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00:00Nikita Jain, Biotechnology, IITB.
00:16So how to overcome emotional dependency and loneliness?
00:23First of all, there are not several types of dependencies.
00:30These types are very superficial.
00:33We might say, I have material dependency, I have financial dependency, I have physical
00:39dependency, I have emotional dependency, I have spiritual dependency, I mean, dependency
00:46is dependency.
00:47Who is dependent?
00:50All dependency comes from the fundamental sense of incompleteness of the I.
01:07We are born feeling that something is not quite right about us.
01:16Even the newborn baby carries that deep belief, obviously not consciously.
01:31And it is that sense of imperfection or incompleteness that drives us through life.
01:51That's what makes most people do whatever they do in their lifetimes.
01:58So we acquire knowledge, we acquire social certification, we get into several kinds of
02:05relationships, we procreate, we amass wealth.
02:09We do this, do that, build a house, build a mausoleum for ourselves.
02:19We do all these things.
02:22Actually why do we do any or all of these things?
02:30Because we are not convinced that we are alright.
02:39The I tendency is a raging dissatisfaction against itself.
02:50I am greatly dissatisfied with whom?
02:53With my own being, with my own existence.
02:58I'm not okay, I'm not okay.
02:59Why am I not okay?
03:00Don't ask me that.
03:01I'm born like that.
03:05Has something occurred to you to make you feel that you are not alright?
03:11No, I have occurred to myself and that's what makes me feel that I'm not alright.
03:20Not that some event has happened to me.
03:25The event that has happened is me, me meaning my birth.
03:30Not that something has happened to me and is making me feel bad about myself.
03:37The event of my existence itself makes me feel bad about myself.
03:49I'm born feeling bad about myself.
03:51I'm born feeling hungry and dissatisfied.
03:56When I was born, I cried.
04:02That's the human condition.
04:05Why am I here?
04:09That's the first thing that occurs to the kid, the newborn infant.
04:15Why am I here?
04:17What did I do to deserve this?
04:25What did the newborn ask mommy?
04:31Now who did this?
04:40And now you know what we spend our entire life, the rest of our life for.
04:48We spend it trying to overcome the botched up work that we are.
05:06I'm the output of something quite shoddy.
05:10It needs to be amended, corrected, rectified.
05:13And our entire lifetimes are just a desperate attempt at rectification.
05:22I'm born incorrect, I have to take care of myself.
05:25And there is ample proof to show that we are born incorrect, obviously we are.
05:34We don't teach the child language and the child would have an underdeveloped mind.
05:45The human child requires almost two decades of education.
05:55Look at the amount of effort that goes into the rectification.
06:01Even before you can really step out into the world, you require two decades of training.
06:08So obviously you are not born all right.
06:13Some part of it is biological.
06:25And the other part is social.
06:33Your hands extend only this much.
06:40Your eyes can see only this much.
06:46Your memory is limited to this much.
06:54Your intellect is only this sharp and no more.
07:02So all this is biological incompleteness or imperfection.
07:13And then there is the social sense of imperfection that is imposed upon you.
07:25You have a particular color or ethnicity or nationality.
07:33So you are probably not all right or a little bit all right.
07:39But nothing about your nationality or color or gender or ethnicity can make you fully
07:47all right.
07:50Even if you belong to the most developed of countries, there would be somebody prepared
08:00to point at something obnoxious about your country.
08:10So you take that in.
08:13I'm not all right for this reason.
08:15I'm not all right for that reason.
08:23And that's what leads to both of these things that Nikita, you are mentioning in your question.
08:31Loneliness and dependency.
08:34Loneliness fundamentally means add something to me.
08:46Make something sit next to me.
08:51Affix something to me.
08:56Glue me to something.
09:01Superimpose something on me.
09:09Magnify me.
09:15Are you getting it?
09:18Without that addition, without that amplification, I'm not okay.
09:32I'm not good enough.
09:35It's not as if it is something that specifically happens to you when you are 26.
09:45If you are born with this feeling, again go back to the infant, does not see her mother
09:58for two hours and starts wailing.
10:02Is that not loneliness?
10:07And it's not something sexual.
10:14As you might be misled into believing being a 26 year old.
10:20It says that even if you are just 26 days old, you still require the warmth of a human
10:29body next to you.
10:31Otherwise, you know, you start.
10:40That's what is born loneliness and dependency.
10:44And it will continue.
10:47May you live till 126.
10:50You will find that loneliness still haunts you.
10:55The same kind of loneliness that you experienced when you were 26 days old.
11:04Are you getting it?
11:07So the disease is deeper than we think.
11:15We feel, oh, it's about a young person, probably looking for a friend or a mate.
11:24No, no, no.
11:26It's an existential problem.
11:30We are lonely because we exist.
11:37We are dependent, why?
11:40Because we exist.
11:46How to challenge this problem then?
11:51Then you have to exist in a different way altogether.
11:56Right now what exists is the body identified and socially identified ego.
12:08That's what is born.
12:12Thankfully, thankfully.
12:18An alternative exists.
12:22The option to live not as the ego, but as something beyond the ego exists.
12:32And if that option does not exist, then life is absurd.
12:39Even as the absurdists would say, or rather question, I mean, why live at all?
12:50Is life worth it?
12:51And surely life is not worth living if there is no possibility of freedom from the ego.
13:08If there is no possibility of freedom from the ego, then every passing day is just another
13:19experience in servility and anxiety and slavery and depression, right?
