Existence as Duality || (2016)
Questioner: I am seeing Shiva’s statue here, how it is dual? How duality is there?
Acharya Prashant: You close your eyes, this statue would no more be there.
And if there is nothing then even your eyes will not be there.
Do you know if the universe disappears then your eyes are not there at all?
Eyes are defined by the capacity to see something other than themselves. Universe gone, what is the question of eyes? Eyes exist only if the universe exists. The Universe exists only if the eyes exist. That is duality.
What do you think, if everybody disappears, would the sun still rise in the same way?
No, not at all. Because, the sun, the time, the rising, are all events in your consciousness. Your consciousness is not there, the sun will not rise.
Q2: But when I die, the world will go on.
AP: No. When you die there will be no 'time' to go on, how can the world go on?
Time is what you are, you are gone, time too is gone.
How can the world continue then?
Q2: Not for me, not in awareness, but it will be there.
AP: Even the question that others are there persists only as long as you are there. When you are gone, are others there anymore?
Q2: I will not say, but they are.
AP: Will you say that ‘others are still there’ after you are gone?
Q2: No.
AP: We have this notion deeply set in the mind that, "There exists the world before my birth and after my death. And I have somehow landed in this world from somewhere."
The world begins the day you are born. The world ends the day you are gone.
Q2: This is a shock to the mind!
