Born in Algeria, Pierre Rabhi (1938-2021) was a French farmer, writer and philosopher. He promoted a way of life that respects both humankind and nature, and worked to promote agro-ecology throughout the world, par­ticularly in Africa.&nbsp;Recognized as an international expert on food safety,&nbsp;he participated in the drafting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.&nbsp;He created many associations with the goal of recon­necting people to nature, and personally embodied his philosophical ideals to inspire people to make changes in their lives.

thumbnail_Pierre Rabhi.png

Pierre Rabhi.png

Pierre Rabhi

<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>In part 2 of this exclusive interview with PIERRE RABHI, he speaks about
 Colibris and some of the other projects he has taken up to bring awareness and change in society. In particular, he
 speaks about the pressing need for moderation and reduction in human consumption, and the importance of transcendent
 love and joy.</h4>
[distance2]
Q: In the first part of this interview, you said that your
 approach and action developed in 3 ways: through philosophical reflections about society, a spiritual quest and
 a practical approach. Does the creation of Colibris in 2007 fit into this scheme? How did this movement start,
 and how do you explain its incredible development?
PR: In 2007, along with several friends, including Cyril Dion and Isabelle Desplats, we
 decided to create a grass roots movement for active reflection and practical ways to build a greener and more humane
 society. Today, Colibris has grown enormously! It has three main objectives: to inspire, to connect and to support
 citizens engaged in individual and collective transition processes. These days, Colibris implements so many projects
 that I would have a hard time presenting them all to you.
To highlight just a few, we have the series, Domaine du Possible, published by
 Actes Sud, some of which is co-published by Colibris; many local action groups; the University of Colibris which
 offers free online training on eco-construction, permaculture, agro-ecology and education; and finally Fabrique,
 which is a platform for everyone to do their bit by offering time, talent, material resources and donations in the
 service of inspiring projects. In short, there are so many things, and I am very happy today about the work
 accomplished and the number of projects that have been implemented.
This growth has accelerated because now libraries and bookshops are full of books that
 take note of our human excesses, but now people want to act, to find solutions, and this is what Colibris offers!

<img decoding="async" width="369" height="245"
 class="img-float-left lazyload has-img-center-in-mobile"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/PIERRE_RABHI_3_2_img_c8aecf4fbb.jpg">Q: In recent
 years you have also supported other projects that spread the same
 values as yours, especially in Crete and Morocco. Can you tell us about them?
PR: Indeed, we are doing a lot. An endowment fund was created in 2013 with the aim of
 raising funds so&nbsp;that we could help. This is a small fund associated with the economic model proposed by
 Schumaker in his book, Small Is Beautiful.
To the extent that our meagre finances allow, we support initiatives that share our
 values of humanism and respect for living things and biodiversity. In Morocco, the NGO called Terre &amp; Humanisme
 Maroc has created a training center for agro-ecology not far from Marrakech. In collaboration with Kaligraines and
 Melitakes, the Endowment Fund has helped to build an eco-hut to house their volunteers in Crete. The Pierre Rabhi
 Endowment Fund has also supported projects led by NGOs in Africa, one in the Navajo Reservation in the southern
 United States, and the actions of Navdanya, the women’s seed movement.
Q:&nbsp;Your life’s journey, your reflections, your
 meetings and your readings have led you to place human beings and Nature at the heart of your thought and
 action. Can you share some of your thoughts and ideas?
PR: I told you earlier what I think about our model of a ‘slave’ society; the kind of
 barter where people give their life for a salary. They give their life to a system that is not fair, because there
 is a hierarchy of powerful owners and poor people. In human evolution, the concern for distribution and equity has
 not been very evident.
Society has been based on a hierarchy of ‘having’ to the detriment of ‘being’. In the
 acquisition of money there are very rich people, very poor people, and those in between. All this establishes&nbsp;a
 hierarchy of destinies that I cannot bear, because the fact that money can determine our social structure is
 offensive to me. Money should be at the service of something else.
We have just launched a collection of books called Carnets d’Alerte, to try to
 help people understand these issues by providing an integrated approach. For example, in the book on finance,
 Les Excès de la Finance ou l’Art de la Prédation Légalisée, we have highlighted the way society has
 legalized and standardized predation or ‘grabbing’: the moment I pay I acquire something legally. This form of legal
 acquisition may satisfy society, but not morality.

<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Society has been based 
 on a hierarchy of ‘having’ 
 to the detriment of ‘being’.
