Redefining Fashion & Beauty - Sabyasachi Mukherjee with Sadhguru

00:06 - Since the guy looks like an illiterate he can’t read and write, but he’s like magical with his geometry.

00:12 - This is India’s USP, we are still in the pole position.

00:15 - But will we get our engine started or will we sit there only? SUPER: Redefining Fashion & Beauty - Sabyasachi Mukherjee with Sadhguru Sabyasachi Mukherjee: There we are. Sadhguru: (Laughs) Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Oh my God! Sadhguru: I think with the lockdown I think all the technologies are going to improve in the next few months (Laughs).

00:37 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: You know we didn’t have, you know, we had the cyclone, we didn’t have internet for over a one and a half weeks.

00:44 - Sadhguru: Oh, now recently? Okay. Sabyasachi Mukherjee: The first two, three were like claustrophobic because that’s like true “vipasana” when you don’t have a cell phone but then we got used to it pretty soon.

00:55 - Anyway, since I’ve lost so much time with you and time is very precious.

00:59 - And I’m sure that everybody is waiting to listen to what you have to say, I’ll shoot off my first question.

01:04 - It’s said that destruction gives to regeneration.

01:07 - Do you believe that there will be a long-lasting change brought on by this crisis? How will it impact people and society as a whole in the future? Because everybody is so uncertain about what this… what future is going to be? What do you think is the world going to change to? Sadhguru: So about destruction being the basis of regeneration, definitely, certain amount of destruction or disruption gives room for regeneration.

01:34 - How actively it regenerates, because we need to understand we are talking about an existential principle in terms of social context.

01:44 - Existentially it’s very true when something is destroyed, regeneration happens in full vigor.

01:50 - But a social context is a very different thing.

01:53 - We as human beings will we really rejuvenate in a big way or will we be going to a very safety kind of mode, self-defensive mode? This is left to individual people and the leaders in the world, not just political leaders, the economic leaders and the social leaders and everybody who is an influencer in the world, how we respond to this.

02:17 - So in my opinion, because still, there is no sign of post COVID yet, nobody knows. Okay.

02:26 - Everybody is expecting it. We were expecting it in May.

02:31 - We, then we were expecting in June, now June is almost gone.

02:35 - So we’re still expecting. The most basic thing that all of us need to understand is not one scientific voice has clearly said this is the nature of this virus, this is what we could do with it.

02:50 - Even if we don’t have an immediate solution, these are the things we could do with it.

02:54 - There is no such thing. Nobody has yet said anything.

02:58 - I was talking to a group of prominent doctors in the world and they were saying, every day on an average one hundred and twenty-eight scientific papers are being presented on this virus.

03:09 - That means they’re all gathering bits and pieces, that nobody has a clear picture exactly how.

03:16 - So having said that, because there is no clear picture of the virus, what is post virus or when is post virus is not clear to anybody.

03:25 - So people are talking about learning to live with it, what is learning to live with it mean, that both of us are talking and one of us will fall dead and we learn to live with it. Okay (Laughs).

03:35 - So, learning to live with it, yes, we will learn to live with just about anything, whatever terrible things happen to us after some time we learn to live with it, but that is human apathy.

03:46 - That is not a human response. So if we are talking about regeneration, we must see existentially there’s nothing really wrong in the world right now.

03:55 - It is a human social situation, but we don’t know how to handle this.

03:59 - As you were talking about (Laughs), no, no cell phone means you go into vipasana mode.

04:07 - If that was the real thing, if humanity was in that state, this would be very simple.

04:13 - The government had to just say fifteen days all of you meditate, don’t do anything else.

04:18 - And virus will be gone, fourteen-day quarantine without any contact, it will be over.

04:22 - But we are not in that kind of state, people are going about, they have to go for work, somebody has to just go for a haircut and somebody has to protest, somebody has to do something else, somebody is even starting a war – all these issues are there.

04:36 - So we are not going to behave like that. Because of that how long the virus will last we don’t know.

04:41 - But in my opinion, if it ends by September, let’s say, then, people will talk about it for three, four, six months and after that they will just go back to their whatever their normal was.

04:55 - Maybe economy will not allow them to go back to their full normal but in their attitudes they will go back.

05:01 - But if it lasts for twelve to eighteen months or more, in case this situation lasts that way, then definitely it will have a more lasting impact on this generation of people.

05:12 - Economy, definitely it will have a big impact.

05:15 - There are some aspects of our lives that all of us have been going at it as if there is no tomorrow.

05:24 - So the virus has brought a certain amount of at least some contemplation of what are we doing, because anyway, we all knew, we all knew the way we are going in this world, our economic engine, which is driving this planet right now, at the same rate, we go, there is no future.

