We Love Superhero Movies - Do You Know Why?

Questioner: Hello Acharya Ji, my name is Anshu, and I'm in my mid-30s and yet I'm a diehard fan of Spider-Man. Ever since I was a child, I have been a crazy, absolute fanatic for Spider-Man. Every time a new film comes, particularly if it's a Spider-Man film, I just cannot control myself, and I rush to the nearby theaters and I watch the film. I include other people to it. If there's a PlayStation game out, I'd be, you know, really eagerly waiting to grab my hands on the fresh copy.

So I am really curious what could be the reason why I'm, as well as many other people, are so fascinated and they gravitate towards superhero films like Spider-Man.

Acharya Prashant: We all want to do a lot of things: climb up the walls, the multi-stories, like the spider, carry out impossible stunts. Batman, Iron Man, Superman, Shaktimaan.

Questioner: There's also a financial angle to this. I was doing some research on what are the most grossing films in the world, and to my surprise, I found that out of the top 10 films, the top seven most-grossing films are some superhero films, like be it the Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU films, or Star Wars films, and they're not just the most-grossing films, they're also the most quickly sold-out films also. So there's something common that's kind of binding people together and pulling them towards such films.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah, we want to do things with things, and behind that want is a hope and an assumption. The hope is that if I could scale the walls as deftly as a Spider-Man and do all these material things as proficiently as the superheroes do, the power, the intakes, then I would be better off. Then I would have access to some hidden source of happiness.

Right now, if I were to start from my current condition, I'm not in a happy place. Am I? Look at the population of the world. Most people do not report themselves as satisfied, fulfilled, joyful, do they? They don't. And then how do you explain or rationalize your lack of happiness or contentment? One of the ways is, "I'm unhappy because I'm limited." And one of the ways those limits can be represented is the physical constraints of the body. Could I do more with the body? I would probably be happy or happier. Could I do more with the body?

So, for a psychological situation, we dream up physical reasons. Lack of happiness is a psychological situation, a mental situation, and it has to be explained in some way or the other, right? While defending the real reason and the real culprit at the same time.

So how do you explain that you are unhappy? You would say, "Oh, because I have material limits. I have material limits, and that is the reason I am unhappy. If I don't have material limits, I can fly to any destination I please, right? I can bash up all the baddies out there."

Questioner: In style.

Acharya Prashant: And in style. Yes. And I can seduce the loveliest girl out there. And when I look at the face of my own wife, that thought becomes all the more charming, you know. And I look at my own tummy and my own barren surfaces, and I know that I have kind of lost the game. And I attribute my inner misery to outer physical reasons.

If I had supernatural powers, I could go and rob a bank as well and have all the money I want. So I like it when the prospect of having unlimited physical powers is visually displayed to me in a very credible, very animated way. I want to believe in it because the story lends credence to my own psychological narrative.

My own narrative is, "I am incomplete or unhappy because of material reasons." Right? That's my narrative. And I'm an ordinary citizen of the world. That's the narrative everybody is carrying. Could I be materially more, I would be more fulfilled. That's the narrative everybody is carrying, right?

But oh, what to do? There are these prakratik, natural limits, and I cannot be materially more. Plus, there are social and legal limits as well. So, I cannot be materially more. Right? But I want to be, I crave, I long, in fact, I am desperate to somehow slip into another more charming, more alluring personality, more powerful persona. And that dream comes true on the theater screen. Why will I not enjoy that?

The pleasure belongs to the ego. But in this process of deriving pleasure, remember, I'm fattening my own inner lie. I am supporting my own false narrative.

Questioner: And I've noticed this is kind of an aspect, a feature of Spider-Man films and similar films, superhero films, that they always have the main superhero always has an alter ego, where the person is an underdog actually in real life, and they kind of maintain two lives together simultaneously, in which, in one, they are weak, and they perhaps lack courage, or they want to stay hidden. And on the other one, the counterpart is extremely, you know, upfront, aggressive, stylish, you know, they have a lot of, like, cool powers. So, there's something hand in hand going on in their lives.

Acharya Prashant: Right. That's insightful of you to point that out. So, the common, ordinary character that Spider-Man is in his usual life is the spectator, is you and me, the movie watcher, right? And then the personality flips, and that makes it very relatable to us. That's me turning into Superman. Who am I? The ordinary one, the bashful one, the limited one, the mediocre one, the hesitant one. That's me. But I have always believed that within me lies the potential to be the greatest one day. We all like to believe that way. No?

Yes, right now, I am in a pitiable position, but I know inwardly I am God, the Almighty. That's the favorite narrative we all carry. And it's so ingratiating to see that narrative come alive on the screen. See, that's me turning into Spider-Man. And that's exactly what I have believed in all my life. One day, this ordinary me will turn into something beyond the ordinary, something even beyond the extraordinary. And that will mean the end of all my miseries, because all my miseries were anyway due to the lack of material power. No?

