To Raise Human Consciousness

If you just take away a few drugs from the market, a big portion of the population will go crazy. This is not wellbeing.

Investing in a spiritual possibility, a possibility beyond one’s physicality is the only ultimate answer. If you want long-term benefits, you must make long-term investments.

The journey from poverty to affluence is a hard journey, whether it is for an individual person or for a society, nation or large populations in the world. And it is not eco-friendly. But most of the time when people get there, they cannot enjoy their affluence.

Human beings need to realize that the quality of their life is not determined by what they drive, where they live or what they wear. It is determined by how joyful and peaceful a person is. In pursuit of wellbeing, human beings have looked up and fought forever. Then they looked out and ripped the planet apart. But wellbeing will happen only when you turn inward. In is the only way out.

Investing in a spiritual possibility, a possibility beyond one’s physicality is the only ultimate answer. If you want long-term benefits, you must make long-term investments.

“If there is no infrastructure, how will you produce enlightened beings?”

A hundred years ago, if you walked into a native village, you had to search the whole village to get one man who could read and write in just the local language itself. But today, at least 70% of the population can read in their own mother tongue and many can speak English. The turnaround happened because someone built schoolrooms and trained teachers.

Similarly, to raise human consciousness, to transform the individual human being, the most important thing that needs to happen in the world is that we build the needed infrastructure, both human and otherwise.

Gautama the Buddha, after his enlightenment, was invited by kings and emperors to many cities and towns. But he said, “If you want me to come, you must build a meditation hall and a garden.” This became a standard.

This is the only society that built a lot of infrastructure for inner wellbeing. There are more places created for spiritual blossoming than anywhere else on the planet. So, it is not a coincidence nor is it an accident that every generation produced enlightened beings.

But that infrastructure is now receding, not growing. There is not much infrastructure for the making of the human being. There is infrastructure for all kinds of things. How many bars do you think exist in your city? There is enough infrastructure to get drunk but not enough infrastructure to get enlightened. That is a very lopsided way of dealing with the world. If there is no infrastructure, how will you produce enlightened beings? You will not! That is what is missing. We need to put that back.

Physical and Human Infrastructure

This is one of the commitments that Isha has for the world: we want to build infrastructure for the inner wellbeing of the human being. When I say infrastructure, I am not just talking about physical infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is just to incubate human infrastructure. The most important thing is what kind of people you generate. Without the right kind of people, you cannot transmit this science because this is a subjective science. Without the right kind of people, it will not get across to people the way it should.

This is the time and age where we can empower every human being with the necessary tools, know-how and ability to handle their own inner wellbeing by themselves, without impeding upon any other life.

When it comes to life transformation, we do not allow anyone to teach these as a profession. One must hold this above his or her life, more important than their life, only then are they allowed to teach. This is given as an offering, never as a profession or a hobby.