Before you fight the flies, go take a bath || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2021)

Acharya Prashant (AP): Always remember the one being spoken to. The one being spoken to is one in illusions. Therefore, when the one in illusions is told, “You must have clarity”, what is he really being told, practically being told? Shed your illusions.

Clarity is not a thing to be had and clarity is anyway not going to be available to one in illusions. Therefore, when the sages talk in an affirmative way, you must still decode it in the negativa. See what is false! Relentlessly. Ruthlessly. Drop it! Drop it right now. Don’t wait a second. How long do you want to keep poison on your tongue? Spit it out. Right now! Don’t think. The inner tendency to die unfulfilled is what is causing you to brood with poison on your tongue. It’s the death within at its conspiring worst and you’re saying, “No wait, I am thinking.” No. Spit it out.

When you proceed to unburden yourself of the false you find that the falseness shackling you is almost endless and then if you are sincere you ask yourself, “There are these thousand false things encircling me, occupying me, attached to me. What do I fight — these things, one by one, or should I rather look at my tendency to attract these things, my tendency to drop these things?”

So, the one who proceeds to get rid of falseness, if he is sincere, he will end up getting rid of himself because it is to you that all falseness is. Falseness does not exist in vacuum. If falseness has come to you it is because you wanted it, you invited it and you are keeping it, you are nourishing it. What’s the point in attacking that one particular piece of falseness then? Figure out what is it within you that remains actively enamoured of the unreal. You will drop one thing but if you will not drop your tendency, soon you will find yourself running after and sticking to another false thing.