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Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Context:
~ How to live and not just survive?
~ How to live rightly?
~ What is the right thing to do in life?
~ How to know what is our passion?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
~~~~~
Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Context:
~ How to live and not just survive?
~ How to live rightly?
~ What is the right thing to do in life?
~ How to know what is our passion?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Good afternoon sir, my name is Ushna Sheikh and I am a student of FYBSC here in this college.
00:09So I see all the people around me living a cycle, like a life cycle, who are just working
00:17hard and struggling to survive in the society.
00:20So my question is how to actually live and not just survive.
00:25So like when I am on my death bed, I know that my life was worthy enough.
00:29Girl, you are asking for just too much.
00:39This is what the best and the greatest among us in this human race strove for.
00:54And struggled all their life, so that's what you are asking for.
01:00I am really glad, wonderful, sit.
01:04So how to live and not just survive, wow.
01:13What does it mean to just survive?
01:22It means to exist for the sake of the body.
01:28I am just trying to put it in certain technical terms for the sake of clarity.
01:36If most of your waking time is spent in pursuit of physical sustenance or physical pleasure,
01:48then you are just surviving.
01:55Six to eight hours we sleep, another two hours are spent taking care of the body.
02:03That makes it 8 to 10.
02:07You are left with 14 hours, 16 hours.
02:10Of these 14, 16 hours, three hours are spent commuting, if you are in Bombay.
02:20So you are left with what, 10, 12 something.
02:23Of these 10, 12 hours, if you are spending 80, 90% just taking care of your livelihood
02:33or trying to maximize your physical pleasures, then you are just surviving.
02:41What's common between just striving for livelihood and maximizing physical pleasures?
02:47Livelihood is the thing that you enter into so that you can maintain your physical sustenance.
02:58So physicality is the common link.
03:04You ask someone, why do you work so much?
03:06Is there joy in your work?
03:10Is it a mission you are working for?
03:13Do you want to bring about a substantial change within you or in the world?
03:17And if the answer is no, they say, no, we work so that we can feed ourselves, our family,
03:24take care of needs and also provide for our desires and ambitions, then that's called
03:30as mere survival, just survival.
03:36Most of my effort goes towards taking care of my stomach, my body, my clothes, my accommodation
03:47and the remaining part, the excess amount that I earn.
03:52I spend that to take care of my desires, my pleasures.
03:58This is mere survival.
03:59Are you getting it?
04:02A fellow earns, let's say, 100 rupees a month.
04:0660 to 70 is spent in what he calls as fixed expenses.
04:17Of the remaining amount, the fellow spends rupees 20 in pleasing himself.
04:27And rupees 10 he keeps in the bank for future use.
04:31This is mere survival.
04:34And this must have begun to sound horrible to you because this is how 99% of humanity
04:43lives, merely for survival, just for survival.
04:51What is real life then?
04:56Real life is when the body, the physicality is not the end but the means.
05:07To live to feed the body is much the same as buying a car to keep refueling it.
05:22What does the car do?
05:24It goes from the home to the fuel station and comes back to the home.
05:33The car moves so that the car can be fueled.
05:39The fellow goes to office so that his stomach can be fueled.
05:45He goes to office so that he can eat enough for his stomach, both the stomachs, the physical
05:51stomach and the mental stomach.
05:55Why does the fellow go to his office?
05:57So that the stomach can be fueled is much the same as buying a car so that it can be
06:04taken to the petrol pump to fuel it.
06:07The car goes nowhere else.
06:08It goes only till the petrol pump or it goes till the garage so that it can be serviced.
06:16What's the point in buying and maintaining such a car?
06:22It takes you nowhere.
06:25There is no destination it can bring to you.
06:27Similarly, what is the point in having this body if the entire life has to be spent just
06:34servicing this body?
06:37And by body, I mean both the physical body and the mental body just as the stomach is
06:43both the physical stomach and the mental stomach.
06:47And the mental stomach, we all know, is hungrier than the physical stomach.
06:53Are you getting it?
06:56What is the point in having the body?
06:58By body, I mean the body and the mind.
07:00If the entire life you are working just to feed the body and the mind, how does the body
07:07demand to be fed?
07:10Through food, through clothes and through shelter.
07:13These are the three things that the body wants.
07:16How does the mind demand to be fed?
07:18Infinite appetite, unending desires.
07:25Both of these keep demanding, please feed us, please feed us.
