Inferiority

If most people are oppressed, why do unjust systems still survive? Because the oppressed themselves unknowingly support them through inner ignorance. No structure can sustain without the participation of those it exploits. Real change cannot begin outside; it must begin within. When individuals see clearly and refuse to remain complicit, the system collapses. Blaming the system is easy, but transformation demands responsibility for one’s own life.

Let’s separate two things clearly. One, physical harm. If you are in a jungle, you must know how to protect yourself from the beasts, right? That’s a matter of basic intelligence and rationality. Two, feeling inferior, that does involve your consent. Nobody can make you feel inferior if you are not participating in that phenomenon. Somebody abuses you, slaps you, insults you; that is something he can do. But feeling inferior, that is something you do to yourself.

हमारी खाल का रंग क्या है? हमारी हाइट क्या है? हमारा जेंडर क्या है? हम किस घर में पैदा हुए? इनका हम कुछ नहीं कर सकते। तो अगर इसको लेकर आपको तनाव होता है या ईर्ष्या होती है, तो इसका मतलब है कि जो प्राकृतिक चीज़ें हैं, उससे ज़्यादा आइडेंटिफ़ाइड हैं। ऐसी चीज़ से हमें आइडेंटिफ़ाई ही नहीं करना है, जिसमें हमारा कोई रोल ही नहीं है। हमारा बस कहाँ चलता है? हमारे चुनाव में। चेतना का काम है चुनाव करना, आप अपने चुनावों की फ़िक्र करो कि मैं सजग रहूँ और ज़िंदगी में सही चुनाव करती चलूँ।

इसका कोई इलाज़ नहीं है न। अगर तुम जानवर ही हो तो इसका कोई इलाज़ नहीं है। इसका इलाज़ तो सिर्फ़ तभी है, जब ऊँची चेतना के इंसान बन पाओ। और उसके लिए तुमको आना होगा वेदान्त की ओर, उपनिषदों की ओर और कोई तरीका नहीं है। वरना ये जो बात है चकाचौंध में फसने की, हीन भावना में फसने की, ईर्ष्या में फसने की, ये सब तो एक छोटे बच्चे में भी होती है।

दुनिया के सामने इंसान की तरह खड़े होना सीखो भाई! केचुए की तरह थोड़े ही है कि किसी भी के भी पाँव के नीचे आ गए। इस चेहरे पर तेज होना चाहिए, ऑंखों में ताक़त झलकनी चाहिए! कुछ बोलो तो उसमें साहस हो और संकल्प हो! आवाज़ काँपे नहीं, थरथराए…

Does the person you are with encourage you to read? You have to ask, “What does he bring for me, roses or books?”

Be very cautious of those who bring roses for you, especially red roses. Books are what we all need, and books are dangerous. Books are dangerous because…

When you feel inferior, even a harmless touch can hurt you. No one can hurt you without your consent. It has nothing to do with the intention of the other person; it has much more to do with your self-concept. The deeper you go into yourself, the more you are devoted and surrendered to the Truth, the less significant this tendency to get hurt will become.

Is there anybody who does not suffer from an inferiority complex? And all inferiority is psychological, mental. You feel you are inferior, the other fellow also feels he is inferior. Then are you inferior? You are inferior only if there is at least somebody who is not inferior. But what if everybody is feeling inferior? Then are you inferior? Because inferiority is relative.

प्रश्नकर्ता: प्रणाम, आचार्य जी। मैं बचपन से एक धार्मिक परिवार में पला-बढ़ा हूँ। बचपन से पूजा-पाठ हमारे घर में चलता था। रामायण-महाभारत हमारे घर में चलता था। तो उन सब का देखा-देखी मैं भी सबसे रामायण-महाभारत साझा करता था। लोग खुश होते थे और मुझे भी एक तरह का प्रोत्साहन…

आचार्य प्रशांत: अपनी हस्ती पर भरोसा करिए। आप अपनेआप को जितना जानते हैं, आप उससे कहीं ज़्यादा सामर्थ्यवान हैं। अपना आकलन आप बड़ी हीनता में करते हैं, अंडरएस्टिमेशन (कम आँकना)।

छोटे नहीं हैं आप, विश्वास करिए। उसी ऊँचे विश्वास को श्रद्धा भी कहते हैं। कि जाने दो जो जाता है,…

आचार्य प्रशांत: इमेज की परवाह करने का मतलब होता है कि ये जो आस-पास के लोग हैं, ये बड़े महत्त्वपूर्ण हैं मेरे लिए। कि ये क्या कहेंगे मेरे बारे में, वो बड़ी महत्त्वपूर्ण बात है।

