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00:00Real humor is actually about bringing stuff down.
00:03What does the Bhagavad Gita say?
00:04Goda Godeshu Vartanth.
00:06It's all just play of Prakrati.
00:08It's all a Trivunatma play.
00:10What are you so serious about?
00:12And therefore whenever you find somebody, anybody,
00:15very serious about anything,
00:17you know that the stage is set for a nice cracking joke.
00:21But we are touchy people, very sensitive people.
00:24And it is the mark of very insecure people
00:26that they are scared of laughter.
00:28Such people are so insecure that you do not need weapons to terrorize them.
00:32A few jokes suffice.
00:34If you are someone who cannot tolerate jokes,
00:37you need to check your insecurities.
00:39Surely you are defending something that is fundamentally indefensible.
00:44That's why you are so touchy.
00:46Why are you feeling so vulnerable, sir?
00:48Are others carrying the responsibility of protecting your fragile feelings?
00:53Why are you feeling so fragile in the first place?
00:55I'll drag you to the court for harboring such fragile feelings.
00:59You need to get yourself checked.
01:01Jokes are so bad.
01:02Our youngsters will get spoiled.
01:04Why have you raised your youngsters in such a pathetic way
01:07that they get spoiled by anything?
01:09If there is a creator, he's actually a comedian.
01:11Pranam Acharya Ji.
01:12Recently, media has put a term in front of me that is dark humor.
01:25So, sir, I want to ask you that what is humor?
01:28We see one sort of application of humor in our sessions too
01:33as you have a great sense of humor.
01:35So, what is humor?
01:37And what purpose it serves to the human consciousness?
01:42And should there be any border to comedy or not?
01:47See, ultimately the one thing absurd about existence is the common ordinary kind of consciousness.
02:08There is just no meaning, no purpose in existence.
02:15And yet we all move around with self-appointed sense of seriousness and sincerity and purpose and target and achievables.
02:29And that is the mighty joke.
02:35Existence itself.
02:36Consciousness itself is a joke.
02:41The human being taking himself seriously is THE joke.
02:48So, whatsoever it is that is taken seriously by you,
02:56is a befitting candidate to be a joke.
03:03And its candidature is befitting to the extent it is taken seriously by you.
03:14Which means the more seriously you take something,
03:19the more worthy a candidate is that thing to become a joke.
03:29Because actually there is nothing to be taken seriously in life.
03:34There is nothing here that is of any consequence or any importance.
03:40Ultimately, at the Paramarthic level, when it comes to the behavioural, practical level, the Vyavaharic level,
03:49then obviously you have to take things seriously.
03:52But we forget that the seriousness is all just transactional.
04:04That the seriousness must remain just conditional.
04:18Seriousness is not an absolute.
04:23There is no object here, no premise, no value that has an unconditional value.
04:30You can laugh at something only when the thing is queer, a misplaced, no?
04:44If a thing is placed where it must be, will you laugh?
04:49But if I place my shoes on my head, you will laugh.
04:53Because the thing is inappropriately placed, no?
04:57The thing has been given a place, a sense of importance that it does not deserve.
05:04And that is the definition of humour.
05:08To see what is being given importance and bring it down.
05:14Because frankly, nothing deserves importance.
05:20Real humour is actually about bringing stuff down.
05:26What does the Bhagavad Gita say?
05:29It's all just play of Prakriti.
05:33It's all a Trivunatmak play.
05:35What are you so serious about?
05:38And therefore, whenever you find somebody, anybody, very serious about anything,
05:45you know that the stage is set for a nice cracking joke.
05:55Are you kidding?
06:00But we are touchy people, very sensitive people.
06:04Since we do not understand that all this is just one.
06:11Therefore, we pick pieces of it from here and there, and start calling few of those pieces as sacred.
06:19And because we have appointed those pieces as sacred, we do not want those pieces to be addressed irreverentially.
06:34We say, you know, when you are talking of those things, you better maintain some respect.
06:38But Sir, only you have declared that those things are respectable.