07:29The body says, give me a better house, give me better clothes.
07:34The mind says, oh, that's what I want to have.
07:38That next thing remains to be achieved.
07:40I must have that.
07:41And life is spent just servicing the body-mind complex.
07:49It's been 10 years since you bought that car and it has never taken you anywhere else.
07:56And there is so much in the world, great and beautiful, that you must go to.
08:02But your car takes you nowhere because all your time you are just servicing the car.
08:09The car is of no use to you.
08:12Instead, you are being used by the car.
08:15You do not own the car, the car owns you.
08:18You are a slave to the car.
08:19Similarly, we are mostly slaves to our car.
08:24This is our car.
08:26You have been gifted with this so that you can use this to reach somewhere in life.
08:32Instead we act as slaves of the body, don't we usually?
08:36The body decides what we'll do.
08:39And body means body-mind.
08:41The body and the mind decide what you ought to do.
08:43And the mind is nothing but an outgrowth of the body.
08:49Our desires, our thoughts, they arise from our physicality, don't they?
08:55Your hormones shift a little and your mood shifts, does that not happen?
09:03So what you call as your mental emotions are nothing but physical things in motion.
09:12So of what use is life then if all you have to look for is physical mental security and
09:21fulfillment of blind desires?
09:25You live when there is something beyond physicality to live for.
09:32You have that.
09:33As young people, this question should be very, very important to you.
09:38I do not know whether we'll ever meet again.
09:42I do not know whether my words will mean anything to anybody at all.
09:48But if even one person here finds some significance in what is being said right now, the very
09:57center of life within will experience a change.
10:06I meet 25 and 35 year olds now and they say that it's probably too late.
10:15Why couldn't we meet you when we were in college?
10:21And every day there are hundreds and thousands of messages, emails, sir, what you are saying
10:29is perfectly right, but it's just too late for me now.
10:34I'm 30.
10:37Fortunately you are not yet 30.
10:43So you are just in the right place to decide what your life is for.
10:49For facing the stomach and the mind or for reaching a lovely destination.
11:00Life is not about eating, breathing, sleeping, walking.
11:09You cannot even be called as living if you just eat, breathe, sleep, walk, take a bath
11:16and gossip.
11:19One cannot even be called alive.
11:20You know, technology is progressing at such a rapid rate.
11:26We actually have robots today that can do most of what a normal human being does.
11:36Robots can even emote because emotions are just chemical.
11:42Therefore robots too can be made to emote.
11:46What's the problem in having a chemical arrangement that generates emotions?
11:52No shoes.
11:57Is there something in life beyond what a robot can do?
12:03You say, you know, I'm not dead.
12:05I'm alive.
12:06Why?
12:07You see, because I walk.
12:08Even a robot can walk.
12:10I speak.
12:11Even a robot can speak.
12:12I see.
12:13I hear and see.
12:20I love.
12:21But that's simply chemical attraction.
12:24Even a robot can be made to experience that.
12:27Just Google and you will find robots falling in love.
12:31They have been programmed to fall in love.
12:33Just as we have been physically programmed to fall in love.
12:36There is no consciousness in our love.
12:40It's just material attraction and repulsion.
12:44Like iron pieces to a magnet.
12:47Are you getting it?
12:52Can there be something in life beyond robotic?
13:01If we have a robot sitting here, it will register everything that I'm saying.
13:08In fact, using machine learning, using artificial intelligence, the robot will actually be able
13:19to prepare a very intelligent map of what has been said.
13:27It will be able to tell how one part of my response to one question mapped perfectly
13:33with another seemingly different part of response to a different question.
13:39You will find it difficult to do.
13:40The robot will do it better than you can.
13:45In some sense, if the robot sits here, it's gathering my words better than you can.
13:53What is it then about a human being that qualifies it or him or her to be called alive?
14:03What is that?
14:05What is that?
14:06And that's something we need to have.
14:15You're waiting for me to give the answer?
14:18That's robotic.
14:23A robot can never exceed its programming.
14:28A robot can never go beyond its programming.
14:33One thousand years from now, when you will have unimaginably fast and smart supercomputers,
14:43the supercomputers of today will appear like an abacus in front of them.
14:50That kind of computing ability you will have a thousand years is too much, within 50 years.
14:58That's the rate at which computer science is progressing.
15:02Even then, no computer will ever be able to go beyond what it has been created for.
