Only a healthy mind can have healthy relationships || With youth (2014)
Questioner (Q): Sir, my parents always told me to make friends, to be social. You are saying concentrate on yourself. Sir, my question is that how to manage between our social life and also concentrate on ourselves?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Lovely! Good. Very good. I am glad that we are uncovering a lot of things. Friends, social life, being social, relationships; that’s what we are entering now. Can a slave really be friends with anybody?
Q: Yes, Sir.
AP: Really? What can a sick man give to others except his own sickness? There is a basket of apples, and there is one rotten apple there; sick, not healthy. What will this apple give to the other apples? Only rottenness. A man who is confused, full of violence, can he love? Will he radiate love and joy to others? He will always radiate his own confusion and violence to others.
When you say that 'I want to be friends with somebody', you want to be a well-wisher. How can you do good to somebody when you could not do good to yourself? The fellow could not help himself all his life, how can he help somebody else? Service is beautiful, you want to serve others, you want to love somebody, you want to be friends with somebody and you want to do good to the society. Wonderful! But how can you do good to the society, when you do not even know what is meant by doing good? You are so confused!
If I ask you, sitting over here, "What is meant by doing good?", you would write hundred different kinds of things. We don’t even know what is good. And even what we write today, will change tomorrow, just as your goals change, your decisions change. Then this social relationship that we are talking of will only be a diseased relationship. Don’t you see only diseased relationships all around? People dealing in fakeness. People dealing in greed and dumping each other. Don’t you know how all these socialites behave and what is the truth of their lives? Before you can relate to anybody else, you must know yourself and be contented with yourself.
Only a free mind can love.
I am not at peace with myself, how can I be at peace with somebody else? Is that not obvious? I will always be quarreling, always. Superficially, it may appear that there is peace. Superficially, things may appear to be alright. But nothing will be alright. You are taught to be social but you have never been taught the meaning of relationship. Only two free minds can really relate to each other. Slaves don’t relate to each other. Two conditioned minds don’t relate to each other.
I am speaking from my conditioning; you are speaking from your conditioning. Now, what kind of relationship is possible? No relationship is possible. If you go to one of these mental asylums you might find two madmen talking to each other. One is saying something and the other is standing patiently. And when the first one stops; the second one starts saying something. And now the first one is nodding as if he is listing carefully. But when you go close, you will find that what the two of them are saying is not at all related to each other. The first one is talking about electrochemistry and the second one is talking about the political situation in Nigeria.
(Everyone laughs)
And both of them are communicating. They both are talking in very socially acceptable ways. They know the etiquette. So it seems that everything is alright. But it appears alright only from a distance. You go close and you find that there is no real relationship. Even the husbands and wives have no real relationships.
(Silence)
That is the truth of our relationships. Because our minds are conditioned, so we cannot relate to anybody. We cannot relate to anybody! How can we be friends? The world is your family. Be a lover to everybody. But how can you do that? How can you ever know what is it to be a friend with somebody? Look at what you do to your friends. Your friend wants to sit in silence. And you say, ‘Silent! What’s wrong with you? Come, let us go to the bar. You appear depressed.’ Now the fellow is silent and you are telling him that you appear depressed.
And there was another kind of friendship too. The one between Krishna and Arjun. He too was a friend. Do you have friends like these? You cannot have friends like these. Look at your relationship with your friend. Only he can be your friend who tells you that you are alright. Do your friends tell you that you are good, wonderful as you are? Or are your friends telling you that you must achieve something? If they say you all this then they are not your friends.
Do you even know the meaning of ‘friendship’? All that we know is, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ So whatever my needs are, my friend should supply me.
(Everyone laughs)
"That is a Friend. The one who takes care of my needs." That is the only friendship that you know. And you say, ‘I have been told to be friendly.’ Start with yourself. Self before service. Self before loving. Self before being friends. That is what comes first, ‘Self’.