</h5>
<hr>
Is it right that because an individual has money he can buy the Amazon rainforest, or
 that the big cartels can ‘grab’ and confiscate the property owned by the whole of humanity, that they did not even
 create? If human beings were intelligent we would recognize what Nature or the Divine has given us totally free of
 charge, as a common good to all people and all creatures. Unfortunately we are not intelligent. Instead, we have
 proclaimed human beings as the best, and from there we have defined a set of rules in our own interest, in a totally
 arbitrary way.
In addition, the male world has completely dismissed the feminine dimension. For
 millennia our societies have been based on the subordination of women. Even the Bible promotes and supports this
 subjugation of women. I read the Old Testament, and it is difficult to find a woman who ‘stands up’. And it’s to Eve
 that we owe all these troubles : what an idea to eat the apple! So we start from this idea, which has then become
 ingrained, then fossilized, and finally an accepted fact.
In the first place, God is masculine. I do not see why he would not be both masculine
 and feminine. From there, an entire civilization has been influenced by precepts, principles and arbitrarily
 established creeds. This asymmetry or imbalance between the feminine and masculine principles&nbsp;creates chaos and
 destruction. The woman as creative energy, as childbearer and mother of humanity, is naturally inclined to protect
 life, and we must pay tribute to the guardians of life and listen to the feminine in each of us. Without her, there
 is no change.
All these arbitrary rules have built a society where fear dominates and where we think
 we are intelligent because we make weapons, the apotheosis being the atomic bomb. When we see all this, it is not
 easy to say that humanity is intelligent. In fact, we have confused our abilities with intelligence. We have skills
 but not intelligence. If our wonderful abilities were governed by intelligence, everything would be in an
 intelligent order.
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<img decoding="async" width="834" class="w-100 h-auto lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/PIERRE_RABHI_2_3_img_21578e2e47.jpg">
<hr class="vertical-space1">
Today we are so very far from an intelligent order: slaughter and violence are defended
 better than life. Violence is encouraged with the advent of more and more new killing machines, and Nature is
 destroyed. What this means is that the human phenomenon – just a short minute and a half or two minutes in the
 equivalent of a 24-hour history of the Earth – has been a real catastrophe. The human being is the ecological
 catastrophe number 1.
We wrote a book with Jean-Marie Pelt, in which he made a retrospective of the way life
 has evolved on Earth through cooperation and association, a principle that governs nature. He showed that life owes
 more to alliance than to rivalry. I often tell people that a lion eats an antelope, but does not have a bank of
 antelopes. He must survive, but he does not survive by accumulation or by speculation, but only by the necessity to
 which he is subjected, as is the case with all of us. This&nbsp;is the big difference with the indefinite hoarding
 of a few human beings who confiscate legitimate property from the rest of humanity.
Q: You speak about the urgent need to reduce our needs and the responsibility to leave
 a better world for future generations. What is your vision of what tomorrow’s society could be?
PR: I have indeed said a lot about degrowth, or the reduction of wants, because in
 France I was pushed to run for the 2002 presidential elections. After much hesitation, asking myself, “What am I
 going to to do in this gallery?” I eventually proposed myself. The only thing that motivated me was that this
 candidacy could create a dynamic, a pretext for dialogue between people. Today, citizens need to talk to each other
 and not just listen to politicians. So I thought it was an opportunity.
Our campaign was more of a manifesto: “What planet will we leave our children, but also
 which children will we leave to the planet?” It was a call to elevate consciousness: to go beyond all the divisions,
 all the tendencies that bury us in incurable differences, and try unity. Our campaign was therefore based on
 anything that could contribute to unity, and contribute to a different world, a paradigm shift. Among our proposals
 was the famous idea of degrowth. I tried to explain this concept of negative growth, but it was not always well
 understood.
When we launched our campaign, a number of politicians heard us, joined us and signed up
 to our program, which was a great encouragement&nbsp;to us. Our whole process was centered on public debate, and
 people talked, discussed and exchanged in a multitude of places.
And then time passed, and the idea of degrowth was misunderstood. Maybe we did not know
 how to explain it. But what is certain is that a fundamental thing was said: we cannot, humanity cannot have
 unlimited aspirations and unlimited appetites in a system that is limited. The planet cannot reproduce a forest as
 it is cut, cannot replenish the seas with fish as they are fished, and so on.
