Beware of Fake Depression

Questioner: Good evening, Guru ji. My name is Shashikant Prabhakar, and I am from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. I am currently pursuing an MTech from NIT-Silchar, Assam. My question is, if I get tired of something, I get into depression. If I move away from that place, everything starts working fine. After some time, when I come back to the place where I was staying, everything restarts again like it had started earlier, and I start feeling hopeless and go back into that emotional state. So, why does it happen, actually?

Acharya Prashant: Would you repeat the happening?

Questioner: It’s like if I’m suffering from depression or feeling tired of anything like my studies or financial issues or whatever it is. When I move to another place, everything starts working fine. But when I come back, it again starts happening like it was earlier, low emotionally and all those things. Why does it happen, actually? Is it because of the state of my mind or something else?

Acharya Prashant: It happens because the root of the disturbance is within you. Temporarily, a change of surroundings helps reduce the disturbance, but the mere change in external situations cannot help beyond a point. So, once again, when the external situations are not conducive, you will find yourself internally flustered. And to make things worse, you probably keep on returning to places that made you flustered in the first place.

So, it’s no surprise that you once again start feeling uneasy. Have you understood both of these points?

The first point is that in the absence of self-knowledge, we give ourselves very cosmetic solutions, right? We try to change the external environment. We say, ‘Well, I am feeling suffocated today in this place, so let’s go to a bar and have a drink and try to forget what is going on, or let’s go to the movie hall and enjoy the latest release, or hang out with friends. Or, sometimes, we say, let me just fall asleep and forget it all. These are the kinds of things we do, right? If you want to have a change of mood; you try a change of shirt.

Now, this displays a lack of intention to get into yourself. You do not really want to know what is happening inside, what the real cause is, or what the root is. So, the treatments that we offer to ourselves do work for a while and then fall apart.

Questioner: But Guruji, actually, my state of mind changes when I just hang out with my friends or go and enjoy any other place, like right now I am in Himachal. So, why am I back in the same state of mind as before?

Acharya Prashant: Because the mind is not just its superficial state. The mind is a deep thing, almost like the ocean. Winds on the surface change the state on the surface. They do not change what is happening deep within the ocean. And what if a volcano is erupting inside the ocean? How much can then the winds on the surface help or affect or matter?

But we do not know ourselves. So, all that we know of is the superficial state of mind. And that is easy to address: escape away to Himachal with friends. And, indeed, you will feel jolly for a while. See how happy you are! Not that you should not be happy; you should be deeply happy, not superficially happy.

Wisdom, spirituality, or Vedant, are definitely pro-happiness. But they want you to have happiness that means something. They want you to have happiness that is not affected, degraded, or reversed by worldly losses or random outer happenings.

Why not go for that kind of happiness? And that kind of happiness is difficult to obtain if one uses such recipes—friends, hill stations, a little bit of beer, hanging out, water sports, paragliding; All of these do offer happiness. But how deep is that and how long-lasting is that?

And we are not talking of depth or permanence for morality's sake. We are talking about these things because we want those things. Don’t you want deep happiness? Don’t you want the kind of happiness that circumstances cannot take away? You want those things; hence, we are talking of them. It is not some kind of morality or idealism.

Questioner: Yes. Guruji, exactly.

Acharya Prashant: Exactly! You want that, and I want that, and we all want that. And if we want that, then it is our responsibility towards ourselves to go and attain that. That is the entire process of wisdom of spirituality, nothing else.

See, you are already afraid that you will return to your place and that the old self, with all its miseries, will re-emerge. Even as I mention the sea, you have already become a bit nervous thinking of the checkout date and time.

The thing is, Why log into the kind of happiness where the checkout date has been set in advance? Sometimes, you know the checkout date, and sometimes, you don’t. But it’s a kind of hotel you cannot permanently reside in.

Questioner: Exactly. Got it.

Acharya Prashant: You need real estate of your own, not the hotel of happiness. But that is the kind of names these hotels have -- Hotel Fun, Hotel Pleasure, Hotel Paradise. Ask them what kind of paradise this is, you keep reminding me of the checkout time, and if I overstay an hour, then you start subtly threatening me. ‘Sir, you know, we are booked. Sir, somebody else has to check-in. Sir, if you want to stay for another six hours, why don’t you pay half-a-day’s tariff, Sir.’ That’s the reality of this rented happiness.

I can only tell you that as a young man, it is surely possible for you to do better than this, right? Traveling to places is a great thing. But don’t travel in search of happiness. Travel in your joy. Travel in your deep purpose. If you don’t have a great purpose in life, if you have nothing that keeps you internally joyful and you still keep meandering from place to place, it won’t mean much.

I seem to be spoiling your evening! Bonfire and whisky must be waiting somewhere outside, right? Must be cold in Himachal!

Questioner: Then, what should I do to overcome all those things? Do I just need to accept, or what?

Acharya Prashant: Be a real hedonist! And that means having a taste for suffering. Love the real thing so much that you feel prepared to accept any challenges, any degree of hurt. The joy that we are talking of, you have to fall in love with it. You have to be a real pleasure-seeker.

I might not be making sense to you. Let us know that in advance. Unfortunately, I don’t have many other ways to communicate this to you. Maybe when you reflect later in the night today on what we discussed, maybe, things will be clearer to you.

One has to be – what must I say – Hard-core! Know that you deserve joy, and for the sake of joy, fight it out. Know where your real thing lies. And don’t compromise on it. Know that it’s possible to love and that you are entitled to love.

I am talking all in abstractions. I can see that. But how else do I express myself?

There is nothing else that would help you except plunging into the battle for the real thing. That real thing is one. But the battles that we all must fight are all separate and individual. You will have your own personal battle to fight, and I, too, will have my own battle to fight, though we both would be fighting for the one same real thing, right? So, fight it out.

And in that fight, what you get is blows, hurt, and wounds, and that makes you man enough to experience real happiness. Without those wounds and without that hurt you can anyway never know what happiness is. Happiness does not lie in flimsy pleasures; happiness lies in those deep wounds you take for your deep love. And if you keep avoiding those wounds, where is real happiness?

Questioner: Okay. I will think about it. I’ll change myself.

Acharya Prashant: I am already having fun visualizing how it would be over the bonfire and probably the cocktail. I have given you enough to anyway make your evening, right?

Questioner: Actually, I have got your point, Guruji, what you have explained.

Acharya Prashant: I am not sure I have said something that anybody can get so easily.

Questioner: Yes, but I understand a little bit that I have to fight it out by myself. What I feel is that I have to enjoy all those things…

Acharya Prashant: I have not said that. That is just not what I have said.

Questioner: Like, enjoy the happiness kind of thing.

Acharya Prashant: But it’s good that you are intrigued, right? So, let it be there in the mind. I think I’ll see you again someday, maybe a few months down the line or a few decades; who knows?

Questioner: Yes, definitely.

Acharya Prashant: Chalo!

Questioner: Thank you so much, Guruji!

Acharya Prashant: Thank you. …

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