Self-Worth Is a Lie You've Been Sold

Questioner: Hello sir, I am Harshit Pandey. I am a second-year B.Tech student at IIT Kanpur. Sir, first of all, it is a great pleasure to talk to you. My question is mainly about self-worth. I want to know: is self-worth a genuine concept or just an egoistic or narcissistic way of assigning value to insignificant human beings? And if it is real, then how can one measure it and how is it defined?

I also came across one of your quotes from the book: “If your self-worth depends upon anything external, then life will play with it like a puppet.” I want to know, then, what are the factors self-worth is assigned to? Is it assigned to efforts? But then animals like a donkey also put in efforts, are they worthy?

The second question is: can a person's worth exist independent of others' perception?

Acharya Prashant: What you are asking is probably one of the most important questions ever faced by a person. If it is not the most important question, it belongs to the family of the most important ones. Why? Because it deals with the self. When you say, “What is self-worth? Is self-worth important? Why does self-worth have to depend on others?” and other related things that you will probably come up with as we discuss. All of these terms and all of these questions are very obviously centered on the self. Right?

What is self? When we say self-worth, self-esteem, or even self-respect, all these are interrelated concepts. But all of them have one thing at the center and in common, which is the self. Now, can we talk of these things without first being very sharp and clear about the self?

Questioner: No.

Acharya Prashant: No. So, would you want us to venture into the self? What is it exactly?

Questioner: Yes, I want to.

Acharya Prashant: So, what is the self? We'll discuss. I'm not really answering your question. We'll move on this together.

Questioner: How do I identify myself? I am sure that it is not my name. Maybe my knowledge is myself.

Acharya Prashant: When you say my knowledge, then it is the self's knowledge, so there is circularity in what you are saying. My knowledge cannot be who I am, right? It's like I ask you, “Who are you?” and you say, “My T-shirt.” This light-colored thing that you are wearing right now. Then what you're saying is, “I am, or rather Harshit is, Harshit's T-shirt.” That doesn't answer who Harshit is, does it? It doesn't.

So who are you then?

Questioner: Then I have no answer.

Acharya Prashant: And if I do not know who I am, what am I respecting? What am I attaching worth to? What is all this assessment and pride about? If I do not know who I am and I say I have a lot of self-respect, what exactly or who exactly am I respecting?

Questioner: Sir, I'm also like other human beings that are living on this planet.

Acharya Prashant: Yes.

Questioner: I must have some worth, right? I must have some values.

Acharya Prashant: How do you know that? Is that a speculation, an empty conjecture, a feeling that you do not know where it comes from? What is it? “I must have self-worth.” How do you know?

Questioner: It is just a feeling that I must have.

Acharya Prashant: You cleared the JEE, right? And there's a simple question, let's say on projectile motion: a ball is thrown in such a direction, and so much is the wind speed, and the ball just breaks midway in the air, right? And where do you think that one particular part is going to fall? And some associated details are given. Would you answer by saying, “Well, it must be falling at around 6 meters horizontal distance from where it was thrown?” Would you admit such an answer, and would IIT Kanpur admit you if you gave such answers?

Questioner: No, sir.

Acharya Prashant: So how can we then be very vague about the most important thing about ourselves, the self? What is the self?

So you talked of self-worth. Instead of talking of worth, shouldn't we first talk about self? But that's the thing. The self is taken for granted and we quickly hop on to the next thing. So self-respect, self-doubt, self-worth, self-negation, self-affirmation — a lot of things hyphenated with the self without knowing what the self is. Without knowing what the self is, self-love, right? We can keep love aside. Let's first talk of self.

So, to begin with, we have a vague haziness. I call myself existent. There is being. I think I exist. There is this feeling of “I-ness.” Till this point I think we are safe. We are, I think, on solid ground. Yes, as you said, there are so many people and all of them feel something. So this “I” feeling is common among all living creatures. Do we agree? Do we see that?

Questioner: Yes sir.