06:45Or have the heavens declared such a thing?
06:48So basically, you are saying that I must respect your ego.
06:53And it is your ego that turns certain objects of its imagination into something sacred.
07:02And then you say, you know, you are violating our sacred space.
07:05But is that space absolutely sacred?
07:08Or has that been named as sacred by you?
07:14And if you have the right to call something as sacred, then equally I have the right to not think of it as sacred, no?
07:21And if your sentiments are hurt, when I step on your sacred space, then I can also say that my sentiments are hurt,
07:31when you do not allow me to step into something that I do not think of as sacred.
07:37If it is a question of sentiment versus sentiment, then my sentiment is as good as yours.
07:42Why should I honour your sentiment more than mine?
07:50It is the mark of maturity of a people that they are able to laugh at themselves.
07:56And it is the mark of very insecure people that they are scared of laughter.
08:04Such people are so insecure that you do not need weapons to terrorise them.
08:09A few jokes suffice.
08:15Now having said that, the biggest joke is the ego itself.
08:24Because what is it that you take the most seriously in the entire universe?
08:29Yourself.
08:30Every living being in its own world is at the centre of the universe, no?
08:36I am the most important one. Everything else is in relation to mine.
08:43So a joke is worth calling a good joke, a good one.
08:51Only when first of all it is targeted inwards.
08:57Do you have the courage to look at yourself and see what an amusing specimen you are?
09:09If you do not have the guts to laugh at yourself and instead you are always found throwing barbs at others,
09:16you are not a good comic.
09:21I don't know what dark humour is, but real humour and sharp humour is when you can destroy your own darkness.
09:35The man who starts taking himself as a joke is for sure a liberated man.
09:44And the mark of bondage is that you will be very sensitive and very vulnerable when it comes to being made the butt of a joke.
09:58But you will be very eager to turn others into jokes.
10:06Before you make fun of something or somebody, ask yourself,
10:12have you first of all made fun of yourself?
10:19The one who takes himself as a joke, only he has the right to turn everything else into a joke.
10:34And the great thing about such a person will be that you cannot scare him with consequences.
10:40You cannot say we will put you in jail if you joke about this and that.
10:45You will say you will put me in jail? I am already a joke.
10:48How can you jail a joke?
10:50And that will be a bigger joke, you know, a jailed joke.
10:53So on one side, the joke is on those who take jokes so seriously that they get offended and wounded.
11:08On the other side, the joke is on those who keep making jokes of others without ever succeeding in seeing how big a joke is their own self.
11:32But in general, if you are someone who cannot tolerate jokes, you need to check your insecurities.
11:47Surely, you are defending something that is fundamentally indefensible.
11:54That's why you are so touchy.
12:02If someone makes jokes of stuff that I hold as important, or let's say if there is a person, a historical figure that I respect, and someone comes and makes a joke of that figure, I am not going to be offended.
12:28Probably, I am going to be disappointed.
12:36Probably, I would want to educate that person.
12:43If that fellow is making fun of people I respect, then it's not those people who are getting hurt, right?
12:53Are they going to get hurt? No.
12:55This fellow is doing all this so that I get hurt.
12:58And if I get hurt, have I really respected the ones I claim to?
13:10So, I might even get disillusioned.
13:14Maybe I had certain expectations from this person.
13:17And those expectations have all been betrayed.
13:22Listening to the joke he has come up with.
13:26Maybe I will be disappointed, disillusioned.
13:28Maybe I will even be saddened.
13:30Maybe I will tell this person, you know, I am disappointed with the quality of your joke.
13:43Not that your joke is offensive.
13:45It's just cringe.
13:49I think you ought to have a better sense of humor.
13:54All that is, all that is a different thing.
14:02But to say that our feelings and our sensibilities and our emotions have been hurt.
14:15I mean, why are your feelings so vulnerable, sir?
14:19Are others carrying the responsibility of protecting your fragile feelings?
14:26Why are your feelings so fragile in the first place?
