From Ego to Eco: Rewilding Nature and Ourselves
What happens when we renounce our ego and allow nature to become our teacher? We talk with rainforest conservationist and educator Suprabha Seshan about her incredible efforts to protect and restore the forest at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Kerala, India. Suprabha shares with us her decades of work which has involved the integration of scientific and traditional practices, understanding the complex conditions in which plants exist and relate to each other, and how human societies can exist in harmony with this diversity. She sees the botanical sanctuary as providing an ‘ark’ for the endangered plants of the Western Ghats biome from the ‘flood’ of human expansionism, and the remarkable ways in which rewilding can offer a refuge to the remaining exuberance of life, including ourselves.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Suprabha Seshan 0:00
Simply put eco E C O does not have a single authoritarian imperative that it is a community. It is all these different creatures and everybody has a chance to kind of run the show for a bit. Now the fungi are sending the nutrients this way and then there's a storm and then the trees crash and it's all that dynamic, this thrilling exuberance of life. There is no single one that is keeping the others down and unhappy. The ego requires the unhappiness of others. If you're other centered, you will want the well being of others and that the ego cannot tolerate is what I've been looking at the ego requires another to be less than you you are greater and it is separative. It is divisive, it seeks its own pleasure at the expense of another's pain.
Alan Ware 0:52
Those powerful words are from Indian rain forest conservationist and educators Suprabha Seshan. We will hear more from Suprabha about her incredible efforts to protect and restore the forest at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary and Kerala, India and today's episode of The Overpopulation Podcast.
Nandita Bajaj 1:19
Welcome to The Overpopulation Podcast where we tirelessly make ecological overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right sizing the scale of our human footprint so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj co host of the podcast and executive director of population balance.
Alan Ware 1:44
I'm Alan Ware co host of the podcast and researcher with population balance, the first and only nonprofit organization globally that draws the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy and ecological overshoot and offer solutions to address their combined impacts on the planet, people and animals.
Alan Ware 2:04
Today's guest is Suprabha Seshan, a rainforest conservationist and educator who lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary situated in the last remnants of the Indian rainforest in Kerala. Seshan received the 2006 Whitley Award, the top environmental prize in the UK, commonly known as the Green Oscars, and the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship in 2005. Her life is dedicated to plant conservation, habitat restoration, and education. And she looks at reforestation as a multi-dimensional relationship between plant and animal species, human beings, and the land we all inhabit. Her decades of work has involved the integration of scientific and traditional practices, understanding the complex conditions in which plants exist and relate to each other, and how human societies can exist in harmony with this diversity. Her writing has been published in Scroll, Indian Quarterly, Economic and Political Weekly, the Journal of Krishnamurti Schools, and many other publications. In 2022, she received Sanctuary Nature Foundation's Green Teacher Award. Seshan also serves on the Steering Committee of the Ecological Restoration Alliance India.
Nandita Bajaj 3:18
Hello Suprabha, we are so happy to have you join us for this episode. We've only recently learned of your work and we are so inspired and moved by your dedication and commitment to the natural world and to exploring how humans can live in greater harmony with nature. We don't know anyone quite like you who has devoted decades of their lives to protecting and restoring a small piece of the earth and catalyzing a diversity and profusion of life. We are so excited to speak with you. We know you had to leave the beautiful tree frogs behind at the sanctuary to join us today from a friend's place, and we appreciate your taking the time. Welcome to our podcast.
Suprabha Seshan 4:00
Thank you, Nandita. That's wonderful. I'm so happy to be here.
Nandita Bajaj 4:04
Great. And we'd love to begin with your background. For nearly thirty years, you have lived and worked at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in the southwest of India, in Kerala. We'd love to hear how you came to this work.
Suprabha Seshan 4:19
So first of all, I want to say I came to a place and the place captivated me, which is the land and the mountains broadly, of course the Western Ghats are really beautiful. But when I arrived at the sanctuary, this little refuge on the edge of an old forest, and at that time, there was no electricity and it had this very quiet but intense feeling about it. So it was the land and the people and the plants and the animals, the river, the particular forest, a mountain that we climbed pretty soon after my second visit. And so I would say it was that that drew me to the place. It was a community that drew me to that mission and I joined it at a time where it was unfolding. And many things had been set in place. But there was room for someone like me who dropped in out of the blue, literally from Kansas actually, to Kerala. And there was room for me to explore and to join in and to grow my own place in that vast community. The work is part of that, but it's the community that I love and have come to find home in.
Nandita Bajaj 5:29
And you attended a number of Krishnamurti Schools that were, of course, founded on the principles of world renowned philosopher, author, and public speaker Jiddu Krishnamurti. And Krishnamurti believed deeply in the power of education, and one of his chief aims was to help impart, through education, a worldview of deep connection with nature, what we might call ecocentrism. What was your experience like attending those schools, and how did your education at the schools inform your worldview?
Suprabha Seshan 6:01
I spent eleven years in the schools, from the time I was eleven, or close to twelve, when I joined, and I went to three of the Krishnamurti Schools and ended with five years in the UK at Rockwood Park. So there were two schools in India and the one in England. And there were many things that kept me on in the school. But the primary thing was, again, absolutely stunning locations and this tremendous connection with the natural world. And of course, at that time, Krishnamurti himself was alive. And the places were buzzing with inquiry, and this deeper sense of what is all this all about. And I had time as a youngster to explore the wild world in which the schools were situated. And that was a conscious, you know, part of the educational mandate of the schools - that children look at trees, listen to birds, their bodies are in contact with the Earth, and within that a spirit of inquiry is fostered.
