This pleasure is very necessary || Acharya Prashant at IIT-Delhi (2022)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00 Pranam Acharya ji. My question is, is pleasure a necessity for humans? Do we as human beings

00:12 need pleasure for survival to be sane?

00:19 The question is, is pleasure a necessity? Do we human beings actually require pleasure

00:27 for survival? What is pleasure first of all? See we all operate at a certain level of the

00:43 mind. Call it the level of consciousness. Right? You can take that as our current potential

00:56 level. This is where we stand. And our potentiality is huge, tremendous. So you stand here and

01:12 your potentiality is huge. Now what will happen when you connect these two points of differing

01:23 potentials? What happens when you connect two points having potential difference? There

01:37 is a flow. It could be the flow of water or the flow of electrons. Let's say electrons,

01:43 current. This flow is called pleasure. This flow is called pleasure. Something is happening.

01:50 I was at this level. I have been connected to something at this level and so there is

01:57 a flow and I am hopeful. I am liking the experience. Something is happening. Are you getting it?

02:06 Now this is the right kind of pleasure. The pleasure of ascension, the pleasure of rising

02:14 up, the pleasure of flying high. Unfortunately for us human beings another kind of pleasure

02:21 is possible. You connect this level of your potential to a place that has only this level.

02:31 Still what you would experience is a flow. No? Are you getting it? Still there is a potential

02:40 difference. If you are connected to something lower than your existing state of consciousness

02:46 even then you will have a flow. This flow again is pleasure. This is the kind of pleasure

02:52 that sinks you. For example the pleasure that you get in doing something utterly lowly.

03:03 Is there not pleasure in random debauched mischief? That is when 240 volts is getting

03:17 connected to 100 volts and you experience the flow and that flow titillates. Well something

03:28 is happening. Something great is happening. The flow of energy in the downward direction.

03:35 Unfortunately most of the pleasure that we experience is the flow in the downward direction.

03:46 Pleasure is greatly important. We all definitely need pleasure but we need pleasure of the

03:52 upward kind. Instead the market serves us pleasures of the downward kind. So much so

04:01 that the word pleasure has become synonymous with fall. You would hardly find anyone rising

04:09 in pleasure. If you want to see somebody falling go and watch his moments of pleasure. Those

04:18 will be the moments in which he will be falling in life. That's the sad situation we have

04:25 come to. But that's not necessary. In fact without pleasure you cannot rise. That is

04:31 the importance of pleasure. And that kind of pleasure that takes you higher, there is

04:39 a special name for it. It's called joy. It's not ordinary pleasure, not ordinary happiness.

04:46 It's called joy. It takes you higher. But it's a very demanding and very extracting,

04:52 very expensive pleasure. The lowly kinds of pleasures are cheap. You can get them very

05:00 easily. Go get drunk. Go fall in a brothel. And those lowly pleasures will be very easily

05:12 available to you. Go binge and then fall asleep knowing fully well that you have assignments

05:20 to submit. There is pleasure, right? There is pleasure in overeating and then falling

05:26 asleep. Is there not pleasure in that? Most of our pleasures degrade us. But equally Vedanta

05:37 tells you that without pleasure you cannot live. It's just that you have to choose the

05:44 higher kind of pleasure. You have to choose pleasure that takes you upwards. And mind

05:52 you if you think you are doing the right thing in life and it is not giving you that high

05:58 pleasure then that thing cannot be right for you. One characteristic of the right thing

06:05 is that it is immensely pleasurable. However, this is not an exclusive characteristic. Even

06:13 wrong things are greatly pleasurable and you have to be discreet. Pleasure comes from both

06:20 directions. You look at a great work of art, there is joy. You start wandering on the road

06:31 and randomly abusing everybody or chasing monkeys, there is some pleasure in that. There

06:39 is a lot of pleasure in that because that's what most of the people are doing. With great

06:47 application and discipline, you learn how to play the guitar or the sitar, there is

06:55 joy in that. But that's an expensive joy we said. You get angry and you pick up the

07:05 guitar and put it five times, bang it on the floor and it breaks and for one minute there

07:12 is great pleasure. Playing tennis you play a great shot and then kiss your racket, there

07:19 is joy. You play an awful shot and then hit the turf with your racket ten times and smash

07:28 the racket itself, there too you have some pleasure. Have you not seen players doing

07:33 that as if the racket has played the shot. So they want to explode the racket. And there

07:42 are players who play wonderfully well and they put the racket on their forehead. Playing

07:51 a great shot requires discipline, it is expensive. It requires you to control your animalistic

07:59 instincts because your instincts are telling you what is the need for further practice.

