Idealess action, zeroness and fullness || Acharya Prashant (2014)
Question: Please tell something more about Idealess action and Zeroness.
Speaker: Idealess action simply means that I have so much clarity that I don’t have to think anymore. An idea is a thought. “I am so damn clear that thinking is no more required”, that is Idealess action. “I have understood so deeply that I do not need to ideate anymore”. Such action is creative action, fresh action because in any case all thoughts, all ideas, can come only from the stuff that is only stored in the mind. Right? We know that. So any action coming from an idea will be an action being repeated from the past. Because every thought is coming up from where? Its roots are in the past.
Idealess action means fresh action, lively action. Not a repetitive thing, not something that is coming from habit, not something that is coming from confusion because when there is confusion there is a lot of need to think. Don’t we think a lot? A confused man would be thinking very hard. But when there is no fear, when there are no authorities sitting up on your mind, when the ego does not want to quickly achieve something, then action can be spontaneous. Simple, free flowing; that is idealess action. Right? Not action coming from a lot of thinking, but action coming from simple innocent clarity.
Zeroness simply means, ‘That which I perceive to be true is not really true, it is only dependently true. I perceive it to be ‘something’, it is not something, it is just zero , zero means nothing .’ It could be understood in many ways. Let us take one way. I perceive the world only through the senses. This piece of furniture cannot be said to exist if I cannot see it. Assume that I cannot see this piece of furniture, assume that when it is hit, there is no sound and assume that it cannot be touched either. It cannot be seen, it cannot be touched, would you still say that it exists? Would you still say that it exists?
All Listeners (unanimously): No Sir.
Speaker : So, all the existence that you see around you is dependent simply on your senses. It is not absolute. It is relative to your senses.
If the senses change, then the world will change and that is so. There are so many frequencies that you cannot hear but dogs can hear. For them there is sound and you will say that there is silence. You can hear only between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, dogs can hear beyond that. What is silence for you, is noise to the dog. Your eyes can see wavelengths only between 4,000 and 8,000 angstrom. 10,000 angstrom, you will say infrared. You cannot see, but there are so many birds that can see. For you there is dark blankness, for the bird the world is bright. There is still brightness. So the world for you exists only with respect to your senses.
If aliens come here they will see an entirely different world. Their world in fact need not be even three dimensional. It can be a ‘n’ dimensional world. For you there is time, they may have something else. For you time has a certain speed, for them the speed of time may be totally different. So the world as we perceive, it is not quite real. This realization is called Zeroness . It is Zero. ‘What I think to be ‘something’, is Zero, Nothing .’ But Zeroness doesn’t mean that there is nothing. Zeroness only means that what I think to exist is only dependently real. It is not unreal, it is dependently real.
Listener 1: You mean to say that it is absolutely everything and absolutely nothing.
Speaker: You will have to be very meditative, very silent to understand this. When you start from where you are presently situated and you enquire, then you find that all this is not what it appears to be. It is more or less like a dream. A dream appears very real but when you wake up you realize that it was not real. It appeared real. Similarly, all this appears real but it is not actually that real.
When you start from here then you say “It is absolutely nothing.” But then you say that even for something like a dream to appear, there has to be a living dreamer. Dream may be unreal, can the dreamer be unreal? The shadow may be false, but even for the shadow to be there something has to be there. So even the existence of the unreal, even the existence of the shadow proves that there is a man somewhere. Even the existence of a dream proves that there is a conscious being somewhere. And that something which is real but expresses itself as unreal is called absolutely THAT, everything, absolutely. Yes!
Its like this. There is THAT, which IS but it appears as shadows and dreams and many other things. It appears as the world. If you think that the world is ‘the world’, the world is real and then you are mistaken. Then the world has no value. But when the world is the expression of the Reality, then the world is great, wonderful. Enjoy it.
If I start by saying, if I believe that this table is a table then I am fooling myself, because this table is not really a table. But if I come to see that this table may not be that which it appears, but is still an expression of the Truth, of the unknowable, unseen Truth, then this table is wonderful. Now I cannot just be casual about this table, because this table is an expression of the Reality, of the Truth. Or a small bird or a river. If the river is just water flowing, then it is just a sensory perception to me and we have discussed that whatever is a sensory perception, is only dependently real, then the river does not mean anything. What worth does the river have?
But once you come to realize that river is actually a manifestation of something else, there is something that is expressing itself as the river, then the river becomes sacred, then you can worship the river. Now the river is an expression of that Absolute. That Absolute is manifesting itself, showing itself up as the river, as the bird, as the sand, as the table, as you and me.
Now the world is a totally different place. Now it has become bright. You can love the world.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
