Empowering Choices: Impact of Knowing What to Do and What Not to Do
Questioner: My name is Prakhar, I am a final year undergraduate from Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. My question is: What is more important in life? To know what to do, or to know what we must not do?
Acharya Prashant: I’m unable to look at your face, there is something that…
Questioner: Cap?
Acharya Prashant: There is a cap and also probably, the light is a bit dim. Can we do something about it?
Questioner: I’ll try to use my phone flash.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, better. Now, I can look into your eyes. Yes, come again, please. That is just one line of the question.
Questioner: Sir, my question is— what is more important in life— to know what to do or to know what not to do?
Acharya Prashant: See, doing or not doing, both are functions of the doer, right? The doer is the one making the choice. The doer is the one making the choice. You are asking: Do I trust the output of a certain instrument or a certain gadget? And if I trust the output, if the gadget says, ‘go left,’ Is that more important than the instruction to go right?
Let’s say you have an instrument with you, and the instrument is on your dashboard, on the dashboard of your car, your bike, or something. It can instruct you to go left, or it can instruct you to go right. It’s a positioning system called an ‘LPS’ or a life positioning system. It can tell you, ‘Go left,’ or it can tell you, ‘Go right.’
You are asking me, ‘What’s more important? Going left or going right?’ What’s more important, ‘To know what to do or to know what not to do?’ My question is: Is your LPS trustworthy, first of all?
Because doing or not doing, I repeat, are functions of the doer. The doer is the instrument. Is the instrument, first of all, reliable? Who’s the one making choice within? Who is setting these options in front of you?
Who’s coming to you and saying, ‘These are the options if you do something; these are the options in favor of not doing something.’ Have you gone into the inner machine? That’s the job of the engineer, right? To go into the machine. If the machine is alright, it will perform rightly. If the internal fundamentals are not in place, then we do not bother too much about the output. The output, we know, will be wrong. And if sometimes, the output appears to be correct, that’s just a fluke. It cannot last long; it’s not repeatable.
How do most people know what to do? And you’ll surely be finding people around you. I am sure you are an intelligent and observant fellow. Have you not seen people who are very sure about themselves? And you wonder, from where do they gather such confidence? How do they exactly know what to do?
Because they have never bothered to investigate from where is their doer-ship arising? They have instincts, and those are all conditioned instincts.
‘I know I needed to get into IIT.’ But why exactly? And very few people will have any kind of depth in their response to this question. ‘I very well know I need to write my GRE and then fly off to the U.S.’ How do you know this? How do you know that this is the right thing to do? Very few people will know.
A lot of Muslims know that all others are infidels and, therefore, do not deserve to be liked. A lot of Hindus know that their religion is the best one. And with great confidence, they will say all these things. The Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Buddhists. How do they know with such surety?
‘Well, at the age of 24, I will pass out, and I suppose I must have a BMW by 30.’ How do you know? Who told you? ‘I think I’ll have just two kids, one by the time I am 30 or something, another before I am 35.’ How do you know? How do you know?
‘Let’s celebrate, and if we are celebrating, nobody is going to keep quiet. It’s a party; let there be noise.’ Nobody should be silent in a celebration; it’s a don’t, right? ‘Don’t be quiet in the middle of a party or a celebration.’ How do you know that this is something to never be done? From where did this come to you?
Do you see that we are trying to take your attention to the inner machine that generates the list of do’s and don’ts? Do you see that practically everybody has that inner list of do’s and don’ts? And the generator of that list is an alien one, masquerading as you. Ok, that’s a bit too complex. The generator of that list has been corrupted by alien influences.
If I’m born as an Indian, I have an Indian list of do’s and don’ts. If I were born Chinese, I would have a Chinese list. Born as a North Indian male, you have one list of do’s and don’ts. Born as a female in the northeast, you’ll have a very different list of do’s and don’ts. They are not yours. The generator itself is not authentically you.
Then, how can these dos and don’ts matter? And then it becomes rather bewildering and quite amusing that a lot of people spend their entire lives just following this list of do’s and don’ts. They do not bother to question where these commandments are coming from. Do you understand?
‘Now, that you are IITian, how can you be a dancer? So don’t be a dancer, given that you are an IITian.’ Who decided that, exactly? I’m not encouraging you to be a dancer; I’m just pointing to the fact that there are certain things that become inconceivable. And we do not ask ourselves— How? When did they become prohibited? What was the inner agency making the decisions?
‘I must have a fat job.’ But brother, you were never quite greedy. I know you; there are so many other things in life that have mattered to you. You are somebody with a taste for fun and enjoyment; you like hanging out with friends, and you like being with your girlfriend. You like trekking, hiking, those things, and you feel so wonderful when you are immersed in a great book— Sartre, Maupassant, or Indian literature.
But now that you’re in IIT, you feel great pressure, ‘I must have a fat job.’ From where did this commandment come to you? Who is the inner decision maker? Is that you, or is that someone greatly influenced by the surroundings? Don’t do this, don’t do this.
We often say, ‘Oh, there is that little voice inside us; we call it conscience.’ Wisdom is to realize that your conscience is all artificial. 100% influenced. And that’s why the so-called inner conscience is totally outer and varies from person to person. People have done horrible deeds based on the advice of their conscience. Hitler, too, in his own eyes, must have been a man of conscience.
So, who’s the doer? Who’s the doer? What does he want to achieve through the deed? If he says, ‘Do something.’ He has eyes on the result, probably. If he says, ‘Do not do something.’ He wants to save something probably.
What is it that he wants to gain? What is it that he wants to save? From where do his thoughts and emotions arise? Because action is an instinct, right? You say, ‘I’ll act.’ You act because you want to change something. Desireless action is not something we know of. We act because we want something from the action, the deed. What is it that we want? How do we know that the thing that we want from the deed is indeed useful to us? It’s alright to have a target. It’s alright to demand something from your action.
I am acting to reach that place. I am walking; that’s the deed. I am walking; I want to reach that point. How do I know that that point really holds something meaningful for me? Who told me that that particular point, indeed, has a thing of importance? These are the questions that a young, intelligent man must ask himself. Otherwise, life is a short affair. You can very easily squander it away in meaningless kind of motion, random motion.
Oh, Brownian motion you know of, right? Think of the molecules; think of atoms. All the time, their entire duration, they are just moving, moving, moving and colliding and changing their path, and moving with great velocity, don’t they? If they were humans, we would really felicitate them. We will say, ‘Look at these little things, the molecules. They are all karmayogis. They are constantly in action; they are constantly doing something.’
It’s not about just doing something. It’s about knowing the doer. Know why there must be movement at all. Know who you are. Know what it is that you lack. Know what it is that you need to shed. And then, the deed is right. Then you know the one right direction for you: unambiguously, choicelessly. Again, it makes me wonder if I have been able to communicate. Am I through to you?
Questioner: Yes, sir. That was actually an insightful answer. I expected not such a deep insight. Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: No, you and each one of you on the other side of the screen are most welcome to ask for clarification or pose a counter. I welcome that.
Questioner: Yes, Sir.
