Can a man and a woman be just friends? || Acharya Prashant, with Delhi University (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00But can a boy and girl just be friends?

00:16A friend is someone in the truest sense.

00:24You can relate to in a way that uplifts your life, your mind, your thought process, gives

00:34some clarity, some insight to you.

00:38That's who a friend is, right?

00:41Being with the friend turns you into someone better.

00:46That's who a friend is, simply put.

00:50So why can't you be with a girl and find that her presence, her company, gives sharpness

01:00to your consciousness, to your mind.

01:06You are able to understand life better.

01:14How is it not possible?

01:17And vice versa, how is it not possible that let's say there is a girl who is somehow either

01:29too afraid or too egoistic or superstitious, and she comes in contact with a boy, and in

01:38the company of the boy, she realizes the filth within and is able to clear the cobwebs and

01:46emerge as bold, inquisitive, and a better individual.

01:54Why is that not possible?

01:56Sir, but the biological instincts are always there, like whenever we are talking to the

02:04opposite gender, and there is a subconscious urges and instincts.

02:13What if you are with a person who is able to point that out to you?

02:18Yes, sir.

02:22Because the moment to catch the snake or the rat is when it emerges from its hole, right?

02:36Yes, sir.

02:38So you are with a girl, an intelligent girl, and she is able to point out to you in real

02:47time.

02:48What's her name, please?

02:51Sir, Varchas.

02:52Varchas.

02:53She is able to point to you in real time, Varchas, you are not listening to me, you

02:59are just staring at me, and I am telling you of something very important, and yet your

03:07mind is elsewhere.

03:11Is she not a friend?

03:14And this kind of a thing, no boy, no male will be able to tell you because the kind

03:22of reaction you give to a girl, you will anyway not give to a boy.

03:27The girl will know the animal in your eyes, that animal keeps hiding when you are with

03:32your boyfriends, in a group of the same gender, a very important part of your personality

03:45simply remains hidden, but when you are with a girl, that part gets activated, and if the

03:55girl is wise enough, she will be able to point that out and tell you that here, here

04:06is your animal, here is where you are not even a human being, maybe you will not like

04:12her for that, but she will be able to potentially at least help you out in a big way, you might

04:24not accept that help, that's okay.

04:29So it's not whether boys and girls or men and women can be friends.

04:40Let me extend it to say something beyond the question.

04:47You know, I love to say, I love to quote rather, someone else has said and I quote

04:56that often, that some part of your humanness remains unawakened till you befriend an animal.

05:10If you have never been friends with a rabbit or a dog or a cat or a cow, it's difficult

05:21to be friends with a tiger or a python practically, but you can be friends with a deer or a bird

05:27or a monkey.

05:30These are the animals that you find in your vicinity, not deers really, but similar.

05:37So if you cannot be friends with an animal, some part of your humanness remains unawakened.

05:46Now extend that and I will say, if you cannot be friends with a person of the opposite sex,

05:57an important part of yourself will remain unnourished, unawakened, uneducated, unaddressed.

06:08That's what happens to people who may move only in same sex groups.

06:15They remain boorish, you understand boorish, uncultured, unsophisticated, undeveloped.

06:27So six dudes are hanging about.

06:35Chances are that this group lacks in something quite important.

06:48I have nothing against same sex groups, please.

06:52I want to point out something, so I am taking an example.

06:59So six of them are just hanging about and doing what boys do.

07:04Actually six girls coming from a girls only school and girls only college.

07:16They have never known what it means to be in vicinity of a boy.

07:22An important part of their personality will remain underdeveloped.

07:31That does not mean that you have to forcefully intrude into girl gangs.

07:39Do not construct my thing to mean that.

07:46You find six girls going and then you barge in and you say something is missing here and

07:51I have come to take care of that, don't do that.

07:59There is life, there is the world and your consciousness will not rest in peace till

08:09it understands the entirety of it, the wholeness of existence.

08:17Women constitute 50% of the world's population.

08:22How will you understand life if you do not understand women?

