Rapid Fire Round with Acharya Prashant

Questioner: Okay, great, fantastic. Now, we are into the third round of our conversation and this is going to be rapid conscious choice. I’m not going to call it unconscious because then you might actually say that it was unconscious and therefore, you will not take any responsibility. So, I am going to give you two choices, you will have to pick one and you will have to very briefly explain, maybe in one sentence or maximum two sentences, why you chose what you chose.

So, choice number one, or question number one — Man or woman?

Acharya Prashant: Woman.

Questioner: Why?

Acharya Prashant: Possibility.

Questioner: You will have to explain this.

Acharya Prashant: If you can be so brief, I’ll be entitled to be equally curt.

Questioner: No, you explain it, I want the explanation. You said, 'Possibility'.

Acharya Prashant: You see, when you say man and woman…

Questioner: Man or woman.

Acharya Prashant: Man and woman, classically, both are just Prakriti. So, both come under the umbrella name of woman, which is the human state, which is the human state. In some sense, all of us are women. You are a woman in just the biological sense; I too am a woman in the mental sense, right? So, the word woman describes entire mankind; you could say, “Womankind.”

Questioner: Okay, womankind.

Acharya Prashant: So, the possibility of redemption is there only to the woman. Who else will have that possibility? So, a woman, you know, is used as a metaphor for the one who is seeking her beloved. So that’s the mind, the mind seeking peace. So, I would want to remember that we all are that unfulfilled consciousness, which is, that we all are that woman who is seeking the ultimate beloved, in that sense, possibility.

Questioner: Desire or renunciation?

Acharya Prashant: Desire.

Questioner: Explain.

Acharya Prashant: The fundamental thing is love. Love is the highest desire. It is only when you desire the highest, that you’ll have the guts, or the daring to drop the lowly things, which you call as renunciation. So, renunciation can never come first. Krishna, in the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, talks of 'Karma Yoga' and 'Karma Sannyas' and he says, “They are ideally the same thing.” But practically, Karma Yoga is preferable to Karma Sannyas, which is much the same as saying that love takes precedence over renunciation, or that love is the mother of renunciation. If you are in love, you will, without even knowing, drop a lot of nonsense and you will become a renunciate and you won’t even know that. So, love will bring about renunciation. At the same time, renunciation without love won’t last and would become some kind of hypocrisy.

Questioner: Osho or J. Krishnamurthy?

Acharya Prashant: J. Krishnamurthy.

Questioner: Explain.

Acharya Prashant: Purity.

Questioner: You will have to explain that.

Acharya Prashant: You see, the higher you go, the purer you need to be. Methods and tactics are all great when you have just begun the climb. But the same thing that assists you to climb at the lower altitudes, becomes a burden against climbing when you have reached the heights, at higher altitudes. So, Krishnamurthy has an unparalleled purity. No methods, no distractions, no this and that, a very dedicated concentration on nothing but the Truth. And that’s the reason I said J. Krishnamurthy over Osho. At the same time, I have great respect for Osho, and I think he can be very useful to those who are just beginning their journey. But as you ascend, it is Krishnamurthy that you need to seek.

Questioner: Krishna or Shiva?

Acharya Prashant: These are much the same, no choice is there. But, because these days you know, it’s a topical thing, because these days I am with the Bhagavad Gita, so I’ll say Krishna. On another day, I would have equally said Shiva.

Questioner: So, explain to us that why are they the same thing and why Krishna today and Shiva tomorrow.

Acharya Prashant: Krishna today and Shiva tomorrow?

Questioner: Yes

Acharya Prashant: Oh! nothing, that’s a mood, a fleeting mood, a fleeting moment. I mean, just yesterday I conducted a session on the Bhagavad Gita, and tomorrow I think there is another one. So, it’s just a human thing that Krishna is top of mind. Otherwise, there is no difference between Krishna and Shiva. There have been phases, when I have found myself immensely in love with just the word ‘Shiva'. In fact, just half an hour before you came, we had the head of the books department with us, and because Maha Shivaratri is approaching, she drew my attention to one of our old books, ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ and I said, rename it —‘Shivoham'.

That becomes important because Maha Shivaratri happens to be on my birthday, so in a very carnal way, I have a bit of a connection with Shiva, which is nothing but a very carnal connection, does not mean much. Krishna and Shiva are one, you see, Krishna as he speaks in the Gita, speaks as pure Truth, and Shiva is another name again, for the highest consciousness possible. So, Krishna and Shiva are just the same. Someday you will feel like saying Krishna, someday Shiva, and there are days when I just love to say Shri Ram.

