Mid-life crisis: The return of the Truth || Acharya Prashant, with Delhi University (2023)
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Video Information: 17.03.23, Delhi University (Online), Greater Noida
Context:
~ Why do people commit suicide?
~ What is the end of suffering?
~ Are we actually living?
~ What is the worst that happens when I die?
~ What is the reason of suicide?
~ Why do people commit suicide?
~ How can we check it properly?
Music Credits: Milind Date
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Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Good evening to one and all present here. Thanks a lot, sir, for coming here, Acharya
00:13Pachand sir. Today we feel really blessed to have you to address us Enactus SLCE students.
00:20You have been really kind enough to accept our invitation, so we really thank you for
00:24that. Although, sir, you don't need an introduction, but because this is a podcast which will be
00:28published, that means that we have to share some things about you. Acharya Pachand sir
00:35is an acclaimed Vedanta executive to a national bestseller and also a national bestselling
00:40author for over 100 books. He's a powerful force of socio-spiritual transformation who
00:45has been helping people around the world with his knowledge and expertise. Today, millions
00:51of people are inspired by Acharya Pachand sir. He continues to share his wisdom to masses
00:57through various offline and online channels. Sir, it's an honor to welcome you to address
01:01us students of Enactus Shambhala College. Thank you. Welcome all of you.
01:07Sir, my question is related to midlife crisis. Midlife crisis is a rising trend in society
01:17and unfortunately, students within the age bracket of 20 to 30 are getting midlife crisis.
01:23So, why they are getting this and how to deal with this?
01:32See, what you call as a midlife crisis, irrespective of the age when it hits you, is basically
01:53a blow of the truth. So, as a college student, as a young man or a woman, you have been
02:22taught to have certain dreams. You have been conditioned to have certain dreams and you
02:34will not invest yourself in those dreams unless it is simultaneously assured to you that the
02:49dreams will get you happiness and fulfillment. Right? Will you buy something without an assurance
03:03that the thing will fetch you happiness, etc? You essentially buy a promise of fulfillment
03:15and happiness, irrespective of what you buy. Right? Otherwise, you will not invest yourself
03:24in the thing or the idea or the dream or the person or the job or the ideology or the lifestyle.
03:32All these are things, all this is stuff that we are made to buy into. Right?
03:43And we are convinced that if we buy into these things, then the result will be satisfactory.
04:02Obviously, the sellers of these dreams and ideologies and lifestyles will not want you to question
04:19these things because it becomes difficult to sell something spurious if the customer is too
04:37investigative. Right? No salesman enjoys a very inquisitive customer. So, these are not presented
04:56to us as things or options. These are presented to us as inevitable truths. You have to have a certain
05:11kind of lifestyle. As a young person, life is more or less scripted for you and the script is inviolable.
05:23It's not optional. It is the truth. See, only the truth is inviolable. Everything else is simply optional.
05:36And if something is presented to you as inexorable, something you just cannot avoid, then it is being
05:47presented to you as the truth. Right? Irrespective of whether the presenters use that word or not.
06:01So, as gullible young persons, you start believing in the script. You start thinking that obviously
06:12this alone is life. What else? You start using words like commonsensical, obviously. So, someone
06:29asks you, what are you going to do after college? And a lot of you will say, obviously, I'll get into a job.
06:38Obviously. And we have been conditioned to such an extent that it does not remain even faintly visible
06:55that there is nothing obvious or inviolable or final in this. That this must be a matter of conscious choice.
07:10You have to think over it. Visualize a day in your life at the age of 30. Visualize. Visualize a typical day
07:28in your life at the age of 30. And you'd be amazed if I ask you to pen down your visualization. Let me just
07:40hand over a piece of paper to each of you and ask you to jot down whatever has sprung in your mind.
07:49You'll be amazed the kind of similarities you will find in your descriptions. 70 to 80 percent overlap.
08:01How is that possible? The elements of your typical day at the age of 30 would include a job or a business,
08:12a husband or a wife, a kid or a couple of them, a house, a vehicle of your choice.
08:22Some of you would be thinking of a foreign country. Right? Right?
