Good Spirituality Is Good Economics
Questioner: Good evening, sir. First of all, I’m Tushar, a first-year BTech student from IIT Goa. I was going through your book Truth Without Apology, and there is a chapter named “Good Spirituality is Good Economics.” In the last line, you have mentioned that, “Real economics is not separate from real spirituality.”
How can you link spiritual things; nirvana and all that stuff, with materialistic things like economics, money? And now you’re saying deforestation is wrong. I cannot get your point.
Acharya Prashant: “Good spirituality is good economics,” right?
Questioner: Yes, sir.
Acharya Prashant: Your favorite celebrity wears black. Let’s say he (pointing towards the listener) is your favorite celebrity, right? And you are totally enchanted. He is a football player or a film actor or somebody, and if he wears black, and he has been continuously telling you that, you know, “Black is best, black is best; that’s the motto. Chant with me: ‘Black is best, black is best.’” And you don’t even know that he has been in this way continuously conditioning your mind. Right?
Say: Black is best (pointing towards the listener).
Listener: Black is best.
Acharya Prashant: Repeat: Black is best (pointing towards the questioner).
Questioner: Black is best.
Acharya Prashant: “Black is best.” Now, this (pointing towards the black-coloured cup) is rupees one lakh. Please buy it. And you will buy, because you do not know that you have been conditioned to believe that black is best, and you in no way know of its real value. Just because it is black, you will be ready to pay rupees one lakh for it.
This is how economics gets distorted when you don’t have wisdom. When you say something carries a certain price, how do you know something is worth that price? Please tell me.
“Black is best.” So, this (cup) is rupees one lakh. Will this sell or not? This will sell hot cakes. This will sell.
Now think of so many black mugs that we have been buying. Think of them. The foremost among them is jewellery. Does it really have any value when it comes to utility? Please tell me. The money that you pay must be commensurate with the practical utility of something. Why are you paying so much money for just a metal or a couple of metals? Why? Because you have been conditioned. And that’s what happens to those who are not deeply spiritual; they can be very easily conditioned, and then they’ll spend all their savings on these black mugs, thinking that they actually deserve to be bought for rupees one lakh. That’s why good spirituality is good economics.
Questioner: Okay. Though we are conditioned, like when we purchase jewellery, when we purchase things like that, like the black mug you were saying, we just see the benefits after that, like we can sell it to those like us who purchase it.
Acharya Prashant: What if you are not at all interested in selling it ever? There are so many traditional middle-class women in this country who never buy jewellery for the purpose of ever selling it. They say, “We are buying it, you know.” You ask them the reason; they’ll give some reason. You take the line of questioning a little ahead and they might get annoyed because there is no real reason, and you are investing your entire life savings in something. Why are you investing your money in something?
You know the reason why there are so many farmer suicides in India, especially in Maharashtra? There are multiple reasons, obviously. One of the reasons is that the poor farmer spends a lot on weddings and other kinds of traditional and religious observations; be it a wedding or a funeral or anything else. And when he spends so much, he has to borrow from the local moneylender at exorbitant rates. That compounds very quickly. And on top of that, if there is a bad summer or a failed monsoon, the farmer is often pushed to suicide along with other contributing factors, obviously.
You understand how badly we attach value to things. You understand how poor we are at evaluation. Something might be tremendously valuable, really valuable, but you’ll not be prepared to spend even rupees 100 for it. You’ll say, “No, no, I don’t want to take it.” And something might just be gas, a hot air balloon, empty vacuum, and you’ll say, “I’ll put my entire life into obtaining this.” That’s what lack of wisdom or spiritual foundation does. Think of it.
You are here, and of course you’ll have a functional placement office, and it happens in other IITs; I’m sure it happens here as well. After the admissions office, the placement office is the real thing. All else is just time pass, right? The admissions office, JEE, is important; you’ll put a lot into it. And then you start looking forward to the placement office, “Which companies, what CTC, this, that, international placements.”
So, money.
What will you do with that money? Do you really know what to do with that money? And when you don’t know what to do with that money, then the sellers celebrate. The market rejoices. They look at you, and they’ll be elated: “Here comes another one with a fat pay package and zero wisdom. He can be fooled. Sir, please come over. This one for rupees 1 lakh. This one for 10 lakh. This one for so much.” And you can be fooled.
The average Indian household spends much more on the girl’s dowry than on the girl’s education (source: ThePrint). This is where spirituality comes in. I’m talking about money here.
If you don’t have wisdom, you will not know where to spend your money. You’ll spend your money rather on the girl’s dowry than on her education.
Money is all right; earning money is all right. But do you know where to spend it?
And I’ll correct myself: not that earning money by any means is all right. Because even there, we fail to do the complete calculation. One and a half hours of driving to the office, one and a half hours of driving back to your place in peak traffic hours. How do you put a number to that? How do you evaluate the cost of that? But you don’t, because wisdom is what is missing. And when wisdom is missing, then all your financial calculations also go awry. You’ll simply say, “This is what I get from my job,” you won’t see what the cost of being in that job is.