08:04 "Coach let me go home, I want to sleep. Coach my legs are on fire and my shoulder

08:13 is hurting and there is this tennis elbow to boot. Let me please go." That's the

08:19 lower kind of pleasure. You avoid work, you shirk your responsibilities, there is the

08:26 lower kind of pleasure. The higher kind of pleasure we all need. We cannot live without

08:33 pleasure I agree with the questioner. But I repeat please, please ask yourself the pleasures

08:41 that you are having in life, are they taking you higher or are they making you more of

08:46 animals. Now what's wrong with being an animal, sir? That's not your nature. You

08:55 will suffer. You are not an animal. Why are you trying to be an animal? Why are you doing

09:03 things that animals do? The kinds of pleasures most of us are into. Marijuana, weed, do these

09:16 turn you conscious? No, but they are pleasurable. They are pleasurable because there is something

09:21 happening. There is something happening so you feel probably the right thing is happening.

09:25 At least I am no more in my current state because the current state is of suffering.

09:30 So some displacement has happened, some movement is happening and you hope that the right movement

09:35 is happening. No, the right movement is not happening. Most of the times the default movement

09:40 is the wrong one. The right movement you have to be very careful about. It's a sensitive

09:47 delicate thing. It has to be crafted, it has to be engineered with all your intelligence

09:55 and devotion. The wrong thing is like free fall in gravity, it just happens. What does

10:02 it take to take an airplane up 35,000 feet? It takes generations of engineering to put

10:13 the plane up there. What does it take for the plane to crash? Nothing. One drunk pilot

10:21 and the plane is gone. It's always easier to fall and there must be some pleasure in

10:29 letting the plane drop, right? I am sleeping. I can't help it, I am sleeping. Go for the

10:42 right kind of pleasures. Spirituality is about having great pleasures, the kind of pleasures

10:50 that normal people cannot even think of. Do not think that the spiritual person leads

10:57 a boring or dull or dead life. No, the really spiritual person is drunk on pleasure. You

11:08 cannot imagine his state of inner euphoria. He is ecstatic on something that is totally

11:18 unavailable to the commons. Are you getting it? So kindly don't be so serious. Even I

11:30 am not. It's just that one happens to appear serious. Are you getting it? Joy is for the

11:44 real human being, for the real adult. Cheap pleasures are for kids. Go for the highest

11:57 joys in life. That's what makes life worth living. Go for tough attainments. And by tough

12:06 attainments I do not mean things that you get by competing with a million other people.

12:13 They are not tough attainments. If a million people want the same thing that you do, then

12:20 you are just one of them. Are you not? Please see that. The toughest attainment is about

12:28 wanting something that no one else wants. But that's not what our education and society

12:36 has taught us. We have been told, a million people wrote the JEE and you are in the top

12:42 one percentile, therefore you are special. Well, special we probably are. But think of

12:52 it. Please think of it. How special are we if we have all the common desires? The one

13:04 who did not get selected desired to get selected. The one who got selected desired to get selected.

13:10 The desire is just the same. So where is the difference? Can you desire something that

13:18 transcends commonness? Can you question the common desire itself and ask it, why am I

13:27 obliged to fulfil you? You rascal, you petty desire, why should I invest my time, my life,

13:34 my energy in fulfilling you? Did your desires take your permission to arise? Please go into

13:47 the process of desire. Do desires come with your consent, your permission? No, desires

13:53 just arise. And once they arise, you are a slave to them. Normal human tendency. Once

14:01 the desire arises, we become a slave to them. It's just that we say, oh, these are my desires.

14:05 How are these your desires when you never desired them? Do we desire our desires? No,

14:14 they just come. And where do they come from? They come from influences, they come from

14:18 conditioning and they arise from the bodily configuration. And once they arise, we act

14:25 as if we own them. We say, oh, this is my desire. And then we run after those desires.

14:31 And thousand others are running after the same desires. And if we succeed in the competition,

14:34 we say we are special. No, we are not. Can you question desire itself? And when you question

14:43 desire itself, then you learn the right desire. And the right desire is very, very rare. And

14:53 that's where joy is. That's where the highest pleasure is.

14:57 Am I connecting? Are we together? Okay.

15:12 [END]

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