The Life Journey of Acharya Prashant
Questioner: If you could take us back to the time when the entire journey began, are there any memories you have from your childhood when you started thinking about these philosophical teachings or towards spirituality?
Acharya Prashant: There isn’t any one particular memorable or epiphanic incident, but it was happening almost all the time. So, I was looking at the world around — how people are on the streets, in the houses, in the school, on the playground, and a lot of things would strike me as odd. So, observing and processing were going on all the time.
So, I was looking at the world and seeing suffering, discord, disharmony, fakeness, and as a kid, all that was getting registered and questioned, probably even disliked. So, there was an urge to change the shape of things as they currently are. That’s how it is. I don’t remember any one particular incident. Though, if pressed, I can probably pull out something, but that won’t be particularly significant.
Questioner: So, how were you as a child? Were you more into reading books of others?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, I was reading a lot, but I was also playing, I was also very mischievous. So, you asked for incident; yeah, there is a series of incidents which we can together call as one incident, which is that I was the class monitor and also the club head. They were called houses. We had yellow house, red house, green and blue. So, I was leading the yellow house.
So, both these are positions of responsibility and gravity, you are the class monitor and also the house leader and quite often I would be found standing outside the class in punishment. So, a lot of teachers, I very fondly remember them, they had a certain liking for me. They would come and say, “You have to take responsibilities in life and once you are in class eleventh, probably you will become the head boy of the school and why must you bring this upon yourself? Being the monitor of the class, why should you; of all students, be found being punished?”
So, I was quite a mischievous brat, also a studious one. I like to go deep into whatever I was doing. So, that led to all the academic accolades; that also led to the headache that I would cause, sometimes to my family, sometimes to my teachers.
And when it comes to reading, the reading wasn’t confined to any one particular genre. So, I was hungry and I just sucked in whatever came my way, from little comic strips meant for class two students to somebody’s PhD thesis, even if I couldn’t make much of it. But, if I would find a copy of something, anything, for sure I would pick it up and try to grasp what’s going on. And that made me branch erratically in all directions with no particular plan or pattern, an organic kind of very natural growth.
I was reading up on all things possible. And when we would visit a bookstore, I would never be satisfied with the number of books purchased that particular visit. In fact, my father would specifically plan visits to bigger cities where we had more prominent bookstores, just so that we could purchase books for me. He was an officer in government service. So, sometimes he would be posted in places that were not quite big and established. So, to get well-stocked bookstores, we needed to travel and we did. So, that was a bit remarkable to travel just so that you can visit a bookstore; that was happening once every few months.
Essays, poems, history, science, father himself was quite a well-read person, so, he would bring me quite an assorted set from all possible directions. So, the entire stock that we had was very eclectic.
Questioner: You also mentioned how you looked at the world in terms of the kind of suffering it had. So, at that time, would you go to someone and talk about it?
Acharya Prashant: I was a hesitant kid. Even if I was mischievous, that mischief was limited to my inner circle. When it comes to outsiders, I’m initially quite hesitant in approaching or talking. I was basically shy. So, I could be called an introvert. So, when I would find suffering in its various shades, all kinds of colors and dimensions, I would watch. For example, an overcrowded train, it would engross me. The display of poverty and famished bodies, people who were obviously not even eating well, patched clothes, kids who were obviously not going to school, and that would numb me down.
I’m trying to recollect; I don’t remember approaching anybody to speak to them, or whatever, knowing fully well that there’s nothing that I can really do. And probably I was not going to make a half-hearted attempt. It was so significant for me; the fact of human suffering, that it was a disgrace to the suffering one to just go and console him or her. If suffering actually means so much, then it deserves to be taken head-on, or you are just a pretender.
There is someone who is on a very nominal kind of diet, needs clothes, needs a different life altogether, and it was not possible for me to go and say, “Uh-oh, never mind, God will take care of you or keep trying, one day things will turn for better,” but it would stay with me for long and turn into a quiet silence within.
