Are We Really Special?
Questioner: Hello sir. I am Siddharth from the Department of Aerospace Engineering. I have a question related to life, which is in two parts.
The first part is: are human beings and other living organisms similar to organic robots, following instructions from genetic material, and is their whole purpose to forward that genetic information and protect that genetic information?
The second part is: are we, as human beings, free? Do we have free will, or are we following instructions from our genes? And is there a purpose of life if it is true that we just…
Acharya Prashant: Come one by one because each of these demands a week to answer. So, first one: are we automatons? Is that the first question?
Questioner: Yes sir.
Acharya Prashant: Yes. That’s what most of us are. Are we not?
That’s why I call artificial intelligence the next species in the course of evolution. We have a great interest in claiming that there is something special about us. But there is nothing special about us. We too are just machines made of material. And that’s why you are often taken by surprise when AI composes a beautiful romantic poem and it touches you more deeply than anything that you wrote or was written for you. And you very well know it’s coming from a machine, and it came in eight seconds flat, because that’s who we are. We too are a system. We too are just a system.
And this system, in the course of evolution, has now given birth to another system, which you call artificial intelligence. But calling it artificial is just vanity. We too are equally artificial. We want to call that intelligence artificial, and this (pointing towards oneself) real. So, this is real intelligence and that is artificial.
Sorry, sir, no. If that is artificial, then this too is artificial. There is hardly any difference. This “I” feeling that we carry, this “I” feeling is just a product of our physical constitution. That’s all.
Questioner: One follow‑up question. If we consider all living beings, organisms, as different species that are in a race, and that genetic information is something that wants to have some perfect robot which is better at protecting and forwarding that information. So if we consider human beings are very intelligent, but we are not very strong in terms of withstanding life’s physical challenges.
For example, we cannot withstand that much temperature. Consider a life form called the tardigrade. It can withstand very high temperatures, even space radiation, but we are not that strong physically. So how can we say that human beings are the ultimate form of life?
Acharya Prashant: But who said “ultimate form of life”? I mean, human beings said they are the ultimate form of life?
Questioner: Human beings considered themselves.
Acharya Prashant: Did we consult cockroaches? Did we? On yourself, by yourself, for yourself, you can declare anything. I am the most handsome man ever born.
Questioner: So, who do you think will win in this race?
Acharya Prashant: See, there is no victory in all this. There is just material playing out its own game, right? He comes from the Gita, it is just prakriti, and, as they put it, the three guna that it has, doing what their material nature is.
Even when you say they are in a race and one of them is trying to win, you use such metaphors. You are anthropomorphizing something that does not carry intention. Just as you know, when the skies open up and a drop falls, it is happening just because of the material laws of prakriti. But you want to give it human intentionality.
So you say, “You know, the cloud was in love with the earth, so in the form of the drop it has sent a messenger.” No. All that is your imagination. You are needlessly inserting human drama where there is none.
So nobody is in a race, and nobody wants to win. It’s just material doing its own thing.
Race, etc., we do, because this thing called ahaṅkār, the ego, that we have carries a prakriti of incompletion. And because it is incomplete, it wants to grab something. But that something I want to grab is something he too wants to grab, because our constitutions are fairly similar. And since both of us want to have that, then comes something called a race or competition.
So that applies to this particular material form. This form. That does not apply to electrons or protons or drops or something, though we like to put it that way, because we want to believe that everything operates as we do, because we are at the center of the universe. But that’s not the way things are.
In fact, it’s not that everything operates as we do. The correct way to put it is: we operate as everything else does. Just as an electron gets attracted towards the nucleus, right? Similarly the sperm cell gets attracted towards the egg, the man gets attracted towards the woman.
What’s the difference?
The difference is that the material attraction comes first. You must say: just as the electron rushes towards the proton, similarly this one rushes towards that. That one must come first. But instead of that, what you want to say is: just as I have great sentient love for somebody, similarly the cloud has great love for the earth. That's the inversion of reality.
Questioner: Thank you, sir.
