"As long as you are giving me pleasure and satisfying my needs, there will be peace. The day you stop, there will be war.” This is the usual social contract in which we exchange pleasures and dependencies. This is why there is a lot of violence. But there can be another way of relating to the other, where you are existentially complete within. There can now be beautiful, loving, compassionate relationships because you are not looking to be a parasite or a commander.
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Questioner: Good afternoon, Acharya Ji. Your teachings guide us towards aloneness, which is a state free from the ego’s need for others. Conversely, medical studies do consistently show that a sense of community is required for proper mental health. If our deep-seated need for human connection is merely an egoic attachment, how can we overcome it if it possesses a risk to our well-being? And is there a way to engage with a community that doesn’t arise from loneliness?
Acharya Prashant: You see, when I say you have to be alone, that is not asocial or antisocial advice; that’s something of the inside. See, even external relations come from somewhere, right? Let’s say I relate to you, I relate to him, I relate to her; there is a center, a point from where the relationship is arising, right?
Most often, the relationship comes from a point of incompleteness. So I say, “There is something missing in my life, and because there is something missing in my life, I’ll strike a relationship with this, and the assumption will be that when this enters my life, then I’ll be complete, there’ll be happiness, there’ll be fulfillment.” That’s the usual center of relationship, and this is what we call society.
