How to always make right decisions in life? || Acharya Prashant, at RVCE Bangalore (2022)

Acharya Prashant (AP): The session is actually all yours. I’m not here with a specific message or purpose or agenda of my own. You will be the drivers of this entire interaction. So, I’ll just respond to what you say. The participation has to be equal from both the sides though presumably I’ll be doing ninety percent of the talking.

But still, the involvement and attentiveness has to be from both the sides. You will be driving, dictating and setting the tone when it comes to the session. It’s all yours. So, let’s please begin. Don’t hesitate there are no right or wrong issues to be discussed. Whatsoever is important in life is worthy enough to be taken up.

Q: Sir, let me start the discussion.

AP: Yes, please.

Q: So, can you throw some light on decision making, itself and how that process goes on. And how do you decide it’s the right decision or a wrong decision.

AP: You see, all decisions come from a certain state of mind. Let’s be together we want to explore the entire process of decision making. We internally stand at a certain point and we are not all right with it so we need to move to some other point, right? Had we been perfectly ok with where we are and how we are, there would have been no need to move to some other place, reach some other point, right? If I’m here and I’m perfectly ok being here, then there is no need to reach anywhere else. But as we all are, we are never perfectly ok where we are. Life is therefore a continuous movement. Are we together?

So, I’m at point A and point A whatever it is, wherever it is, never succeeds in giving me full satisfaction. Is that true for all of us? Wherever we are that point is never a point of complete satisfaction for us. And that’s the reason we need to move to some other point. Now the question is, which other point? Which other point and what route to take to that point. That is the foundation of entire decision making.

So, whenever we need to take a decision, we need to be firstly thinking of where we currently are, not where we want to reach. You see, usually when you have to decide, you only talk of the options. You say, “I have to make a decision and these are the option available and among these options I have to make a choice”.

So, let’s say the names of the options are B, C and D. And I have to make a decision between these three B, C and D. I’m continuously thinking therefore of B, C and D. Which one to choose? Which one to choose? Is B better? Is C better? Is D better? Pros. Cons. And if I’m picking up one of these, which route to take to that destination?

The mind is totally occupied in this kind of thought deliberation. B, C, D. B, C, D. Sometimes C appears great and then someone comes as say, “No, B is wonderful, look at me”. And just as you were about to decide in favor of B, suddenly D shows up as the most lucrative one. And we keep just hopping from one option to the other. In life it could even be E, F, G, H, … X, Y, Z.

What is missing in this entire thought process? Right from B till Z the entire alphabet has been covered. We are thinking of all the options available to us. What is the one little thing that is missing there? What is the one little thing missing there? The first thing, the starting point. The most important thing but it is always missing because it is exactly where we are.

And the eyes only look somewhere else, the eyes have no capacity to know exactly where you are. The mind is always busy thinking of the future and other places. The mind does not like to introspect, reflect and know what the current reality, the present facts are. The mind does not like doing that. The mind has much more fun dealing in imaginations. Imaginations are dearer because they make you feel empowered, “I have so many choices. I’m an empowered person”.

And each of the choices offers and promises pleasure and A is not a point of pleasure. What is the definition of A, we said — A is a point of dissatisfaction. We stand at A and we are continuously dissatisfied where we are. So, A is the point of dissatisfaction and from B to Z there is the promised satisfaction of various kinds. B promises satisfaction of B kind and T promises satisfaction of T kind. But A is a point of dissatisfaction. So, the mind is continuously thinking of B, C… X, Y, Z. A it will never know of.

But if you do not know the very story of your dissatisfaction, the details of your current situation. Will you ever be able to take care of your internal problems? If you go to a doctor and he starts prescribing you medicines without diagnosing you, without asking for a pathology report, clearly explaining your current situation, what kind of doctor would that be?

So, all of us are actually bad doctors to ourselves. We do not like to diagnose our current condition but we want great medicines so that we can be healthy and powerful and beautiful in the future. But how can you prescribe yourself a course of betterment if you do not know what your current ailment is, ailment you understand? Disease, problem.

If I do not know what my current problem is, how will I have solution to that problem? But look at the way the mind functions. The mind does not want to go into itself, the mind does not want to go into its current state and its current state alone is the problem.