And here I’m talking of something very tangible; time. Time that you can measure: one and a half hours. How about things that are not easily quantifiable, like spirit, like inner purity? What if your job saps away all of these? What if after three years in a company, you have turned shrewd, cunning? What if the job is of a nature that keeps terrifying you in the name of motivation, in the name of targets, and three years later you discover that you are a fearful individual? How do you put a price to that? Please tell me. How do you adjust that against your CTC?
You will not be able to do even basic arithmetic if you don’t have wisdom.
Questioner: I’d like to, on a lighter note, differ with you on one thing. You said jewellery is the black mug that is selling most. There are two more black mugs that are selling even more. That is: the idea of God, and the people who think that their gun will bring peace.
Acharya Prashant: So, that’s God house. And you go there and you offer your life savings. Tell me the ROI, please. Please tell me. Please illuminate me. But you are conditioned. You’re indoctrinated. And you must have put in your sweat and your blood to earn every rupee of that. Or maybe you cheated on the job; maybe you took bribes, I don’t know how you got that money, but you took the whole thing and gave it to some godman. “Baba ji, this is for you and for your ashram.”
If you don’t have wisdom, this is what you’ll end up doing with your money. Or, “Now I have earned so much; let me go to Dubai and burn it.” Even that is not fundamentally different from offering it to Baba ji. Baba ji, Sheikh ji, same thing, right? Both offer you gratification. One offers gratification in the imaginary sense: “Imagine that now you have reached heaven after your death. I have bought heaven insurance for you. Here is your insurance.” And the other offers sensual gratification. So you go there and you look at the tall buildings and the massive malls.
That’s what you’ll do with your money. Or you’ll be gifting lavishly to your boyfriends or girlfriends, not knowing; why really? you’ll be earning from the wrong source and spending at the wrong place. Want that kind of life? But you’ll be happy that you are earning. You’ll be earning from the wrong place and spending at an equally wrong place. But you will be proud that you are earning.
What kind of life is that?
And GDP will rise, by the way, because GDP does not factor in wisdom. As long as there is production and consumption, GDP rises. Even if only guns are being produced, and even if only bullets are being consumed, GDP will still rise. And you can put them on your CV: “Last CTC, this much, 40 LPA, 80LPA.” No number.
Questioner: Thank you, sir, that was very illuminating. Now, there are many other students also who wanted to ask questions, so I would like to invite Anvesa.
Questioner: But things are happening simultaneously in our lives. So many things are happening all at once. So how do we focus?
Acharya Prashant: You are one. You are the experiencer of the forty things happening all at once. Look at yourself.
Questioner: But sir, sometimes we don’t have an answer within ourselves.
Acharya Prashant: You don’t need an answer. You just look, without any desire for answers. Just see. There is no harm. What will you lose? You’re just seeing. You are the one subject of those forty things. Right? Look at yourself. Just passively look at yourself. Nothing more is needed. You don’t have to evaluate yourself. You don’t have to improve yourself. You don’t have to refine yourself. There is no harm in just knowing what is going on. That’s all that is needed.
Questioner: Sir, like the topic in which you were talking, I had a question regarding that. Like, we are taught from childhood that “Aham Brahmasmi,” or “I am the center of the universe.” You were also saying something around that. Is it being egoistic or being spiritual?
Acharya Prashant: That’s the highest Upanishadic statement. That should never be taught to a kid, right? Because the one who is teaching it to a kid surely deserves some education in the first place. What do you mean by “Aham Brahmasmi?” Brahm is not an object. How can you tell that to a kid? I’m not talking on moral grounds; I’m just saying this is not “2 into 2 equals 4” that you can spoon-feed to someone. This is a very, very deep Truth that comes only to the loving self. Otherwise, it is a very meaningless thing. “Aham Brahmasmi, Pragyanam Brahm, I am Atma Brahma.” You can keep narrating all day; they mean nothing. Nothing at all.
And there is a great harm: you tell it to a kid and the kid starts thinking of herself as knowledgeable. “I know the pinnacle of Vedanta; ‘Aham Brahmasmi.’” Now how do you speak to the kid? The kid is already so knowledgeable.
Questioner: So actually, I would like to question that the map of the truth is different from the Truth. So how do we know that what we are observing is the Truth or the map of the truth?
Acharya Prashant: You need to observe only facts. Just keep this desire for Truth aside. Truth is not something you can approach being who you are. So even the desire to come to the Truth, is a very egoistic desire. Keep it aside. Limit yourself to facts. And if you are totally sincere, brutally honest in acknowledging the outer and the inner fact, they say, magically the Truth descends.
But the Truth is not a concept. The Truth is not a statement. The Truth is not something you can hold in your hand. The Truth is not something you can even aspire for. Right? So forget the Truth. Just forget the Truth. Care for the facts.
Questioner: Understood, sir.