Of course, many of the schools have been quite academic. And I was particularly outdoors and interested in wildlife and the boulders and the rocks and the owls and so on. And in the final place that I was at in England, there was a tremendous sense of nurturing the land too, which is, you know, through gardening, as a means of bringing the wild back. So that's been part of my life for a long time. Also in India, you know, all the people I've known have been avid gardeners, close to plants. And, you know, every city space has been just bursting with plants, in terms of my friends and family, and so on. So there's been a long association with the wild and the feeling that when you harm, you know, the rest of the natural world, you're harming yourself. And when you care for one, you care for the other. And all inquiry is with others and with each other. So that's been there for a long time.
Nandita Bajaj 7:57
Right. And was it an intentional decision on your parents' part to have you attend the schools?
Suprabha Seshan 8:04
Yeah, the very first one, yes. Because they're, you know, excellent in their education, also different, give a lot of space to the child. But the second and the third were decisions of my own, and I had the opportunity to go, so and again, you know, because Krishnamurti was alive at the time, and one hand, as youngsters we had some contact with him, those were the last years of his life. And just the sense that, you know, always every question was like, "How do you see a bird?" Or, "How do you relate to a tree?" Or, you know, "What is consciousness?" And to us, that in the presence of other beings, I think was what struck me deeply.
Nandita Bajaj 8:04
And did you actually get to meet with him one on one?
Suprabha Seshan 8:05
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Nandita Bajaj 8:06
Wow. That must have been quite a remarkable experience.
Suprabha Seshan 8:14
Yes. And very easy. The youngsters at that time, especially in England, you know, he would come down for lunch with a big dining room and we went on walks with him and listened to music and there were many discussions, and so it was an easy connection. That was the smallest school, so not so many people around. India was harder, a lot of hoops to jump before you could meet him. But at the same time, he was in himself very accessible.
Nandita Bajaj 9:16
Yeah, I was reading about him, how he didn't really like being put on a pedestal. He really just wanted to commune with people and your experience certainly sounds like that.
Suprabha Seshan 9:27
Very much a grandfatherly older person, but that compassion and the sense of deep interest in you as a person, the inquiry itself, you know, "What do you love and and what is in the way of finding what you love?" And you know, it's a pretty competitive society in India, and to be asked that question in the structured and formal society to find out. And you know, one important question was, "If you love the land in India, why do you want to go somewhere else to study nature?" So, you know, I was on the way up to England to getting a PhD maybe, or going abroad for further studies, but that question kept drawing me back to India and to coming back home in some way.
Nandita Bajaj 10:10
It's so nice to hear your experience of it. Because I grew up in India too. I was there until I was sixteen. And, you know, I went to private Catholic schools and didn't have really that reverence for nature as a foundational value. It was very much the competitive nature that you're describing, and separation of subjects, and you know, a lot of rote memorization. Not even, at least in my personal experience, not even a real love for education. So I didn't really have much access to nature growing up, or that relationship to the land, the kind that you've had. And for me, it's a very recent phenomena that I'm coming to it now in my forties, waking up to that connection. And it's been really lovely being able to meet people like you who embody that experience so beautifully.
Suprabha Seshan 11:01
I was just lucky, Nandita. You know the world here, and especially for urban middle class, and it's extremely driven in a certain way, right? So I think I lucked out, and then had the chance to pursue it in some way.
Alan Ware 11:15
So after graduation in the UK, you went across Asia and Europe in search of wilderness, and you ended up seeing that all landscapes were quite affected by humans. And then you went to the Land Institute with Wes Jackson, who we've interviewed his co-author, Robert Jensen, to explore that nexus of landscape and people. So I imagine that that nexus of landscape and people affected you when you went to Gurukula and saw the sanctuary and what they were doing to not only advance natural regeneration, but also having humans live more harmoniously on the land. Did that speak to you?
Suprabha Seshan 11:55
Oh, completely. I think you've understood it really spot on. The journey itself was really exploratory. And I traveled across India a lot. And that's when I perhaps had a chance to explore, as a young adult, some of the cultural sides of, aspects of, you know, "What do different communities, how do they express themselves? What does nature mean to them? And what is the nature-culture divide?" But I mean, I didn't have the language for it then, but that's what I was exploring. And, "Where does wilderness begin and end?" And, "Does it begin in my backyard, is it in my body?" And all these sorts of very innocent kind of questions. But a lot of time with different communities across India and then Southeast Asia, and then back to Europe, and I found out, in a little bookstore in the Orkney Islands where I was on a bird watching survey for the Royal Society of Protection of Birds, that there was a place called the Land Institute. I'd known about Wendell Berry before that. And then I saw this book, Meeting the Expectations of the Land in this remote bookstore. The proprietor, he just started talking to me because I was an Indian in northern Scotland, in an island and caught out in a storm, and just started talking and handed me this book. And I was like, "Wow, there's a place called the Land Institute. And they're asking all these questions and, and they take people," and so I just wrote to Wendell Berry. Handwritten note on handmade paper, and you know, blue ink, and sent it off to him. And I sent it off to the press, actually, because I didn't have an address. And then it reached him. And then he wrote this beautiful letter back.
Nandita Bajaj 13:31
Oh, my goodness.