The mind does not want to go into that because it hurts, no—It hurts and it requires a certain discipline, a certain watchfulness. Instead of watching what is going on the mind want to deal in colorful imaginations. Just forget what is going on and start thinking of the various possibilities, colors and pleasures possible.

Therefore, the first step in decision making is to ask yourself, why do I need to make a decision? What is wrong with my current situation? This appears like a very obvious question but we fail to ask it most of the times. Why, first of all is there a need to go away from A to any other place. What’s wrong with A? And obviously there is something definitely wrong with the place A. Are we together? Or are we all lost in this alphabet. Somebody is at M, somebody is at X. Are we all together at A? That’s where we need to be.

So, first of all why do I need to decide? If everything is hunky-dory, perfectly good, A is my home. I don’t need to move an inch. But there is something certainly wrong with A. What is my current situation? The more you go into it, the more clearly it emerges where you need to go next. And if you do not go into A and just keep thinking of possibilities and alternate destinations, you’ll be just entertaining yourself. You will feel good, but that feeling will lead you nowhere.

We will talk of so many things, you know, five yearly plans, visions for the future. You hear them everywhere, right from the ordinary household to the parliament of India and the United Nation, everyone is talking of the place to go to. But we do not talk as much of our real current situation and why at all are we stuck in the situation that is.

There must be a reason why we are at A, right. There must be a reason. And if we do not address that reason, it is quite possible that even if you move to D, D will be nothing but another form of A. Because the reason that you are at A might be an internal reason not an external reason.

Your problem might not be external, the problem usually is not external. Wherever you are at in life is because of something within you. Please note this down. Now you want to go to some other place but you are carrying the reasons why you were at previous place firstly, even if you go to the other place not much will change in your life. But we want to change exteriors. “I am not feeling well. The house looks dull”. So, what do we change? We do not change the mind of the occupants of the house. We change the paint; we change the curtains. Don’t we do that?

But what if the problem is right within you. If you know where the problem is, then you will know what is it that you really need to address. All our life we fight, we struggle, we strive, we want to be better so we toil so much. Don’t we all do that? Homo sapiens all work so hard in life, you go to the jungle you do not find any other species working so hard.

But we work very very hard. Animals move about just either for food or for pleasure or for mating and that’s all. They don’t really indulge in organized work. But we keep working almost sixty seventy percent of our life. But still no animal is as depressed and as dissatisfied as human beings are. There has to be a reason. This is the reason.

We move from place to place without ever understanding the problem. So, I want a solution. I want a solution. I want a solution but what is the problem in the first place? That we are never bother to clarify to ourselves. We just have a vague impression, all of us. We have a vague impression. And if you have vague impression of the problem, all you get is vague solutions.

And vague solution you have plenty. The world is nothing but a huge marketplace of possible solution. Everyone is selling solutions to you. And in lieu of the solutions they sell you, they charge huge amounts of your life, your time, your effort, your money, your everything. How are people able to sell all kinds of solutions to us that don’t work? Because we do not know our problem. When you do not know your problem, any solution appears possible and lucrative. Does it not?

You pick-up a GPS system. Let’s say Google Maps. Right? You put in it the place you want to go to. Would it work for you? Would it work for you? Let’s say you have connectivity and all that. Would it still work for you? It won’t. It will ask for your current location. We do not know our current location. We just want to reach somewhere. And we keep wondering “But I have written it. I want to reach the states. The Silicon Valley is the place I belong to.”

The GPS, even the GPS happens to be wiser than most of us. It will refuse to respond. It will say “No, no answer. First of all, you should know where you are.” Otherwise no route is possible, no movement.

We do not know where we are. So, everything appears a possible solution. There is certain dissatisfaction within me and that dissatisfaction is the characteristic of point A, right?

Now, someone comes and says “All right let’s go watch a movie”. That appears like a possible solution. Someone says, “Let’s go settle on Mars”. That too appears a solution. Now, think of this: settling on Mars appears as a solution and so does going and watching a movie. Does that not tell of the total ignorance about our inner state?