Questioner: Laxmi or Saraswati?

Acharya Prashant: Saraswati, obviously. I don’t even need to explain, I suppose.

Questioner: So, they are not one?

Acharya Prashant: No, they are not one.

Questioner: Why?

Acharya Prashant: Learning and wealth cannot be one, obviously. But at the same time, if you want to go deeper into it, if you pick up the ‘Durga Saptashati’, there, both Laxmi and Saraswati are simply two names for the mother goddess. If you want to go there, then I’ll say, “Just as I said I can’t pick between Krishna and Shiva, I cannot pick between Laxmi and Saraswati.” But if you want to accord the popular meanings to their names, right? Then, Laxmi stands for wealth and all; Saraswati stands for wisdom. Wisdom, any day over wealth.

Questioner: Eastern Philosophy or Western Philosophy?

Acharya Prashant: Eastern.

Questioner: Why?

Acharya Prashant: 'I'.

Questioner: Explain.

Acharya Prashant: Western philosophy pays relatively lesser emphasis on who you are. There is a lot of ideation, and there is a very honest and laborious exploration of man’s conditions, society, economics, but the purity and rigor that Vedanta displays in coming to man’s fundamental identity, and then declaring that liberation from all the identities that you hold, is the very purpose of life, that is something that you do not find in western philosophy. In fact, nowhere in western philosophy, do you find the word mukti (liberation). There is knowledge, there is exploration, there is realization, and I’m fond of western philosophy, right? I am not deprecating one over the other. I love western philosophy, I want to go deeper into it, but liberation is something the west does not talk of.

Questioner: India or world?

Acharya Prashant: How can you have India without the world? So, that becomes just too hypothetical. But again, as someone sitting in India, I would simply say, 'India'. But, when I say India, again my India is not a political unit, not a geographical location, not a piece of land. When I say India, I refer to the place, to the set of conditions, that enabled man for the first time to both look towards the sky and into himself. So, that’s the India that I love. The India of self-knowledge.

Questioner: Life or death?

Acharya Prashant: Death.

Questioner: Explain.

Acharya Prashant: That which we call as life must be put to death and only then, does real life begin.

Questioner: So, there’s a life after death?

Acharya Prashant: No, not after death. When you say after, you mean a flow of time. So, at 4p.m. life as we know ended, and at 5p.m. you had an afterlife. I am not talking of that.

I am talking of a certain beyondness, I am saying that this eating, talking, walking, mating, this is what we consider as life, right? When we are able to transcend this definition of life, then we really come alive. So, let this life be put to death, and then there is joy, and the fear of death is gone. And the Upanishads say, “That is what is immortality, when the fear of death is gone.” This that we call as life, it is always in the shadow of death, no?

We are always afraid of things coming to an end, in some way or the other. So, this life is no good because in this life, there is always the fear of death. This has to be exceeded, this has to be transcended, that’s why I said death. I said death, so that we may come alive.

Questioner: Now, the last segment. I am going to ask you about your first and your last love, which is books. Give us five books that you have loved all your life.

Acharya Prashant: Depends on the audience segment. Suggest me an audience segment.

Questioner: Well, on love, on enlightenment.

Acharya Prashant: Okay, one book each on these?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: On enlightenment, for beginners — ‘Siddhartha’ by Herman Hesse.

Questioner: Love?

Acharya Prashant: ‘Narad Bhakti Sutra’

Questioner: On Science.

Acharya Prashant: Oh several, you could have ‘The Feynman lectures on Physics,’ you could have the Hawkins’s book on time (A brief History of Time). Several books, but I would say, stick to your textbooks. That’s where you get science from. Science, you just cannot read. Science without mathematics means nothing. So, when we say science, there has to be an exercise book, a notebook by your side where you keep solving equations. Science is not just literature.

Questioner: Name a book on Woman.

Acharya Prashant: Ayn Rand’s ‘We the Living'.

Questioner: Name a book on sex.

Acharya Prashant: Specifically on sex? There are so many books that touch upon sex. Ah yes! ‘Of Human Bondage’ by Somerset Maugham.

Questioner: Name a book on Indian Literature.

Acharya Prashant: That encapsulates Indian Literature?

Questioner: Or maybe an Indian fiction.

Acharya Prashant: Indian Fiction. ‘Shekhar Ek Jeevani’ by Agyeya.

Questioner: Thank you so much for this fascinating, enlightening discussion. I hope we can carry on once again, probably in future for another conversation and for more love.

Acharya Prashant: Wonderful.

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