Acharya Prashant: Now, next thing. Creatures, at least of our species, never just say “I.” They also rarely say “I am.” They say “I am A or B or C.” Do we observe that?

Questioner: Yes, we do.

Acharya Prashant: So this self thing seems to be always predicated on an A, B, or C object. The self is dependent on something else, right?

Questioner: We associate ourselves with something.

Acharya Prashant: With something. You had used the word identity. As you began your question, you had used that word. So we are always identified with something, and those identities are very fluid. They just keep changing. We can observe that. Not just over long periods of time, but even over micro periods. We are creatures of changing, fluid, and several identities at once.

Now, where do these identities come from? If I say I am A or I am B, is that internal? Because I'm talking of I, and I is supposed to be the most internal, most central thing to my existence, right? I exist. So existence and I are the same thing.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, you agree. So this A, B, and C, are they too internal?

Questioner: They are external.

Acharya Prashant: They are external. But this internal thing takes its being, its existence, its sustenance, its very body from something external. And how does that happen? How do you become A, or how do you become B?

Questioner: If a society values A, then I try to associate myself with A.

Acharya Prashant: Right. And even if it does not value A, sometimes you find yourself helpless, don't you? It's not always even about society. So often it's about the body. I mean, I am male. Society has hardly anything to do with that. The body gave you that, right?

And there are a lot of things, as you said, that come from society. For example, I'm smart, I'm handsome, I'm rich — that's a social concept. Right? All my friends say I'm very sharp. So that again is obviously social. So be it physical or social objects, what we can clearly see is that they are not internal. And we say I is internal. But this internal thing is so helplessly dependent on external things.

Are these external objects and their associations with I really controlled by the I? Determined by the I? Does that happen?

Questioner: Why not? They can be controlled by I.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, potentially they can be. But does that happen? The I seems to have a range of choices, right? For example, you could say, “I am a cricket fan rather than a tennis fan.” So you could say, “I chose my object cricket.” Right? So there seems to be apparently a choice. “I chose dosa over idli.” So apparently there seems to be a choice. So we feel like saying that the objects that I relates to are chosen by I.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: But is that really the case? Will you ever say, “I am an ice hockey fan?”

Questioner: I don't understand.

Acharya Prashant: Sitting where you are as a student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, how likely are you to say that you are an ice hockey fan?

Questioner: I will not.

Acharya Prashant: You will not say that. So where did the options cricket, badminton, and let's say soccer, come to you from?

Questioner: From the environment.

Acharya Prashant: They came from the environment, right? So this I then is very helplessly dependent on the environment, except that it seems to have some kind of narrow choice in choosing what the environment throws at it.

For example, let's say you are a South Indian, your environment can offer you dosa, idli, vada. And you say, “It is my free will, my choice to go for dosa.” But the thing is, this choice that is being offered to you is a function of your environment. The environment has set very clear boundaries and it will not allow you to go beyond them. You are unlikely to say that it is French food that you love the most, or Russian, or Manchurian, or Korean, right? Or Brazilian. Unlikely.

So, can we say that more or less the I is borrowing its life itself from random circumstances?

Questioner: We can say that I is the product of our environment, right?

Acharya Prashant: Our environment. And the environment is not something that you control, right?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: Environment is a random variable, right?

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: You do not choose the place of your birth, the time of your birth, your family, your parents, your economic conditions. We do not have a choice. You don't choose your gender. In fact, you do not choose even to be born. Right? So the environment is a random variable, and the 'I' is helplessly dependent on the environment. Right?

So everything that 'I' has is actually a function of the environment? In the worst case, in the worst case? Potentially something else might be possible, we'll come to that. But in the worst case, which is unfortunately also, the most common and frequent case, the 'I', the self, is hopelessly dependent on the environment, which is a random thing.

Now, who is the one going to have self-worth? Name the entity: the self.

Questioner: I.

Acharya Prashant: The I. So the I will be assigning some worth to itself, and that we call self-worth. But

The 'I' is nothing but its associations or dependencies on the objects around itself. So the I actually has no free existence of its own. Even the way it assigns worth would have been absorbed by it from the environment.

