The Man in Coma Dreams of Changing the World
Questioner: Namaste Acharya ji. My name is Lata. I'm a PhD student here in biomedical engineering. So, drawing from that dumbness of things that we do. So, what happens generally is, the friends I have, the people I've met throughout, there's a lack of why, in why they're doing the PhD. I have met them, I asked them why. And they're like, "There's bachelor's, there's master's, then there's PhD. What else is there?" Okay, for engineers there's a different agenda. They have BTech, didn't get a job, did MTech, didn't get a job, did a PhD. So, it happens that way.
So, what happens at the end of a PhD? Like, a PhD shouldn't be a degree, right? It is to seek something. You're seeking something deeper in that field. You're not just here for that. How do we find that why? Why are we doing this? Why are we here?
Acharya Prashant: You're carrying this book, right? Just open the second chapter. Just open the second chapter.
Listener: “Why do people show off?”
Acharya Prashant: Wait, wait. Notice the color of the paper. Notice the font. Notice the theme of the book. Now, move to any subsequent page. Notice the color of the paper. Notice the color of the ink. Notice the theme, the central idea of what's being said. Move to any other paper. Now, move to the end. Has anything changed?
So, it's not about MTech or PhDs. That's how we have been since kindergarten. And how can it suddenly change when you enter BTech or MTech or doctorate? That's the entire story. One chapter cannot be an exception. One page cannot stand out. You cannot suddenly have red ink in the middle of black, an ocean of black. Possible? It's an ocean of black. Can you have a red dot in the middle? Impossible. It'll be dissolved. It'll be taken in, co-opted, killed.
Listener: But it might stand out also if it is there.
Acharya Prashant: It doesn't. It's a big if. There is no such dot. Please understand. It's an entire stream of ignorance. But you notice only those places or points or dots or drops where you start feeling uncomfortable, where you receive a hit. This same flow, this same theme, when it serves your little interests, then you don't raise any questions. Are you getting it?
Okay, I'll make it more objective. Did you choose your subjects when you were in class 10th? No, you'll say we actually had no choice. Fine. So, why should the picture change when you enter a PhD? It's the same theme. Chapter 2, chapter 8, chapter 11, then death. We'll die the same way. Even the last page carries the same ink and the same theme and the same page. We'll die the same way.
Do we really choose our thoughts? I'm asking you. Please tell me.
Listener: Isn't it just the prejudices and memories which are there?
Acharya Prashant: Do you choose your feelings? Then how do you choose your careers or your partners? Because if thoughts and feelings come randomly, then the things that we hold so close to our chest, they also just come randomly. And if they are random, why do you invest so much in them?
That's the story of our life. When we choose nothing since the beginning, we'll be choosing nothing even in the middle. PhD is the middle. The fellow is not making a choice. It's an unconscious flow. Like a leaf flowing in a stream, being carried away. Being just carried away. Something is just carrying us through life. We don't determine our goals. We are nobody. There exists nothing within, really. We are just processes. And that's a pity because we can be more than a process.
Because we can be really conscious. Because choice is available. But in the name of choice, we just glorify our unconscious behavior and say, "I chose this." You didn't choose this, sir. It happened to you. But that would appear insulting, a bit shameful. It's happening to me.
Everything is happening to me. This happened to me. That happened to me. The body happened to me. My gender happened to me. My religion happened to me. My kids happened to me. Everything just happened to me. I have never actually, really consciously chosen.
That would appear quite insulting. So we say, "No, no. I have now chosen to take up that job. I have chosen that car model. I have chosen to settle in the US." No, not at all. It's not your choice. You are just flowing. You are drifting. You are drifting. You are like a man in a coma, being wheeled away on a stretcher.
Is the man driving through the hospital? But that's what he claims to do. He is comatose. There is no consciousness. The force causing the movement is not internal. There is no inner locus of control at all. That's how we are. But that shows up, let's say, at one particular point, and then we wonder. We actually worry about it. I hope it goes deeper instead of just worrying. We try to understand it. We observe it. We approach it. We look at it. Not just this moment, but how all moments have been and how all moments are likely to be, not just with us, but with everybody, not just around us, but even in history. That's the way it has been. Right?
Questioner: But then are we accountable for any of our actions?
Acharya Prashant: Accountable only to yourself. You are the measure of your actions. You.
Listener: So does even what we say, unconditional love, does it even exist?
Acharya Prashant: Who is the lover?
Listener: No, anyone. Let's say I have a love for science. I have a love for a person. Does it even exist?
Acharya Prashant: The fellow is being wheeled away on a stretcher, and he is in a coma since birth. This one would be the lover? Like seriously? But in his dream, he's uttering some nonsense. "I love you. That one is my kid." This is what is happening.
