Free Thinking and Free Thinkers?
Questioner 1: Hello, Acharya Ji! Thank you so much for your videos and your Satsangs in Rishikesh. It’s very, very insightful and helpful. And may I ask you one more question? What do you think of free thinking and free thinkers? Thank you!
Questioner 2: Acharya Ji, this question that Inis from Russia has put up, is very relevant to me as well. What is freedom of thought? What is thought per se? What does it mean to be a free thinker? Are you thinking freely?... What are all these things? Please give clarity.
Acharya Prashant: Free thought! We need to be firstly clear on what the thinker is and hence, what the thought is before we talk of free thinking or free thought. You see, from your observation, do you remain when you are not thinking? I am not talking of you in the bodily sense. You obviously say that even when you are not thinking, the body remains, but in the psychological sense, do you remain sans your thought?
When you are deeply meditative, or when you are in deep sleep, or even in deep ecstasy, do you remain in the psychological sense?
Questioner2: What do you mean by remaining?
Acharya Prashant: Who are you? When do you say that you are?
Questioner2: When things are happening? When there is movement, both physical and mental.
Acharya Prashant: When do you say that you exist? How do you know you exist?
Questioner2: When I think freely more. Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” Probably yes, thinking is one of the pieces of evidence that says, “Yes, this machine is functional now.”
Acharya Prashant: Right. So, what is then the purpose of thought?
Questioner2: To keep you existent.
Acharya Prashant: To keep you existent, in the psychological sense.
Questioner2: And meanwhile also, resolve certain conflicts, help in decision making…
Acharya Prashant: Conflicts to whom? Who is the conflicted one?
Questioner2: The one who is thinking.
Acharya Prashant: The one who is thinking. So, the purpose of thought then, as you said, is to defend that thinker. The purpose of the thought then is to provide assistance to the thinker. Or is it not?
Questioner2: Yes, it’s a kind of tool the thinker has in their hands.
Acharya Prashant: …the thinker has in their hands. Because as you said, “the thinker is facing a conflict and thought comes to the rescue”, right? So thought then is a problem-solving mechanism. Or in a slang kind of way, you could say, “Thought is a sidekick to the thinker.” And who is the thinker? Thinker is… I am asking you. Is not the thinker the feeble one who continuously requires the assistance of thought? Do thinkers exist without thought?
Questioner2: I mean the thinker without thought is not thinking anymore, but…
Acharya Prashant: …but probably is existent as a tendency.
Questioner2: It is existent as not a thinker at that moment, but probably in some other form…
Acharya Prashant: …latent form. It’s dormant and sleeping, and the tendency can get activated anytime.
Questioner2: Maybe it’s emoting in anger right now, but not thinking…
Acharya Prashant: …but aren’t all those things anyway related to thought? Is there emotion without subtle thought? Aren’t emotions or actions or thoughts really the different kinds of actions of the same actor?
Questioner2: Probably yes. Acharya Ji, when you say thought (mental activity), you are implying the traffic on the road or the road itself?
Acharya Prashant: No, I am talking about the traffic on the road, and it says that here the traffic creates the road, just as the airplane creates its path in the sky, right? Don’t you say there’s air traffic?
Questioner2: So you are saying there is no road without the traffic?
Acharya Prashant: There is no road without the traffic, yes.
Questioner2: It’s not the other way around.
Acharya Prashant: On the surface, when you’re talking of the earth, surface transport, then there is the road and then there is the traffic. The road comes first, and the traffic comes second. But think of the sky — there the traffic creates the road, doesn’t it? And you don’t want to be coming in front of the traffic, right? The road is indeed there.
So, the thinker is there and the thinker is who we are, our identity, right? Anshu is the thinker, Prashant is the thinker, he is the thinker, she is the thinker. Inis, who asked the question, is the thinker. And thought serves to secure that thinker.
Thought serves to secure that thinker in the very existential sense, meaning thinker cannot exist without thought. Remove thought and the thinker will fall. Thinker is no more there. So thought secures the thinker to that fundamental level. And the thinker, you want to call him a free identity?
Questioner2: What you said, “The thinker is now bound by the thoughts that they think, so not free, surely.”
