Are you your brain? || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Questioner (Q): I can understand when you say, “I am not the body.” But the identification with the mind, the thoughts, it feels like – ‘I am the brain.’

How to be dis-identified from the brain?

Acharya Prashant (AP): The brain wants to just continue, you want to come to an end. How can you be the brain? Does the brain ever want to come to an end?

Q: No.

AP: The brain’s continuous desire is to stay continuous. That’s the nature of desire – it just wants to continue. And you want to come to an end, right? You want to come to a sleep, you want to come to a full stop, how can you be the brain?

Q: All I know is my brain.

AP: Is that so?

Q: How can I know anything other than my brain?

AP: Don’t you ever yearn for Freedom? Have you never known Love? Are these things of the brain? And if they are not, why do say that all you know is the brain?

Is Freedom a thing of the brain? All that the brain can have is the thought, ideas, concepts. Is Freedom a thought, idea, concept? Is Love a subject of the brain? All that the brain can have, I repeat, is thoughts, ideas, concepts. Is Love a thought, idea, concept? If you are saying this, then you must be living an un-free and loveless life.

How is it that you say that you have never known anything apart from the brain? You surely have. Even as I speak to you right now, the brain is busy comprehending and analyzing what I am saying. But can the brain understand?

And have you never known Understanding? And if you have ever known Understanding, how do you say that you are nothing but the brain? Even this moment is sufficient to prove that you are not the brain.

Are you getting me?

Q: Yes.

AP: And if you are getting me, is it the brain that is getting me?

Q: Yes.

AP: Even that you do not know, because you are speaking as the brain.

The brain has no idea of what I am saying, because all that the brain can have is ideas, and what I am saying cannot be captured as an idea. So the brain is clueless, yet ‘you’ are getting it.

Are you not getting it?

Q: No.

AP: How do you know?

So don’t try to say ‘Yes’ or say ‘No’.

Q: So it is the denial of whole thinking itself.

AP: No, not denial.

Q: The ownership of the thinking.

AP: Exactly. Denial is a kind of ownership. You don’t even have to deny.

The brain does its own thing.

There is someone you say that you love dearly. You tell that person, “You are my life, you are my life.” That person passes away. Within a few hours, you are found having your meals.

‘You’ are in grief, but the body is not in grief, the brain is not in grief. The brain is telling the body, “I need my food, I need my glucose, I need my nutrients.” So in the middle of that grief, you will go and have food. ‘You’ are in grief, the body is not. Or is the body ever in grief?

Does the body ever understand anything sublime?

All that the brain knows is its own survival and continuation.

The dearest one is lying dead in front of you, and the brain is saying, “Some food please, some food please.” Does that not happen? Maybe not immediately, maybe after a few hours. How long will you stay hungry?

The brain does its own thing. When it needs food, it needs food, doesn’t matter even if an avatar (incarnation) has died in front of you.

Q: Most of the actions that we do are for the body and the brain.

AP: Exactly.

Q: So what will be my True actions? Will there be no actions at all?

AP: Depends on who you are.

What is it that you want, and the body does not want?

Take that as your identity.

What is it that you want but the body does not? Take that as your identity.

Q: Even if the ownership from thinking is removed, is there still a need for Liberation?

AP: Liberation is needed because you need to be liberated from that ownership. Just by saying, “If the ownership is removed, is Liberation still needed?” the Liberation does not automatically happen. The ownership does not automatically go away. The ‘If’ that you are uttering is a humongous ‘If’.

All Liberation is nothing but Liberation from this ownership. Give this ownership up, and then there is nothing to be liberated from.

show_less