Having Achieved a lot, why Am I Still Dissatisfied?
Questioner: Whenever I succeed in achieving something, I immediately start looking for something else, and when I succeed in finding that something else, again I find myself in the same situation. What am I really looking for?
Acharya Prashant: That which you commonly look for and that which you achieve has a limited purpose. Its purpose is to give you a glimpse of what you are really looking for. A glimpse is useful but cannot be a substitute for the real thing.
So, there is one target that you set, you achieve it, and the reward is a glimpse. The glimpse must impel you towards more of something. The glimpse is a fleeting sensation, a momentary revelation, a passing flash of right, and it is one's reward for the pains, the planning, the execution. And the glimpse says, “Now surpass me”; the glimpse says, “If this much is this good, how good would be one step further?” That is what it says.
Questioner: Where does it stop?
Acharya Prashant: It stops when the glimpse becomes life itself.
Questioner: How far?
Acharya Prashant: Not at all far if you bow down to the glimpse and read it rightly, and very very far if you start using this succession of glimpses as a proxy to real revelation.
Kabir Sahab puts it very nicely. He says, “There is a light that does not require the sun.”
If your brightness is dependent on daybreak, then it would most certainly disappear at sundown, which means your inner illumination must become object-independent—it cannot be dependent even upon the sun—which means that glimpse must become target-independent. If you continue to get it only upon the successful attainment of one particular target or object, then the world is full of an infinite number of lucrative offers of targets and objects, and it is an unending succession.
There needs to be a dimensional change. Once one has proven himself successful in the attainment of these worldly glimpses, then it is one’s responsibility towards himself to attain something dimensionally superior.
Yesterday Kabir Sahab was saying to us:
बिन धरती एक मंडल दिसे, बिन सरोवर जूँ पानी रे ।
Bin dharti ek mandal dishe, bin sarovar joo pani re
Instead of seeing the earth, understand that it is merely a sphere. Just like seeing the lake, one should understand that it is nothing but water.
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The thing has to be made independent of its limiting conditions. If it is water that you want, why must there be a circumference to limit the water? If it is the sky that you want, why must you need an earth to watch the sky? The limiting condition has to be gotten rid of.
Elsewhere it has been stated: a brightness that is ’ bin baati, bin tel’ (without a wick, without oil). Baati and tel are the limiting conditions. It is quite interesting that the limiting conditions appear like giving birth to the brightness, but they are also what would give death to the brightness—because the oil and the wick cannot last forever.
Now, you must be getting a hint: that which is giving you those glimpses is also that which is keeping you perpetually dissatisfied. Take it whichever way you choose to. It is your blessing, as well as your… (Smiles) The same sun that gives you the day is also bound to give you the night. Now, if you relish the day so much, how would you complain about the night?
Attainment of the highest order beacons. What is that higher order? A few examples. All this that you call as attainment of targets and success is your success, isn’t it?
Questioner: Not just mine, there are a lot of people involved in it.
Acharya Prashant: There are a lot of people involved in it, but it certainly has you as the one who is relishing it; therefore you call it a success, an attainment. For example, something done by somebody or some organizations in a faraway land—even if it is known to you—would hardly occur to you as ‘your’ success. You would call it a success if you are a participant in it, even if it happens to be a team activity. So, that is the compulsory ingredient: the presence of the ‘I’.
The glimpse comes to you because you are the mover, the shaker, the doer. Can there be a success that really does not have you at the center? Maybe that would be a dimensional encroachment upon the current situation because when something is done for oneself, it cannot be too big; it would be only as big as one’s conceptions of one’s self.
But when the definition of success itself expands, then a strange thing happens: success is much more difficult to come to and success is far nearer. It is much more difficult to come to because the target is unattainable—it is big, enormous—and it is far more facile and intimate because the effort becomes the success, so you don’t really have to wait for the great day; the effort itself becomes the reward. Even the intention itself becomes the reward.
I will quote again from Kabir Sahab.
माया महा ठगिनी हम जानी ।।१।।
त्रिगुणी फांस लिए कर डोले। बोले मधुरी बानी ।।२।।
केशव के कमला है बैठी। शिव के भवन भवानी।।३।।
पण्डा के मूरती है बैठी। तीरथ हूं में पानी ।।४।।
योगी के योगिनी है बैठी। राजा के घर रानी ।।५।।
काहू के हीरा है बैठी। काहू के कौड़ी कानी ।।६।।
भक्ता के भक्तिनि है बैठी। ब्रह्मा के ब्रह्माणी ।।७।।
कहहिं कबीर सुनो हो संतों। ई सब अकथ कहानी ।।८।।
Māyā mahā ṭhaginī hama jānī
trigunī phāns līe kar ḍole, Bole madhurī bānī
Keśav ke kamalā hai baiṭhī, Śiva ke bhavana bhavānī
Paṇḍā ke mūrtī hai baiṭhī, Tīrath hūn men pānī
Yogī ke yoginī hai baiṭhī, Rājā ke ghar rānī
Kāhū ke hīrā hai baiṭhī, Kāhū ke kauḍī kānī
Bhaktā ke bhaktinī hai baiṭhī, Brahmā ke brahmānī
Kah hin kabīr suno ho santon, ī sab akath kahānī
Maya! We know very well that you are a big cheat. You roam around with a trap made of three guṇas (tendencies)—Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas—and with your sweet voice, you lure the beings.
