If life is not loveless, would you still talk of liberation? || Acharya Prashant (2016)
Questioner (Q): After listening to you it appears that the purpose of the world is Joy and fun. And Joy is coming from silence. And Silence would have been there even when we were not there. If Joy or Fun are our natural states then why this universe does exist? Why did somebody create all this? What was he thinking?
Acharya Prashant (AP): The question here, for those who will not comprehend Hindi, is that “If Joy and Fun are our natural states then why does this universe exist? Why did somebody create all this? What was he thinking?” I do not know what he was thinking but I am sure that if you go into this you will be set thinking and that will take away your peace.
We are not here to talk of mighty things. In a way of theory I can take this up, in fact, I have taken this up not less than a hundred times previously not less than five or ten or twenty videos addressing this. You would have put up my name on YouTube. I could recycle their contents here right now but I don’t want to do that. I want to ask you, has this question really meaning for you? Do you live in this question? Is this question in any case, in any way related to your daily living?
Life is what you do minute-by-minute, second-by-second, hour-by-hour. Minute-by-minute do you think why did God created the Earth or the Universe? Minute-by-minute you are taken over by questions of ambition, hope, worry, security, love, lust, achievement, fear, desperation, respectability – these are the things that really matter to us. In fact, even when we talk of God we talk of some big entity, a fatherly figure, a respectable one, a creator, and an all-powerful one. Do you see then that authority, security, respectability, bigness – this is what really matters to us? Let us rather ask questions which are very-very ordinary, I assure you that it is in the ordinary questions of one’s daily life that both the problem and the solution lie.
We are accustomed to talk of big things. You would rather talk of Brahm-Anand when the mind is busy still figuring out why one cannot trace that missing ten-rupee note. But the question one is asking is about the Brahm-Anand . One is still not satisfied that he negotiated well while purchasing a pajama in one of these shops, one is still wondering why that particular email didn’t arrive, one is still wondering would he get a job on going back to his city. But one won’t ask these questions because they do not sound like spiritual questions. And what are spiritual questions? Spiritual questions then, by the going definition, are the ones that are nothing to do with our lives.
The more hypothetical, vague, imaginary, nonsensical, and useless a question is the more spiritual it is, so ask. "How long is a day in the kingdom of God?" Significant question? "Do you think the universe is a female? Do you think the universe has earlobes?" Why can’t we talk about our home loan? Why can’t we talk about the guy from the bank who keeps calling? Is it not the stuff like this that fills up our mind? Should you rather not discuss that and I also want to ask you that if we are settled with that kind of stuff would we ask questions about God?
If you are not afraid would you really talk about God?
When do you go to a Church or a Temple? If you are not greedy would you really like to talk about enlightenment? If your life is not loveless would you still talk about liberation? So don’t you see why one wants liberation or enlightenment or moksha or pure consciousness? Is it not important to see that? If you are alright just rolling on the sand here, why do you go somewhere and demands blissful experiences? You are already having a blissful experience. But it is this incapacity to roll on the sand that sends us to the great masters.
And they will never say that you just go and roll on the sand, they will say, “Come I will show you what witnessing is. I will demonstrate to you how to be separated from yourself so that you can watch what’s going on.” What is the point in watching what is going on? I would rather participate in what is going on, to hell with witnessing. We already have enough mind stuff. We already have enough theory. Why do we want any more of it?
What if all the knowledge in the world gets erased? What if all the great books are burned down in a great fire? Won’t you still survive? Won’t you still have peace? Do you require concepts, words, definitions to have peace? What if there is nobody to talk of pure consciousness, would your consciousness become impure? What if nobody told you there exists a God, what would happen to God? He survives on rumors, he lives by the grapevine, that kind of God we have. If nobody brought God to you would you still have a God? No, you would have many miscellaneous things, talk of those things, they are more real for you.
Q: My question is about God. My question is that when we can already get Joy from silence then why is everything created to make us suffer?
AP: Whom all are you representing?
Q: I am representing myself only.
AP: Then why you are saying ‘we’? He is asking that "If silence is already available then from where noise is coming just to trouble me?" Noise is this question; noise is this effort to know. It is made right now.
Q: Who? Is me or…
AP: Who is making it? You tell me who is asking the question?
Q: I am asking.
AP: So, that is why it comes into picture.
Q: You will give the answer, if you know that’s why I am asking the question.
AP: Is it not obvious, Silence is there but then you want to write a book on silence. Now, will you do something in silence? Silence is there but you want to take silence to the laboratory. Now you will create noise.
The effort to do something, the effort to reach to Silence is noise. What is already there, when it is tried to be obtained, that is suffering. Suffering is nothing but unnecessary action. All that is unnecessary is suffering. Not only suffering is unnecessary, it is more important to see that ‘unnecessary’ is suffering.
Q: Sir, example?
AP: Were you born thinking that there is something missing in your life? Nobody is born like that, right? At least at a psychological level, every kid is complete. He may demand food, he may demand toys but he does not demand self-worth (Aatma-chhavi ). But slowly he is taught that there is something wrong with him and then he is also taught the ways to make up for what is wrong with him.
First of all, it is drilled into the child that unless you achieve or attain and look in a certain way your life will not be complete. And then he is given the road map, the means, the wherewithal to obtain all those things. Now what he is being encouraged to obtain something that he never lost in the first place. But the child is hypnotized firstly to believe that he has lost something and then he is motivated to achieve what he has never lost. And this foolish process of believing wrongly and then acting wrongly is what we call as human life. You are trying to cure a disease that you don’t have, you are trying to find stuff that you have never lost – that is what we call as action and satisfaction.