Someone says let’s go, “Let’s have a game of table tennis. That too appears fine. Maybe this will work. Someone comes and say “You just sleep for two more hours you will be alright. That too appears worth trying. Someone says, “Oh! you don’t have a nice mate in your life. Go get a girl, go get a boy.” That too appears quite promising. Maybe that will take care of internal unrest.

Then some senior comes and says, “Dude, all you need is a high paying job, and once you have that you will start feeling good within.” and you say, “Oh! Now I know that was the problem”.

The world, as we said, is a huge marketplace that keeps on offering all kinds of unworkable solutions. They will not work. Not because the world is hell-bent on cheating us but because we do not know what we need. Do we know what we need? Instead of discussing where we need to go more than half the time the energy in the decision-making process should be invested in knowing where we actually stand, currently.

But the mind has ego at its center, “I know, I already know. Of course, this is where I am. Am I such a fool that I won’t even know the ground under my feet? Of course, I know”. What is it that I do not know? “Oh! I do not know that and that and that and that. Those are the places I need to go to and try.”

“But this, this my current situation, I of course know of that, I’m living it. who else will know it. I’m the master of my life, I know everything what is going on. No sir that’s not true.” If there is one thing each of us is deeply ignorant of, it is our own mind. That’s the one secret hardly anyone is able to unravel.

We might know of a thousand things in the universe. A day might come when science might know everything under the sun. But, still the most fundamental unit, the entity that sees everything will remain like a black box. You know of everything but the one that knows of everything will remain unknown. All the mysteries outside have been opened up and solved but this (pointing hands on head) black box (waving hands in negation).

So, internally we will continue to remain at point A. Externally we have covered not only the alphabet but the entire dictionary. All the possible permutations combinations, everything meaningful and meaningless has been tried and yet we are in the same sad and sorry state as we ever were.

A few data points for you all. The world is more prosperous today than it ever was in its history. Per capita incomes were never as high as they are today. And that’s when we are talking of a population of eight billion people. Eight billion people with the highest possible level of per capita income and those per capita incomes are only increasing at a global average rate of around three percent per year.

In developing countries, the rate of increase of per capita income is often seven percent, eight percent, nine percent. China actually experienced ten percent for several consecutive years.

The kind of technology that we have today, the power of information at our hand has no parallel in history and we are living longer. Average age lifespans in several European countries and Japan are already touching ninety years. The average fellow is living almost up to ninety. Even in India it has exceeded seventy-five years already.

There are so many countries in the world that have almost absolute literacy now. In India too several states, literacy level has now exceeded ninety percent. We should be very very joyful. This should be golden period of human existence, no? we have gone to the Moons. We are going to the Mars. We have thousands of man-made satellites orbiting the earth. And you have thousands of channels available for your entertainment.

Science is even trying to make man almost immortal. If not immortal then make people live up to one-hundred-fifty years. There is no disease so big that man is not challenging it and trying to find a solution. Even HIV AIDS almost has a cure today. We all should be extremely delighted, man is God.

We have done that no previous generation could. And the man is more depressed today than he ever was. Mental disease is today a kind of epidemic that it never was. Suicide rates today are higher than they ever were. We have more nuclear weapons ready to be fired than ever were. And we are closer to a complete climate catastrophe than we ever were.

We are wiping out more number of species today than we ever were. In the last forty years, we have completely obliterated more species that got extinct in the last 40,000 years. And that might be an underestimation. If you Google you might find that it is actually four million years, the number of species that went extinct in the last lakhs of years is very small compared to the number of species we have completely wiped out, they will never return, in just the last four decades. What’s going on? What’s going on?

These should be the best of times. Instead, these are the worst times man has ever faced. Not merely man, all the species on this planet. In fact, the planet itself has never faced a worse condition than it faces today. And we live longer, we have more money, we have more technology. We have more knowledge. We have more power to destroy. You ask for it, you have it.

You want to reach a place, you reach faster. You want to order a good, it gets shipped faster. What is it that you want? Tell me, you will have it. Everything is available, right from B till Z. And yet we are unhappier today than we ever were. We are not only at A; we have sunk to a place below A. What is happening?