05:41 - There is no future generations if we go like this. We know this, but we’ve been going because you are going, I am going; I am going, you’re going; like this we’ve been going.

05:50 - So the virus has brought a halt to it. I think this must be if we are really conscious human beings, we should make use of this in a conscious way and definitely craft a more, a better – better is a very relative word, I would say, a more conscious world, a more conscious planet as such.

06:11 - It is possible to do that because at least now people are, you know, kind of stuck in their home, so you can at least talk to them now.

06:20 - Earlier, you couldn’t talk to them. Now you can at least talk to them and they’re in a listening mode because things are disturbed or dislocated in their lives.

06:28 - So, if it lasts long enough, I think that rethinking will come but if it goes off by September, I think people will just get back to their normal stuff very quickly.

06:38 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Okay. You know since we are talking about the economy, my next question to you will be that will the world move from capitalism to responsible capitalism or will it move to socialism? It’s a thought that we are all pondering over as we watch everything unfold around us.

06:53 - Sustainability and rapid economic growth haven’t historically gone hand-in-hand.

06:58 - Reducing carbon footprint, addressing climate change, which also will mean that we need to slow down our consumption and re-imagine our economies.

07:07 - But one fears that this might also lead to huge job cuts and a big job crisis all over the world.

07:12 - What can governments around the world do collectively and individually to balance this? Sadhguru: Well (Laughs), that will need a whole paper. That question is a very… Well essentially, let me talk about India.

07:32 - In India, still sixty to sixty-two percent of the world’s… country’s population is in agriculture.

07:40 - So that is a huge safety net because the monsoons are expected to be good this year.

07:45 - If you focus on agricultural production, one important thing is nobody will die of starvation.

07:51 - That’s a basic concern for me. As long as people are nourished, maybe we will… people will buy less of your clothes, will buy less of everything, that doesn’t matter, but nobody is dying of starvation, everybody’s well-nourished.

08:06 - Well-nourished human beings with time on their hands can be very productive, they can come up with something tremendous, something absolutely new that we have not done till now.

08:16 - So sixty percent is there that is a safety net.

08:19 - And because sixty percent is involved in agriculture and now a whole lot of people from cities have kind of reverse migrated back to villages, both agriculture and textile could take off in a big way because forty-five million people in this country are employed in textile industry.

08:40 - And this was our real strength at one time.

08:43 - We have so much population in agriculture mainly because many of the weavers went back to agriculture for survival after the East India Company came and destroyed… systematically destroyed our industry, mainly textile industry.

08:58 - At one time, we are closing the whole of Europe.

09:01 - Most valued cloth came from this country, we can again get the nation back there, because the values of sustainability are slowly not only in the high society, it is slowly dripping down to middle class.

09:15 - So, there that, that size of that sustainable market is gradually improving.

09:21 - I think month on month it is kind of expanding.

09:25 - So, because of that, we have an immense possibility in this country, agriculture and textiles and of course, there are many other allied things which can be done, but for the rest of the world those who are completely running on you know, there are economies which are running only on purchasing power of the people.

09:45 - So, there, there will be serious dislocations.

09:49 - What they will do we have to see because, always it’s been about putting money in people’s hands and they will buy something and this rotation has been going on and all the time people are getting into deeper and deeper debts, and they’re buying more and more endlessly fueling this consumption – those economies will be hit.

10:08 - I think a large part of world economy has moved in that direction.

10:12 - So that part will be hit. In my opinion, if I could be completely wrong, I am not an economist or something.

10:20 - I’m just gauging from people’s moods and how they are and how things are happening.

10:25 - Let’s say twelve months if this virus situation continues, I would say maybe we will have to live like how we lived here about twenty years ago, fifteen or twenty years ago.

10:37 - When I say twenty years ago, in the last decade, people tell me because you’re… I mean, I’m not just aiming at the textiles but because you’re in that, you understand those volumes better than anything else.

10:48 - They are saying we are buying five times more clothing than our grandparents and in the next five years they are saying we are going to double that.

10:57 - That means ten times we will have. Well, only one pair we can wear at any time.

11:03 - We like style, we like variety, alright, we can do all that.

11:07 - But an endless amount of consumption of anything, textile is not the only thing.

11:12 - These days, people are buying phones every six months, whether it is working or not working, well, you know, things which are in good functioning mode, they are throwing it away and buying another thing and another thing, simply because it’s become a statement.

11:27 - This is the way they try to enhance their individual nature, which is a very basic way of living, that human being has to enhance himself or herself, only because of what they possess is a very, very unfortunate way to live.

