It will surely be dark when the eyes are closed || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: Is Ego the opposite of true self?
Speaker: Whenever something has an opposite, it means the thing is in itself dependent on its opposite. Black has its opposite as?
Listeners(everyone): White
Speaker: This means that there can be no ‘Black’ without ‘White’. You will not be able to identify Black if there is only Black. Black can be identified only against the background of White. Black is dependent on White for its existence. If there is no ‘Night’, there would be nothing called ‘Day’ either. You know the day only because there is a night. If there is only day, you will not be able to even call it ‘Day’. Day is dependent upon Night. This is called ‘The world of Duality’, where nothing is independent of each other and everything is dependent on its opposite. You can identify night only because you know day. Most of us think that blind people always experience darkness. They do not even experience darkness because they have never known light. To experience darkness you must have experienced light. This is called Duality where opposites depend upon each other for their existence.The true has no opposite.
Listener: Is it not False?
Speaker: False means that which is ‘not’. It is not there. It is an illusion. For example, dreams are false. Truth has no opposite. False is not the opposite of Truth. Wrong is the opposite of Right. But False is not the opposite of Truth. False means,’I can not see the Truth’. The inability to see the Truth is Falseness. Truth can not have an opposite. Truth can only have somebody not realizing it.
There is the Sun. If you cannot see the sun, does that mean that there is darkness? That only means that you are unable to see the Sun. Light always ‘Is’. Similarly, Truth always ‘Is’. It is you who cannot look at it. And that situation is called the situation of falseness. Falseness does not mean the absence of truth. Falseness does not mean the opposite of truth. Falseness is your incapability to find out the truth. Light is there. You can’t see.
So, the ‘True self’ has no opposite. It is just that you will be living in illusions and that is what is called as Falseness. That is what is called a Dream! It is unreal! Imaginary! You are what you are but you may believe yourself to be something else and that is called False. That is called as Ego. That is what is Personality. And it is False. Not an opposite of the True self. Because you are what you are. There can be no opposite to that. It is just that you are believing yourself to be something else. That is called as Falseness. Unreality!
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
