Bliss and Grace are never going to come || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Speaker: What happens when I am looking for Bliss?
Listener 1: I don’t have to look anywhere, because you can look for somebody…
Speaker: But, I have been told that human lives must attain to Bliss, because that is our nature. I have been told that *Sat Chit Anand*swabhav is what I am . I must attain to Bliss.
Listener 1: No, I have to discover it.
Speaker: I have to discover it.
Listener 1: I am already there.
Speaker: Whatever. But, I am not experiencing it. So, what happens when I am looking for Bliss?
Listener 1: Mistakes will happen.
Speaker: This looking for Bliss is itself an?
Listener 1: Un-Bliss.
Speaker: Ok.
Listener 1: If that is a word, I don’t know, whether in dictionary that word is there or not.
Speaker: So, looking for Bliss itself is a *d*istractment from?
Listener 1: I have to be established.
Speaker: Maybe I already have, but I don’t know, whether ‘*I am*‘. I don’t know, whether I am Bliss . But, what I know for sure is – if I am searching for Bliss, that search cannot be Blissful. Because, search means I am not yet there.
Listener 1: I have lost it.
Speaker: I have lost it.
Listener 1: That’s why I am searching.
Speaker: So maybe this concept, that Sat Chit Anand is my swabhav, this concept itself is interfering with my swabhav .
Listener: No.
Speaker: Swabhav means that which is there even without tutoring. Even before somebody told me, that I am Sat Chit Anand . If I am actually Sat Chit Anand and I would be Sat Chit Anand even without knowing the word ‘Sat Chit Anand’ . But, the day somebody comes to me, and tutors me, that my swabhav is Sat Chit Anand , now, what do I start doing?
Listener 1: Start searching for it.
Speaker: I start searching for Sat Chit Anand . Now, what am I searching for? I am searching for a ‘word’ .
Listener 1: Sat, Chit, I have already searched and found. Now, Anand is left.
Speaker: Yes, something is left. I am searching for something . Right. Which is a word and image. So, from a state where I was That , now I have been pushed into a state where I am searching for That .
Listener 1: One thing to be clarified, that the Bliss, but definition of Bliss, what we are looking as a Bliss is – a worldly object will never calm. I mean to explain a very great eye opening example that this distance, distance itself is a Bliss. We are not satisfied with that. We want no agitation to be part of it or agitation which is conducive to our plans. So that is one thing. So, coming back to the question…
Speaker: Suppose, I don’t know. Suppose, I am the first man, I am the first man on this earth. I don’t know any of this. But I am the first man. First man, as existence would produce. First complete, healthy man. Won’t I have *Sat Chit Anand*swabhav ?
Listener 1: You ought to.
Speaker: Ought to. But there are no Upanishads to tell me that.
Listener 1: Of-course.
Speaker: Now, am I lacking anything in life ?
Listener 1: No.
Speaker: That’s it!
The day the instruction comes, the day this knowledge comes, that attaining to Bliss is a worthy goal of life, my life becomes disturbed.
Listener 1: Basically in layman’s language or in a lighter side of it, like – I am not having an Aadhaar card (The Aadhaar Identity Card is issued to every resident of India, which would enable him/her to avail a number of Government services) , so I have been told that you do not have an Aadhaar card; it doesn’t mean that I am Aadhaar -less.
Speaker: Yes.
Listener 1: So, I have been told that get Aadhaar card, then only I will get my LPG cylinders.
Speaker: Something like that. Yes.
Listener 1: That doesn’t mean, I will become Indian citizen only if I have an Aadhaar .
Speaker: Yes. Yes. But, you know what happens, really it happens, you start feeling a little bit less of a citizen if you don’t have an Aadhaar card or a passport or a pan card or one of these things. Now, this is so strange, as if, your very citizenship has been diminished.
Listener 1: Rather, something really good has come from this talk, that if I have been told that I have to attain Sat Chit Anand , then I feel incompleteness, though I might be already in a meditative position. But, then I search – Ok! Was this correct? Or, something else is Sat Chit Anand?
Speaker: You know, think of someone who is sitting there nicely, just sitting, and then I go up to him and say meditate and here are the list of methods, you could use either of them. Pick up something that suits your personality, meditate. Now, what am I doing to him?
Listener 1: You’ve shaken him. You’ve given..
Speaker: I have shaken him out of his meditativeness and what have I given him? Ostensibly, I am a well-wisher, who has given him a list of methods of meditation. But, I am saying now..
Listener 1: Might have transcended them..
Speaker: But, we all are already.
Listener 1: But, this debate will lead us to, that we should not read Upanishads then.
Speaker: It’s what the Upanishads are saying – forget us!
Listener 2: Sir, in my view, this spirituality is very easy. But, it does not come by any reading or anything, but some Grace it is.
Speaker: Maybe that Grace is there, but by asking for it, you keep it away.
Listener 2: It comes.
Speaker: It does not come, because to come, it should have been absent at some point. Maybe it is there, but our beliefs, you know again, we have an image of Grace.
What is Grace? We confuse Grace with luck. If something nice happens to me, if randomness favors me, then I say, ‘This is Grace’. For us, Grace and luck are one and the same thing.
Are they are not? And if you are unlucky, lets say you get run over by a truck, would you say that Grace is still shining on you?
Listener 2: It is just an happening. Maybe.
Speaker: And people do get run over. Don’t they? And it’s highly unlucky thing to happen. And when it happens, and in that moment, there would be hardly anybody who is still be full of gratitude . Now, Grace is gone! But, Grace is still there. You are unlucky, but Grace is there.
Listener 2: It is there..
Speaker: It doesn’t come.
Listener 2: It is always there. Yes.