11:40 - So that dimension, probably most people will begin to realize if we suddenly start living like how we were twenty years ago.

11:48 - It was not bad twenty years ago, as far as I can remember (Laughs). Not bad at all.

11:53 - Maybe we had much less than what we have today, but I think it’s perfectly okay.

11:57 - So one thing that every nation should focus on is agricultural production, because people should not starve, there must be food in every nation.

12:05 - If this one thing is taken care of, if we roll back a little bit with all the technologies that we have in the last twenty years, the advancement of technology, communication, especially… especially, see from Coimbatore to Kolkata, we are talking right now, with all this.

12:22 - If our consumption reduces not because of our wisdom, simply because our pockets are shallow, I don’t think it’s a very bad thing.

12:31 - My only concern is people should not go into starvation mode.

12:34 - I think in this country we are well endowed in that direction.

12:38 - Every other nation also should prepare for that.

12:41 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. It’s very well said because I really think that what the lockdown taught many of us was to appreciate the basics.

12:48 - And I think, you know, there is a saying in Bengali that we sometimes (Speaks in Bengali – not transcribed), which means that we sometimes focus more on the periphery than on the core.

12:58 - But I think for India the lesson is… Sadhguru: Not sometimes, all the time, most people (Laughs).

13:03 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Yeah, __(Unclear) food first on the table, human lives first.

13:08 - Fashion can come much later. You know, Sadhguru but… Sadhguru: You can do style with very little things (Laughs).

13:15 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Absolutely. . See even, even a 1000 years ago, those who were stylish were stylish, isn’t it? Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Right.

13:23 - Sadhguru: Even the caveman, just with his loin cloth also he did his own style.

13:28 - So it’s okay (Laughs). Sabyasachi Mukherjee: You know you were talking about nourishment.

13:33 - And I want to ask you something about wellness.

13:35 - They’re both related. Even before the pandemic, the topic of wellness had become very popular all over the world.

13:42 - I view its rise in popularity as a direct response to the effects of excessive capitalism.

13:47 - People feel overworked, tired. I mean, I haven’t slept well for the last ten years because I was… I was constantly on a work treadmill.

13:55 - And now people are looking for new ways to slow down.

13:58 - They are understanding how beautiful life can be, and they want to all achieve a better quality of life.

14:03 - Tell us a little more about the importance of wellness in the modern world and what kind of role would India play in it? Sadhguru: I would like to dealing these two things, slow life is well-being, I don’t think so.

14:17 - Even in a very fast lane, you can still be well, I’m always on a fast lane, but I’m very well.

14:23 - So wellness and lazy life need not necessarily be connected.

14:28 - You could be working very hard and still be very well because the question is only or are you… is your life an expression of your joy? Or are you working in pursuit of your happiness? That makes all the difference.

14:43 - If you’re… if your work and if your activity is an expression of your joyfulness, then work is not going to deplete you, it only enhances you.

14:53 - So I would like to first of all dealing those two things.

14:57 - Well, for many of them, who are just started working for a living, many people.

15:02 - They got a job mainly to make a living. But then they got mad about their job and endlessly they went on, such people are suffering their jobs.

15:10 - In United States of America, they tell me seventy percent of the population, some surveys say not… not like their work, they hate their work.

15:21 - So we… when we were looking at why are so many drug overdoses are happening in the weekends, you know, one… one Saturday evening, in Ohio, in a small town near Dayton, I think, Dayton, Ohio, twenty-three cars were found where people were lying overdosed, that they won’t wake up, they need hospital to wake up, that kind of people, not just drunk or drugged, they are drugged to that point where they need a hospital to bring them back.

15:52 - Twenty-three in the cars, they sit somewhere in the parking lots here, there and they go into the states.

15:57 - So we were looking at why is it people, Saturday evening means they have to go crazy. Actually, it’s Friday.

16:03 - Thank God it’s Friday, you know that whole concept (Laughs).

16:07 - So when we were looking at it, we found that seventy percent of the Americans hate their work.

16:13 - When five days of the week you do something that you hate, oh my god, you would want to go away from this world.

16:20 - So in a way a drug or excessive alcohol, all these are a way of going away from this world.

16:25 - Weekend is not rest time; weekend is a way to obliterate yourself.

16:31 - Because five days of the week you’re doing something that you don’t care for.

16:35 - So this is a time for people to realize that how life… how precious this life is, because as you sit here, as it is ticking off moment to moment, it’s not a second or a minute that’s going away.

16:49 - It’s your life that is ticking away. When you realize this, and this is very important in this culture.

16:56 - We always, from childhood, we always made people conscious that this is mortal life, you are mortal.

