Autistics voices in Climate Action

Here's the recording of the conversation 'Neurodivergent voices in Climate Action' organised in October 2024 by Action for Autism, with Dilip Kumar Makela, Pranav Sethi, Esha Patel and Raj Mariwala. If you have the time and interest, please listen to the full 1.5 hour long conversation. I speak at 0:32:55 * 1:00:35 * 1:11:52 * 1:21:20

 

Here is an edited transcript of my talk.

Firstly, I'm delighted to be here and to be part of this important conversation—something I have been thinking about for a very long time. Since I have primarily been introduced as a yoga practitioner, let me begin by briefly sharing my journey so far, just to set some context for my further sharing.

My journey began with addressing urban environmental issues like waste management and sanitation. This got me wondering why so many people were migrating from villages to cities! And then I started learning about what ailed rural India. I then spent a couple of decades working on anti-corporatization and globalization, regenerative farming, and later on reimagining education, since I felt the schooling system was at the root of many of our crises. I worked on organizing communities and local economies, among other initiatives.

After decades of this kind of work, I finally turned toward yoga - not to escape from this important work. But because, at the end of a long marathon of trying to address issues one by one, I became convinced that although all this work was necessary and valuable, it was still not enough to address the depth of the crisis we are facing. I came to see that underlying these many crises - including climate change – is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.

By spirituality, I do not mean the kind that asks us to escape from physical reality or wrongly translates māyā as “illusion.” māyā actually means “measurable yet transient.” So I am speaking of a spirituality that takes physical reality - including climate change and climate action - very seriously; a spirituality that brings consciousness into the physical world. This, for me, is the very foundation of Integral Yoga as articulated by the seer Sri Aurobindo. And this is what drew me to the vision and dream of Auroville.

From this new vantage point, what I am seeing is that climate change is actually a symptom of a larger metacrisis. It is not multiple crises, but really one interconnected crisis; much like fever is a symptom of an underlying condition.

What I find missing in much of the broader discourse on climate action is not merely certain perspectives. What is missing is an entire lens through which this crisis needs to be seen and understood if we are to begin acting in ways that can truly make a difference.

I feel that our current perception of the crisis emerges largely through what I call the colonized lens - a reductionist and fragmented lens in which we perceive primarily through the intellect. But, by its very nature, the intellect can only perceive parts. So when it identifies global warming as something that must be addressed, it logically begins asking: Where are the emissions coming from? Which sectors contribute how much? What can be reduced? It then attempts to build the big picture by assembling these different parts together. I feel that this very approach is our fundamental crisis!

We humans have come to believe that we are separate entities; separate from one another and from other life forms. We believe that everything can be understood in isolation. But, I believe that no matter how sincere our intentions are, and no matter how aggressively we apply our various well-researched strategies, if we do not address this underlying illusion of separation, we may only become more deeply entrenched in the crisis.

What I am proposing is that we flip this lens around.

When we first learn to see the big picture, the metacrisis, we can then zoom in and understand the different parts and their interconnections. If we can do this, there is hope that we may discover genuinely new ways of responding. And this, I feel, is precisely what the indigenous or decolonized lens does. It begins by seeing and understanding the whole - pūrṇam, as we call it in our culture.

Through this lens, when we look at the individual elements of pūrṇam, we realize that each element is itself pūrṇam. This is what the well-known Vedic mantra “Pūrṇamadaḥ Pūrṇamidam” speaks of. Whatever emerges from the whole remains whole.

Going by this very logic, when we gather fragments, threads, and perspectives and attempt to construct the whole by assembling them, no matter how many pieces we collect or how diligently we try, we may only end up with a larger fragment.

I think this is what Einstein meant when he said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” Interestingly, Einstein is now being understood to have been autistic, and someone who thought profoundly outside conventional frameworks.

So, I would suggest that more than merely incorporating additional perspectives from neurodivergent people, what is urgently needed is a change in the lens itself. Decolonisation is not an option anymore. It is a necessity if we are to survive as a human race.

***

It is difficult for me to look at my work within any one specific field because I have moved through many different contexts and issues over the years. Something that I have been learning about recently is how we autistics often experience a heightened sense of eco-anxiety, when compared to neurotypicals. This insight helped me make sense of the earlier part of my own life.

For many years, I lived with a deep sense of panic, depression, and loneliness, constantly wondering: Why am I feeling so intensely about what is happening in the world, while others seem to be unperturbed?

In response to this, I spent about two decades of my life denying myself a lot: using only public transport and handed-down clothes, saying no to this and that - trying to reduce my impact on the earth. Simultaneously, I engaged in initiatives that I thought addressed and solved what I perceived as crises. During those years, I went through periodic burnout. I am now in the longest and most intense one ever.

***

From where I am today, I see the most important and urgent thing to do is become more compassionate with ourselves. The problem we are trying to respond to - the machine that keeps cranking up every day - is so much bigger and faster than any one of us can even imagine. Yes, I can turn off my air conditioner. But today, I was able to come here to this conversation, be functional, and speak with you because I had my AC on. So, we need to put things in perspective.

