The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - The Indic Mind: An Approach to the Metacrisis | Reality Roundtable 8

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Mohit Trivedi, Abhishek Thakore, and Kejal Savla, three NGO leaders in India active in driving social and cultural change using the perspective of the Indic Mind. As a subcontinent, the Indic people have faced crisis after crisis, yet have still held onto the optimism and compassion foundational to their culture. Submerged in this history and context, there is so much for the West to learn from those active in the metacrisis space in India. How has India's unique history shaped the way they approach coming resource constraints, as they prepare to experience disproportionate global heating and extreme weather? Why is it important to hold paradoxes that look beyond the black and white, towards more complex and nuanced perspectives of the world? How could community be at the center of the responses to converging challenges we face - and what would it mean to practice relationality across all areas of one's life? Mohit Trivedi is the co-found of 2069 Ecosystems. He is also a learning designer, facilitator and movement weaver, with a passion for spiritual and socio-political transformation. With a background in psychology, nursing, alternative education and social entrepreneurship, Mohit is aspiring to have harmony in his relationships with power, money, work and connections with others. He is actively stewarding a pan-Indian movement bringing together various individuals and organizations who are looking to practice collective leadership and decentralization, and nurture the next generation of spiritual and socio-political leaders. Abhishek Thakore is a serial social entrepreneur and a systems change expert with over two decades of experience. As the founder of The Blue Ribbon Movement, he has created an ecosystem of initiatives aimed at building youth leadership, civic engagement, and thriving cultures across the social sector. An MBA from IIM Bangalore and a Senior Fellow of Bhoomi College, he uses his diverse expertise for serving humanity's evolutionary purpose and responding to the metacrisis. Kejal Savla is the co-founder and CEO of Wisdom Tree- an organization that works with non-profits across rural and urban areas to work on organizational challenges through culture and leadership. She works with the integration of psychology, spirituality, and management to tap into organization's soul-force to reach its highest potential. Kejal is a weaver of social change for humans and systems to co-exist non-violently. She comes with a decade-long experience of working in the social space with youth on deep democracy, local problem-solving, and 100% consent-based decision-making. For Show Notes and More visit: thegreatsimplification.com/episode/reality-roundtable-8 To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/XQbP4UJaiCw   

You're listening to the Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification. Greetings, or should I say Namaste. Welcome to Reality Roundtable Number 8. I took a break from Reality Roundtables because I was in India for six weeks this winter. Near the end of my stay, there was a symposium of activists and thinkers and people talking about sustainability and the future and NGO leaders.

And I was fortunate to meet and befriend three Indian NGO leaders who are with me on this conversation. today. The topic is the Indic Mind and the Metacrisis. When I went there, I expected to hear a lot about climate, climate justice, plans for climate, and what I found was surprisingly different. And by the way, as I'm recording this, I just noticed a tweet that it is 45 degrees Celsius plus in the Indian subcontinent, which translates to 113 Fahrenheit. And if you account for humidity, it's much hotter than that. So climate is a central part of the metacrisis for the Indian subcontinent. With me today to discuss this and other aspects of India and the human predicament and what we face are Mohit Trivedi, who is the co-founder of 2069 ecosystem and is actively stewarding a pan-Indian

movement to bring together various individuals and organizations who are looking to practice collective leadership and decentralization. Also with me is Abyshek Thakor, who is the founder of the Blue Ribbon Movement and co-founder of the 269 ecosystem. Abbe has created an ecosystem of initiatives aimed at building youth leadership, civic engagement, and thriving cultures across the social sector. Last but not least is Kejal Savia, who is the co-founder and CEO of Wisdom Tree, which offers services to nonprofits in order to reorient their cultures towards wisdom. I encountered much wisdom. When I was in India, it is very heartening to me to be aware of so many humans around the world working collectively and individually on these problems. there's much wisdom in this conversation as well. Please welcome Mohit, Abi, and Kejal.

Namaste, my friends, Kejal, Abi, Mohit. Good to see you. Namaste. It seems like a lifetime ago that I met you. It was three months ago, less than three months ago in the south of India. Welcome to the program. If you could each briefly say who you are and if you were, to introduce yourself.

Namaste. I am Mohit. I live in Udaipur. It's in South Rajasthan. And I'm living in a family where we are all trying to learn things naturally and trying to flow with life wherever life can lead us. Well, I'm sure we're going to hear more. Abashik. Abhishek from Mumbai, deeply into culture.

That's what gets me going. Been in the space for two decades and a part of this larger family of all of us. Namaste. My name is Kajar. I live in Mumbai, which is in west of India. And for me, the last 10 years I've been exploring social change through inner and outer change processes. Excellent.

So we all met in Oroville where we had a. kind of a seminar on the metacrisis. And I didn't know, but you all kind of follow this podcast, the work, the metacrisis space. And I thought it would be fascinating to have a conversation about India and the metacrisis and some of your reflections, some of your efforts, some of your philosophy on the Indian culture and how that can play a role and what humanity faces. You know, I, speaking as an American, India is this massive country with almost a billion and a half people.

And I don't, you know, I cognitively know things like who is the president and the population and where it is. But it was until I was in Tamil Nadu met you and others that it emotionally hit me, the vibrancy, the warmth, the depth of the culture and the striving of people. And it was just a magical experience. So I wanted to give you each the mic to talk about your work, your perspective on what we're calling the metacrisis. So without further ado, who would like to start? Explaining what we are trying to do, I would say that we can touch couple of doors that can explain, explore the work that we are trying to do here in our

context. So I would say that first door would be Indic mine. And the question that comes to me is, what if we can reclaim our uncolonizable gene from our colonized DNA? what becomes possibly if we can do that and when I say Indic mind I would definitely say that the mind which has been or which has gone through lots of excessive oppressive systems but still there is deep down something which cannot be colonized which cannot be affected and that stays there and there is some sort of rich roots of collective

