Do not stick to sick surroundings

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Ever since I started listening to you, things started revealing themselves to me. Mind’s race of getting somewhere, achieving something has settled now. My mind is not curious about spiritual concepts anymore. But what I observe now is a new pattern. My mind is not interested in doing anything. I thought it’s temporary, but it’s going on for over a month now.

Does this mean there will be no enthusiasm? No passion arising in this body? I have peace all the time because the mind is not distracted. It does not like to cling to the past or dream about the future. But this peace has no colors. It feels bland. Are these experiences just some dull colors painted by my mind on the canvas of consciousness? I sense a deep sorrowful state within this body, mind. There is no joy. Is this depression? I feel like doing nothing. I do things but don’t know who is doing and why. I feel dead inside. What is this, and how long can this go?

Acharya Prashant (AP): As long as one is a patient, a sick one, the hospital is a suitable place. There is a congruence between the inner state and the outer environment. One is sick, so one is in a hospital. That is logical, that is the right order of things. But what would happen to the sick man, if he loses his sickness, and yet finds himself in the hospital? The sick man is no more sick, and yet, he is leading a lifestyle in which he is confined to the bed. To a routine that befits only sickness. He is still fettered in a lifestyle in which there is no challenge. There is only self-protection. There is no deep fun.

Such a lifestyle suits the sick man, is rather imperative for the sick man. You cannot let the sick man go to a football ground, it would not be helpful. It can even be calamitous. A cardiac patient playing soccer. The worst can happen. But if the heart is now all right, and strength is returning to the body, to the entire system, to the limbs, to the mind, and still the fellow is being told not to accept challenges, then it will be a very dreary situation. It may even be worse than sickness. It is bad enough to be sick, but worse than that is to not be sick and still be in a hospital.