Don’t fall in such traps
Acharya Prashant: I talked about the female labor participation rate. Even as you were narrating the story, that was the first thing that flashed in my mind. One of the interpretations of this declining FLPR is that as households are getting richer, women are deciding, choosing, in a conditioned way, obviously, to stay at home. They are saying, “Now that the husband earns enough, why do we need to go out?”
So even those women who were working and earning for themselves, let’s say five or ten years back, are deciding to quit their jobs, especially in the middle class and the upper middle class. In the lower-income groups, the drop in the labor participation rate is not so high because they can’t afford to drop out. They need to have a second income to run the family, so, there, women continue to be engaged in work.
But what’s being seen is that the moment the family gets a bit affluent, the first thing that happens is that the woman stops working. Not obviously in all cases. Now, it’s not merely the woman’s decision, obviously. It is the decision of the woman and the man; and it is coming from all the forces that act on them. And it’s not good at all; it’s not good at all.
On one hand, Darius, we have liberalism, we have feminism, we have so much talk of women’s empowerment. How can you have any kind of empowerment if the woman decides on her own to not to earn? And it’s not about not earning; it’s much more about feeling entitled to live on somebody else’s money.
It’s not as if she has decided not to earn and retire to a jungle, turn a recluse, a sannyasin or a monk or something. She’s not turning into a nun or a sannyasin. She’ll continue to spend, but she’ll continue to spend the husband’s money. And that’s exactly what the husband wants; that’s also what the wife wants.
And it beats me how it is possible that, on one hand, the forces of aggressive feminism are gaining ground in the country. And on the other hand, well-read, upper-class women who call themselves feminists, empowered are deciding to not to work.
Something is wrong somewhere. Something is very wrong somewhere. The way we are educating our boys and girls is probably just not proper. The way we are looking at the self is probably not very deep.
The first thing in liberation is: do not be dependent on somebody, at least for your bread, for your basic sustenance. What kind of empowerment is this that happily accepts dependence on somebody else’s money, on a date and also for an entire lifetime? It’s a curious thing. And it’s not merely an Indian thing; it happens in the First World as well, just the incidence is lower. Here it’s rampant. It needs to change.
If you have been uncomfortable about it or hurt by this, it is probably a good thing. Just that you have to understand that it’s not just about that particular date, and it’s not just about women. Men are as deeply conditioned as women are, and the decisions that women make are obviously not in a vacuum. They are influenced by strong forces that operate upon them, and those forces are often of patriarchy as well.
So it’s the men that inculcate that kind of attitude in women. And then it’s men like you who sometimes get a jolt, “How is she behaving? What is she doing?”
The thing is, she does not exist as an individual, just as most of us don’t. She’s a bundle of influences. And among those who influenced her were a lot of men. There were a lot of women as well, but there were a lot of men.
In wisdom literature, we call that common source that is conditioning both men and women as Avidya or nescience. You could also call it Maya.
So yeah, that’s how it is. It would have been more horrible had you initiated some kind of a love story, remaining as conditioned as you are. So, two conditioned beings happily believing that they have fallen in love with each other. The worst downside of all this is that when you are conditioned, this one thing becomes totally impossible to you: love.
That’s the reason why I have been very interested that young people take to meditativeness, wisdom literature, the scriptures, spirituality. Because without that understanding, you can have no fire in your life. Even if you have some fire, it will be of the type that reduces you to ashes. It doesn’t work for you; it just burns you down.
And the more I reflect on it, the more I see how the whole thing is not merely one incident at one point in time. I mean, if you recall the kind of discussions you would have had with her, it would have been in the same dimension as her refusal to offer you help no? What I’m saying is: had the discussions between the two of you been on a very high plane, it would not be possible that she would have refused to pay up.
But then those discussions can’t happen, I'm just imagining, because those discussions can have only as much depth as the two of you have, right? So there is she and her actions when you were pleading with her nonverbally to give some help, are coming from the same center as her utterances when she was mingling with you.
But Darius, tell me: do you have any problem with what she said during the date? No. Instead, you tell me that the whole thing was pretty pleasant. Now how is it possible that the whole thing was pleasant and it suddenly turned unpleasant at the end? So what happened at the end was a seamless continuation of what was happening throughout that meeting.
But the entire part is quite acceptable to you except the end part. I would suggest you come to a point where the whole thing appears not merely unpalatable, but rather disgusting to you; that you are able to see the end in the middle itself, in the beginning itself.
And what is the beginning point? A feeling of loneliness, this and that. If you start from there, you get a date like that. And when you get a date like that, it ends like that.
Questioner: The end is the beginning.
Acharya Prashant: The beginning is the beginning, the beginning is the middle; it’s all a part of the same script.
