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Video Information: 07.07.2020, IIT-Bombay, Greater Noida, U.P.
Context:
~ Is there can be life without depending upon others?
~ How to be less dependent on others?
~ What is dependency?
~ How to be independent?
~ How to be fearless?
~ What is fear?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates?
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Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
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Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work?
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Want to work with Acharya Prashant?
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➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: 07.07.2020, IIT-Bombay, Greater Noida, U.P.
Context:
~ Is there can be life without depending upon others?
~ How to be less dependent on others?
~ What is dependency?
~ How to be independent?
~ How to be fearless?
~ What is fear?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Nikita Jain, Biotechnology, IITB.
00:10So how to overcome emotional dependency and loneliness?
00:18First of all, there are not several types of dependencies.
00:24These types are very superficial.
00:28You might say, I have material dependency, I have financial dependency, I have physical
00:33dependency, I have emotional dependency, I have spiritual dependency, I mean, dependency
00:40is dependency.
00:41Who is dependent?
00:45All dependency comes from the fundamental sense of incompleteness of the I.
01:01We are born feeling that something is not quite right about us.
01:10Even the newborn baby carries that deep belief, obviously not consciously.
01:25And it is that sense of imperfection or incompleteness that drives us through life.
01:45That's what makes most people do whatever they do in their lifetimes.
01:52So we acquire knowledge, we acquire social certification, we get into several kinds of
01:59relationships, we procreate, we amass wealth.
02:03We do this, do that, build a house, build a mausoleum for ourselves.
02:14We do all these things.
02:16Actually why do we do any or all of these things?
02:24Because we are not convinced that we are alright.
02:33The I-tendency is a raging dissatisfaction against itself.
02:44I am greatly dissatisfied with whom?
02:47With my own being, with my own existence.
02:52I am not okay, I am not okay.
02:53Why am I not okay?
02:54Don't ask me that, I am born like that.
02:59Has something occurred to you to make you feel that you are not alright?
03:05No.
03:06I have occurred to myself and that's what makes me feel that I am not alright.
03:14Not that some event has happened to me.
03:19The event that has happened is me, me meaning my birth.
03:24Not that something has happened to me and is making me feel bad about myself, no.
03:31The event of my existence itself makes me feel bad about myself.
03:43I am born feeling bad about myself.
03:45I am born feeling hungry and dissatisfied.
03:50When I was born I cried.
03:56That's the human condition.
03:59Why am I here?
04:03That's the first thing that occurs to the kid, the newborn infant.
04:09Why am I here?
04:11What did I do to deserve this?
04:19What did the newborn ask mummy?
04:25Now who did this?
04:34And now you know what we spend our entire life, the rest of our life for.
04:42We spend it trying to overcome the botched up work that we are.
04:56It's like I am the output of something quite shoddy.
05:04It needs to be amended, corrected, rectified and our entire lifetimes are just a desperate
05:12attempt at rectification.
05:16I am born incorrect.
05:17I have to take care of myself and there is ample proof to show that we are born incorrect.
05:23Don't teach the child language and the child would have an underdeveloped mind.
05:39The human child requires almost two decades of education.
05:49Look at the amount of effort that goes into the rectification.
05:55Even before you can really step out into the world, you require two decades of training.
06:02So obviously you are not born alright.
06:07Some part of it is biological and the other part is social.
06:27Your hands extend only this much, your eyes can see only this much, your memory is limited
06:42to this much, your intellect is only this sharp and no more.
06:56So all this is biological incompleteness or imperfection and then there is the social
07:09sense of imperfection that is imposed upon you.
07:19You have a particular color or ethnicity or nationality.
07:27So you are probably not alright or a little bit alright but nothing about your nationality
07:35or color or gender or ethnicity can make you fully alright.
07:44Even if you belong to the most developed of countries, there would be somebody prepared
07:54to point at something obnoxious about your country.
08:04So you take that in, okay, I am not alright for this reason, I am not alright for that
08:10reason, getting it?
08:17And that's what leads to both of these things that Nikita you are mentioning in your question.
08:24Loneliness and dependency.
08:28Loneliness fundamentally means, add something to me, make something sit next to me, affix
08:45something to me, glue me to something, superimpose something on me, magnify me, getting it?
09:12Without that addition, without that amplification, I am not okay, I am not good enough.
09:29It's not as if it is something that specifically happens to you when you are 26.
09:39You are born with this feeling.
09:47Again go back to the infant, does not see her mother for 2 hours and starts wailing.
09:56Is that not loneliness?
10:01And it's not something sexual as you might be misled into believing being a 26 year old.
10:14It's just that even if you are just 26 days old, you still require the warmth of a human
10:23body next to you, otherwise you start, that's what is born, loneliness and dependency.
10:38And it will continue.
10:41May you live till 126, you will find that loneliness still haunts you.
10:49The same kind of loneliness that you experienced when you were 26 days old.
11:01So the disease is deeper than we think.
11:09We feel, oh it's about a young person, probably looking for a friend or a mate.
11:18No, no, no.
11:20It's an existential problem.
11:24We are lonely because we exist.
11:31We are dependent, why?
11:34Because we exist.
11:40How to challenge this problem then?
11:45Then you have to exist in a different way altogether.
11:50Right now what exists is the body identified and socially identified ego.
12:01That's what is born.
12:07Thankfully, an alternative exists.
12:16The option to live not as the ego but as something beyond the ego exists and if that option does
12:26not exist, then life is absurd.
12:33Even as the absurdists would say or rather question, why live at all?
12:44Is life worth it?