This Maya accompanies lord Vishnu in the form of Lakshmī and sits with lord Shiva in the form of Bhavānī. Maya takes the shape of idols that priests worship and the same Maya becomes the holy water that pilgrims bathe in to wash their sins.
For a yogī (ascetic) Maya comes as yoginī (female ascetic), with an emperor Maya lives as his queen. This is the specialty of Maya—on one hand, it can appear as a precious diamond, and on another it can manifest itself as a worthless cowrie.
In a devotee’s home, Maya resides as a nun, and in Brahmana’s house, she lives as brahminī (brahmana’s woman).
Kabir says, Maya is indescribable and there is no end to its ways.
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Whatsoever it is that one is identified with becomes one's Maya . For the devotee, the idol is the Maya ; for the pilgrim, the holy water is the Maya ; for the poor, poverty is Maya ; for the rich, money is Maya . It has to be transcended—transcended not in a sense of repudiation or renunciation, but transcendence in the sense of making one’s way through something using the same thing; transcendence in the way of swimming through a river using the water to cut through the water.
Similarly, these glimpses have to be used to go beyond these glimpses. See what is it in these glimpses that truly ingratiates you, and see why it must stay only for a while. Get rid of the limiting conditions.
Questioner: The question still remains. I worked hard, I earned money; that’s the reward I got. Now I can’t even spend it, I don’t know what to spend it on. It is useless! Then I get to see another thing, let’s say, a car. “Okay, if I buy it, I will probably get some satisfaction.” I buy the car, I drive it, and the moment I drive it for the first time I lose interest. “I got it, let’s buy something else; let's buy a bike, a superbike, any bike.” I drove it, fine. I have done it. Next: come to camp.
Acharya Prashant: What is common in all these purchases? Money is something that money can buy. And money is already doing its bit for you, is it not? Money is showing you what it can do for you and what it cannot do for you. The glimpse—money is already providing it to you.
Now, is it not upon you to attain that which cannot be monetized? Money has done its bit already. And those who do not have enough money, the absence of money is Maya because they keep hoping that money will deliver them peace, so they have no intention to think of anything other than money; money itself remains an unattained target, and they keep targeting money. You have money, so you know what money cannot deliver. Why not go towards it directly?
You used the word ‘satisfaction’. If satisfaction is what you want, see whether money is the right tool to get it.
Questioner: To be honest, I feel more happy when I work for my clients for free of cost.
Acharya Prashant: At the same time, what is it that you are delivering them free of cost? Money. If money cannot deliver you peace, how will it deliver them enough peace?
Questioner: I belong to a certain industry where we make money for people.
Acharya Prashant: That’s right. But then, this too is an ‘I’-centered answer. “Because I belong to a certain industry where money is at the center, therefore even if I have to deliver something free of cost, it would be money. So, either it is money for money, quid pro quo, or it is money free of cost. But in either case, all that I can give to someone is money.”
If money couldn’t satiate you, how much can it do to the other? Obviously, it is not useless; obviously, money has very important usage. But you yourself are the best testimony that after a point money stops delivering. I have been through it. It wasn’t money but success of another kind; success of another kind that the world worships. It was incidental that I happened to get it at quite an early stage in my life—and it became boring.
So, that is how it always happens. Either that can become a neurosis; then you could say, “The world has come to an end! All that the world could offer, I have had it, consumed it, enjoyed it, and it is not delivering me peace”—and that is a neurosis of a really bad kind—or you could say, “The world has done its bit. Thank you world, thank you money, thank you success. I am now going to target something higher, something bigger.” The choice is open.
Questioner: I am already troubled by choices. Please don’t give me another choice!
Acharya Prashant: All those choices belong to this dimension (points towards the ground) . So, one could go this way, this way, and this way (pointing at directions horizontally) . Then there is a choice that goes upwards. It is a choice in an entirely different plane. And that choice, once made, renders all these other choices meaningless. What is certain is that any amount of intellectualization or planning or investigation in the plane of the usual choices would only deliver you with the usual results; maybe the best of the usual results, but nevertheless something among the usual ones. And even the best among the usual ones, you have tasted it. It is alright, but not something that can really fulfill you. So, it has to go skyward now.
