World Tribal Alliance founder makes the case for unlearning the human-nature split

Days before leaving for South Africa, Indian spiritual teacher Mohanji summed up, in an interview for the podcast of the organization he founded, the idea behind the World Tribal Alliance: bringing together guardians of indigenous traditions from different continents to restore, in his view, a relationship with nature that modern life has broken.

The interview, published on the alliance's channel last October, precedes the Origins gathering, held by the organization from November 4 to 10 on the Cape Peninsula, in South Africa — an event also mentioned in other World Tribal Alliance videos covered by this site. Mohanji describes himself as a spiritual teacher, philanthropist and environmentalist; he runs a foundation under his own name and does not detail, in the interview, where the alliance's funding comes from.

Division as the root of violence

For Mohanji, humanity has lost its sense of unity among beings because of divisions such as caste, nation, religion, color and language. He points to roughly 195 countries organized along those lines as a symptom of a fragmented world. It is a spiritual reading of the roots of conflict, not a testable sociological diagnosis.

Living it, not teaching it

He argues that the elders gathered by the alliance do not aim to preach or lecture, but to live a consistency that, in his view, speaks louder than any speech. He sums up the idea in one line: "in the world of noises, silence wins."

A voice in a Himalayan cave

Mohanji also recounts a personal episode, with no witnesses: meditating in Vasishtha Cave, in the Himalayas, he says he heard a voice telling him to "catch your spine," an instruction he describes as a turning point in his spiritual path. He presents the account as something he lived through; this site treats it as testimony, not established fact.

Who will be in South Africa

Describing the Origins gathering, Mohanji mentions the participation of South African filmmaker and naturalist Craig Foster, co-director of the documentary "My Octopus Teacher," winner of the 2021 Academy Award for best documentary feature, and American physician Zach Bush, known for talks on gut health and the environment.

The interview offers no verifiable data on the size of the alliance, its budget, or the concrete results of earlier gatherings — nor on the year the organization was founded. What remains, in the end, is Mohanji's stated bet: that bringing elders of different traditions together in one place would, by itself, produce an effect capable of spreading beyond the ceremony itself.