Life’s a Joke, But We’re the Punchline!
Questioner: Pranaam, Acharya Ji. Recently, media has put a term in front of me—‘dark humor.’ So, sir, I want to ask you that what is humor? We see one sort of application of humor in our sessions too, as you have a great sense of humor. So, what is humor? What purpose does it serve in human consciousness? And should there be any border to comedy or not?
Acharya Prashant: See, ultimately, the one thing absurd about existence is the common, ordinary kind of consciousness. There is just no meaning, no purpose in existence, and yet we all move around with a self-appointed sense of seriousness and sincerity and purpose and targets and achievables. And that is the mighty joke. Existence itself, consciousness itself, is a joke.
The human being taking himself seriously is the joke. So, whatsoever it is that is taken seriously by you is a befitting candidate to be a joke. And its candidature is befitting to the extent it is taken seriously by you. Which means—the more seriously you take something, the more worthy a candidate is that thing to become a joke.
Because actually, there is nothing to be taken seriously in life. There is nothing here that is of any consequence or any importance, ultimately, at the Paramarthik level. When it comes to the behavioural, practical level—the Vyavaharik level—then, obviously, you have to take things seriously. But we forget that the seriousness is all just transactional, that the seriousness must remain just conditional.
Seriousness is not an absolute. There is no object here, no premise, no value that has an unconditional value.
You can laugh at something only when the thing is misplaced, no? If a thing is placed where it must be, will you laugh? But if I place my shoes on my head, you will laugh. Because the thing is inappropriately placed, no? The thing has been given a place, sense of importance that it does not deserve.
And that is the definition of humor—to see what is being given importance and bring it down. Because frankly, nothing deserves importance. Real humor is actually about bringing stuff down.
What does the Bhagavad Gita say? Guna Guneshu Vartante. It's all just a play of Prakriti. It's all trigunatmak play. What are you so serious about? And therefore, whenever you find somebody, anybody, very serious about anything, you know that the stage is set for a nice, cracking joke. Are you getting me?
But we are touchy people, very sensitive people. Since we do not understand that all this is just one, therefore, we pick pieces of it from here and there and start calling a few of those pieces "sacred." And because we have appointed those pieces as sacred, we do not want those pieces to be addressed irreverently.
We say, "You know, when you're talking about those things, you better maintain some respect." But sir, only you have declared that those things are respectable. Or have the heavens declared such a thing? So basically, you are saying that I must respect your ego. It is your ego that turns certain objects of its imagination into something sacred, and then you say, "You are violating our sacred space." But is that space absolutely sacred? Or has that been named sacred by you?
And if you have the right to call something sacred, then equally, I have the right to not think of it as sacred, no? And if your sentiments are hurt when I step on your sacred space, then I can also say that my sentiments are hurt when you do not allow me to step into something that I do not think of as sacred. If it's a question of sentiment versus sentiment, then my sentiment is as good as yours. Why should I honor your sentiment more than mine?
It is the mark of maturity of a people that they are able to laugh at themselves. And it is the mark of very insecure people that they are scared of laughter.
Such people are so insecure that you do not need weapons to terrorize them—a few jokes suffice. Now, having said that, the biggest joke is the ego itself. Because what is it that you take the most seriously in the entire universe? Yourself. Every living being, in its own world, is at the center of the universe, no?
"I am the most important one. Everything else is in relation to mine." So, a joke is worth calling a good joke only when, first of all, it is targeted inwards. Do you have the courage to look at yourself and see what an amusing specimen you are? If you do not have the guts to laugh at yourself and instead you are always found throwing barbs at others, you are not a good comic.
I don’t know what dark humor is.
But real humor—sharp humor—is when you can destroy your own darkness. The man who starts taking himself as a joke is, for sure, a liberated man. And the mark of bondage is that you will be very sensitive and very vulnerable when it comes to being made the butt of a joke.
But you'll be very eager to turn others into jokes. Before you make fun of something or somebody, ask yourself—have you, first of all, made fun of yourself? The one who takes himself as a joke—only he has the right to turn everything else into a joke. And the great thing about such a person will be that you cannot scare him with consequences. You cannot say, "We’ll put you in jail if you joke about this and that." He’ll say, "You’ll put me in jail? I’m already a joke! How can you jail a joke?" And that will be a bigger joke, you know—a jailed joke!
So, on one side, the joke is on those who take jokes so seriously that they get offended and wounded. On the other side, the joke is on those who keep making jokes about others without ever succeeding in seeing how big a joke is their own self. But in general, if you are someone who cannot tolerate jokes, you need to check your insecurities. Surely, you are defending something that is fundamentally indefensible—that’s why you are so touchy.
If someone makes a joke of stuff that I hold as important, or let's say, if there is a person, a historical figure that I respect, and someone comes and makes a joke of that figure, I'm not going to be offended. Probably, I'm going to be disappointed. Probably, I would want to educate that person. If that fellow is making fun of people I respect, then it's not those people who are getting hurt, right? Are they going to get hurt? This fellow is doing all this so that I get hurt.
