Discovering Meaning in Life's Journey || Acharya Prashant (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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00:00More than a decade back when I used to more frequently address college audiences, I used

00:09to say all your education put together on one side is less valuable than one single

00:23course on education of the self, life education.

00:33But we are taught of everything, sciences, humanities, languages, quality, all of that

00:45we are well versed in.

00:49But in no book generally do we find the word self.

01:02The question of identity remains neglected.

01:06If I understand, in neuroscience we take it up, in psychology we take it up.

01:13First of all a very small fraction of students opts for these things, secondly even if they

01:21do opt for these disciplines that happens only after class 12th and thirdly the question

01:31of liberation from suffering that is not taken up even in these disciplines because it's

01:41not sufficient to talk of the psyche.

01:47One also has to talk of liberation because that's what we want.

01:53The fundamental human condition is of suffering that deserves attention.

02:02How to tackle that problem?

02:06What is suffering?

02:07Where does it come from and how to be liberated from it?

02:12Is my existence not congruous with, synonymous with suffering?

02:20Can I continue to be and yet not suffer?

02:26We don't take up these questions.

02:30The result is the kind of catastrophe you just talked of and the irony is it's still

02:45not very visible at the material level.

02:50Had it been very visible then we would have been shaken up and something would have been

02:57done.

03:00Our indifference, our complacency itself testifies that the full effects of the inner catastrophe

03:12are still not externally manifest.

03:18So we can afford to remain oblivious but that won't continue for long and I shudder to think

03:28of a situation in which it in fact does continue for long.

03:35That would mean a world in which everything is more or less alright on the surface but

03:45within everybody is insane.

03:54Only everything is orderly and within everything is chaotic and when insanity becomes universal

04:11then we'll call it the norm and once you call it the norm then nothing comes as a shock.

04:20You don't even want to discuss chaos or insanity or disorder because that's the norm.

04:29Something is taken up for discussion, consideration only if it appears unusual.

04:40If everybody goes mad, who would talk of madness?

04:46In a madhouse nobody is mad, everybody is okay and we are, I fear, very speedily hurtling

05:10towards that kind of situation and in that situation you know who's declared mad?

05:21Those who dare to talk of madness, they are the ones labelled mad and lynched.

05:36It's a very unfortunate capacity that we as human beings have, the capacity to adapt and survive.

05:50We can adapt, we can acclimatize and we can survive even with horrible internal madness.

06:03We probably already are doing that and being insane within will behave and display

06:18as if everything is alright, getting it?

06:27Now where is the question of corrective action?

06:32To treat a disease first of all one has to acknowledge a disease as disease.

06:40How can there be treatment sans diagnosis?

06:49But if disease, I repeat, becomes commonplace then it is no more called a disease.

07:00It's called being human, it's a part of our human nature, it's normal, it's natural as we say these days.

07:18So you tell someone, please, you are being violent, see what you are doing to the animal.

07:24I say no, this is not violence, I am just being natural, you see there is a lot of exploitation

07:35and lust and greed and possessiveness and obviously violence in your relationships.

07:49That comes the reply, but isn't all that natural?

07:53So that's we are very quickly coming to.

07:57All our diseases will be called our nature.

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