17:03 - That means you’re on a limited lease of time.

17:05 - If you understand this every moment at least making use of this lockdown, if people understand we are mortal, we have very little time to live.

17:14 - As we sit here, our life is just ticking away.

17:16 - If we know this, I think naturally, people will do what matters most to them.

17:22 - If every human being is doing what really, really matters to that human being, I think we have a beautiful world.

17:28 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Absolutely. I think it’s also time for everybody to reprioritize because I see the same thing in, in the business that I’m in, there are a lot of people are so unhappy doing what they want to do, and I think they need to be aligned back to what they really want from their life.

17:41 - Anyway, coming back to fashion and beauty. The fashion and the beauty industry for the longest time have preyed on people’s insecurities to increase their bank balance.

17:53 - We are constantly telling people to become better versions of themselves.

17:57 - Sometimes so much so that we alienate people from who they really are.

18:00 - We are constantly trying to make them look different from who they are, change their personalities.

18:06 - I don’t personally think it’s a very sustainable business model. I’ve said this in many interviews.

18:11 - I just want to ask you what are your thoughts on the fashion and the beauty industry? And how do you think that fashion and beauty together can contribute to a much more sustainable and a positive dialogue that’s going to create wellness in society? Sadhguru: By fashion you mean just clothes accessories and stuff, not cosmetic surgery, right? Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Everything sir, fashion and beauty… Sadhguru: Including cosmetic surgery? Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Cosmetic surgery in, in many ways when you look at clothing, I think that sometimes the fashion industry what we do is we are constantly trying people to adapt to newer clothing that they are not comfortable with.

18:48 - I might not say it’s a, it’s a cosmetic change, but it definitely is a change.

18:52 - So I wanted to ask you, how is it that we can realign people to who they really are, still create a business and create more wellness and less anxiety in the world.

19:03 - Sadhguru: I was… I was talking to a very senior lawyer in United States.

19:10 - She’s the vice president in the company and this company is the second largest law firm in United States.

19:18 - It’s a very senior position. But she’s only in her late forties. A brilliant lawyer.

19:24 - But I was staying with them and I just saw how she has to get ready in the morning, walk up and down take calls on high heels and tight clothes and struggling.

19:35 - I said, “Isn’t it so hard to be a woman. ” Why is it… Why have we made it so extremely hard to be a woman? I have seen my mother, my aunts and my you know, many other women around me who are very comfortable the way they are, dressed the way they are.

19:52 - The way they make… make themselves up is very easy, but the way certain fashion what to say concepts have made them is it’s so extremely difficult to be a woman constantly walking on stilts and you know, all that problems, the tightness of the clothes, you can’t sit, you can’t stand, everything is difficult.

20:15 - So in a way trying to fit people into male needs, especially women, because fashion means largely it’s been a woman’s domain, slowly men are coming into the picture, but still, I think it’s a small number if I’m right.

20:30 - So I think the entire fashion industry for a long time has been trying to fit a woman into a male requirement.

20:39 - I think you should fit a woman into a woman’s requirement of what she wants to be rather than how a man wants her to look.

20:47 - So I think if that change happens, a whole lot of things in the world will change.

20:53 - And if a woman dresses the way it is comfortable and nice for her, rather than how it is nice for a man to look at, if that is done, I think many things about how women will come out in the society, how they will function, how they will succeed in various aspects of life, all these things could change significantly, if only fashion is not… women’s fashion is not defined by male requirements.

21:21 - Well, male’s… men’s fashion, I don’t think it is defined by women’s requirement.

21:27 - I think it’s largely by the male requirements.

21:29 - So I don’t think there is any change needed there.

21:31 - But above all, being comfortable with what you wear and just everybody as you know, like, even a bird grows colored feathers to make itself attractive.

21:45 - So it is the nature of lives on this planet to wanting to look better than what it is, little enhancement of who they are.

21:54 - It’s perfectly fine. It’s not… It’s not something for me to comment upon.

21:59 - But going overboard in terms of killing all your comfort, your well-being, everything, just to look in a particular way, I think this has to go.

22:10 - I think you’ve done a lot in this direction to bring back you know, organic clothing where naturally the comfort in this kind of tropical nation, organic clothing is so very comfortable.

22:22 - Most people don’t know what that is and hope right now this whatever people are protesting against the Chinese polyester.

22:30 - So with this I hope little more handlooms and organic cottons and silks in in this country will grow (Laughs) because it looks like there’s going to be a big movement in that direction.

22:40 - So the comfort of being in a, in a, in a, in a cloth that’s been produced with care with a certain involvement more than anything.

