A Spiritual Method for the Courageous Ones!
Questioner: So, do you teach any Sādhanā through which your disciples and followers can access this inner Witness through which they can constantly de-attach themselves from the world which they are experiencing.
Acharya Prashant: Know what you are doing currently, first of all, that’s what is needed. Anything begins when first of all one feels the need to begin it. Sādhanā etcetera makes sense only when there is an honest acknowledgement that one is not living rightly. If one is determined to keep declaring that I am already on the right path, there is no question of any Sādhanā . Even if it is suggested, and there are thousands of Sādhanās available in the spiritual market, even if it is suggested, it would just be another layer on the several pre-existing ones that constitute the inner self. Won’t make any difference.
So, the first thing is to acknowledge that life is not right. That one is afraid, one is jealous, one is insecure, one is looking all the time towards the future. And when one senses all these things and with honesty and courage acknowledges that such is the state of my life, then there is the possibility to drop the outer and inner things that make one miserable. Now the question of substitution arises, right? One sees that there is a lot in one’s existing patterns of life that does not deserve to exist. So, one says, “Fine, now I see I don’t need to live with this. But if not this, then what?”
That’s when one requires to find a great and higher purpose of life. That’s the Sādhanā . For Sādhanā , there has to be a Sādhya , a great purpose, something worth achieving. So, it starts with the process of negation. First of all, you negate the way you are already living, and once you have honestly accepted that the way you are living is not worth it, then you figure out a high, and higher, and even higher purpose to live for; that alone is Sādhanā .
Questioner: Fine. Okay, but then for any ordinary person, because what you are talking about is a very high state.
Acharya Prashant: No, it is not.
Questioner: For human beings, ordinary human beings.
Acharya Prashant: I deal with ordinary human beings and I deal with millions of them.
Questioner: Yeah, and they do need a few crutches. Okay I do understand and realize that, yeah, the way I am living is not making me happy and I want to get out of it. And the only way through which, you know, I can get out of it is by accessing a higher, bigger guide who can tell me the way out. Now, accessing that bigger guide can happen only when the mind falls away and you’re no longer in the clutches of your mind.
Acharya Prashant: No, no. Wait, wait. It’s not that way. Even in your worst states, even when the mind has gone completely bonkers, and let’s say the mind is drunk and inebriated, there still is consciousness within. A person in the worst throes of Maya, still has a glimmer of Truth within. So, it’s not as if there is a binary kind of division where one does not know anything and therefore one necessarily has to look at a special guide for illumination.
Questioner: Guide within. Guide within.
Acharya Prashant: So, one begins by acting on what one already knows. You do not even need a ‘guide within’. You only need honesty within. You see, there are ten things you can probably do in the course of the day. Anybody, you, me, anybody. Now, don’t we honestly know which of these things deserves a higher priority? We do know that, right?
Questioner: Hmm.
Acharya Prashant: The alarm bell rings. We were the ones who set the alarm in the first place, right? We knew it was important. We decide not to get up. What we need therefore is not any special kind of illumination or guidance, the first thing to begin with is just pure little honesty, right? So, acknowledge that your current ways of self-deception are not yielding results for you, and begin with what you already know, already know.
You already know that getting up at 5 AM is important. Now why do you still fall asleep? Why do you still decide to be in the bed? So, that’s the way one moves forward in this inner journey. Make the best decision possible given your current level of understanding. Whatsoever you understand, ask yourself, “Do I not know anything at all?” You will find that you already know a lot. You already know a lot.
It’s just that one lacks the, as we said, the courage and the honesty to act on one’s own pure convictions. By that I do not mean that the thing that you think to be valuable today is utterly and absolutely valuable. No. At this moment, given that you can figure out only ten ways to act in a particular situation, let’s say. Obviously, even with all your honesty, you will only choose what you consider to be the most important among these ten ways.
But if you make the right choice from within the limited set of options that you can generate for yourself right now, what happens is that at the next step an eleventh option opens up on its own. And that eleventh one might be better than even the best among these ten. And so on and so forth, the thing continues.
I have a problem when people come and ask me, “Sir, please tell us what to do,” and the nature of more than half the questions that are posed is exactly like this: “I am in this particular situation, what do I do now?” I typically ask, “Don’t you already know? Don’t you already know? It’s your life, and if you don’t know, how will I?” Who am I to know how it’s happening in your life? All I can do is I can remind you that ignorance is not your nature and therefore your best self already knows.
Something in your mind already knows of the factuality of what’s going on. I can only encourage you, I can only question you and push you a little and then it’s all upon you, right? The role of the guide is not to carry the student or the seeker on his shoulders, it's not even to show the way. The role of the teacher has to be simply to tell the student to open the eyes. So, first thing, not carry the student on his shoulders; second thing, not even show the way; third thing, not even show some light, because the light is already available.
All that the guide is supposed to do is ask the student, “Are your eyes open? Are you sure?” The path is there, the light is there, and the legs are there. Using the light, with your legs, you can walk the path. But are your eyes open? Do you honestly even intend to reach somewhere? Or is it that you have already submitted yourself, surrendered yourself, to your current state of misery and pathos. That’s the only legitimate role of the guide—to simply exhort the understanding that pre-exists within the seeker.
Questioner: I do agree, but you know, such is the situation of current times that the mind, no matter how much we kind of condemn it, still it is the first layer of our existence and keeps getting affected, influenced by all kinds of things around us which often mute your own inner understanding of truth. We do get under the influence of, especially fears. It’s very easy to make anybody fearful because survival is at stake.
Acharya Prashant: Not without one’s consent. Not without one’s consent and that’s what is to be seen. Whatever is happening is to be taken as a function of the experiencer. It is not the world that is imposing or inflicting fear on you, it’s just that the experiencer within has calculated that there is benefit in acting fearful. The moment the experiencer realizes that you know there is no great benefit here, what am I really getting out of it? Probably I am just asking out of an old and frozen habit, hmm? Fear won’t be there anymore, it will start diminishing.
So, that’s the role of the guide. To ask the student, “Do things happen to you sans your consent?” The trick of the ego is a very usual and old trick, it does not have to do with the current or modern times. It exists since antiquity. The trick of the ego is to say, “I am just a victim. I am just a victim. I am so helpless.”
The ego exercises its blind choices all the time under the garb of victimhood. Acting as a victim it says, “Things are happening to me.” The fact is that inwardly, it is all the time exercising a choice, just that the choice is not an honest choice. The choice is not even in the benefit and the interest of the chooser itself. And that’s the question that one needs to ask to herself. “These choices that I am exercising, including the choice to act afraid, are these choices helping me in any way? Am I born to live in fear? Then why do I choose to be afraid so often?” That’s what.