And if I get hurt, have I really respected the ones I claim to? So I might even get disillusioned. Maybe I had certain expectations from this person, and those expectations have all been betrayed, listening to the joke he has come up with. Maybe I'll be disappointed, disillusioned. Maybe I'll even be saddened. Maybe I'll tell this person, "You know, I'm disappointed with the quality of your joke. Not that your joke is offensive—it's just cringe. I think you ought to have a better sense of humor."
All that is a different thing. But to say that our feelings and our sensibilities and our emotions have been hurt? I mean, why are you feeling so vulnerable, sir? Are others carrying the responsibility of protecting your fragile feelings? Why are your feelings so fragile in the first place? "I'll drag you to the court for harboring such fragile feelings!" You need to get yourself checked up. "Why are your feelings so brittle?" "No, jokes are so bad. Our youngsters will get spoiled!"
Why have you raised your youngsters in such a pathetic way that they get spoiled by anything? By the way, the youngsters you are trying to protect—listen to kids in class three and four these days and see whether they have any of those values left in them anyway that you are trying to protect?
There was this clip a year or two back—not even today. Kids from class three and four were playing this game or having this contest—"Whose mama is the hottest?" What are you trying to protect your kids from? Your kids are totally exposed to everything, including your mama's pics in her college days.
Today, she is the mama. Once, she was that butterfly in the college, and her Instagram account is eight years old. Everything is available to be seen. And now the kids’ friends are saying, "Mama is really hot, man," and my kids are getting spoiled?
Raise them in a proper way. The whole issue shifts to right parenting.
Once I had said, when you do not have sacredness in your life, then you try to compensate for it by turning all kinds of little and miscellaneous things into sacred.
I don't have real sacredness in my life, so then I say, "Oh no, this is sacred for me. This is also sacred. This is also sacred." Forty different things are then sacred for me, and then you throw a joke at any of those forty things, and I get offended, you know. "Why are you trespassing on my sacred space?"
Sir, sacred spaces are always very internal. How come your sacred space is a public pathway that anybody can step on? I have my sacred space here in my heart. Nobody can touch it. Why is your sacred space so public?
All that happens when real sacredness is missing from life. Then all kinds of trivial things are termed as sacred. "This is all sacred." And humor is humor. I do not know what dark humor is. I mean, I don't watch much of comedy, so I don't know all that. To me, existence itself is, you know, an uproar of laughter. What will I do by watching a stand-up or somebody? Huh? Everything about existence is a huge guffaw. Ha. Ha. Ha! Everything is a joke, and nothing is a joke in particular.
You look at the soil in front of these premises. Huh? You look at the floor beneath your feet. All that was living, walking, talking—not too far back in the past. You need a bigger joke? And then you look at your own face, and very soon, you will be the soil on the earth. And yet we take ourselves very seriously. "I'll need two extra hours for makeup before the party tonight." "Why?" "There is a pimple this side.” “No bhaiya, ‘don't click from here, click from here, or I'll make this kind of a posture to hide the…. ,obviously! (makes posture.)
And then she is the organic matter that the bacteria are enjoying, and the pimple was such a big deal once. Dark soil. Maybe that's what is called dark humor.
Jokes can be in bad taste. Jokes can be very, very poor works of art. But I don't think any joke can have the power to violate that which is really sacred. If stand-up artists or comics have to be punished, they should be punished for being distasteful. And that's no small crime, by the way. The fellow is standing there, barking, wasting everybody's time, coming up with fluff that he calls as jokes. Bankrupt him for that.
That's fine, because you are a professional, and your job is to come up with something worth calling a piece of art. Instead of that, you're coming up with these sorry specimens. You deserve to be bankrupted. That is fine. But I don't suppose people deserve to be jailed for violating somebody's feelings.
In fact, those with such— as I said, those with such crippled feelings deserve to be treated. These people need to be identified and admitted into some psychiatric ward or something. I've said something—even this can offend them. You won't even know what is offending what. Anybody can be offended by anything and say, "My feelings—I'm, I'm hurt." Or am I to take cognizance of everybody's feelings before I open my mouth? Is that the deal?
Then no sane person will ever open his mouth at all, because somebody or the other will always be offended. And why should it matter more if twenty thousand people are offended compared to only two people being offended?
The individual has the same rights as the mob. If even one person is being offended, it's the same as offending one lakh persons. And if you can jail someone for offending one lakh persons, jail him for offending even one person, and that will mean nobody will say anything at all.
You need to have a "shut-up society" then, instead of stand-up. Whatever. The fellow who does not examine himself will take himself very seriously. That's the rule.
The less you know yourself, the more you respect yourself. The more is the inner hypocrisy, the bigger is the façade of outer respectability.
What respectability? And if I hold something as sacred, it suffices for me that I hold that thing as sacred, right? It's a very intimate relationship between me and that. Why will I demand that you, too, must respect what I hold sacred? What kind of demand is this? You know, what does this demand betray? That I, too, don't hold that thing as sacred.