22:51 - Somebody who loves to do it, does it. I am not saying the cloth will be dripping with his lover what? That’s not the point.

22:58 - The point is what human beings have contributed to must, must come to you and stay close to you, not something that just falls out of a machine like that.

23:09 - That mass production idea has gone into textiles, started with Manchester (Laughs).

23:16 - And it’s okay if you’re producing steel nuggets, you can produce… mass produce, but clothing which is so intimate to a human being must be hand produced as much as possible, if not completely.

23:27 - Education must become designer. You know, right now we have mass education like a extruder, it is dropping children out in one shape, whatever happens to that individual, it doesn’t matter. You got him into the shape that you want.

23:41 - So fashion should not be in that context that you got somebody into the shape that you want.

23:47 - No, it must be the way it’ll enhance that person, at the same time enhance not just in appearance, in comfort, in well-being in every sense it should enhance that person.

23:57 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. You know, in fashion we have a new movement that’s coming up, which is called the female gaze.

24:03 - You’re so right, because fashion has been dominated by male designers for the longest time.

24:08 - But right now spectacular pieces of women’s wear is being created by women designers.

24:13 - In fact, in my company, ninety percent of women, ninety percent of people who are holding top position are women and I specifically choose women without being sexist.

24:25 - It’s just a strategy, because I think women understand women’s clothing and their needs and their bodies more and it helps us to understand women from a female gaze, which is so important.

24:35 - It’s happening in photography, it’s happening in advertising, it’s happening in fashion, and you’re so right.

24:41 - Thank you so much. I have another question… Sadhguru: That’s a good movement, that’s a good movement.

24:44 - That’s a good direction to go (Laughs). Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Yeah.

24:48 - There… you know, as a man, we can only assume what it is to be a woman. We can never be a woman.

24:56 - So it’s always important to take the direction from a woman. We are dressing up a woman. It’s so Important.

25:02 - There is a shift recently, there is a shift in fashion towards sustainability.

25:08 - And I wanted to ask you about your work with the Isha Foundation, you’ll have started something called fashion for peace, which I was a small part of in New York.

25:17 - I wanted to know more about what you’re doing with sustainability, what you’re doing with fashion for peace, what is your intention and where you’re taking this movement? Sadhguru: We connected some of the New York Fashion Designers, American designers and some Indian ones, I mean, Indian origin people with the local clusters of weavers and you know, cloth makers.

25:43 - So that connection we are making and now we are trying to… this is in the works, but it’s taken longer than we thought it would.

25:51 - We want to create some kind of a textile exchange about handmade cloth and those in different parts of the world who are willing to use it.

26:00 - This is not a business venture. It’s more like a social venture, where this exchange will link people up and even stock up some things and, you know, transportation and other things which they’re not able to handle.

26:13 - Even to dispatch a little bit of goods, they don’t know what to do.

26:16 - To create those kind of clusters as a more like a social activity rather than a commercial activity.

26:23 - But I feel apart from us, somebody must take it up as a commercial activity, then only it will become much larger.

26:31 - We are doing it more as a setting up a model for people to do it in much bigger scale.

26:37 - On the social level, we cannot scale up because there is no profit margin.

26:42 - So scaling up becomes a difficult process for us. That’s what we’re right now at.

26:47 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. I want to ask you another question.

26:50 - We have demonstrated great skills in IT, in telecom, but I think India still has to tap the potentials of some of our greatest assets, our soft skills.

27:00 - You know, our heritage, our craft traditions, which are so unique to us and which have been sustained over generations and years, what role can our government along with, along with influencers, along with businesses, along with consumers do to be able to promote the soft skills of India, to promote the traditional culture of India, and to create that into a cultural capital in the global market? Sadhguru: Well, in many ways, I know I will become very unpopular by saying what I will say now, but this compulsory education is murder of all soft skills in this country.

27:39 - Because in this country, we learn to do things with our hands in a way that you can’t imagine possible, many wonderful things.

27:46 - And these things won’t happen that you can learn after eighteen years of age you have to learn much earlier, you have to observe your parents doing it or you have to be there you know, to get that skill.

27:57 - I will tell you, my family is… my relatives, many of them are very much involved in silk weaving and silk printing in Bangalore, Mysore, that region.

28:07 - And we have also been silk cultivators, you know, mulberry cultivators and all that in our families.

28:13 - So at one point, because I was determined to not to qualify for anything in the university, I was just doing literature and just having my time.

28:21 - So my father thought I must get into some business because I’m not getting educated properly.

28:27 - So he sent me, “Why don’t you go and see the silk industry, that my uncle is one of the leading business people at that time in Bangalore.