Suprabha Seshan 13:33
And then he sent my letter on to the Land Institute, and then someone from there by the name of Jake, he was coordinating interns, and he wrote on behalf of Wes Jackson back to me in India and said, "Looks like you're interested in internship, you know, here's the brochure. And do you want to apply?" And as far as I know, I was the only Asian at that time to have gone there. Or perhaps I think there'd been somebody from Germany who had been to the Land Institute as an intern, but certainly nobody from India. And so I wrote off and then answered all the questions and started relating to them and then I was accepted. And then I reached the Land Institute by Greyhound bus from, you know, New Jersey. And it was an amazing year, and it was, you know, about the interns as well, who I lived with, and they were so impressive as young people and and the tall grass prairies and this whole experiment at Land Institute, this whole problem of agriculture that they had defined, and how do you bring health back to the land through mimicking the prairie, and was also exciting. And then I met Wendell Berry, and he, you know, he still has my handwritten note. And I still have his handwritten note. And then, you know, whenever there's an exchange with Wes, he says, "I tell Wendell, Supi, how you are." It's just one of these amazing serendipitous things, and I cherish all of it and all the deep learning which is to look at the natural world and to learn from it and to ask what was there, who was there, and to act upon that, you know, to the wisdom from the land and the communities that have been there, the Native Americans. At the end of that year, I had a, I was thinking, exploring, going to university for higher studies. But then I came back home, and with a bunch of friends, I went to the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary for the second time. And as I went into the forest with these friends, and with Wolfgang, the person who founded the place, we climbed a mountain. And then I realized that the same set of questions, in a very different way, was being asked by you know, Wolfgang, and it's also the women who work in the place and the man and so on. So I just fell in, literally out of Lufthansa Airline Company, from one amazing place in the middle of the tall grass prairies, firefighting and looking at Bison and how does a prairie grow, and then to Kerala to look at, "How does this remarkable biome come about? And and how do we as gardeners participate in this?" With different language, different ways of expressing it, but that relationship with plants was what really grabbed me, you know, I just like, life turned upside down in that one trip.
Alan Ware 16:17
Now, you've been there over thirty years now, right?
Suprabha Seshan 16:21
Yep.
Alan Ware 16:22
And what would you describe as the main work of the sanctuary?
Suprabha Seshan 16:25
So day to day operations are centered around native plants and other plants also, with species of the Western Ghats, and animals and land and the forest. So we're about thirty-five people now. And it's very much caring for life in all its different forms, you know, people of Kerala particularly, I would say, are very intimate with plant life. And I've been to many places, and it's just like, everybody in the state has an affinity with the plant kingdom, and, you know, tubers and climbers and creepers and herbs, and, you know, annuals and perennials and giant trees, and the whole works. And just naturally people have that. And it's true, of course, also in Costa Rica, and you know, Malaysia and other places in the tropical rainforests. But there's something about the state of Kerala that just particularly embodies it, even you know, as it's all going towards crazy forms of development now, I think it's still something that's there. So that's the daily work. And the mission as such, is that it's a refuge. It's a refuge, it's a halfway home, it's an ark, it's a place that we bring back those who we believe are survivors of ecological holocaust. And for twenty, twenty-five years, we have explored the mountains from north to south, it's like a thousand two hundred kilometer range. And we've been to every smaller landscape within this larger area and searched for plants amidst the desolation of infrastructure projects, and industrial scale agriculture and ecotourism, urbanization, and so on. So 93% of the biome is gone. And therefore, every single being of these mountains is under some kind of desperate pressure. And the perception of this already forty years ago by the person who founded the place was what, you know, has really created the mission that collapses under way and biospheric interconnectivity is under assault, and what can I do as a gardener was the question that he asked, and one thing I can do is provide a refuge. And how do I do it? Well, here are the people of this land who know how to grow these plants, and just the way that other people rescue animals or refugees. And, you know, the place has been that refuge for plants affected by ecological disintegration. So that was a very powerful motivating impulse then, and it remains the case. The work is now, you know, has many more aspects to it. But that is the core of it.
Alan Ware 19:06
And you've rescued, I read somewhere sixteen-hundred to two thousand species of plants that you've transplanted from elsewhere in the range?
Suprabha Seshan 19:15
Yeah, like from dam sites and roadsides and landfills and coffee and tea plantations, and you know, just from anywhere, really. And so the understanding of how plants are rare or the kind of biogeographic and conservation elements, they're sort of the more scientific side of things, but it's really the perception that these are species that require our support. And this is one way of supporting them.
Alan Ware 19:42
You've described yourself as plant supremacist in a way, in the belief that-
Suprabha Seshan 19:47
Yeah, you know, that was really talking a snoo cat, you know, the big predator type of conservation and fortress conservation and, you know, you save the tiger you save everybody, you know, that kind of thought. But there's also a declaration for all of us, we are allied in many ways through affection, through work, through understanding with plants. And, you know, gardeners feel that allegiance with plants, right? This emotional kind of connection. So I live with people who feel that way and who manifest it. So the sense that we, if we work with the plants, then the animals will come. So you sort of turned that whole thing on its head. And now people are talking about fungi. And I think I ended that particular piece by saying, you know, "Thermophilic bacteria on the ground are going to be protesting because they feel that they are more important, you know, than anybody else, because they've been around for longer."
Alan Ware 20:43
And as I think you've mentioned, all the species of birds and snakes, mammals, frogs, toads.
Suprabha Seshan 20:48
Yeah, tremendous diversity. And we're finding plants and animals in this tiny - it's really small. It's like twenty-five hectares, seventy acres at the edge of vast reserve, of course, so the flow of animals back and forth is what creates the diversity. But someone just recently sent me a photograph of a snake that they had photographed in the sanctuary, and then said, "Do you realize that this is a really rare snake?" And we had seen it off and on, but to be then told by someone who's come and takes a picture and says, you know, "It's been seen only so many times? And do you realize it's a refuge for snakes?" You know, so we get told that, that it's a refuge for snakes, it's a refuge for butterflies, it's a refuge for human beings. And I think that's the narrative that we're spinning about the ark story, is that it's not that we chose or any one of us chose so many of this and so many of that, but it's like, everybody chooses their best friends. And then this huddle of life and everybody's clamoring on to this little little piece of Earth, you know, and the plants bring their animal friends, animals bring their butterfly friends, whatever, that it's not a one person selection, but it's rather in everybody is in this process of saving themselves, saving other people, saving this little corner of the Earth and then also repopulating any land around it.