Deep within, I'm not sure whether the thing is really sacred at all. So I want the power of the crowd behind me. I say, "You know, I hold this thing as sacred, and twenty thousand of you, you too, must say that this thing is worth respecting and bow down so that I feel assured that the thing is indeed sacred."
If I'm assured of my faith, why will I seek security in numbers? I know for myself, and that suffices, does it not? I know for myself, and it suffices. Now, you may keep joking, or you may keep supporting me. Does it matter? It doesn't matter.
But our love, our respect, our faith—they are all very borrowed concepts. Borrowed and imposed. We really have no confidence in them. Therefore, we are very scared. Forget the sacred. What is present is the scared—a minor variation from the sacred to the scared. We are very scared people.
Because we don't have real spirituality in life, we don't have the wisdom that comes from self-knowledge. Therefore, our faith is very fragile. We keep looking towards everybody. "You know, you please honor my faith, otherwise I'll be offended."
Laugh at yourself. That's the best joke. You can laugh at others too, but only after you first of all laugh at yourself.
And you don't need any special event or person or thing to laugh at. Everything here is a cosmic joke. If there is a Creator, he's actually a comedian. But just, just this much of caution you must have. Before you laugh at others—laugh at yourself. And then, even when you laugh at others, it won't carry a sting. It will carry compassion.
Questioner: Sir, you said that the sacred one should be in the heart, but if someone is cracking jokes or disrespecting the one who teaches me that the whole existence is full of jokes, if there should be no boundary, no border on the jokes, why should I not slap the person who disrespects by cracking jokes about the Gita or you?
Acharya Prashant: The slapping can come from two very different persons, very different centers. One is—the joke that you cracked on my teacher shook my own faith, huh? Brought tremors within, my entire belief started shaking. That is one thing which may make you want to slap that person.
The other thing is—when you are publicly ridiculing my teacher or casting, uh, false kinds of aspersions, then you are making the job of my teacher difficult because you're doing it publicly, and my teacher's mission is public. He wants to get to a large number of people, and by leveling false allegations on him, you are making his job difficult.
Now, before my teacher reaches a person, your false allegations have already reached that person. So my teacher will have a doubly tough time bringing the truth to that person. Now, this is another center. This is not about personal hurt. This is about objectively seeing that the conduct of that person is deleterious to the mission. These are two very different things.
If you ridicule my teacher in private, I have no issues. No issues. You can say whatever you want to. But if you do that in public, then you are jeopardizing his mission and my mission. And then I cannot be lenient on you. Then I'll come down very harshly and very heavily on you because my teacher has surrendered his life to his work, his mission. And by publicly demonizing him, you are laying his life to waste, because his life is his mission.
These are two very different centers. I'm not personally hurt. But if you hurt the mission, then I'll do whatever it takes to protect the mission.
Questioner: Sir, at the starting of the answer, you mentioned that at the Paramarthik level, there is nothing to be taken seriously. But when we come down to the Vyavaharik level, there is something to be taken seriously. But the ego exists only at the Pratibhasik level. So why, at the Vyavaharik level, do we have to take something seriously? Because seriousness is the concept.
Acharya Prashant: You see, you already take things seriously. You already do. Don't you take yourself seriously?
Questioner: Yes, I do.
Acharya Prashant: So you already take things seriously. Hence the question—"Why do we need to take things seriously?" That’s a very redundant question. You already do take things seriously. And because you take the harmful kind of things seriously, therefore it is advised at the beginning that you must take another dimension of things seriously.
For example, when you come to me, I'll say, "Take the Bhagavad Gita very seriously, very seriously." But a point comes when the scriptures themselves say, "Now, keep us aside. We have done what we could. Go beyond. We liberated you from everything possible. Now we liberate you from ourselves as well." That's what the scriptures say.
So, scriptures are to be taken very, very seriously as long as you take yourself seriously. And then that final point—we need not worry about. Don't try to imagine it. Okay, one day will come when the Upanishads will say, "Fine, close the book and keep it aside, and, and fly away."
Don't imagine. Hence, I say, you'll need the Gita all your life. Gita is not a thing to be used and discarded.
Gita should be like your breath—let it remain always with you. If, at some point, the Gita has to say, "Son, now you can go beyond," let that be on the Gita.
Why should we try to prophesize that? Why should we jump the gun? Our job is to stay true to the Gita.
Questioner: Why have you included the Vyavaharik level in the zone of seriousness, as the ego exists only at the Pratibhasik level? Hence, the seriousness also exists only at the...
Acharya Prashant: No, no. It is not as if the ego exists only at the Pratibhasik level. At the Pratibhasik level, the ego exists for what it is not. At the Vyavaharik level, the ego exists seeing the facts of its being. There is a fellow who lives in imaginations. There is a fellow who lives in facts. But even the fellow who lives in facts believes that he's a fellow. So he's still not at the Paramarthik level. At the Paramarthik level, even the fellow does not exist. There is total dissolution.
So the ego exists at both levels. At the Pratibhasik level, you are Superman. At the Vyavaharik level, you are man. But it's better to be a man than a Superman or a Spiderman.
