The Mind Must be 25 Forever
Acharya Prashant: What is the best use of youth?
The same use, as is best for, in any point of life.
It's not as if youth can be put to a "use" that is different from the best use of any other stage of life. Doesn't matter how old you are, your time must have only one purpose, one aim, one direction: self-revelation, peace, clarity, realization.
It's just that it is much more facile in youth. Why? Because in your youth, you are neither a kid nor too grown up. Because you are not a kid, your brain is now developed enough to analyze, criticize, think, ruminate, ponder, delve, and introspect. Now all these things are possible for you. You can now gather knowledge, divide it, compare it and your body has strength. So, the mind is not unduly afraid of physical limitations. At the same time, you are not old. Layers and layers of sediments have not yet gathered upon you. Your habits haven't become fossilized, you haven't settled down into grooves and you are not burdened with social responsibilities. So, youth is the most appropriate time to move speedily towards yourself. The same movement must happen throughout life. But it is, as I said, much more facile in youth.
Questioner: Is it not another idea sold to us when youth is usually talked of in terms of a time to indulge?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, of course! Indulge so that commercial products find a market. Don't you see that? Unless the youth indulges in consumption, how will the market sell? And the youth can absorb a lot, eat a lot, travel a lot. So, it's great to trap them. If you want to sell burgers to eighty-year olds, you have a practical problem. The buggers can't even eat now. So, if you are selling burgers, you better target twenty-five-year olds. They can consume burger after burger. They have the innards.
Youth is not a period where you are to really make merry. Youth is the period when you are rushing towards a goal, a city, and the road is smooth and traffic-free and the engine is strong. So, you can speed up. You better speed up because you know that, soon you will come to congested areas. Soon your vehicle may start developing snags. Right now, it is just the appropriate time to hurry up. "It's an expressway, good sunshine, so I can see clearly, and the vehicle is fine right now. I better accelerate."
Questioner: Why is it that old age always gets connected to the concept of having regrets so much?
Acharya Prashant: Because you haven't sped during your youth. So now you know that your vehicle is going to run out of fuel and you are still nowhere near the destination. You will have only regrets.
Questioner: Is that my regret or they are telling me to regret this?
Acharya Prashant: Both. Because those who are telling you to be regretful, are exactly the ones who advised you not to hurry up during youth. So, the same script that says "indulge in youth" also says "regret in old age"; it's a part of the same script. Act 2, scene 1: "indulge"; Act 4, Scene 3: "regret"; it's the same script.
That's why the Saints kept on telling you "balyakal khel gawayo": you wild away your childhood in just trivial matters and your youth in desires and consumption and now you are left with only regrets when you are old. That's what the saints have always been telling you. And that's why mostly you see old people with a very freckled face; freckled and frowny. It's very difficult to find a joyful sixty-year or eighty-year-old. It's a rarity.
Questioner: Those who have fun in youth are seldom happy in their old age.
Acharya Prashant: Correct, very-very difficult it would be to find a blissful octogenarian. In fact, the word "senility", you know where it comes from? When do you say somebody has gone senile? In India they say: Sathiya jana . Do you know what that means? "Sathiya" means that you have reached sixty; you become senile. That's where the word "senility" comes from.
Questioner: After forty, mid-life crisis.
Acharya Prashant: Midlife crisis and all this. Don't you see you are bound to have a midlife crisis after forty, why? Because of the ways you have gone through in your youth! The most wasteful period of one's life is often the time between twenty and thirty-five. You are at the peak of your powers between let's say, twenty and forty. And if you don't utilize that time, then post forty, obviously, you will have a crisis. Forty to sixty—you will spend battling that crisis. And after sixty, you aren't even battling, you are just regretting and waiting for death. This too is a stereotype. But they aren't just.
Questioner: Even though they have to be guarded against and they have to be rejected, they have to nevertheless scrutinize them for throwing them aside. Because if you don't scrutinize then we won't even realize when they might start creeping back into power over us.
Acharya Prashant: Obviously. Everybody who is in a bar is not drunk. What does the stereotype say? "They are all drunkards inside the bar." Not everybody is drunk, but then a big proportion of them actually are drunk. So better give some credence to the stereotype. It does not mean that you should blindly follow it. But at the same time, it serves to investigate why that stereotype exists in the first place.
Questioner: You have to know how much and why the idea has power. That is the only way to become immune to the power over you.
Acharya Prashant: Of course.
Questioner: If you take quick decisions that impact you for the good of you, it harms you as well by the society or as the family responsibility around your professional or personal life…
Acharya Prashant: Great decision cannot come without the courage to face the consequences.
Questioner: But if you take quick decisions then you can't take action with great certainty for that particular situation then how can you get over, from that action? It impacts you sometimes.
Acharya Prashant: What does quickness mean?
Questioner: You said to take a quick decision from twenty to thirty-five—which is the age of youth—for your personal and professional life. It also harms you sometimes.
Acharya Prashant: Twenty to thirty-five is fifteen years. What do you mean by quick decisions?
Questioner: If you are taking some actions for good things, for your life, then it impacts you as well sometimes.