Acharya Prashant: The thinker himself or herself or itself is not free. How can thoughts be free? The thinker is, first of all, a captive to his own need for self-preservation. Is that not so? That’s the first thing that a thinker wants. And that’s what the thinker uses the thoughts for. Aren’t all thoughts in some way, an exercise in self-preservation?
Questioner2: To put it simply, like in everyday practice, we use our thoughts to, you know, quench our desires. For example, I have a desire to eat some ice cream, so I’ll use my thought to get to the shop. So that way you’re saying…
Acharya Prashant: You think for your own welfare. All thought is in self-interest. Self-interest, meaning the interest of the self. And this self is the little petty ego, the thinker. So, the function of thought is to secure the ego. Not the truth really. Not the truth really. Now tell me what is free thought, and free thinker?
Questioner2: What if I am a philanthropist or an environmentalist, and I use all my thought energy to do good work? Is it still…
Acharya Prashant: Good work by my own definition. I’ll have to very honestly, look at my life and ask, “Do I really know what goodness means.” And if I do not know that then isn’t it a bit rich of me to try to do good to the environment?
Questioner2: Obviously. Acharya Ji, in the very beginning itself, at the very outset, you took it to the psychological level, and now you are making…
Acharya Prashant: Because the thought is a psychic thing and the thinker is a psychic entity. You can’t hold the thinker in your palm, or can you? The thinker does exist but in a subtle way.
Questioner2: What if we discuss this issue on a social plane, for example, the two of us are sitting in this cafe, discussing, thinking, and an authoritative figure comes and say, “You cannot talk about these things, or you cannot let your thought go in that direction, it’s a taboo, you cannot think about these things.”
Acharya Prashant: That secures their positions, maybe, and the one holding the position is the self, or thinker, or ego. That’s their thought that we must not think. So, it’s thought prohibiting thought of a certain kind. Similarly, you can have thought, encouraging thought of a certain kind. In either case, this thought is in bondage.
Are you getting it?
So, you may call yourself unfree, you may call yourself free, either way, you are trying to secure your interests. And in securing your interest, you are obviously not free.
Questioner2: Thinking about or trying to fulfill one’s interest, is it always a matter of selfishness? Is it always a matter of bondage?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, till a very late stage, yes.
Questioner2: How about in a society where certain people are getting to fulfill their interests and there are certain people not allowed to fulfill their interests?
Acharya Prashant: Nobody knows their interests. How are they fulfilling it? You do not know where your interests lie because you do not know who you are.
Questioner2: As a society, you almost have the right to chase equally, their self-interest.
Acharya Prashant: Who will have the right? In your dream, you are a crow, and you want the right to eat filth. You may be granted that right or you may earn or win that right. How does that help you really? You are not the crow.
Questioner2: Acharya Ji, you attack superstitions, you attack all those forces in society which bind the human mind. Would you also not want to look at this topic from that point of view? That there are forces which are making us think in a particular way, that there are forces which are not letting us think in a particular way? Our mind is being, you know, colonized by certain ideological forces. So free thinking really is not happening.
Acharya Prashant: No, see, there are those who have been conditioned or forced, or subjugated to think in a certain direction. Obviously, theirs is a bad condition. No doubt. Better than these are those who are thinking in various possible directions.
Why are these people better than those who have been conditioned so that their thought flows only in a particular channel, like a river let’s say? There’s this channel, right? And the river has to follow the channel. They are better only because straying here and there and thinking variously will allow them to see the falseness of thinking in a particular stream, in a particular channel only. That’s the only utility of so-called ‘free thought’.
Are you getting it?
That, however, does not mean that flowing in a random haphazard way, hither and thither will lead you anywhere. It’s just that it will tell you there are many other possibilities, though absolutely the truth remains that none of those other possibilities are any truer than the single possibility that this stream has been confined to.
Are you getting it?
This stream has been confined to one channel, right? And let’s say, each molecule, each atom, here in the stream has been conditioned to believe that this is the only way to exist — flow in a particular way along with everybody else. Flow in a particular direction along with everybody else. That’s what we have been doing for centuries and millennia, so how dare I violate the flow.
