Liberation, meditation, Heart, and free will || (2020)
Acharya Prashant
Questioner (Q): What is liberation?
Acharya Prashant (AP): What is bondage? There is nothing called liberation, nothing at all. It’s just that because there is bondage, hence there is liberation. In the absence of bondage, you are liberated from liberation as well.
Q: Is meditation the only way to attain liberation?
AP: What is meditation? If meditation means challenging your bondages, then yes. If meditation means doing this and that, then no.
Q: Does liberation mean that we are free from all the responsibilities?
AP: First of all, you cannot use the word ‘responsibility’ in the same breath in two different dimensions. That which we keep on doing on a daily basis, if that is what has to be called as responsibility, then liberation is no responsibility at all. And if liberation is the real responsibility, then there can be no other responsibilities. You cannot say that you are responsible for meeting your quarterly sales target and you are also responsible for your liberation. Choose the word carefully.
Q: Why is it very easy to fall into bondage?
AP: It is attractive and it carries the name of liberation. Let bondage come to you honestly declaring that it is bondage, and you will see whether bondage attracts you. Because you are a great lover of liberation, therefore bondage manages to dupe you. You are an innocent lover, ready to be beguiled. So, bondage comes to you, parading and displaying itself as liberation, and you say, “Yes, I love you.” And you are so innocent, you lack so much indiscretion that you totally forget to check and examine whether that which you are carrying home as liberation is actually liberation or something else.
You have never chosen bondage for yourself. Whenever you have chosen, your choice has been in favor of liberation. It’s just that you have been pretty naive. Love without wisdom means a lot of suffering.
Q: How can I distinguish whether I am following my heart or my intuition?
AP: Test, just test. Be as cautious and wary of your intuitions as you are of other people. Rigorously, dispassionately, just test. Examination is the way. Don’t be biased in favor of your intuition. Even your intuition is nothing but an internalized version of what comes from outside. If you start giving the opinions and dictates of others your consent, then after a time you start feeling as if they are your own personal and original opinions.
What we call as our thoughts and our feelings are mostly not at all our own; the same applies to intuitions. Intuitions, too, are just condensed experiences, deep and frozen over time. Even animals have intuition, and intuition is of good help; intuition helps in physical survival. But when it comes to the principal matter of liberation, then intuition is of very little help. And intuition has equally little to do with the Heart; intuition, too, is a thing of the mind, just as thoughts and feelings are.
Thoughts are superficial, feelings are a little deeper, intuition is even deeper, and intuition is helpful. If you are in a jungle, intuition would help you. That’s where the faculty of intuition really developed: in the jungle when we were beasts for an unimaginably long time—oh, we still are. That’s when we developed the capacity to intuit, and it was a very useful capacity. It saved us from predators; it helped men be synchronized to the ebb and flow of seasons; it helped men and women choose their mating partners. In all those things intuition was helpful. It won’t help you when it comes to your liberation. Just as you have to be liberated from thoughts and feelings, you also have to be liberated from your identification with intuition.
Unfortunately, even in spiritual circles, sometimes intuition is accorded a lot of respect. It does not quite deserve that respect. Testing and examination are the way. When one does not know, what else can one do? Look at the thing and then look at its consequence. Christ once said, “The tree is known by its fruit.” How else do you know if you do not look at the fruit?
So, see what you do and see what it gives you. Make good use of your past and memories. There is no use discarding and abhorring the past as something untouchable. The past is a useful resource; better use it. See what you have done in the past so many times and see what that has given you. See what others are doing and what they are getting. You cannot afford to conduct all experiments upon your own only life; neither are you going to live long enough, nor will you survive all the experiments. See what others are doing, look at them, read their stories, watch biopics, read biographies. Remain watchful.
Q: What is the difference between feelings and the voice of the Heart?
AP: In the East, in fact everywhere in the spiritual domain, the Heart has not been taken to represent the center of feelings; it is the center of wisdom. The mind is taken as the center of all mental activity, and all mental activity includes both thoughts and feelings. So, thoughts and feelings both emanate from the mind. Wisdom, realization—that’s what the Heart is about.
So, Heart has nothing to do with feelings. Thoughts and feelings are one. If the mental wave is not strong enough, you call it thought; if the mental wave is quite strong, you call it a feeling. That’s the only difference. But because the mental wave is quite strong in the case of feeling, we succumb so badly to it that we start calling that wave as the ocean itself, and then we say that the Heart is the center of feelings.
The worst defeat in front of feelings is when you start associating feelings with the Heart. That’s when you have really kneeled down; that’s the worst surrender. We have succumbed so totally to the force of feelings that we have started attaching divinity to them and saying, “Oh, thoughts come from here (pointing at the head) and feelings come from here (pointing at the heart) .” No, they don’t. They come from the same center. Wisdom comes from somewhere else.
Q: Is our life governed by our karma, or is it run by destiny?
AP: It is totally governed by what you choose and what you do. Your destiny is destined, but your destiny can be made to wait forever. The destination is certainly there, but what you do along the way determines your life, and what you do along the way is your karma.
So, no point entertaining oneself with the thought that destiny is preordained or that destiny is liberation itself. Destiny might be liberation, but look at your life—how liberated is your life? The question is not what would happen at the end of the journey; the question is how are you doing along the journey. Life is the journey, the destiny is well set, and the destiny is common to everybody: liberation is the destiny. But are you liberated right now? That’s what matters.
Q: Then why have some people said that whatever is going to happen is already written?
AP: Those who have known have never said that. This would be said by only somebody who is very fatalist. If there is one thing that would inevitably happen, it is the end of all happening, and that is liberation. Only that is certain and unavoidable—the utter end, the utter end beyond death. That is what you too want—the utter end of all this drama. But is the drama anywhere close to ending for you? If not, then liberation is just a principle and principles don’t help. What helps, what is material, is the reality of life.
Liberation is the final and unavoidable end, and that would end time as well. But right now, see how your time is being spent. Liberation which is yours to take has been postponed to the distant future. Obviously, you cannot do away with it, you can merely postpone it, but see how far you have postponed it. And by postponing, pushing back liberation so far, we have turned the journey into a torture. If one has to journey, can’t one journey liberated? Can’t you be liberated and continue to journey, just for fun? Why must you journey without liberation?
But when you journey without liberation, you console yourself by saying that you are journeying towards liberation. It is such a bad consolation. Why not journey with liberation? Why keep postponing your destiny? What great wisdom lies in thinking that destiny would come one fine day in the future? If it is inexorable, why not right now?
So, nothing is pre-set. You have free will. Free will does exist. You better align your free will with your eventual and total freedom. Don’t misuse free will. What is the limitation of free will? It is free to go berserk, it is free to choose all madness, it is free to make all the wrong decisions, but it is not free to ultimately not be liberated. Ultimately, free will has to surrender to liberation. But how long would that take? That depends totally on you. Hence, align your free will with freedom. Choose rightly.