How Self-Awareness Can Combat the World's Problems
Questioner: Pranam Acharya ji. Sir, I have question, as we are getting advanced in material progress and technology, still at the same time we see there are rapid increase in suicide cases, depression, mental health issues, climate change and I think this is due to our action coming from natural tendencies such as greed, consumption, fear. So, sir my question is, how can we minimize these tendencies in order to create a better living for ourselves?
Acharya Prashant: You don’t have to criticize or minimize these tendencies per say, you have to understand these tendencies. Fear says, “something will be taken away from you.” What is fear fearful of? Greed says, “come on go get that thing.” What is it that greed actually desires? Because if fear were only with respect to one object, then fear would have been eliminated with the elimination of that particular object, but that never happens, right? Let’s say you are afraid of the cat and somebody shoos away the cat. The cat is no more there, the cat has gone. Has the fear gone? The fear is still there after the cat you will be afraid of the monkey then of something else then then then. Fear continues. Let’s say greed were with respect to only one object.
You get that object, has greed disappeared? No. The greed is still there, so what greed wanted has not been obtained with that object. Greed definitely wants something else. Fear definitely is apprehensive of something else. Does consumption ever satiate you fully? You want more, more, more.
What does that tell you? There is something else that you want. You do not know your urge to consume therefore you are consuming the wrong things. And when it comes to greed and consumption you also have words like lust, like the tendency to accumulate and hold. They all belong to the same family. Irrespective of what you consume and how much you consume and how much you want to secure it by your consumption, by holding or storing or securing the object of consumption still there lingers a fear. I will never be able to consume fully. I am still not feeling fulfilled. Irrespective of the quantum of consumption, I am still much at the same place internally. So, we have these instinct and those instinct are telling us something about ourselves. And that’s the way of self-knowledge.
How will you know yourself. There does not exist any tangible entity called ‘I’ within you. Go get yourself X-rayed, dissected you will never be able to locate the ‘I’ within you. It’s not there in the heart, it’s not there in the brain, where will you find that ‘I’. And that ‘I’ is all important, it exists in every bit of your existence. You cannot have a thought sense ‘I’, you cannot utter a sentence without ‘I’. Even if you do manage to construct a sentence that does not contain ‘I’ you will find that you are still related to that sentence. So, the ‘I’ has indirectly come in.
That ‘I’ is ubiquitous, yet it is nowhere to be seen within you. How will you know the ‘I’? ‘I’ can be known only in these tendencies — What is it that you are afraid of? What is it that you want? What is it that you have been avoiding? Why does envy arise so much with respect to that person? What is it in that person that I covet so much, that I am forced to become envious? Are you getting it?
So, life is the name of these tendencies. If the ‘I’, that invisible ‘I’ is not there, there is no life either, but life becomes beautiful when you know who you are and life remains a blind rush, a series of staggering stumbles if you do not know who you are. Never suppress these things when they arise within you, it’s not without reason that you feel attracted towards any single thing in the world. There is a reason. However, that thing is not the reason. That thing is just an indicator of a deeper thing within yourself, that where we all miss the point.
If you feel attracted towards something it could be a job, it could be a car anything a house, a women, anything, a party. If you feel attracted towards something you feel that attraction is towards that thing. No. No. No. It’s not that ‘thing’ that you want, nobody wants the ‘things’ that he desires. No ‘thing’ has ever managed to satisfy any person. However, you do ‘want’, the ‘want’ is real, the ‘thing’ is not. You cannot say I do not ‘want’ because you experience the ‘want’.
The ‘want’ is what makes you the person that you are. The ‘want’ itself is existence. But it’s not that thing, you must be thankful to the ‘thing’ for it can be the means to open your own interiors to you. If you can understand why you are attracted to that thing you will know something about yourself. So fine Thank you. Looking at you I realized a thing or two about myself but it would be a mistake, sometimes a life defining mistake, to assume that the thing holds importance, your central urge is different. Figure out that urge, it’s a delicate thing we are seeing here. One, you cannot know your own urges in absence of the urges, if you want to understand greed first of all greed must be there. You are the greed. When you know greed, you know yourself and whenever there will be greed, greed will be with respect to an object. So, greed is something you need to understand because you are the greed. The object of greed is not all that important.
Please understand, objects have varied across cultures, across human beings depending on the stages of life objects of greed they vary right. You were so very drawn towards an ordinary piece of chocolate when you are five, now you are drawn towards something else, a monthly five figured dollar salary maybe, right? So, the object of greed has kept changing, which simply means that there is no need to pay great attention to the object of desire, the object of desire has kept changing, desire has not changed. Use the object of desire to penetrate the desire itself. See what do you want. You do not want that object. When you are able to neutralize yourself with respect to an object it’s a favor to both the parties, especially if the object is a conscious entity. You are relieved of the object and the object is spared of your desire. Both of you can then heave a sigh of relief as they say.