“I belong to a certain industry.” You know, this is a very deep statement of identification.
Questioner: It is.
Acharya Prashant: One has to now surpass it: this ‘I’, whether it really belongs to anybody; this ‘I’, whether it really does belong to somebody who is perpetually waiting for it up there. Maybe these are the questions that now need to be probed.
And these are not merely logical or academic queries; they have a greatly elevating effect on consciousness. One’s life choices get supremely refined. One comes to taste what has been classically called the nectar of life. If that is beckoning you, it is the best thing that can happen.
Questioner: Why is my family scared of this? (Smiles)
Acharya Prashant: Because they have images. Because they do not know what is going on inside you. They have had enough images fed to them from media, literature, society, and elsewhere. The real thing, if it is known, it is supremely alluring, not at all terrifying. Its images are terrifying because we are the ones who make those images. And we are poor artists. Even if the thing is beautiful, our version, our rendition, our narration of it is quite horrible.
So, if one is describing or narrating or painting or singing of Mukti , Liberation, the song might be so atrocious that it puts many a listener off from the course of Mukti . And that is what has happened. If you look at the usual spiritual seeker, he is not at all a good advertisement, not at all. So, it is quite understandable if your family members are not taking kindly to the prospects of your…
Questioner: They wouldn’t leave me.
Acharya Prashant: No, they don’t have to. That is another image that is grossly misleading and also…
Questioner: I had seven to eight people crying when I was leaving for here.
Acharya Prashant: I understand, I really understand.
Questioner: One of them was just my manager. He was like, “Sir, the office will get closed!”
Acharya Prashant: I do not think that frequently happens. In one odd case, that might happen. But then, one odd office does deserve to shut down; one odd office, one in a hundred, let’s say. So, that will continue. Ninety-nine offices out of a hundred anyway do continue, and they continue in a much more healthier and refined way.
The Truth cannot be harmful or dangerous for anything or anybody other than the false. And even the false is not really destroyed by the Truth; it is sanctified, it is elevated, it is purified. Purification cannot be bad or harmful for anybody. The image is dangerous, very dangerous.
If you look at the Buddha, he was probably running the largest organization of his time. There was hardly an organization bigger than the Sangha of Gautama Buddha. And that requires managerial acumen, that requires planning, that requires the skill to hold together an organization running on very clear principles, and running towards a very clear and holy purpose.
It is not that people who move towards spirituality give up on worldly life; on the contrary, I would want to ask everybody, what kind of worldly life is it that proceeds without spirituality? If your worldly life, be it the affairs in your office or in your home, are not upon a spiritual foundation, how do you find their quality? How are they?
Questioner: It is all frustrating.
Acharya Prashant: It is all quite frustrating. The world requires spirituality at its base so that the world can function properly.
The Upanishad says, “Brahma is the stabilizing tail of the universe.” It is a very curious description. Brahma is the stabilizing tail of the universe; not the destroyer of the universe, the stabilizing tail of the universe. Now, without Brahma , what kind of a universe would it be? Unstable, finicky, rolling off either side, psychotic, envious, greedy.
We know the story, don’t we? We know the usual fear that happens in worldly businesses. Why does the world appear so unstable, smoldering, simmering, striving, and conflicted? Because it does not have a spiritual base.
And that is the reason why even in management schools, over the last two to three decades, wisdom literature has been introduced—in management schools! So, your manager need not worry. If he goes to an advanced course in one of the Ivy League schools, they would probably hand over a few wisdom texts to him. Some of them might be common texts that we have brought here.
Brahma is the stabilizing tail of the universe, not the destabilizing tail. The Truth, the Ātman , or Brahma , they stand for peace, not for disquiet. They stand for love, not for separation. So, no families need to worry. Are the saints known to harm anybody? The images are horrible, not the real thing. So, spirituality is the pacifier.
Kabir Sahab says,
जग में होते साधु नहिं, जर मरता संसार ।
Jag me hote Sadhu nahi, jar marta Sansar
If there were no saints in the world, the world would die burning.
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When there is a problem, then Truth is the solution. The Truth itself is never the problem. All problems are based on a lack of understanding, on some misconception, on vagueness of concept, on haziness of clarity.
Questioner: Void of Truth.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, so problems are identical with a void, a void that does not have Truth.
And we all are problemed, aren’t we? Truth is the solution. Truth is the answer. One need not worry about the Truth; one is already quite worried. Truth is the solution to worries, not another worry.
This would be the story in many cases: many of you would have had to answer uncomfortable questions while coming here, right? That is okay.
