It was high in the upper Himalayas that His Holiness 1008 Shri Shri Soham Baba first noticed the climate was changing.
The ice-covered peaks where the sadhu (holy man) lived and meditated became barren.
Trees below were dry, their flowers dead; the birds that once filled them long gone.
“Mountain deserts,” he calls them. “For kilometres and kilometres, all the glaciers were melting.”
Two decades later, Babaji – as he is known – strides into a media briefing at Durban’s International Convention Centre.
Ashen body and unshaven dreadlocks traded for deep, saffron robes; a large silver lamp in hand (healing water made of the five healing grasses of the Himalayas, he says).
“Umshanti, umshanti, umshanti,” he tells those gathered, and begins talking.
He is not one of the academics rattling off details.
He speaks freely, ramblingly, stopping and starting to show the audience photos of himself meditating in one of his caves, planting seeds on the bank of the Ganges, blessing a crowd of thousands.
“Oh, they love me,” he says. “They go crazy to see me.”
Two sari-clad followers from his Netherlands-based Soham Baba Mission sit close at hand; nearby, his suited security detail.
This is life for Babaji at lower altitudes, raising awareness about climate change and spirituality – two sides of the same coin.
“We talk about the climate outside, but there is also a climate within all of us… When in crisis in life, we go shopping. Buy a new jacket, new pants. This mega consumerism is one of the biggest factors of climate change.”
The message gets a mixed response.
A journalist with waist-length hair and a deep suntan wants to know more about Babaji’s own spirituality. Another, in a suit, asks how he knows so much about climate change if he has been living in caves in the Himalayas.
It’s all part of his responsibility as a religious leader, he says.
“Awareness is the foundation of everything. It’s only through awareness that action can manifest.”
His own moment of awareness came from a conversation with his spiritual master.
“He told me that the old masters in the Himalayas used to say, ‘For one tree you cut, you take a star away from the sky’ … you cut one tree down, and you take a life away. You kill someone.”
Now, he encourages his followers to plant trees, a message he says they are embracing. A simple action making an immediate difference, rather than being bogged down by talk.
It’s the one thing that bothers him, coming to these conferences and seeing progress stumble over niggling issues between governments.
“You first need a climate to work together positively,” he says. “Climate change is not the problem of one country. It’s the problem of the collective. We have to solve this problem together.” By Kristen Van Schie, Independent Online
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