Climate change, over-population, biodiversity loss, depletion of resources, what is it? When you do not understand yourself, you do not know what you want? Then you simply indiscriminately, violently consume all that you can. Classically, the entire universe is called as prakriti. Everything, including the man-made objects, everything is called as prakriti. Man, too is a part of prakriti. When you do not understand yourself that is when you so not understand prakriti, you simply destroy prakriti. There can be no love without understanding, right? That which you do not understand, you will never be able to learn. However, you can be desirous even without understanding.
Today if you, if you see glaciers melting and the coral reefs being destroyed and the AQI levels are beyond tolerance, the reason is very simple. We have no self-knowledge so we do not know this universe we are living in. I am not talking of Science, I am talking of the relationship we have with the universe. We do not know what is the right relationship to have with the world around us. So, all we do is consumption and destruction. We have simply destroyed everything. There can be therefore no scientific and technological solution to this problem.
The solution is self awareness. Otherwise the technology will be used simply to consume. And you cannot halt the march of technology. Man is gifted with intellect and technology will keep improving. It must. Technology is a neutral thing, there is no harm in technology per say. Technology must improve in all ways possible. The problem within the application of technology, because you do not know yourself so you will use all kind of technologies just to fulfill your blind instinct and those instinct can never be fulfilled. So, the solution to all these problems has to be spiritual. When I say spiritual I just mean self knowledge, no mumbo jumbo. Unless our education very whole heartedly embraces the knowledge of the self and the life there is no hope for man, for our various species and for this planet and lets keep aside all that nonsense of man migrating to other planet and colonizing them and starting new life altogether all that is childish fantasy. Not that, that is not possible but that’s not the solution. You are in IIT see how your education has been thoroughtout your journey from nursery till class 12th as they say K-12 and now in your B-Tech or M-Tech program and after that you might decide to go for a Phd. See all the while you are have just been prepared to consume. The entire focus of education has been to make you someone who will earn well, right.
People celebrate gaining entrance into IIT not because they love knowledge but because they know that fat packages are now gauranteed, right. Entire emphasis has been on consumption, if you can get into IIT you will get to consume a lot. If you can get into the one of the IIT’s you will be able to bite into the big apple, United States, especially if you can get into Computer Science you will have a fat dollar salary. And that’s what is celebrated, that’s what the entire preperation cycle is about class 8th till class 12th , the entire coaching industry everything.
Who want to just know and learn, and I am not talking of self-knowledge here? I am talking of the knowledge of the world, even that is not something that is respected. All that is respected is consumption. Think of Indians, that’s interesting thing, how many people know of the IISc? And how many people know of the IITs? And when it comes to their glamour quotient the IITs far exceede the IISc in the popular imagination, in the common mind. Why? Because that science is technology and science is pure knowledge and technology is to be used to ingratiate your desires. So, education has to change. We have been very badly educated. In the inner sense we are all illiterate’s doesn't matter whether you are at an IIT or an MIT or Howard doesn't matter. We are fundamentally uneducated people. How can you call a man educated if he knows nothing about who he is in the first place? Think of it, its amusing.
Questioner: So sir, why are we not teaching self-knowledge in school. If this is what we need in first place, what keeps us away from this?
Acharya Prashant: Give me the authority I will make the right policies (chucklingly). How can you answer that question, there are the policy setters and they have been deciding the policies and the curricula and they have not been probably very wise or insightful people or they have simply been responding to the demands of the societies. The societies say, we want first of all need bread and butter and after that we want goods of daily use and after that we want goods of luxury and that’s what we want. We have no patience with all this self-knowledge and what not. We want to consume and when we look at our peers in the West we feel envious. How are they in the West consuming so much? Their per capita electricity consumption is so high, the no of vehicles per thousand member of the population is so high their, iron ore consumption per capita is so high there, food consumption, meat consumption, dairy consumption, consumption of all imaginable goods is many many times there. Why are we just left behind? We want to catch up and what does catching up means? We will destroy the planet just as much as they do. That’s what is happening.
Questioner: So sir as an individual what are the steps can we take?
Acharya Prashant: If there are kids in your vicinity be very responsible towards them. First of all you must know what a human being needs to fundamentally learn, you have to learn it for yourself first and then you have to take that knowledge to the others, helping others, edifying others. With self-knowledge you realize is of much more value than just ingratiating yourself. So that’s probably the only way and that’s also been the only way possible historically. Know it for yourself and then disseminate it to others. What else is possible? Utilize your resources, your means, your intellect, your powers and see how it can be done. And that would mean walking an authentic road. There is no road actually. It’s a jungle, so you will have to, you will have to make your own road. I don’t know, I am not in a position to consulsively answer this because even I am still in the process. And one then must have the faith, the love, the courage too continue in the process because there is no laid out road, there is no royal highway ready-made and advance waiting for you. You have to proceede step by step and see whats the next thing to be done. What you want to however always remember is that its important and its lovely there is no possibility of giving up. Its just so important and its joyful.
Questioner: Thank you sir.