Acharya Prashant: It will impact you. It must impact you.
Questioner: In that case, it demotivates you as well.
Acharya Prashant: No. If you are getting demotivated then your decision is not right. No good decision can come without the accompanying courage to bear the consequences. If you have taken a decision and are then regretting the consequences, then the decision itself couldn't have been great. The result of a great decision is great bliss; the result of a great decision cannot be misery.
And wise decisions are not the same as quick decisions. These lights have been quickly switched on. You press the button and quickly there is light. That does not mean that there is any wisdom applied by the light bulbs. It's just a mechanical reaction. Spontaneity and quickness are not the same things. Wisdom is related to spontaneity, and quickness can be merely mechanical. Somebody abuses you; you quickly abuse back. Is there any wisdom in this? But the action is quick.
Questioner: Maybe he is saying not a quick decision but the decision at the correct time.
Acharya Prashant: Obviously at the age of twenty-five, you will not make decisions to have dentures. What do you mean by decision at the right time?
Questioner: Right time means like, if we take your example itself, you were able to take the right decision at the right time.
Acharya Prashant: Right decision can be taken only at the right time. What do you mean by the right decision at the wrong time? If you make decisions at the wrong time, is it right?
Questioner: Let's say I had this feeling about being spiritual earlier also, but I was not able to take that decision to dedicate myself.
Acharya Prashant: So, take it right now. Do what is possible right now, you have no other possibility anyway. How does it matter where you are? The GPS says your location, destination and this is the way. And there always is a way. How does it matter where you have reached? What is the GPS always ready to tell you? What path takes you from your location to the destination? And the path is always there. It doesn't matter where you are. Wherever you are, a way is available. Use that. Otherwise, one is just finding an excuse. One is saying, "You know, I didn't make the right decision at that time, therefore, I am stuck." It's just another addition to the long list of excuses we already have.
Questioner: "I am a bad boy and nothing can happen now."
Acharya Prashant: "Now nothing can be done. It's all spoilt you know. We are chasing two hundred and we have lost four wickets for twenty. The game is gone. So why even try?"
Questioner: Youth is also an idea or what? Like I am over forty, so I feel like the only thing that probably changes is my body. My body doesn't recover so fast and all those things.
Acharya Prashant: Correct.
Questioner: In case of mind also, a little bit of sharpness has come down I feel. But otherwise, it's the same. Nothing has changed.
Acharya Prashant: You are very right. If one is living rightly, then youth is the permanent state of one's mind. The body can grow old. The mind cannot grow old if one has lived rightly. Youth, that way is your default state.
The 'Atma' has no age; it is ageless; the mind has the right age—one age—the right age of the mind is twenty-five. The mind must be twenty-five forever. And the body, its age changes every moment. The age of the body changes with the clock. But the age of the mind should get frozen at one point: twenty-five; twenty-five forever.
Questioner: Eighteen till I die.
Acharya Prashant: Eighteen till I die, that kind of a thing.
Questioner: I am sure you discussed this before but what are the components of this right living that you were talking about, that will keep the mind forever young.
Acharya Prashant: All that we have talked of: inquiry, fearlessness, love, compassion, discipline, surrender, love for freedom. If one has been living that way, then mentally one never grows old, never. You will be young even when you are ninety. And this that I am saying is not an idea.
Questioner: And when people say that youth is energetic. The definition of energetic also somehow seems to mean hyperactivity. But energetic does not necessarily mean hyperactivity.
Acharya Prashant: The right channelization of energy. When people say, "You know, that guy is very energetic", that does not necessarily mean that he is wisely channelizing his energy. It only means an effulgence of energy, which might even be disruptive.
Questioner: Self-destructive.
Acharya Prashant: Or self-destructive, boisterous, simply random! That kind of energy is of no use.
If you'll go into it, it is very very interesting. The way we are living is just not done. And it's extremely tragic as well as amusing to wonder how we came to this kind of living. You must wonder: Why must forty or forty-five years old live like this? Why? How was it mandated?
Right now, in the vast sky of all the possibilities, a very narrow path has been delineated. And almost the entire mankind has been told to take that path. All the other possibilities have been closed.
Look at this vast sky, see, and imagine a very narrow trail, a very narrow and nonsensical trail; nonsensical and equally random; existing just for historical, social, and evolutionary reasons. In the middle, there is some trail and eight billion living people are walking down that trail. And there is no fence. No fence separates that trail from the great and open possibilities. You can jump over, cross over, any time it's possible. But just about nobody is prepared to leave the retinue.
Questioner: The elephant has been chained.
Acharya Prashant: "The elephant has been chained".
Questioner: There is no chain. He doesn't realize that there is no chain.
Acharya Prashant: Obviously, that's what he said.
Very narrow, very very narrow and crooked trail; a trail that makes no sense. And the entire mankind is walking down that trail.
Questioner: It starts with the schooling itself.
Acharya Prashant: Schooling, television. You know what, I have come to see something very very stupid but very appalling as well. Our consciousness is made up of popular media. What you call as the consciousness of the average human being, it is made up of movies, the songs. We live our life by the songs.
