Joy of the uncaused and the unpredictable || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: Pulkit is asking, ‘Is there a pre-determined aim of life or does it evolve with the circumstances?’ Pulkit, neither of these. For us anything belongs to either of these two categories. Right? It is either something pre-meditated or it is something spontaneous and random, that we have not thought of. Life is neither of these. Nobody has pre-meditated anything and nobody has left it absolutely random also. I will explain, understand this. What you call as the usual happening of life is subject to the constraints of cause and effect. For example, if you go and poke your finger in that electricity socket, with the switch on, with the power turned on, it is definite that you will get a shock. It is pre-meditated. It is cause and effect. What is the cause? You put in your finger. And what is the effect?
Listeners: The shock.
Speaker: You get a shock! Similarly, the moment you eat your food, it is pre-determined to a great extent that what will happen to the food. Food goes in, there are certain chemicals that get mixed with the food, and the chemical process of digestion begins. Whatsoever is mechanical and material is pre-meditated. For example, the day you are born, it is certain that you are also going to die. So you could say that with life, death is already certain. Are you getting it? These things are definitely pre-meditated and looking at these, one may feel like saying that a lot in life is actually fixed. Not really!
What is most valuable is not contained within cause and effect. Cause and effect is- if I am born a male, I have to be a bread winner. Cause and effect is- if I am born in a family of farmers, chances are, I too will become a farmer. Cause and effect does not always hold good. Cause and effect gets broken. The disruption of the chain of causation is intelligence. It is intelligence. But intelligence is not random either. Intelligence works in ways that only intelligence knows. Neither can you say that it works in pre-meditated ways, nor can you say that it is absolutely random. Nothing can be said about it. It is just spontaneous. There is no predictability associated with it. It is so unpredictable that you cannot even say that it is unpredictable. Because if something is totally unpredictable, at least that much becomes predictable about it. What? That it is…
