In all that you want, Liberation is all you want || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Questioner: Only sometimes do I consciously know that I actually want liberation. How to increase one’s quality so that this want is continuous?

Acharya Prashant: Only sometimes do you use the word ‘liberation’; at other times, you use a lot of other words for liberation. So, the mistake is mostly semantic. You just need to expand your vocabulary and remember that every word in the dictionary is a synonym of liberation. Right now, when you think of liberation, you say, “I am thinking of liberation.” But when you think of having a pizza, then, according to you, you are thinking of something other than liberation.

The desire for food and the desire for liberation are, according to you, diverse things, and from that divergence is arising your question. You are saying, “Only for, let’s say, an hour a day am I consciously thinking of liberation; for the remaining twenty-three hours I am thinking of miscellaneous things—A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H…” L is for liberation, and the other twenty-five letters are all for various miscellaneous things in the world that occupy and attract us. So, you just have to tell yourself and deeply, deeply remember that A equals B equals C equals XYZ, and all of them equal L.

You cannot think of anything but liberation. All thoughts are thoughts of liberation in disguise. It is a limitation and constraint of language that only sometimes do you call liberation as ‘liberation’. At other times, you name the desire for liberation as a pizza, or money, or clothes, or relationships, or a book, or something else.

Man moves for one central purpose, and that purpose is liberation. It’s just that he does not consciously know, rather admit and acknowledge, how liberation-thirsty he really is. We keep denying to ourselves that there is just one thing that we want. We think that we want multiple, various things; no, we want just one thing. The various things we go to are nothing but mediums to go to that one single final thing. If this much can be remembered, then all the mediums will become useful; then all the mediums will become Godly, divine, because they will become a medium between you and the divine. If you can remember that it is a medium, then it is divine. But if it becomes the end, if it becomes a purpose in itself, then this becomes an obstruction.