that we experience every day there is non-linearity interdependence and there is a rural mind in this this india we still have like seven point of 7 million villages and almost 70% of the population live in villages and in that I would say 100 millions are tribal population so there is huge play between the indigenous and indic mind and there is lots of porosity diversity and vast neck among you would say most capitalist and extractive mindsets. So we have that play here. We play between these paradoxes and definitely there is scarcity in the mind, but there is some sort of memory of abundance in our bodies. So if you go to a village, they would not ask you why have you come. First thing that they would ask you is,

do you need water? Or would you have chai if I'm having chai? So there is some sort of warm and welcomeness that you would find doesn't mean that they are not affected by the metachy or superorganism or they are affected fairly but there is this like some sort of wisdom that we need to reclaim and I would also say that the work that we are doing is something more like reappropriating our culture Like the co-option process went through this 4, 5, 6, 700 years. And in our group, I find that there is this Indic mind is very alive. And we keep on staying in that process where we see that whatever has been co-opted and whatever is connected to the context now, how can we reclaim that?

in a very compassionate way, very non-violently. And in that, what I feel in Indic mind is the role of elders, the wisdom keepers in our work, their presence, their rigor, how the stories of their success and failure inspire us. And it gives us more insight, foresight. It also keeps us in a place where we are more playful. We can explore more about mind. I would go towards the second door, which is access to spirituality.

How Abhishek says, spiritual lab. So we are in a spiritual lab. And I feel that what if deeply spiritual, people can be on the front side or front line or forefront when it comes to societal transformation. This is a very rich land where access to spirituality is very easy. And I would say that there is a spectrum of raw spiritual unpopular knowledge and very cryptic Vedas. So you can understand something from Vedas, which is like layered and metaphorical and all that. But there is also, if you go towards the villages, you would find saints and seers and the kind of knowledge or wisdom that

they can give you. It's very unpopular, but deeply spiritual. And I would say that this is the land where Krishna came and shared the Gita with us, where Buddha came and shared Buddha and shared, Buddha and Mahavir shared the value of non-violence and how to be fully with yourself and expansion of the self. And then people keep on coming like Mira with her devotional aspect and then Nanak and Kabir and Bolesha and Bhuri Bai and Ashoka and then Krishnae and then Krishmurti comes with those nuances and then Gandhi comes with very practical raw spirituality. So it's like huge. We have so many ancestors who keep on poking us that stop, pause, think, connect to yourself and then move. So in that way, there is a lot that we can access.

And it's also visible alive in our day-to-day life. It is practiced widely. And like in in Metacrisis, if I connect with Metacrisis and connect with your work, I would say that there are higher chances that we would find people here, those who are spiritually grounded, and can stay in post-tragic space where they are not nihilistic, they are not impulsive, but they are grounded and their responses are generally in the gray. While saying that, I would go towards the third door and then I would, stop here. The third is great that how

Rumi invited us that let's go to the land which is beyond right and wrong, which is beyond white and black, which is beyond polarities. I mean, if we can relate to polarities differently,

then what becomes possible? I would say that the wisdom that we are tapping into is the wisdom of grey, which goes somewhere underneath the black and white. It's not even on the spectrum. It goes down. It goes below and deeper to understand what's happening on the polarities and how to relate to that. Though grey is somehow marginalised voice, it is somehow critiqued by all the extremes. Nobody likes it. You get, you know, because you don't

take a stand. You are constantly realigning. with the context. And when that happens, there is nothing right and wrong. You are somewhere where you are under, it's like you are not glorifying anything and not demeaning anything. And in that sense, somehow, it's very important to not do name calling, but at the same time understanding the patterns of, deep patterns of like how you say, of your superorganism, the mollock to understand and how its patterns play out in our in our collectives and day to day life. Several times you mentioned the Indic Mind. So could you describe for the viewers what what is the Indic mind?

It's a it's a mind that has developed over thousands of years of an uninterrupted civilization. A mind that has had close proximity with nature and has seen the diversity of life. it's a mind that has had time to philosophize, imagine, dream and so on. And so in its lived memory is the capacity to see cycles. There is enough in the culture that it has seen cycles. So it's a cyclical mind. It's a mind that can hold ambiguity and paradox very easily. It's a mind that can say this is true and its opposite can be true simultaneously.

And it comes very naturally to somebody who's not an indic mind that may seem like double standard or hypocrisy saying, how could you do this and this? but there's a lot of comfort and ease with holding all of that, right? So the mind is also very capable of dealing with ambiguity. It's a mind that can hold a lot of diversity at a lot of ease. And a mind that kind of doesn't other as much. The other is a reflection of you. And the culture, the mythology, the scriptures talk a lot about interbeing, right? And seeing the divine in the other person.

So Namaste is also the divine in me, acknowledges the divine in you. So your greeting itself begins with the acknowledgement of the sacred. Of course, the mind is wounded. There is anger, guilt, shame, there is modernity, but there is some lived memory of that which still continues. And would you say that the Yendik mind exists in most of the population of people in India? Well, I would say the seed exists, the DNA exists, and it can be evoked, and it does get evoked time to time. But I think it needs to bevoked. And I would add to that that it stays just in India. It stays all over. Like even in the Western mind where there is that native DNA that gets ignited in different. That is also some

sort of similar to what Indic mind is. I had just a quick thing, Nate, to add that I think the reason we spoke about the Indic mind first was that to look at Metacrisis from the Indian context, we have to understand also the mind that is approaching the problem because the starting point itself is very different. The Indic mind may not look at the same thing in the same way. And that's why we're saying that the starting point of looking at any crisis might also be a little different. And hence we started with that.

So this wanted to add that. Well, that doesn't surprise me, Abby, because the first day that we spent together, you spent like four hours talking about process and your relationship. and we never said a single word about the metacrisis or climate change or economy or anything. And that's what impressed me by the three of you and your other colleagues is your deep synergies and trust and bonds with each other. And just the way you approach these things, it was noticeable and striking to me, which is one of the reasons that the four of us are here today. I want to continue from where Mohit has shared. I would say that when the culture starts with an assumption of interbeing rather than individuality alone, when it starts with saying that the divine exists in each of us and each of us is an expression, a unique expression of nature.

