Yuva Spot : Expanding Our Dreamscape

(Extract­ed from talks at Vikasa, Rishikesh, Decem­ber 2016)

(Com­par­ing Kar­na and Krish­na from the Mahab­hara­ta) See for exam­ple, Kar­na is so very easy to relate with — “I have self-pity. I get bit­ter when peo­ple abuse me.” That is so very relat­able. But Krish­na shows a tra­jec­to­ry, a growth tra­jec­to­ry. That is very impor­tant. When you get into an orga­ni­za­tion, can you accept being in the same position..lifelong?. You will keep aspir­ing for some­thing high­er and big­ger, right? You would be think­ing “What should I do to get there?” That’s very impor­tant. You need intel­lec­tu­al con­tent to back it up, then you see,”Hey! It is valid. Yes, I can aspire for that.” And what’s wrong with that? There’s noth­ing wrong. And it is in terms of greater and greater degrees of free­dom. Right? But it does not hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly. That’s where your role, your effort, self-effort at self-mas­tery becomes the key fac­tor, that deter­mines your degree of free­dom, noth­ing else.

See, it is like many peo­ple get into edu­ca­tion, you have a lot of good time, and lat­er on when com­pa­nies come, you feel unpre­pared, and that restricts your degree of free­dom Because of your own pre­vi­ous actions, you earn those con­se­quences, where it is restrict­ed manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty. Some dream com­pa­ny — “Oh! I can­not access it.” Why? Because of my own past actions. Oth­er­wise it is very much open. You could access it. But it depends on, whether you had the under­stand­ing. That’s why many peo­ple say,”Oh! If only I had this idea, under­stand­ing in my first year (of under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion) by now, I would be some­where! ” But that’s the­o­ret­i­cal, what to do? What is prac­ti­cal is now you have it, make use of it. That intel­lec­tu­al frame­work becomes so very crit­i­cal. And what we are doing is not negat­ing any­thing, we are expand­ing it. That you can even aspire to be a Brah­ma­ji. It is a con­tin­u­um. But what would it take? It would take a lot more! So we are not negat­ing any­thing, but we are expand­ing it so much, so man­i­fold, you know. And that is very crit­i­cal, if you need to grow.

See you are lim­it­ed by your imag­i­na­tion, the access to men­tal space that you have. That is the role of edu­ca­tion, expand­ing that imag­i­na­tion space, that it is not just ran­dom imag­i­na­tion, it is prop­er imag­i­na­tion. Access to that, you can even say dream­scape, what you can dream to be, that is such a crit­i­cal part of edu­ca­tion, because all these great beings in the Mahab­hara­ta, Ramayana, puranas and all those are illus­trat­ed only to give us the dream­scape, that we can aspire to be like that, not just set­tle for what we are right now.

In fact, one of the tragedies that happens in many villages and rural areas now, is that their dreamscape is extremely limited, their aspiration window is extremely crippled. And hence you will see them crippled in their thought - “Life is like that”

They believe only in fate. And it is not just in rur­al areas, even in urban land­scape, many stu­dents, that dream­scape is miss­ing. It can be so much more, while it is restrict­ed to just this. “If I don’t do this.…” many com­mit sui­cide. Why would that hap­pen? Why would you take your own life? If you had an expan­sive dream­scape, actu­al­ly so much can be done, if not what you had aspired for, so much more and there is no end. Why would you take away your own life? Because your men­tal scape is so restrict­ed that if this is not, then you feel that is the end of life. Why would you do that? Do you under­stand how it affects us per­son­al­ly? That is how much impor­tant this mind­scape, this dream­scape is. This aspi­ra­tion win­dow is. And Mahab­hara­ta, Puranas, all these what do they do? They expand your aspi­ra­tion win­dow to a very great extent, that you aspire for that degree of free­dom. And that makes it pos­si­ble since it is aspi­ra­tion dri­ven, it is your desire. Nobody can move you, but you. Nobody is your friend, but you your­self. You can lift your­self only by your­self. A very valid state­ment. Oth­ers can guide you, pat you, but you will have to put in the effort your­self. It is as sim­ple as that. And we see this illus­trat­ed all through the Mahab­hara­ta. That’s beau­ti­ful.