IIT Kanpur: How did some sages attain wisdom at a very young age?

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

Questioner (Q): How did sages like Ashtavakra and Adi Shankara attain wisdom at such an early age of fourteen or eight? You have said in many of your videos that unbearable pain coming from falseness is the starting point of the journey towards the Truth. How can someone have this kind of unbearable pain at such a young age?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Eight years and fourteen years is a very old age. The child finds living unbearable the moment it is conceived. You know, there are scriptures that talk in detail about the agony of the fetus in the womb and how the yet-to-be-born child repents in the womb. None of that has to be taken as a fact, as an objective fact, but it is an important pointer towards something related to human consciousness.

Existence itself is suffering. The moment consciousness gains existence, it is sorrow and suffering that has taken a life. To be embodied is itself a tension, a limitation, bondage. Don’t you see? On one hand, you say that your nature is expansive and infinite; on the other hand, your bodily existence is limited to six feet of your height and one-and-a-half feet of your width — full stop. Isn’t that a great bondage? I mean, again, don’t take what I am saying as…