From that starting point, relationality becomes very important. And in responding to a metacrisis where you have to sense and respond, you don't know what you're leaning into, you need deep coordination and resonance. And in our work, while each of us understood the metacrisis, we also spent a lot of time building our relational field. We see this relational field as kind of a non-negotiable if we want to make a response to the meta-crisis. We feel very often people say that is not the real work. The work is on the outside. And I would argue, you know, the work is inside and in between as much as it is on the outside. And we are convinced about that, right?

So what happens is the way I would say is building a resonant field. Not doing that means that later on you have a lot of energy spent just kind of jostling with egos, trying to convince each other and trying to one up. And coordination is much harder between people who have not taken the time to deepen their relationship field. By the resonant field, I mean different layers. Of course, there's a cognitive resonance of a shared image of the world, shared language. There is an emotional field of love and deep care for each other saying, you know, I want you to do well and your goodness and my goodness are one. Your well-being is tied to my well-being and we're really one at that level.

And at a spiritual level, getting curious, saying, wow, what an expression of divine are you? What an expression I am and how can we support each other to walk our paths with more integrity? So a lot of this involves the messy work of dealing with envy and jealousy and anger and a lot of subtle things that. arise between any two people who are working together. And I feel the first place where the metacrisis kind of shows up is within us. And the second place it shows up is in the relational field. And I feel then it shows up in the world. So if you're dealing with it, first I have to deal with it within me, which is my feeling

of division, separation, individuality, overly specialness and so on. And as I clear that up, working with others who are also doing that and kind of building that, our experience has been that that creates a sort of, what I call the inner net, right? Like, we have the internet. I feel there is an internet that happens between any two people. Internet means that you're able to transfer a lot of meaning, context, energy in a short period of time because you are vibing with this person deeply and you've done the work required

to do that. We experimented with the idea of ashrams. India has had ashrams forever, but those ashrums were permanent ashrams where people would stay and there are still so many ashrams. but we realized we are all busy people so we need to do pop-up ashrums so we started with something called artivist ashrums we said artivist

as a person who looks at social change as an art form not social change as a must do or a science but as a unique expression of their gift into the world and we started with these 100 hour six day gatherings of 10 to 12 people and slowly build the field amongst ourselves and to us that building block still serves us because even today some of that collective time, energy, understanding that we've built with each other, not just intellectually, but really

living in the same spaces and all, we feel that serves us. Those building blocks became a gathering of the tribe. The gathering of the tribe became a festival called 2069, which is a 50-year journey we're committed to. So the reason I'm saying relational field is it is not that we're not doing actions in our local context. Each of us has our own organizations. Each of us is a local node, we're doing things. Yet I'm saying that equal time to our inner practices and equal time to building the relational field is how we would approach the meta crisis, right? I would say that the Indic mind therefore may not look at it as a very unique and urgent problem to be solved, but say this has happened. You know, man has faced crisis, humanity has faced crisis time to time.

And one of our scriptures is the Mahabharat. It's a large epic. And it is about a time of crisis. where everything kind of reaches this boiling point and people have to make choices. And Mahabharat is not a one-time event. It happens again and again in our personal lives, in our collective lives. So the culture remembers. The culture has passed on a manual across generation saying, what do you do when you're pushed against the wall and nothing else is working? You have to take a dharmic decision, a decision that serves life.

So there is a precedent for that. There is enough references for us to not feel too scared and yet be in. invited to our kind of highest selves. And I think we lean a lot on all this, right? Because this gives us a contextual frame to make sense of what is happening. Instead of being lost, scared, confused, this says, okay, there are pointers. There are pointers that have been passed on. These are metaphorical pointers.

They're not literal pointers saying to ABC. But really a lot of metaphors, rich archetypes, characters and so on. So I feel, and just to kind of tie this down, I would kind of say that if you we're able to build the relational field, which we've kind of spent time doing a lot of, a lot of the work later becomes easier. And I really feel that globally also, how can we, you know, activate this layer which is around the world. I feel the world is wrapped around a layer of all of us.

We're all doing sincere, great work and there is a what I call the nameless tribe, right? We are a nameless tribe around the world. There is immediate recognition and resonance. And yet I feel that alongside we have to do our work with each other. and inner work everybody is doing. I think global work everybody is doing. Relational field, I think we need to hang out together. We need to start really falling in love with each other.

When we do that, we'll be like really super sync and unlock a lot of superpowers and collective wisdom. So I think, yeah, I would make a shout out for that kind of work. Also, you know, it's like if you want aeroplanes to land, you have to build airports. I think if you want complex solutions to land, you have to build landing pads for that consciousness. And I feel a relational field needs to be there for new solutions and ideas to land.

And I don't think we're building that spiritual infrastructure for answers to emerge from the unknown. Let me ask you one question and then I'll let Mohed and Kijil jump in. You said that part of the Indic philosophy or the Indic is a way of living is interbeing. Is that with humans only or does that extend to non-humans like animals and nature? Yeah, it absolutely exists with nature and animals. And I guess the sense of sacred nat is all around and all pervasive. Even in a modern city like Mumbai, when you go on the street, you will see some lady worshipping a tree or somebody feeding a stray animal.

So it's built in. It's programmed into the culture, which makes it easier for us in a way. That's excellent. Mohit or Kejel, would you like to follow up on what Abhi said? I think just a very tiny point there. I think it generally very hard and contrasting for people when they hear. They think it's just like a nice thing to say. But this is like solid work to put the time to make the relational field happen.

And we really feel that's the core. Everything else surrounds it. But it's like the centre piece. It's not like a by the way piece that, okay, we have a few hours of hangout after our agenda driven meetings to say, okay, you know, make sure that you have good relations. So it's literally the core. It's the center.

