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Video Information: 12.02.23, Interview with Aarti Tikko from The New Indian, Greater Noida
Context:
~ Why our consumptions are destructive?
~ What are the facts about destructive consumption?
~ What are causing global warming & climate change?
~ How are food affective global warming & climate change?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
~~~~~
Video Information: 12.02.23, Interview with Aarti Tikko from The New Indian, Greater Noida
Context:
~ Why our consumptions are destructive?
~ What are the facts about destructive consumption?
~ What are causing global warming & climate change?
~ How are food affective global warming & climate change?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Okay, now great, fantastic. Now we are into the third round of our conversation and this
00:08is going to be rapid, conscious choice. I'm not going to call it unconscious because then
00:14you might actually say that it was unconscious and therefore you will not take any responsibility.
00:21So I'm going to give you two choices. You will have to pick one and you'll have to very
00:27briefly explain maybe in one sentence or maximum two sentences, why you chose what you chose.
00:37So choice number one or question number one, man or woman, woman, why? Possibility. You
00:51will have to explain this. If you can be so, if you can be so brief, I'll be entitled to be equally curt.
01:02No, you explain it. I want the explanation. You said possibility. Possibility. You see,
01:08when you say man and woman, man or woman, man and woman, classically, both are just prakriti.
01:16So both come under the umbrella name of woman, which is the human state, which is the human state.
01:25In some sense, all of us are women. You are a woman in just the biological sense. I too am a
01:32woman in the mental sense, right? So the word woman describes entire mankind. You could say
01:41womankind. So the possibility of redemption is there only to the woman. Who else will have that possibility?
01:50So a woman, you know, is used as a metaphor for the one who is seeking her beloved. So that's the mind,
02:02the mind seeking peace. So I would want to remember that we all are that unfulfilled conscious,
02:12unconsciousness, which is that we all are that woman who is seeking the ultimate beloved, in that sense, possibility.
02:23Desire or renunciation? Desire. Explain. The fundamental thing is love. Love is the highest desire.
02:33It is only when you desire the highest that you will have the guts or the daring to drop the lowly things,
02:44which you call as renunciation. So renunciation can never come first. Krishna in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita
02:52talks of Karmayog and Karmasannyas and he says they are ideally the same thing, but practically,
03:01Karmayog is preferable to Karmasannyas, which is much the same as saying that love takes precedence over renunciation
03:12or that love is the mother of renunciation. If you are in love, you will, without even knowing,
03:20drop a lot of nonsense and you will become a renunciate and you won't even know that.
03:25So love will bring about renunciation. At the same time, renunciation without love won't last
03:33and would become some kind of hypocrisy. Osho or J. Krishnamurti? J. Krishnamurti. Explain.
03:40Purity. You will have to explain that. You see, the higher you go, the purer you need to be.
03:55Methods and tactics are all great when you have just begun the climb.
04:10But the same thing that assists you to climb at the lower altitudes becomes a burden against climbing
04:26when you have reached the heights at higher altitudes. So Krishnamurti has an unparalleled purity.
04:39No methods, no distractions, no this and that, a very dedicated concentration on nothing but the truth.
04:59And that's the reason I said JK over Osho. At the same time, I have great respect for Osho.
05:07And I think he can be very useful to those who are just beginning their journey.
05:17But as you ascend, it is Krishnamurti that you will need to seek.
05:26Krishna or Shiva? Much the same. No choices there. But because these days, it's a topical thing,
05:37because these days I am with the Bhagavad Gita, so I'll say Krishna. On another day, I would have equally said Shiva.
05:44So explain to us that why are they the same thing and why Shiva today and Shiva tomorrow?
05:55Krishna today and Shiva tomorrow? Oh nothing, that's a mood, a fleeting mood, a fleeting moment.
06:01I mean just yesterday I conducted a session on the Bhagavad Gita and tomorrow I think there is another one.
06:08So it's just a human thing that Krishna is the top of the mind.
06:12Otherwise there is no difference between Krishna and Shiva.
06:16There have been phases when I have found myself immensely in love with just the word Shiva.
06:27In fact, just half an hour before you came, we had the head of the books department with us
06:36and because Mahashivratri is approaching, she drew my attention to one of our old books Om Namah Shivaya
06:44and I said rename it Shivoham. That becomes important because Mahashivratri happens to be my birthday.
06:51So in a very carnal way, I have a bit of a connection with Shiva, which is nothing but a very carnal connection, does not mean much.
07:02Krishna and Shiva are one, you see. Krishna, as he speaks in the Gita, speaks as pure truth
07:11and Shiva is another name again for the highest consciousness possible.
