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Video Information: 02.05.2024
Context:
What is Acharya Prashant's inspiration?
Why Acharya Prashant left Civil Services?
Why are moments not important?
What is important?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 02.05.2024
Context:
What is Acharya Prashant's inspiration?
Why Acharya Prashant left Civil Services?
Why are moments not important?
What is important?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Hi, good evening today at Entrepreneur India.
00:06We have with us Acharya Prashant.
00:07Acharya Prashant, thank you so much for talking to Entrepreneur India today.
00:11Welcome.
00:12So, if you take us back to the time when the entire journey began, are there any memories
00:17you have from your childhood when you started thinking about these, I mean, philosophical
00:22teachings or towards spirituality?
00:26There isn't any one particular memorable or epiphanic incident, but it was happening
00:36almost all the time.
00:39So I was looking at the world around, how people are on the streets, in the houses,
00:50in the school, on the playground and a lot of things would strike me as odd.
01:05So observing and processing were going on all the time.
01:13So I was looking at the world and seeing suffering, discord, disharmony, fakeness and as a kid
01:29all that was getting registered and questioned, probably even disliked.
01:41So there was an urge to change the shape of things as they currently are.
01:55That's how it is.
01:56I don't remember any one particular incident, though if pressed I can probably pull out
02:04something, but that won't be particularly significant.
02:13So how you were as a child, were you more into reading books of others?
02:18Yes, I was reading a lot, but I was also playing, I was also very mischievous.
02:32So you asked for incident, there is a series of incidents which we can together call as
02:43one incident, which is that I was the class monitor and also the club head.
02:53They were called houses, so we had yellow house, red house, green and blue.
02:58So I was leading the yellow house.
03:04So both these are positions of responsibility and gravity, you are the class monitor and
03:08also the house leader and quite often I would be found standing outside the class in punishment.
03:20So a lot of teachers, I very fondly remember them, they had a certain liking for me.
03:31So they would come and say, you have to take responsibilities in life and once you are
03:40in class 11th, probably you will become the head boy of the school and why must you bring
03:48this upon yourself?
03:50Being the monitor of the class, why should you of all students be found being punished?
04:02So I was quite a mischievous brat, also a studious one.
04:13I like to go deep into whatever I was doing.
04:18So that led to all the academic accolades, that also led to the headache that I would
04:28cause sometimes to my family, sometimes to my teachers and when it comes to reading,
04:41the reading wasn't confined to any one particular genre.
04:47So I was hungry and I just sucked in whatever came my way, from little comic strips meant
04:59for class 2 students to somebody's PhD thesis, even if I couldn't make much of it.
05:11But if I would find a copy of something, anything, for sure I would pick it up and try to grasp
05:19what's going on.
05:23And that made me branch erratically in all directions with no particular plan or pattern,
05:35an organic kind of very natural growth.
05:44I was reading upon all things possible and when we would visit a bookstore, I would never
06:00be satisfied with the number of books purchased that particular visit.
06:08In fact, my father would specifically plan visits to bigger cities where we had more
06:16prominent bookstores, just so that we could purchase books for me.
06:22So he was an officer in government service, so sometimes he would be posted in places
06:36that were not quite big and established.
06:40So to get well-stocked bookstores, we needed to travel and we did.
06:47So that was a bit remarkable, to travel just so that you can visit a bookstore.
06:56That was happening once every few months and essays, poems, history, science.
07:11Father himself was quite a well-read person, so he would bring me quite an assorted set
07:26from all possible directions.
07:30So the entire stock that we had was very eclectic.
07:39Sure.
07:43So you also mentioned about how you looked at the world in terms of the kind of suffering
07:48it had.
07:49So at that time, would you go to someone and talk about it?
07:55I was a hesitant kid, even if I was mischievous, that mischief was limited to my inner circle.
08:04When it comes to outsiders, I'm initially quite hesitant in approaching or talking.
08:15I was basically shy.
08:19So I could be called an introvert.
08:26So when I would find suffering in its various shades, all kinds of colors and dimensions,
08:39I would watch.
08:44For example, an overcrowded train, it would engross me.
08:54The display of poverty and famished bodies, people who were obviously not even eating well.
09:15Patched clothes, kids who were obviously not going to school.
09:27And that would numb me down.
09:34I'm trying to recollect.
09:38I don't remember approaching anybody to speak to them or whatever, knowing fully well that
09:52there's nothing that I can really do.
09:55And probably I was not going to make a half-hearted attempt.
10:04It was so significant for me, the fact of human suffering, that it was a disgrace to
10:13the suffering one to just go and console him or her.
10:22If suffering actually means so much, then it deserves to be taken head-on or you are
10:36just a pretender.
10:37I mean, there is someone who is on a very nominal kind of diet, needs clothes, needs
11:00a different life altogether.