आदमी छोटी बातों में तो दूसरों से ज्ञान ले सकता है क्योंकि ज्ञान किसी का…

आचार्य प्रशांत: उदय रावत हैं, चौंतीस वर्षीय, नैनीताल से, पूछ रहे हैं कि आजकल हर कोई अपनी नज़र में शोषित या विक्टिम क्यों है? जैसे हर किसी ने अपनी पहचान ही बना ली है दमित होने की, दबे कुचले होने की, शोषित, पीड़ित होने की और अगर उनकी सुनें तो…

Question: Sir, we have learned that we should not have ego, as it is conditioning. Ego arises because I feel incomplete within. But to fill this incompleteness is what I want in life. It gives me satisfaction in life. So, shouldn’t we be egoistic?

Speaker: What exactly is the logic?…

Immersion is not in itself a virtue. You have to find out what you are immersing yourself in. The wrong kind of immersion is like anaesthesia: you will feel no worries because you are rendered unconscious. The wrong kind of business or immersion operates by lowering your consciousness. And when…

Strength is your nature. If you have managed to remain so weak, so fragile, so brittle for so long, it is only because you have been defending your weaknesses. You have been arguing in favor of your weaknesses; you have been reasoning out your weaknesses. You have simply not been…

There are people who indeed say that, “No, everything is fine with us.” They are not lying. It’s just that their fineness is superficial.Yes, there is fineness in your life, but that fineness is just this deep: scratch the surface and the fineness will evaporate. A little tragedy hits you…

The more smart you are, the more clever you are, the more are the chances that your own smartness will destroy you.

It is very important to see when cleverness turns into cunningness—and that happens very frequently, very easily, very unnoticeably. You do not even know when you have turned…

A strange situation is that a beautiful woman’s life is perhaps more complex than an average-looking woman’s life, because a beautiful looking woman has a lot of men eyeing upon her, and she can get whatever she wants. And what you will get for your beauty, that is the real…

Life will certainly teach you, but at the cost of great suffering. And there is no guarantee you will be able to learn in a lifetime, because when your life teaches you then life has no conscious agenda to teach you. Life just operates on the principle of result of…

It is very common that you go to a doctor and if you are a vegetarian, he kind of scoffs at you. It’s a very disdainful glance he throws at you: “Vegetarian?!” And that too, you see, is a relic of the fifties, sixties, seventies. It has gotten into the…

Giving birth is not for kids. Law just says that there is a legal age—eighteen, twenty-one and such things. First of all, giving birth requires that there has to be mental maturity. Unfortunately, 99% of the world’s population is not at all mentally mature enough to be parents. The funny…

Revenge is a mistake built upon another mistake. The first mistake was, “He took it from me—my peace, my pride, my respectability.” That was the first mistake to think that way. And the second mistake is, “I can get peace back by snatching it away from him.”

Revenge is: thinking…

Treat the body as a companion, and see how this companion behaves when you fulfill its demands, and how it behaves when you do something that is for your own welfare. This companion is very, very selfish, very greedy. It cares only about itself; it has no respect for what…

What do you call as beautiful in a woman? Her curvature, her hips, her breasts—all of that just makes her conducive for bearing a child. Exactly that which qualifies her to bear a child is taken as beautiful by you.

So, all that you are looking for is someone who…

Why do you call a theft a theft only when one is taking away something from others? Is it not theft when you take away your greatest possibility and potential from yourself? Is it not theft? Are we not criminals against ourselves, first of all?

If I deprive you of…

Acharya Prashant (AP): Abhay said that there is a feeling, a strange feeling, he does not probably know the origin of it. But the feeling nevertheless is, and the feeling says, ‘I am the best, Abhay is the best’, that's what the feeling says. And because of what the feeling…

Questioner (Dev Ji from US): He is saying that a sense of hurt seems to arise when the sense of who we are? This notion we have about what I am is challenged and the smallness of the person I come to the fore. Put another way when one ego…

A celebrity couple gives birth. Now, rabbits give birth. Same thing. But the media keeps splashing the face of this kid, this baby incessantly—incessantly! A thousand more women are then influenced, rather compelled to give birth. The media is constantly telling you, “Look at this baby. This is what you…

Look at a river, or look at a tree; both have life cycles. Once the tree was tender and young, there was a particular way it responded to the wind. And now the tree is getting old, now there is another way it responds to the wind. Both are beautiful.…

There might be people around you who make it compulsory for you to smoke, not because they urge you to smoke, but because they put you in so much of tension that you will need to smoke. But you are deriving some benefits from those people, so you will never…

“I am pious and I have holy intentions”—this was the first piece of fake news invented by man. All attempts, all intentions, all likes and dislikes, all decisions ultimately boil down to just the prakritik narrative—food, comfort and sex. That’s what we live for, that’s what we act for, and…

Silicone implants, false bras, false eyebrows—what else is there? That thing that removes the wrinkles, botox. The entire time is being spent in this nonsense. I don’t know the details, but there is so much. You can read all that on the menus of the saloons—this treatment, that treatment, and…

Acharya Prashant (AP): The words our friend is referring to read "Remain untouched. Remain unshakeable. Remain untouched and remain firm centered undisplaced." Those words make sense only in the context of our present condition.

