Youth and Creativity-1 || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: You can say that till this age, I could be called as a child, and, the such and such age, we call it teenager and youth and so on and so forth. It’s very complete when it comes to the body. I am not greatly interested in the cycle of the body right now. When we are talking of youth and creativity, youth and architecture, we are talking of mental cycle. Mentally, who is a child? Irrespective of the age, Mentally who is a child? His physical age may be twenty-five years or eighty years but mentally, who is a child? Who do you call mentally arrested, mentally still kid?
Listener 1: Sir, who cannot differentiate between right and wrong, cannot take decisions, can not properly take care of himself. That is when you call one a child, mentally!
Speaker: What do you mean by taking decisions for oneself? Deciding between right and wrong?
Listener 2: Basically, independence. Being independent!
Speaker: Independent of what?
Listener 3: Of people who are taking care to bring you up. Who are deciding for you, and ones who think that you are young, teenager.
Speaker: It is a very beautiful and confident word: Independent, but if you want to live in independence, does it mean independence from the guardian? Is the dependence, what we have, limited to the guardian or is dependence more pervasive?
Listener 3 : It’s not.
Speaker: So, if the dependence is so pervasive then independence too must be sought from many other sources, not only parents or guardians. What was the definition of the child? Somebody, who is?
Listener 3: Dependent
Speaker: Now, as we said that the physical age does not matter, you may be ninety years old but if you are still dependent in a mental way, we are not talking about the dependency upon the doctor, in a mental way, if you are still dependent, does not matter how old you are, you are still a child.And here we are, in this hall, trying to investigate, what is youth. May be there could be law that someone who is dependent, can not be called young. Now, why are we dependent? No one enjoys dependency but still we find that we are often dependent. Why does one need to be dependent?
Listener 4 : Sir, there were times when we are mentally and physically not capable of taking care of ourselves, then you are bound to be dependent in more ways. For some people, it might not be physically but mentally it is.
Speaker: Certain dependence is very much understandable, its nature is nearly physical, but why are mentally grown up people mentally dependent? And we are bound to lead us to ourselves, all this will lead us to ourselves, what we are doing, our profession, our life, but then, why are grown up people dependent? In the mental way, not in a physical way. Can you tell me a few types of dependencies?
Listener 4 : On our friends and family. Suppose a man is working, he is dependent on his wife. He will share his problems.
Speaker: Is sharing dependency? And that dependency is different from sharing. What are the dependency that you come across?
Listener 4 : Giving someone the authority to take our decisions.
Speaker: Very good. Giving someone the authority to take decisions on our behalf. A mind that cannot take it forward, itself is dependent on somebody to take it forward. ‘*Whose decisions are not his own.*‘ That is more or less a viable definition of someone who is not yet young; a child. Who is a child? Who is dependent. We are talking of mental dependency so when we say who is a child, do not quickly come up with an image of a child 5 or 7 years old. We are not talking of five-year olds and seven-year olds. We are talking of twenty year olds and forty years olds who are still dependent as far as their minds go. We are not discussing biology here. We are not looking at physiological age. Who is a child? Before we move on with the question what is meant by a young person, we must understand who is not yet a young person. And the child is not yet young because he is dependent. It’s not the child’s fault that he is dependent. The child cannot understand. It is inevitable that the child be dependent. The child has to be dependent, and all forms of dependencies arise from the inability to make sense of the world, looking with your own eyes and your own mind. Why does the child has to be dependent? You tell me. It has to be dependent.
Listener 4 : Proper guidance.
Speaker: You said guidance, but why is it that he has to seek guidance?
Listener 4 : Doesn’t have the ability to take decisions?
Speaker: Doesn’t have the ability to think and take the decisions.
Listener 4 : In the childhood, we did not know anything and we were dependent and we obeyed what was given to us.
Speaker: In front of a child, there is no alternative available. The child cannot claim that I will not obey. For the child, obedience is must. The child must obey, and why must child obey? Because he has no other option. Either I have a faculty which guides me with something internal, of my own, and if I don’t have it then there is no option but to follow somebody else, to obey somebody. The child will have to do it, and why does the child has to do it, because it does not have an understanding of his own. Its capacity of free thought has not become yet ripe, yet not awaken. So, who is a child? Irrespective of the bodily age, anybody who cannot stand for himself, anybody who is perpetually obeying and obeying is still a child in the mental sense. It does not matter if you are forty years old. If all your movements are dictated by somebody else then you are a child. And that somebody else need not be a person. That somebody else can be a convention, tradition, somethings that the books say, something that have been hammered since long, something that has been considered sacred in your society or your profession. If you find yourself in a situation where obedience is your life, submission to authority is your life, then you are mentally a child. You see, what we are trying to do. Before we come to understand what it is to be young, we must first understand what it is to not to be young. The child cannot really think. So what is it the destiny of the child? We need to ask ourselves. Can we think for ourselves? Do we understand? Is my thought deep? Or is it flicker of influences? Now, lets bypass these for a while and let’s go straight away to old age. Who is an old man?
Listener 1 : One who has experience.
Speaker: The one who is experienced. What do we mean by experience?
Listener 1 : Experience of life.
Speaker: What exactly is meant by experience?
Listener 1 : Learning through various situations.
Speaker: Learning through various situations, and what do you mean by learning through situations? When you pass through a situation, what do you learn?
Listener 3 : How to deal with it, how to cope up with it? Sometimes through the process and sometimes through results.
Speaker: I understand. You have passed through a situation and something happened in that situation. But where is the question of learning. When do you learn, really?
