Fear and Faith || Acharya Prashant (2016)
Listener : In my experience, when we tend to get rid of fear, in a way it’s de-conditioning ourselves. De-conditioning leads to a lot of changes in your life, sometimes it can be apparently disastrous – you can lose many people around you, jobs and apparently in the language of the world you become unsuccessful. All this looks like its crumbling.
Acharya Prashant : It is actually not crumbling.
You see, a man comes and this has just happened recently so I am saying, and he says that his problem is that he is bugged by his family, precisely by his wife that he comes to me stating as a problem. So I say, you stay, keep coming, attend a few sessions, read a few things and I recommended a few other books I said you read these.
The books did what they always do, what they must do. The fellow got an insight, he came to see what was troubling him. He came very cheerfully and said, ‘You know what, I have come to see that this relationship has such and such contours and I have come to see where the problem is’. Then he said, ‘Now I have a problem!’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Now I know this, my relationship is in strain’.
I said, ‘Wait, what exactly was the problem? You said the wife is the problem. Now you feel clear and empowered to let go; to let radical change happen and now you are saying this is the problem. do you want to get rid of the problem or is
Do you want to get rid of the problem or is ‘getting rid of the problem’ itself a problem?
You are saying the wife is going away but wait first of all you said the wife is the problem. If the wife is the problem then what is going away? The problem is going away. So why are you complaining now?
You say you will have economic problems, I want to ask you if your economics are so wonderful, then why do you want to keep earning more and more money? People come and say, ‘You know if we do what you say then we will face such and such problems.’ You say that as if right now you are in wonderful position and going by what I say you will be in a disaster.
Do you see your assumption?
You claim that if we do what you say then there will be such and such problems.
Wait! What do you have right now?
You are pretending as if everything right now is wonderful, you are living in heaven. Why don’t you simply accept that right now you are troubled? And if you are troubled right now then things can only improve from here. So let the change happen, why don’t you honestly acknowledge that right now you are troubled?
Right now you are experiencing problems; right now you are at the rock bottom. Things will only look upwards from here. So let the change happen.
How can it be worse than it is right now?
Don’t you see how bad it already is? But you say, ‘No, no I will lose something.’ You are wearing only instruments of your own torture. You are carrying just chains. If you lose you will only lose your torture. You remember that famous statement by Marx, that was said in a very different context, but is very applicable here– “You have nothing but your own chains to lose”.
So if you lose something, let the loss happen. That loss is auspicious; that loss will unburden you.
Once I asked somebody, he was saying, ‘You know Sir, this will happen, that will happen’. I said, ‘You know that beggar at the crossing, I once found him really apprehensive that he might be robbed. What do you have to lose? What can I take away? You already don’t have anything precious with you. You only have a sense of beggar-hood and if that sense is taken away its good for you’.
So, let the change happen, let the loss happen. You are only losing your problems. And that which is good for you will you ever lose it?
Forget about me, let God – the almighty himself come, will you ever lose the Truth?
God is the Truth how can he take away the truth from you?
So that which is really important, you would anyway not lose rest assured. He just called it faith.
Know that if it is Real, it cannot be lost and if it is being lost, then let it be lost. It cannot be Real.
