Are you alright with yourself? || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Questioner (Q): Sir, in real life, habits look real. Not false.

Acharya Prashant (AP): It may look real, it may look unreal. Ultimately, how do you feel with it? Are you okay? If you are okay with it, then the whole thing stops here. If you are okay with the way it is, then it stops here. The fact is nobody is okay with the way he or she is. Some are honest enough to admit and some decorate their suffering with fancy names.

Spirituality is for the one who has decided to totally get rid of the suffering.

He will not treat it as a casual matter, he is totally sincere. He says, “No fooling around, it’s my one life; can’t waste it. If Joy is my nature, I must live in my nature; I cannot squander it in worries, divisions, conflicts, procrastination, terrible relationships, insecurities. No! Not prepared for that anymore.”

Spirituality is for the one who will not compromise. If you are a well-adjusted man, a socially compromised man, then spirituality is not for you. At least not till the day when you feel nauseatic; when you feel repentant about yourself.

Feeling alright? Stay alright!

The scriptures lay down very clear conditions for the one who must proceed with reading them. They say one of the conditions, very clear condition is a deep burning desire to be liberated. There cannot be a deep burning desire to be liberated unless you are acknowledging that you are in bondage! So, those of us who feel that they are not in bondage, they are free individuals, the scriptures are not for them; spirituality is not for them. For them, there is this world. You go and have a good time as long as you can.

There are many who are out there, remained out there their entire lives, and then they die.

It’s alright.

Q: On one end you say there should be a burning desire and on the other end you say Truth has no experience, you cannot experience Truth.

AP: Is the burning desire about getting Truth or is the burning desire about getting rid of your state?

Are you in the Truth?

In the state that you are in, you are totally identified with the false; the desire is to drop all this. The desire is not of the Truth; the desire is to get rid of that which you have surrounded yourself with. For liberation, there has to be bondage, so the desire is to get rid of all this. Of course, it is powered by the Truth. It is driven by the Truth, the Truth within, but it cannot be of the Truth because Truth cannot be an object, not an object that your mind can fancy or conceptualize.

If you are in a burning house, your desires cannot be of serene meadows. Caught, trapped in a burning house, will your desire be of the Himalayan snows? What would be your only desire? To somehow escape the burning house.

Q: What if every house is burning?

AP: Do you know that there is something outside the burning house called free space?

You will not know that till you have an image of free space. Sometimes open the doors and peep out. How many houses do you know of? Only as many as your house allows you to know. If your house is very liberal, you will know of 100 other houses, if your house is conservative, you will know of 5 other houses, and based on this limited knowledge, see what you declare “Every house is burning.” Look at this arrogance. We all have it. We all have this misplaced belief on our knowledge.

You say, “I know it is all the same everywhere.”

Do you really know?

Q: Yes, kind of.

AP: Not kind of. When it is a matter of your life, be certain.

Q: Yes, around me I see the situation.

AP: How big is the entire expanse of possibility and how small is that which you call “around me” and what will you have collected around you? What is it that you will ever find around you?

You will find only that around you which you have collected. So, you will only find yourself around you. Your own likes and dislikes, your own choices, so will you ever find the total Truth around you?

But look at your misplaced confidence, you say “No I have looked around myself, and I have found only this so this must be the Truth.” Without ever seeing that whatever around you is just a reflection of who you are. What will you find in the phonebook of a terrorist? Contact numbers of all the monks and saints?

What will you find around him?

Q: Probably, the next possible targets.

AP: You will only have that around you which you have collected around you.

And that is no proof of Truth.

It’s like the fish saying that there is only water in the world. Of course, there is only water in the world of the fish. As long as you want to remain the fish, you will only have water around you.

Heard of the frog in the well?

What does it say?

“All around me are only walls, so the universe is a wall.”

For the frog, the universe is a wall, and he is absolutely sure. "The universe is a wall because I look at it with my eyes." How big are you? How dependable are your eyes? Why must you remain a frog, and as long as you are the frog, the universe will remain to be the walls.

Are you the frog?

Must you be so enamored with the trrrr trrrrr, that croaking?

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