What you call as normal is abnormal, and also highly insane || Acharya Prashant (2017)

Question: A gentleman was saying that a person, who is drinking or is drunk, he still has got some kind of stability on mind, and he too, can judge. That is what I felt to be perhaps wrong. A person who is drunk probably loses his judgement and whatever we have heard from doctors and other people, anybody who takes liquor is likely to lose self control, his thought processes are likely to become distraughted, and he is likely to lose his good judgement. We have seen drunkards moving around and we see that they probably lose self control. That’s my perception or observation.

Acharya Prashant: In an otherwise sane world, drinking might probably need obfuscation of consciousness. But when you say that you see drunkards moving along and you see what kind of things they are doing, do we also not see non drunkards moving along and doing what they are doing?

Listener 1: But if we compare their behavior, Sir, we find that the behavior of the drunkard person is deviated from the normal standards.

AP: What is the normal? And who sets the standards? What if the normal itself is highly depraved?

L1: In whose perception Sir?

AP: In the perception of the normal itself because the normal is suffering. What if the normal, what if the norm is just to suffer? What if the normal has itself fallen in its own eyes? You see, our conditioning is of two types, at two levels, one is the biological aspect. There are fluids inside the body; there is the very constitution of the genetic material. That is one level of being drunk, in the sense that you have associated yourself with the veil rather than the assets. You have associated yourself with the body rather than the core. It is one level of drunkenness.