So, let’s say that atoms here are conditioned to do that. Then there comes a fresh, new, young, rebellious kind of little stream, and it says that I want to break away. And it does break away; breaks away and explores the various topographies and territories, this way, that way, whatever way. And it inspires many other little streams to break away from the parent flow. “Free thinking streams.” Now, none of them will be able to fly any more than this stream (conditioned) is able to fly. None of them. None of them at all. Right?
It’s just that those streams will break free of at least one superstition which is that this is the only way. This, they will realize that this is not the only way. They will come to know that there are many other ways of flowing, but they must also remember that none of those other ways are any truer than this particular way, because all of those ways are just ways of thought, and thought exists just to secure the false ego. And this kind of humility, a free thinker must have.
So, the so-called free thinking is better than bigoted or dogmatic and channelized thinking. But I repeat, it is no closer to the truth than the worst superstition. I know I will be challenged on that, but I want to be.
Questioner2: Will the conditional possibility of the wave, the stream that has now taken a different path, the possibility of that stream flying more?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, that’s the only utility, provided the renegade stream, this breakaway stream does not start taking itself too seriously — as the truth. And that is exactly what happens in the case of most free-thinking liberals. Right? They think that by flowing in a direction opposite to, or different from the conventional direction, they are standing at some kind of a sacred and elevated position, which is not true at all.
Questioner2: So, what I’ve understood up till now, Acharya Ji, is that it’s so easy to say that a slave cannot think freely, cannot even move freely, he needs to have freedom of thought and expression. And people say that this slave is bounded. What you are saying is that the slave is bounded but the master is also bounded. It appears that the master has freedom of thought, the master can do whatever they wish…
Acharya Prashant: The one who takes himself as the master is not any more free than the slave because it is quite fashionable among in a free-thinking circles to consider themselves just a little bit more liberated, at least just a little bit more liberated than the masses.
Look at the term ‘woke’ — the masses are supposed to be asleep. We are woken now. I refute that. The masses are indeed sleeping but so are the ones who call themselves Woke.
Questioner2: So this entire trend, about I will do what I want, I will not follow others’ commands, I will not listen to any authority, don’t tell me what to do, don’t tell me how to live. I will find out how to live…
Acharya Prashant: …because it is coming from my free thought, I will do what I want. This entire concept of personal freedom, greatly misplaced, greatly misplaced! This entire concept of personal freedom and this concept has taken a holy name by calling itself as free thought. Thought cannot be free. Every bit of thought is conditioned. Just as every cell of our body is conditioned, similarly, every wave in our brain is conditioned.
Questioner2: So listening to others and living accordingly is a conditioning, and listening to yourself and living accordingly is also conditioning…
Acharya Prashant: …is also conditioning, yet deeper. Because when you listen to others, it is something very gross. You know that the other is enslaving you, right? The other is trying to be all over you. It’s an obvious sensory thing. You can look at his eyes, you can look at his gestures, you can look at his intentions, words, everything, and very clearly make out what his purpose is. And something within you wants to resist him because we don’t like others dominating over us.
But when it is your own inner conditioning dominating over you, you don’t even want to resist because you feel that it’s your own personal free will. It’s not your personal free will. It’s the mass of conditioning accumulated within you over a flow of centuries that is doing the talking. And you do not realize that the mass of conditioning is not who you are.
It’s an alien thing, just that it has somehow made its way to your insides. And now it is sitting inside and acting as if it is you. It has usurped your identity, right? And you do not even know that you’ve lost it. You do not even know. You are siding with the thief.
Questioner2: Frankly, there is much pleasure in living by one’s own rules and commands. My life, my rules… much pleasure.
Acharya Prashant: My life, my rules. My way or the highway. So much of today’s liberalism and these things boil down to just this — my life, my rules; I will do as I please.
Questioner2: Today, you cannot socially ask anybody to not do anything. You cannot point a finger and say, “Why are you doing this, this is morally wrong.” “It’s my life. It’s my Facebook account, I will post whatever I want. I wrote this book…”
Acharya Prashant: Now a very important word comes in — Understanding or Realization. You have to find out how it is qualitatively different from thinking.
