Ego is the centre of all positives and negatives || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)
Listener: Sir, it is said that chase positive energy. When I am with you, I always feel that positive energy. Why is it that we always need someone to be with us to have that positive energy? Can’t we have of this energy on our own and lead a happy life?
Speaker: Two things, one I believe that I am talking to an audience that have read the fundamentals of science. Energy is not a vector, it does not have any directions. How can it be positive or negative? What do you mean by positive energy? Energy is in Joules. Do you put minus or plus sign there? There is nothing called positive energy. That was the first part.
Second part was that we need someone, somebody outside ourselves that gives something to us to motivate, inspire. First of all don’t call it positive or negative. Positive and negative will always with the respect to the center. Have you seen a blank graph paper. Even on the graph paper when you declare a side to be positive or negative, there is nothing called positive and negative in it. Right? After a while something becomes positive and something becomes negative. Plus X, minus X. Plus Y, Minus Y.
Where do these positive and negative come from? How do they come? They come depending upon from where you have set an origin.Where you have set the center. Is that not so? In case of the mind, the center is always the ego. For each of us we are the center of the universe. For a dog, the dog is the center of the universe. For a woman, the woman is the center of the universe. For you, you are the center of the universe. You look at everything in your own context. That is the reason why what is highly positive for one, is deeply negative for the other.
The lion is chasing the dear. What is positive for the lion is highly negative for the dear. Don’t you see that? Two countries are fighting. The same outcome is highly positive for one, and deeply negative for the other because both are looking at the outcome from their respective origin. And the origins are different. You look at everything from your center, and that center is ego. What is positive for the man, is negative for the woman. What is positive in one religion, is negative in another religion. What is allowed in one country, is not allowed in the another country. What is good in one house, is bad in the neighboring house. Because our centers are different.
So do not call it positive or negative. By calling it so, you will only reinforce the ego. Getting it? So, from me what you are getting is not at all positive energy. In fact, you are not getting anything from me. I have only helped creating an environment here which is bringing your mind to silence. That’s the all that I am facilitating, otherwise I am useless. I am really not giving you anything. I am only an environment provider. Right?
Once you realize this, the second part of the question is answered. You will not need anybody. Could you give this environment to yourself on your own, you are free. Who needs anybody else? If you can bring my mind to peace, stillness, silence on my own, there is no need of anybody else. It is your only function right now, and you do not have any function. You can be your own best teacher and you must be your own teacher. There is great fun, great freedom. You need not depend upon others.You need not to call anybody else. But you must have great urge for state to come. I will not be dependent and that will be the way of life. You cannot say that I am dependent in one field and not dependent in the another field, because freedom is total. Freedom cannot be partial or fragmented. If you are dependent upon this or that, then you have to depend upon me as well.
You depend on friends, media, parents, religion, books, the entire world. If you are dependent upon everything else, then you have to depend upon teacher as well. Ask for total freedom and that is the fun of the life. That is the fun of the free life and aloneness. And only then you will also be capable of love, because a slave cannot love. A conditioned mind cannot love. Freedom and love go together. A dependent mind cannot love. A dependent mind can be attracted, it can have desires Alright. But attraction and desires are not love.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
