Have You Saved Enough for the Return Fare?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, in today’s satsang many questions that we have received have come up from the mystical poetry of Lal Ded. Another one is asked by Vandita. She has quoted Lal Ded:
By the highway I came, But by the highway I return not. And so I find me still on the embankment, not having gone even half the way, And the day is done, the light has failed. I search my pockets but not a cowrie find: What shall I pay for the ferry fee?
~Lalleshwari
Seeker Vandita inquires.
Acharya Prashant: Sorry for interrupting the question. It does not matter. “By the highway I came.” What is the highway? The womb and the birth canal are the highway. What is the highway? That is used every day by millions. Everybody is using the same road. The birth canal is the highway. “By the highway I came.”
I came through the route of flesh and blood. I came through the route of mortal birth. But she says, “By the highway I do not want to return. I do not want to die the same way I was born. I was born like everybody else, just as everybody else is traveling on the highway. By the highway I came, but now I want to fly away.” Is there a flyway somehow possible? Close to the highway probably there is, but it is very expensive, very expensive.
So she says, “You know, I don’t even have two cowries.” What is the cowrie? It is an old unit of measurement of money, just as you say, “I don’t even have sixpence.” If I keep using the highway, I will die the same way I was born.
How are you born? You are born very, very unconsciously. Anybody who remembers his or her birth? Anybody? You don’t even know how you came here, so even that is a second-hand account. What if you never came here? What if you were always here? How do you know that you were ever born? How do you know? Because everybody else is born? Because you are shown pics of your childhood and a certificate from the hospital? How do you know that you were ever born? Please tell me. Any first-hand experience, recall, memory? Anything? Nothing.
And when you die, are you conscious in the moment of death? Is there anybody who is conscious right in the moment of death, in the last moment of death? Anybody who is going to remember his death?
We die the same way we take birth, unconsciously. Unconsciously we are born, and unconsciously we die. And that implies that everything in between is also going to be necessarily unconscious. How can there be pure consciousness between two points of unconsciousness?
That’s the highway, you know. It’s a highway of deep unconsciousness. Lal Ded is saying, “By the highway I came; by the highway I will return not. I am determined, because it’s a very bad highway. It’s a highway through which only the dead travel.” I want to take the flyway, but the tariffs are steep, and I do have nothing in my pocket. What do I do? What is the tariff? What are the charges?
Sadhana is the charge. Deep and real work is the charge. That is what you have to pay, and hence that is what you have to firstly earn. That’s what this life is for, earn the airfare. Else, you will be condemned to stay on the mortal highway.
Lal Ded is grieving. She is saying, “You know, a lot of my years are already behind me, and I haven’t yet earned much. Any day the flight can announce its departure. Have I saved enough for the fare?” She says, “No, not yet, so I have to hurry up.” That’s what the entire spiritual process is about, collecting the airfare. So that you can rise up, otherwise, you stay crawling on the highway.
Life is not so that you just remain a crawler, a creeper. Life is so that you can take off.
And taking off, as you know, is expensive. It is not for the ones who keep squandering money. Are you getting it? You have to be a spendthrift. You have to say, we have to conserve; what? Time, resources, attention. If you keep spilling all these needlessly, mindlessly, you will not take off.
And remember, we do not know the flight schedule. We do not know when the boarding call might come. Do we know?
And if it’s getting too late for Lal Ded, what does that tell about us? If Lal Ded says that she has not been able to save enough for her upward journey, what do you infer about your own spiritual account? How much have you saved? The reference is Lal Ded; her account is not yet par. Can you infer something about your own account? What? Zilch. No overdraft, minus.
Maybe Lal Ded’s account says, two cowries or sixpence. Our account says, minus thousand dollars. And then we want to pay from this account to take the flight. Not only is it negative, we are spending from it again and again and adding nothing to it. Every minute that you waste in an unworthy talk is a stress upon your spiritual account.
Every rupee that you waste upon your personal carnal pleasures is a criminal withdrawal from your spiritual account. And the highway is anyway waiting.
Read the whole thing.
Questioner:
By the highway I came, But by the highway I return not. And so I find me still on the embankment, not having gone even half the way, And the day is done, the light has failed. I search my pockets but not a cowrie find: What shall I pay for the ferry fee?
Acharya Prashant: I said airfare. Lal Ded says ferry fee. That’s the classical Indian representation. What I am talking of is something more modern, a flight into free space. Lal Ded says ferry fee, crossing the vaitarni, crossing the bhavsagar. So the boat is needed rather than the highway. Be it the aircraft or the boat, both demand their fares, and you have to save. Have you saved? Are you saving, or are you expending more and more?
Questioner: Charan sparsh, Acharya Ji. Today you sent this beautiful verse of Lalleshwari; it just touched the heart. And this was actually one of my favorites because I know it contains a lot of stuff which I need to know: how do we earn? How do we earn this spiritual money?
Acharya Prashant: You don’t have to really earn spiritual money; you already have a certain balance available to you when you are born. But then, you also have to live, and living also consumes a lot of resources. Living entails expenses. So you have to decide whether you want to spend what you have for the purpose of materialistic, pleasurable living, or do you want to spend it towards a higher purpose?
Nobody needs to give you time. Don’t you have time? Time is your biggest resource, but we squander away our time in unworthy pursuits, don’t we? Nobody is short of time; it’s just that people use their time unwisely.
Similarly, don’t you have the capacity to know and understand? Don’t you have the power to attend? You have all these, but then we start attending to all the trivial things in life, don’t we? The power to attend is such a blessing. You can lock yourself upon a thing and come to understand it. But then, the thing that you choose to understand is rarely the right thing.