So the environment is telling the self how to accord worth to objects of the environment. The environment is telling the self, or rather the environment is providing the metrics to the self, the algorithm to the self, through which this self, like a slave, will now attach values to objects in the?

Questioner: Environment.

Acharya Prashant: Environment. Now you tell me, what is self-worth?

Questioner: So it is like I associated myself with some things in the environment. Now I am associating worth to those values.

Acharya Prashant: You are not there at all. There is just the random flux all around you, and that flux has programmed you how to assign worth to something. Even your criteria are not really your own. Right? So what is self-worth?

Questioner: Now I don't think it's a real concept.

Acharya Prashant: How can self-worth be real when the self is unreal? But you will be all full of concepts, and those concepts you have absorbed from the atmosphere, right? If you read widely, if you go into the history of the world, particularly the various cultures since ancient times, you'll be astonished firstly and then amused at the diversity of things different people at different times have found respectable or worthwhile.

I was very young when I read of a particular tribe where a woman's worth is determined by the length of her neck. So when she's still a small girl, they put rings around her neck. As she grows up, the neck widens, but the ring won't allow it to. As a result, it takes a vertical path. It elongates. And the longer the neck, the more valuable, precious, respectable, lovable, or beautiful she is considered.

And you look at their necks, I mean one and a half feet long necks, or the length of the ears. And 100 years later, two other people like you and me might be conversing and just as today we are astonished that somebody's worth could be determined by the length of her neck, 100 years later somebody might be wondering how somebody's worth can be determined by their JEE rank. But when it is happening, it looks perfectly natural because it is normal, because everybody is doing it. It is normal. So it also looks natural. Doesn't it happen on campus? Your CGPA, your JEE rank, and later on the weight of your package, the CTC, start determining your worth, and it appears so normal.

Questioner: That was the main reason I asked this question.

Acharya Prashant: And it appears so normal, but it is just like according weightage to the length of somebody's neck. There is no consciousness in that. Nobody knows why that is important at all. It's just that it is trendy.

And if you ask them, all the reasons they give will circle back into themselves. The logic would always be circular, and circular logic is sham logic. Or they will come to a point where they say, “Oh, but this is obvious, is it not?” No, nothing is obvious. Show me. And they will not be able to show anything. Just a bundle of belief, empty belief that they have absorbed from the environment.

Questioner: Sir, can you give any example when it becomes circular?

Acharya Prashant: So you start with this topic that concerns you so much: the packages. You start with this. So why do you think packages determine your self-worth?

Questioner: Sir, money is a necessity. So by getting a good package, I will get money.

Acharya Prashant: Okay. So how do you know money is a necessity?

Questioner: Sir, for basic things we also need money.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. But there is no company that comes to your campus that doesn't offer a package bigger than the basic necessities that you have. So that is always taken care of, that we need not even talk of. Basic necessities are like food, shelter, communication, commutation. These are your basic necessities, right?

Questioner: For a good quality of life, right?

Acharya Prashant: Good quality of life. What do you mean by good quality of life? And how do you know that such quality can be called good?

Questioner: Sir, for basic necessity, we need only food, clothes, and a home.

Acharya Prashant: No, you also need a laptop. You also need a vehicle. But then no company that comes to the campus doesn't offer you enough to afford even a laptop. That much you can always rest assured of.

Questioner: But with limited money, I can't explore many things in the world.

Acharya Prashant: Okay. Let's see. What is it that you want to explore that can happen only with the fattest package?

Questioner: I can't travel.

Acharya Prashant: Why can't you travel? Unless you want to travel specifically first class or business class.

Questioner: Let's say I want to travel to Switzerland. I can't travel with a 12 lakh package.

Acharya Prashant: No, you can. You just look at those who are actually traveling to Switzerland, and a lot of them, if they are single, if they don't have any liabilities, a lot of them would be traveling on that kind of package.

Questioner: Then what about the family?