Everything else then comes. around that orbit. Just taking on the thread, I think the conversation that we've been having, I think one of the important aspects in holding the relational field together responding to the meta crisis is to make sure that we walk longer because metacrisis is not a one-day challenge or a few years question. It's almost an ongoing journey, which probably at times may not even get answered in our own lifetimes. And it's for after our lifetimes work also. And in that, process, one thing that came up for us is how do we hold this together? What will make sure that we are added together because it is wherever humans are, it is inevitable that fights will come, battles will

happen, issues will come up. And how do we kind of hold ourselves together? Because the moment life happens, practicality happens, action happens, finding something that helps us navigate this systematically or step by step or something that guides us is essential. And, that's where for us the idea of collective decision making, the idea of holding the collective from a space that we all not just say what our shared principles are, but also organize based on our shared principles. And how do we not have like a one leadership model? Because in a collective, it's also the space for everyone to collectively lead and walk together and move forward. And in that, the idea of collective decision making has been very powerful for us.

again, some elders have inspired us to arrive there. Winoba, who is a spiritual successor for Gandhi, he, after his experience of doing the Bhudan movement, and at the end of his life, came to this insight that if shifts have to happen, masses have to also transition and arrive at that shift, not just their leaders were inspiring them to do a few actions, because the leaders will come and go, the masses kind of stay and take on. another source of inspiration for us has been Menda.

It's a tribal village in Maharashtra where for last 30 years the village has been practising collective decision making. They call it Sarva Anumati where how all decisions happen collectively which means even if one person objects you literally pause and look at the objection inquire into the objection because we believe that the wisdom of each person is a grain of truth and that truth is here to help us understand a voice of minority, a concern that we may have not thought of. And then with that collective spirit,

we walk together, walk ahead. And those guiding principles for us have been very useful in how we have made decisions in our collective, this whole creating a network of people or a web of people who are walking together with these spirit. And it may not always become very technical formal processes. but it's in how we inquire and how we make decisions, how we pause. Maybe we spend two extra hours to listen and find out if a concern comes in.

And that's something for us to be very important because the Indian mind is also diversity-oriented. It wants to hold the paradox and it's a practice into it. It's like we can say all this jargon, but the practice is when we spend the extra time to talk about the paradox and the polaris. through these processes. And we've experimented Sarwanumati in this. We've never used the language in our collective about Sarvanomati, but we have those principles.

And again, another place where we've practiced this is the Blue Ribbon Movement, which is a youth group in Mumbai, where we have kind of tried to maybe formalize a little form around the spirit and then some work in the last four, five years to articulate this create more step-by-step processes so that the process is also guide us and make it a little more tangible for a young person to literally look at this also as a way of learning for themselves and inquiring into something which we do not know at the start of it but at the end of it we reach a place where all of us collectively feel that we have arrived at our answer that serves all of us

and serves the higher purpose we are here for. So I think that I would say is another piece in our journey that's helping us walk together. And to enable that then, of course, there are a lot of organizing principles in terms of how do we structure ourselves in our collective space where all of us are trying to respond to the meta crisis. How do we go beyond logos? How do we go beyond egos? And how do we not make formal contracts?

and how do we really trust our word when we are signing up. We don't really sign an MOU saying that, oh, are you part of our network? Are you part of our collective? But there is trust and there is a shared spirit and that we can say it without really feeling the need to formalize it. And how is it going? How is your efforts, the three of you and your other colleagues?

How is that scaling, building relationships and networks in India? right now where we are, we have, from when we started about now, I'm seven years or so and the form has constantly evolved, how we've added up, but currently where it is together, there is a new sense of energy that is coming up to respond to the current way we are looking at the meta crisis and that has brought people together who probably wouldn't have otherwise. So if, for example, it was a network meeting and would all of us have showed up with the same enthusiasm and energy, I feel no, like each of us who are right now part of this loose collective that we are saying are people who have highly opinionated, aware people who have their own

ways of how we would want to go and what really would, you know, excite us to be there. So there's a lot of independent leaders who are individuals or organizations. leaders who are then saying that we want to come together and we want to do this. And at this point also, we are each invested in what we are doing individually at the same time, taking time to come together and do this. And it's active, it's going on where local and collective actions continue to happen. Excellent. Mohed, Abbey, would you like to add anything to what Kijal just shared? I'll just add a quick one, Nate. It is difficult and it's messy. And just as we need people to transcend and get into enlightened self-interest, we need organizations also to transcend their own interest to nurture the ecosystem.

And in the DNA of every organization is built in survival, growth, scale. And for an organization level transcendence to happen. And then the leaders of those organizations being willing to kind of say, okay, the ecosystem has a space. We feel that is the journey we are undertaking. So it's a couple of hundred people around in a loose network like Cajel said, there's a loose V so we can't take a membership roster. And how ideology intersects with relationality. What happens when our ideas don't match? We love each other, but our visions are different.

So it's, yeah, it's messy and tough. But you're doing what I actually think is really important is you're acting as an Overton window to change the conversation at the same time building relationships. and changing the initial conditions of a future that you can't really predict. I think that's pretty solid. Yeah. I think whatever we are trying to do, somehow the application of that Luzvi, that Kajal also talked about and Abhishek shared. And I would say that Losevi comes with that kind of equity or equitable organizing where authenticity is, something which is very important and when we share what we are then it's easier to navigate in that

complex chaotic collective and i would also say that we have actually traveled in this 10 15 years or seven years together uh from the form which is more mechanical uh to the frameworks to the process and to the context and now whenever we we do like more like collective decision making or so it is not just attached to the form or or the framework it goes beyond the process and and the context and that's why it helps us take decisions that are truly collective i i would not say they are truly collective but somewhere closer to that that and somehow we are able to navigate that space and it is it is also helping us to not be in in a space of martyrdom that, oh, I am only doing something or some sort of when there is a space of

service or then there is no resentment. I want to give without resentment. So we are still struggling in that space, but somehow because of these heritage, somehow we are able to be in that field. I have so many questions for the three of you because I want to learn. When I've spent time with you in person, like everything you said was interesting and novel to me because it's so different than what I'm experiencing here, but doing similar work. So let me just start with a couple of questions that anyone can chime in. Indian subcontinent, as scientists will articulate, is going to have a higher preponderance. of drought, flood, heat waves, fires, and a higher incidence of wet bulb temperatures. And I knew that cognitively before I came to Oroville.