Acharya Prashant: Hello sir, I'm an MTech student. So one year back I was really working hard and grinding to get into this college. But after I got in, I’m feeling kind of like, what’s the point, right? Like everything seems absurd, right? Like we are on a rock that’s revolving around a star, and then there are millions of other stars in our own galaxy, and there are millions of other galaxies also.
And so, as I get deeper into this rabbit hole, I end up feeling small and insignificant. So how to find meaning in this absurdness, or is it really necessary to find this meaning?
Acharya Prashant: The question again must be inverted. Your problem is not of meaninglessness. Your problem is of residual meaning.
Your problem is that you see yourself small and meaningless only intermittently. You come to terms with absurdity, you come face to face with absurdity, only episodically, especially in moments of defeat or frustration. It’s then that you say, “Oh, it’s all so absurd and meaningless.” But when your desires are being fulfilled, then the world becomes very meaningful for you, doesn’t it?
So your problem is not that you have half the meaning and the other half is missing. Your problem is that you still carry, needlessly, half a sense of meaning.
There is no meaning. This that you say has to be continuously remembered. You don’t have an existence separate from the universe. The ego tries to create a division. It wants to say: this versus that. There is me, the observer and the experiencer of the universe, and there is the universe, so there are two.
But when you see that the universe is just so big, so big, so big, so big, so big, then your role in comparison starts tending towards zero. That’s one way of seeing that there can be no duality, because even if you want to insist that there are two, one is pitifully smaller compared to the other.
So saying that there are two, when one is infinitely big and the other is like a nanofriction of a grain of sand, doesn’t make any sense. So that too brings you towards non‑duality, Advait.
Even if there are two, one is just so small that it must not be counted at all. And when you see that the two do not exist, there is only one, then any kind of personal meaning evaporates. Meaning becomes meaningless.
What meaning can you have? Even if there is meaning, meaning belongs to Astitva, existence, universe, brahmand, prakriti. It does not belong to you, because you are nobody. You have to be in continuous touch with this stark reality. And the deeper and the more continuous the touch, the deeper and more continuous is your freedom.
Now you don’t need to search for meaning in life. Now your job is to question the meanings that you carry.
There still is a great purpose to life, and that purpose is to come to terms with purposelessness. You still will have a great meaning in life, and that meaning will be to approach meaninglessness. That will be the final meaning.
Why do I exist? To see that I do not.
What meaning does life carry? The meaning is that it is meaningless.
What purpose does this life have? To see that the question is absurd.
If you are free, then you are free of purpose. But you are not free. You only get glimpses of intermittent freedom. So your job then is to carry a meaning, a purpose, definitely, and that is to keep questioning yourself, because this self, this ego, is a bundle of meanings and purposes and beliefs, and consequent hopes and desires. That’s what one is.
And one’s job is to keep questioning. Somebody says the meaning of life is love, and you ask yourself: what does that exactly mean? Somebody says the meaning of life is responsibility. Ask yourself: what does that mean? You have to question all these things till they remain. And as long as you remain, some part of these things will remain.
So you now have a purpose for your entire life.
Questioner: So, sir, like spiritualism, religion, these philosophical thoughts that we are all having, these are just some coping mechanisms for us?
Acharya Prashant: Obviously. You see real wisdom is not at all about having a thought, an idea, a concept, because we are already very full of thoughts, ideas, concepts. There’s nobody who is empty of them. In fact, we are overflowing.
Wisdom then is about questioning what you already have. It’s not about acquiring more. It’s not knowledge in the conventional sense. Knowledge is additive, accumulative. And wisdom is negative. Knowledge is accretion, and wisdom is demolition.
So real wisdom, or philosophy, or spirituality, would be marked by its ability to clean up, to unburden, to delete, and free internal space. That’s the mark of real wisdom.
You won’t be able to walk out and say, “This is what I learned.” Instead, you will walk out and say, “Oh, I thought of myself as a learned fellow when I walked in, but I walk out a bit relieved of my learning. I walk out unburdened of my learning.”
