Question Everything: Unlearn for True Freedom! || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Madras (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Good evening sir. So my question is, many a times one's moral practices and questions

00:08of right and wrong become a major reason for his mental distress and depression. While

00:16one may be considered to be excessively concerned about moral and ethical matters, my question

00:21is, is it wrong to be so? And further, if one is, if it is becoming a reason for his

00:30depression and other mental health problems, so where can one draw a line and deal with

00:36it in a right way?

00:40See, morality comes from the behavior of the society you are living in. Morse, Morse, Morse

00:59relates to the masses. The way masses behave, that becomes the morality. Ethics come from

01:10the accepted ideology of the society or you could say philosophy, the prevalent philosophy

01:21that decides what is right, what is wrong. So be it morality or be it ethics, they both

01:27are situated outside of you. The common masses decide morality and the leaders of the society,

01:41the thought leaders of the society, they decide the ethics. The awakened person does not live

01:52by morality or the prevalent ethical codes. He, and when I say he, I mean she as well,

02:01so take that as included. He lives by his consciousness. What does that mean? That's

02:12not some abstract thing within consciousness. That's a very solid guiding principle. What

02:20does that say? That says anything that makes you see more clearly, anything that liberates

02:31you of your inner and outer bondages is right. Put it right, good, auspicious, whatever.

02:45And anything that puts more bondages on you and puts a haze in your vision, that's not good.

03:02So ethics and morality both exist to tell apart right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable

03:14for those who do not have eyes of their own. And most people actually have no eyes of their

03:20own. That's why they need moral and ethical standards and that's a bit of a necessity

03:36because if you do not know what to do and how to live and how to decide on your own,

03:42then practically you do require someone else to tell you all those things. When someone

03:48else tells you all those things, that is practically useful, but inwardly very wasteful. Why?

03:59Because actually you have the potential to decide on all those matters totally and purely

04:06by yourself. To accept help when help is not needed cannot be taken as something good.

04:18The very definition of help is that it should enable you to proceed without help. But if

04:29help is of a nature that perpetuates your need, your compulsive need to keep begging

04:37for help, then it is not help at all. That's what happens when people make decisions in

04:46their life going by the prevalent ethics or morality or such things. You ask yourself,

05:02Who am I? What am I here for? And that which brings me closer to the purpose of my existence

05:18is good, right, auspicious, correct. There is no ethics in it. I know on my own or you

05:29can simply call it inner ethics. You can simply call it higher ethics. Instead of saying

05:37there is no ethics, because if you say there is no ethics, someone will jump up and say

05:41it is unethical. We are not talking of unethical stuff. We are talking of higher ethics or

05:48inner ethics or deeper ethics. But for such ethics to function, obviously there has to

05:58be self-knowledge. If I do not know why I am just wandering about, I am just following

06:13the law of inertia and rolling from here to there in some kind of whatever straight line

06:24or circular motion till I am hit by another object. You see why people keep hitting around?

06:34That's Newton's law. So, for such people, external codes become compulsory because they

06:46have no inner guiding light of their own. If you do not give them outer codes, they

06:54will just keep banging hither and thither all their life. So, something is handed over

07:01to them. Alright, you take this and use this to somehow survive. But that's not what you

07:10as a young person should be aiming for. Obviously, there are social laws and social norms and

07:23legal provisions that you must honour as a responsible citizen. All that is okay. You

07:33cannot just jump the red light saying that my own inner code allowed me to jump the light.

07:40So, all those things fine, they are acceptable. But when it comes to the really meaningful

07:48stuff in life, when it comes to decisions that are really intimate to you, you should

07:55totally forget what the society and the society's uncles are telling you. There has to be a

08:06clear line of discretion. In certain matters, yes, you do look at the rule book and the

08:16code of laws and you agree to abide by all that. And there are certain other things in

08:22which you refuse to listen to everybody, everybody including God Almighty Himself. I will not

08:31listen to anybody because the nature of the matter is very inner, very intimate. So, again,

08:45I am not sure whether I have been able to connect.

08:48Whom should I listen exactly? So, how do I know whom should I listen?

08:55No, you don't need to listen to anybody because you have already listened to a lot of people.

09:01Why do you want to increase the number and the burden? You have to question now what

09:06you have just silently listened to. The damage has already happened. Now there has to be

09:15damage control, rather reversal, damage reversal. Have you not already listened to too many

09:21undeserving people? Please tell me. That's the story of all the kids that are unfortunately

09:30born. From their first day they have to listen to very very unworthy people. Those unworthy

09:40people come as parents, teachers, they flash on the TV screens. The kid goes out and he

09:49meets all kinds of people and all those voices just keep penetrating the mind. And all those

09:58voices cumulatively become what is called the sense of self. Your sense of self is not yours.

10:07It is borrowed, it is reflected, it is coming from this and that, here and there. So, you have

10:15already listened to a lot. Now your time is to un-listen. What does un-listening mean? It means

10:25questioning, probing, investigating, exploring. You have to ask yourself, this that I so thoroughly

10:31deeply believe in, does it have any merit? Must I live the way my parents and grandparents did?

10:40Must I follow the way this community around me of students and others is flowing? Must I think

10:52the way my peers do? Must I go the way my physicality and my hormones dictate me? So,

11:10this is the time to question everything that you know of and believe in. Un-listen. Un-learn.

11:19And in that there is freshness and newness and life. You're not coming to us as a clean slate,

11:31are you? The tabula rasa was a fiction. You are a conditioned mass already.

11:41Yes, I think, yeah, it makes sense. I am glad. Thank you, sir.

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