Acharya Prashant: How much does your family need? And if your family is currently surviving on what they have, how come their needs will suddenly escalate the day you get your job. And how come your own needs will suddenly amplify the day you step out of your campus?

Questioner: Maybe they are holding it.

Acharya Prashant: Holding needs or desires?

Questioner: Desires.

Acharya Prashant: So how do you know your desires will fulfill you? If you fulfill your desires, you will be fulfilled. How do you know?

Questioner: Sir, what other options do I have? I have desires.

Acharya Prashant: No, no. Now we are breaking the flow of logic. What you have now come to is: I need the fattest package possible for the sake of my desires. That's what you have come to, right? Fine. We respect that.

But how do you know that your desires are actually good for you?

Questioner: So what do you mean by good for me?

Acharya Prashant: Why else do you have desires? If I tell you your desires will kill you, will you still have those desires?

Questioner: No, I will not.

Acharya Prashant: So you maintain desires, you respect desires, you invest in desires only because you think that fulfillment of desires will be good for you. Right? How do you know that?

Questioner: Because I enjoy fulfilling that desire. For example, I like to eat chocolate. When I eat it, I enjoy it.

Acharya Prashant: Right. There are so many things that you liked when you were 10 years old or 5 years old. What were your desires as a 5-year-old? Did you really want to be at IIT Kanpur? Which stream do you come from?

Questioner: A chemical M.Tech.

Acharya Prashant: Did you really want to be doing M.Tech then? What were your desires? What does the 5-year-old desire, or an 8- or 10-year-old?

Questioner: Maybe toys, chocolate.

Acharya Prashant: So did they fulfill you or did they just evaporate and you moved on to something else? Similarly, how do you know that what you're desiring today at the age of 20 or 25 is not a toy or chocolate? In fact, it is literally chocolate. You just mentioned chocolates. How do you know that you'll not be smirking at these desires when you are 35 or 40? How do you know there is any worth in these desires?

Questioner: Sir, I don't understand what the problem is. I agree that desires change over age. What is the problem in fulfilling them at that age?

Acharya Prashant: Very well. Very good question.

See, why do you desire something? Do you desire so that the desire remains? Let's say there is a kind of water. There is a particular kind of special water with the property that even if you drink 5 liters of it, you'll still remain thirsty. Would you want to go for such water?

Questioner: But the moment I am drinking that water, I must enjoy it.

Acharya Prashant: No, no. Understand: how can there be enjoyment when you are still thirsty?

Questioner: I'm also thirsty.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. But then you are not, that moment just. And also getting to that water requires investment of your precious life, precious time, and your expectation. Mind you, every desire promises you something: “Come to me, I'll fulfill you.” Is that not the promise?

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: And that's how all objects are advertised as well: “Come to us, we will fulfill you.” And that is also what your expectation is: if I go to that object, it will fulfill me. Right? Now, there is this water. Irrespective of how much you drink of it, you still remain thirsty, and it is an expensive water. It consumes your entire life. It wants your total investment in it. Is it wise to go after such water?

Questioner: No, sir. It is not wise. But in life, I don't see that. For example, I desire a car. When I get the car, the desire dies. What is the problem?

Acharya Prashant: Do you have a car?

Questioner: No.

Acharya Prashant: That's why you can speculate this way. You see, this is the trap: what you have right now is a dream, not a car. And that's the reason you are thinking that when you will have a car, the desire for a car will die. That never, never, never happens.

The day you have a car, what begins is not just your journey in the car, but a journey of disappointment as well. Think about it. Because no car gives you what it promises in your dreams or in the showroom.

The day you take your car out on the road, what begins is not just a journey but also your disappointment, and you start planning therefore for a bigger car. You will not stop at that because the car has disappointed you; otherwise you would not have wanted to go for a bigger car. The car is exactly the water we are talking of. Irrespective of how much you drink of it, your expectations would never be fulfilled. You would be made a fool of.