Some people have accepted and adhered to the idea, others not. We have no statistics on
 the impact of the proposal, but we have had a lot of positive feedback. I have never been aggrieved by this idea
 that we need to reduce our footprint, as for me simplicity and moderation are the true power. It is a conscious
 choice that everyone can make for the Earth and for equity. Then I wrote a book entitled Vers la Sobriété
 Heureuse. My publisher told me that it would be miraculous if it sold more than 4,000 copies, and today it
 has sold 350,000.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Our campaign was more of a manifesto: 
 “What planet will we leave our children, 
 but also which children will we leave to the planet?” 
 It was a call to elevate consciousness: 
 to go beyond all the divisions, 
 all the tendencies that bury us in 
 incurable differences, and try unity.
</h5>
<hr>
It has nothing to do with me personally, it’s just that today people do understand that
 wanting a complex society to which one gives one’s whole existence, and being happy at the same time, does&nbsp;not
 work. On the contrary! People living in the developed world have never consumed so many anxiolytics and watched so
 much entertainment of all kinds. They are escaping from reality. Why? Maybe because this reality scares them. We try
 to escape by all means. Of course, escape is easier than tackling the issues and dealing with them with the
 rationality and determination that would be required.
Today the situation is difficult for everyone, at least in France, because nobody is
 guaranteed of having a job in 5 years. We see a general disintegration of the social system, which is not likely to
 stop. We can try everything we want, but it will not change because it is the logic itself that ensures that it
 cannot stop. What is needed now is to praise the power of moderation, and to consider moderation and simplicity as
 the keys to our survival. To aspire to simplicity is to make a fair, moral and structurally just choice. That’s
 why&nbsp;there’s a growing craze for simplicity. Simplicity rather than complexity can lead us to joy.
Q:&nbsp;Can you explain this idea further?
PR: Joy is free. It is something that comes from elsewhere, of a transcendent essence.
 As we no longer have access to joy in our society, we fill our lives with pleasure. I have nothing against pleasure,
 but when it becomes industrial and ephemeral it is consumed like the rest. I know people who should be happy and
 fulfilled because they have everything, but are they joyful? That is another question.
I sometimes find joy in people who have almost nothing, but every hour that passes is an
 hour of happiness for them. They do not have a moment of despondency! It shows us that reaching something
 transcendent through the material way is simply not possible. But when we have nothing, we are also not happy. So
 having just what is necessary brings us inner contentment and predisposes us to joy.
<h5><a href="//www.heartfulnessmagazine.com/agro-ecology-love-socrates-part-1/">Read Part
 1</a></h5>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Interview by SYLVIE BERTI ROSSI</h4>
<hr>

Agro-ecology, love & Socrates - part 2

<hr><h4>PIERRE RABHI was interviewed by SYLVIE BERTI-ROSSI in 2018 on a life of purpose, traditions, and modernism, agro-ecology, Socrates, and transcendent love.</h4><hr>Q: You spent your childhood in an oasis in Algeria, but then had to face the modern world quite early in your life. How did such opposing cultural experiences mold the man you are today?PR: It was not easy for me. I was born and raised in a Muslim environment, in an oasis in the South of Algeria. When I was 4 years old, I lost my mother and that was a defining moment in my life. Soon after that, coal was discovered in our region and so the French came to operate the mine, as Algeria was still one of their colonies then. Coal mining caused a deep change in our lives, in our culture, in our traditions and in our biotope. It upset everything. Our little oasis, which had been so quiet for so long, was suddenly in a sort of turmoil fraught with extremely rapid changes.Many of our people became miners and were exploited, and that is when my father started to worry about our future. He thought that the rules of the game were no longer in our hands, so he entrusted me to a childless French couple, and they took care of me and introduced me to a new culture. That is how I lived alternatively in the modern world and tradition, Christianity and Islam, in a constant duality. I was confronted with totally incompatible beliefs, especially as far as religion was concerned. The credo of Islam states that God did not have a child, whereas the Christians claim that Jesus was the Son of God. So I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place, as it were, and it was not very comfortable. That is how my humble life started.When I was a teenager, my questions became more pressing. No answer was ever obvious, however, as I was aware of the impossibility of both religions agreeing. Then I thought that philosophers might be able to give me another answer, so I read a lot. I was not really brilliant at school, where I felt bored, and having read so many philosophical works I gave the last word to Socrates, who said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” That is how it was, and that is how it still is.Q: A few years later you went to France. Can you explain what pushed you to settle down in a secluded area of the Cevennes, a choice that was going to change the rest of your life?PR: First I landed in Paris, at the heart of the hectic circle of self-satisfied modernism, where people claimed they had found the answer to humankind’s quest for happiness.I had to earn a living, so I became a skilled worker in a company, where I had a new opportunity to observe the human condition. That experience helped me question the Parisian belief at the time of what defined happiness. Little by little I understood what human bondage meant: bartering one’s existence for a salary, even if it meant risking one’s life. It was not about how to live but how to exist. Then I kept thinking about the wealth nature offered; such beautiful things that no one could ever possibly appreciate, because life meant eleven months spent in a coma and one month to resuscitate every year, and nothing more.Then I met a girl whose aspirations were similar to mine. We asked ourselves, “Could we really spend a whole life being stuck behind closed doors within a city? Why shouldn’t we go towards nature, towards large spaces and the infinite world with its vast skies and areas?” So, we decided to go back to the land and settle as small farmers.