My miseries were not because I lacked love or honesty. Actually, I was miserable all my life because I couldn't do this and fly. Now that I can do this and fly, all my problems will be solved. I don't need empathy. I don't need insight. I don't need compassion. I don't need the Truth. I need none of these. All I need is some…

Questioner: Superpowers.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah, superpowers. Or a super dress, you know, the Iron Man kind, wear it and fly and beat up the baddies. And by the way, it's you who decides who the baddies are. And there is nobody here who doesn't have a lot of baddies in his life. Because the ego, to itself, the goodie, if I am the good one, then all those who do not concur with me are, by definition, the bad ones. And if they are the bad ones, they must be beaten up. That's justice. Just that I cannot carry that out because, you see, I don't have enough muscle power. And once I'm successful with that, I will experience divine contentment.

Why do I need attention? Why do I need realization? Why do I need liberation? All that I need is a state-of-the-art dress, a suit powered by some super fuel. And that's what I need.

So, yeah, childish fancies and childish grins. Well, wish I could stop at calling them just childish. They are not just childish. They are conspiratorial. We conspire against ourselves by attributing false causes to our miseries. We do not want to look at the real reasons behind our psychological suffering, our inner deprivation. So, we weave pretty stories, stories in which we stand as decent victims. Victims who are divinely positioned to receive extraordinary powers someday and avenge themselves on all the evil forces in the universe and, in the process, also save the rest of mankind.

Remember that these are not just heroes. They are public heroes. They are publicly lauded. Is that not something the ego has always demanded? Not only should I be great, I must be recognized as great. So, it's not just that Superman must exist. His movie should also make a huge amount at the box office. Just the existence of Superman doesn't suffice. He must have an audience. That's what the ego, by the way, always needs. An audience. That's what we, too, have been hungry for. An audience. I am good. I am great. Plus, give me an audience to certify that I am great. And also, in that audience, I'll have some good-looking girls. That's just incidental, by the way. You know, I never wanted that. I'm so committed to my wife. I hate looking at her, but, you know, I'm a committed husband.

Questioner: This fanaticism gets stretched to a point that the lines between reality and fiction get blurred in a way that people come together and they form these fan clubs, and there are franchises with different merchandise being sold, and, you know, places like New York, which is in the films, that is where Spider-Man has become synonymous to the city, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. So, there's a completely different, alternative universe that is made because of such films.

Acharya Prashant: An alternate universe is not even needed. This universe that we have created for ourselves is, in itself, an absurd manifestation of the distortion that we are. You think of the man rushing to his job every morning, hoping that money will take care of his inner hollowness. He's playing out the same Spider-Man script, but in a less dramatic way. He's not doing all this, but the underlying hope is the same in its constitution.

What is the Superman story? If you can have more material powers, then you are super, right? If you can have more material powers, then you are super. This man rushing to his job every day subscribes to exactly the same idea. If I can have more money, I'll be super and special and would be relieved of my suffering. Same thing, same idea, just a lot less dramatic. The Superman series just makes our absurdities very glaringly visible. Otherwise, we don't need an alternate universe. This universe of ours is already very absurd.

Tell me one thing that you do not do to gain psychological fulfillment. There is nothing natural in the world of Homo sapiens. Everything is done with an egoic objective. Everything has a psychological meaning. Everything is for the sake of some entity sitting within. And that is exactly the Superman script. More material, more power, more happiness. That is also the bane of this earth.

That is also the curse called the climate catastrophe. If I can be more, if I can do more, I'll be more happy.

So, they are just dramatizing the pre-existing script of our lives. And that's why we love it so much. As you nicely pointed out, they have alter egos, right? The very ordinary person, that's the one buying the ticket to watch himself on the screen turn into a super fan. The absurdity is less on the screen and more on the side of the spectators. In fact, those watching the movie are just projecting an amplified version of their own life on the screen of the theater and then pretending as if they are seeing something novel and buying tickets and applauding and then also buying merchandise and the rest of it, as you said, you know.

Do you find any of those superheroes reflecting on their own life? Really asking the question, "Who am I?" They very happily lead double lives, sometimes triple lives, without seeming internally worried at all. Whereas this is division, inner fragmentation, which is a very painful thing. And those of us who lead multiple lives know that you wear one hat, then you wear another hat, and sometimes, at the same place, at the same moment, you are wearing two or more personalities. Are these superheroes ever found facing the mirror? Are they ever engaging with the questions of identity?

