.
11:17If you allow a madman to hold the keys to a nuclear arsenal, you know what you'd get, right?
11:33And that's the condition of humanity.
11:34And that's the condition of humanity.
11:37A lot of destructive potential, a lot of power in the external world,
11:46without any wisdom to know what to do with that power.
11:52So as would be obvious, we are using that power to annihilate ourselves
11:58and all other species along with ourselves.
12:03So science and religion, as you rightly pointed out,
12:10they pertain to two different aspects of mankind.
12:15If that is the reality, I want to understand why does Acharya Prashant
12:24call himself, or as you are known, to be a practitioner of Advaitha.
12:30What does that mean?
12:35In very simplistic terms, Advaitha means
12:47that the trueness that you experience, that makes you rush again and again towards the world
12:56will be of very little use to you.
13:00Advaitha is non-duality, right?
13:04So even non-duality is defined keeping duality at the center, right?
13:10Advaitha, non-duality.
13:12We all experience duality, twoness.
13:15So there is me, I think, I think there is me, and I think there is that banana,
13:20and that gold, and that something else, and that woman, and that, and that.
13:26There is this twoness.
13:28There is me, and there are those goodies out there.
13:32And the natural biological urge is to say,
13:36if I get those things, then my restlessness would be healed.
13:41That's twoness.
13:43Advaitha is to realize that the cure does not really lie out there.
13:51Your relationship with the world has to be founded on a different ground.
14:00It cannot be founded on the ground of desire.
14:04You cannot say, I am restless, and if I get that, that would give me peace.
14:10Hence, that constitutes or that founds my relationship with the world.
14:15If that is a relationship with the world,
14:18then that's a very exploitative kind of relationship,
14:21and that's what we all have, right?
14:23An exploitative relationship with the world.
14:25And because the world consists of, as we see, other people,
14:28they want to exploit us back.
14:30So mutually it becomes a game of violence.
14:34Advaitha would mean,
14:37my relationship with the world has to be in a way that helps me
14:43enter my interiority.
14:48The world is not an end.
14:52The world cannot be my destination or target.
14:56The world can at best be a means to help me penetrate into myself.
15:02And that constitutes a healthy and fair relationship with the world.
15:06That's non-duality.
15:08One can speak of non-duality in very sublime terms as well,
15:13and very esoteric, very mystical.
15:16But that would not be very useful.
15:18So in this non-duality, science and religion in a way are one.
15:23In this non-duality, science finds its proper utility.
15:29Now science does not exist to appease me.
15:33Now science exists to help me fulfill myself.
15:38You see, this mobile phone, right?
15:42It's a product of technology.
15:44If I do not know myself, I'll use the mobile phone for all the wrong purposes.
15:51And what do I mean by wrong?
15:53Not morally wrong, not legally wrong.
15:55Wrong in the sense that the use will decimate me.
15:59I'll be using it to just reduce myself to an animal.
16:07And that's what most of us do, right?
16:09Products of science.
16:11And we use them in very self-destructive ways.
16:15On the other hand, that mobile phone can be used in very, very sublime ways.
16:23Ways that elevate the consciousness.
16:24You pick up the phone and there's the internet.
16:27And all the great wealth of wisdom is available on the internet.
16:32So you could use the mobile phone for that as well.
16:35But we don't do that.
16:37When you are clear inside, when there is non-duality inside,
16:42then you know what to do with science.