Nandita Bajaj 22:09
And it seems very reflective of the name of the school, Gurukula, because Gurukula itself means a traditional school in India where students are living near the guru. But would you say the guru here is nature, that you're all kind of students of nature, learning, and protecting?
Suprabha Seshan 22:26
Yes, absolutely. So we've interpreted the word guru as in teacher, the one who dispels darkness, and kula literally means family, right? So family of the teacher. Students traditionally went to live with the teacher and then to be part of the family. And so we are with other creatures and each other in the family of nature. And there is no single person imparting the wisdom but there is this entire, I keep calling it huddle or you know, this community. So it's not a single, you know, one man sitting in repose, giving, you know, fount of wisdom. I have no qualms with that. But that nature itself in all diversity is the teacher.
Alan Ware 23:05
Yeah, as you've described, the sanctuary providing that ark, that huddle, for endangered plants and all the communities that follow, the insects, the birds, the animals - what do you see as the flood making that ark necessary?
Suprabha Seshan 23:20
Personally, I can say that the flood has been on its way for a while, and it started thousands of years ago in some places. Certainly in India, you know, destruction of environment has been going on for, you know, maybe fifteen hundred, two thousand years. There are more and more evidence of large scale deforestation, say along the riverbeds and so on. But at the same time, all the stages in this evolution of certain societies - feudalism empire, then colonialism, and then the current version of capitalism - is this whole buildup of the flood. And that's the way I describe it. Someone else might just call it hubris or supremacist thought, but unleashing its effects through its technologies on the body of the planet. So that's been on its way for a while.
Alan Ware 24:11
Right. Yeah, you've lived with people who had that happen. Indigenous people had that happen hundreds of years ago. You've written that the fundamental driving force of capital is the imperative to conquer all life, which yeah, it turns living things into resources and into pollution. And in the area you have around there, there are a lot of cash crop plantations that are heavily denuded, right? That were ginger and was it rubber?
Suprabha Seshan 24:38
Yeah, many, many crops. I think that's with the whole colonial takeover of mountain areas in India at least was the testing of these, you know, beverages and tea and coffee and then rubber, cinchona, so many eucalyptus. I mean, very close to where I live is a higher mountain area which was one of the first places for botanical experimentation in the Nilgiri Mountains. And plants were brought there and and plants were taken from there and all these plantations and so on were made. So that is like a couple of hundred years old, where forests were seen as, first were cut and cleared, and then those remaining were just seen as ugly and uninteresting, and the replacement with these new forms of forestry and so on. But then, you know, that was part of the despoilation. But then, you know, ever since 1948, there's been lots more, an equal or a greater amount that's been cut. So the forces of development have destroyed the rest. And so we're left with these toe holes of life, you know.
Alan Ware 25:46
Yeah. Yeah, here in America, we have what are called mountain lions, which are cougars, and grizzly bears, which are in the mountains. And I always thought, "Oh, they're only mountain animals." But no, they've been pushed into the mountains.
Suprabha Seshan 26:01
Yes.
Alan Ware 26:02
That's the only place we will leave them alone. Otherwise, the grizzlies were all over the prairie and the mountain lions were all over the prairies.
Suprabha Seshan 26:10
Yeah.
Nandita Bajaj 26:11
One of the things you've talked about is the insatiability of the patriarch, and you've spoken a bit about what patriarchy here represents, in current day, the modern, technocratic, militarized, capitalistic world, but we know of course, patriarchy goes back thousands and thousands of years with, of course, the start of even the separation worldview from nature with the domestication of animals ten thousand years ago. And it's also, of course, around that time that it became very concretized in terms of the gendered division of men and women and the exaltation of women's role as procreators to populate the world to fight off other tribes and create more farmers and more laborers and, and all of that. And that's where, you know, we really look at population and patriarchy go hand in hand, as patriarchy is the oldest form of population control. So with you being in Kerala, we have particular interests, because the state of Kerala has a fertility rate of about 1.5 children per woman on average, which is well below the average of about two children per woman in India. And Kerala achieved this low fertility rate through an emphasis on female education and the emancipation of women, and widespread contraception and family planning support, all of which were, in a way, really confronting patriarchal notions of gender and what women were expected to do. And in your own work as a gardener of nature, what role have you seen population growth? Of course, combined with the rapid increase in consumerism and the rise of the mechanistic worldview, what role have you seen that playing in the ecological devastation in your particular region in the Western Ghats?
Suprabha Seshan 28:10
You know, my whole emphasis is so on the militaristic mindset that there are two problems that I see. One is, you know, there's only so many number of people that a land base can support, right? So I'm not going into the question of why there are so many people because it is absolutely true, what you've said, it is a fact that women have been used for creating the forces to run a patriarchal enterprise. At the same time, what I'm just looking at is the presence of the human animal on the land, and what happens to the land and what can it support? And there's, of course, a great export of people, right? Because Kerala, what does it have as export? It has the spices and it has labor, right? So it has these two major things. So that's a big export of Kerala. And, you know, there's a tremendous tragedy there when people are forced out because they're just too many people in one place. So the forced migrations of overpopulated areas, for me is absolutely heartbreaking. When people simply have to leave because there is nothing to hold them. The land is also being trashed by the government, by other fickle economic policies. So right, so it's the same land base cannot support the same number of people because of the agricultural policies. So I have felt that in my area, it feels like it's filling up now. But it's filling up with all sorts of things like with cars, and with young men and women more attached to their mobile phones than to each other. And the aspirations are changing, and to live on the land is not really valued anymore. So there are all these other things that are happening. The land is no longer a place to cherish. But it's a place to leave because it cannot support you. And the other thing is that the impact of large scale infrastructure projects is immensely greater than all these people. So a dam for instance displaces so many people. Where do they go? And, you know, what has that done to that entire region or plateau?