12:45And surely life is not worth living if there is no possibility of freedom from the ego.
13:02If there is no possibility of freedom from the ego, then every passing day is just another
13:1224-hour experience in servility and anxiety and slavery and depression.
13:32And not only are you experiencing that frustration today, you know very well that this frustration
13:50is your fate for all days to come.
14:00Then as many have said and done, suicide appears the best option.
14:11If life offers no possibility of liberation from the pain called ego, then why live at
14:23all?
14:26But as we said, thankfully that possibility is very much there.
14:33Only when you exercise that possibility is freedom from dependency and loneliness possible.
14:44And that's a deeper exercise.
14:47The shallow way is to fight loneliness through distraction.
14:56And if you distract yourself in a thousand ways, then you can keep loneliness at bay
15:04at least for a certain time.
15:12You could go to a beer bar and spend a few hours with your friends and you are no more lonely.
15:21Are you lonely in that duration?
15:23You are not.
15:28Or you could watch the highlights of the last World Cup soccer, pretending that you do not
15:43know the score line, oh my god, who is going to win?
15:55Or you could do a thousand other cute and stupid things to keep you busy.
16:07That's a shallow way of negotiating with loneliness, dependency, etc.
16:17And I am talking of them in the same breath.
16:18They are much the same thing.
16:23The real way is to know that as long as we continue to feed our false sense of self,
16:38we are condemning ourselves to more and more loneliness, more and more dependency and we
16:45are necessitating therefore more and more of anti-depressant material.
16:59An anti-depressant is not merely a pill.
17:02An anti-depressant is much more like a visit to the shopping mall or waiting for the Friday release.
17:21That's an anti-depressant.
17:25Clinically, only a small proportion of people are depressed.
17:30Existentially, we are all born depressed.
17:42So there are some who have been diagnosed with depression and there are some who are
17:55asymptomatically depressed.
17:58But depressed we all are without doubt, except for the liberated ones, we all are depressed.
18:08In some cases, depression has shown up, erupted in full ferocity.
18:17In other cases, depression is lying latent, hidden, waiting for the right time to raise
18:24its fangs.
18:33So Nikita, I would invite you to come to Vedanta.
18:45I'll invite you to go to all the fundamental spiritual scriptures.
19:14Come to Kapil Rishi, come to Kalad Rishi, come to Krishan and you are born in a Jain
19:25family.
19:28Come to Kund Kund.
19:34Come to Mahavir, to Parshunath.
19:40They all are there for you.
19:46They were people with a lot of love and they have ensured that their bodily absence does
20:01not enfeeble their mission.
20:06They have left behind rich and voluminous scriptures and accounts, questions and teachings.
20:34And there is a higher pleasure in being with them.
20:44Once you develop the taste of being with a Krishan or a Mahavir, you will forget
21:02all this loneliness and dependency business.
21:08Because loneliness cries for a person just like you or an activity in your own dimension.
21:23That's what loneliness and dependency cry for, right?
21:30When you have the company of these geniuses, then you feel fulfilled.
21:50Then in fact, not only are you not lonely or dependent, actually a lot of filth from
21:58your life is expunged.
22:04Forget about you saying, who else can be added to my life?
22:11The question changes.
22:13The question says, now who all are unnecessarily still present in my life?
22:25From an instinct towards addition, you find that you are now more concerned towards liberation,
22:42negation, purification.
22:46You don't want to bring in more people into your life.
22:49Now you rather want to purify yourself of the people or things or concepts that are
23:00already in your life.
23:01You are not adding now.
23:03You are actually subtracting.
23:07You are subtracting actually because now your space has been occupied by somebody quite
23:16large, immense.
23:24That somebody is not a person.
23:26That somebody is just somebody.
23:31But he is quite voluminous, expansive, immense.
23:37And to make space for him, he is not a male.
23:44But I have to use some words, so I am using.
23:47But to make space for him, you have to evict all the nonsense, all the clutter that is
24:04sitting upon your precious mind space.
24:08So you just tell all of them to leave, leave, leave.
24:15There is somebody else I want to be with.
24:22This is the opposite of loneliness.
24:24In loneliness, you are looking at the world with desperate eyes.
24:29Somebody please give me company, somebody, somebody, please, please, please.
24:34In the state I am talking of, you are looking at yourself and asking how the hell I have
24:40allowed these two rats to still be present in my room.
24:46My room is almost completely empty of all kinds of pests now.
24:55There used to be a pest called that dude.
24:59There used to be a pest called my BFF.
25:05There used to be a pest called my distant cousin.
25:11And they were all of these occupying my room and my mental space.
25:19And I have shooed all of them away, rather most of them away.
25:22But these two little rats, they are still jumping around, attracting my attention.
25:29One is my ex, who keeps stalking me on Instagram some days.
25:40The other is this new contender, who keeps sending me this occasional feeler, hey which
25:51brand of coffee do you like, what, you are doing cookery course or something.
26:00So these two rats are still left to be pushed out.
26:06So you see the whole thing has drastically changed.
26:09From being a beggar in front of the world, now you are asking the world to keep away.
26:20Isn't that a position of power, immense power?
26:24Not that you have become a world hater or something.
26:27It's just that now you have learned discretion.
26:30Now you know who should be allowed in the sanctity of your room.
26:39Your room is a sacred space, is it not?
26:42Do you allow all kinds of rats and lizards and cockroaches to populate it, do you?
26:52By the way, I have nothing against lizards, I have 26 of them in my room.
26:59But here when I say lizard and cockroach, then you know what I mean, right?
27:12Bring the big ones in.
27:15Without them life is anyway not worth living.