15:12No machine, therefore, can ever be free.
15:16And that's the only characteristic of living.
15:21Can there be freedom?
15:23No machine is free.
15:25All machines are operated by some operator outside of them.
15:34They are designed by a designer outside of them.
15:39They are programmed by a programmer outside of them.
15:43They therefore cannot be free.
15:46Can you be free?
15:47And if you can be free, then you have lived, otherwise you have just existed and survived.
15:56Like a piece of flesh, bacteria, fungi, insects.
16:03The whole lot of animals, they all exist, don't they?
16:10And there is nothing wrong in their existence because they are not even supposed to be free.
16:16They don't even want to be free.
16:17But human beings, if we are not free, something within us keeps weeping, does it not?
16:27You can very coolly have dogs as pets, and kitten, and if you feed them well, and if
16:37you treat them well, they'll never go away.
16:42Even if you push them out of your house, you'll find them returning, right?
16:50And you take them out for a walk.
16:56And there's a collar around their neck.
16:59But no human being can ever be satisfied with such an arrangement, provided he deserves
17:06to be called human.
17:09No human being will ever say that if I get fed properly, and if I'm given enough money,
17:17and if I'm given a cozy place to live in, and a nice bed to sleep in, I'm ready to live
17:24like a dog in your house.
17:26No human being will say that because human beings are constituted to value freedom more
17:33than anything else.
17:38The dog will happily survive in its bondages.
17:45Man cannot happily survive.
17:47We know of people who would rather die than be enslaved, right?
17:55I hope we all were like that.
17:59I prefer death over slavery or bondages.
18:04That's the defining and exclusive characteristic of a truly alive human being.
18:11Freedom.
18:12Freedom from everything.
18:14Freedom from your external masters, and more importantly, freedom from your inner conditioning.
18:20Inwardly we are badly conditioned.
18:25Each strand of your hair, every particular cell in the body is simply conditioned.
18:35There's nothing new in life therefore.
18:37That which you are doing, that which you are experiencing, your emotions, your thoughts,
18:41your instincts, your reactions, they are all pre-scripted in a sense.
18:50And on top of that script, there is another script imposed on you by the society.
18:58First of all, we are all born conditioned and then the social influences from us, coming
19:06from family and the media and the college and the religious stream we belong to, they
19:16all burden us even more.
19:22And we become thoroughly mechanical.
19:25The fellow loses all sense of freedom.
19:29What's scary is most of us lose even love for freedom.
19:37We resign, we surrender, we agree to live like slaves.
19:46We start calling the master's orders as our own thoughts and desires.
19:54Are your desires your own?
19:57Are your targets your own?
19:58No, they are mostly coming from a master outside, who's dictating terms to us.
20:09Sometimes we know the master, most of the times we do not even know that the stuff we
20:13are chasing is actually of no use to us.
20:22Some blind force has taught us to respect something, to chase something, to value something,
20:29to live for something and we are blindly obeying the commands.
20:37Like a clerk receiving dictation from an officer.
20:46Like a master commanding the dog to fetch the newspaper.
20:57Like a programmer asking the machine to fetch a certain result.
21:08That's how most of us live.
21:10Can you be free from all this?
21:13Can you see that your existence is threatened from all sides by blind forces that are violent
21:28and senseless and meaningless?
21:32And because they are blind and senseless, they want to capture others' lives.
21:43One mark of ignorance is that it suffers.
21:48When you are ignorant within, you suffer.
21:51And when you suffer within, you know what you become?
21:54You become violent so that you can make others suffer.
22:01When the society in general is ignorant, it suffers and it makes everybody suffer.
22:15Young people must be cautious.
22:20Carrying bondages should not be labelled as responsibilities, as virtues, as sanctimonious
22:39stuff.
22:45You must question all the definitions that have been fed to you.
22:53You must figure out what is really sacred in life.
22:56You must figure out what is important, what is not, on your own.
23:02And then you are free or at least are walking towards freedom.
23:11I do not know whether absolute freedom at all is possible.
23:14I began my response by saying that you are asking for too much.
23:19I do not know whether in your lifetime you will ever be able to come to something called
23:25as absolute freedom.
23:27But life is made worth living by striving for freedom at all costs and all times, irrespective
23:35of how lucrative bondages appear, reject them.
