A confidence independent of knowledge || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2015)

Questioner (Q): Sir, how to get confidence that is not based on knowledge?

Acharya Prashant (AP): (Laughingly) Just say that even if knowledge is not there, no harm will be done. Simple!

How did you associate confidence with knowledge? You did that, right? By unnecessarily saying a few things to yourself, over and over, again and again. You repeated falseness like a mantra. You repeated lies like a mantra and it came to a point where you started believing in your own lies. That is the simple story.

All that you are carrying in your head, you were not carrying it fifteen years back. You acquired it during the journey and you kept acquiring and kept acquiring and you kept preserving it, you kept safeguarding it, with the result that now you feel that it is really something precious.

Just as you repeated to yourself that “Oh my God! If I do not know, something bad will happen!” Repeat to yourself, “Even if I do not know, whatever will happen, will be alright.” Whatever will happen will be alright, there is no problem. Are you getting this?

You see, when confidence depends on knowledge, essentially you are trying to safeguard yourself against some bad happening in the future. If you are already assured that existence is taking care of you, that you are alright if you win and you are alright even if you lose, then there will be no situation in which your inner confidence will be dented.