This is just the result of moving without knowing. We do not know where we are, we do not bother to know what is it that really troubles us. And yet we want to try a lot of solutions. We don’t want to try lot of solutions; we actually commit ourselves to several of those solutions. You understand commitment? I have dedicated my life to a particular course, A particular road. I’ve just dedicated. I can’t reverse the decision now, in the hope that that road is good for me.

The governments have committed for example x billions to a certain field, without even knowing whether that investment will indeed be useful, when it comes to solving the real problem. And why don’t we know whether that investment would help? Because we do not know the real problem. The real problem sits within and therefore all our external endeavors are failing very very badly, they are not only failing, they are aggravating the problem no end.

We do not know the cause of inner disquiet; we do not know why we are suffering internally. So, what do we do? We go and hack down all the jungles and we feel if we cut down all the trees maybe we will feel happy. Now that sounds very stupid when I put it this way but that’s exactly what we are doing, no?

You cut down trees to create a place for yourselves that will give you more food or more entertainment or more technology or so called more development. The thing is, did you know why you were unhappy in the first place? When you do not know what makes you unhappy, you try all kinds of mad options to become happy. And we are doing that and we are on the brink of total Extinction ourselves as a specie. We do not know whether this species of ours will actually see the year 2100. And if we do manage to be around at that time, what kind of world it would be, we just, we shudder to think.

Have I gone on for just too long or was it making some sense? See as you sit here, all of you are at crossroads, no? You have to make very important decisions in life. And several of those decisions are simply irreversible. You must, first of all know that why you need to do that? First of all, you need to ask yourself, where am I? Who am I? and therefore what do I need. Just because the entire crowd seems to be moving in one particular direction or some other, you cannot follow that.

The one and only one criteria for decision making is your own inner welfare. There are no other gods you need to worship. You decide to pick-up a job offer, how exactly is it helping you? Ask yourself. It’s a tough question, I know because the answer might be it does not help me and that leads you to a dangerous point. You know, you had something in hand and you started asking yourself some honest questions. And the result was that you could not pick up what you had in hand, it had to be dropped. And that sounds scary.

But that is far less dangerous than getting a heart surgery when you actually have a problem in the elbow. How does that sound? The elbow was paining, but you are in such a stupor, in an internally drunken condition that you did not even know what the pain is and where it is coming from? So, you got yourself a heart replacement. First of all, it won’t work, the elbow will continue to pain. Secondly, you have lost out on something that was already healthy. That’s the way decisions happen.

That’s the way I have seen like twenty batches of engineering students behind me falter. More than twenty batches now. Engineering students, students of management. Ever since I passed out from my engineering college, I have been in touch. Very talented people but internally ignorant.

They would know a lot about their field of study, many of them would be well versed in what is going around the world as well. What they would not know is, what is going on within them. So, they would make decisions and those decisions didn’t help. Now, people are in their mid-40s and slowly it starts biting you that it’s been a wasted life. Let that not happen to you.

I repeat, the only criteria to decide on a course of action of future is, does it really help me? What is my real problem? And that which I am choosing will it really help me? Self-awareness is the key. Nothing, but atmagyān helps.

Self-knowledge is therefore no exotic antique, ancient piece of outdated wisdom. It is the fundamental requisite today. More than anything else, we all today require self-knowledge. Without that, as the wise ones have sung and they have laughed, they have said, “Look at man, is there any creature in a poorer condition?”, and they have laughed. They have said, “Even the crows and the sparrows and the fish are in a better condition than man is”. When I say man, I mean human beings, not man- the gender.

You do not want ten or twenty years from today to be at a place where you find you have invested yourself completely in something and that investment has brought you nothing. What will you do then? You cannot turn the clock back. Those twenty years would be gone and you will find you are stuck in permanent kind of responsibilities, so-called responsibilities. It will be very difficult to course correct then. So today is the time. Be very cautious.

Keep everyone else aside, be with yourself and ask, “What is my life for? And it’s the question you need to stay with. It’s not a process you can over with in an afternoon. Be with this question for long. “What is my life for? What exactly?”

It's an important question to ask if you take yourself seriously. If you do not take yourself seriously, if you are ok with your own suffering, then one can be very cavalier with life and…

Are we connecting? Are we together? We can have lighter questions as well, no issues. Its not that we want to turn it into a philosophy class.

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