Are you capable of love? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2023)

Acharya Prashant

Aarti Tikoo Singh is an Indian journalist who is known for being vocal on the Kashmir conflict and strongly considers herself secular.  https://twitter.com/AartiTikoo?s=20  ➖➖➖➖➖➖  ‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...  ⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates? Join WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va6Z...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work? Contribute: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/contri...   Want to work with Acharya Prashant? Apply to the Foundation here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/hiring...  ➖➖➖➖➖➖  Video Information: 12.02.23, Interview with Aarti Tikko from The New Indian, Greater Noida  Context: ~ Conscious and unconscious choices  ~ Good & Bad Choices ~ Who Awakened Acharya's Consciousness ~ Acharya's Moment of Awakening  ~ Acharya's Love Interest  ~ What is Love & Humanity? ~ Is Humanity on Path of Consciousness? ~ Does Life Need to be a Utopia? ~ Will Humans perish?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 Namaskar. Acharya Prashantji, my first question is who or what is Acharya Prashant?

00:14 A person, as a fact, a person seeking his own liberation in the

00:40 only way possible, by sensitizing others to their own liberation. So that's an answer

01:02 at one particular level, there could be several other answers in other contexts, other ways.

01:17 I suppose this one would do to begin with. And when you say Acharya Prashant is a person,

01:26 what does it mean? What does that represent really? A human being with a consciousness

01:37 that seeks fulfillment, so a human being like any other, like all of us. Do we all seek

01:50 answers? Does everybody seek answers? There is a question in front of me and that is the

01:59 answer. Are you a single child? No, no, I have a brother, I have a sister. How was your

02:05 relationship with your siblings? Usual, usual, nothing special there either. But then you

02:11 sort of were also liked your space where you could just read and think. Yes, yes. And your

02:22 siblings did not intrude into that space? They were not too fond of books. So if I am

02:27 with books, that keeps them away. I used to actually help them with their academics. They

02:39 had their own interests. That is how it used to happen. And school, friends, teachers,

02:46 how did they see you? Academically I was always doing well. Top two in the class and after

03:03 class sixth or seventh I was regularly topping. In fact the distance between me and the next

03:16 one just kept increasing. So academically I was always doing well. So you liked competition?

03:27 Oh, I was very competitive. You were? Oh, very competitive. So there was this drive,

03:33 drive into the mad race. But at the same time I was comparing myself or I was competing

03:44 not so much with the classmates or batchmates, I was competing more with the question paper.

03:55 So that is the reason why I would often not be satisfied even if the marks appeared good.

04:05 Was that because of conditioning at home? See at home obviously there was emphasis on

04:15 academics but then that kind of incentivization or encouragement was given to all three of

04:25 us. It is not that parents were hell bent on producing toppers. Obviously they wanted

04:34 that I do well, all three of us do well. But it was not to the extent of craziness or something.

04:52 Yes because the expectations from me were higher so if I won't do well then I would

04:59 be looked at with a sterner eye, that much was there. But not much beyond that. In school

05:08 I was also quite mischievous, very mischievous. What did you do? A lot of things. So the teachers

05:22 would be in a curious space. On one hand they would want to make me the head of the house

05:35 or the class monitor or such things. On the other hand they would find themselves compelled

05:44 to punish me. So the monitor would be found standing outside the class quite a few times

05:57 and then the teacher won't know what to do because on one hand she has to present me

06:05 as something of a role model, look at his marks, how well he is doing, how sincere he

06:10 is. On the other hand I have to be disciplined because when I was not with books I was not

06:21 very controllable. When I was with books I was quite sedated, just immersed in the text.

06:31 When not with books then the energy would violate a few norms. So there would be punishments,

06:46 scoldings and… One mischief that you did you still regret? One mischief that I still

06:56 regret? That was a bad one. If I disclose that it would be the first disclosure of its

07:09 kind. Okay, let's hear this on this show. Let it be. You have seen class teachers attendance

07:21 registers? Yes. The big ones. So I'll keep to myself some of the details so that I don't

07:35 become too obvious. So there was my class teacher and because I was mischievous she

07:44 didn't quite like me. And her situation was worsened by the fact that she could not

07:58 absolutely admonish me because she was an English teacher and I was doing quite well

08:03 in English. She used to teach Shakespeare. I think I have disclosed it all. So the English

08:16 period used to lie just before the lunch break and that's when she would come being the

08:26 class teacher, call for attendance and do these things. So one day she left the attendance

08:31 register behind. Okay. And she's gone and it's lunch break. So I open my lunch box

08:39 and there is a pakora there oozing oil or ghee, whatever it was. And you know how much

08:52 class teachers love their attendance registers, right? How nicely they maintain them and how

08:56 important those registers are. Oh, I hate disclosing all this. Come on. So I take the

09:08 pakora, keep it on the attendance register. It was lying open and I close the register.

