Questioner (Q): What is consciousness?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Consciousness is your universe around the center that you are, the little ‘I’. Consciousness is the entire universe around that, and therefore ordinary consciousness always hinges on ‘I’, ordinary thought is always anchored to the self. You will find it very difficult to think without thinking of yourself. If you will investigate your thoughts, they would always be ‘I’-centric. Even if the subject of thought is apparently very isolated from you, still, while thinking on that distant, isolated or secular subject, you will find that you have started thinking about yourself, or you have started thinking with respect to yourself, or you have started thinking as yourself. So, the ‘I’ has forced its way into a subject, into a domain where it had no business to be. That is ordinary consciousness—a universe revolving around the insecure ‘I’-sense. That is consciousness.
Q: How to get liberation?
AP: First of all, you have to honestly admit that there is suffering, and you also have to have the faith that suffering is needless, and then there is the possibility of liberation. It’s easy, is it not?
The physical apparatus never suffers. There is pain, yes, there might be pain, which is quite a chemical thing, and therefore chemicals can relieve pain. There is pain, but not suffering in the physical apparatus. Therefore, liberation has to be, obviously, for the one who suffers, and he is not physical. It is this little ‘I’-sense that suffers; it is the little ‘I’-sense whose environment we call as the mind or consciousness. Hence, the purpose of spirituality has everything to do with this ‘I’-sense.