13:38And not only are you experiencing that frustration today, you know very well that this frustration
13:56is your fate for all days to come.
14:06And as many have said and done, suicide appears the best option.
14:17If life offers no possibility of liberation from the pain called ego, then why live at
14:29all?
14:32But as we said, thankfully, that possibility is very much there.
14:39Only when you exercise that possibility is freedom from dependency and loneliness possible.
14:50And that's a deeper exercise.
14:53The shallow way is to fight loneliness through distraction.
15:02And if you distract yourself in a thousand ways, then you can keep loneliness at bay
15:10at least for a certain time.
15:18You could go to a beer bar and spend a few hours with your friends and you are no more lonely.
15:27Are you lonely in that duration?
15:29You are not.
15:34Or you could watch the highlights of the last World Cup soccer, pretending that you do not
15:49know the scoreline.
15:50Oh my God, who's going to win?
16:01Or you could do a thousand other cute and stupid things to keep you busy.
16:13That's a shallow way of negotiating with loneliness, dependency, etc.
16:23And I'm talking of them in the same breath.
16:24They are much the same thing.
16:29The real way is to know that as long as we continue to feed our false sense of self,
16:44we are condemning ourselves to more and more loneliness, more and more dependency.
16:51And we are necessitating, therefore, more and more of anti-depressant material.
17:05An anti-depressant is not merely a pill, an anti-depressant is much more like a visit
17:16to the shopping mall or waiting for the Friday release.
17:27That's an anti-depressant.
17:28Clinically, only a small proportion of people are depressed.
17:36Existentially, we are all born depressed.
17:48So there are some who have been diagnosed with depression.
17:57And there are some who are asymptomatically depressed.
18:04But depressed we all are, without doubt, except for the liberated ones, we all are depressed.
18:14In some cases, depression has shown up, erupted in full ferocity.
18:23In other cases, depression is lying latent, hidden, waiting for the right time to raise
18:30its fangs.
18:39So Nikita, I would invite you to come to Vedanta.
18:51I will invite you to go to all the fundamental spiritual scriptures.
19:20Come to Kapil Rishi, come to Kalad Rishi, come to Krishan.
19:30And you are born in a Jain family.
19:34Come to Kund Kund.
19:40Come to Mahavir, to Parshwanath.
19:46They all are there for you.
19:52They were people with a lot of love.
19:57And they have ensured that their bodily absence does not enfeeble their mission.
20:12They have left behind rich and voluminous scriptures and accounts, questions and teachings.
20:40And there is a higher pleasure in being with them.
20:50Once you develop the taste of being with a Krishan or a Mahavir, you will forget
21:08all this loneliness and dependency business.
21:14Because loneliness cries for a person just like you or an activity in your own dimension.
21:29That's what loneliness and dependency cry for, right?
21:36When you have the company of these geniuses, then you feel fulfilled.
21:56Then in fact, not only are you not lonely or dependent, actually a lot of filth from
22:04your life is expunged.
22:10Forget about you saying, who else can be added to my life?
22:17The question changes.
22:19The question says, now who all are unnecessarily still present in my life?
22:31From an instinct towards addition, you find that you are now more concerned towards liberation,
22:48negation, purification.
22:52You don't want to bring in more people into your life.
22:55Now you rather want to purify yourself of the people or things or concepts that are
23:06already in your life.
23:07You are not adding now, you are actually subtracting.
23:13You are subtracting actually because now your space has been occupied by somebody quite
23:22large, immense, that somebody is not a person, that somebody is just somebody.
23:37But he is quite voluminous, expansive, immense.
23:43And to make space for him, he is not a male, but I have to use some words, so I am using
23:52But to make space for him, you have to evict all the nonsense, all the clutter that is
24:10sitting upon your precious mind space.
24:14So you just tell all of them to leave, leave, leave.
24:21There is somebody else I want to be with.
24:28This is the opposite of loneliness.
24:30In loneliness you are looking at the world with desperate eyes.
24:35Somebody please give me company, somebody, somebody, please, please, please.
24:40In the state I am talking of, you are looking at yourself and asking, how the hell I have
24:46allowed these two rats to still be present in my room?
24:52My room is almost completely empty of all kinds of pests now.
25:01There used to be a pest called that dude.
25:05There used to be a pest called my BFF.
25:11There used to be a pest called my distant cousin.
25:17And they were all of these occupying my room and my mental space.
25:25And I have shooed all of them away, rather most of them away.
25:28But these two little rats, they are still jumping around, attracting my attention.
25:35One is my ex, who keeps stalking me on Instagram some days.
25:46The other is this new contender, who keeps sending me this occasional feeler, hey which
25:57brand of coffee do you like?
26:00What?
26:01You doing cookery course or something?
26:06So these two rats are still left to be pushed out.
26:12So you see the whole thing has drastically changed.
26:15From being a beggar in front of the world, now you are asking the world to keep away.
26:26Isn't that a position of power, immense power?
26:30Not that you have become a world hater or something.
26:33It's just that now you have learned discretion.
26:36Now you know who should be allowed in the sanctity of your room.
26:45Your room is a sacred space, is it not?
26:48Do you allow all kinds of rats and lizards and cockroaches to populate it?
26:54Do you?
26:58By the way, I have nothing against lizards, I have 26 of them in my room.
27:05But here when I say lizard and cockroach, then you know what I mean, right?
27:18Bring the big ones in, without them life is anyway not worth living.