How do I really know somebody? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Question : How do we know anybody? How do we really know anybody?

Speaker : Let us first see that how do we presently work, what is our way of knowing and relating to other people. How do we look at anybody? Pay attention to this.

How do we look at anybody? Do we look at people as they are? No. Our eyes are covered with a lot of filters, filters of identity, beliefs, of our own prejudices, of the opinions that we are already carrying about others, and with these eyes we look at others.

Can looking be really possible if you already have an opinion about the other?

Is it possible to really know the other person or the other situation or whatever when your mind is already carrying an opinion about the other? It is impossible, because if you strongly believe that you already know then you can no more know, that is the way we operate.

We never really look at anything. We always look at people, situations, places with some kind of a belief, and that belief is a great barrier to really knowing. With that belief you can never know anything, never. So, it is no wonder that we are deceived.

It is not surprising at all that we are deceived, but nobody else is responsible for this deception. Nobody else is responsible if life makes a fool of us. We ourselves are responsible. We never bother to look at life honestly and directly. We look at life with these filters, and these filters are the enemy of