But then I met all the people there. And I experienced, I think early January when I was there in Mumbai, it was 100 degrees of Fahrenheit in the middle of winter. So my question is, what do everyday people in India think about climate? change. My assumption was that they were going to be really pissed off at the global north who burned all the carbon, but that's not what I found. So my question is, what is the dialogue around climate change, two-part question to everyday people in India and to maybe the NGO people that are following the science and know what's going on? And if I would say there are several

India is existing in parallel. There's one India that is just trying to get its basic needs met and will be at the receiving end of this. But there, the preoccupation is not even climate change as much as just getting a good job surviving, coming out of the poverty cycles and so on. There's a middle India, I would say the modern India, which is kind of saying, yes, climate change is happening, but we want our creature comforts and kind of emulating the global north in some ways. And it kind of aspires to that. And then there is kind of, I guess, the woke India or the active activist India where I think. we'd locate ourselves, which is asking these kind of questions saying, how is it fair even?

How is it, how is it like we're bearing this brand and can we reach out to the brothers and sisters in our global north and say, guys, this is happening to us. So like we're connected. Can you see this? So there is all this happening in parallel, I think. But as a culture, I don't think resentment comes that naturally. I mean, there is resentment. There may be anger, but there is still a lot of ownership to say, I'll improve my own

circumstances, we will do something about it. So I think that's, that would be my quick take. I mean, I, I don't live there, obviously, but there's got to be the cultural memory of what Britain did and the colonizing that, you know, eventually ended. But now there's a different form that's happening, which is indirect, which is the climate is going to warm and have impacts on everyone's lives in coming decades, not because of something that India did, but something that, you know, the global north where 90% of the emissions had been burned. So to me, it seems like there would be naturally a resentment or an anger or something, but you're saying that that is, is not really in the Indic mind as much as it would be in somewhere like the West.

I would say that something that is coming to my head is like how in 1835 McAulake came and tried to change the education system of India and kind of came up with some minutes. His idea was to really go deeper into the Indic mind and change it from there to reform it to bring the more evolved. language and understanding and the wisdom. He was deeply illusioned. But I would say from there came the diesel engine and the tractors got into the field of the villages. And then came the processed food, I would say, in the village. And like this is the journey.

Then came more like the TV. and the TV came before and then the processed food and then the internet AI whatever. You can see that. I come from a village in a tribal area of South Rajasthan and I'm seeing this growth, that how from that schooling system to right now to AI or other. So I would say that there is a spectrum like how Abhishek shared and this journey. Seeing that journey definitely there, There are masses that are not privileged enough to think about all these things.

But at the same time, they are experiencing all these things. If you go to the hills, they are experiencing what is happening to their land, their hills, their mountains, their water system. So they can easily see the change from 100 years. They never had to buy water and now they need to buy water, even in the village. So that is happening. Somehow I also see that in the coastal areas, But the most important thing is, I would say that more than resentment, there is something that is deeply understood by these people.

Like, if something needs to happen, needs to happen through us. And it cannot come from somewhere else. And I think that would definitely help us because it is more contextualized. but at the same time understanding that this journey from the schooling to the AI is definitely affecting us deeply, conditioning us deeply. And I would definitely I would finish with this thought that there is an illusion of choices in any system, either it is colonizers or capitalism or any other system. I would say again superorganism or Moloch or inner life.

which satan is very intelligent now it's it's like it is giving us that illusion of choices the more you are pet of this moloch the more you are of its victim so it's like the person who's living in the ultra-urban city and and you know consuming everything that capitalism is saying or extractive systems are saying but he is the or she is the biggest victim of the same system. So I would say that those who are living in marginalised ideas or in rural ideas, they have consumed less, so they are less victim of the whole superorganism. So that is what I'm experiencing in India.

But yes, it is climate change is definitely affecting lives and people are actually seeing it. though there is no blame game right now because they don't understand the bigger game but sooner they would understand and they would start asking questions I would say even the confidence to stand up and say that guys this is not okay I think we're only now starting to build that confidence to look into the eye and say guys this is not okay it's just slowly happening when we said the Indic rising it's now happening after so much of just coming out of the colonial era and then saying, okay, guys, this is happening. So I think that's slowly happening.

Yeah. And just like one other thing we feel is that there is a sense of community that has always showed up in times of all crisis until now. So we've gone through enough floods and we've gone through all kinds of challenges in our history also, maybe not the same of different kinds. But what has come together and prevailed always is a sense of community that shows up in solidarity and finds a way out of it. So we have a history of finding a way out of something

and then figuring hence what to do, how to move ahead. So that faith that this will help us again persists. You're not hopeless about it. Let me ask a follow-up, maybe more personal question, but if it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I don't know what that is, Celsius in Mumbai when I was there. How has it been since then in the last, three months. We're in an El Nino year. I haven't been looking at the Indian weather. And how are each of you

personally, you know, thinking about climate change living in India the rest of your life? Or don't you give it much thought? I'm just curious. For us, because we are an unschooler family, so we also have to travel. So we travel according to the weather. In the summers, we try to be in the hills. And in winters, we try to be in Norville so that it is like manageable and rest of the time we stay in Udaipur when the weather is really good but I would also say that because we want to live more sustainable life and we don't use air conditioning here in our house we have taken a house which is open which is airy and even in this month or till maybe 15th of May which is like 30 to 40 degrees Celsius, we'll be staying without AC and we've figured out how to stay,

sleeping on the ground and all those kind of things, keeping all the doors open and just using the fan. That's a personal choice that you're not having air conditioning. I mean, you could get it if you wanted, right? Yes, yes. Wow. I would not do well in 40 degrees Celsius. But it is still manageable.

not kind of glorifying that we are not, I don't have problem using air conditioning if it is needed. If we'll stay in Udaipur and then we might buy, like, or we might stay somewhere where there is air conditioning. It's like non-violence is very important when it comes to self-to. So I'm just clarifying that not to glorify that part. Thank you. I just looked it up. 40 degrees is 104 Fahrenheit. Never gets that hot where I live.