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/unnamed_2_eec1bbdcb4.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T10:09:15.142Z" alt="unnamed_2"></figure>&nbsp;Q: How did you do it? How did you manage to live in the country, far away from everything?PR: We did not have the skills or training for it. Returning to the land was for us a new initiation. How to become farmers ? First I went to agricultural college and graduated, and then I worked on a farm in order to learn the real practical skills and what it really meant. For me, it was a first awakening. I immediately understood that what we call modern agriculture is about becoming a murderer of nature and of the soil, due to the constant use of toxic chemicals. They were used for everything – sprayed on the ground, on the vegetation, in the environment etc. Agriculture had become a destructive practice.That was how I came to see it, all the more so because the doctor who introduced me to the country worked in public healthcare and could testify to the damage that had resulted from such extensive use of pesticides. So I was in good hands, at the heart of a very practical training that was not limited to theoretical principles. Then I said to myself that if I could not do without such destructive practices, I’d better do something else than tilling the land.My friend the physician led me to discover Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic principles. I read the books of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, one of Steiner’s colleagues, who explained that biodynamic methods in accordance with nature would even have a positive impact on the soil. So I practiced biodynamic farming to begin with, then I devoted myself to organic agriculture, and now I specialize in agro-ecology. On our farm we experimented with non-toxic farming, in both agriculture and breeding, and everything went well.From that period onwards I became a sort of spokesperson, an advocate of natural, ecological and organic agriculture. I wanted to share my experience so I wrote a book entitled, From the Sahara to the Cevennes. It was published and I received an award from the Cevennes Academy. In the book, I exposed only facts and gave no lectures; I just wanted to talk about the course of my life and show what changes I went through, changes that in fact revealed the general trend of modern life would take. I wrote more books and as they were successful I went on writing. At the same time, I became more engaged.Having managed to survive and produce food within our own space, I wanted to see if agriculture that complied with the laws of life could work for the poorest farmers. So I went to Africa and we created our first agro-ecological center in Burkina Faso. I had a foot in the door, and I wanted to go much farther, so I did. My observations went hand in hand with philosophical reflections about society, with a spiritual quest and with a practical approach. Thus were born the three poles upon which I wanted to act and bear witness.Q: So you left for Burkina Faso in the 1980s to share the principles and techniques of agro-biology and to experiment with your discoveries in another part of the world.PR: I found myself in a very particular context, in the Sahel, where the people were mostly farmers. They had been living off the land for ages, even though they had not always done so wisely. For example, at one point they had started deforestation, but they had survived. Then, since they represented an important workforce, the farmers were mobilized to grow export goods and bring foreign money into the country. They had to use fertilizers and pesticides, which they were obliged to buy. As in many other places, they could no longer produce food to feed themselves and had to buy food for their families with what they managed to earn. As a result, they were deep in debt and the system led to a complete degradation of their living conditions. Actually, I blame these things for having contributed to the great Sahel famines.So, we opened an agro-ecological center, which gave birth to a group who disseminated our agricultural methods all around the country and in other parts of Africa. Today, many people in Burkina Faso are involved in eco-agriculture. Clearly, even when the land is poor, it can still feed us sufficiently and qualitatively, provided we respect it.Q: You have inspired so many people through your commitment, through the lectures you have given and the books you have written! Who are your own thought leaders, the people who inspire you?PR: I have read quite a lot, as I mentioned already. I had my Catholic phase, then a Muslim one, and progressively a spiritual one, devoid of any church or religion. That is the one I am still in. All through the course of my life, the person who has inspired me most is Socrates. When he said that he knew nothing, he spoke the truth. I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. What do we really know? Very little, I am afraid.Then I went through a very complex phase in my life: I did not feel clear about things and felt miserable, even though we had just