08:30Now, who gave these ideas to you? Don't tell me it's commonsensical. I don't have that sense.
08:42Who gave those ideas to you? How does it become like a law of nature that these things will but naturally happen?
08:58How did this get into your mind and strike such deep roots?
09:09And all of this is very intricately related to the thing called midlife crisis. We are not needlessly going into it.
09:20How did this enter your mind? Please tell me.
09:24When it enters your mind and once it takes a seat there, you know the tragedy is that it no more remains social, it becomes personal.
09:39You do not say my dream is a social one. What do you say?
09:43It's my personal goal. This is what I personally love.
09:49The thing is even the entity you call as the person is just a social construct.
09:56There is hardly any individuality in our existence. We are biological and social beings.
10:04The hardware comes from biology and the software comes from society, education, influences and such things.
10:18So there is nothing of our own really in our existence, our life, our mind, our thoughts, our emotions, our opinions.
10:26So you have bought into all those dreams and there is hardly any variety in those dreams.
10:38That's what used to bore me about them when I was your age.
10:44Come on, maybe I'll subscribe to what you're trying to sell me, but at least show me some options.
10:54Like a good customer. I want to feel empowered. I want to feel I have choice.
11:01So I would say, come on, show me some choice.
11:04There would be not much choice even for namesake.
11:09Job, money, wife, kids. Please something else, add to the list or remove something from the list.
11:25So there would be some very fickle and unimportant kind of additions or deletions.
11:36The core would remain the same and the core remains the same for everybody.
11:41It has remained the same, much the same for you people also.
11:45And that's what explains the midlife crisis.
11:48The stuff that you bought into at the age of 20 or 25 starts showing up as fake, useless, spurious by the age of 35 or 40.
12:03And that's what you call as a midlife crisis.
12:05But by then it is just too late. You have made irreversible decisions and deep investments you just cannot now get out of.
12:15That's what is midlife crisis.
12:20So that midlife crisis that you experience at the age of 35 or 40 or 45 is actually something
12:30that gets initiated decades earlier.
12:35It got initiated when you entered class 11th and you didn't know whether to go for commerce or science or medicine or arts or whatever.
12:48And then somebody told you, you pick up this particular stream and you will be happy.
12:55And you just didn't know anything and you enrolled into a particular stream.
13:00That's when the whole thing began.
13:05And then it kept snowballing as you kept moving on in life.
13:12It just kept getting bigger and bigger like a balloon inflating in size.
13:20But the balloon cannot keep gaining volume infinitely.
13:26A time comes, a day comes when it just bursts.
13:31That's what you call as midlife crisis.
13:33All hot air is what the life of a youngster is about.
13:38Just hot air, gas, a lot of gas.
13:42And gas can't survive for too long.
13:49Ever seen an everlasting balloon?
13:54But then that's what we are all busy blowing up.
13:59It bursts.
14:00And when it bursts, there is a sudden crash.
14:04You lose energy, you lose motivation, you just don't know what to do with life.
14:08All you're left with is a lot of frustration and repentance.
14:15And you get terribly irritable.
14:23And you start aging very rapidly.
14:28That's why when you hit 60, something called senility strikes you.
14:36Have you heard the word senile?
14:38What does that mean?
14:40Senile.
14:42What does that mean?
14:45Yeah, but what does that denote psychologically?
14:49If you say someone's gone senile, what does that mean?
14:56Gone kaput.
14:58Gone kind of insane.
15:01That's senility.
15:02And that's supposed to hit you when you hit 60.
15:08Senility.
15:10In Hindi you call it satyana.
15:12You see how it's related to sat?
15:17Satyana.
15:19Now what's it about 60 that your mind totally goes bonkers?
15:24Nothing.
15:26But a realization of a life all failed.
15:29A failed life.
15:33It need not begin at 60.
15:37It used to be at 60.
15:39Then it started happening at 35, 40.
15:41Now the questioner says it is happening at 20.
15:45Why is it happening so early?
15:48And it's a good thing, right?
15:49If you're failing, it's a great thing to realize early that you are failing.