14:29I will drag you to the court for harboring such fragile feelings.
14:36You need to get yourself checked up.
14:40Why are your feelings so brittle?
14:45No, jokes are so bad.
14:50Our youngsters will get spoiled.
14:52Why have you raised your youngsters in such a pathetic way?
14:56That they get spoiled by anything.
14:58By the way, the youngsters you are trying to protect.
15:04Listen to kids in class 3 and 4 these days.
15:08And see whether they have any of those values left in them anyway that you are trying to protect.
15:20There was this clip a year or two back.
15:26Not even today.
15:28Kids from class 3 and 4.
15:34They were playing this game or having this contest.
15:38Whose mama is the hottest?
15:40What are you trying to protect your kids from?
15:53Your kids are totally exposed to everything including your mama's pics in her college days.
15:59Today she is the mama.
16:03Once she was that butterfly in the college.
16:06And her Instagram account is 8 years old.
16:12Everything is available to be seen.
16:14And now the kids' friends are saying,
16:17you know, mama is really hot man.
16:24And then my kids are getting spoiled.
16:27And raise them in a proper way.
16:30Then the whole issue shifts to right parenting.
16:40Once I had said,
16:41when you do not have sacredness in your life,
16:45then you try to compensate for it by turning all kinds of little and miscellaneous things into sacred.
16:55I don't have real sacredness in my life.
16:57So then I say,
16:58Oh no, this is sacred for me.
16:59This is also sacred.
17:00This is also sacred.
17:0140 different things are then sacred for me.
17:04And then you throw a joke at any of those 40 things.
17:08And I get offended.
17:10You know.
17:11Why are you trespassing on my sacred space?
17:16The sacred spaces are always very internal.
17:23How come your sacred space is a public pathway?
17:26That anybody can step on.
17:28I have my sacred space here in my heart.
17:33Nobody can touch it.
17:37Why is your sacred space so public?
17:43All that happens when real sacredness is missing from life.
17:52Then all kinds of trivial things are termed as sacred.
17:58This is all sacred.
18:03And humor is humor.
18:04I do not know what dark humor is.
18:05I mean, I don't watch much of comedy, so I don't know all that.
18:13To me, existence itself is an uproar of laughter.
18:21What will I do by watching a stand-up or somebody?
18:28Everything about existence is a huge guffaw.
18:36Ha ha ha.
18:38Everything is a joke and nothing is a joke in particular.
18:43You look at the soil in front of these premises.
18:53Hmm?
18:54You look at the floor beneath your feet.
18:57All that was living, walking, talking, not too far back in the past.
19:06You need a bigger joke.
19:09And then you look at your own face.
19:13And very soon you will be the soil on the earth.
19:19And yet we take ourselves very seriously, you know, you know.
19:30I'll need two extra hours for makeup before the party tonight.
19:34Why?
19:35There is a pimple this side.
19:39No Bhaya, don't click from here, click from here.
19:43Or I'll make this kind of a posture.
19:46To hide the obvious thing.
19:51And then,
19:56She is the organic matter
19:59that the bacteria are enjoying.
20:04And the pimple was such a big deal once.
20:09Hmm?
20:10Dark soil, maybe that's what is called dark humor.
20:15Jokes can be in bad taste.
20:20Jokes can be very very poor works of art.
20:27But I don't think any joke can have the power to violate that which is really sacred.
20:45If stand-up artists or comics have to be punished,
20:51they should be punished for being distasteful.
20:57And that's no smaller crime, by the way.
21:01The fellow is standing there, barking, wasting everybody's time,
21:07coming up with fluff that he calls as jokes.
21:16Bankrupt him for that.
21:19That's fine.
21:21Because you are a professional.
21:23And your job is to come up with something worth calling as a piece of art.
21:32Instead of that you are coming up with these sorry specimens.
21:35You deserve to be bankrupted.
21:37That is fine.
21:38But I don't suppose people deserve to be jailed for violating somebody's feelings.