09:21 Just to complete the formalities, keep a thick book over the place where the pakora was.

09:32 Didn't want to leave things to chance. So you wanted to ensure that it was spoiled.

09:41 Right. So she returns and finds this thing done and I was clever enough to ensure that

09:50 nobody had seen me doing all that. So after the lunch break we had, I suppose, geography

10:03 or history period. And I was good at geography and history. The teacher liked me. And the

10:13 class teacher comes rushing, steaming in, all red, furious. And it's a geography period

10:27 but she comes and says, "All of you stand up and raise your hands, both the hands."

10:34 So everybody stands like that and she does that and says, "I want to know who did this

10:41 and unless I get to know that you all will stand like this." And she retires to the

10:46 teacher's room. But the teacher in charge in that period is somebody else. And now the

10:54 whole class is standing there like this and only one person knows for sure who has done

10:59 that and that one boy is shell struck. "What have I done?" So he is the most silent of

11:11 all. Others are taking time to gossip or look around or do something. So the geography teacher

11:22 says, "All right, you all can't stand this way whole afternoon and those of you who are

11:28 keeping silent will be allowed to sit down."

11:36 You got away with that.

11:37 Now in between one of the girls from my class and she had her own grudges against me.

11:47 Oh, you hit on her.

11:53 Not exactly but.

11:56 It was in fact the opposite.

11:58 Oh, she was hitting on you but you were not interested.

12:03 She had meanwhile gone to the English teacher, the class teacher and whispered to her that

12:12 the kind of oil that is there in your register, you know, I think Prashant was the one who

12:18 had brought pakoras today. I don't know for sure. I'm just sharing with you that he had

12:25 brought pakoras today. So the class teacher who was anyway not very fond of me had already

12:33 my name as a suspect. So she comes after half an hour and finds the entire class standing

12:41 like this and only one fellow had been allowed to sit down and he was sitting and reading

12:49 and the entire class was standing. So she just blew up.

13:01 But he is the prime suspect. That became some kind of an encroachment on the authority of

13:11 the other teacher because it was her period, her time. So she said, "But you know, he's

13:18 been standing so still and keeping so quiet. I have no option. He has to sit." So that

13:25 created a bit of a funny situation. I tried to lock my lips so that I am not seen laughing.

13:37 Even in that moment I was, but that strained my relationship with my class teacher for

13:42 the rest of the year. So that's not something I think I should have done.

13:49 So that you deeply regret now?

13:52 Not deeply. It's all right. So if she happens to watch this, sorry ma'am. That was me.

14:05 That was me and I don't think I should have done that.

14:12 Okay. Acharya ji, from this mischievous boy, studious boy to college days, did you hit

14:23 on girls, later women?

14:27 Didn't find too many worth it. So just like any other boy, I had my attractions and there

14:38 was not much in them. Mostly physical kind. So if a girl appears attractive of body and

14:50 voice and manners, mostly of body, so there is a particular attraction. So that was that.

14:58 Nothing remarkable, nothing worth noting. All that was happening. I mean it happens

15:03 with everybody. Yeah. Nothing significant there.

15:07 Did you never find any woman who was spiritually worthy or whose spirit attracted you?

15:16 No. I found a few innocent ones. I could go to them and speak to them of things that mattered

15:31 and they were remarkable, important because they were innocent, because they could listen.

15:41 But even that listening stops after a point. Not everybody is interested in going too far

15:58 on the spiritual road, too far down the spiritual road. So I suppose those people have to be

16:10 created. You can't get them in the market place, you can't get them just randomly somewhere

16:20 in the world roaming. It's a rare and precious thing, such a human being. And that's what

16:29 I learnt. The one who is worthy of being loved is actually someone you will have to create.

16:40 Because on their own, they probably do not exist. At least I didn't find them hanging

16:53 somewhere to be just picked up. So I said fine, if they don't exist, let's create them.

17:03 So are you really saying that man and woman are ordained to have fickle relationships?

17:12 Exactly. Very well said. Very well said. Yes.

17:17 So there can be no real love between a man and a woman?

17:22 I do not know who I am. She does not know who she is. Where is the question of love?

17:28 I mean two unconscious people just stuttering down their unconscious paths and randomly

17:38 they happen to bump into each other. Is that love? Obviously not.

17:45 I'm going to go to the very fundamental question because what you are saying is probably very

17:55 complicated for most people in the world. Most people understand the idea of love. But

18:02 you seem to reject that. You seem to say that it's all superficial. It's fickle. What is

18:09 love? What the rest of the world is experiencing and you are saying that it's not there.