Questioner: Yeah, it did feel like a different woman, but the same type of setup. It’s almost like some of the things I was doing were scripted, you know, getting the good table, getting the good food. It’s almost like there’s this pattern that keeps happening. The players are different, but the ending is predictable in a way.
Acharya Prashant: And you knew in advance that such a table was to be set up. You knew in advance what kind of wine to order. You knew in advance that the restaurant had to be posh and expensive. You knew in advance that you wanted the corner table. Those things were already known to you.
Just as you knew all these things in advance, she too knew in advance that you were supposed to pay up.
Questioner: That’s the angle I never thought of. I always look at it from my point of view. But yeah, you make this so clear now..
Acharya Prashant: We don’t exist. We are scripts run by a faceless force. Somebody else is writing and running our scripts. Even to say that somebody is writing my script is an overstatement. I am just a script. It’s not even my script, I am the script. That is the unfortunate reality of most of us.
Let this be an occasion that unveils the unpleasant reality of your inner self to you. I can’t guarantee you anything about your next date, but the more you’ll see how deeply conditioned you are, the less surprised you will feel on seeing how deeply conditioned others are.
Because we do not see that we are scripted, trained automatons. So, life keeps on throwing surprises at us. When you are in touch with reality, things don’t take you by surprise. We are not in touch with reality. You thought you were dating a woman. She was not a woman; she was a script. She thought she was dating a man. I hope I’m not being offensive or something. She thought she was dating a man. You were not a man; you were a script. It’s a script meeting a script. So everything happens as per the script. Why are you now worrying or wondering about it?
So, first of all, you leap out of your script. Then there is the possibility of new things happening. Right now, your only surprise is: this woman did something that women in the US do not do. Your surprise is not that something really unscripted held. No, nothing unscripted happened. It’s just that in your mind you are still following the US script; instead, you hit the Indian script. The Indian script…
Questioner: Has a twist.
Acharya Prashant: Has a twist. It does not go according to the US script, so you’re feeling surprised. How does it matter? Indian or American, it’s still a script.
The possibility of love opens up outside the script.
So it’s not so much about her refusing to assist you. Even the way you would have made the offer, the way she would have accepted the offer, the thoughts in your mind, the thoughts in her mind, we must honestly ask: how much of that was original? How much of that was really mine?
Believe me, in her own mind, she did no wrong. Not at all.
In fact, I have found that we are quite big on media and social media now, so comments flow in their hundreds. And women actually have a self-righteous position when they say that we are not supposed to work and you better not expect that from us. Equally, men are conditioned about the roles they are supposed to play in life at home, in society, and how they are supposed to feel about themselves.
And it’s very, very bad. It’s particularly bad for the woman, because if you are not earning, then in some way you are deeply in bondage. Also, since there are no free lunches in life, you would be paying up, but in a hidden way, probably in an unspeakable way. If you have to pay up, why don’t you pay up in cash?
See, the only situation where you don’t ask the other to pay up is when there is love. And love is extremely scarce, extremely. When there is no love, there are transactions. So, as I said, there are no free lunches; there are transactions. And when there are transactions, you are transacting in something. If not in cash, then in what? The options are quite scary.
So, I leave it to you to understand that if the woman is indeed paying up because you expected her to pay up, right? So, there is someone who does want his share of payment, there is someone who does want his pound of flesh. And if he doesn’t get it in cash, how does he extract it? Probably literally in flesh? It is not pleasant to think of this, but this is probably what is happening in millions of relationships.
So you’ll have to pay for your lunch. Simply pay for it in cash.
Questioner: So, is this why we disguise it in the guise of romance, flowers, chocolates, and movies, because it is so much more palatable than simply a transaction?
Acharya Prashant: So much more palatable than facing the stark and naked reality. The stark and naked reality is that the woman pays in some other currency.
It doesn’t please me to put it this way, but it is my duty to state it, so that there are many women who might be caught in it and still have a chance to emerge out of the internal trap. They might be helped. So many young girls who are getting trained indirectly, and they may just realize how dangerous their training is. And if they can avoid that fate, I’ll be happy.
Questioner: And it sounds like it’s not something they are doing deliberately or maliciously. It’s just, I have my script, and she has her script. And someone is controlling the script.
Acharya Prashant: The script begins from the moment of your conception in the womb. So you can’t even blame one particular person, or group of persons, or institution or something. That’s how we are physically made, but our physical constitution need not become our destiny.
That’s the purpose of life, no? To know your real destiny beyond your physical limitations and social conditioning.
Most people do not know that such a dangerous thing is surreptitiously happening to them. When they are kids, when they are in school, when they are watching TV, when they are reading fiction, when they are in university, watching movies, going out on dates. The training is constantly happening, and the conditioning is being buttressed. Nobody knows that he is a script.
