How to retain the learning that one receives from you? || Acharya Prashant (2014)
Question : We have learnt about fear and fearlessness of mind from you.
My question is: How will I be able to retain this knowledge and teaching and for how long?
Speaker : There is no particular need to retain.
The general kind of knowledge that your regular education gives you, that needs to be retained, because that is memory based, and that’s why it is called as knowledge . You need to remember it. This is very different. This is not memory based.This is a particular revelation which if clearly understood becomes you. It becomes a part of you. Then there is no need to memorize or retain. This is not some formula in Mathematics or some principle in Engineering. This is in a very different dimension compared to the rest of your education, in a very different or let me say in a higher dimension, a more important dimension than the rest of your education. So, do not worry about how to implement these teachings in life. The implementation is happening right now. As you understand, implementation has automatically started happening even without your permission. You need not think about that. Look at the mischievousness of the mind. The mind says that I want to ‘think’ how to become thoughtless. Even to become thoughtless it has used thought. You don’t need to think. It is already seeping into your mind. It is already penetrating your heart. It is already getting into you. You need not worry. Your intervention is not required. You give all your energy to bringing your presence into it. That’s all you can do. Leave everything else to the happening. It will happen on its own. Have faith.
You concentrate. You bring your energy to say “if I have not understood, I will be honest”. ‘If I need to be somewhere at a particular time I will be there at that particular time. If I need to read something before coming, I will ensure that I have read it.’ All that requires energy. ‘I will make sure that I have read it.’ You do that. It is needed, rest just leave, it will happen on its own.
Listener 2 : Sir, I have a question. We have discussed about personality in our session. In that you said that you should be free of your own personality. So what is the exact meaning of ‘free of your own personality’?
Speaker : Yes. Very good. There are two kind of personalities just as there are two kind of flowers. There is a flower that is man-made, that is social. We will call it ‘a plastic flower’. One flower is that which is brought to the plant by the society, it is not emerging from the plant but coming from the society, from somebody else. Somebody else comes and puts plastic flower on the plant. This is one kind of personality and this is the kind of personality that most of us carry. That personality is not arising from our essence. That personality has been given to us by somebody else. You need to get rid of that personality.
There is another kind of flower. There is a plant, and the plant has the capacity to spontaneously, naturally bear a flower. The plant has that capacity. That flower is already in that plant. It only needs an expression. The flower only needs an expression.
This is another personality which arises out of your essence, like a rose flower that arises out of the rose plant. It is organically linked to what you are. It is just an expression of what you really are, without conditioning, in all the purity and clarity of the mind, this is another personality. Let that personality be there. And that is beautiful. That is different for all of us, just as plants are different, and it is beautiful and continuously changing also.
What we wear is an artificial personality given to us by the society. We are told to behave in a certain way. ‘Good boys and good girls, good men and good women act like this. Such and such are the responsibilities of a good citizen. A good professional behaves like this.’ That’s what you do. All these are so fake and so artificial. Any one of you who likes to live a fake life?
(Silence)
Then why be like a plastic flower? It is in all of you to really bloom like a real flower, bloom. You don’t need to be plastic. Give up your plasticity. And once you give it up, you will discover that there was no need for it. ‘I am already so good, all this fakeness is such a load upon the mind.’ Is it not? You have to carry it along wherever you go. You carry your fakeness with you, and every thing about us is fake. But because we are carrying it since a long time, we have come under the illusion that this is the ‘real me’. We have been fake for so long and so deeply that we have forgotten that there is anything called ‘the real me’. And the people around us, the media, the family, the society, our friends, the institution, they all keep reinforcing the fakeness in us.
Listener 3 : Sir, sometime all these things that we listen from parents, from society and from our friends are a part of our nurturing also.
Speaker : Now, what you call as nurturing is again misunderstood. Just extend this example of the rose plant. When a rose plant is nurtured, the care taker must leave his own interests behind. I might have kept the rose plant initially in a small place because it was small, so I kept it at a small place close to me. Now the rose plant has started growing. If I really want to take care, you said, ‘nurture’, if I really want to nurture it then I will have to keep it at a place which is suitable for the plant. Or will I keep it at a place suitable for me?
Listeners (everyone): For the plant.
Speaker : For the plant, and that is love. Love is where the interests of the plant come first. Now we need to ask ourselves that what is happening in the name of ‘nurture’. Whose interests are taken care of? Am I being allowed to grow, prosper and flower or are my roots being cut so that I remain like a nice bonsai that can be kept in a drawing-room? You know what is a bonsai? The plant could have been a huge tree, but its roots are cut so that it grows into a nice, domesticated, homely plant. You need to ask yourself all these questions because nurturing is such a great responsibility. Not everybody is capable of it. And what is often done in the name of ‘nurture’, ‘care’ and ‘concern’ is pure conditioning. You need to be careful. What is it? Is it really care or some thing else? Because care is never self-centric. When you care for somebody, you take care of the other person’s real growth. You do not take care of your own interests, your own fears. Are you getting it?
Listener 3 : Sir, how do we know that what is ‘the real self’?
Speaker : It may be actually something very simple. It is just that when our eyes are clouded or when the mind is disturbed then it cannot even look at a simple things. ‘The real self’ may not be a great mystery at all.
I am closer to me than any other object can be. Sitting where you are, you are closer to yourself than anything else. So ‘the real self’ may actually be something very obvious, direct and simple. Yet it is something that we keep missing. Yet it is something that is so distant to all of us; very close yet so far away. So you need not wonder that what it is. Just ensure that your eyes are clear. Do not ask what the real self is. Right now concern yourself with what the fake self is. Do you get this? Clear the rubbish, concern yourself with rubbish. Your concern should be to clear the dust away and then the mirror will shine. You need not ask how the mirror will shine. You don’t need to ask all these questions. You bother yourself with only the dirt on the mirror, and clear away the dirt, and that’s all. If you are blind-folded, if there is something covering your eyes, what should be your first concern? Should you ask when will I open my eyes, how will the world look? Should that be your first concern? Should you energy go into that or should you put your energy in removing the blind-fold?
Listeners (everyone): In removing the blind-fold.
Speaker : Because seeing is so easy. Once the eyes are open, it is obvious, simple, direct. Open your eyes and see. But put your energy into liberating yourself from the blind-folds that are in front of your eyes. And we have so many blind-folds. A thousand kinds of conditionings . Ask about how to remove the blind-fold. The real self is so simple, you will see that it is available right here, right now.There is no great secret in that. The fake one is complicated. That’s where all the knots lie That’s where all the game is being played. Concern your self with the fake one. Put all your energy in removing that fake self.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