Questioner: Slogans and lyrics, jingles.
Acharya Prashant: Remove the songs and half of a man's problems would be solved. Songs are dictating our consciousness. So much so that everything, even our smiles are not ours. We smile by the way the songs tell us to. And if you can be discerning enough, just by looking at somebody's smile you can tell "Oh! This is the smile of that particular actress". Even the smiles are now totally borrowed. Nothing about us is ours.
The television, the media, the movies are there in our houses, in our bedrooms. The way even we physically associate with our partners; if that is not enough, they are there in our very being. The way you lie down, the way you wake up, the way you cry, the way you laugh, the way you eat; the whole story of being is a fabricated story. There is no authorship in that story.
Questioner: I could always accept all the ideas, but one thing shocked me the most. I have seen even deaths in the family and seen women even in those occasions crying in a particular manner. That shocks me the most all my life.
Acharya Prashant: Because that's how you are supposed to cry.
Questioner: How can that happen? Thirty years back when I was a kid, I could see women crying differently and differently.
Acharya Prashant: Because now the serials have changed, and a dainty, commonly woman must cry in a dainty and commonly way.
Questioner: They need the help of Rudalis also.
Acharya Prashant: But that's an old tradition. The thing is, you look at people laugh in albums that are half a century old and you will find them laughing in ways that are different from ours. That's how complete the strangled hold is. You don't even laugh originally. You don't even glance originally.
Questioner: It's because of our role models.
Acharya Prashant: The songs you know, they are everywhere and then there is the fiction, the popular literature, and such things.
Questioner: Sir, a kid who is born is already always surrounded by society. So, the kid is having no choice whatever the parents or school or teachers are telling, feeding.
Acharya Prashant: We don't have any kids here. So, we have a choice.
Questioner: Yes, we have.
Acharya Prashant: Your emotions are not yours; your love is not yours; your hatred is not yours; your dress is not yours; your hairstyle is not yours; your eyelashes are not yours.
Questioner: I have a question.
Acharya Prashant: Your questions are not yours.
(silence)
Questioner: Over time I analyzed that there is a utility to the institutions or traditions that were made by wise people. Now, there is no essence left to them but just continuity.
My question is why don't we change the systems in the way our ancestors did?
Acharya Prashant: Do that. Those changes do not come through social consensus, they come when one man with fire in his heart decides to burn down the trash of the past. Do that. No tradition emerges from social consensus. It always starts from one person and later on snowballs into a popular thing. So, if you can see something, why don't you materialize it? Why are you always at the receiving end of tradition? If you can't start traditions, at least demolish a few. Demolish them or rejuvenate them, whatever.
Questioner: We can call them average.
Acharya Prashant: Hmm, take the easy way. Want to have it and eat it as well, right?
Questioner: Demolishing is possible by only very few. Guru Nanak being shown as he is born with that.
Acharya Prashant: Not true. Had that been the case, then all of us wouldn't have been reading "Tripura Rahasya" at once. Then you would have said it is only for the author and the selected few. Why is the entire mankind reading the scriptures?
Questioner: Maybe the stories are made afterward.
Acharya Prashant: Not true. Don't label them as supernatural or extraordinary or whatever. The potentiality is there in everybody. What is befuddling is how the potentiality just goes to grave without ever being expressed. And it's such a terrible loss, isn't it? We count all kinds of losses, but we never count this opportunity loss: "I was born with great potential and the potential has gone to the funeral pyre." The possibility is there. It's just that we have become so straight-jacketed that we can't even visualize ourselves as the vehicle, as the exponent of that potential.
You know one of the reasons for this is that we don't take one step at a time. You are looking at yourself and you are looking at Guru Nanak and you are saying, "Oh, he is standing atop Mount Everest, and here I am deep down in the valley. How will I ever reach him?" Obviously, if you will compare yourself straight away to Guru Nanak then the climb is herculean, very steep. Take one step at a time. From where you are, take one step.
That has been a very central part of my teaching: don't think too far ahead, just take one step, that will be easy . Won't it be? Take one step and be determined. Then take another baby step. And when you are taking one step, think only about that one step. One step is not very difficult. Is it? But when you look at the mountain top then it is very difficult. Looking becomes the deterrent.
People have come to me and said, "You know, you started at the right time, you have the benefit of privileged education, this that. When we look at you, we understand that it's not possible for us." I said then you stop looking at me. Then you stop coming because I am doing a great disservice to you. Instead of facilitating your movement, I am blocking it. Don't look at me at all. Look at your condition and take one step. I have also just taken a series of tiny steps. And I am continuously taking them. Just as you are on your journey, I too am. And there are just small steps that you have to take, and I have to take.
Don't have any images about the outcome. You don't know who Guru Nanak is. You cannot visualize who Krishna or Kabir or Mohammad were. You simply cannot. Given who we are and where we are, all our visualizations will be very juvenile. So, don't think about the endpoint. Look at your present situation and ask yourself, how do I move one little bit? Can't I improve just a little? That's it.