You have the power to choose your company, your place, your relationships, but the place you choose to be present at is hardly ever the right place. Nobody needs to give you something additional; you just need to make discreet use of what you already have. You know how to read, right? You know how to read, but just see what you choose to read. Using your ability to read, you can read a Shri Krishna, a Krishnamurti, a Kabir, a Christ. But then, what is it that most of us prefer to read? All kinds of rubbish. No?
Now, do you need to be taught to read? That you already know of. You don’t need to be taught to read. You need to decide better what to read. And that is sadhana. Sadhana does not mean earning additional powers. Sadhana simply means making wise use of what you already have.
And the one thing that you already have, and waste mercilessly is yourself: your time, your attention, your energy. Everything that you have is a resource to be used towards accumulating airfare. Memory is a resource too; is it not? Memory is a useful resource, but see what our memory is cluttered with. Is our memory cluttered with things that would enable our redemption?
Do we remember only stuff that would facilitate our salvation, or do we remember all kinds of nonsense? Stuff that should have been forgotten long back. What is it that we choose to remember? That’s what Lalleshwari is pointing at.
The ego loves to proceed on adventurous pursuits. Sadhana does not mean going out and earning something additionally, and then proclaiming to the entire world, “See, this is what I have and you don’t have this.” Sadhana does not mean that.
Sadhana is much, much more in the sense of negation: don’t spend yourself where you are already invested in. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
In many senses, sadhana is another name for avoidance, upeksha, avoid. It’s such a great mantra. It can rival any other mantra. It can compete with the most effective mantras that mankind has known: just avoid, A-v-o-i-d. That’s sadhana. Avoid what? Avoid yourself. Stop being yourself. That’s the biggest favor you can do to yourself. Come out of your own role. This role that you have chosen for yourself is awfully bad. Drop this role. That’s sadhana, avoid being yourself.
Questioner: How do I do that? Acharya Ji.
Acharya Prashant: How do you manage being somebody that you should not be? That’s a much more difficult thing to do, and you coolly manage that. But when it comes to a far simpler task, you so innocently ask me, “How do I do that? Acharya Ji.”
Like my driver, Ashok Janardan Kulpati. He drives so very smoothly, almost in trance, at speeds bordering on the velocity of light. But then I ask him to drive at 60 or 80, a maximum of 100. He similarly, very saintly, probes me, “How do I do it? Acharya Ji.” Bugger! If you can do what you have been doing for the last two hours, breaking my back and neck, why can’t you drive at 60?
This is not a question; this is dishonesty. Janardan bhai never seeks my counsel to drive at 140. He just waits for me to doze off. If I doze off and wake up after an hour, I find myself in a Trans-Atlantic location. Then he doesn’t need to take my counsel. But if I advise, or I shout, “Why can’t you drive like an ordinary human being, like me?” Then he says, “It is very difficult. 60 or 70, I will necessarily crash the vehicle. 80 means a heightened chance of accident, 60 means a definite accident.”
This is the kind of inquiry most spiritual practitioners have: “How do I do that which is easy and simple?” I can only do that which is most convoluted, most complex, most terrible, most sense-defying. That I can do.
Do you understand how much it takes to live the life that most of us live? It is awfully difficult, and yet we manage. We must be congratulated. We deserve commendations. The murkier the life you are living, the more entitled you are for a great medal or something, because it is very, very difficult to live a murky life, is it not?
But we have practiced for a long, and we have gained great expertise, so simple things, they do not appeal to us now. We must do the impossible. Have you seen the extent to which people go just to defend their ego? Have you seen? Have you seen the kind of pains people take just to defend their falseness? Have you not seen? Please. Have you not seen? Is it not much simpler to drop the false? No, but we will go to any extent, take on any kind of suffering, just to defend the false ego.
You will not do that which is obvious and simple and natural, that we will not do. We are prepared to live a life of torture on the rack, and that's how we live a tortured life every moment. But we are just not willing to bow this stupid and stubborn head down and admit that we have been fools.
I can show you how you are executing yourself, torturing yourself, by leading an unnecessarily stupid and evil life, and that is the only way I can convince you to return to simplicity. How else? But instead, you ask me, “Acharya Ji, what is simplicity? How to be simple?” How to be simple? By dropping the complex, that's all. No?
You know what, maya is not an abstraction. Maya is not a concept. Maya is not even in the mind. Maya is flesh and blood. Maya is human. When I say these things and I look at your eyes, do you know what I see? I see resistance and defiance. It's not you in those moments, it's maya.
We are Maya. Maya is not just an idea. Maya is a human being, the human being that looks at me when I have made matters extremely obvious and extremely simple for you, and she looks at me as if she has understood nothing. That's Maya. Even after the thing has been made irresistible for you, if you have heard it, you cannot deny it, you cannot resist it, you have to take it, you have to bow down to it, but you look at me as if I'm talking some alien language. That is Maya. This face is Maya.
How is it possible that you are hearing this, comprehending this, and yet refusing to acknowledge and change your life? How is it possible that your eyes are still hollow and barren, like the eyes of a robot that just gathers information and does not change? These are eyes of defiance. Yes, yes, you can keep saying whatever you want to. We are what we are. We will hear you out, but we will not listen. Forget about any change, we won't even acknowledge that there is a need for a change. These eyes that look at me as one looks at a wall, in the usual dull, bored, indifferent way.
Isn't that a great horror? You can tell all that you can, and yet you are faced with somebody who will just not understand. And beyond the point, you move from just telling to pleading. Now you're not telling, you're pleading. And the fellow is sneezing, and you are almost on your knees, you're saying, “Please listen,” and that thing in front of you just refuses to understand. It's adamant: “I will not understand.”
I think that is the most horrible spectacle in the entire universe possible. And you couldn't have simplified it any further, it's two plus two for now, and the fellow is saying, “I will not understand.”
