Gloss is the spontaneous action of Core || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker : Core is what you are. It’s very simple.
And what are you?
You are your innate intelligence, the ability to understand.
What is the first statement that you wrote today?
Listeners : Appearance is the function of intelligence.
Speaker : Appearance is the function of intelligence and gloss is the function of core.
If you are inherently healthy, won’t your face radiate that?
The glossiest thing in this universe is the Sun. Has it borrowed its radiance from somewhere? It has Helium sitting at its heart and burning, the core. Because of this it has its gloss.
Where there is core, where there is intelligence; there is also the action of intelligence. The action of intelligence which is visible to eyes is called gloss.
There is a third thing which is called mask. When the core is hidden beneath layers and layers of conditioning then there is no radiance, no vigor, no life and no energy in your life. So, you borrow your appearance from outside. You wear a mask. Mask is such a poor substitute .
Listener 1 : Sir, I got to know about hard work, and then I worked hard and achieved this. Is this not gloss?
Speaker : Whatever you don’t understand and yet take in, is always conditioning.
It’s not yours because you have been told that hard work is the key to success. You know that donkey on the road is very hardworking but doesn’t get anywhere.
Enjoyment is the key to excellence.
Can you excel if you do not enjoy doing it? But you have been told that you should keep on repeating things, that is called hard work and it will bring you success.
That success is a dead success. Repetition works with material.
Here is this stone. If I work hard on it, that is useful and you will have to work hard on it because it is a dead, material thing. You want to chisel it, engrave something on it.
But we are conscious beings; we are not the beings of hard work. We are intelligent and intelligence is understanding.
You cannot understand if you are not joyful, if you are afraid, if you are feeling bored. Then there can be no understanding.
Hard work is not done, hard work happens. Let me give you an example. Sitting in the college, morning to evening how many calories do you spent? Say ’x’ joules. And you feel so tired, frustrated and bored and you say that energy has been sapped off me. You know you are completely exhausted by the time it is five in the evening. Then you go out to play soccer. How many calories do you burn to play soccer? Ten times the number of calories you burnt throughout the day. Am I right?
Listeners : Yes Sir.
Speaker : Yet you don’t feel tired. When is the actual hard work done? At the play ground.
Hard work should not be done, it should happen. And when it just happens in your playfulness, in your immersion in the activity and then it’s not an activity, it’s just a sport.
So, do not do hard work. Enjoy life, hard work will happen itself. It will just happen. Without your effort, it will happen. Without your desire it will happen. So, don’t aspire to do hard work.
Listener 2 : Sir, so was all the core once gloss?
Speaker : All the gloss was once the core. How can core be anything else?
Core is your ability to understand. It’s not given to you by anybody.
Intelligence is not information. It is an ability to understand.
Listener 2 : Ability to understand what?
Speaker : Everything. Ability to understand what is going on. To watch it, to know it and to observe it and that is ‘intelligence’.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