Questioner: But, as you said, we need to keep questioning ourselves continuously. But if everybody does that, then society will collapse, don’t you think?
Acharya Prashant: No. You see, how exactly? See this, what you’re calling “everybody” has his belief at his center. The belief is the engine of all individual and social action. Look at every single thing that you did since this morning. Tell me of one thing that does not proceed from a belief.
So when you are continuously acting from a point of belief or purpose, which are all very artificial, very borrowed, very hollow and false; if you are continuously acting from that point, why can’t you continuously question that point?
I’m asking you: is it not sensible to take a hard look at your own engine? Because that’s the engine powering your decisions, your movements, your actions, everything.
One does not have to stop to question himself. The thing is, you are anyway already moving. Who has stopped for even one second? Nobody can stop. As long as you’re alive, there will be movement. And since there is continuous movement, should you not be continuously in touch with the source of movement?
And when you look at the source of movement, you wonder, you’re surprised. This is where I’m coming from? Such a large project I’m attempting, socially respectable, but all of that is arising from such a petty point, such a dark point.
Look at World War II. In fact, global scientific research and tech development got a huge boost because of World War II. A lot of systems, not just military systems, civilian systems, even medical systems, that we see today owe their existence, at least their beginning, to World War II.
ICBMs that you have today are actually just the great‑granddaughters of the German V‑2 rocket. Great things were happening. The EU that you see today had, in fact, already been unified by Hitler in 1941. It took us another eighty years to form the EU. If you look at Hitler’s territory in ’41, that corresponds roughly to today’s EU. You look at the area captured. You look at the military movement. Look at a lot of great things that were happening.
And what were they coming from? A very dark point. A very dark point within Hitler. A very dark point in the German national consciousness, dark and petty, not even complex. When it is put in front of you, you wonder: this is from where all that arose? This little petty thing, this is what gave birth to all that?
So it is very much possible that big things are being done, apparently, but they are all originating from something very, very small.
When you say, “Oh, the world will stop.” If the world is proceeding and operating from a small and dark cave, why not check its movement? Let’s not be predetermined to stop the movement of this world. But can’t we at least investigate its origin? Please tell me.
Don’t be so impressed by the world. “Oh, but the world is moving. The world is moving.” The German armies are marching. So, you should be impressed? The kind of killing machine Hitler manufactured was never seen before or after him. So should you be impressed?
All of that was coming from a very, very petty point. Why should you be impressed? And again, that does not mean that we have to jam the brakes and say, “No, let’s stop this machine right now.” That machine is life, because to be human is to be in movement. The machine will move. The question is: from where? From where?
Why do you think that wisdom means stopping or starvation or subjugation? Because that’s the common superstition we carry. If you are wise, then you’ll stop, then there will be no movement. But you’ll see what you are implying, what you are saying is: there can be movement only in stupidity. If that’s the way it is, then life is not worth living.
We are often so scared of wisdom we say, “If we are wise, what will happen to GDP?” That means GDP has to necessarily come from stupidity. Seriously, why must it be that way? No. Wisdom does not mean starvation. Wisdom also does not mean falsification and all the scary images we carry.
We will move, we will act, science will proceed, and science will turn into technology. But why can’t all of that happen from an illumined place within the human being? Is that so difficult or too much to ask?
Questioner: So all in all, I have understood that it is about incessant maneuvering and constant inquiry about our actions and all. There is a fear as well as a thrill in it, I feel, because it is about 24 by 7, you can’t miss even a second.
Acharya Prashant: I want to endorse what you’re saying, but there is a big problem: now this will become a belief. And the thing with language is words are hollow, and we fill them up with our own meanings. So when I said ‘inquiry’ and when I said ‘incessant movement,’ maybe that’s not exactly what you understand. You will fill those words up and color them in your own way.
So yes, I want to endorse your words, but two problems: words are not the purpose. And secondly, meanings are always subjective. So be careful.
Questioner: Thank you.
