Acharya Prashant: Service will not probably fulfill this restless ‘I’, but service will enable you to forget this restless ‘I’. That is beyondness—not quite the fulfillment of the little ‘I’, but a certain forgetfulness towards the little ‘I’. You say that you are serving a cause bigger than yourself or you are serving others; therefore, there is no time nor opportunity to keep wondering whether your own demands have been met.
One is restless, one is restless, and then one starts dedicating oneself to something bigger, something larger. And the bigger cause consumes so much attention, time, energy that one is left with no space to complain or wonder whether one is internally unfulfilled. You say, “Even if I remain unfulfilled, it is a small matter. I might be happy, I might be sad—the work that I have taken up is bigger than my happiness and sadness. It does not quite matter how I am feeling.”
“I am unfulfilled—oh, probably I am, but I just forgot that.” This is beyondness.
“Am I unfulfilled? Probably I still am. But who cares? I have better things to take care of.” This is fulfillment.
When thoughts of your personal success stop mattering to you, when you say, “There is something more important than my personal success,” then you have really succeeded.
Questioner: It has to be something big, right?