08:27How will you understand yourself if you do not understand women and vice versa?

08:32Because the questioner is a man, so I am addressing him in this regard.

08:38Had the questioner been a woman, the answer would have been a bit to the other side.

08:46As a woman how will you understand the world if you have never been with men or if you

08:53have been only sporadically with men?

08:58So it's not whether a man and a woman can be friends.

09:05I am saying if a man and a woman cannot be friends then they will be missing out on the

09:13wholeness of life.

09:17In your circle of friends there must be women and if you are a woman then in your circle

09:27of friends there must be a few men at least and you must have a few animals and by animals

09:41I do not mean men, not men who are like animals.

09:53You look quite pleased by what I am saying.

10:03So there can be no logic really in depriving yourself of company of the other gender.

10:16I do not know how that can be useful.

10:20That only breeds desperation and then perversion.

10:29In my batch at IIT there were 350 of us and that included only 13 girls and you cannot

10:41even imagine what kind of desperation it fostered 337 of us boys and 13 girls

11:04and we used to sympathize with our seniors.

11:08One of the senior batches had just six.

11:15It's not just something of a joke.

11:23It can have potentially serious repercussions this gender imbalance when you do not see

11:34girls around you the mind imagines girls and it imagines them in the worst way possible

11:48the way of lust, the way of unreal juvenile imagination and same applies to girls as well.

12:06No gender discrimination here and then these two get married and this man who gets married

12:15at 28 has never been in the company of women and he has become a de facto lusty gorilla.

12:34How do you think his relationship with his wife would pan out?

12:41How do you think he will choose the life partner in the first place?

12:48He has never been in the company of women so by the age of 28 he is so starved of the

12:55very sight of a female figure that he will choose, he will make the worst kind of choice

13:02when it comes to having a wife or a partner or girlfriend something and that's a very

13:09important choice you make and that choice will go all wrong because you do not know

13:15the thing called woman.

13:21You have been starved all your life.

13:26You make a wrong choice and that wrong choice then becomes your life.

13:31You breed kids.

13:33Kids have come from a wrong choice.

13:34What will you do now?

13:37Kids are irreversible.

13:41All this because you never had any female friends.

13:46When you don't have female friends then you have female fancies.

14:00Avoid living in fancies.

14:03Make friends with a few worthy girls and that's not exactly the same as having a girlfriend.

14:15Making friends with girls is not the same thing as having five girlfriends.

14:22I do not mean to say that there is something wrong with having a girlfriend.

14:27Go ahead and have girlfriends if that pleases you but that's a separate matter.

14:34Right now the point we are discussing is whether men and women can be friends.

14:38Yes, they must be friends.

14:41Not just can be, they must be friends.

14:47Do not become one of those macho characters who hangs about in his guy circle and scoffs

14:59at women.

15:06Six hunks drinking all night and doing all boy stuff.

15:15That turns you into some kind of a caricature.

15:20There is no special glory in that.

15:26Let that not be set as an example.

15:43As long as men and women will be treated as two separate universes that will amount

15:54to a lot of misery in the world, that will amount to a lot of over sexualization.

16:05You keep a man very distant from women and he gets over sexualized.

16:14You keep a woman far away from men and she gets hyper sexualized and that's what religions

16:26have traditionally done.

16:30That's what conservative cultures have done.

16:34You create such a chasm between the genders that they both start burning in illusion and

16:45in lust and there can be no great lustfulness without illusion.

16:57You cannot become crazy after women if you really know women.

17:09If you start knowing women, your desperation will reduce because there is nothing very

17:13special in them.

17:15When you do not know women, then you go totally bonkers.

17:24Fancies, imaginations, stories, dreams and then rapes.

17:32It is the mark of a liberal and an awakened society, a spiritual society that men and

17:58women will be freely mingling with each other.

18:07The more you are body identified, the more you are gender identified.

18:18The more you are kept away from the other gender, the more identified you become with

18:23your own gender and therefore you become more body identified and body identification

18:32is the root cause of all problems, personal or global.

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