15:54So that you have the opportunity to make some amends.
15:57If you realize at the age of 60 or 80 that you have lived a failed life,
16:02you don't even have the time to make corrections.
16:06Are we together?
16:08Now, how is it that the so-called midlife crisis is striking you much earlier than before?
16:18It is because the quantum of dreams that you are carrying today is much bigger than before.
16:25And it's coming to you much earlier.
16:33So people used to get into relationships at the age of 25, 30 something.
16:38Today all that begins in class 5.
16:41Right?
16:42That which you call as the nibba nibbi phenomena.
16:48So when at the age of 10, you are already into it.
16:53Then at the age of 20 or 25, you know that you have entered midlife crisis.
17:00Because the life of desire had begun just too soon.
17:11The life of consumption had begun just too soon.
17:17You want everything early, right?
17:20Today they say you must have a mark at 25.
17:23Only then life is successful.
17:27People used to buy their first Maruti 800 after retirement.
17:34So a lot of people are getting a lot of things way too early.
17:42And therefore, the subsequent disappointment and disillusionment also comes earlier.
17:56So the kind of depression people used to experience at 40 is now being experienced at 25.
18:02Because the experiences that they would accumulate till 40 are now being had in a much shorter time span.
18:19They would take 40 years to have those kind of experiences that you guys are having within a short span of 10-15 years now.
18:33You travel much more.
18:35You consume much more.
18:39The internet has widened the scope of your experiences much more.
18:49You can get into serial relationships which was not happening earlier.
18:55So in some sense, you have the opportunity to be wizened much earlier.
19:07Have you seen those black and white movies of 50s and 60s?
19:13What would be the typical age of the hero?
19:17I thought 50s.
19:21Think of Ashok Kumar.
19:24Think of Raj Kapoor.
19:26Probably they began in their 30s.
19:31But they always looked quite greyed down.
19:38Impressive because old.
19:41And think of the kind of screen heroes that you have today.
19:49Forget the oldies.
19:53Who are just statues that tradition has installed and those statues won't fall anytime soon.
20:05Otherwise think of the new entrants, the new faces that you see on the screen.
20:10They all look pretty young.
20:12Not just young, rather juvenile, even immature.
20:22So the onset of consumption, the onset of desire is happening much earlier.
20:34Much earlier.
20:38It's a very strange thing.
20:40Very, very strange thing.
20:42It happened just yesterday here in Bodhisattva.
20:45So, Rohitji is here.
20:48So we got three new rabbit friends yesterday.
20:55All kids, small.
21:00They have just arrived here yesterday.
21:03And they are just a few months of age.
21:08So they need to be, rabbits need to be neutered.
21:14They need to be neutered after they reach 6 or 7 months of age because that's when they start showing adult behavior and start mating.
21:24Before that they don't need to be neutered.
21:26But the doctor, the vet, he said something quite unusual, very interesting.
21:34He said, no, no, no.
21:36You can't wait for 6-7 months nowadays.
21:39Rabbits start displaying adult behavior at 3 months of age.
21:44So he asked him, but why?
21:47He said human proximity.
21:49Humans have grown so sexual that even the animals who live in their proximity start showing sexual behavior at an earlier age.
22:06Now I don't really fully believe this thesis that the vet has proposed.
22:11But even if there is a grain of truth in it, it's a very important pointer as to where we are headed and where we stand.
22:21You know that the average age of onset of puberty in human kids,
22:30it has decreased to like 10 years or something.
22:37That which used to show up at 13 or 14 is now emerging at 10 or 11.
22:45You know how girls are beginning to have their periods way earlier than what used to happen a few decades before.
22:57Now from where is that coming?
23:02All that is coming from an environment that is continuously provoking you, titillating you, instigating desire in you.
23:14So a lot of consumption, desires, this, that.
23:26And that which will begin earlier will also crash earlier.
23:32That crash is what you call as a midlife crisis.
23:36My opinion, it's not necessarily bad.
23:41If at the age of 25 itself, you can be disillusioned from the usual script, the usual pattern, the usual conditioning,
23:52then probably something new, fresh can open up for you.
