The Final Proof That We Are Horribly Cruel People
Questioner: Many of us were already acquainted with the amazing phenomenal work that you do with your videos and other things, but in preparation for this talk many of us got familiar. So, based on that we’ve got some queries. So, the first question is, that in many of your interviews you mentioned that one cannot be spiritual if one eats animals at the same time. So, when cruelties behind milk and meat consumption are highlighted, people who are not vegan, they tend to get very defensive. So, this question has two parts — the first part is what does such defensiveness indicate from the prism of spirituality and secondly, that given that the meat and milk consumption and demand has increased dramatically in India, so does this point towards a large-scale spiritual crisis and if so, what kind of an approach can be taken while talking to people about animal cruelty and also veganism. This was Sunaina’s question.
Acharya Prashant: See it’s a bit of a tricky affair to introduce the fact of animal cruelty to someone without alleging or insinuating, that the person is some kind of a criminal. So, one has to be sensitive to the response of the listener and to be fair, education or awareness towards such things is pretty low. So, if the person has not yet known of these things, he or she can be extended some benefit of doubt. It is possible that the person never had the opportunity to be educated in that regard.
Vegans sometimes exhibit a holier than thou kind of attitude and aggression that is counterproductive. Even I am guilty of that, I have seen that. But, when you look at someone who comes from a meat-eating family or the traditional kind of Indian Vaishnav family where milk and ‘kheer’ and ‘dahi’ are a staple, then it comes as a shock to that person, that milk involves cruelty. It’s a totally alien and a disturbing concept. So, it has to be brought out with due expertise and that does not mean that you have to be especially trained in communicating these matters, just that one has to be sensitive that the other person might not really know. Or even if he knows, it is his environment that has been too much on him and so far, it has been next to impossible for that person, to quit all these food items or habits.
So, these things have to be gently brought out. I understand, you see when you are familiar with the pain and the suffering that the animals go through, that disturbs you and that makes you rush to help them. It becomes difficult to be gentle and patient and a little slow and measured, right? Because you have just seen the hell that the goat or the cow or the buffalo have to go through. You are acquainted with that.
So, you are agitated and when you see someone consuming meat, you almost want to slap them. I appreciate that feeling. But also look at that person, he might come from a family of generations of meat eaters. And when that fellow was two years of age, that was when he was served his first morsel of biryani or chicken piece or something. So, its almost flowing in his veins now. He has to be a bit gently weaned away from all that. Right?
So, one has to be relentlessly at it. The bombardment on social media has to be incessant, but when it comes to personal confrontation, one has to remember that the objective is not to shame the other. The objective is to help the animal. Just shaming the other won’t help. In fact, it is possible that the other becomes aggressive in his defense and that aggression might mean that he says that not only do I continue to eat, but I will actually consume flesh in double the quantity. As some kind of signal of childish defiance; people do that. So, it’s a tricky thing. We want to rush. But we will have to rush gently. That’s something I am not only telling you that’s something that I remind myself often, because I too want to rush. I want this whole cruelty to come to an absolute end right now. But that’s not how it can happen. So, one has to gently rush.
And the second thing you said, that is it symptomatic of a wider spiritual crisis? Of course, it is! Of course, it is! Of course, it is!
The very philosophy of life has gone all wrong. We have been told that individual happiness is the purpose of life. One lives to consume. You live to be happy for yourself. Of course, you can add these little goodies like compassion and helping someone and you know all these are little tit-bits you add to the overwhelming project of self-satiation. But they are just that, little tit-bits.
The overwhelming theme of life is personal pleasure. That’s the philosophy we have been fed since our birth and that philosophy is a very violent one. Not that someone teaches that philosophy to us via a classroom course or a textbook. It is just in the air. Right? You look at a hoarding, a billboard, you look at the way a shop is structured. You look at the clothes people are wearing. You look at the voice of somebody, a marketing professional or somebody and it’s the philosophy that is contained there, it is embedded there.
So, we are being sublimely educated rather indoctrinated, conditioned in that philosophy and that’s the spiritual crisis. See spirituality is basically, simply about realizing who you are and clear fallout of that is that you no more care for your personal desires. I am not the person so how can I be so particular about my personal desires. That’s what all spirituality is about.
I am not the person I appear to be. That’s not my reality. That is just my appearance. The person is my appearance. My reality is beyond the person that I appear. Therefore, all the personal desires that I have, have to be taken lightly, cannot be given a great importance. So, that’s what spirituality is — Where you cannot give your personal desires great importance. Giving your personal desires great importance is to subject yourself to suffering. And freedom from suffering is the goal of entire spirituality. There is no other goal.
We suffer so much; therefore, spirituality exists. Spirituality is self-knowledge. Spirituality is not spirit-business. Basic self-knowledge — To see who I am and what I want and therefore how I must live. That’s what spirituality or self-knowledge is.
On the other hand, the philosophy we have been fed tells us that personal ingratiation is the sole purpose of life. So, these two are obviously at odds — Spirituality and the philosophy that the commoners believe in. Though nobody realizes that because nobody believes that he has a philosophy of life. We all think we have a certain opinion about life, that is our own. All the opinions that we all have about life are not at all our own. They either arise from the bodily tendencies or from the social environment.
Those are the desires that we chase — bodily compulsions or social conditioning. Both together telling us, “Be happy, be happy, be happy, be happy at whatever cost.” The only antidote to that is — self-knowledge. Self-knowledge tells you who is there to be happy? Whom are you trying to please? Can we enquire into that? It’s alright to be happy, but who exactly is the one being fed happiness at such great cost?
It’s like you’re drunk and you are trying to feed yourself and you do not even know who you are and therefore where your mouth is? And some imposter, some fraudster is standing right behind you with his mouth wide open and you pick up the morsel and you’re thinking you are feeding it to yourself. Somebody else is being fed when you are trying to fulfill your desires. Your desires are not fulfilling you; they are fulfilling somebody else, somebody else.
That’s the point of self-knowledge. When you realize who you are, then you cannot spend your life pleasing somebody who you are not. So, you know what that means, all of that? What that means that is, if the system is to continue; the system of thought, the system of economics, the markets, the politics, the society, the family, the education, if all of this is to continue, self-knowledge has to be obstructed. Very sternly, very staunchly, very deliberately, very systematically.
If self-knowledge advances, then everything that we see around us and see within us, will be threatened. And there are vested interests. So, people will not allow real spirituality to prosper. But at the same time, it has become some kind of a moral fad to declare that one is spiritual. So, what would then happen? Shady alternatives to real spirituality will need to be fabricated. See, real spirituality would threaten the entire system —within and with-out. Right from the kindergarten school to the parliaments of the world. Everything will be threatened, if real spirituality advances.
So, some kind of fake spirituality has to be created and fraternized, so that the systems and the vested interests can continue to prosper. That’s what we are seeing all around us today. That would also mean that if you come up with real self-knowledge, you better be careful. You are in crosshairs. You are being watched and you are being targeted.
Questioner: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much.