23:44It does not matter that you are wearing respectable chains, no, even if your fetters are made
23:57of gold, just drop them.
24:09Are you getting it?
24:11That's what a robo cannot do.
24:17If I ask a robo, are you getting it?
24:20It will just look into the code and database to figure out what to say when somebody asks,
24:26are you getting it?
24:28And if it finds nothing there, error or bad input, that's how machines respond.
24:42So are you getting it?
24:51No robo can ever understand what has just been said.
24:55It can comprehend but not understand.
25:00Not today, not hundred years from today.
25:06Do you understand the difference between comprehension and understanding?
25:14To understand is to live it.
25:17When you understand freedom, then you drop your bondages and you start living freedom.
25:27Comprehension means, oh, I know what those words imply.
25:32So if you can know my language, if you can turn active voice into passive voice, if you
25:39can translate what I said from English to German or to Hindi, you have comprehended.
25:45But comprehension means nothing.
25:49Understanding means living.
25:52Comprehension simply means intellectual translation.
25:58Intellectual translation never helps anybody.
26:00There are so many people who know so much intellectually, it doesn't change their lives.
26:07But to understand is to commit to what you have known to be true.
26:13Now that I have understood, I am living it.
26:17And that's what a machine cannot do.
26:20If I speak of freedom to a robo, it cannot drop its programming.
26:27A thousand times I will speak of freedom to a robo or to a computer, it will still remain
26:33programmed.
26:35And that's how human beings are human beings.
26:38It is possible for you to go beyond your programming.
26:43It is possible for you to be free.
26:45It is possible for you to understand.
26:51Do you choose to understand?
26:54That's an unfortunate ability bestowed on us, choice.
27:01Why unfortunate?
27:02Because typically we choose the wrong option.
27:10Freedom is a choice.
27:12Bondages too are a choice.
27:17Ninety-nine times of hundred, we make the wrong choice.
27:23The robo, well, it cannot choose at all.
27:25It is simply programmed.
27:27And even if it will choose, the choice will come from the programming.
27:31True?
27:36Can we make the right choice?
27:38We'll have to live rightly then.
27:42Right choice is not just about uttering something from the mouth or nodding your head.
27:49It's about beginning to live in a free way, from the center of freedom.
27:57Possible?
28:01First of all, beautiful or not?
28:05Yes.
28:06When you'll find it beautiful, then you'll make it possible.
28:12There must be beauty in a young person's life.
28:16If there is no beauty, then there is no inspiration.
28:23Why will you move if there is ugliness all around?
28:27From ugliness of one kind who wants to strive to reach ugliness of another kind, somewhere
28:34you must see greatness and brightness and beauty.
28:38And then you are inspired and then you move.
28:42And that's when you can fight your slavery.
28:46And fighting requires a lot of energy.
28:54Be strong.
28:55Okay, sir.
28:56I am Manojendra Chaudhary, I am in the Department of Physics.
29:02You see, just as a corollary to what you just said, I want to ask, a robot doesn't have
29:08ego.
29:10So now, what is the intersection between the urge to be towards freedom and your ego?
29:18You could say, the robo does have an ego planted into it by its designer.
29:30Therefore, the ego of the robo is totally in bondage and therefore choiceless.
29:41You could either say the robo has no ego and that would be perfectly correct.
29:44Or you could say, the robo has an ego, a sense of I. What is ego?
29:50A sense of I. The robo has an ego that cannot choose.
29:57We utter I, we utter I exist, I am.
30:05And this I am-ness could either be robotic or real.
30:12It is robotic when your I am-ness is dependent on others.
30:19And if you feel threatened that if the other disappears or withdraws, the I am-ness itself
30:28will disappear.
30:31That's the slave ego.
30:34For example, I am rich.
30:38What is the ego?
30:39The I am thing is the ego.
30:43And if the ego says, I am rich, and if the riches vanish for some reason, some reason
30:49– a stock market crash, let's say.
30:54The fellow says, oh my God, I am gone.
30:56Because who was I?
30:57The rich one.
30:58And the riches have gone, so I am dead.
31:01I am rich.
31:02Now strike out the word rich.
31:06What remains?
31:07Nothing.
31:08That's false ego.
31:13But most of us choose to live in this kind of false and dependent ego.
31:21Real ego is self-dependent, free.
31:27It does not find it necessary to identify itself with something.
31:35It does not experience a kind of vacuum that it must compulsorily fill up with something,
31:45anything, some trash.