24:00So, good.
24:02It was that kind of a crash that resulted in the phenomena that we today know of as Gautam Buddha and Vardhaman Mahavira.
24:19In some way, it was midlife crisis that struck them.
24:24They had everything and they were brought up on a huge dose of consumption.
24:31All kinds of consumption.
24:33Riches, prestige, knowledge, women, whatever they wanted had been made available to them.
24:40In fact, much more than they could ever want had been forcibly made available to them.
24:48Forcibly so that they do not become renunciates.
24:54That's how the story goes.
24:56At least with respect to the Buddha.
24:59His father was afraid that this chap has other plans.
25:05He will not stay put in the palace and he will probably take some other path.
25:12So, he tried to immerse Buddha into all kinds of material luxuries.
25:23And that only hastened the process of Buddha's disillusionment.
25:31He said, all that could be had, that could be consumed or enjoyed or experienced.
25:40I have already had and it has failed on me.
25:46I still feel wretched and hollow within.
25:52So, why continue this kind of life?
25:55Obviously, fulfillment lies elsewhere.
25:59So, let me go out and try.
26:04I wish all of you get an early crisis.
26:14It's better to be painfully struck with reality than to live in a fool's paradise all life long.
26:25Though that's what the ego wants.
26:27The ego says, don't show me the mirror, don't tell me the truth.
26:33Let me live in my fanciful dreams my entire life.
26:39Wish that could be true.
26:48What would you rather have?
26:50What would you rather have?
26:53A painful blow of the truth?
27:00Or cozy, wooly, sweet dreams?
27:20Such a loud declaration, an utter roar of the truth we just heard.
27:27Now that explains the crisis.
27:32We are born to be deceived.
27:37Our natural composition is such that we want to remain stupid.
27:46Not anybody's fault. That's how we are born. That's how everybody is born.
27:50We have a strong tendency to favor self-illusion.
27:57Even if truth stares us in the face, we will refuse it.
28:10Unfortunately, that cannot continue for too long.
28:14When facts and imaginations collide, you know what gets shattered.
28:22Nobody can shatter facts.
28:26Dreams crash.
28:28But your entire culture and all your teachers and well-wishers, they want you to chase your dreams, don't they?
28:45And the whole motivation industry.
28:48Come on, chase your dreams.
28:51I support them.
28:53I say chase your dreams even more wholeheartedly.
28:58So that you can very soon realize that your dreams are nonsensical.
29:08In fact, those who are very sincere towards their dreams will be the first ones to reject their dreams, to evolve beyond their dreams.
29:19Because they have been sincere in pursuing their dreams.
29:24The worst condition is of those who maintain dreams, yet never pursue them wholeheartedly.
29:33So they remain in some kind of perpetual hope.
29:37So there is a dream.
29:39One day the dream will come true and then I will be happy.
29:44So if you have some dream, and as young people obviously will be having dreams.
29:48I say go after it with all that you have.
29:53Go after it so that you can see its futility.
30:00Otherwise all that I am saying from this position right now will not appear true or even tasteful to you.
30:17Materialize at least a few of your dreams so that you can see their falseness.
30:22So that you can see that there is just nothing in that.
30:29Obviously you are far luckier if you can see the futility of these so-called dreams.
30:37Mind you, remember how we began.
30:40We said your dreams are not your dreams.
30:43They have been drilled into you by the society.
30:48Anyway, now that you have started calling them your own.
30:55Lucky are the few who can spontaneously just by observation and their insight.
31:05Realize that the dream business is all hollow and futile.
31:11Realize that there is nothing individualistic about our dreams and goals and targets.
31:19Those are the lucky few.
31:22Most of you will need some kind of a crash to regain your senses.
31:40Otherwise we remain in some kind of intoxicated state.
31:49Where the dream business is everything.
31:55And everybody has the same dream.
31:59Gather a crowd of hundred.
32:01Ask them, can you list five dreams that you have.
32:07And you find that all hundred have at least three shared dreams.
32:13Will that happen or not?