18:15 See, I'm rejecting the idea, not love. So what the world has is an idea of love. And

18:23 if love is an idea, then it's something very small and quite rotten. So where do ideas

18:35 come from? All ideas emerge from the ego to fulfill the superficial desires of the ego.

18:47 So if love is an idea, you will be looking at the other. It could be someone from the

18:52 other gender. It could be a little kid. It could be an animal. Or as people say, I love

18:57 chicken. When you want to really sink your teeth into something, you say you love it.

19:04 So it could be a food item. Whatever you would be looking at, you would be looking at that

19:11 thing just from the perspective of fulfillment of your desire.

19:20 Is it so wrong to have desires?

19:24 Would you want to be exploited for somebody's desire?

19:30 I am the seeker of answers.

19:34 Would you want to be? Nobody wants to be exploited so that the other can fulfill his base desires.

19:41 I might be prepared to sacrifice myself if my sacrifice helps the other. But if I am

19:52 an object of somebody's desire, then even after swallowing myself whole, he would still

20:01 be unfulfilled. So my life has gone and he has achieved nothing out of my so-called sacrifice.

20:09 So there is nothing in this love. Man looks at woman to appease himself. Woman looks at

20:14 man again to appease herself. And the two of them are in a lifelong mutually exploitative

20:21 relationship of what good is all this. And we don't want to face this, acknowledge this.

20:27 We want to pretend as if all is hunky-dory.

20:31 If everybody becomes so enlightened as you are, people will probably not fall in love.

20:37 People will probably not reproduce. People will probably not follow their biological

20:44 mandate.

20:45 When people are wise, that's the only time they can be in love. Wisdom and love go together.

20:54 So what you are saying, on the contrary, when you know who you are, when you have some insight

21:01 into yourself, that's when you become capable of love for the first time. Most people spend

21:07 their entire lives not loving, not because they didn't find someone worthy enough to

21:16 be loved, but because they were fundamentally incapable of loving anything.

21:23 You know, among couples, this sometimes goes, one of them would ask, "Oh, do you love me?"

21:32 That should not even be the question. The question should be, "Are you capable of loving

21:36 anything, anybody?"

21:38 The fact is, neither of them are capable of loving. So how? It's unjust to ask such a

21:45 person, "Are you loving me?"

21:48 The fellow has no faculty to love. And that faculty has to be learnt. It has to be awakened.

21:55 And that's the proper purpose of education. But our education does not teach us what real

22:01 love is.

22:02 So what do we have? We have animalistic love. And we think of that as the only love possible.

22:07 The result is a very loveless society, a loveless earth that we have.

22:12 You seem to have insight into yourself and you're constantly seeking this path. Are you,

22:22 but you're still saying that you are, are you actually saying that you're incapable

22:26 of love? Did you never feel that you are capable of love, regardless of what the other person

22:34 is?

22:35 This very discussion is an exercise in love. How can I be incapable of love? Had I been

22:40 incapable of love, I wouldn't have been sitting here. I lost my father a few days back. What

22:46 makes you think would bring me to this chair? It's love. It's just that we have been so

22:56 held down by the conventional images and definitions of love that we do not realize true love,

23:03 even if it is right there in our face, even if it is right there.

23:09 So a great lover, Christ, for example, what do we do to him? We don't even see that he

23:15 loves us. And all the wise men, they are just lovers, but we forget them, we ignore them.

23:26 So that's what.

23:29 So you love everyone?

23:32 Why else would I make myself available to everyone?

23:36 Are you available to everyone?

23:39 Is there a restriction on who can watch my videos or read my books?

23:42 Will you meet everyone?

23:45 That's a physical limit, you see. And that also depends on the urge of the person to

23:50 meet me. I'm available. I suppose last month itself I would have addressed no less than

24:01 half a dozen gatherings that are open to anybody to attend. So if people want to attend, they

24:09 can come over, but they'll have to travel. They'll have to take the pains. And that's

24:14 the thing in love that you do.

24:16 So why do you think, why wouldn't you actually give benefit of doubt to many people who might

24:22 be in love, in true love? But you are constantly passing the judgment, saying that people are

24:33 not in love. It's only they're chasing their desires. They're constantly being driven by

24:39 their biological urges and they are making actually a mess of it.

24:46 You look at the facts, even if you have to pass a judgment. First of all, you want to

24:53 scrutinize the evidence, right? You look at the facts, you look at what's there on the

24:58 table. And when you look at the state of the earth, when you look at the mess that we have

25:05 created, there are obvious conclusions.

25:11 So love is not possible.

25:14 It's unfortunate that love is quite possible, but we deny ourselves.

25:21 So how can humanity, how can human species at least make an attempt or get started on

25:30 this path of love?

25:32 This way? This is the way?

25:37 Where did this love for reading come from? Was, is it genetics? Is it something a priori?