It is not a question of morality. It is a question of stupidity. It is not that it is morally not proper to have desires. Two hoots to morality. We don't care about morality. But we care about ourselves, right? Because the question is on the self. We care about ourselves. Why should I invest in water that is never going to quench my thirst? I'm being made a fool of and somebody very cunningly is robbing me of my life-energy, time, money, effort, everything. That's the problem with desire.

All desire exists with the promise that it will fulfill you. All desires rest upon that promise: you get that object and you will feel fulfilled. The problem is that the promise is never kept and you are deceived.

Somebody cheats you. All objects are great but only in the future, like the car that you talked of. It is a great thing to dream of, but the day you find it rolling out on the streets you are already thinking of something else.

And is that how one wants to live? An infinite progression of just dissatisfaction, where you are internally dissatisfied and externally being looted. You don't get the car for nothing, right? You earn for several years and then you go and give your hard-earned money to somebody, and what you should get in return is the fulfillment of a promise. But the promise is not kept. The car doesn't give you what you want from it. Are you getting it?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: So now we come back to the self. Well, as if it is ever possible to go too far away from the self, but nevertheless return to the self. So there is this self, and this self, whatever it is, is a desirous entity. You have captured that very well. This self is another name for desire because there is no moment when you are without desire — conscious desire, subconscious desire, big desire, small desire, one desire, many desires — it doesn't matter, but you are always desirous. Right?

So what does this self then think of itself? Try a bit of reverse engineering. If you have always found the self desirous, what does the self think of itself?

Questioner: To associate with other things.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, but that's about other things. If I'm always desirous of other things, what do I think of myself first?

Questioner: When I'm always desirous of other things?

Acharya Prashant: If I am someone always desirous of objects A, B, C, X, Y, Z, something, what do I think of myself in my own eyes? Who am I?

Questioner: A lalchi person.

Acharya Prashant: Don't put labels. Be very factful and logical. So there is this entity, this entity that is always craving for this, this, this (gesturing with his hand) something somewhere, real or imaginary, doesn't matter — but this entity is always craving for something. So what does that tell you about the nature of this entity?

Questioner: Dissatisfied.

Acharya Prashant: Dissatisfied. Very well captured. Incomplete. Can we say that?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: And therefore it thinks of all those objects as candidates that will bring it?

Questioner: Satisfaction.

Acharya Prashant: Or completion. Completion we may say.

So that's what the self is in its own eyes: an incompleteness, a hollowness, a restlessness, a perpetual dissatisfaction. That's what the self is — a constant dissatisfaction, a constant feeling “I am inferior, I'm not worth it, I'm not enough.” That's what the self is. And the more incomplete, the more restless, the more inferior and little and petty the self takes itself to be, the more it will crave for all these objects it sees. Right?

So in its own eyes the self is a hollow, an incomplete thing by its own admission. The self has confessed that “I am a hollow, an incomplete thing.” Now if that is what the self is, tell me what is self-worth? I have admitted I am hollow from within and therefore like a beggar I keep running after this or that, something, “Please, please, please enter my life and fulfill me.” Be it a girl walking down a lane or that next car I'm looking at. All the time I am just wishing, which should be actually called begging.

So who am I in my own admission?

Questioner: A beggar.

Acharya Prashant: A beggar. Now what about self-worth?

Questioner: Maybe, I'm just deceiving that these things have fulfilled my incompleteness.

Acharya Prashant: Lovely. So what we have come to is, as long as we operate as the ordinary self, the self-worth is bound to be not just zero but negative. We will remain beggars in our own eyes. And if you are a beggar, then you are controlled by your masters. Aren't you?

So very proudly you say, “I am Harshit, a student of IIT Kanpur, and that's what defines me.” Tomorrow some random circumstance, some chance event, something in the environment, and the institute checks you out. You'll crash because now you have tied your self-worth to a master, to an external master. Right?

And that's what happens to most people. They have nothing within except a hollow, a vacuum that they are desperately trying to somehow fill using all the objects of the world. Just that the attempt will never succeed, because the attempt rests on the premise that I am actually hollow. And this premise, this assumption, this supposition is never tested at all because our education does not teach us how to.