Yeah, I think I grew up in Mumbai. Mumbai has always been a hot city. So winter is less experienced in that sense. But of course, heat is growing too much climate change is happening in many ways now. I think while one part of it is there is privilege and there is access that we have to be in home most of the times. Our work is such. It doesn't require us to be on feed all day, every day kind of thing. So that's a lot of privilege that takes us away from facing it every minute. I think, but other than that, if there is work and we have to travel and it's needed. I think a part of me, just like all Indians, is also trying to build residence because it is not that we have an excuse and we have a way out of it. We take it on to ourselves to say, how do I build my resilience? Maybe we will wear cotton clothes. Maybe we will do a few tricks. Like, you know, we have all these desi nuskas.

We'll put some, we'll put subja in our water so that it keeps our inner body, inner system, cool. So we'll do all these small, small, desi nuskas and prepare to show up. So I'm going to be traveling to mid of Maharashtra, which is even hotter than Mumbai. But there is no way I can not do it because that's the reality of where I live. And I have to equip myself to show up. And that's how most Indians try to cope and live. What percentage of the population in India has routine access to air conditioning? I would assume it's relatively small.

It's a small, it would be a very small number. You know, I live in a city that has 24-7 power, which is not everywhere in India, but, and I live in a financial circumstance where I can have all my air conditioning blasting all the time. And yet, you know, what we manage to do or what we do every night is to have the air conditioning on for an hour and then stop it and just let it stay. Not because we can't afford it, not because there's no electricity, but just it's our act of stewardship towards the planet. And I remember walking to my daughter's room in the morning and seeing the air conditioning off. And I asked her, how come you didn't sleep without, why did you sleep without air conditioning? And she said, I turned it off after an hour because that's what she sees us do. And these are things you do because it's one planet, one family.

And nobody is watching, I guess, but it's what we do. So following on that, what might the Indic ethos or the Indic mind, what do you think that might contribute to responses to the metacrisis that might be different or quite different than in other areas in the world like Europe or the United States or elsewhere? I think one idea, Nate, would be that the calling of the times, the word Dharma is a very complex word that people have interpretations, a simple interpretation I have is an action that enlivens the self, the other, and the context. So what is the right action that one can take in today's time? And Yukh Dharmu, calling of the times. So I think the Indic mind would evoke each person to look within and say, what is the dharmic thing to do?

What is the right thing to do today? Because the crisis is not about you. It's you're the central character. Each of us is a central character of our lives. And here we're located in the crisis. What are you going to do? And what is the dharmic thing to do? What are you being called upon to do?

So I definitely think one evocation would be to be in service of life and be invited to act not from a solo space, but act from the calling of the times. So, Yukhdharma, I would say. So that would definitely be one evocation for each one. I think it's one of our application too. I would say it's spiritual and sociopolitical. And in that, I would definitely say that doing your inner work, which is collective sadna, and connecting it with the collective work, which is collective work,

which is collective sadna, individual sadna and collective saddana, and doing that practice constantly is something which is very important. And somehow going through this process of unskewing, our relationship with power, money, authority, our ego, our shadows is very important. And that journey is something that I think would definitely help us in responding to this chaos. I would also say that deep understanding of this spiritual crisis or meta-crisis, understanding of the bigger game, and not coming up with some reductionist bogged solutionism,

but to come up with some sort of more balanced or into an equilibrium. And I would say the last one would be, Being fully aware of where we are leaving, what systems that regulate us, maybe not just Indic mind, but at the same time capitalism or patriarchy or colonialism, all those systems somehow deeply regulating us. So being coming from that space which is nonviolent and compassionate and having those ethnic. That's in those ethics, I would say definitely help. So is the Gandhi ethic of nonviolence that was practiced against the British? Does that have a metacrisis parallel that we can apply to our global situation right now? Have you thought about that?

With Gandhi, there is no othering, right? There is we're all one. And so you're not my oppressor. like where our destinies are linked. So first starting with no othering. So not othering the global north, for example, but also insistence on the truth. The truth being that the impacts of actions are not equally distributed, right? So the satya agraha, satyagraha that Gandhi did the non-violent insistence on truth,

till that kind of gets the person who's so-called doing the sin, not hating the sinner, but hating the sin, right? and making that, kind of resisting that and really evoking that kind of a response, right? So I think to me, it has a modern application which we'll have to apply in our own context. We'll have to reinterpret it. Now, the problem is much more complex,

but the principles are timeless, the principle of non-violence, of oneness of spirit, of humility, patience. So I think we'll have to kind of recode it in our times. Yeah, I think the idea of violence has also evolved, right? like first it used to be physical violence, you kill somebody and then from there it was maybe use structures and policies

and that's how we evolved now. Violence has become so subtle and it's also evolved with times. Our responses also have to evolve with times like all the kind of mental health challenges that we see are happening because there's another form of violence that has happened in the last maybe a century or so

that is creating rise to all of this. So there is definitely a role of non-violence or a hinsa and a lot of that is to reinterpret it in these times. And I feel a big part of that from the Indian mind that comes, is surrender to something higher that we do not fully understand. Because trying to understand it from the space of mind only in itself also is a form of reducing it to saying that my mind knows everything and I will be able to solve it all.