25:45 Is it something that you carried through generations? Where does this initial liking, dislikes or

25:55 love or repulsion for things come from?

25:59 See, if it can be reasoned out, if a cause can be attributed to it, then it becomes something

26:09 very little.

26:11 Then it becomes largely formulaic.

26:14 If you can know how this child was pulled towards books, then the same formula can be

26:23 applied to all others and the moment it gets limited to a formula, it becomes something

26:31 very small.

26:34 So at most I can say that I was fortunate to be provided with stuff I could read.

26:50 But then there are probably a lot of kids who do have access to books and who probably

26:58 might have access to even richer wisdom material than I had.

27:06 I would simply say it's a matter of choice.

27:13 Somewhere you have to stop the chain of causation.

27:15 You cannot say this happened because this happened because this happened because this

27:19 happened.

27:20 If that's the way it is, then a computer program can capture it and an advanced engineering

27:30 lab can produce thousands of kids using the same formula, thousands of kids with a spiritual

27:39 bent of mind or an academic bent of mind using the same formula.

27:45 So I suppose I have to stop at that, just saying that the books were there and I just

27:56 preferred reading over any other activity.

28:02 And your parents helped, encouraged?

28:07 Was the influence of parents or friends or somebody else there in life, early life?

28:17 Even though you're saying, you're insisting that let's not go into the causation, but

28:22 I'm trying to understand who Acharya Prashant is.

28:31 You see, I didn't have too many friends.

28:33 I didn't have too many friends.

28:35 I did have friends, but that was limited to my school time and those were not days of

28:42 the internet and I didn't have kids, my friends visiting my home.

28:50 So I had the opportunity to be with my books for long hours in the day and it was not merely

29:02 books pertaining to wisdom or something that I read.

29:07 I was not training to become a spiritual leader.

29:11 I was reading from all directions.

29:16 So I would read history, I would read comic strips.

29:27 All that is available, anything one can lay his hand on.

29:32 So are you conscious or unconscious?

29:35 I don't know.

29:37 One can only try to see what the current condition is.

29:42 So you keep looking at yourself.

29:45 There are telltale signs and you can never reach absolute consciousness, right?

29:55 It's always a journey.

29:57 So if you'll ask in binary, conscious or unconscious, I'll modestly say unconscious.

30:06 Because if I say conscious, that's like violating a principle.

30:11 To say one is conscious is to say one is absolutely conscious because only the absolute point

30:21 deserves to be called a state of consciousness.

30:25 All else is just a foggy state of the mind in which you know little and you don't know

30:31 little and when you don't know everything, it's better to simply say you don't know.

30:42 So are you saying by and large, humanity, what we call humanity, is unconscious or is

30:48 in the process of gaining consciousness?

30:52 Yes, obviously, humanity is a huge unconscious lot.

31:00 Huge unconscious lot.

31:03 So when we say love or when we say humanity, what are we really referring to?

31:10 Are we saying that it's a construct?

31:13 We just believe, we like to believe that.

31:15 We are referring to a species that is born like animals and lives like animals, even

31:27 though it has a much superior potential.

31:33 We talk of human beings, we are really talking of 8 billion animals, that's all, driven by

31:44 their biological mandate.

31:47 So we are mostly driven by our biological mandate.

31:51 Obviously.

31:53 What else is a territorial mind?

31:58 What else is the insane thirst for a house or a partner or money?

32:17 What else is all this?

32:18 All this is…

32:19 You also said that humans are special.

32:22 For us, the test is tougher and we cannot be seen at the same level as animals because

32:32 they just follow their biological drive.

32:36 Humans try to exceed that biological mandate.

32:39 Right, right.

32:40 See, that's what human beings must do, but that's not what they actually do.

32:47 And that's why it's rather unfortunate that in spite of the potential, in spite of what

32:54 is possible, we live like animals and that's why we are worse than animals.

33:01 See animals living like animals are alright, they have no option.

33:07 But human beings living like animals are a disgrace because they had an option.

33:18 Is it really within our control, within our limits to have that choice which you repeatedly

33:26 refer to as the conscious choice?

33:29 Do you think we are at that stage, that level of evolution or whatever you would like to

33:35 call it, where we can actually access that conscious mind?

33:42 You see, what is a question?

33:47 A question is a choice, right?

33:50 I could have said, I don't know and I don't need to know.

33:53 But what do I say?

33:57 I don't know, but I must know.

34:01 So the possibility to enquire and know is always there, else there can be no questions

34:11 possible.

34:13 So it's not a matter of the stage of evolution, it's not even a matter of one's upbringing

34:24 or economic conditions or social conditioning, none of that.

34:31 As a human being, the option to do better, to enquire, to know, not to proceed without

34:44 understanding is always there.

35:03 [Music]

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