21:44In fact, those with such, as I said, those with such crippled feelings deserve to be treated.
21:53These people need to be identified and admitted into some psychiatric ward or something.
22:00I have said something, even this can offend them.
22:08You won't even know what is offending what.
22:12Anybody can be offended by anything and say, my feelings, I am hurt.
22:19Or am I to take cognizance of everybody's feelings before I open my mouth?
22:23Is that the deal?
22:31Then no sane person will ever open his mouth at all.
22:35Because somebody or the other will always be offended.
22:44And why should it matter more, if 20,000 people are offended,
22:48compared to only two people being offended?
22:51The individual has the same rights as the mob.
22:56If even one person is being offended.
23:01It's the same as offending one lakh persons.
23:03And if you can jail someone offending one lakh persons,
23:06jail him on offending even one person.
23:08And that will mean nobody will say anything at all.
23:13You need to have a shut up.
23:16Society then instead of stand up, whatever.
23:21The fellow who does not examine himself,
23:24will take himself very seriously.
23:27That's the rule.
23:32The less you know yourself,
23:35the more you respect yourself.
23:40The more is the inner hypocrisy,
23:42the bigger is the facade of outer respectability.
23:52What respectability?
23:54And if I hold something as sacred,
23:57it suffices for me that I hold that thing as sacred.
24:01Right?
24:02It's a very intimate relationship between me and that.
24:07Why will I demand that you too must respect what I hold sacred?
24:13What kind of demand is this?
24:15You know what does this demand betray?
24:19That I too don't hold that thing as sacred.
24:22Deep within,
24:24I am not sure whether the thing is really sacred at all.
24:30So, I want the power of the crowd behind me.
24:35I say, you know, I hold this thing as sacred.
24:37And 20,000 of you,
24:39you too must say that this thing is worth respecting and bow down.
24:41So that I feel assured,
24:45that the thing is indeed sacred.
24:48If I am assured of my faith,
24:51why will I seek security in numbers?
24:55I know for myself,
24:58and that suffices.
25:00Does it not?
25:02I know for myself, it suffices.
25:04Now you may keep joking,
25:06or you may keep supporting me.
25:07Does it matter?
25:08It doesn't matter.
25:09But,
25:12our love, our respect, our faith,
25:16they are all very borrowed concepts.
25:19Borrowed and imposed.
25:24We really have no confidence in them.
25:27Therefore, we are very scared.
25:32Forget the sacred.
25:34What is present is the scared.
25:37A minor variation.
25:40From the sacred to the scared.
25:45We are very scared people.
25:47Because we don't have real spirituality in life.
25:50We don't have the wisdom that comes from self-knowledge.
25:54Therefore, our faith is very fragile.
25:59We keep looking towards everybody.
26:01You know, you please honor my faith.
26:03Otherwise, I will be offended, you see.
26:07Laugh at yourself.
26:08That's the best joke.
26:09You can laugh at others too.
26:13But only after,
26:15you first of all laugh at yourself.
26:17And you don't need any special event or person or thing to laugh at.
26:25Everything here is a cosmic joke.
26:29If there is a creator, he is actually a comedian.
26:30But just this much of caution you must have.
26:44Before you laugh at others, laugh at yourself.
26:47And then, even when you laugh at others, it won't carry a sting.
26:56It will carry compassion.
26:58Sir, you said that the sacred one should be in the heart.
27:06But if someone is cracking jokes or disrespecting the one who teaches me that.
27:12That the whole existence is full of jokes.
27:18If that, there should be no boundary, no border on the jokes.
27:22Why should not I slap the person who disrespect by cracking jokes, the Gita or you?
27:29The slapping can come from two very different person, very different centers.
27:33One is, the joke that you cracked on my teacher shook my own faith.
27:42Brought tremors within my entire belief started shaking.
27:53That is one thing which may make you want to slap that person.
27:59The other thing is,
28:01when you are publicly ridiculing my teacher or casting false kind of aspersions,
28:10then you are making the job of my teacher difficult.