Questioner: They do have the identity questions in many of the films. Almost every superhero film has a story arc in which they ask this question: "Who am I at the end of the day? Am I more Peter Parker, the weak underdog, or am I more the Spider-Man, the ultimate Spider-Man or the Amazing Spider-Man?" They ask this question, and generally the answer is, yeah, I am the one with extra powers, superpowers, and as well as I'm the one who is the weak one, who doesn't, who lacks courage. So, a balance of these two together.

Acharya Prashant: So, that's the typical ego operation. No? Remaining the timid one, preserving the little one. I can still be great. So, at my heart, I remain the fearful one, the ordinary one, the one carrying a lot of conditioning, the one carrying the weight of the past, the one carrying very, very pitiable stories, the one carrying narratives of victimhood. At my heart, I can remain that and still I can go out in the open and be a hero to the world. Standard ego operation. That's what we pay to watch.

And the ego relishes that: I can be small and yet act big. By the way, that is an existential impossibility. If you are a timid Peter Parker, that's who you would be even in the grandest of your actions. The action would look grand on the outside but would be quivering on the inside, bloated on the outside, hollow on the inside.

Questioner: They make every aspect of the film so palatable for people that, you know, they have that aesthetic, they have used the CGI, and it looks so real and relatable. So, they keep on trying to push the idea that you can be exactly who you are right now. All you need is a radioactive spider to come and bite you and you become the Amazing Spider-Man.

Acharya Prashant: And what's missing from your life is not the inward glance but the special spider.

Questioner: It's a spider.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah. Which means luck is the one to be blamed. What can you do? You didn't chance upon that spider. All kinds of flies and cockroaches and other things, they keep swarming upon you. Even spiders, but the ordinary ones, the special spider. What can you do? It's a matter of random chance. You are innocent. The fault lies in your stars.

See, Peter Parker was not special at all. What did he do to deserve those powers? Nothing. He just chanced on them. So, if you are petty and limited and powerless and fearful and trembling, it is just because you did not meet the right coincidence. That is exactly what the ego loves to hear. I am all right. It's just that I'm not fortunate enough. I don't have to work for my liberation. I just have to wait for my chance. And in the process, I can remain as I am. I just have to wait. You see?

But, how will you watch the next movie after this conversation? So, drop all this, hard delete from your memory.

When the ego is the self, all our lives, all our acts of so-called creativity are just exercises in making our inner falseness universal. The personal is rendered universal through a charming narrative. And all that just for the sake of that trembling thing within that does not know who it is but is resolutely committed to self-preservation. I will not look at myself, but one thing I'm very sure of: I want to remain, and for that I will do whatever it takes.

Questioner: Yes.

Questioner: Namaste. My name is Kalpesh, and I am living in Canada, working as a mechanical engineer. I've been listening to you for over 3 years, and I had a privilege to meet you and attend in-person sessions during your second visit in the UK.

So, my question is quite related to the previous one, which was about the movies. So, what I see here in Canada and the US is, I see people going absolutely crazy over the sales, specifically during the Boxing Week, like Boxing Day, lining up outside in the freezing cold just for hours to get a small amount of discount or maybe a little bit more.

So, this question comes from, I watched a documentary called Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy, which exposes how corporations psychologically manipulate to keep the consumer buying. So, it made me wonder how people can just blindly consume like this. So, can you just give me some…? I think you gave pretty much the answer in the previous question, but this is quite, I see so frequently, and the sale keeps on coming every month, I think.

Acharya Prashant: What will you do if the sale doesn't arrive? You'll probably fly to another country where the sale has arrived. It's a demand-side phenomenon. How the selling corporations manipulate the buyer is not really a truthful description of what is happening.

The demand comes first. It's not that the buyer is being hoodwinked into buying stuff that he never needed in the first place. In fact, most of the exploitative transactions that we see in the world, whether it is between a buyer and a seller or an employee and an employer or between a husband and a wife or parents and kids or between the devotee and the priest, a lot of such transactions happen.

This particular one, the buyer and the seller, is the most clearly demand-side driven one. In the other transactions too, there is a very strong demand component. But in this one, the demand component power outweighs the supply one.

We have had instances on record. One company, one brand doesn't provide you what you think you need, you rush to the other store, the other brand. If one category of goods is in short supply, you still want to buy something, so you fill up the boot of your car with another category of goods. But the thing is that the boot must remain filled up. If this category is not available, then with some other category, but the vacancy is not permissible. That's how the ego is, right?

The ego is in itself a hollow thing. Therefore, it needs loads of stuff to fill itself up.

Now, a hollow thing cannot tolerate vacant spaces. The hollow thing needs lots of solid goods. If of this type, fine; if not available, then the other type.

Obviously, we are not saying the phenomenon is only demand-driven from the side of the customer. It is definitely demand-driven, but the demand too exists on both sides. From the customer side, the buyer side, the demand is plainly visible. I want something to fill up my house. That's the demand statement from the customer.