So we begin with this: I am the self, and I am always hungry, always hollow, always dissatisfied, always incomplete. “Can I have this? May I have that? This one, please. Hello. Please, please.” That is our situation the entire life.

So there has to be zero or negative self-worth. And to hide this absence of self-worth, we load ourselves with even more objects because there is a deep inferiority complex within, because there is a deep void within. So we load ourselves with gadgets of all kinds, with displays of all kinds, with performances of all kinds. You deck up your CV. You ostentate. You just keep showing off to this and that. “See how much I have,” and all this that you are showing off to others or even to yourself. It's not just others that you show off to. Often you show off to yourself as well. “I am now convinced I am a big man.” Why? “Look at my watch.”

Questioner: Sir, then nothing in this world is worthy enough. The word “worthy” itself is not a genuine word.

Acharya Prashant: I am yet not too eager to come to worth. I'm still on the self. Stay on the self. That's what all wisdom is about. Stay on the self.

So I’ll do everything to somehow borrow some worth from the world. Why? Because the self feels impoverished. The self feels just so petty, so miserable, so ashamed of itself that it has to associate with this, take names, say “I belong to that association,” or “I hold this great post now,” and if that post is not there, then I'm nobody. That's a situation, right? And how do you like this situation? Do you enjoy this situation?

Questioner: No, I don't like this.

Acharya Prashant: Oh, you don't like this. Wonderful. That's a crisp admission. Lovely. We don't like this situation. Any honest person should actually never like this situation. But to clearly say, “I don't like this situation,” you require some boldness, some honesty. So yes, well done. You admitted nobody should like this situation where you are just dependent on so many worldly objects.

If you don't like it, then you will ask, from where does this situation arise? Now we look into it. I think that will add value to me because, first of all, I have believed that I lack value in myself. Think of it. You want to add external value to yourself through some object only when you first of all deeply believe that you lack value in yourself. Right?

So this incompleteness, this hollowness, this dissatisfaction that we talked of as being intrinsic to the self, what if they are all suppositions? What if they are just beliefs that the self has borrowed about itself from the environment? Maybe the environment, the first thing it tells you, is that you are incomplete, and later on it tells you, “Now that object A will make you complete.” Maybe without first telling you that you are incomplete, you could not have been persuaded to rush after or beg after object A. Isn't that logical?

If I already feel full, will I rush after something?

Questioner: No.

Acharya Prashant: So this helplessness, this disgrace, this indignity, this misery, this condition that you said you don't like and nobody should like is all because, first of all, we have been made to feel incomplete about ourselves. That's a defining characteristic of the self. It feels incomplete about itself, lonely, and afraid, right? And therefore it has to associate with this in a dependent way. In a dependent way it associates.

How do you know that this incompleteness is, first of all, real? How do you know?

Questioner: Sir, if I don't associate myself with anything, then there is no difference between me and you, and if there is no difference between me and you, then I am equally valuable like you.

Acharya Prashant: No, wait. You are still going into the future. “If I don't do this, then there is no difference.” But the question is different. The question pertains to the present fact. Present fact. The present fact is that you do associate with a lot of things. Not associating yourself with others, not being dependent on others is just an assumption that has never happened with you. Right?

So why I talk of assumptions, we will talk of reality. We are dependent on objects, and we are dependent on objects because we firmly believe that we cannot exist without depending on objects. We firmly believe that, and if you believe that, then there will be negative self-worth. Now, if we want to get rid of this indignified situation, where net worth will definitely be negative, we will have to examine the belief. What is the belief? That without depending on the world, I am nobody. Without having crutches, external supports, I am nobody. We'll have to examine this belief, right?

Questioner: Yes, sir.

Acharya Prashant: Now, let's examine it.

If we have known that whatever the world gives you never really takes away your dependencies, then why, in the innermost sense, should I depend on the world? Yes, externally, for various operational, behavioral, and practical things, I will be dependent. I need this mic to be speaking to you. Yes. But why should internally, as a question of the self, I be dependent on this mic, or that gadget, or this person looking at me from that screen? Why should I be dependent? Why can't I internally be totally free of whatever objects there are? And from that freedom, now, if I speak to you, is that a problem?