28:34 - So why don’t you go and see. ” I went there, I thought I’ll just see.

28:38 - I was not thinking of getting into the industry. But I thought let me go and see.

28:41 - I went there and this guy was sitting there and he’s just weaving a silk sari.

28:48 - And he doesn’t have a diagram. Definitely no computer.

28:53 - Nothing, like magic he’s just doing like this and like that one flower comes up on the sari, and he’s just going on doing like this, another flower comes up.

29:03 - Nothing is ever not aligned properly – perfect.

29:07 - Like today you can get those designs in computers.

29:11 - But in his mind, it’s all fixed and the guy looks like an illiterate, he can’t read and write.

29:15 - But he’s like magical with his geometry, his geometry is one thing that always kind of mind boggled me, the geometry of the existence itself the way it is, this guy has this sense of geometry, no education, no nothing but so fantastic.

29:31 - Almost miraculously, these flowers keep coming up without a single flaw in them.

29:37 - So I just sat there looking at him for whole three days before he finished this sari, and it was so incredible watching this.

29:45 - So these kind of skills will not come by reading about it.

29:51 - You just have to immerse yourself in it. There is no other way.

29:54 - I think in our country, our idea of compulsory education needs to change.

30:00 - Everybody just reading about physics, chemistry, mathematics, fully knowing I’m not going to become a mathematician or a chemist or anything else, simply picking up small bits and titbits of every science and everybody who’s read a high school textbook, unfortunately, think they’re scientists, you know, because, you see the commentary that’s going on in the social media, they all think they are scientists because they read a high school textbook.

30:25 - It is completely wrong. I feel we need to bring an education, where if somebody wants to learn weaving or art or dying or whatever, you know, various things, including agriculture, as a part of education from an early age, because these things, if you don’t instinctively pick it up at an early age, suddenly you will do it at the age of twenty, it’s not going to work like that.

30:49 - So this so-called compulsory education, sending everybody to that a British kind of education system, which was only designed to produce clerks for their, Her Majesty’s service, we are still doing the same education, destroying all these crafts.

31:05 - Above all, the biggest concern is, we have made some small surveys.

31:09 - And we found that not even two percent of the farmers are able, I mean, are able to encourage their children to go into farming – next generation.

31:21 - So in another twenty years, we will have a serious situation where we don’t know how to grow our food.

31:27 - So already, we don’t know how to weave our clothing; already, we don’t know how to weave a basket.

31:31 - Already, all these things have happened. So if soft skills have to come, our idea of education has to go through a thorough change.

31:39 - This everybody going, sitting there, learning A,B,C, 1,2,3, three languages, and you don’t know anything at the age of fifteen.

31:47 - You’re not capable of doing a thing at the age of eighteen.

31:50 - That is not a good way to do things if you want to have soft skills, but I feel in the future of this world because the world is so connected today.

32:00 - If you really have something intricate and beautiful, the world is hungry for those things.

32:06 - But we are not able to… we are looking at the past.

32:09 - I’m talking about thousand years ago, at that time, we were taking our goods all the way to Jerusalem, Damascus, you know, Greece and all these places.

32:19 - Today, it should be so easy to do that with the transportation and the online communications we have.

32:25 - But in these times, we are destroying all that and studying that kind of education that you know what the… what was done for an occupied nation.

32:35 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. In fact, I wanted to share something personal with you.

32:39 - You know, when I was very young I dropped out of school for five years.

32:42 - I had clinical depression because my parents wanted me to study medicine.

32:46 - It took my father five years to convince me to go back… Sadhguru: Oh, that is an Indian ailment, that’s an Indian ailment everybody wants to study medicine (Laughs).

32:54 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: I know. And, I didn’t want to and my big… you know for me, I thought that, I thought that education was like an arranged marriage that you get married and then you find love, I wanted to have a love marriage, I wanted to know what I was chasing.

33:08 - It created a lot of havoc inside me. But I was glad that I dropped out of school so that it gave me courage to do what I wanted to do.

33:15 - So I completely understand what you’re saying.

33:17 - I have another question to ask you. You know, the American dream, which was chased by a lot of people all over the world is on the verge of collapse.

33:25 - And a lot of people worldwide are getting disenchanted by it.

33:30 - And there are corridors that there are… there are conversations that are happening in power corridors, cultural corridors all over the world, that a new dream needs to arise for people to get hope.

33:40 - What do you think would India play a role in creating of that new dream? And is that role going to be big enough for India? Sadhguru: Oh, the role is very big.

33:55 - The thing is, are we agile enough to get into that role? Are we quick enough? Are we wise enough to get into that role? That’s the only question.

