Fakeness is confusion and fear; live authentic, real and clear || Acharya Prashant with youth (2013)
Listener: Should one be diplomatic or straightforward?
Speaker: Can I answer, if this is a diplomatic question?
(Addressing the listener) Utkarsh, even to answer this question, I must be sure that this is a straightforward question. If it is not a straightforward question, then how can a reply come, and you are asking me, ‘should I be diplomatic or straightforward?’ How would you feel if I start giving you a diplomatic reply? Can anything happen if both the parties are playing games with each other? Of course, some kind of talk will happen, some general time pass, two parties both intending to deceive each other and ultimately making a fool of each other.
But, I understand why you are asking this question, because we have been accustomed, we have been trained to live a very artificial life, a very fake life and that makes you wonder, ‘is there anything called authenticity in life or is everything just fake?’ A doubt has come up and it is a very serious doubt.
You are fortunate that a doubt has come up because there are so many of us who do not have even that doubt left, they fully well know that life is fake. So, in your first year, you are deeply convinced that life is inauthentic, that one must be cunning, that life is full of challenges and unless you are shrewd, cunning and devious, the world will eat you up, so be diplomatic: You must know all the right moves, you must be able to make your way through, your mind must be very very active and alert to the dangers and the world is dangerous, extremely dangerous place, you must watch what you are saying, you must not live freely in your expression, in your words and in your love, be guarded because you have a property that might be lost, the entire world wants to rob you of your property so, be careful.
What do you have to defend? Do you have anything that is valuable which you need to defend?
And what is really valuable, is something that can not be taken away from you. Why be insecure about it? Why not let life flow freely? Why intervene at every step with your cunningness? Why can’t the mind, the speech and action be one? Why not be so free that what you say is that which is there in the mind, and you act according to what you say and what you think? Why should there be a dissonance, a separation? Why should you keep thinking one thing and say another? Why you must you be saying one thing and doing another?
At the root of this dissonance, at the root of this artificiality lies an assumption, and that assumption is that ‘the world is a dangerous place’. This assumption has been deeply drilled into our minds; the world is dangerous. The world is full of robbers, criminals and rapists and you must try hard for your security. Well, yes, to some extent there are these dangers, but when you give too much importance to these things, then you also insulate yourself from freedom and from love.
You can not be diplomatic in love, because you can not be diplomatic when you are free. This is such a poor bargain- to give up love and freedom and purchase little bit of security, it is an extremely bad deal. You have given up something that is worth millions, billions and trillions, in order to get something which is not at all important. It is a very loss making deal that you have made. There is no need for this deal but we have been trading away the really valuable things in life for something which is just so ordinary. There is no need to do that. Run a little bit of risk, and risk is anyway there. Life is the biggest risk, it will ultimately end in death. So, why are you shying away from risks? Move into a little bit of danger, it is alright.
The open sky is always dangerous; the cage is always very safe. But where would you rather be, in the open sky or in the cage? You have to decide that, you have to ask that to yourself, because most of us are choosing to be in cages rather than open sky, because we want security.
Real people: real words, real action, real relationships, real life, no diplomacy, no artificiality, no falseness, no fear.
All these are coming from fear, do you understand this? All your falseness comes from fear. If you are not afraid, you will not be fake. You are fake, because you are deeply afraid.
What kind of life is this, that is spent in fear? Do you feel really good when you are afraid? How many of you enjoy being afraid? May be you my friend, you enjoy being afraid? If you don’t enjoy fear, then how can you enjoy falseness? But all of us are fake. See how you dress up, see how you put up facial expressions, see the kind of profile photos you put up on Facebook. Aren’t we all deeply fake?
Fakeness, fear, frustration; they all go together. What does not go with these; is freedom.
Some of us even have fake email ids. What you do with these fake profiles, tells about your mind. That is the rubbish that is rotten in the mind, but because you are so afraid, you cannot bring it out in the open, so you use a fake email-id. When I look at these things, obviously there is no reason for anger, but there is a particular sadness that I feel. Why should young people have so much of neurosis? Do you understand neurosis? Mental disease, a sickness.
Look at the entire universe around you. Is anything fake in the universe? Is the sun faking its brightness? The grass that is authentically green, does it fake its color? Are the birds faking it, when they sing? Only man is hellbent on living an in-genuine life, and there is no end to what all we can fake. We can fake anything; counterfeit is the word.
How would this be if this air that you breathe, becomes fake? Instead of 20 percent of oxygen, if some fake gas is mixed, for how much time would you survive? If nature takes a clue from man and decides to fake a few things, what would happen to us? You are wearing dresses which gives your a body a shape, which your body does not have. Fake accents, fake eyebrows, fake lip gloss and with progressing medical science, there is no end to what you can fake. What are you trying to do?See that you were not born with this fakeness, you were born absolutely original.
You were not born fake. You have been taught this fakeness, this diplomacy. So, somebody comes to your house and asks, ‘where is your father?’, and you go inside and father says that tell him that father has gone out to the market. You go outside and tell the fellow that papa is saying that he has gone to the market. This is your first lesson in fakeness. Somebody comes to the house, you are asked to greet him, even if you know that the fellow is worth spitting at. Now, you start learning fakeness, and you are so small that you cannot do anything about it, helpless. You think that this is probably the way the world runs. No, the world does not run this way. Nobody ever achieved anything out of being fake.
The world is what it is because of real people, who have real minds and live real lives.
All these teeming millions of followers and manipulators, they just die one day, there is no life in them. Do you want to be one like them? Like these insects in the rainy season, who just come, live for a while and then die and get crushed under your feet. Have you seen these insects, near bulbs and tube lights? What is the difference between them and us? They do come, die, finish.
The society has a great interest in perpetuating your fakeness. Look at these deodorant advertisements. Don’t you have any intelligence, don’t you have a mind of your own, don’t you understand? Look at all these commodities that are targeted at women specially. You wear all this jewelery and husband will be very happy. Can you be anymore stupid than this? What kind of husband is this who is more bothered with the jewelry than with the person? But surely, this stupid woman has an equally stupid husband.
This fakeness is being reinforced everywhere. Look at all these hoardings at the road. So, there would be some real estate developer, advertising his latest building, residential complex. He will not tell you what the entire thing is really like, it will be a facet because he knows that this will work. You will be attracted to that advertisement on the hoarding because you look only at the face. He knows that fake the face and you are home. Just fake the face, because he knows that his audience does not have the eyes to look beneath the surface.
Have those eyes that can look deep, and then no fakeness will be able to fool you. But before you protect yourself from fakeness, first of all, stop the efforts that you make to fool others through your fakeness. You are alright as you are, you are wonderful, perfect, good, just wash your face, only that much is needed, even animals know this.
You don’t need all these toiletries. No need of fake accent, you don’t need a fake life, you don’t need a fake love and you don’t need a fake job.You are alright. Have that deep trust in yourself that ‘I am alright as I am’. There is no need of self improvement through fakeness. Self- realization is another matter, that is absolutely another matter, but there is no need for self improvement. You are alright, good, wonderful, all of you. Do you believe me when I say that you are alright?
Listeners: No, Sir.
Speaker: ‘I am deeply flawed, I am rotten and stinking’, if I say this, then you will be glad. ‘This is what I am, rotten and stinking’ but if I say that you are alright, good, then you get angry. ‘How dare you say that I am good. Look at my face, do I look good? Everybody has been telling me that I am piece of…’. How can I be good?
You are good, you are alright; there is no need to compare, there is no need to reach anywhere, just be, and that being is real.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