Nandita Bajaj 30:26
Exactly. And a huge part of the work we do is we really are looking at the holistic way of not just the number of people, but how the people are living and what demands more and more people are increasingly putting on nature. Because as you said, it's not just the number of people, it's the number of cars, it's the number of phones, and it's combined with just the number of people is the mindset of the modernistic worldview, what you've said is the global indoctrination that has really divorced us from our relationship to the more than human world. And so when we add more people with that mindset, who then want to, again, increasingly become middle class consumers, the infrastructure is just a proportional response to the demands that people are then placing, and everything else kind of just becomes a multiplier. Our main directive is education, is to how to really bring that ecocentric worldview where not only are we liberated from the forces of patriarchy, but then also moved to become closer to the land.
Suprabha Seshan 31:40
Yeah, you know, if you look at the footprint of a warship, and of Indians having seven ten warships, or the number of fighter jets, and tanks and air shows just to show off your fleet, and then the whole surveillance and then the bases and then the petroleum and then the fossil fuels and transportation infrastructures to just support the militaries. So this is not in any of the Kyoto and in all those subsequent Glascow Protocols. It is never featured. The US Army's carbon emission is not talked about. The Indian Army's carbon emission is not talked about. The Indian Army's footprint, the ecological footprint is not talked about. You know, we have to put in center focus, the footprint of the combined militaries of you know the world's superpowers, and that is what is destroying the planet in my humble opinion.
Alan Ware 32:34
Right, so you got a TEDx talk online, titled The Eco Versus Ego. And those concepts of ego and ego would seem to be analogous to the differences between the ecosanctuary you're creating in the flood of this ego-fueled extractive capitalism that the sanctuary was built to protect species from. How would you describe the current culture of ego? We've talked about it somewhat, the flood, and how that differs from the culture of eco that we need to create?
Suprabha Seshan 33:04
Big question. I think it's already there in those two words, right? And again, I was kind of just playing on the fact that in South India, we mix up the eco with the ego, we have the same sound for the "c" sound and the "g" sound. And so someone might say, "Oh, you're, you know, you're an egologist," you know, they might tell me, you know, yes, I'll be like, "Yes, I'm an egologist." And at the same time, you know, I have been a student of how this entity, this ego comes about in everything that we do and desire and our relationships and so on. So simply put, eco, E-C-O, does not have a single authoritarian imperative, that it is a community. It is all these different creatures, and everybody has a chance to kind of run the show for a bit. You know, the fungi are sending the nutrients this way. And then there's a storm and then the trees crash, you know, it's all that dynamic. There is no single one that is keeping the others down and unhappy. The ego requires the unhappiness of others. If you're other-centered, you will want the wellbeing of others and that the ego cannot tolerate is what I've been looking at, the ego requires another to be less than you. You are greater, and it is separative. It is divisive. It seeks its own pleasure at the expense of another's pain. At its basic unit, it's just a protective device, right? It's just a way of saying, "Hey, you stand off. This is me." And it's a form of self expression. And it's a coherence in an organism, but it seems to, within the modern human form, to get so separative and so divisive and so abstract, that it is acquisitive at its very base it's deeply acquisitive. And so the moment you have, the other can also have not have as much as you because the Earth is limited. So a few people then accumulate while the others are suffering. So the suffering nature of an egotistic life and the deeply thrilling nature of an ecological life, you know, all these animals and plants. And it's not to say that there isn't killing or there isn't some aggression, it's not to say that that doesn't happen, it's to say, rather, so many forms of proliferating, and you know, having a great time, this thrilling exuberance of life. And it's the sort of ego is like a toxic mimic of that, it has an exuberance to it, it has a power to it, but it's not exuberant in the way I see it. So India is filling up with people, but so many people are sick. And such a fascism is at play, whereas the rainforest is so many beings, and there's room for everybody. So cultures that celebrate or value the sense that you can have leadership, but you can't have too much of one possessing at the expense of the other. And then the other, which is the you know, the egotistic, a hubristic model is that, you know, one person can have what previous kings and emperors didn't have, and that level of wealth. So how did this society allow for that? And then there are all these Indigenous communities and traditional communities where leadership, and you can have a little bit more because, you know, you need to be a little bit stronger, maybe you need to go and do that thing. You have to take your people to safety, but it's very little, it's so transparent and egalitarian and different people take a leadership role and then the elders are there. And then, you know, the women have a very strong voice and the children have room to grow in this huddle of humans, elders, and very different from this competitive, patriarchal, driven - you know, the rational disaster in this society. You know, it's not just natural disasters and national disasters, but there's a rational disaster. Schooling drives people insane. People are unhappy as a result of schooling. Education should bring out, should midwife the best in each individual. And that you see amongst your Indigenous friends, is all the children are celebrated. And you don't see that in urban schools, the celebration of every child.
Alan Ware 37:21
So you've written that schooling in the modern world, as you just mentioned, is designed to acculturate young people to operating well within that capital industrial machine of the ego mindset. And how do you think we might change schooling to emphasize more of an eco mindset?
Suprabha Seshan 37:37
Well, who is the we?
Alan Ware 37:38
Yeah.