And I think what probably I feel a lot of us try to understand is that mind doesn't know everything. We try to use it to make sense of some things, but also create that space of the unknown, the surrender, where the answers will come, maybe because we are together, maybe because something else happens in nature. And that is important also as we evolve globally, not just locally. What are each of you most concerned about in the coming decade and also what gives you the most hope for the coming decade? I can start this one off. I think for me, what gives me hope,

I think there is no option to not have hope. I think the only way humanity and all of us have evolved and survived is that hope is not a choice. Hope is a stand that you take and then you act from there to figure out hence what, where, how, etc. So that definitely is a big part. And I think for me the concern is a lot of the social fabric that is breaking down. a lot of the relational feel that has been the strength of where I come from, that is seeing dismantling in different ways at different levels and a lot of the idea of isolation and individualization

that's coming in, which is causing troubles which we're not even able to write now voice out fully. I think for me, that really is scary because that was our strength and that's where I also see now cracks coming in. I would say that my fear is or concern is around. more dissociation more divide and in that I would say that this this how I said that this reappropriation of our culture is happening by the the extras so what we are trying to reclaim in that reclaim process something is again being co-opted by the extremes. So first by the colonizers and then by other extremes. So this process is somehow

in a loop. It's a very, I would say, a cycle. So that I'm afraid of that more dissociation, more divide would happen. I think hope is an illusioned word. I would say that I would say confronting what we are going through and realizing, acknowledging, honoring that chaos and embracing the unknown and staying there grounded would definitely help. I don't have any answer for the hope right now. But yes, yes, this, what we are doing together might help us. I'm most concerned about us forgetting how to love. And I think not being loved or being able to love creates a deep void in each of us. We try to fill the void with everything else, but that restlessness just doesn't go.

And today I think we don't know how to deal with the energies of love. We don't know how to deal with Eros. We don't know how to communicate non-violently. We don't know the brotherly love. We've forgotten so much. And if there's one message that's passed on across generations, I feel it's like guys don't forget to love. each other because that's at the heart of being a human family. And I feel we're rapidly losing that ability to technology, to individualism. And so I just feel that if we forget to love

and if we are out of the metacrisis, I don't know if it's worth being on the other side of it. If you're still hostile to each other and to nature and so on. So I think that's my biggest concern. My biggest hope is us, Nate. You give me hope. Mohit Kajal give me hope. I have personally experienced that there is a global family. every day shows up to respond to this with full integrity, with full spirituality, to the best of their ability. They recognize each other. There's an energetic recognition of all of us around the world.

And I have seen it so I can kind of bear testimony that such a thing exists. And we are here. We're inspiring each other. We are a part of a common team. And I genuinely believe we'll make it. Like I'm not just saying that I feel this layer of this layer has a purpose in humanity today. and I think this layer will see it through. So that's a sort of deep belief of knowing that I have.

And yeah. And one podcast at a time, Nate, it's happening. It's, I mean, each of us is doing it, right? So thanklessly, so tirelessly. I mean, and you inspire me in that way, right? Just at it. It makes me very emotional, to be honest, to just see each of us every day in face of such difficulty,

just showing up and just quietly doing this, you know. And I think that's very humbling. That's very powerful. Thank you. I feel very privileged to have traveled around the world as much as I have. And yeah, there's politicians and crazy fanatics and violent people in every country. But under the surface, there are people like the three of you in every country I've been to. And we're all the same. And we care about music and food and love and our family and nature. and I hear you and I feel you with what you just said. And there is some energetic field there that's hard, hard to describe.

So thank you for that. And we don't know. So we just have to keep moving forward. So well said. So speaking mostly, though not entirely, to a Western audience as you are right now, what is one thing or a couple things that you, would like the audience to understand about India's present situation, culture, future, that is perhaps unknown and unrecognized if we don't live in your country.

I can't speak for my viewers, but I think a lot of people don't know that much about India. So what would you like to share with our viewers? I would say one is that we're still healing and recovering from the centuries of what has happened to us. And therefore, there is a need to feel proud. There is a need to reassure ourselves. We were at a peak at some stage.

There is a need to deal with the guilt, anger, shame, everything that's piled in our shadows. So we are at it. The culture is healing itself and you'll see all kinds of things. But the deeper process is healing. That's how I see it. And it'll take its own time. We're just an 80-year-old nation state.

So I think so that's underway. second is that we are your family. I think we're the largest part of the family in one and just to kind of say that we have gifts to offer and we are beneficiaries of the work that other countries have done for sure. So there is a mutuality. We have some wisdom. We have some experiences of an surviving civilization.

Like we've survived for 5,000 years. So we're like, okay, there's hopefully something that we may have to share with the world about how to get along, how to survive, and see us for who we are. Do not see us because just, do not see us only materially, don't see us as rich, poor GDP alone. There is so many more layers of capitals that are present here.

We're much richer than that. And hopefully also wiser than being seen as just naive or as undeveloped. So I think see us for who we are. I think that's what we'd say. Yeah. That's well said. And that's new to me because three months ago I had never been to India and I did see you for who you are.

And here we are today. I made a lot of lifelong friends in my brief stay there, and I love India, I have to say. Kejal, Mohid, what would you like to share? I think the presence of us is the second wave of co-option. I would definitely say that. While we are definitely healing and there is something happening underneath, but also superficially or on the top there is lots of other kind of appropriation by our own people is happening. I would say that I'm not demeaning them but they are coming from affected by

Moloch and they are coming from that extreme. Culturally I would definitely say that somehow we have that gene again I would say that uncolonizable gene in our colonized mind is somehow mainstreaming non-violence or mainstreaming different evolved virtues in a very raw practical, unrecognized, unpopular ways. And in day-to-day life, if you go to a village and they are practicing something very evolved, but they would not even give much importance to it. So that is something that you see. It's very present. And I would say the future is something very connected to what Abhishek shared is that some of the answers would come from this land. I would definitely say that from its rich roots and rich roots of collectivity and wisdom. most of the answers, and this is not just in India, you would find in Africa or some countries of Europe,

those who are less affected by modernity and those who are still in their native sense would come up with more cohesive, more interesting answers or responses, I would say. Like one of the core thing for me is that while India is a country and all of us are, we have a lot of, because we are a huge population, there's a lot of survival instinct that's all the time playing out for us and that's all the time, something that we've deeply ingrained and it's present in every action and how we think and how we show up. But I also feel that gift of the challenge has been that makes us be at something too much, like we will be at it till we solve it and that makes the wisdom or that makes the knack of the person so much more stronger that while yes we've gone through a lot of challenges and questions indians aren't people or i don't see people around to be people who'll give up and lose it like they will try to figure it out till the last moment they have because that's what survival instincts have thought us that you have

have to be at it till you figure it. And there is that memory of trying it relentlessly and there's that hard work. And my hope is that is what is going to keep us. Like even if we've probably forgotten some of the things, we're trying to heal, we're trying to recover. But that being at it and constantly trying it, which is something which is very, very ingrained, which will, I think, take us to a future where we'll go back and go back to what we forgot about our spiritual roots and maybe reconstruct that and live.