07:19So Krishna and Shiva are just the same. Someday you will feel like saying Krishna, someday Shiva
07:27and there are days when I just love to say Ram.
07:29Lakshmi or Saraswati?
07:31Saraswati, obviously. I don't even need to explain, I suppose.
07:35So they are not one?
07:36No, they are not one.
07:37Why?
07:38Learning and wealth cannot be one, obviously, but at the same time, if you want to go deeper into it,
07:49if you pick up the Durga Saptshati, there both Lakshmi and Saraswati are simply two names for the mother goddess.
08:00If you want to go there, then I'll say just as I can't pick between Krishna and Shiva, I cannot pick between Lakshmi and Saraswati.
08:10But if you want to take, if you want to accord the popular meanings to their names, right,
08:18then Lakshmi stands for wealth and all, Saraswati stands for wisdom.
08:23Wisdom any day over wealth.
08:27Eastern philosophy or western philosophy?
08:29Eastern.
08:30Why?
08:31I.
08:32Explain.
08:35Western philosophy pays relatively, puts relatively lesser emphasis on who you are.
08:50There is a lot of ideation, there is a very honest and laborious exploration of man's condition, society, economics,
09:05but the purity and rigor that Vedanta displays in coming to man's fundamental identity
09:19and then declaring that liberation from all the identities that you hold is the very purpose of life,
09:29that is something that you do not find in western philosophy.
09:34In fact, nowhere in western philosophy do you find the word Mukti, liberation.
09:39There is knowledge, there is exploration, there is realization, and I'm fond of western philosophy, right,
09:45I'm not deprecating one over the other, no, no, no.
09:49I love western philosophy, I want to go deeper into it, but liberation is something the west does not talk of.
10:01India or world?
10:04How can you have India without the world?
10:10So, that becomes just too hypothetical, but again as someone sitting in India, right,
10:18I would simply say India, but when I say India again, my India is not a political unit,
10:27not a geographical location, not a piece of land.
10:31When I say India, I refer to the place, to the set of conditions that enabled man for the first time
10:44to both look towards the sky and into himself.
10:49So, that's the India that I love, the India of self-knowledge.
10:56Life or death?
10:58Death.
11:00Explain.
11:07That which we call as life must be put to death, and only then does real life begin.
11:15So, there's a life after death?
11:17No, no, not after death, when you say after, you mean a flow of time.
11:22So, at 4 p.m. life as we know it ended, and at 5 p.m. you had an afterlife.
11:28I'm not talking of that.
11:30I'm talking of a certain beyondness.
11:33I'm saying that this eating, talking, walking, mating, this is what we consider as life, right?
11:41When we are able to transcend this definition of life, then we really come alive.
11:49So, let this life be put to death, and then there is joy, and the fear of death is gone.
11:59And the Upanishads say that is what is immortality, when the fear of death is gone.
12:04This that we call as life, it is always in the shadow of death.
12:08We are always afraid of things coming to an end in some way or the other.
12:12So, this life is no good, because in this life there is always the fear of death.
12:17This has to be exceeded. This has to be transcended.
12:20That's why I said death. I said death so that we may come alive.
12:24Now, the last segment. I am going to ask you about your first and the last love, which is books.
12:31Give us five books that you have loved all your life.
12:35Depends on the audience segment. Suggest me an audience segment.
12:39Well, on love, on enlightenment.
12:44Okay, one book each on these? Yes.
12:50On enlightenment for beginners, Siddhāt by Hermann Hesse.
12:55Love.
13:02Nārada Bhakti Sūtra.
13:06On science.
13:09Several. You could have a Feynman lecture on physics.
13:14You could have the Hawkins book on time.
13:22Several books. But I would say, stick to your textbooks.
13:27That's where you get science from. Science you just cannot read.
13:31Science without mathematics means nothing.
13:33So, when we say science, there has to be an exercise book, a notebook by your side,
13:39where you keep solving equations. Science is not just literature.
13:45Name a book on women.
13:51Ayn Rand's We the Living.
13:53Name a book on sex.
13:59Specifically on sex.
14:03There are so many books that touch upon sex.
14:14Yes.
14:18Of human bondage. Somerset Maugham.
14:23Name a book on Indian literature.
14:29That encapsulates Indian literature.
14:36Or maybe an Indian fiction.
14:39Indian fiction.
14:49Thank you so much for this fascinating, enlightening discussion.
14:55I hope we can carry on once again, probably in future, for another conversation and for more love.
15:03Wonderful.