Questioner: So, you had not even confided to your family about it?
Acharya Prashant: Not even once. I don’t remember talking to anybody about what I was making of the world. So, Lucknow, where I did my ICSC, class seven to class ten, I would be returning home on my bicycle after school, and Nishatganj, and there were these shops, butcher’s shops, and you would see animals; the chicken being pulled out and their feathers are being plucked. And there would be a lot of noise from the animal, helpless cries, unnerving cacophony. And then suddenly, there would be total silence. He’s gone, finished. And whenever such a thing would be happening, I would just stop there and look from a distance, an entire body is hung at the shops. So, I would take that in and move on. Probably I wrote of that once or twice in the essays we were asked to write.
Questioner: You would vent it out in the form of writing?
Acharya Prashant: I was not venting it out, it was becoming me. It was not something alien that you could vent out. You vent out stuff that you cannot digest or assimilate. It kept on going into me and became my bone and my blood. And it wasn’t dramatic at all, having watched all that, I could come to my home, take my lunch, do my homework, and even play a video game. It’s not that it was like a huge blow on my consciousness. I was just observing. It was a continuous backdrop of melancholy with no unusual spikes to demonstrate to anybody or to register within myself.
Questioner: So, at that stage, what that kid wanted to do or what that kid wanted to become?
Acharya Prashant: There was no immediate purpose or objective. I was just seeing the way things were. And maybe that seeing was doing something to me within. Maybe that continuous observation moulded my decisions later on. Bu, you know, I don’t remember coming to any kind of conclusion early on. No, I was not thinking of changing the world. I wasn’t thinking of reforming the society. I didn’t even know why things are the way they are. In some way, I was just stunned. When you are stunned, you don’t start darting in some direction with purpose, you know. You’re seeing these things and it’s a continuous process of passive stunning, every single thing.
When it comes to career aspirations, because I had exposure to bureaucrats in my family, so that was a default choice — if you’re an IAS, you can do something good. In fact, I wasn’t very inclined towards engineering. I went to IIT because the stats told me that most of the top ranks in UPSC are obtained by IITians. Last five or ten years, when I would look at the background of the toppers, would find a lot of IITians there. So, that way, engineering became a choice. I was groping. I would be dishonest if I say I had any clear direction. And I wasn’t exactly in a hurry because that would have been dishonest.
If I do not clearly understand what’s going on, how do I form a definite picture and freeze a definite plan of action. The picture was emerging and the plan of action would follow from that. You see, what I’m calling as cruelty, I didn’t know whether it’s coming from religion or economics or basic human biology itself. Maybe we are cruel by our very physical composition, I didn’t know. I was just seeing something that would shock me, I didn’t understand it. So, I waited for the clarity to emerge and it’s still emerging. It’s a work in progress. The way things are interconnected, the way everywhere, it’s a play of the same inner tendency, it took me a long time to come to see that.
It would sound very dramatic if I say I had clarity at the age of fifteen, that child prodigy stuff, that wasn’t the case. But I was doing what I could. I was observing, I was reading. And on issues that I couldn’t grasp, I would have conversations with my father. And he had the knack of simplifying things instantly. So, I could go to him with a problem, the narration of which would last, let’s say, ten minutes, and his response would be twenty seconds, forty seconds, a minute at max, and everything would stand resolved. So, that’s something that I still appreciate, very simple understanding of things that appear complex. That understanding itself becomes a solution.
So, that’s the way it has been. One thing, I think, I can give myself some credit for — I didn’t try to sweep things under the carpet. If I have seen something, I have seen it. I didn’t try to pretend that I understand when I didn’t. I didn’t try to trivialize something just because I couldn’t wrap my head around it. If something was beyond my comprehension, I let it stay there. And the process remained continuous, in that sense, not the exact word, but, a bit laborious, and demanded patience. I don’t know whether all this is making any sense, but that’s the way it has been. It didn’t make much sense even to me, so, I don’t expect it to be very obvious to everybody, but fine.