Questioner: Sir, no one can be completely independent....

Acharya Prashant: How do you know that? How do you know that? That again is a supposition, and you must investigate: where did this kind of belief come to you from? How do you know? And mind you, we are not talking of a vacuum in which you do not interact with others, in which you do not relate to others. We are talking of not being existentially dependent on others. Is that a problem?

Questioner: Sir, what do you mean by dependence?

Acharya Prashant: I am blank, and this blankness hurts. This blankness is the incompleteness we are talking of. I am blank, and it hurts. Therefore I depend on X. I am X. Now it feels at least momentarily good. This is the dependence I'm talking of.

The feeling, the assumption that I am blank, and this blankness basically is ignorance. I do not know myself. Therefore, there is a void, a blank, and hence some object has to come to fill that blank up. This is the incompleteness I'm talking of. I am sipping from this mug, right? This is not existential dependence. This is a behavioral relationship. Even if this is not there, it does nothing to who I really am.

Similarly, there are so many other things. They may come, they may go, sometimes they are here, you welcome them like guests, and then they are gone. You bid them goodbye like guests. That is fine. But being existentially dependent for your worth on something reduces your self-worth to negative.

So self-worth can exist only when the self is real. And the real self is one that does not borrow itself from the world. Once you do not borrow yourself from the world, we cannot even estimate your self-worth. No number can be put to it. You can call it infinite.

Questioner: Or call it zero.

Acharya Prashant: Or call it negative. Yes, you're right. You can call it infinite or call it zero. Zero in the sense that it cannot be captured in a number, because all numbers are, after all, finite. So, to have any self-worth, first of all, you must have clarity about the self, and that clarity clears away the blank. All wisdom literature, the entire world through the centuries, is about clearing away your false notions about the self.

How do you experience these false notions in your life? How do you know they exist? “I must become an engineer.” Why? Forty years back, people were not so crazy. “I must be in the CS branch.” Why? “I must get married.” Exactly. Why have you?

All these statements that you hear daily are very strong indicators of the blank. Blank. I do not know who I really am. Therefore, I borrow myself from the world. The moment you do that, you are humiliating yourself. It is indignity. Nobody will say, “I do not know the self.” Ignorance about the self exhibits itself in a lot of other ways. Many, many other ways: the need to always belong to a group, the need for social acceptance, the need to be ahead of the pack, the need to be competitive, the need to look good in others’ eyes, the need to be seen as successful. All of these are very strong indicators of the blank.

And if the blank exists, then you have negative self-worth. Have you been together?

Questioner: Yes, sir.

Acharya Prashant: Or did I miss you at some point?

Questioner: No, sir. I can't expect any better answer.

Acharya Prashant: I’m glad.

Questioner: Sir, I got the answer. Thank you so much.

Acharya Prashant: Welcome.

Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. I'm a first-year student of PG at IIT Kanpur. As you have said, the desires we have give an infinite loop, and we come into the dissatisfaction of having something and owning something. Like you have given the example of a car: owning a car will give you dissatisfaction. The moment you sit in it, you will find some kind of lacking in it, some aspect is lacking.

But the thing is, the one who does not own the car, who is owning it for the first time, will have some sort of satisfaction: yes, now I have a car. The sum, the amount, will be less, I know the amount will be less, but it will give a sort of satisfaction: yes, I have this which I didn't have yesterday, in the past.

So my question basically is: how should one stop before it’ll consume, before it’ll go on an infinite loop? When should one stop about the desires that we have? One should stop at a specific moment: this is the moment we should stop the desire, otherwise it will consume me as a whole.

Acharya Prashant: No, no. You see, you are asking for an answer with respect to the objects. This is me, the self, the subject, and I am the desirous one. Are we together?

Questioner: Yes, I am the desirable one.

