Embrace 440-Volt Shock
Questioner: Acharya Ji, Pranam. Deepest gratitude for your teachings. In the last three years, I've experienced a profound shift in the way I think and the way I live my life and yet when you say, 'Aren't we all committing suicide, it hits you like a 440-volt; what am I doing, how much more can I do, where am I stopped, what are my barriers?'
So my question is also about somewhat related to mental health but this is coming to me as I read your book on the Upanishads where you talk about the vṛtti, about tendency and a lot of your question answer sessions that I've listened to, about vṛtti.
So I'm a psychotherapist. I work with people who come from again a lot of victimhood and so in the initial stages, I'm empowering them to think for themselves and to take affirmative actions, to recognize what their patterns are and how those patterns got constructed.
But the basis is that I was born as a blank sheet and then the patterns got constructed based on the environments I lived in, the people I met and how I responded to them and now I'm reading now I wasn't a blank sheet. Aaj subah maine suna hai, kaali chaadar… aapne jo satsang mein kaha hai, (Today morning I heard the quote “Kaali Chaadar..” during the satsang), so where does one go from here? We were born flawed. We were born to self-destruct.
Acharya Prashant: See we have everywhere to go. When you're in such a bad condition, that's good news as far as your potentiality goes, no? If you are already on the top of your curve you cannot go anywhere from there except sliding down, but when you are right at the bottom the entire universe is waiting for you. Good news, no?
We are in such a bad condition that from here only better things can happen to us. Is that not nice? So, in some sense, Prakṛti, the mother loves us. She gives birth to us in in such a wretched form that from there we can only improve.
We are in such terrible shape as we take birth that from there, there is no possibility but to become better. So the thing is that some people manage to become worse even from there. That's another story.
Questioner: Those are the stories who come to me to be counseled…
Acharya Prashant: No, but even those who become worse, remember, you cannot be influenced or enslaved if it is not for something within you that cooperates with the enslavement. That something is our genetic composition itself.
It's a very flawed concept that the kid is born clean or innocent. In the shape of the kid, a severe problem is born. In the shape of the kid, deep enslavement is born.
Don't you see that the human kid requires something like 20, 25 years of education? If you were born all right, why would you require two and a half decades of education? And even after two and a half decades of education, we are still internally illiterate. That's how great we are. And that's how bad our situation is at the time of birth.
Any other species that needs so much education? We spend a quarter of our life including the prime of our life just getting educated and in certain streams your education lasts till you are 35 or even 38, 40. Never wondered why do we need to be? And this is only with respect to the external kind of education, worldly education, we are reading about accounts or arts or science or technology or medicine or law and that consumes so many years.
Internal education, the real education that makes you a human being, a proper human being that takes even longer. That kind of education might not be complete even by the time of your death. Even 80 years do not suffice for that. If we are beings who cannot be properly internally educated even in 80 years, think of how we are at the time of our birth? Think of how lowly the kid is that even 80 years are not sufficient to sufficiently illuminate him internally?
Now do you realize why Saints have repeatedly prayed to get freedom, liberation from the bhava chakra, the cycle of birth and death? Who wants to be born? To be born is the worst thing that can happen to me. I don't want to repeat the mistake.
Once you realize that you have not come to this world to enjoy, celebrate or have fun; then you have known the purpose of life. Now you can be liberated. But to realize that you have not come here to have a gala party, you first of all need to know that the kid that you have in your lap is seriously diseased. In fact, the scriptures say a bundle of diseases is born. Only Aham Vṛtti takes birth, the mother disease, that's what takes birth.
Now once you know that you have been blessed with the mass of disease, now you will live your life rightly because you know your situation. When you know your situation you know what to do with it.
We do not know our situation. We celebrate when a kid is born. And we say, “Oh! the kid is cute, innocent, masum, pyara, clean, nirdoṣa, whatever;" that's the fundamental mistake and from that mistake all other mistakes ensue. A challenge is born and it has to be met with wisdom. Then the purpose of life is not happiness but liberation. What kind of happiness? What celebration? What song and dance? You’re a captive. You're a prisoner. Your state is pathetic. If you want to write a song, it must be written in your blood.
