A spiritual man is a really ambitious man || Acharya Prashant (2015)

Question: Sir, I understand that the work we are doing these days will help us. But, mostly I get the feeling that everyone in Advait has become too ambitious. They say do this, get that done. The office seems so much like a corporate.

Speaker: You do not know ambition; all you know is some petty desires. All that you know is desire for some petty limited sum of money, some possessions, some this and that. Because, ultimately whatever you want is quantifiable, is just a number. Even the highest that you can think of, is just a number.

You do not really know ambition. Ambition in its purest form means Immensity. Ambition in its purest form means desiring only the Highest; desiring right till the end of desire; desiring That which will bring a full stop to the desire. I have repeatedly said that the saint is not a renunciate. He is the most ambitious man, he is desiring the Highest. But you have a stereotype. You think that the spiritual mind must have nothing to do; you think that the spiritual mind has no relationship with the world; you think that the spiritual mind simply does not care what is happening around.

The spiritual mind is deeply deeply ambitious. The worldly man, with all his limited cravings, can never really know the ambition of a saint. The worldly man will keep thinking that the saint does not want anything. The fact is that the saint wants That, which is the only thing worth wanting and gets That. The saint wants the highest and gets the highest. The worldly man wants all the worldly things, and does not get even that much.

That’s the thing about desiring rightly. Desire the highest and you get the highest. And desire anything except the highest, and you won’t even get that. Highest is achievable, the others are never achievable. When you want the highest, then you cannot remain yourself. The highest will not be contained within you. You will have to go. When you want something lowly, then you want only for yourself, because you will remain. What you are wanting is so small that it can be contained in your boundaries, it can be contained in yourself; so all your limited things, you can want for yourself. But the highest you can never want just for yourself. When you want the Highest, it is so big, that it will shatter all your limits, all your boundaries.