Suprabha Seshan 37:39
And who runs the schooling system? And are they going to allow that to happen? Because school is very much, the educational system is hand in glove with every other industry, and the fact that education is an industry and not part of growing up the young. I mean, I've known schools who take their children to the land, and I know them in India, you know, within this very difficult framework that we're currently in, there are very interesting schools who focus on relationship - relationship with each other and with other than humans more than humans with the land base - and with an approach that is inquiring rather than telling. It is not based on accumulation of knowledge or of information, but rather of developing these different strengths and relationships, that it's in relationship that education happens, it cannot happen without relationship. So there are many, many schools and they're in slums, and they are in villages, and they are in tribal communities. And so there's a whole alternative educational network in the country that is really amazing. And I think India's also seen some of the most outstanding educational experiments, I think. So they seem to have all come upon some basic things. Affection, a lot of physical activities. So you know, children are not constrained by sort of one directional hammering of information, and that music and literature and art and poetry and storytelling and community work is, these are all essential. So that children are always in community. And I think part of the problem of schooling is that it's separated from home. And so there are these two, at least two different messages that most children will get. And then third is what comes through the media, right? So most children are having these sort of three or four different forces on them. And of course, many schools set out to liberate the children from, you know, terrible homes and so on. But if there's a disjunct, the child actually has a really hard time so it is important to work in community, you know, so you're working with parents and you're working with a larger community and you're working with the land. So I would say just opening the doors and becoming physical, you know, sensory, relational, is what I would do, what I know these outstanding educators have done.
Alan Ware 40:00
And you've had many kids come to the sanctuary, right? To stay for several days.
Suprabha Seshan 40:05
Several days, several weeks.
Alan Ware 40:07
Several weeks?
Suprabha Seshan 40:08
Even. Yeah, a couple of months for young children. Yeah.
Alan Ware 40:11
And what changes do you see in those young, especially the urban kids, what is their experience?
Suprabha Seshan 40:17
It takes a while for what I would say for just this exuberance, you know, and to get out of, these days, it's gadget driven, of course, you know, the phone or the need to talk about, you know, whatever's on the latest show, or whatever. But you know, nature does a lot of the work, you know, you have leeches creeping up, you know, feet and ankles and shins and you know, draining your blood, you know, you that's something to deal with, and that may be the unpleasant, kind of fearful way. But I would say it's a very intimate way. And it's harmless, you know, you don't, losing a little bit of blood doesn't particularly endanger your life. But there's also, you know, all the other creatures, there's the birds and butterflies, and there's a river, and going swimming every day, and walking in the forest with people who know the forest really well, and storytelling under the stars and so on, that at the end of a period, you see people are walking up and down the hills, you know, they're much more comfortable, they're not tired. Children, their bodies have adapted to this terrain, they're easier, their, you know, their playfulness is coming out. And you know, they're more participating in the community. And they're delighting in all these other, you know, creatures around them. And they want to go and see this and see that, and so what seems to happen is just this liveliness of the child comes out. There will be the occasional child who say, gets very homesick and wants to go home and is fearful. But I think we've had very few instances of that, because somehow the place is so beautiful, and so delightful in just its creaturely way, and the adults around are comfortable with whether it's elephants or leeches or flowers or orchids or trees. They're comfortable, and small talk amongst the adults is just all these other creatures that I think children get into that. I mean, they are susceptible to the adults around them. And and I think it's very important to not impose nature verbally. And you know, gloom and doom talk, it's very important to just relate. So I keep coming back to the single relationship, and but it's not a verbal relationship, it is the body does its own thing, and the plants and animals also impact you in so many ways. And then you start to garden, and then you start to climb trees, and you see a bird that you've never seen before. So all these little little little things happen. And then small talk then becomes the little creatures that you saw, rather than the video games and so on. So I just approach it like that. It's a natural, it is the family of nature. So children become part of the family of nature, and they come back and you know, sometimes children have had a hard time. And now they come back years later, and they tell you that this was still the most important experience that they had the privilege, really, to experience because where do you get that kind of forest that you can enter and just be at home in? You know, everything's walled off now, you need permissions. You need the sentries at every post. It's like crossing, you know, national borders to go into a forest. There's security, there's armed guards patrolling, there's all that. So just the sense of, "I can walk out and see all this, or be with all this, be part of all this, I am a creature." So that we have seen, and sadly, the forces against that, depriving children of that natural, what I call enlifenment, another word, no, I'm not interested so much in enlightenment, but rather enlifenment, you know, the very sort of coming alive with other creatures. It's not just enlivening, it's more than you are in this relationship with lots of other creatures. So the gadgets, the surrounded by gadget life, to be surrounded by plants and animals. That is what we impart to the kids, that possibility to be surrounded by other creatures. I think children love it.
Alan Ware 44:07
Yeah, to see those relationships, instead of I've heard you talk about coming in with your theory of abstract concepts. However you're applying it, if you're applying it to nature and naming everything instead of just observing, right? Just watching the relationships that you're seeing. And there's so little that we know about so much of nature, so to - it is you hubristic to come in and think you can name everything and, and know all those relationships. So that's great that the kids are getting that more inductive, observational, relational experience with it and realizing partly how ignorant we are and how much more there is to learn and experience.
Suprabha Seshan 44:47
We just create the conditions as best as we can for that to unfold. You know, I think time is essential, you know, how much time do we get with these children? You know, they go back, we may never see them again. The lucky ones we see again, and it's a delight to receive the same kids over many years, you know, ten years, fifteen years, we've seen them come back year after year. So I've now seen like two generations of children come in, you know, when I was young, you know, there was all these little kids coming in. And now you know, they're all - then their little kids are coming.
