When a person changes, his relationships too must change

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

Listener: How to deal with society and the conditioning it brings along with it?

Acharya Prashant: You talk a lot about society, but ultimately our visa expires and we have to return to the same society. What do we do? Do we go to some forest? Do we go to Mars? What do we do? What do you mean by society? If you look at the contact list of your phone, is that list the same as the list in her phone (signaling towards another lady). How many numbers are there in your phone directory? How many? How many?

(Silence)

How many?

This is not a mystical question please. (Everyone laughs)

How many contacts?

Listener 1: Minimum 200.

And how many people are there in the world? 8 Billion.

What is society? The minuscule number of people that you gather around yourself. You have gathered a very small number of people around yourself and you call it ‘the society’. An infinite number of societies exist. You are the center of the society that you gather around yourself. When you change, your contact list also changes.

Society changes completely and dramatically but you act as if, ‘no I have to go back to the same society’. Throw away your mobile phone, get a new mobile and save new numbers. Society has changed, the whole universe has changed, now what is the problem. ‘Oh! such a great problem- society.’

These 200–300 people are all that you know. The universe is giving you 8 billion choices, why are you rejecting all of them, why must you stick to these 300 people, and why must you discard all 300. There would be few worth keeping, keep them, the others would naturally drop off. ‘No we have to go back to the same society’. If you are going to the same society then you are the same person then why have you spend so much time and money in India? To remain the same person? To go back with the same luggage?

Only the same person maintains the same society. When the person has changed, his relationship will change.