them and bring them back in a very different way. And the spirit of unity of being a global family, I think deeply always touched with it and deeply always holding that value at the heart of it. Thank you. A couple more questions. Let me ask each of you, if your work is wildly successful, what do you envision the impact or the trajectory of your current work extrapolating it out five or ten years. What can you envision?

I would say 500 to such people who would definitely understand the significance of inner and outer work. And that goes hand in hand. and they also value while staying in the head and more articulative and everything, you need to really do something on the ground. Those who can actually dance between different paradoxes, micro and macro and self-organized emergence to completely organic and forest kind of organizing. So all those kind of things, I would say that if it thrives, we might have 300 to 1,000 such people and a big community, which would be able to influence the larger audience. I mean, it's more like still on the surface level. There is deeper. But this is what I see if everything goes well.

I believe it. I believe it could happen. Abhi, Kijal? I would say that our governance system or our resonant field building scales, I think that's the secret sauce, the magic recipe. If you're able to scale that, a certain network will come online, which Moit is saying is maybe 300 to000 people in India, but also the global network, because we'll be able to plug in more seamlessly with other collectives also. And I feel when such a network comes online, we'll have access to an intelligence which we don't currently have. a collective intelligence that's able to sense, respond at an entirely different level, come up with non-linear miraculous responses.

And then there is enough trust and capacity to locally, contextually execute. So it's not uniform. The sensing is collective. The tapping is into forces beyond us and a collective intelligence. But action is, you know, thousand flowers blooming with the right season. But thousand plants, doing different flowers blooming. So I feel we're able to, being wildly successful, One is I don't see us as like only us as being wildly successful.

I still see us as the global family being wildly successful. And if you're able to collectively create this super intelligence to deal with the superorganism, I think we'll have cracked it. So I think that's what's worth attempting. Yeah, very similar lines. I think if we've fully cracked and we've done what we are doing at its best and it's fully successful, there will be a deep rootedness in nature where nature doesn't feel violated, nor individuals feel violated. And we would have created a process which

helps us organize ourselves as groups in a way that we live in sync, not just internally with ourselves, but with nature. So it's something that will work for everyone and all organisms. And that's when I think we would have actually arrived because we will be fully nonviolent. Well said. So I am 98.7% confident that the four of us will be lifelong friends based on our interactions. So I would like to extend an offer for you three to come back on this program, either individually or as a group or cross-pollinating with other groups working on the metacrisis. But let me put you on the spot right now. what is one topic that if you were to come back, that you would like to spend a whole hour talking about that one thing, something that's relevant to our collective futures, either in

India or for the whole world, that we just wouldn't have the time to unpack on this initial conversation, but that is that you're passionate about and you think is relevant to our future? One would of course be Sarbanumati. I think there is so much more that we can't talk about, collect. decision making collective processes, all of that, that was one. The other for me was also this feminine and masculine ways of organizing and leadership. And I think that's another thing that also helps us organize the way we do, which is again a whole conversation in itself, I feel.

How to organize to organize. It's something which is very important, I feel. how we as a group or a collective or a network is more important than the agenda. How do we deal with the conflicts and everything which is happening in between us? And then how to navigate that and still understanding the metacrides. How to become that stepping. stone while organizing well so that if something happens if we hit the wall, if we hit the wall, that stepping stone would definitely help others. And you have a kind of a formula for that

based on your experiences? I would say it is very dynamic. It keeps on growing. It's like we have to look at the fruits and have them and they are very juicy and all that. But at the same time, we have to go back to the roots and work on our foundations. And that is also juicy. Difficult, but roots are also juicy here. So that keeps on happening this back and forth. Two for me also. The first is the critical link. I would call it the critical link. I think the one person to one person relational link, I feel is the building block that we need to master. and the violence there manifests as violence in the world, everything. That unit for me is primary.

It's the primary lab in which we catalyze the change we want to make. So the relational field, so that would be one. I can't stress enough how important the dynamics there are. The other would be Nate would be talking about the beyond. I feel the conversation of energies, archetypes, ancestors, future generations, forces which we can't name but can comprehend and how they may be of assistance to us we steer away from it because it sounds to esoteric, but I do feel something beyond our comprehension is going on.

I do feel we can tap into it. I do feel it has a role in our response, and I just feel we need to talk about it. Thank you. Any closing words? For the audience, I would say that, I would again say that this is an invitation to sincerely inquire and somehow go deeper into our sense making together.

It's not that a small group can crack anything. It's that togetherness or that oneness or that collective that can do something bigger than an individual. So you all live in India, but you do speak on Zoom and occasionally travel, is there any way that our viewership could help you or you can help our viewership or how do people engage with you and your work in India? I would say three things.

Let's meet. We're happy to come and talk. We're happy to have you in India. Let's meet if this resonates with you. I would say let's share. I think we have a lot to share and a lot to receive. So I would say that. And third, we love good vibes.

So let's care was my third thing. Let's kind of nourish each other and so on in whichever ways we can. So we're happy to show up. We're invited. Thank you all for your time. Namaste, to be continued. And thank you. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification,

please follow us on your favorite podcast platform and visit the great simplification.com for more information on future releases. This show is hosted by Nate Hemplythe. Higgins, edited by No Troublemakers Media and curated by Leslie Batlutes and Lizzie Siriani.