Nandita Bajaj 45:20
Right, you've used certain words that really capture what's happened culturally, is you've you've talked about the deprivation that students undergo through the more traditional kind of mechanistic educational system. And the deprivation is really of the natural curiosity that a lot of young children have towards nature, and the sense of connection and all that a lot of us grow up with, but then are hardened, you know, over time to lose touch with that aspect. And in a way, it's a form of indoctrination over years and years of being made to believe that we are superior to all of nature, and we can conquest and control. And these weeks of experiences that students have at the sanctuary with you, it sounds quite clear that that adaptive quality, it happens very quickly, that adaptation to being in community with these plants, and with these animals. It doesn't take very long for us to get in touch with that more innate, natural, communal sense that we have within us. And that to me speaks volumes, right? Of how much effort our culture is putting into removing and divorcing us from what may naturally come to us, is to be in community with other beings and to be in relationship and to observe and to just be. I think that is a beautiful experience that you've described. And also, I love your emphasis on the enlivenment piece, where you also talk about the modern worldview emphasizes this quality of finding your authentic self and becoming individuated, enlightened beings, which is still taking us further away from relationship. It's something that we must do to self-actualize in separation from someone else, but the kind of enlivenment you're talking about is enlightenment that is happening in relationship with others - you are evolving together in understanding one another. And I had never heard of that before. Because, you know, we do talk a lot about self-actualization in our work and being able to attain a certain level of autonomy. But within that, it also I think, what you're bringing is a deeper sense of enlightenment, of that autonomy, of constantly oscillating between the individual and the community really helps us inform what enlightenment actually could mean.
Suprabha Seshan 47:57
Yeah, you just put it so well, Nandita. And both of you really, I feel like you've taken all this so seriously, and with such affection, that really is important. And I don't want to take myself too seriously. You know, some of this is because I had a spiritual education and I've seen people get so serious about this. Not Krishnamurti himself, but you know, the whole community, you know, and how you tend to put up one figure and all the rest of us can never attain that because, you know, we are full of our complications and problems and maybe the life in the forest is this very complicated way of being together because lianas are there, the trees are there, and there's all these animals and birds, and there's this entanglement, really, and life is just teeming, and there's always room that you're finding and and I feel that even our thoughts and emotions, somehow they find a way into the world when you just give them room without saying, "Oh, that's not enlightenment." So to give room to the child and to give room to our emotions, and to feel our way into the world, and the world is feeling its way into us. And you experience that profoundly in the rainforest, right? There's all these creatures that's trying to live in you and under you and you know, on you, so that is just sensory, the whole thing is really sensory, and your skin and your eyes and your ears and all that - it's full of feeling. So maybe being together as humans amongst nonhumans brings out this particular human-ness that is also our source of joy, you know, to be human - what is it? You know, and to be human is to be full of life, to be life.
Alan Ware 49:38
Yeah, the sensuality. You've talked a lot about embodiment being especially critical to the ecomindset and you've written that quote, "One day I fell in love with verbs. After this, nature, life, everything appeared more and more in verb form and less and less in noun form." So I imagine a lot of what you mean by that is what you've been talking about, the action, the sensing, the feeling. Those are all “ing” words, being words, verb words, versus creating taxonomies of plants and trying to label everything and in a way that I mean, as we've been learning about fungi and the intelligence of plants, and there's so much that we don't know. So to assume that we can put nouns and concepts on everything is very arrogant, but you embody that. We also in a video heard you singing. At one point, you've talked about singing, and physically embodying the singing, moving while you're singing. So you've really gotten in touch with that. How did that come about for you? And how important, I mean, it looks like this is a critical part of the eco mindset, right? It's partly this embodiment being especially important to you.
Suprabha Seshan 50:48
Yeah, I live with people who are embodied each in very different ways because they're working on the land, or they are hunter-gatherers, or, you know, or artists for instance, or people who go tree climbing and so on, that they are all kind of so relating with their bodies and senses, rather than through abstractions and categories, right? For me, that the theatrical musical side is simply that something that I carried over as something that I've always done, which is like I enjoy, you know, how people speak, and I enjoy songs and songwriters, and, and poetry, and so on, and languages, and I speak a few Indian languages. And so going there, you know, I just started to do things and imitate, and it wasn't thought out. But it's just something that happened. But at some point, it became this thing that I would do quite often and every day and go into different places, and it became this on the land and listening and trying to, at first, it's imitation. And then but the more you try to imitate a particular tone, it's not just that, oh, I'm imitating a bird call, it's actually the tone of the animal, the tone of the wind, or the tone of the hoot of the Nilgiri langur, which is a monkey, that in tonality, you actually get a sense of the emotional, feeling fullness of the other being. So you know, mimicry and imitation is one thing, but when you get into it quite deeply, I think you get that empathetic, and this sort of mirror neuron kind of effect, which is that you start to feel like the other, or as the other, or you're approaching something that keeps you both in the same place in this convivial way. And, you know, I don't get it right most of the time, you know, I'm full of myself and full of my thoughts, full of my, you know, things I have to do, and so on. And I'm just walking along. And I know that all these other creatures sense that energy, because that's what they're really good at, all the others, is sensing what is beneath the skin. But as I listen, and as I do these different things, and I also get into a state of listening, and then you play with that. And so it's just been this form of, I would say, entering communion, but communion more is a state of something in common and shared, and to explore just being together and you know, your audience is a troop of monkeys, or, you know, they don't care anything about you. But at some point, they're listening. And then they, you know, there's a call and back and forth sort of feeling that you have, and I would never say that I call and they respond, but rather that in my response to them, in my responsiveness to them, or listening, that I, first of all, don't push them away. Second, there seems to be an approach sometimes. And then there is this something that happens back and forth, back and forth. And I think it's enough to leave it at that, you know, I don't want to say more than that. But in that I have the sense of just being part of that place. And I'm not filling it with my abstractions. And so there's room then for all these others in my own heart, you know, in my own being there is room, I've taken their sounds into my body, into my being. And that is a very profound aspect of communication, I think. You know, we're so defensive when we talk person to person, human to human and not abstractions, identity plays such a big role in what I said and what you said, and India is such a great place for this, you know, kind of argumentative kind of thing. But, you know, we're all like troops of monkeys ourselves, you know, we're just like yakking away. And then you go into the forest and you just play, and then when you can do that with one or two or some other people, it's very sort of artificial at first, but then sometimes, you know, you enter into this thing. So it's just about that really, you know, the music of everything, really, and to feel that you're part of this great orchestra and that you're tuning in somehow with your own song.