11:04And it was not possible for me to go and say, oh, never mind, God will take care of you
11:14or keep trying.
11:16One day things will turn for better.
11:25But it would stay with me for long and turn into a quiet silence within.
11:39So you're not even confided to your family about it?
11:45Not even once.
11:46I don't remember talking to anybody about what I was making of the world.
11:58So Lucknow, where I did my ICSC, class 7 to class 10, I would be returning home on
12:17my bicycle after school, and Nishatganj, and there were these shops, butcher's shops,
12:38and you would see animals, the chicken being pulled out, and their feathers are being plucked,
12:57and there would be a lot of noise from the animal, helpless cries, unnerving cacophony,
13:18and then suddenly there would be total silence, he's gone, finished.
13:27And whenever such a thing would be happening, I would just stop there and look from a distance.
13:44An entire body is hung at the shops.
13:52So I would take that in and move on.
14:00Probably I wrote off that once or twice in the essays we were asked to write.
14:12You would vent it out in the form of writing?
14:17I was not venting it out, it was becoming me.
14:22It was not something alien that you could vent out.
14:29You went out stuff that you cannot digest or assimilate.
14:34It kept on going into me and became my bone and my blood.
14:48And it wasn't dramatic at all.
14:51Having watched all that, I could come to my home, take my lunch, do my homework, and if
15:04even play a video game.
15:07It's not that it was like a huge blow on my consciousness.
15:15I was just observing.
15:18It was a continuous backdrop of melancholy with no unusual spikes to demonstrate to anybody
15:30or to register within myself.
15:43So at that stage, what that kid wanted to do, what that kid wanted to become?
16:00There was no immediate purpose or objective.
16:22I was just seeing the way things were.
16:25And maybe that seeing was doing something to me within.
16:30Maybe that continuous observation molded my decisions later on.
16:40But I don't remember coming to any kind of conclusion early on.
16:50No, I was not thinking of changing the world.
16:54I wasn't thinking of reforming the society.
17:00I didn't even know why things are the way they are.
17:05In some way, I was just stunned.
17:08When you are stunned, you don't start darting in some direction with purpose.
17:19You are seeing these things and it's a continuous process of passive stunning.
17:27Every single thing.
17:34So when it comes to career aspirations, because I had exposure to bureaucrats in my family,
17:52so that was a default choice.
17:57If you are an IAS, you can do something good.
18:05In fact, I wasn't very inclined towards engineering.
18:08I went to IIT because the stats told me that most of the top ranks in UPSC are obtained
18:19by IITians.
18:23Last five or ten years, when I would look at the background of the toppers, would find
18:29a lot of IITians there.
18:33So that way engineering became a choice.
18:46I was groping.
18:50I would be dishonest if I say I had any clear direction and I wasn't exactly in a hurry
18:59because that would have been dishonest.
19:02If I do not clearly understand what's going on, how do I form a definite picture and freeze
19:12a definite plan of action?
19:17The picture was emerging and the plan of action would follow from that.
19:28You see, what I am calling as cruelty, I didn't know whether it's coming from religion
19:35or economics or basic human biology itself.
19:44Maybe we are cruel by our very physical composition.
19:50I didn't know.
19:52I was just seeing something that would shock me.
19:58I didn't understand it.
20:01So I waited for the clarity to emerge and it's still emerging.
20:10It's a work in progress.
20:14The way things are interconnected, the way everywhere it's a play of the same inner tendency.
20:26It took me a long time to come to see that.
20:33It would sound very dramatic if I say I had clarity at the age of 15, that the child prodigy
20:47stuff, that wasn't the case, but I was doing what I could.
20:54I was observing.
20:55I was reading.
20:57And on issues that I couldn't grasp, I would have conversations with my father and he had
21:07the knack of simplifying things instantly.
21:13So I could go to him with a problem, the narration of which would last, let's say, 10 minutes
21:23and his response would be like 20 seconds, 40 seconds, a minute at max and everything
21:32would stand resolved.
21:36So that's something that I still appreciate.
21:41Very simple understanding of things that appear complex.
21:48That understanding itself becomes a solution.
21:55So that's the way it has been.
22:00One thing I think I can give myself some credit for, I didn't try to sweep things under the
22:10carpet.
22:11If I have seen something, I have seen it.
22:13I didn't try to pretend that I understand when I didn't.
22:22I didn't try to trivialize something just because I couldn't wrap my head around it.
22:34If something was beyond my comprehension, I let it stay there.
22:40So and the process remained continuous.
22:47In that sense, not the exact word, but a bit laborious and demanded patience.
23:04I don't know whether all this is making any sense, but that's the way it has been.
23:09It didn't make much sense even to me.
23:10So I don't expect it to be very obvious to everybody, but fine.