Jaggi Vasudev, the self-styled Sadhguru, is on a propaganda mission called ‘Save Soil.’ He claims to have traveled 30,000 km across 26 countries as a lone motorcyclist in 100 days. That’s approximately 300 km every day.
According to leading news outlets, Jaggi Vasudev used BMW K1600 49GT to travel across these countries. The bike has a fuel efficiency of 15km per liter, which means 2000 liters of fuel for the so-called 30,000 km ride. Only a miracle man like Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev can burn fossil fuel and save soil.
However, there isn’t any continuous footage to verify if Jaggi Vasudev traveled the entire length by bike. It can also be a staged event, a sophisticated pleasure ride the Sadhguru took for fame. He has enough wealth and servitors at his disposal to ensure that. By chance, the Isha foundation says it has video graphed the ride. Then it means Jaggi Vasudev was not traveling solo.
Let’s put that argument aside and see if Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev practices what he is attempting to preach?
Is Sadhguru violating nature?
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is sitting on a large swathe of land under the foothills of the Velliangiri mountains, around the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. According to a CAG report, the ISHA foundation has continued its construction of buildings in an elephant habitat/corridor without getting a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the Hill Area Conservation Authority (HACA), despite notices to the state forest department in 2012 and 2013. It is not an unfounded allegation against the ISHA foundation run by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. All leading news portals carried this news on the 11th and 12th of July 2018.
We are not going into the details of the case. It is already there in the media. But we are curious to know where was Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s interest in soil then? He goes into nature’s zone, digs out the soil there, and erects a concrete monastery. Is this Jaggi Vasudev’s idea of building a conscious planet?
The planet is already conscious. You don’t have to build one!
Let’s be blunt. We don’t have to create a conscious planet. The planet is already full of life. Nature is a home for innumerable species and organisms. It’s enough if we, as humans, don’t destroy it, even in the name of so-called spirituality. It applies to Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and his ISHA foundation too. He may concoct and dole out some theories to persuade his followers, but that’s just some justification to enact another human-made agenda contrary to nature.
We all have heard that people practicing meditation and spirituality wish to go to forests and mountains. Nature’s serene backdrop helps them unwind and focus. That’s fine. That’s their choice. But what is the need for Jaggi Vasudev, Isha foundation, and the likes to build massive material structures adjacent to jungles? Can’t they practice and propagate their spirituality sitting elsewhere?
Spirituality on sale. The price tag is nature.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev could be in the business of spirituality, selling books, artifacts, and food products. To operate like a corporate, he can be inside the city doing business. But as a spiritualist, Jaggi Vasudev should have known how he should be when he moves his entourage into a rural hamlet under the mountains. He should have kept the place intact and resided there.
If Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s idea of spirituality is to make people sit inside concrete and granite constructions meditating, he could have done that within the urban jungle itself. Why desecrate nature and build something on it? Did Jaggi Vasudev get the raw materials like bricks, granites, wood, steel, and concrete to construct his Isha yoga center without destroying soil? Did he create them with his yogic powers without tampering with nature?
But sorry, don’t ask Jaggi Vasudev. He will either laugh sarcastically and brush aside the question under the carpet or might get offended. He needs some yoga and meditation to calm down his shooting tempers. The self-anointed Sadhguru, the epitome of spirituality, lost his cool when a BBC interviewer politely asked him about the violations.
Like the famous quote, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” Jaggi Vasudev should be cautious before he tries to question others on environmental destruction or talk about saving soil. He should first ask himself, “Where do I stand? On pristine soil or the concrete, I laid over it?”
The spiritual guru who lost his composure
In the first few minutes of the interview, we can Jaggi Vasudev proudly talk about how he was received by policymakers in the countries he visited. However, moments later, we can see Sadhguru trying to silence the interviewer and then getting the cameras turned off. Is it a fall from grace for a spiritual guru to display anger in public? Well, however, we may call it, the critics of Sadhguru felt empowered to throw a volley of questions at the spiritual guru. One of them was intriguing — Does Sadhguru’s Sambhavi Mahamudra needs an overhaul? Certainly, the efficacy of his spiritual methods stands exposed. After all, the guru himself has lost his composure.
Adiyogi’s huge carbon footprint
The other major contradiction when Jaggi Vasudev speaks about soil is the 112ft bust statue of Adiyogi at the ISHA yoga center in Coimbatore, made using 500 tons (5 lakh kg) of steel. Did he design it to resemble himself? We do not know. But possible.
The issue with the Adiyogi statue is its carbon footprint. For every ton of steel produced, 1.9 tons of Carbon dioxide (CO2) gets emitted. So the Adiyogi statue, in its making, has put out 950 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, in addition to other hazardous gas released during steel manufacturing.
We all know that iron ore and coke (from coal), the raw materials used in steel manufacturing, are obtained through mining. But how many of us know that to make 1 ton of steel, 770 kg of coal is required? Going by that data, to produce 500 tons of steel for the Adiyogi statue, 3.85 lakh kilograms of coal would have been used. Isn’t that huge?
It’s common knowledge that mining hurts the environment and is not a sustainable practice though our modern society is dependent on it. Mining leaves acid discharges that make acres of adjoining areas and their soil unusable for decades. In addition to all the environmental destruction that comes with steel, crafting and transporting the Adiyogi statue, too, would have consumed a lot of fossil fuels.
Now, how should we look at the Adiyogi statue? With reverence and fascination for its grandeur or sulk because it has a larger-than-life carbon footprint? Did Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev not think of the colossal wreckage he has done to soil by crafting a bust statue in steel? If the realization of the importance of soil came to Sadhguru only later own, he can minimum repent for making it. Perhaps the save soil movement is his way of repentance.
Is ISHA’s Mahashivratri event environmentally friendly?
The last thing we like to bring up is the annual Mahashivratri festival at the ISHA yoga center in the Booluvampatti village, Coimbatore.
Some reports claim that more than a lakh people took part in the festivities of Mahashivratri here. It is like a mass event inside the jungle, where Jaggi Vasudev dances in vibrant outfits to the tunes of artists from across the country. While celebrities and high-profile people in the inner circle dance with the Sadhguru, others get a glimpse of him as he walks a ramp that runs amidst people. The sight is typically that of a cult carved around a self-styled godman. “Subservience is a believer’s plight.” How else can we call it?
Now the question is, Is it required to blast such high decibel music in an area adjoining a reserve forest? Aren’t the large drumming instruments used by ISHA musicians made of leather? Where did they procure it from? Is it possible without slaughtering cattle? Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev should explain the source of this leather to devout Hindus thronging his ISHA Yoga center.
Here is some math on the environmental cost of traveling to Jaggi Vasudev’s ISHA foundation for Mahashivratri. Sadhguru’s yoga center is about 28 km from the Coimbatore Railway station. People from various cities, states, and countries visit Jaggi Vasudev’s Isha center year-long. Say on Mahashivratri, if one lakh people commuted an average distance of 50 km to reach the ISHA yoga center and return, the total distance covered by all Mahashivratri visitors will be 50 lakh km. Now, if the average mileage of all the vehicles plied to the center is 25km/liters, then Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s Mahashivratri event must have burnt 2 lakh liters of fuel. One man is responsible for consuming such a large quantum of fossil fuel overnight.
So let’s ask Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, are you practicing what you are preaching in the name of Save Soil? Don’t worry about society. It will remain awake if leaders don’t mislead.
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