succeeded in our back-to-the-land operation, and even though our children were feeling well. We had all the so-called trappings of happiness. In such moments, one can feel and live a strange intimate experience, which may be related to our past or whatever. Anyway, I was not well at all, and I was looking for a way out.Then I discovered Krishnamurti and things began to change. He would not teach lessons, or teach how to think. He had that Socratic approach that made me realize that I had been trying to understand myself through the environment and through other people, whereas I needed to understand my inner self. Such an approach had a salutary effect on me because I could not resort to any religion or philosophy of any sort. Through Krishnamurti, I was confined to that sort of solitude that triggered in me, beyond mere thinking, a way to analyze myself, to understand myself and to find out all by myself. Then, I only needed a kind hand. So I went back to the Socratic approach and I said to myself: “Rely on nobody but yourself. ”So I entered a mode of investigation related to direct feeling and thinking, to experience. Then I understood that I need not rely on anyone else’s thought, and that I’d rather take into account the clear thinking I was endowed with, a thinking that was not within me but that had been and would be given to me, as long as I stopped looking for solutions. I just had to listen to myself, pay attention to the way I was evolving, the way I reacted, and the reasons why I was jealous, why this, and why that. It was an initiation of my self by my self. That really helped me fare better, in a very strong and powerful manner. I recovered all the energy I needed to pursue my journey on earth and on the land in the way it had been envisioned.Q: So since you discovered Krishnamurti, have you resorted to that inner voice in order to be guided in whatever you do, in all your choices?PR: Absolutely. I make sure I am following the right path. We are all on the right path, but we have to make sure of it. For that, we can ask ourselves: “Will it harm others if I do that? Is it merely conforming ? Am I being influenced by preconceived ideas ? Am I attached to dogma, to anything?” Once you have no attachment to anything, then you are really connected ; you are not attached but connected, open to the Absolute. Regarding the Absolute, it makes me think of the quote of Meister Eckhart: “Stop talking about God. All you will say about Him is nothing but lies.”Q: And what happens when you are no longer attached to anything ?PR: The last question to ask yourself then is whether your imagination was at work, trying to reassure and comfort you, or whether it was silence that let you know, a silence that can say so much more than any word you hear! It is a silence in which, at long last, something can be expressed, something that does not come from torments, or from a quest for Truth that was far too intense. Being silent does not mean you have to be lost in the desert. In the desert, there is a particular silence, the absence of noise, that silence that makes you say that you are no longer within your self. You are lost in the very center of the desert. Maybe. But that is not the silence I mean. I am talking about the silence you can hear when you are in the middle of a crowd. There is no need to be in an empty environment to hear that silence. And it is a very ‘active’ silence, which doesn’t come just by magic, because it requires you to be present.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/unnamed_4_d05e18b713.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T10:10:42.327Z" alt="unnamed "></figure>&nbsp;Q: Being connected to that inner silence is important indeed. But how can we do that?PR: Well, do you expect someone will give you a recipe just to be applied? Today’s recipes are more like relaxation than like silence. When you are very relaxed, you may think you are bathing in silence, but true silence is different. Its nature is transcendent. You have to open yourself to it. It is like the air you breathe. The air is there, and you breathe it. It is like love – the love you experience and the love you live. In all these deeds you are by yourself, completely alone, isolated, but without actually being so. When you want to be isolated you are really connected; on the contrary, the more you want to be connected the more isolated you feel. This silence is of a very peculiar nature. Speaking about it is no easy matter.Q: You have just evoked love. You often talk about the strong energy there is in love, which is like an engine that will help you change and change things around you.PR: That’s right, but the word ‘love’ strikes a particular chord, which is open to different interpretations and fantasies. Love is, in fact, transcendent by essence. I think human beings are tailor-made for it. Love means loving trees, loving the earth, the fish, loving, loving and loving again; it’s all about love.Then there is also particular love, more intense, like the one you feel for your companion, for your children, for your dearest ones, the love between a man and a woman, the sort that ‘I’ will see and live as a great celebration! But love is not only that. When you love a tree, it is not personalized. It is like an essence, a transcendent reality to which you connect yourself. That is the reason why unconditional love can never ignite dissent. It is not its role; it is not in its essence.I think that love is rich with multiple tones and intensities. There is a first circle, the circle of the human love we feel for our loved ones. Then, there is a second circle, and a third one… until we reach the love that embraces everything and everyone.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/unnamed_3_ca0da041b0.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T10:09:58.634Z" alt="unnamed "></figure>www.pierrerabhi.org<hr>To be continued.<hr>&nbsp;&nbsp;