The Real Meaning of "All is One"
Acharya Prashant: You look at the world, you look at two or twenty things, and then you discriminate between them. You pick one of them, thinking that this one element, object, or option is better than the rest. That's how the mind operates. The mind looks at diversity. It keeps looking at diversity, and diversity is what bewitches it. Here is one thing, and there is another thing. I like this, I dislike that. I have to go after that thing but I have dropped that. This thing is higher than that. Hence, I need to go for the next attainment. That's how the mind operates and that's what makes the mind suffer—the choices that it makes, thinking of one object as superior than the other object.
At this point, we have to remind ourselves that freedom from suffering is the objective of the Upanishads. The rishi is speaking not just to becalm the mind, but to bring the mind to a point of wisdom where it can, for itself, see its follies. It looks at its processes and realizes how it is misled or flawed. So, one suffers when one sees distinctiveness or variety. One feels incomplete because there is something more to be had. One feels insecure because there is the threat of the attained objects being lost, and all of that is because the world that we perceive through our senses is perceived as a world of diversity. The world is nothing but the diversity that you see.
Questioner: Is it possible to see these mental objects as one, like happiness and sadness, as you just said?
Acharya Prashant: The question is: is it possible to see mental objects as one? Well, yes if you are not repulsed or enamored by one of them. It is when you strike an unworthy relationship with yourself, with the experiences, that's when the Truth starts fading away from you. Otherwise, the fact of happiness will be self-evident.
It is all happening to you. Therefore, you are in the best condition to quickly, immediately, and honestly see—what is happening, and how it has all happened, from where have the experiences and the emotions arisen. You'll not see any of that if you want happiness too badly or are too frightened of sadness.
Happiness can come as a guest; you do not need to turn it away. Sadness too can come as a guest, there is no need to not welcome it. It's when you have been desirous of one for long and scared of the other for long that you fail to see the truth of them. Otherwise, they're just fleeting things related to your physical existence. Don't you feel hungry every day? How special is that?
Similarly, it's all right if you feel happy every day. Don't you feel sleepy or thirsty every day? Don't make it special. If happiness is not special, it will be a delight. If sadness is not special, then you'll be able to carry it lightly. Let tears be just tears, they should not hold great meaning. You can cry freely and there is a delight in that, but it is unseemly when tears erupt from a suppressed state.
You see the precipitation that comes from the clouds, and then there is the formation of dew drops on the leaves early morning, and then there is the eruption of volcanoes. When volcanoes erupt then too it rains—it rains ash and lava. Why must there be so much suppression of sadness that when it erupts, your entire being shakes like the place around the mountain?
Even if you have to cry, cry gently, like the gentle rain from the clouds or the gentle formation of dew on the little leaves—nobody even came to know and the little dew drop found its way into being. That should be the quality of your tears. But sadness makes us go mad. Our tears don't flow, they erupt because we are so scared of sadness that we suppress it for very long forcibly and one day it erupts like a volcano. Let it flow.
Similarly, with laughter. There is the gentle breeze, and then there is the huge gust coming from an industrial fan. We want happiness so much that we construct artificial ways to have it. Have you seen Industrial Fans? They are really huge. Stand in front of them and you’ll be blown away. That's how our happiness usually is: we have manufactured our happiness and we want lots of it.
There is the sweetness contained in fruits—in a banana, guava, or mango, and then there are these fizzy, aerated drinks containing sugar. Our happiness is like that fizzy drink with so much sugar.
Spirituality is not about abandoning these dualities (happiness and sadness) you are talking of, it is about welcoming them without resistance, expectation, or attachment. You tell me a joke, I'll laugh—it's fine. But I'm not desperate to hear a joke, or am I?
If one of my pets dies, I’ll weep; I won't pretend equanimity. It's okay. Does one have to pretend to be someone who is never hungry? Then why do we have to be someone who is never angry? If you do something mischievous, I'll be angry, but the next moment if you do something funny, I’ll laugh—though I'm not dying to laugh.
Questioner: When someone listens to this talk in the wrong context, then there are like many people who say, “All is fine, all is well, and be at ease and don't do anything.” So, how can one draw that fine line?
Acharya Prashant: One must be very careful whether this talk is intended for them or not. We said that one has to keep making the right choice endlessly before coming to choicelessness. So, one has to honestly ask, “Have I, if not endlessly but for long, made the right choices in life?” Only then can one honestly declare, “Now, I don't need to choose because all appear one to me.” Otherwise, in the name of ‘Oneness’, one would just wickedly fulfill his desires. The grain and the flesh are one, so why should one not consume the flesh of the chicken or the goat? After all, “All is one.”
“All is one” is not an objective statement. “All is one” does not refer to the chicken and the goat and the grain being one. “All is one” refers, not to the objects, but to the subject and the relationship that the subject strikes with the various objects. As long as one thing appears more desirable than the other things, how can “All is one” be true to you?
When I say “All is one”, I do not mean that the pillar and the post, the TV and the radio, or the table and the chair are one. Rather, when it is said, “All is one” I refer to the subject, the experiencer. Are you experiencing them differently in the context of your desire? If yes, then you still have a long way to go. Objectively speaking, the wall and the floor will never be one. So, it's not about objects, it's about the subject. Have you, in your inner journey, come to a point where you do not see anything as excessively desirable and anything as too repugnant? It's about you. If you are fond of flesh, and you start consuming it in the garb of spiritual axioms, then it's just self-deception.