And the biological processes are all going on because biological processes do not require consciousness. So the fellow is growing here. The fellow is growing in height and in weight. The fellow has attained puberty. The fellow can even reproduce in a coma. That is possible. Only your cells have to be taken, and the reproduction will happen.
And all that is happening, and that is what we call the story of our life. So what do you mean by unconditional love? The question is, who is the lover? The lover is in a coma. The lover does not know himself, and "I love you" begins with "I." The lover does not know what this "I" is. Where is the question of love? One doesn't even come to love before "I." Forget about coming to "you." "You" is a distant third. "I love you" requires "I" in the first place. Where is that?
Listener: Is there any purpose, or this person in a coma has no purpose at all? It is just living and passing by the way.
Acharya Prashant: Only the person in a coma can have a purpose. You see, the purpose will be to come out of the coma. What else? What else? Please tell me. If you are so horribly sick, can you have another purpose? Must you have another purpose?
But instead of having that one all-important purpose, we have all kinds of purposes. I need to go to the grocer and get something, get a new mug. I have to arrange for a date at that particular place. All kinds of purposes we nurture, except for that one purpose which will make all other purposes viable.
That one purpose is, first of all, come to your senses and stand up on your feet. That we don't do. We remain comatose, and yet we keep dreaming of multiple purposes.
You know, "I'm studying so that one day I'll own a Ferrari." And how would you ride it? On a stretcher? How exactly?
Think of all your purposes. You will find the top purpose is missing. And if the top purpose is missing, of what value are all these secondary purposes? Purpose, goal, goals, targets. All this hustle. I have to get there, do this. All this is purpose, right? And yeah.
Questioner: Then why do we dread this philosophy of karma so much?
Acharya Prashant: Because the unconscious one can only have an idea of philosophy, a projection of philosophy, an image of philosophy, not philosophy itself.
So karma, for example, would be something totally unknown to the unconscious one. But he'll have some image of what karma is. Like the mass of the population. Go to anybody, karma is such a popular word, and nobody would say, "I don't know what it means." Everybody has some vague idea, some hazy image, right? But do they know what karma is? When you are unconscious, you cannot know anything, let alone karma.
What is karma? Please tell me. What is karma?
Questioner: The basic saying of what goes around comes around.
Listener: It's actions. No, it is not that. It essentially means actions. So whatever...
Listener: The actions without any dependence, niskama karma which we say.
Acharya Prashant: If it comes from the Bhagavad Gita, all it means is karma does not matter. That's what the Bhagavad Gita says.
You are needlessly obsessed with action. You should be attending to the actor. And when the actor is in the right place, then you don't have to worry about action.
The right action will follow by itself. You won't have to plan it. You won't have to worry about it. It will be spontaneous. That's karma. But would the unconscious man know that? He would say karma is, if you do bad things right now, then in your next birth somebody will come and hit you with an iron rod.
Questioner: So, is that sleeping man in a coma? Is the way to get out of the coma only through philosophy, or can we calculate it and get it from the side?
Acharya Prashant: Glad you raised this. Wonderful! Glad!
See, the saving grace is you can never be fully unconscious. Never, never be fully unconscious. And that's why doctors dread it when you are deeply unconscious. Even when they anesthetize you for surgery or something, the unconsciousness is only to a level. And if you exceed that level, doctors get jittery because that may now mean that you'll never return.
You can never be fully unconscious, and that's why sedatives and dopamine spikes don't help. You will suffer. You want to be unconscious so that you can avoid the experience of suffering, right? You want to sleep. Does that not happen when you are very tense? You want to fall asleep so that that deep, dirty, ugly experience can be avoided or at least postponed.
But in existence, being fully unconscious is not possible. Some part of you will remain conscious, even if you lie a thousand times to it. You may keep telling it, "No, no, no. There is no reason to experience any suffering. All is hunky-dory. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep." It still won't go to sleep because its nature is awakening. It will remain awake. And because it will remain awake, you will suffer. You'll suffer.
Just as a man who retains some sense through a surgery, he'll suffer, right? If during a surgery, when you are being cut open, if you still have some sensitivity left, physical sensitivity, you experience suffering, don't you? Yes. That's our inevitable condition. We try to become as insensitive to ourselves as possible. But we can't succeed. That's the law.
So, the one in a coma, at some deep level, will know that he is in a bad state because being in a coma is not his nature. Nature is awakening. And when you go against your nature, you will suffer. That is the very definition of suffering, going against your nature.
Nature is awakening, and yet you have preferred a coma. And that is suffering. And when you suffer, then out of self-love, you must figure out what this thing called suffering is, what its entire structure is. And by knowing that, you manage to gradually awaken. That's the way out.
When you suffer or when you are unconscious, then you still have the power to know why you are unconscious, right? And by knowing, by knowing more and more and more, you put away the unconsciousness because knowing itself is consciousness. When you know more and more, you find you are rising out from the coma.