Listener 5 : If we are in a situation, good or bad and we deal with it, go through it then we get to learn how to deal with a similar kind of situation the next time?
Speaker: The same situation next time. Tell me, whether you will ever have the same situation, next time?
Listener 5 : Not exactly the same. But similar types.
Speaker: Is it really ever possible that the same situation repeats itself? Are any two moments in life ever the same? Then, where is the question of learning from experience?
Listener 6 : It is like a cycle. The child moves from the young age to old age, and the child is dependent upon elder people so we can pass on the information to the next generation. So, they can learn from our mistakes.
Speaker: Forget about other’s learning from your mistake. I am questioning whether we can learn from our own mistakes. Is it really possible to learn from our experience? Because you say that we come to know what we did right and what we did wrong, and when the same situation arises another time, we have the benefit of experience. I am asking you whether the same situation ever arise again? Then, what is the use of this learning? Or whether there is anything called learning?
Listener 6 : At least we can suggest others.
Speaker: When the same situation is not arising for you, how can it arise for others? I understand that this is the great urge in us to think that experience has some value and some validity, but does experience really help?
Listener 6 : By learning from our experience, growing as a person.
Speaker: What do you mean by growing as a person?
Listener 6 : Being more mature.
Speaker: What do you mean by that?
Listener 6 : We may not get the same situation again but we may get a similar kind of situation, and then, you learn from the experience and respond to the situation in a better way. And as a person, you can be a better.
Speaker: What do you mean by a better way? These pieces of furniture are present in this room and they are as much in this room as you are, and at some point of time, you will move out of this room, they will stay here. They have received many such sessions. The same sound waves that are falling on your ears, will fall upon them as well. By the time they retire, by the time they are taken out of this room and that will be forty or fifty years from today, they would have really experienced a lot. Does that experience help? And for them all situations are similar. You said that the things are similar and so many things. All the situations are similar. Are they of any help? Are they getting better with time? What do you mean by learning or experience? That’s what an old man thinks by the way. We are talking of old age right now. An old man surely thinks that the experience has made him a more mature person. You meet any old man and that is what he will claim. That I have a lot of experience and that’s what makes me special. I have a lot of experience and that is why you must listen to me. I am just opening up this thing to you that does experience really helps you to mature or maturity is a totally different dimension? I understand that we have been continuously given this thing that experience is extremely important, that experience leads you to maturity, and tremendous value has been put upon experience and age, because experience requires time and time means age. So there is a lot of incentive upon that. And that is exactly the emphasis that an old man puts. But you tell me, does learning really come from experience?
I know, that is exactly what we have been hearing all our lives. But there is no harm in just trying to investigate it. What is so special about being old and if being old is so special then as you said that the old man is experienced by learning then why talk of youth and architecture. Why not talk of old and architecture? They are the ones who have the experience. So why not change the topic of today’s discussion to ‘*Old men in Architecture*‘? Why not? By your own words, it is the old man who can learn from his mistakes and has attained a certain level of ripening and perfection.
Listener 7 : Sir, the most important thing is passion and enthusiasm. We all have dreams., but when we talk of the child, he has dreams but he is inadequate. Similarly, talking about the old, he has less dreams and is more calm and experienced. So, we see dreams and we have the enthusiasm to achieve it and that is why we talk of youth in architecture.
Speaker: So, the old man, we are not talking of the physically old man. I need to remind it again. We are talking of the mentally old man. Do you want to say that the old man does not have energy or passion?
Listener 7 : We are not talking of the physically old man, we are talking of the mentally old man.
Speaker: Then, he is definitely preferable to a young man because he is what the young man is, energetic, passionate. Plus, he has experience. So, you agree that we must change today’s topic to old and architecture.
Listener 7 : No, Sir.
Speaker: Why? What’s wrong with being old? The old man is experienced.
Listener 7 : Repetition of the situation. He will be teaching the same equation but with the old ways.
Speaker: Now, something new is coming up. We said that he will have experience but he will start dealing with situations in the same old manner because of the experience. She said that the old man does not have passion and enthusiasm and is not energetic. Why is the old man not energetic? And, we are not saying that he is old now and he has arthritis and that is why he cant be energetic. We are talking about the mentally old. Why can’t the old man be energetic? And if he could learn from his experience then he must be energetic. If experience is learning, if experience really teaches you something then experience should have also taught you to be passionate and energetic and creative.
Listener 7 : Sir, the basic difference here is that an old person has gone through all stages of life, childhood, youth, adult and all the else. So, comparing with the youth, the advantage here is the power to use his knowledge is the maximum and secondly they have the power to mold their own minds and bring about those changes which are difficult to bring about in old age, and becoming more stagnant.
Speaker: When we talk of the body, there is a progression. Child, young and then old. It’s a linear way. You cannot become old before becoming young, in terms of the body. But when we are talking of the mind, it is very much possible that you may straight away become old without ever being young, without ever finding your youth, and this is what happens to most of the people. Mentally they are born child and then very quickly they become old. They never experience what is it to be really young. So, if you say that the old man is the one who has passed through all the stages of life. Not true. The body has surely passed not the mind, can bypass the chronological order.
Listener 7 : Sir, how is it possible that the mind can bypass the order?
Speaker: You see people around you who are physically young. But mentally very very old. Now, ask yourself, how did this happen that the old age was totally dominant? There was Oscar Wilde, who said that “the youth is lost upon the young.” He said that the young of the body are rarely young of the mind. They are old; already old. The young of body are rarely young of mind. They are already very old.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