28:15Because you are doing it publicly.
28:18And my teacher's mission is public.
28:22He wants to get to a large number of people.
28:26And by levelling false allegations on him, you are making his job difficult.
28:34Now, before my teacher reaches a person, your false allegations have already reached that person.
28:41So, my teacher will have a doubly tough time bringing the truth to that person.
28:51Now, this is another center.
28:54This is not about personal hurt.
28:57This is about objectively seeing that the conduct of that person is deleterious to the mission.
29:03These are two very different things.
29:06If you ridicule my teacher in private, I have no issues.
29:11No issues. You can say whatever you want to.
29:15But if you do that in public,
29:18then you are jeopardizing his mission and my mission.
29:22And then, I cannot be lenient on you.
29:29Then I will come down very harshly and very heavily on you.
29:33Because my teacher has surrendered his life to his work, his mission.
29:37And by publicly demonizing him, you are laying his life to waste.
29:53Because his life is his mission.
29:58These are two very different centers.
30:01I am not personally hurt.
30:02But if you will hurt the mission,
30:05then I will do whatever it takes to protect the mission.
30:13Sir, at the starting of the answer, you have mentioned that
30:18at the Paramarthic level, there is nothing to be taken seriously.
30:24But when we come down to the Vyabharic level,
30:28there is something to be taken seriously.
30:30But the ego exists only at the Pratibhasic level.
30:35So why at the Vyabharic level, we have to take something seriously?
30:39Because seriously is the concept.
30:42You see, you already take things seriously.
30:46You already. Don't you take yourself seriously?
30:49Yes, I do.
30:51So you already take things seriously.
30:53Hence the question, why do we need to take things seriously?
30:55That's a very redundant question.
30:58You already do take things seriously.
31:00And because you take the harmful kind of things seriously,
31:06therefore it is advised, at the beginning,
31:10that you must take another dimension of things seriously.
31:13For example, when you will come to me, I will say take the Bhagavad Gita very seriously.
31:19Very seriously.
31:21But a point comes when the scriptures themselves say,
31:25Now keep us aside.
31:30We have done what we could.
31:34Go beyond.
31:37We liberated you from everything possible.
31:43Now we liberate you from ourselves as well.
31:48That's what the scriptures say.
31:51So scriptures are to be taken very very seriously,
31:57as long as you take yourself seriously.
32:01And then that final point we need not worry about.
32:06Don't try to imagine about it.
32:08Ok, one day will come when the Upanishads will say,
32:11fine, close the book and keep it aside and fly away.
32:18Don't imagine.
32:20Hence I say, you will need the Upanishads all your life.
32:23Gita is not a thing to be used and discarded.
32:30Gita should be like your breath.
32:33Let it remain always with you.
32:34If at some point the Gita has to say,
32:38that son, now you can go beyond.
32:42Let that be on the Gita.
32:45Why should we try to prophesize that?
32:51Why should we jump the gun?
32:55Our job is to stay true to the Gita.
32:58Why you have included Vyabharic level in the zone of seriousness.
33:08As the ego exists only at the Pratibhasic level,
33:11hence the seriousness also exists only at the Pratibhasic level.
33:14No, no, it is not as if the ego exists only at the Pratibhasic level.
33:18At the Pratibhasic level, the ego exists for what it is not.
33:22At the Vyabharic level, the ego exists seeing the facts of its being.
33:33There is a fellow who lives in imagination.
33:36There is a fellow who lives in facts.
33:38But even the fellow who lives in facts, believes that he is a fellow.
33:42So, he is still not at the Paramarthic level.
33:45At the Paramarthic level, even the fellow does not exist.
33:48There is total dissolution.
33:49So, the ego exists at both levels.
33:54At the Pratibhasic level, you are Superman.
33:57At the Vyabharic level, you are Man.
34:02But it is better to be a Man than a Superman or a Spiderman.
34:19Man.
34:20Man.
34:21Man.
34:22he says,
34:24Man.
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