34:04 - Is the role big enough? The role is super big.

34:08 - Well, about the American dream, see these dreams were created when our understanding of the world was like this – we will rob the whole world to satisfy the hunger of a few people.

34:24 - So this is called imperialism. Imperialism essentially meant this.

34:29 - You rob the entire world. Right now these protests that are happening, they’re pulling down Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxford, because these are all heroes who robbed the entire world and fed their people.

34:42 - So if I rob ten people and feed my family, my family in their ignorance may be very happy.

34:48 - But that is not a dream for the world. That’s a horrible dream.

34:53 - But this horrible dream, grew up in those nations where there is imperialism that is over.

35:00 - Now the whole world is aspiring. Every human being on the planet is aspiring to do well.

35:05 - Now definitely a sustainable dream has to come.

35:08 - When we say sustainable dream, we think in terms of ecology.

35:12 - Ecology is not the problem. The problem is… See, there’s only one problem in the world – human being. There is simply no other problem.

35:19 - There is only one problem. This one problem to handle, what should we do? The only problem with the human being is, right now they’re in compulsive reaction with the external situations.

35:32 - But the very fact that we call human a being, we don’t call any other creature a being, we call this one a being, because this is capable of conscious existence.

35:44 - So moving from unconsciousness to consciousness is the most important thing.

35:49 - This entire movement what we are calling as Isha right now is clearly described like this.

35:55 - This is from religion to responsibility. Because responsible human being is needed.

36:01 - Right now we have good people. What is our idea of good people? Well, if we kill you know, million people in another country and bring the country’s wealth to our country, we are good Indians, all right.

36:14 - India fortunately never did that much but this is how our sense of goodness has been.

36:20 - We may be good to somebody. Racism also means just goodness actually, because I know somebody will cut the sentence and get me into trouble.

36:28 - But actually they’re being very nice to their own people.

36:31 - They’re being very nice to their own people but enslaving everybody else for their well-being.

36:38 - So good is not what we need. We need sensible human beings, responsible human beings, joyful human beings because why joy is important is, when you’re joyful you will do only what is needed.

36:52 - You… because you’re not in pursuit of happiness.

36:55 - Everything, all the destruction, the so called unsustainable activities that we have done on this planet is essentially in pursuit of human well-being and happiness and with all these thousand years of exploitation, we are not any happier than what people were.

37:12 - So, just for human beings to understand human experience is crafted from within us, not from outside of us – if this one thing gets across, this is India’s USP, if we get this across, then naturally we can fill that space and there are any amount of cultural strengths within us which if we wait for another generation may go away, you know, we may… already we’re depleting very rapidly, one more fifty years means it may be gone, we have to take that position now.

37:43 - We are still in the pole position in spite of all the neglect, we are still in the pole position.

37:49 - But will we get our engine started or will we sit there only, because I have seen Formula One races were in the pole position the car didn’t start, what do you do with that? So, this is a time where India has to be agile and get into that role, because we can contribute immensely, because this is the only nation which is not formed on the basis of sameness of race, religion, language, ethnicity, we’d never look… thought of life in terms of sameness.

38:19 - That all of us who worship the same God, all of us should wear the same stuff, all of us should speak the same language – it never occurred to us.

38:26 - Every few kilometers, you drive people think different, feel different, look different eat different, everything different.

38:33 - So this is a culture which has the ability to take that position.

38:37 - Will we take it or not depends on many things (Laughs).

38:41 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: I seriously hope that everybody who’s listening to this chat, sincerely understand that this is India’s time, I personally believe it.

38:48 - Because I think great things come out of crisises and this is, you know, the world is going to look at everything differently.

38:56 - Everybody all over the world is going to reprioritize their lives and I think this is India’s moment and we just need to be agile enough to hold it.

39:04 - I wanted to ask you one more question and this is very topical, you know, governments and businesses are facing the heat from citizens and consumers worldwide, because people are calling out everybody for intolerance, for non-inclusivity, these are topics that are becoming almost impossible to ignore.

39:23 - What are your comments on this? Sadhguru: See, they must be definitely called out but it should not become an extreme movement.

39:32 - See, you cannot fix history, all right? You cannot correct history.

39:37 - Now going on harping on that we will become hateful and resentful. That should not happen.

39:43 - At the same time we don’t have to, you know (Laughs), in India, we still have an Aurangzeb street.

39:52 - This is just like having an Adolf Hitler… Adolf Hitler street in Israel all right.

39:58 - This is not because of somebody’s religion.

40:00 - Because of that person what he did, all right, his attitude towards the population and what he did.

40:07 - It is estimated he could have killed up to four million people in his lifetime, that’s what they are saying.

