Give your best time to the Best One || (2016)

“You failed to know your Love in your youth Wake up and see your Love is gone.”

~ Saint Kabir

Acharya Prashant (AP): Youth refers to a time when you are physically neither dependent nor incapable. After a particular time, you become physically incapable. And what happens to the rest of the body also happens to the brain. There is senility and there is a lack of memory and such things. And before a particular age, you don’t have enough grey material. So that is why in the spiritual domain, youth has a very special place. That, which is your highest goal, surely requires the best of your abilities. If your goal is a worthy goal then it requires the best of your abilities. And the best of your abilities include your physical abilities as well. So the best time to chase that highest goal, which is Truth or God, is during your youth. You cannot do it when you are a kid, and you cannot do it when you are too old.

You know, there is a great difference between spirituality and morality here. Spirituality clearly says, give your best time to the One who is the best. Spirituality says, if He is the best, then He deserves your best time, and your best time is your youth. Morality says that God must be served only after you have served all your relationships, husband, wife, mother, society, after all, the priorities have been taken care of, only then you should go to God. So that is the moralist way of looking at age.

But, Kabir will never say that.

Kabir will say that when you are in the full bloom of youth, that is when you should seek God.

Questioner (Q): Sir, we also say that one cannot wake up without the grace of God?

AP: One requires both. One requires the Grace of God and his own consent. Now Grace of God is perennial, always there. You require two things of which one is already present. So, ultimately, what do you require? Only one thing. Both are required, yes, Grace is the mother requirement. But the mother requirement is always fulfilled. The small requirement is hardly ever. The small requirement is your own “Yes”, which never comes.

Q: I have other things to do right now.

AP: Ah, so when…? That is the whole thing about ‘Being Available’. You know, God is so innocent, He does not know that if He makes himself so available, then people turn away from Him. “Where will God go? He is omnipresent, omnipotent, timeless, so let me finish the other tasks, they are time-bound. So let me catch the train first, God is not going anywhere, but the train will go. So God can wait, the train won’t wait. So let me first catch the train.”

And everything is time-bound in this world, so everything deserves a higher priority than God because everything will lapse in its youth time. God will not lapse. (Smilingly) So God can be safely given the last priority. That’s what we do, right? Take the most available for granted. He should make Himself a little unavailable. So He sets up Maya. Maya is the seductive agent of God. People think that she is there to dissuade you from Truth. No. We don’t understand Maya. Maya is the only way God can bring you to Himself.

Q: Yes, yes.

AP: She is the daughter of Truth. Don’t worry. (Smiles)

Q: It’s easy to look at Maya as the evil force, deluding us. How can we look at it as a power that will help us reach the Truth?

AP: Only when you are deluded do you start talking of Maya. When you are not deluded, you talk only of the Truth. So, is there anything called Maya?

Only the deluded ones talk of Maya. The ones who are in Truth, see only Truth.

Is there anything called Maya?

For the one who is in Truth, there is nothing called Maya. And the one who is not in Truth, he is anyway unreliable. He is all the time saying, “There is Maya, there is that”. Had he known what is where and what is what, would he have been deluded? Maya is only for those who need some scapegoat. “I am not a fool, Maya is overpowering me, it is not my mistake. What can I do? It’s Maya.”

Q: So either see yourself or Maya will help you see.

AP: Yes, either see it yourself or if you are not seeing, then the not seeing will help you see. The not seeing is called Maya. Either see, then everything is alright and healthy, or if you are not seeing, then the very not seeing will make you see. If you are not seeing then someday you will be… you know. (Smiles)

Q: Someday you will breakdown.

AP: Not seeing itself is a breaking down.

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