Thought is noise. Thought is a lot of words. You really cannot think without the noise that those words produce — noise and heat and clutter. And then there is understanding, in which there is silence and nobody to understand. Quite a contrast in thinking where there must be a thinker.
Understanding proceeds sans an agency. Now, this is something that, thought will never appreciate, never! Thought recoils at such a possibility.
So, when you think the purpose is to defend the thinker, the problem is in the purpose itself. But when the intention is to understand, then there is understanding which is difficult because, in understanding, the thinker has not been secured, rather it has been dissolved.
Therefore, it is so difficult to understand. Because understanding involves a kind of giving up. You have to drop yourself. It’s a dissolution of what you take yourself to be. Therefore, people don’t want to understand. We don’t want to think, we want to agree, we want to disagree, we want to have opinions. Do we want to understand? Not really. We don’t want to understand because, in understanding, I won’t be left alive and kicking and existent.
Questioner2: Very often this question is asked by followers who listen to you on You tube, they are not able to figure out whether they are really understanding what you are saying or whether they are making, you know, thoughtful judgments or concepts.
Acharya Prashant: Have a little trust and shift your primary focus from self-preservation to Understanding itself. As long as your intention in a conversation or action is to defend yourself, seek security, dominate the other or continue as you are, you will need to use thought.
But when the intention is to really know, when the intention is to attain a higher level of peace, when the intention is to go silent, then you find that understanding happens. It just happens. And that understanding is qualitatively very, very different from any output of thought. What can, thought at most, give you? It can give you a conclusion. Thought will at most give you a conclusion. Understanding gives you dissolution.
Now ask yourself, what do you want — conclusion or dissolution. And remember that the conclusion that the thought gives you is never final, neither final nor deep enough. It’s not even a conclusion because a conclusion technically means an end. So, even if a thought does attain a conclusion, it is only interim, very tenuous.
Questioner2: In the process of trying to understand something, is it possible that, like in the case of thinking, we were trying to defend the thinker, is it possible that in the case of understanding, the thinker is being, you know, attacked, or the thinker is being challenged?
Acharya Prashant: No, the thinker is being taken to the point that he anyway has been desperate for without knowing that he is desperate.
See, even in thinking, it is really the dissolution that you want. It’s just that you don’t know that you want dissolution, therefore, you don’t go up to dissolution. You don’t go all the way. You stop midway at the conclusion, and the conclusion strengthens the thinker. Conclusion assures the thinker of his capabilities, to think and conclude. Therefore, he continues on his spree of concluding.
So that’s the way it happens, however, that does not mean that the thinking is of no use, when the objective is to understand. Think, but know the limits of thinking. Till a point, thought helps, and then you have to have the courage or the faith to just know without thought, just know without reason. If you don’t have that courage, then the maximum that you will attain is an intellectual conclusion.
Those intellectual conclusions, I must admit, clarify, are far better than any frozen beliefs that dogmas throw at you, right? But dimensionally, whether it is a dogma coming from religion or convention or it is a conclusion coming from intellectualization of an issue, dimensionally these two are the same. Though in the same dimension, there is a difference of degree. Right?
The bicycle and the car both move in the same dimension, right? However, there is still a difference. The difference is of degree. The degree to which they will be able to move, move in the same direction.
So, while there is no doubt that what you call as free thinking is indeed superior in degree to what you call as illiberal thinking or a narrow thought or conservative thought. There is no doubt. I fully agree to that, but the difference is of degree, not dimension, not dimension. A dimensional difference comes when you surrender to understand, and that’s the dimension you should be seeking because without that there is no peace.
Questioner2: To those whose minds have been blindfolded by dogma, by authorities, you are saying that they must think, and they must think very liberally. To those who have developed unnecessary trust and ego, pride, vanity…
Acharya Prashant: I am saying, “Challenge everything.” I am saying, “Let thought run amok.” Like they say, “A bull in a China shop.” Indiscreetly attack everything that you see, indiscreetly. Because you have been confined for too long by tradition. You have to let your muscles gain some kind of range and agility and movement. So, proceed.
