Questioner (Q): Pranam Acharya Ji, I want to ask you a question. I am feeling a void within myself for the last four years. The void created within me is because of a person whom I love. In the beginning, I tried the traditional method to fill that void but nothing worked. I came to know about you in 2021.
So, Acharya ji, I started listening to you and I have learned that I have to choose the right path, I have to choose a higher goal to be engaged with and to fill that void that is inside me. So, for that, I have developed so many things within me like, I have started writing poems, I have been playing cricket and so many other things. I am pursuing my graduation from DU and also preparing for UPSC.
I have no time left for me to think about what I am actually doing with my life but, at the very moment when I finish or accomplish a thing or a goal, I am left with the same void or the void is always the same, always the same person and that never changes. So, I want to ask you, what is the right way to deal with that void?
And what is the right way to cope with that void or do I have to live with that void because I have searched for that question with so many people like from last six months that void is converting into suffering and pain in the form of tears shed from my eyes and so for that I don’t want to in that phase I really don’t want to be in that phase I want the way to deal with that, that how can I get something better and something right to do with myself and be out of that.
Acharya Prashant (AP): A love affair, girl?
Q: That doesn’t occur, she denied it the very first moment then I have never asked her. We are rarely in contact. We met for the last time when our board exams were over, it was three years ago, and I have not seen her since that time.
AP: It’s for this person you have this craving?
Q: Yeah. For the same person.
AP: See, you don’t get attracted to just everybody. Some practical facts first. You get attracted to someone who is almost at the same level of consciousness as you are. We all have a particular mental range. The one you feel attracted towards has to lie within that range, if that fellow is far below your station, you will not feel attracted and if that fellow is far above your station, you will again not feel attracted. Do you see this?
You might for example, just desire a Hollywood actress, a Miss Universe or somebody but you would not even think of having that person as your life partner, your wife, your love affair. Why? Because that person in your own estimate is far above your range of partnership. Do you see when you are envious, you are usually envious of those who lie within your range? If someone is far superior to you, you don’t even feel envious.
So, there is a particular person and the person has probably offered you a rejection or has not been warm enough or something. What do you do? Raise yourself — as long as that person is within your range of acceptability, you will keep cultivating the hope that one day you will have that person for yourself.
You will not be able to get rid of that hope. The purpose of life is the elevation of consciousness. The person that you are within has to improve and has to improve so much that the person you today pine for simply drops below your range.
You start saying you know, “I just don’t feel any attraction” and this that I am saying is not at all disrespectful towards the other person because I am not talking of pulling the other one down. I am talking about raising yourself up and if the other person is her own well-wisher, I would advise her as well to raise herself up. But because that person has not come to me to seek advice, so I only have you to speak to and to you, I say, raise your game, raise your game and exceed the one you were desirous of.
Please understand this, the ones you like at one level of maturity in life are just not the ones you will like at another level of maturity in life and that’s an auspicious sign that simply means you are outgrowing the world.
At age eighteen, you are prepared to die for someone — “I will lay down my life for you, darling”. If at age twenty-eight that person is still your dream master, then probably there is a problem or there is a coincidence that the person has grown at an equal speed. Ideally, you should be outgrowing your like and desires at a very rapid rate.
Do you still like the toys you have at age three? When you were three, you had a favourite toy, do you remember it? “But sir, you are dehumanizing my love. You are reducing her to a toy.” Sir, let’s talk facts, at your age when you get attracted to a girl obviously the two of you are toys to each other. Are you not? Or is it consciousness getting attracted to consciousness? No, it’s just body and body and you will toy with each other’s body the moment you get a chance.
What happens to the toys that were your favourite at age three? You outgrow them when you are six. then you outgrow the six-year toy at ten and then fifteen and then twenty and you move on. That progression is the essence of life — come on rise, move on. How can you still be attracted towards that same person. How? Is it sounding too brutal, inhuman? Death knell of relationships? The vows to accompany each other for seven births, that can happen only if both of you are totally stagnant. Is it not? Take this at least as a fresh perspective, I am not asking you to accept it.
People grow differently, the one who appears attractive to you today, why do you take it as a mandate to be with him ten years later? That person can outgrow you or you can outgrow that person or the two of you can outgrow in two different directions. What is the need to be so sticky to each other? Or are you welded? You know, even if you weld two different metals together, what happens when they are heated and their coefficient of expansion are different? What happens? Because they are different they will behave differently and move differently.
But our culture, you know, once you fall in love with someone at the ripe old age of eighteen years you should continue with her for the next seven births. Leave her alone, she has a life to live. Growing out of your partner might be a sign of maturity and it might also be a sign of compassion, think of it.
Often in name of love we just impose ourselves on someone who was unfortunate enough to once say ‘yes’ to us. Five years back she said yes, so even today I am at her throat and the rest of her body. “You remember that day you said ‘yes’, yes?. So, you have to live by your ‘yes’.” She was internally drunk. Forgive her, just issue a general pardon and let her go. But you will say, “No, but ‘*bewafa*’ (unfaithful).” You said ‘yes’ and, in most cases, there is no yes at all. Even the ‘yes’ is not there and yet the allegation is there. Disloyal.
What is loyalty? What do you mean by loyalty? What do you mean by continuation in time? If you really have love for someone, you make the sky available to them, you let them free. Is that not an expression of love? Or is clinginess an expression of love? “I will stick to you and if I cannot stick to you physically then I will stick to you in my memories” that’s what all defeated lovers do, right? “I cannot touch you physically, so I touch you in and those are the memories we cherish.” Don’t we? “You know you remember”.
That’s also the stuff of most of our songs. I fully appreciate and I am not being heartless, I fully appreciate how difficult it is to get rid of all that but I also know the consequences of sticking to something other than the Truth. If you have to stick, stick to greatness, stick to the Truth, stick to a wonderful purpose, don’t stick to a mere girl, set her free.