What stops the youth today? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022)
Questioner (Q): I was thinking about today's generation of youth in comparison to the Upanishadic Nachiketa. Nachiketa, where he is being offered all the great materials, sensual pleasures and as you said rightly while negating them he says ‘I'll get to them later but this is what I really want.’
What is stopping the modern youth, mentally or maybe emotionally or maybe it's an external thing? What is the main thing do you think is the big blockage that is stopping him in this consumer capitalistic era from becoming a Nachiketa or even being attracted to a Nachiketa.
Acharya Prashant (AP): Fundamentally, the blockage is much the same as it was 2000 years ago or 4000 years ago. Fundamentally, it is much the same—greed, ignorance, fear, lust, envy—basic things. But what is the form it has taken in the last 100 years? The form is of an abundance of industrial goods. You see, our senses are always looking out for something because the mind is always unfilled, so, the senses are looking out to somehow gratify themselves. ‘Can I bring something to the mind that the mind would be satisfied with?’ That's the role of the senses.
Now, what the industrial revolution has done is that it has put a great abundance of objects at our possible disposal. You have to go out and buy those things and the self-interest of the production, goods, and services industry lies in more and more consumption. So, not only must goods be produced, the mind of the consumer must be modified in a way that it becomes amenable to being rather greedy for the consumption of those goods.
So you have a continuous bombardment of consumption-centric messages on your senses. And I’m not just talking about the overt advertisement, I’m talking of the very subliminal theme of this age. You look at anything or anybody, you find happiness equated with consumption. And when happiness is equated with consumption then it becomes very difficult to enquire. That is one thing.
The second thing is the frustration or disappointment of youth with religion. The only thing that saves man is pure religion and religion has been corrupted to such a low point over the centuries that there is no way that a youngster of this age is going to accept religion. And that's when I'm saying that religion is the only thing that can possibly redeem us.
So, our solo redeemer has been corrupted and snatched away from us. In the name of religion, all that we have is huge bundles of superstitions, traditions, beliefs and violent ignorance. So, the situation now is doubly bad, on one hand, there are so many objects competing with each other to conquer your mind and when they do conquer your mind, they do not satisfy your mind.
Conquering the mind is one thing and contending the mind is another thing. They encroach on you; they colonize your mind without really bringing it any true relief. So, that's one side and on the other side, the thing that could possibly give you relief has been taken away from you.
So, youngsters are either indifferent to religion or sometimes, they actively hate religion. And a tiny cross-section among them who has a thing for religion is actually turning bigoted and fundamentalist. So, we do not have any truly religious people among youngsters, whereas the religious mind is our only hope; a truly religious mind. When I say religion, I'm using it in a very, very different context.
When I say religion, I do not mean the various religious streams, I do not mean the external signs and symbols of religion. I'm referring to none of that. I'm talking of the spiritual mind, the mind that loves the truth, the mind that is sincere about life, the mind that does not want to spend itself intoxicated. I'm talking of that particular quality of mind, that's what I call as ‘true religiosity’ and that quality is becoming more and more difficult to find.
I cannot fault the current generation for that. They have been brought to this point mostly by historical chance. What can one do if one is born in an age where within the first five, or six days one gets to hold a mobile phone? Let’s say, you're born and the first thing that comes in front of your eyes is an apple phone clicking your picture so that it can be circulated over social media. That's how you are greeted into the world.
More and more you are just besieged with things to consume. You are encircled and you cannot break away, it's a chakravyu . You want to get away from one kind of consumption, the only relief you can get is in, then, another kind of consumption. ‘Broke up with your girlfriend? Fine, let's go to a bar and drink.’ So, consumption of one kind is being offset by the same of another kind. No true relief, but a thousand avenues competing with each other to waste your life. You have then ample choice and this kind of proliferation of choice is then termed as freedom. ‘See, I’m free to choose. There are so many options available, I’m free to choose.’
What the youngster doesn't realize is that all these options are not really different from each other, you call option 1 different from option 2 only if they really are not two facets of the same thing. Somebody comes to you and shows you a car from the front; from the side of the bonnet and says it’s option 1. Then he takes you to the side of the boot; the behind of the car. He shows you the boot and says ‘This is option 2. Now please make a choice between these two cars.’ What kind of fraud is this?
This kind of fraud is being played upon us by all the choices that are available to us in life and on the market. They are different sides of the same things; they are not going to satisfy us. The car is hot from the inside, doesn't matter which door you enter it from.
Q: Yeah, I know. I was just following up with that where we were talking about consumerism and how consumerism per se a car or a house versus some sort of a lustful desire. On the surface, it may seem different but at the end of the day, you are seeking something that is a more temporary source of happiness. You're still clinging to things that you feel will bring you that high but you realize that ‘Oh! It only lasts this much. Oh! This one, maybe this will do it.’ And we go through this cycle today as a constant, kind of like a rat in a wheel.
We think we are going to go far but we are actually going in circles. Having said that, one of the things that are very interesting in the modern landscape that you pointed out was the idea that, even a lot of concepts that may seem open-minded and progressive as ‘Oh, you have so many freedoms today. Oh, wow! Today we can be so open-minded and accept all people.’
Sometimes that, too, can become very surface level. Sometimes, for instance, where today while yoga is becoming so popular in the east and especially in the west and when I spoke to someone who is a yoga scholar, I asked him what was going on in terms of so many different forms of yoga in the last few years, you have goat yoga you have beer yoga, you have hot yoga.
What is going on? What is this? I'm confused. And the answer was pretty simple, yoga has become a product of consumer capitalism. Period. As much as it's popular, as much as ‘Wow! Yoga has come out of the trenches, it has come out of the caves,’ this is what the state of it is today.
Freedoms of today where we see while everyone is being accepted regardless of caste, creed, religion, or race but to the extent where, maybe small victories like enjoying holidays, creating national days for something, maybe changing the name of something, maybe removing the statue, as we may see both in India and the states of some old patriarchal imperialistic regime.
Removing those things may feel like small victories but is it really solving an issue, is it really getting to the crux of man's spiritual nature or are we just enjoying surface-level victories?
AP: We talked about the ego co-opting much of what is given to it for its dissolution. It's like I give you something to reduce your weight and you, somehow eat so much of it that the thing itself adds to your weight. That's the way of the ego. You give it nectar and it turns it into poison.
So, that's what the ego has done to Yog as well and it's not surprising, it has always happened. It's happening not only in the US, it's very much evident in India. Even in India, it's evident in places like Rishikesh which is the capital of yoga education. We call Rishikesh ‘Yog Nagari’ (city of Yog) and much of what is being taught there in the name of Yog today is just very useless and very vacuous. You put some thought into it and you will be astonished at the stupidity of it all.
So, yoga is such a nice thing to feast upon, the ego relishes it because the initial stage of Yog; Hath Yog is something that indeed does bring some good to the body. No spiritual benefit to the mind but it brings a dollop of goodness to the body at least, and the ego is always body identified.
So, if the body is being helped, the ego is happy. If the body is being kept fit, the ego is happy. One has a yoga-carved body and that helps you in gaining Facebook likes and Instagram followers. You can market yourself as the sexy yogini now and that’s so cool. The ego loves it and that would always happen. I dread the day when even Vedant can become popular this way.
It's just that the nature of Vedant is so austere that so far nothing in history has succeeded in co-opting it, integrating it into the body of general thought. But even that might happen, the possibility is there. One could call himself a Vedanti and come up with interpretations of Vedant that simply foster more and more consumption. That’s possible.
