Exploring Mass Extinction: Religious Factors and Beyond || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

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.

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