What is our condition? Everything touches us. It touches us and puts its imprints upon us.…

Desire is the great evil that defeats all the petty evils. For the sake of desire, you can shake hands with your worst enemy. Everything has been consumed by desire. Everything.

A point comes, you know, when it doesn’t hurt to pay any price to fulfill your desire. It just…

Every animal in the universe has only its designated period of mating; some mate in the winter, some mate in the summer, some mate only in the rainy season. Dogs mate only in their designated months. Man is the only creature that fucks the entire year-round. That is the quality…

“I will beat him!”

“I will destroy her!”

“Did you just insult me? Did you?”

Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!

“Did she? Did she not?”

Have some mercy upon yourself. Learn to ignore, please. Bypass the small issues. Learn to ignore the small for the big, would…

The little man is not to be blamed for being little. He is to be blamed for remaining little. The great man is nothing but the little man who at some point says, “It’s no fun remaining little”—and he is born exactly similar to the little man.

Now, that puts…

When life teaches you, life has no conscious agenda to teach you. Life just operates on the principle of result of action. You do something foolish, you get hit in the teeth. That’s how life teaches you.

When there is a teacher, the teacher has a conscious agenda to uplift…

Questioner (Q): Jealousy stops us from achieving our own goal, instead we try to think that what others are achieving, that’s not us. What about that jealousy?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What’s your name?

Q: Nikhil.

AP: Nikhil has spoken about jealousy. Very honestly , how many of us have experienced…

Question: Pranaam Acharya Ji. Why do I get nervous in situations where I have to express myself, or when I have to talk to people?

Acharya Prashant(AP): What do you talk to people about?

Questioner(Q): (Questioner is a student of class 6) Anything, most of the times related to my…

You are drunk and driving towards north. There is some probability of an accident, and you are warned of that. So, you take a U-turn and start driving towards south. Now you say, “I was doing the wrong thing; now I am doing exactly the opposite of the wrong thing,…

When you are feeling depressed, ask yourself: “What do I really want? What is the problem?” And it will irritate you no end, because you seek pleasure in depression; because your depression, your bad mood is self-verified and sanctified and certified.

You tell yourself that you have the right to…

Have you ever wondered what kind of perverse pleasure people find in denigrating Gods? The pleasure is, “If I am not high, why should I allow you to remain high? You must be pulled down because, as far as I am concerned, I refuse to rise up. I refuse to…

The politician, we very well know, is a criminal and yet we belong to his fan club. So, who is it who is promoting crime, then? Look at the parliament of the country. I suppose half the parliamentarians have criminal cases against them, close to half. And they didn’t muscle…

Not only do we know what would excite us, the entire market knows what would excite us. It is so very programmed and programmable.

Every advertiser knows how you can be brought to feel excited. They know how to make you feel excited about a certain thing that they want…

You are not under any obligation to be perfect. Alright!

Your incompetencies, your deficiencies are all welcome. They are the part of the game. Just be alive and alert.

And then even out of your own botched up action, something auspicious will happen. Like Shabri, she doesn’t know how to…

Man must observe animals, and whatever you see the animal exhibiting is something that you should be very cautious of. Whatsoever it is that you find common between yourself and animals is the stuff that you should be very cautious of.

Animals have a lot of jealousy. Jealousy is a…

Acharya Prashant (AP): There is a person who is dreaming about betterment and sitting at her place, she is visualizing how things would be after betterment. And she says that the visualization energizes her, and fantasizing about the endpoint makes her happy. This is the situation. Let’s go into it.…

To be a lion does not mean that you are violent. To be a rat is not necessarily to be violent. In fact, the word ‘violence’ does not apply to the lion or to the rat; it applies only to the human being. The lion kills all his life but…

Who are the ones who always keep salivating? The singles. But meet someone who is in a relationship—he won’t want to look at girls, or boys for that matter. He would say, “One is more than enough. Can’t handle one! Who wants two, three, or six?”

Once you come close…