Even the supply side is actually demand-driven. I need more money to fill up my account. And how do I get more money? By selling more goods. So, even selling is actually a demand-side phenomenon. I need more. That's the statement of demand, right? I need more. I'm demanding. I need more. I need more.

The buyer needs more goods. The seller needs more profits. Essentially, both need more. Both are saying the same thing. Which means it is the same operation happening on the two opposite sides of the counter. That one is counting the merchandise just purchased, and the other side is counting the cash just received. But it's the same counting and the same entity keeping the count.

Who is keeping the count? The ego. And will the count ever be sufficient enough? No. Irrespective of how much you buy, it would never suffice. And irrespective of how much you have earned by selling, it's not going to be enough. Same demand side. And I do not know how we can allow ourselves to get confused with the names of the actors when we say, "Oh, corporations are fooling the buyers." It's the ego fooling itself. Come on, let's name it right. Come on. Naming is the name of the game.

What do you mean by corporation? There exists no conscious entity called the corporation. It is the human ego at work. The profit-seeking human ego. The merchandise-seeking human ego. The object-seeking human ego. And that object can take any configuration. The object could be in the shape of a new pair of jeans, a new camera, a new mobile phone, a new laptop, a new house, a new wife, a new husband, a new kid, a new car, a new trophy, a new religion, a new god, a new passion, a new country, a new passport.

Do you get this?

The old one within is tired of its oldness and is continuously seeking newness in the form of new objects. But the newness that it seeks is not an additional thing that it can obtain from diverse objects.

The newness that the old ego seeks can come to it only through a rejection of the old, not through an addition of the new.

But the old ego does not want to reject itself. Instead, it wants to add newness to a pre-existing fundamental oldness. And that will never work. Never work.

Wherever you see transactions happening in the human world, my request is: name the players rightly and honestly. Institutional names are the most misleading. The Planning Commission is making a mistake. China is getting aggressive. Come on. Why? What do you mean by China? Name the person or set of persons, and then you can come to the ego.

What do you mean by the commission? What do you mean by the parliament? They don't have any sentience. Have they? No. You must name the human ego, the one thing at the center of all self-inflicted suffering.

See how both the parties are fooling each other and, in the process, fooling themselves. Have you noticed that in any transaction between two human parties, both think that they have had the better deal? Both think that they have fooled the other one. Otherwise, they would not accept the deal.

If I feel that I am being fooled in a deal, I would reject the deal. If I sign a deal with you, inwardly I feel I have fooled you, and inwardly you feel you have fooled me, and that's why both of us have signed the deal. That is happening in every human transaction. This is implicit violence. We are trying to put more and more into ourselves by snatching more and more, either from a person or from the planet. That's the very nature of the inner hollowness. It refuses to be ever filled up. It can never be filled. It can only be seen for what it truly is.

But that seeing requires love, courage, honesty. It's a decision to be made. It's a statement of intention. And that intention is not something you can enforce on anybody. That intention is a matter of love. It's a very inner thing. Cannot be forced or even induced.

Customers are not coming to the shops. They are running away from themselves. Please describe the movement rightly. The seller is not arranging merchandise in the shop. The seller is refusing to look at the arrangement within. What's the name of the arrangement within? The ego. Better to arrange stuff nicely on the shelves of my superstore than to look at how the ego has arranged itself within me.

This applies to all human transactions. Country negotiating with another country, man negotiating with woman. Somebody hacking down a jungle. Somebody filing for divorce. Same thing. The same primitive darkness showing up in as different forms as possible.

Do not think of choking the supply as a solution, and do not think of sermonizing the demand as a solution. Controls won't work, nor would sermons. Only honest self-observation can work.

You can prevent a man from binging on merchandise. You would find him binging on something else. He would maybe turn religious and start doing an overdose of divine drugs, you know, "I'm God's favorite creature," and all those things.

After all, you know, you require an object to fill yourself up. If it could not be a mobile phone, if it could not be a camera, if it could not be a pair of shoes, it can be eight fancy divine stories. They fill up the same slot. So, controls won't work.

Questioner: The students were not sitting here like I was not listening to you. I would be doing the same thing as the other people. So, being a Gita participant is what keeping me away and showing me the reality by looking at the facts.

Acharya Prashant: The Gita can do only as much for you as you want it to. Right? The Gita cannot miraculously work on you or for you without your consent. Right?

So, remember that so that you don't fall complacent. You have to decide every day for yourself. And the choice made yesterday has no way of carrying itself forward into today automatically. It's a choice that you have to freshly make every day. A decision that must be renewed every day. The Gita can at most remind you of the pending renewal. The Gita cannot do the renewal on your behalf.

Questioner: Thank you so much.

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