Think of that, think of this, question that, debate this, by all means, but that’s not the final thing. After a while, it looks so juvenile to just keep attacking the traditions. Alright, you have attacked tradition, you have reviled it, you have grounded to dust, finished. Now? Now, what do you have? Depressions, psychedelics? What will you live by? What will you live for? More importantly, what will you live as? Who are you?
Questioner2: You cannot be somebody who just negates everything. What is positive in that?
Acharya Prashant: Exactly. Not even positive, not even negative, right? Who you really are, not positively are. Getting it? So, negation is great. Free thought as a tool to negate frozen thought, stale thought, is good, is useful, but it needs to know its place. It needs to have some humility. Thought is just thought, movement of the brain. It won’t get you too far.
Questioner2: Acharya Ji, today, do you think that a revolution is needed where we are questioning this free-thinking approach? Like centuries ago, there was a revolution which attacked the authorities from the outside…
Acharya Prashant: Not too many centuries ago, just 3 centuries ago. And we are suffering the pernicious effects of its unchecked domination on the human mind. We are suffering without a doubt.
Look at all the problems of today’s world. I am talking about the cataclysmic issues — climate change, overpopulation, extinction of species. They are all coming from this unbridled freedom the man has allocated himself. I am free to do as I please. I am the authority. I am the center of this universe. I exist for my own sake.
If you will look at what has brought unprecedented devastation to the world today, it is this kind of enlightened approach, post the Intellectual Enlightenment. So now has come the time to seriously challenge it, and challenge it in as vigorous a way as the European or the French intellectuals challenged it. So, now is the time to move to a higher enlightenment.
Questioner2: Acharya Ji, there are various influencers, mainly on social media from Bollywood, etc., the trend that I have seen, they label themselves as free thinkers. And what they would do is, they would pick up instances from not-so-privileged parts of India, and they would pick up instances and events and they would propagate, they would say that these people must have the freedom to think, freedom to do what they wish to do. And they would really show activism for them.
One thought that I had was, is it not that in their disguise to really give them free thought, they are in a way saying that, I mean, make me also have these free thoughts? Because they don’t really need free thought.
Acharya Prashant: Some kind of “White man’s burden?” We are your saviors. That’s ego. One must have an alibi to establish his superiority. You, the conservatives, have done so much harm to the world, and here are the proofs of the damage you have been causing. So selectively, pick those instances, highlight them, exaggerate them, and use them to drive home the point that you are the final answer, which you are not! Two wrongs don’t make a right, or do they?
The great contribution of intellectual enlightenment has been to establish the authority of the church and dogma and tradition and monarchy as false and hollow, but their great ill effect has been in establishing the authority of the person, the ego.
What has happened is that the authority has just been relocated. There used to be a God sitting high up in the sky and that God has been brought down, confined to dust. And who is God now? The ego is God. Now that really is not much of a difference, or is it? Hardly something we can call revolutionary. If this is the entire effect of the revolution, where is the real change? Nothing has really changed. Just that God was there (up in the sky), now you are God — I will do as I please.
Questioner2: If not the Church or the priest and also not me, then who or what deserves that throne?
Acharya Prashant: Understanding.
Questioner2: What is it? You try to make me understand it.
Acharya Prashant: When you ask that question with utmost sincerity -—“What is it?” Then it comes. That’s it. Whereas, when you ask that question just to counter me or debate me, or pull me down, or secure yourself, then all that you get is conclusions, or conflicts, or some kind of a pyrrhic victory.
Questioner2: The intention with which the mind is setting, starting is what matters.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, the intention. The ego must have the intention to know and go beyond itself, and in that, lies its redemption. Not against itself, not against itself, beyond itself. You don’t necessarily have to oppose yourself. You have to use yourself in a way that transcends your limits.
So, if you have thought, then you don’t need to oppose thought. We are not opposing the so-called free thinkers here. We are saying, thought is not the end. Thought is to be used, not for self-preservation but for self-dissolution. Use thought in the right way.
Questioner2: Inis has definitely got much, much, more than what she would have expected.
Acharya Prashant: I humbly hope so. I really wish we have more people asking such basic questions.
Questioner2: There are many. We have to manage things and get the questions.
Acharya Prashant: Rishikesh has always been good.