31:50Many of us, for example, might be finding it difficult to just sit silently and listen.
31:57Because in the moment of silence, you have to say, I am.
32:01In fact, you don't even say, I am, there is just silence.
32:05And that's a threat to the ego, because the ego must say something, I am X, I am Y.
32:09So the ego chooses to say, I am gossiping.
32:13Now gossip makes the ego feel alive, oh I exist, otherwise there is the danger of inner
32:21death.
32:22Obviously a false death.
32:24No real danger, actually.
32:27Do you get this?
32:30The way we are, the way we are born, we are born with the sense of I am.
32:40It is this sense of I am that works all life to gain fulfillment.
32:49Being unfulfilled is our condition right since birth.
32:56But we choose, because of ignorance, fulfillment from the wrong kind, not even wrong, useless
33:05kind of sources.
33:07We choose to be associated with something that will fail in delivering fulfillment.
33:16So I am rich or I am traveling, I am a tourist, I am a husband, I am a lover, I am educated,
33:23I am intelligent, I am Hindu, I am Muslim, I am male, I am female, I am smart.
33:35We want at all moments to associate ourselves with a certain identity in the hope that the
33:44association will bring fulfillment.
33:48But association does not bring fulfillment because it is an exercise in the wrong direction.
33:53We require not association but actually dissociation.
33:58That is called freedom.
34:01Freedom is to dissociate yourself from all your dependencies.
34:07Would you remember this?
34:09Freedom is to dissociate yourself from your dependencies.
34:13Whereas the ego is constantly clamoring for more and more dependencies.
34:20Even the things that you call as your assets actually become your dependencies.
34:27For example, I own a Rolls Royce.
34:34In language, I seem to be implying that I am the master of the car.
34:39But tell me, one day the Rolls Royce isn't visible, something has happened and you need
34:45to go from place A to place B and all that is available is a humble hero splendor.
34:54What will happen to you?
34:57Think of your condition.
34:59Now who is the master and who is the slave?
35:03Who is the master?
35:04Were you the owner of the car?
35:06No.
35:07The car became so important to you, you got dependent and now when the car is not there,
35:11the car is not suffering, you are suffering.
35:14So who is the master?
35:16The car is the master.
35:18The ego chooses to associate, associate, achieve, obtain, accomplish, thinking that all these
35:25associations will give it fulfillment.
35:27No, they don't.
35:30Freedom comes from dissociation and dissociation does not mean that you throw your Rolls Royce
35:39away.
35:41Freedom simply means that internally you are not dependent on the car for your identity.
35:49The car is there if it needs to be.
35:54I don't think mostly it needs to be there, Rolls Royce kind of thing.
36:00But even if it is there, it is at your periphery, mental periphery.
36:06It does not become so important to you that you keep it at the center of your life.
36:12Similarly with persons, you start idolizing someone.
36:20You call someone as your role model and that person becomes so important to you or because
36:29I am talking to young people, you fall in love and that person becomes your entire universe.
36:37If not the entire universe, at least the center of your universe.
36:44That's the way of the ego, to depend, to constantly experience a hollow and look towards the world
36:52to somehow fill up that hollow.
36:55Can this fill up my hollow?
36:57I want to attain this.
36:58So I will work very hard to earn money to have this, hoping that this will reduce my
37:03feeling of being unfulfilled.
37:08Rolls Royce, a higher degree, a better paying job, a bigger house, a new boyfriend, all
37:19these are in the same category.
37:22The ego is using them to somehow get rid of its state of incompleteness.
37:29But these efforts do not succeed.
37:34What the ego really wants is freedom, not association.
37:38More associations will not make you feel better.
37:45Freedom from associations is what makes you come alive.
37:51And freedom from associations does not mean being a loner.
37:56It simply means not being a slave.
38:01Can't you be in a relationship without being a slave?
38:05Can't there be a healthy and free relationship or do you really have to become somebody's
38:12pet dog for the relationship to exist?
38:17Right?
38:18So that's the choice that you have.
38:21Do you want to live in freedom or do you want to chase associations, assets, accomplishments
38:28all your life?
38:30The more you chase, the more you will be disappointed and suffer.
38:41Is this making sense or is it just too much and too fast?
38:51Not sure.
38:55I hope this at least gives you a start.
38:59You are young, you have a long way to go and you have time.