40:13 - So when there is such a record, you don’t hold him as a ideal, you don’t name things after him, you don’t make… put him up like a hero.

40:20 - Because somebody will take that. See even now after the disaster of Nazi whatever happened in the forties and thirties and forties, even today, certain people identify with that neo Nazi movement, whatever, they still hold that as an ideal, alright, the symbols are still held, because human mind functions and kind of rides on symbols.

40:45 - It’s very important symbols, which brought enormous suffering to humanity for whatever reason, whether it’s race, religion, caste, creed, whatever, that people intentionally cause suffering.

40:58 - Unintentionally, we are causing suffering that’s a different matter.

41:01 - Intentionally somebody cause suffering, such symbols must be removed, and future generations should not grow on those symbols. It’s very, very important.

41:12 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you Sadhguru. Before we let you go, I have one quick question to ask you.

41:18 - You know, the Indian Ayurveda has been so important for our wellness, and everybody… anybody that you ask everybody is saying that do your best to keep yourself fit and agile, improve your immunity.

41:31 - What would you suggest is a good lockdown diet and what are things that people can incorporate which are basic things in their home to increase the immunity system? Sadhguru: Right now (Laughs), Sabya, you know, the… there is a group of doctors from Rutgers University, Indiana, Harvard, Florida University, from various other universities come together and they studied.

41:56 - They made an elaborate study. This is one of the largest studies ever that’s happened, of what happens with Inner Engineering practices.

42:04 - One aspect I’m speaking, not the others. One aspect is, it triggers and activates 230 genes in your body, which are directly concerned with your immune system.

42:16 - So they’re practically, we know this very well but today we have data for this.

42:21 - So one important thing is everybody should bring in a simple internal practice like a kriya, some… something we are offering this online free of cost for everybody.

42:30 - There’s something called as Simha Kriya, in six weeks’ time, if you measure… if you have some kind of parameters to measure, you will distinctly see your immune system is much, you know, much more elevated and acting on a much better level.

42:43 - So apart from that in Indian diet, I think you’re a Bengali, you’re too much on mustard, huh? Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Yes, we do. A lot of mustard.

42:53 - Sadhguru: (Laughs) Mustard is also good. Turmeric is very good.

42:57 - If you eat, this is the time of mangoes already they have ripened but raw mangoes, amla there are many other things we can make a list and throw it out to people, already we are doing it in some level.

43:07 - There are many traditional things that we have naturally been consuming, which makes an Indian system little different.

43:15 - Maybe that is one of the reasons the recovery rate in this country is the best right now in the world.

43:21 - Like more than fifty-two percent of the people who are going positive are recovering from that.

43:26 - Mainly I think it is because of the natural diet consumption that’s happening.

43:31 - But being little more cautious, not eating oily stuff, but eating more you know steamed kind of stuff is much better.

43:38 - But I can’t tell people what to eat. They’re at home out of their frustration that they must be eating pav bhaji and what, what is it that? What is that? Vada something in Mumbai and what is that? Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Vadapav.

43:52 - Sadhguru: Vadapav (Laughs) okay. So you can’t stop them from that.

43:56 - They will fry chilies and eat it’s okay but if they keep a simple practice, which takes twelve, twelve – fifteen minutes a day, a couple of times a day if they do it, their immune system will be much better.

44:09 - Right now, the most important responsibility for every human being is that you don’t get infected.

44:16 - That’s the most important thing. And if you do get infected, you must ensure, from you it does not go to one more person, for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter.

44:25 - People think out of love they can spread infection and it’s okay.

44:29 - Whether it’s love or hate, both ways it’s not okay because the end result is same (Laughs).

44:34 - And during this season, however long this lasts, you and me and everybody else, everybody else who is a sensible human being must take a commitment that we will stay alive.

44:46 - This is not a joke. This is not a joke. This is not a news channel. This is for real.

44:52 - Little irresponsibly if you behave you could be dead, all right.

44:56 - So it’s very important in this entire period, everybody should take this commitment, no matter what I will stay alive, because that is the most important thing.

45:05 - Because you staying alive, you’re also keeping the country and the world alive in many ways.

45:10 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure… Sadhguru: Namaskaram. Thank you.

45:14 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. Thank you, everybody for watching us. I’m really sorry about the glitch.

45:18 - That was Sadhguru for you and Sabyasachi on the Elle Instagram handle, good evening, and take care.

45:25 - Sadhguru: Namaskaram, I don’t know why I’m on the fashion channel (Laughs).

45:32 - Sabyasachi Mukherjee: Thank you. Sadhguru: Thank you. .