IIT Delhi: Consciousness that aspires for heights

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

Questioner (Q): My question is about global warming. As you have said in your videos, the problem of global warming is due to excessive consumption. In our final year of graduation when companies offer us placements, they offer us a lot of money and pick up the best minds using this incentive. These companies are usually very profit-driven and consume a lot of resources.

Someone like me, who is interested in working towards preserving the environment, finds it very disappointing when the enemy is getting stronger day by day and there seems to be no support for us. There is sometimes also the temptation to just go with the flow and follow the masses. How can we motivate ourselves to go in the right direction instead of succumbing to the flow?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Yes, companies come to the campus and they offer you fat cheques, and most of these companies are indeed involved in stuff that only exacerbates climate change; that is true. There might be one odd exception, but mostly the kind of goods and services most big corporations are providing are only worsening the state of climate change. So, you say you know that and yet you feel a lot of pressure to go with the flow. The pressure is not from the flow; the pressure is from our very old, basic physical tendencies. Even the little kid is greedy.

You may have fat offers here that make you shiver in your legs but go to another student, probably from an ordinary campus, and if they are getting an ordinary offer, that offer means much the same thing to them as your offer means to you. It is not that the package is so large that it has overwhelmed you, right? We are born with the tendency to value our physicality much more than goodness. Money is something that appeals to our physicality.

You join a company, you get the signing or joining bonus, you get your first salary; what do you do with it? Do you uplift your consciousness? Does your understanding deepen? Your field of love widens? Have you become a simpler individual? What happens when you start earning? What is it in your life that changes? I am asking you, does your consciousness improve? Do you grow in compassion? Do you turn friendlier? Do you…