Why Man is highly Unsettled and Restless

Acharya Prashant: The whole issue is because you have left the jungle and yet not reached where you set out to reach; you are stuck in between.

Man is in a very precarious position. Animals are well settled; the free ones, the Buddhas are also well settled. Man is unsettled. Animals are not restless; they are well-settled in the jungle. The liberated ones, the sages and the fakirs and the saints and the gurus, they are also well settled. But the world’s population, man in general, is highly unsettled and restless. He is neither in the jungle nor in the place he left the jungle for; he is in the city.

Questioner: There is one very interesting thing that happens: they say that producing babies is natural and you must do that. But, at the same time, they use all kinds of artificial means to produce.

Acharya Prashant: Producing babies is natural, but then it is not natural to produce babies only with your wife. In the jungle that does not happen. If you say that it is natural to have babies, then it is not natural to have babies only with one woman. Nature does not say, “Have babies only with one woman or one man.” If you want to quote nature, then go ahead and have babies with everyone you can find.

You cannot selectively quote Prakriti and what is happening in the jungle. Either you become totally prakritik and then you will have to go back to the jungle, or you say the jungle is now behind us and our center is now not the body, not Prakriti , not the jungle; our center is illumination, and from there we must operate.

Questioner: Being with limited consciousness just like every other being, how am I going to judge whether the other beings want help?

Acharya Prashant: By using whatever limited stuff you have. You are limited and that’s why you are restless. Using this limitation, you see that the other one too is limited and restless. And you don’t like being restless, you want to be helped. Just as you want to be helped, help the other one as well.

It does not help the other one to slaughter him. The other one is just like you; he too is feverish, struggling with consciousness. If you have no compassion for somebody who is just like you, it only means you have no love for yourself. If you cannot help your mirror image, are you helping yourself? The other conscious and struggling being is your mirror image; just like you, different only in the trivial externalities—name, shape, form, age, and species. In all these matters, the other one is probably different than you. But essentially, he too is a consciousness clamoring for, longing for a final rest.

Now, do you want to bring him to the final rest, or do you want to slaughter him and give him rest? Look at an animal; the animal is so much like us. We are the animal. In slaughtering the animal, you are only proving that you do not care about yourself at all.

Look at an animal’s eyes. Is there really a difference between your eyes and the animal’s eyes? Look at the expectation in the eyes of the animal. Look at the fear. The animal in fact really wants exactly the same thing that you want. It’s just that he is far behind you and he is therefore far less likely to get what you might get. But he is in the same queue but way behind; wanting the same thing but far less likely to get it. But the queue keeps moving; one day the animal too will get it—but not if you slaughter him. In slaughtering the animal, you are reducing the animal’s chances and your own chances.

You see, you want redemption, don’t you? And you say, “I am suffering, somebody please help me.” Now, look at what you are saying. You are saying, “If somebody is suffering, he needs to be helped.” That’s your argument, is it not? When you say, “I am suffering, I need help,” what you are actually saying is, “I am suffering, I deserve help.” So, the principle you are operating on is: that if you are suffering, you need to be helped.

Now, look at the animal and apply the same principle. And if there is a principle, the principle has to be universal. You cannot say that the principle is there but it applies only to me. Now, the same principle works on the animal as well, right? The animal too is suffering; what it needs is help. It needs your embrace; it does not need to be on your plate.

You see when I speak all this, I know that a lot of this will not cut ice with many people. I know that a lot of this will just not make sense to a lot of people; it won't just reverberate with them. Only those who already carry some empathy will know what I am saying. Others will conveniently find loopholes.

And loopholes there are many. You can quote this, you can quote that, you can quote some scriptures, you can quote some practice, you can quote some research paper to disprove what I am saying, and you can very easily do that. You don't even need to work hard. If you just want to discredit me or disprove me, do not even bother coming up with proof. Just say, “I don’t want to believe,” and that is sufficient—because that’s the intention. If the mind is already made, why do you need to look for proof?

Proofs are needed when one is honestly exploring for the Truth. If you are already listening to me with a set mind, with preconceived notions, with prejudices, with the decision already being made, then there is no need to waste time fetching proof. Just say, “No, I want to kill animals, I love eating their flesh,” and that is sufficient. You can continue doing that.

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