32:15And still each of them is calling those dreams as.
32:20Oh, this is my personal dream.
32:22How can it be personal if you share it with so many people?
32:25Obviously it is neither yours nor his nor her.
32:29It is coming from some other source.
32:31And that some other source has managed to embed the same dream in each of you.
32:38You don't see that.
32:42You start calling your ambitions, your desires, your targets as your own.
32:49This is not the kind of happy beginning you would have probably wanted to the discussion.
33:06But then the fault is all yours.
33:09You come here, that's the first fault.
33:13Then you begin with such a question.
33:17That's another thing just upon you.
33:19I have nothing to do with it.
33:21I'll simply respond to what you put in front of me.
33:28Mostly it will not appear very delicious.
33:40Pardon me for that.
33:46Yes.
33:47What I think one of the major reason for midlife crisis is larger than life image that movies and OTT platforms portray.
33:58So these movies are manipulating the kids and more importantly manipulating the reality.
34:04And young stars are also relying on them.
34:08So why did this happen and how to deal with this situation?
34:12You see, you buy into an entire book.
34:24You cannot now pick and choose among the chapters of the book.
34:36How is it possible that you continue to believe in chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, 4, 5, 6
34:52and then you say chapter 8 and 9.
34:56I will not believe, I'll not accept and I'll not implement in my life.
35:03That's not possible.
35:04Where do movies come from?
35:08Where do movies come from?
35:12All this movie business is very deeply related to the kind of lives that you live.
35:18You cannot continue to have the lives that you have and yet avoid movies.
35:25See that's a very lucrative argument that many of us internally cultivate.
35:38We say no, everything is okay about our life.
35:42It's the movies that are spoiling the culture.
35:44The question is where are the movies coming from?
35:47They are coming from the same ecosystem that is breeding you.
35:49It's impossible to have the life that you have and not have the movies that you have.
35:57Your life is boring because it lacks authenticity.
36:03Therefore, you need movies that involve thrill, adventure, sex, violence and juicy songs and all those things.
36:12Had your lives been different, would you have required movies like that?
36:16And as long as your lives are what they are, you will continue to need those movies.
36:22But we like to put all the blame on the movies.
36:27We say no, life is okay, movies are spoiling it.
36:31But sir, the movies do not drop from the heavens.
36:35The movies are a product of the society that we are.
36:39Otherwise the movies would have flopped.
36:43Who patronizes those movies? Who needs those movies? Who pays for those movies?
36:49We do, right? We are not dragged to the halls.
36:53We go there on our own and we book the tickets.
36:57And we sometimes buy very expensive tickets because the regular ones are not available.
37:04And even the popcorn basket or tub would cost sometimes 500 or 1000 rupees.
37:13And you still go for it.
37:16Then why blame the movies?
37:18We are dying to watch those movies. Are we not?
37:21And why are we dying to watch those movies?
37:24Because that's the way our life is.
37:26And why is our life the way it is? Because that's the script.
37:30That's what our culture has told us.
37:33That's what our education has told us.
37:35Our upbringing has told us that this is the kind of life that you have to live.
37:38And that kind of life necessitates movies and is also reflected in movies.
37:48Are you getting it?
37:50And that's the reason why the brand and genre of movies that you have in India is very different from what you have in Iran or what you have in Korea or what you have in the US.
38:04Just by the looks of it, you can spot an Indian movie.
38:09Because that movie is springing from the Indian life.
38:14So movies will continue to remain the way they are as long as life in India continues to remain the way.
38:22And where is the Indian life coming from?
38:27Thoughtless conditioning.
38:29You have to do this because it is supposed to be done this way.
38:31So that's where life is coming from and that's also where movies are coming from.
38:37And the more our life changes, the more our movies too will change.
38:45Today if someone makes a really path-breaking movie, what do you think happens to it?
38:54It bombs in a big way.
38:56The producer, the financer, they will be bankrupt on the streets.
39:01Because the Indian life is not yet ready to accept something path-breaking.
39:08We want to live the way the script has told us to live.
39:15And we take the script as respectable, inviolable and all that.
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