‘I must do it on my own'. Why you hesitate in seeking help for your liberation?
Questioner: Now that we touched upon not asking questions, I thought this might be time to say something. I didn’t ask anything for really a long time and I mean, I cannot deny that there’s this element of trying to keep the distance, you know. But still, I sometimes feel like, that it’s like, there are some things that I know I should ask, but I just can’t grasp them. And one problem I have been in with this teaching, it’s also relative, I don’t know what’s a long time and what’s not. But still, I heard you talk a lot and whenever I start thinking that ‘Okay, this might be something relevant to me’, then I start feeling like you have already answered this in so many situations and sometimes giving even opposite answers to different listeners. And then, all that knowledge comes to me and then I am like, ‘Okay, I have heard this, does it mean I should know this already? And now if I ask, I am like—'Shouldn’t I already know?’ You know, this is sort of self-conceit here, I know it. (laughing guiltily)
Acharya Prashant: If I extend this further, then all the knowledge actually pre-exists within us, so, there should have been no reason, in the moralistic sense, to even hear the answer for the first time. Now, you know, the self says, ‘It has been answered before, so, why do I need to ask again?’ Even the answer given before shouldn’t have been needed because, really the self, the ego itself, contains all the answers within itself but because it is so outward-looking because it is so inflated, it cannot look at its own core, right?
So, such kind of a moralistic hesitation is really not needed. Yes, I might have answered it five or fifty times earlier but that’s very little effort compared to what is needed to drive the point home.
So, maybe plus one, maybe then again plus one. If that is to be the criteria, whether or not a question has been answered previously, then Acharya Prashant, in fact, is not even needed because every possible question under the sun and beyond the sun has been answered by so many wise men since so many centuries.
So, reiteration is needed.
Questioner: Yeah, the problem is that sometimes these all answers, they might help in some situations and I feel that, I know this might be a bit stupid of me but I have this really, the deep-seated thing that I should be able to figure stuff out alone or on my own and I know I can’t.
Acharya Prashant: You obviously, you can. You obviously, can. I beg to differ there, you obviously, can. It’s just that relying on whatever sources are available is a part of one’s sovereignty, one’s empowerment.
You see, we anyways make choices. When we are free to make debilitating choices, why do we hesitate making enabling choices? Or, is it so that debilitation is an indicator of our sovereignty and free will whereas, seeking help, seeking empowering assistance is an indicator of one’s weakness? We anyway seek so much from the world, why seek only the corrupted things and nonsense and all the conditioning that comes from the world? If we cannot resist all the conditioning that comes to us from the world, why do we want to resist the help that comes to us from the world? Or, are we saying that ‘Conditioning is welcome but deconditioning is not, Liberation is not?’
All the bondages that the world throws at us, we won’t offer much resistance to them, but when it comes to seeking help or guidance or support for the sake of liberation from bondages, then we hesitate and say, ‘I must do it on my own.’Obviously, each of us has to ultimately do it for himself or herself, even if one wants to one cannot assist the other beyond the point. But till that point where assistance is indeed possible, let us all support each other. It’s not a question of five people depending on one person or something, remember, we are all in it together. It’s not possible that a few sinks and the others swim through.
Questioner: Yeah, it’s the problem maybe, also because I have been spending most of my time alone during this past few years, it’s been a good thing but you get isolated here.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, I really respect the fact that one tries to dig within and discover the answers for himself.
That’s, indeed, beautiful. That’s something I have done for long years but equally, I have been very eager and very quick to seek help when it’s been available. It’s not for nothing that I have a reasonable library. Even now, when I just want to get centred a little, I spend time alone in my study with the books. In fact, I carry them more than I read them. So, wherever I go, I have a couple of them accompanying me. And then, there are days when I go through parts of them—it’s beautiful. And I know, I will need them, irrespective of where I reach, where I reach in terms of you know, all the bla, bla. (humbly implying his achievements)
Questioner: Can you estimate how many books have you read in your life?
Acharya Prashant: Not too many, really. Not sure, the number in my library is nearing two thousand, might be.
Questioner: Oh! That’s pretty good.
Acharya Prashant: With all humility, if I have to be honest, I wouldn’t have read, still not read, around at least a quarter of them. So, that puts it at fifteen hundred and add, maybe a few hundred that I read before the library was instituted. So, approximately, two thousand books, maybe.
Questioner: That sounds a lot, maybe it’s not, I am not sure. It does sound a lot.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, but you know, when you look at one’s lifetime and the number of years one has spent, it’s not really too many, and frankly, not all books are useful. Right? So, if I am to recommend somebody, I hardly ever have more than twenty or forty that I can really recommend.
I had to go through so many books because I didn’t have very precise guidance. Otherwise, a thousand or two thousand is probably just too large a number. Not these many books are needed. I am talking of the field of wisdom. If you are talking of medical science or computer science then that’s another matter and I understand that.
Questioner: I would say one last thing, we have had book recommendations from you in the ‘AP Circle’. I would love to have more—just books, it will be really nice.
Acharya Prashant: We will do. In fact, the fellow who is supposed to make the recommendations is sitting right here, 1.5 meters behind this screen.
Questioner: You are at the right place then…
Acharya Prashant: I suppose this will be immediately acted on and book recommendations are something everybody—only problem there is as I said, there are not too many books we can recommend. Equally there are books that are useful only in specific parts.
So, it sometimes becomes a dilemma whether or not to recommend, because if one recommends and it’s a five hundred fifty page book and I know that only some fifteen-twenty parts or a few things that I happen to highlight and underline are important and if I impose the entire five fifty pages on somebody, then I feel it’s a wastage of time. So, that quandary is there, we’ll resolve it, somehow. We’ll resolve it.
Questioner: Very good.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, thanks for the suggestion.