If you want to sing, the words must arise from your deep pain and there have been people who have written from a point of Truth, only their songs, only their literature is worth reading. When you listen to those songs, you feel elevated. Those songs are coming from a recognition of the true human condition. Are you getting it?
You feel disappointed only when you compare your current state to the imagined party state you have been led to believe belongs to you. The world and its markets and its institutions and the family and education, they have misled you. They have told you, 'You are here to party. And when you find that your life is not exactly a party then you feel disappointed.' As is evident in your question, what do I do? There is disappointment. That disappointment is coming from comparison. You are comparing A to B. The problem is B is fictitious. So the comparison makes no sense. What is B? The feeling the concept that I am born to be happy, that I am born to party.
We are not born to be happy. You are not born to party. You are born to struggle. You are born to strive. You are born to fight it out. And if you really fight it out then you get something higher and heavier than happiness. That's called Ānanda. That's Joy. But that's not a cheap thing. You have to pay for it dearly.
Most people get neither happiness nor Joy. They don't get happiness because happiness is not possible. The more you chase happiness, you get its opposite, it's dual companion, sadness and disappointment. And Ānanda which is indeed possible and which is actually your birthright, joy that you must really attain, that you keep yourself deprived of because you never even target it. You target happiness instead of joy.
I sometimes say that the knowers, the Sages, they were hedonists in the real sense. We aim for petty happiness. They targeted real Joy. They were the really ambitious people. The ambitions of today's CEOs and multi-billionaires is childish in front of their aspirations, their aspirations were beyond all these petty ambitions; transcendental ambition they had.
Their ambition was to get rid of that itself which is sad and hence seeks happiness. They said, “Happiness is sought only when I am sad. I'll finish the seed of sadness itself. Who will need happiness then?” And when happiness is not even needed, that is called Joy.
Whenever you will be a happiness seeker, your face will carry the imprints of your failures and disappointments. As you said, in this world happiness and sadness exist in the ratio of one is to a thousand and that's an understatement as if even one is possible. Am I being pessimistic?
Questioner: Realistic.
Acharya Prashant: I'm being realistic. I am being joy-istic. I'm asking you to go for something finer than happiness. I'm asking you to go for real happiness. That's not pessimism.
Pessimism is such a small thing. I am destroying pessimism itself. This is the height of pessimism — to get rid of both pessimism and optimism. All kinds of dualities, altogether happiness, sadness, pessimism, optimism — this is the cycle of our suffering to be caught in duality.
If things are bad, that's how they are, you cannot avoid that. If you really wanted to avoid bad things, you should not have taken birth.
Questioner: I didn't have a choice.
Acharya Prashant: But now you do have, right? To be born is to be born in choice. Now the choice is happiness or joy. What do you choose?
Questioner: Joy.
Acharya Prashant: And if you choose joy, then do not be reluctant to embrace pain. Those who cannot bear pain will never know joy.
It's in the depths of your pain that joy will emerge.
If you'll continue to harp for shallow happiness, joy will elude you. Be brave, the only way to embrace life is to have a head-on collision with it. That's the only way you can even touch life. Otherwise, life will be all around you but you will never touch it.
You talked of the 440-volt shock. Whenever you will touch life, that's what you will get. And that's why we are so afraid to get in real contact with life. We are life evaders but that's also how this beautiful lady called life can be embraced. She'll give you a 440-volt shock, embrace her.
The moment you embrace her, you will be thrown away. Embrace her again. Develop the stamina. Lady for the men, handsome hulk for the women, whichever you want to take it. One thing is certain, whatsoever is real will also be shocking. If you have no stamina, no taste for shocks, then you will live in your little petty dark cave. That's the only place that is shockproof. Reality is always shocking and to embrace reality is to embrace 440-volts.
After a while you discover that's the only way you want to live. Initially, it is very very bad. You want to run away. After a while, you cannot live without it. After a while, you discover this is what you have always wanted, this is your deepest longing, this is what you were born to love. Remaining protected, covered, insulated, secured — that's not the way of life.
