Know the Doer, Not Just the Deed
Questioner: I am a final year undergraduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT. My question is: what is more important in life — to know what to do or to know what not to do?
Acharya Prashant: See, doing or not doing both are functions of the doer, right? The doer is the one making the choice. You are asking: do I trust the output of a certain instrument, a certain gadget? And if I trust the output, if the gadget says 'go left,' is that more important than the instruction to go right?
Let's say you have an instrument with you, and the instrument is on the dashboard of your car, bike, or something. It can instruct you to go left, or it can instruct you to go right. It's a positioning system — LPS (Life Positioning System). It can tell you go left or it can tell you go right.
You're asking me: what's more important, going left or going right? What is more important — to know what to do, or to know what not to do?
My question is: is your LPS trustworthy, first of all? Because doing or not doing, I repeat, are functions of the doer. The doer is the instrument. Is the instrument, first of all, reliable? Who is the one making the choice within? Who is setting these options in front of you? Who's coming to you and saying, "Oh, If you do something, these are the options in favor of not doing something?"
Have you gone into the inner machine? That's the job of the engineer, right? To go into the machine. If the machine is all right, it will perform correctly. If the internal fundamentals are not in place, then we do not bother too much about the output. The output, we know, will be wrong. And if sometimes the output appears to be correct, that's just a fluke. It cannot last long. It's not repeatable.
How do most people know what to do? And you will surely be finding people around you. I'm sure you are an intelligent and observant fellow. Have you not seen people who are very sure about themselves? And you wonder, from where do they gather such confidence? How do they exactly know what to do? Because they have never bothered to investigate where their doership is arising. They have instincts and those are all conditioned instincts.
I know I needed to get into IIT, but why exactly? And very few people will have any kind of depth in their response to this question. I very well know I need to write my GRE and then fly off to the US. How do you know this? How do you know that this is the right thing to do? Very few people will know.
A lot of Muslims know that all others are infidels and therefore do not deserve to be liked. A lot of Muslims know, and a lot of Hindus know, that their religion is the best one. And with great confidence, they will say all these things — the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Buddhists. How do they know with such surety?
Well, at the age of 24, I'll pass out, and I suppose I must have a BMW by 30. How do you know? Who told you? I think I'll have just two kids, one by the time I'm 30 or something, another before I'm 35. How do you know?
Let's celebrate. And if we are celebrating, nobody is going to keep quiet. It's a party. Let there be noise. Nobody should be silent in a celebration. It's a don't, right? Don't be quiet in the middle of a party or a celebration. How do you know that this is something to never be done? From where did this come to you?
Do you see that we are trying to take your attention to the inner machine that generates the list of do's and don'ts? Do you see that practically everybody has that inner list of do's and don'ts, and the generator of that list is an alien one masquerading as you?
Okay, that's a bit too complex.
The generator of that list has been corrupted by alien influences. If I'm born as an Indian, I have an Indian list of do's and don'ts. If I'm born as a Chinese, I would have a Chinese list. Born as a North Indian male you have one list of do's and don'ts. Born as a female in the Northeast, you'll have a very different list of do's and don'ts.
They're not yours. The generator itself is not authentically you. Then how can these do's and don'ts matter? And then it becomes rather bewildering and quite amusing that a lot of people spend their entire lives just following this list of do's and don'ts. They do not bother to question where these commandments are coming from. Do you understand?
Now that you are in IIT, how can you be a dancer? So, don't be a dancer, given that you are an IITian. Who decided that, exactly? No, I'm not encouraging you to be a dancer. I'm just pointing to the fact that there are certain things that become inconceivable, and we do not ask ourselves how, when did they become prohibited. What was the inner agency making the decisions?
"I must have a fat job." But brother, you were never quite greedy. I know you. There are so many other things in life that have mattered to you. You are somebody with taste for fun, enjoyment. You like hanging out with friends. You like being with your girlfriend. You like trekking, hiking. And you feel so wonderful when you are immersed in a great book — Sartre, Maupassant or Indian literature.
But now that you're in IIT, you feel a great pressure: "I must have a fat job." From where did this commandment come to you? Who is the inner decision maker? Is that you, or is that someone greatly influenced by the surroundings?
"Don't do this. Don't do this."
We often say, "Oh, there is that little voice inside us." We call it conscience. Wisdom is to realize that your conscience is all artificial — 100% influenced. And that's why the so-called inner conscience is totally outer and varies from person to person.
People have done horrible deeds based on the advice of their conscience. Hitler too, in his own eyes, must have been a man of conscience. So who is the doer? What does he want to achieve through the deed? If he says, "Do something," he probably has eyes on the result. If he says, "Do not do something," he probably wants to save something. What is it that he wants to gain? What is it that he wants to save? From where do his thoughts and emotions arise?
Because action is an instinct, right? You say, "I'll act." You act because you want to change something. Desireless action is not something we know of. We act because we want something from the action, the deed. What is it that we want? How do we know that the thing that we want from the deed is indeed useful to us?
It's all right to have a target. It's all right to demand something from your actions. "I'm acting to reach that place. I'm walking." That's the deed. How do I know that that point really holds something meaningful for me? Who told me that, that particular point indeed has a thing of importance? These are the questions that a young intelligent man must ask himself. Otherwise, life is a short affair. You can very easily squander it away in a meaningless kind of motion — random motion.
Oh, Brownian motion you know of, right? Well, think of the molecules, think of the atoms — all the time, their entire duration, they are just moving, moving, moving and colliding and changing their path and moving with great velocities, don’t they?
If they were humans, we would really felicitate them. We'll say, "Look at these little things, the molecules. They are all Karmayogi. They are constantly in action. They are constantly doing something."
It's not about just doing something. It's about knowing the doer. Know why there must be movement at all.
Know who you are. Know what it is that you lack. Know what it is that you need to shed. And then the deed is right. Then you know the one right direction for you — unambiguously, choicelessly.