Acharya Prashant: No. The desirous one. I am the desirous one. The me, the self. And there are all those objects lined up there: the entire universe, the infinite set of objects I can be desirous of. That is all there. Right? Can we see these two?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: Okay. The answer you are asking is in terms of where to stop in that domain. In the domain of objects, you are saying there is an infinite length of objects there. Where do I stop? That's what you're asking.

Questioner: Yes, sir. Where should I distinguish that this is hurting me, and this is with respect to the self?

Acharya Prashant: Right. Now, the direction of the question has to change. You have to look at the subject, the desirous one. That’s me.

The tendency to desire blindly, to desire without discretion, will remain as long as you are inwardly ignorant. Inner ignorance manifests itself in the form of external attachment to worthless objects.

And why do I call them worthless?

Because they will not deliver what they seem to promise in that sense. So you don't have to look at objects and ask me where do I stop there. No, no. If you remain who you are, you cannot stop anywhere. If I remain who I am, the ignorant self, the self without knowledge of itself, the person without self-knowledge, if I remain that, then it is not possible to stop anywhere.

Organized religion, traditional religion, self-help literature — all these have tried their best, recommended recipes, tricks, tactics, methods to draw lines somewhere. They say, “You do this much and then you will know where to stop.” That does not help. Because it is not about going till a point and stopping there. It is about the one who is going. It is not about the road you are walking. You are asking me how far to go down that road. It is not about the road that you are walking. It is about the one who is walking.

As long as you are inwardly ignorant, there is no point, the road for you would stop. Just no point. And that's why in India it has been called the endless cycle of existence. You just keep walking. And because you keep walking and it is endless, therefore simply called a circle, because a circle is endless.

Questioner: That's the way society is, right?

Acharya Prashant: That's the way society is, that's how each of us are. That's how the self is. The self wants a limit on the number of objects. It does not want self-knowledge.

And now you see how all these religious commandments exist. They will tell you, “Consume, but only this much.” And that is also the answer you want from me: where to draw the line when it comes to consumption. And that's what all organized religion has done. That's what all Baba ji’s are doing. They'll tell you, “Yes, consume, but in limit. Desire, but let there be a limit. Yes, you can have, but just one car, don't have two cars. Yes, you can have, but just one wife, don't have sex with two women. You can do whatever you want to, but in limit.”

And that's where your question is coming from: how to set the limit. I'm saying the question is based on flawed premises. It is not about how many objects to consume; it is about the nature of the consumer, the self. Do I know myself? If I know, then I'll know which objects to relate to.

There are only two ways to relate to objects, and I'll be glad if I am noted at this point. When you have some inner illumination, when you have inner honesty, when you know how your inner state is, and you see that there is a lot of darkness there.

What do I mean by darkness? False beliefs, false beliefs about who I am, false beliefs about what the world is like.

Nobody is actually ever ignorant. What we have instead is a lot of fake knowledge, just assumptions, suppositions, that we term as knowledge or truth, whereas it is just imagination. So when one starts seeing that one is full of this kind of darkness, then there are only two ways to relate to objects.

One, I'll relate to an object that illumines me inwardly. I'll relate to an object that acts like a mirror to me. I’ll go to an object that shows me my own condition, situation, and face.

Questioner: For me, that would be my mother.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. So, you go to someone who does not entertain your falseness. You go to someone or something, it could be a place, a book, a person, anything. You go to that object so that it helps you illumine your inner darkness. That is one way of relating to objects, and you don't have to count the number of objects in such a case. The more, the better.

Anyways, such objects are very difficult to find. If you want something that deepens your darkness, they come dime a dozen. You ask for one, you get 5,000 such objects. But objects that can inwardly illuminate you are rare. So if you can somehow approach or relate to many of them, no problem with that. Don't ask for a limit. Don't ask for a count. Don't ask where to stop. Stop nowhere.

The second kind of object that you can relate to is when your inner illumination is increasing. When you find that now you can see things in a better light, when you find that your old assumptions are all falling off, when you can laugh at your former self, now you relate to others just to help them, to illumine them, just as someday related to you to illumine you.

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