Nandita Bajaj 54:51
Right. And you've talked about your singing being an offering rather than a call for a response. There's no expectation there, you're simply adding to the melody of natural sounds and, and listening to one another. And that's the, you know, other example of embodiment, of what it means to really just to let go of expectation, of communication, of simply being and allowing something new to emerge, and not knowing what that might be, they might walk away, or they might come to you. But there's no expectation for something to happen from that.
Suprabha Seshan 55:29
Yes. And that can be true for human beings too, right? That we trap each other in our expectations and categorizations and conclusions. And maybe that's the listening from the forest, that if anything, one can try and bring it into conversation as well. It's much harder to do I think with each other, because we have these layers, right? We have layers of, you know, ideas and expectations and emotions and so on. But I think it's possible. And it's important, it's important that we have that subliminal listening, which is the body, really.
Alan Ware 56:02
Yeah, I've heard you speak eloquently about fixation and the animals, that they are not fixating the way humans do.
Suprabha Seshan 56:11
Yeah, there's no repeat button, there's no repeat button in nature, you cannot play the same thing twice in the natural world, you can only do that in a documentary of the natural world or something that you put onto video or audio, right? That is what you can repeat. But the natural world and including your own body, and including your mind, actually, as it unfolds, that is not repeatable. But an idea, once it takes root, you can just say the same thing over and over again. And that's when you know you're out of sync, right? And I think all these gadgets, that's what they do, they fixate you, they provide these little pleasures, but then they hook you. You can't get hooked to nature.
Alan Ware 56:50
Yeah. And the less embodied we are, the more well we fixate sitting in a chair, or we have to do certain things to make the money with abstract concepts that aren't embodied, like the people you're working with who are moving, through trees or doing things with their body to make their living, to live. And so yeah, we can fixate bodily, it seems like we can fixate stimuli, stimulus-wise, with phones and various addictions that seem much more, yeah, you don't have so much addiction in nature either.
Suprabha Seshan 57:24
Well, it's difficult. I mean, how would you be addicted to say, watching the sunset? Can you get addicted to - the whole thrill of sunset is that it's different every day, and never the same sunset twice.
Alan Ware 57:38
And that slow drip of nature. We're very attuned to that in our reward circuitry, our dopamine, serotonin, whatever, nature does provide it, but it's slower, right? It's mellower than the immediate stimuli of the phone, or social media, or all these things sort of kind of hijacked our brains away from the biophilia that I think we really do have at base, but it's it's been hijacked more by modern civilization, by the, by the ego.
Nandita Bajaj 58:07
Right. What do you think our listeners might do in their own lives in the small physical spaces that they can personally commune with that might help plants and life claim a bit more space in their surroundings?
Suprabha Seshan 58:20
Just that, you know, that you've said that there's, that life is actually claiming its own space, right? That everybody is trying to move in with you, whether you like it or not, you know, and instead of shutting them out, or whatever that whole dance between geckos and termites and all that, every creature is seeing you as an opportunity to move in. And I think when I started to see that every space is actually co-created by many, many beings and creatures and forces of nature, then, you know, even a house, you know, somebody else moves into it, and they didn't ask your permission. So to see that to see that nature can actually take over your house in no time in the tropical rainforest in no time, you just leave a house alone for one year, and everybody's moved in. And when you recognize that, then your structures, maybe your your alienating behaviors, I think they can transform into welcoming or negotiating behaviors. "Now hang on, I'm living here sorry," that sense of a conversation with bats and owls and bears. You know, I have friends who like hang out with bears in, you know, California and other friends who are hanging out with elephants walking in and helping themselves to their jackfruit or whatever, you know, and then me, I like my bats and praying mantises and butterflies and, you know, all the little, little birds. So I think life is not opportunistic so much as it is active. All living beings are moving, dynamic, searching, creating, and when we recognize that you're not the only one who's creative around here, there's somebody else also, then it becomes this reciprocal dance. And that is what the urban person needs to wake up to. Simply that their house is actually not their own. And the more you then welcome, then you can have beautiful gardens with beautiful other creatures and trees and so on. But you can also have beings come in, and that is the space that we need to make for each other.
Nandita Bajaj 1:00:25
Well that was really beautiful. What a moving conversation that was, thank you so much. Your love of the natural world and your embodiment of it really stands as a model that we could all benefit from ourselves embodying. And even in just speaking with you today, we could definitely feel the visceral connection to all of life that sustains us and that brings us closer to, as you have remarkably shown, our true human nature. We are so grateful for your time today and the incredible work that you're doing, Suprabha. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Suprabha Seshan 1:01:00
Well, it's such a pleasure, Nandita and Alan. I mean, this is really a very nice conversation. I hope you visit sometime and I would love to meet you both someday.
Nandita Bajaj 1:01:11
Oh likewise, we both talked about how if we were going to take a flight-
Suprabha Seshan 1:01:17
Welcome.
Nandita Bajaj 1:01:18
Then it will be it will be to Kerala, to Gurukula.
Suprabha Seshan 1:01:23
Please, please do come.
Alan Ware 1:01:25
that's all for this edition of the overpopulation podcast visit population balanced.org. To learn more to share feedback or guest recommendations write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast at population balanced.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on your favorite podcast platform and share it widely. We couldn't do this work without the support of listeners like you and hope that you'll consider a one time or recurring donation.
Nandita Bajaj 1:01:53
Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj thanking you for your interest in our work and for your efforts and helping us all shrink toward abundance.
