How to live as pure consciousness? || (2018)

Questioner: Acharya Ji, Naman!

I read Ashtavakra and surprisingly, my mind quickly and completely accepted the idea that I am pure consciousness and that I don’t need to do anything to get enlightened. However, someone inside me knows that this is the mind’s game to show acceptance of Ashtavakra’s theory. Ashtavakra Gita is sacred knowledge. However, I am confused, as to how to live like pure consciousness in non-duality, not like a doer?

Acharya Prashant: If you will look at your question, you will realize why what you are asking, is impossible to get. You are saying that you want to live like pure consciousness. Right?

One can want to live like the beetles one day, one can want to live like Ramkrishna Paramhans the next day, and then Pele, the third day. Many of us think that spirituality is the best mask we can put on our faces. We have spent all our life wearing and changing masks and now you want to put on another one, which has been called as the purest, eternal, final, most hallowed one. And obviously, the most respectable one, the mask of the spiritual one, the one who is pure consciousness.

It just doesn’t occur to you, does it, that it is not necessary to wear masks? It does not even strike us. Even the possibility doesn’t appear to us, right? The best that we can think for us is a mask. Not that we are trying to do bad to ourselves, we want the good to happen. But that’s our utmost conception of the good, right? The best mask. We say that’s the best that can happen to us. "I will give up the old masks and put on new ones." We are so, very under-ambitious. We even don’t desire beyond a point. And our self-worth is so compromised, that the best we can hope for ourselves is a better version of rags. It’s sad to see this.

Ashtavakra is not about you starting to live like pure consciousness. Ashtavakra is just a reminder to you, that you have the ability to see, what is impure, corrupted, and unconscious about you. Pure consciousness is not something that you can put upon yourself. Pure consciousness is your very root. It is your center. It is not the last wheel on your periphery. It is not the loose cloak that will conceal all the other garments that you are wearing. It is your very center, it is your heart beneath all garments.

‘I’ will not live like pure consciousness, ‘I’ has to be seen as unnecessary, not just declared, it has to be seen as unnecessary. There is a difference between just mundanely making a declaration and actually, consciously seeing something as needless.

Ashtavakra reminds you that you are needlessly taking yourself as helpless. You are holding on to false and unnecessary crutches. Give them up. Pure consciousness is the light in which you see the dirt and the filth in the room. The light is always there, the dirt too is there. What is it then that is waiting to be done?

The eyes are waiting to be opened up. The light is there, the broom is there, and the filth is there. The moment you open your eyes, by the grace of light, you will see the dirt. And then, cleaning is possible.

Ashtavakra reminds you that it is in your power to open your eyes, just as it is in your power to close your eyes. You are exercising a choice to keep your eyes closed, he is telling you just as you can keep your eyes closed, you can open-up your eyes as well. Rather, it is easier to live with open eyes.

In the light of pure consciousness, what is the filth that you do away with?

All the impurity is broomed away.

The light is available, please participate, and please make a decision to open your eyes so that you can look at the filth. You will now also have known that why most people don’t open their eyes because they know that the moment they open their eyes, all they will see is filth.

The moment you look at the filth, it brings a responsibility upon you.

What is that responsibility?

Clean-up!

So that we don’t have to acknowledge filth and so that we don’t have to take the effort of cleaning up, we choose to remain blind.

What we don’t realize is that once the eyes are opened, then cleaning-up is spontaneous.

It won’t be as big an effort as you are probably estimating it to be.

So, don’t be afraid, open your eyes.

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