As was mentioned earlier, perhaps one of the biggest responsibilities we have as a neurodivergent community is to bring our voices into the world. But in order to do that meaningfully and powerfully, we need to be healthy. We can’t afford to be living our lives in survival mode. We need, first of all, to be thriving, so that we can genuinely make a difference. This perspective has settled many of my own anxieties.

There was a time when simply turning on the AC switch would involve half an hour of internal chatter: Is this really necessary? What am I doing? Am I contradicting my values? Now, I feel that much of this inner noise can itself become an obstacle to the work we are truly here to do. All these actions are important. But they need to be held in perspective. That is why I keep returning to the importance of seeing the whole first, and only then engaging with the details and specifics.

***

I also want to speak about my own long journey of engaging with one crisis after another - waste, incineration, toxins, climate concerns - years spent immersed addressing depressing issues. And finally, what truly made me feel at home was gardening.

During my years in the organic farming movement, I had visited and stayed on many farms. Though I often felt uncomfortable on monoculture farms, I felt nourished whenever I visited rich and diverse farms. Now I feel that this is my home. No matter what else I do, if I do not spend time in my garden, I feel that I cannot fully be myself that day.

So I think one of the things we really need to do is to find our sanctuary, as individuals and as collectives. For me, that sanctuary is unquestionably close to nature. I cannot imagine this outside nature. And it is from this place of connectedness, from nourishment - that we can begin to do the real work we are here to do.

***

I had made a list of things I wanted to speak about today. But I am going to stay with one thing that feels the most important.

After nearly twenty-five years of working and constantly doing - engaging in action of many kinds - the last four years, during which my burnout has forced me to step back from all that doing, have taught me something very profound. In hindsight, I feel that I am only now beginning to understand the work I am truly here to do.

All that doing was valuable, yes. But now I feel that my deeper work is to cultivate presence: to deepen my relationship with myself, with nature, and to see whether I can become a channel for that higher frequency of energy / consciousness that is wanting to manifest in this world, and share my experience with the world, whether through insights, ideas, or possibilities.

We have neurotypical people who are often experts in doing, organizing, and figuring things out. I feel we also need to recognize and nurture a different kind of expertise within the neurodivergent community; an expertise in presencing, connecting and sensing. We are, in many ways, sensing-in experts. And I feel people need spaces where they can come and learn from this community what it means to drop beneath constant thought and begin to sense more deeply.

Broadly, this is what I wish to share. I think this dimension is what is often missing. I want to end with a quote by one of my teachers, whose work has been an inspiration in my life - Masanobu Fukuoka. He said: "Before researchers become researchers, they should become philosophers.". And philosophy here does not mean endless discussion, debate, or the churning out of ideas. It means a deep lived inquiry that goes beyond the intellect - an inquiry involving what one is sensing, feeling, and truly perceiving from the intuitive self. I feel that many neurodivergent people are gifted with this capacity in a more spontaneous way. And I think we need to create more space for this ability to be developed, and more collective spaces where it can be recognized and nurtured as an important contribution to the world.

Then we can bring it forward and place it meaningfully in the world.

I feel this is what is needed today, moving forward. 

Neurodivergent’s relationship with Nature; Eco-anxiety

When you ask this question, Nidhi, I am reminded of two specific experiences.

The first was when I entered a forest for the first time. It was a shola forest in Kodaikanal, and I was about twenty-two years old. I had grown up entirely in cities and had not really spent time in wilderness before that. I was so moved by the experience of simply being in that dense forest that I wept. I wept intensely that day, and I had no idea why.

When I returned home, I remember writing a long letter of apology to Mother Nature. Because when I came back into the city, I simply could not make sense of what we had done. I found myself imagining what this place might once have been, and I felt a deep sense of anger, sadness and disbelief. When I shared these feelings with people, and often the response was: “You are overreacting,” But to me it felt so real.

The second experience was at Niagara Falls. I was visiting the United States some years later, around the age of twenty-four or twenty-five. As I walked down the to get close to the falling water, I experienced something very intense. I stood there weeping for a long time, and could hardly leave that place.

There have been similar experiences throughout my life, but these two stand out very strongly. I grew up feeling that there was something palpable in these encounters with nature; something beyond words and beyond merely feeling good or enjoying beauty; a very deep and intense connection. At the time, I could not make sense of it. I could perhaps explain it intellectually, but I could not truly understand it.

Now, as I look back at these experiences with my understanding of the autistic me - my brain, my psyche, my whole being – I am beginning to understand it differently. And this is why I feel we need to consciously create more space for such experiences within the neurodivergent community. Not as occasional or accidental experiences, but as something that can be nurtured - a deeper and more spontaneous relationship. Because I feel the wisdom that can emerge from such connection is profound.

We hear today of courts in different countries beginning to recognize the rights of rivers, giving rivers a voice within legal systems. But what if we were truly able to listen to the spirit of the river itself, to genuinely listen to what she is saying? I feel that somewhere within us lies this capacity—if it is nurtured. And that, for me, feels very important.