SAVE SOIL FOR FUTURE PROSPERITY! Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev spoke, sang, danced while his myriad fans cheered and sought his blessings at the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium at Bambolim on Tuesday, August 23, 2022. On the dais are Chief Minister of Goa Pramod Sawant with some of his cabinet ministers present to witness the signing of a MoU with the Isha Foundation to promote the message of saving soil.

IN one thing mystic, seer, adventurer, entrepreneur of the mind and body, heart and soul, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev must be right in today’s sickening times! In response to a question from someone in the huge gathering of invitees and hundreds of fans, who turned up at his latest “Save Soil” campaign meeting with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant at the Dr Shyama Mukherjee Indoor Stadium at Bambolim on Tuesday, August 23, 2022, he said nobody is perfect. In so many words he said we are perfect only when we are dead and ironically, in today’s times we are all happy when someone is dead!
It was brand Sadhguru all the way amidst a blitzkrieg of glossy posters and we are familiar with it by now just as we are familiar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rhetoric about the good life being exclusive and not inclusive and nobody should dare to complain about it. In this respect at least life is not perfect although if we wish we too may find mental equilibrium and happiness within us if we seek it along the right ways and not the usual human being ways of wanting more and more and more expansion.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s apt observation: We are only just specks in the cosmos but want more homes, more cars, more eye candy, more of everything ….when we are here today and gone tomorrow. Perhaps we should want less and less is the message going out, forget all those who want more and more!
Ever thought about all this? A zillion times I’m sure but perhaps we need the inimitable Sadhguru to remind us to come down to earth to think about saving the soil at our feet! He traces the sickness of humanity to the sickness of the soil of Mother Earth because we have exploited Her ruthlessly and mercilessly and therefore the simple common sense equation would be to stop and think about ways to enrich the soil of the earth once again. For soil is the living force which is part of our body – simply, we are what we eat.
If we eat food without goodness in it how are we going to be good human beings? How will we continue to live? This is one of the critical issues rearing its monstrous head in our times with food shortages coming up in in the wake of climate changes and country after country bringing its people on their knees – if we human of the species don’t take a few vital U-turns we are doomed.

It was quite an educative and entertaining Save Soil Movement evening with Sadhguru followers holding up posters everywhere and greeting everyone with a cheerful “Namaskaram!” at the venue. Apart from the purely Save Soil campaign posters there were also posters depicting him with Goa’s politicians inside and outside the venue — Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, Union Minister of Culture & Tourism of India Shripad Naik, Environment Minister Nilesh Cabral, Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik. They were all there on the dais with a turbaned and royally attired Sadhguru to witness the cultural presentations of music and dances by Goan groups as well as the Isha Sadhguru Foundation’s Samskriti students from Coimbatore, led by his daughter Radhe Jaggia, an exquisite bharat natyam exponent (her performance reminded me of the Tamil Vijyantimala of a younger vintage).
AFTER the performances came the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with Isha Outreach which will help the government of Goa to launch the movement with expertise and training. The duration of the MoU is for three years. How it will translate in Goa at ground level is anybody’s guess! Goa is the ninth state to join this Save Soil Movement which has in recent times taken the eye-catching, adventurous Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev riding his motorbike across 30,000 km through 27 countries – a much publicized event wherein he met heads of state to appeal to them to join the worldwide movement to save the soil of the earth so that organic agriculture (as opposed to soil-destroying chemical agriculture) may continue to feed the world. Otherwise we will see a starving world in country after country by the time 2050 comes around.
SADHGURU’S hour long keynote address detailed how ecology is the basis of everyday economy on this planet and how ecology and economy are intrinsically linked for the human race – but the destruction of the top soil of the earth is the destruction of all life on earth, including superior human life (as least that’s what human beings think, that their civilization is superior courtesy technology and science).

But said Sadhguru, remember that “The body that you carry is soil, the clothes that you wear is soil…tell me one thing that is not soil.” He pointed out that it is the nurturing quality of the earth which makes it our mother and also the human mothers who nourish their children and want the best for them. Just as we do not treat our mother as a “resource” we should not treat mother earth as just a resource to exploit and destroy so that more human beings can amass wealth to be foolishly more and more happy. Any real happiness must come from within and not without!
ALL this and much more in a similar vein of eloquence and déjà vu depending on how much one has listened and imbibed Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. It was a very well organized function with members of his movement at the venue refusing to let anyone cross over the iron barriers which separated VIP from non-VIP zones. The indoor stadium was packed to the gills up in the gallery as well in the main auditorium.
In a finale moment at the very brief question-answer session one fan, Shruti, said she would like to save soil but didn’t know how to do it, and could she please come down from the top gallery where she was sitting, to take Sadhguru’s blessings in person? He smiled and said no, upstairs is a good place for taking his blessings, he is sending them up to her, cracking up the audience by saying coming down to meet him would be dangerous!
Say it was a cultural show with a difference. It appealed to state governments and politicians to do better for the world on which they depend on for too much, more than they need just for themselves and their parivar. The tight security in place made it difficult for even media people without a pass to get closer to the charismatic Sadhguru. Needless to say his campaigns are attracting followers from aam aadmi as well as khaas aadmi who fill his coffers with…er…more wealth to run his varied organisations and centers in India and across the world.
In exchange many hope to get some warm words of comfort and wisdom to live life more intelligently — in a world obsessed by power, profit and control (to quote America’s Dr Shiva Ayyadurai, E-mail and Echo-mail inventor, whose US-based Truth- Freedom-Health educational movement online is drawing thousands of followers).
FRANKLY speaking, my dears, I’m more interested in listening to what Congress politician Kanhaiya Kumar has to say in his mesmerising analysis about what’s happening in India today and how heavyweight and lightweight politicians are hustling to be in league with upper crust society and vice versa may be — to the continuing degeneration of evergreen democratic values and to the detriment of the country’s future and happiness (not to mention, soil, water, air). I mean we can’t possibly call the Gujarati killers and rapists of Bilkees Bano and her family as “sanskaari Brahmins” in a democracy. Or has our democracy turned so exclusive that we can? These are dangerous times we are living in, my dears.
Listen to Sadhguru by all means. He is the guru with the mostest and his talk shows wake up the mind in the best sense of the word, he is definitely food for thought (as much as we need food for the physical body which grows in rich, nutritious soil and not in poor, infertile soil). But I would also say listen to Kanhaiya Kumar more and what he is saying along with other bravehearts sticking out their necks at grassroots level because they too, yes, say they love the soil of India which is being stolen away increasingly by a rapacious government’s policies. A government high on dividing India along narrow vested interests of deadly jumla philosophy – at whose cost?
THINK about all this my dears and don’t just think, it’s time for me to say avjo, selamat datang, poite verem, au revoir, arrivedecci and vachun yeta here for now.

—Mme Butterfly