How to Pause in Life and Take Stock?
Questioner: Acharya ji, you spoke about true pause in your life. So, when I was hearing to that, so usually I see when probably I go back in my daily routine, I don’t see these pauses coming. I usually feel that it must, for example, in this session when I was listening, I felt that pause coming up. But usually when we go back to our daily living, we usually have a lot of things and, then, this pause doesn’t come. At the same time, you have also told us that we must have a life wherein there is nothing even a thought for yourself.
Acharya Prashant: In the ordinary life, if you take a pause, that pause will ruin you. That is why so many people prefer very occupied and busy lives because if they pause, if they have spare time, they will necessarily do something self-destructive. Don’t you see that? The moment a person has spare time, what does he do? He self-destructs.
So, reflection is not something that you do by taking out time exclusively devoted to reflection. If you have to take time out to reflect, it merely means that the life that you are leading has problems. And if your life has problems, then the time that you take out from life will not augur well, you will mis-utilise that time.
Therefore, reflection or stock-keeping has to be spontaneous. It has to be something concurrent. Your life has to be such that it forces you to be spontaneously reflective. Only when your life is bad, you will not be spontaneously reflective. Then, you will want exclusive time for reflection like people want spare weekends. But the moment you want exclusively devoted time for reflection, you have already proven to yourself that you are leading a bad life.
Are you getting it?
Life is good. Who will have the time to break away from it, even to reflect? Life is great. Who wants to even reflect at it? Lead a life, I repeat, that forces you to be spontaneously reflective. That must be the kind of work you pick up, the relationships that you make. They should not allow you to stay unconscious. If you stay unconscious, you should receive a jolt. And reflection has happened!
Why must you reflect after 24 hours? If you are falling asleep, then the reality check, the reminder should come immediately. Or, do you want to waste the entire day and then, reflect in the night and conclude that the day was wasted? So, when must you be reflective? Continuously. And that’s the mark of the right life. I repeat, it forces you to be continuously reflective. It demands attention from you. If you do not give attention, then that life will be spoiled.
To maintain that life, you will have to keep supplying attention, opt for such a life. On the other hand, you can conveniently go for a life where you can happily remain unconscious and still make a living and proceed with your daily worldly matters. In that kind of a life, there would be suffering. And when there will be suffering, then you will be forced to reflect, if you are lucky. But that reflection is just a kind of grief in retrospect. You are grieving over dead time. It’s gone. What is the point in reflecting now?
Therefore, all reflection, all attention, must be in the moment. Do not say that 7 to 8 is my appointed time to look at my day. Do not say that when I close my day, I write my diary or journal. Even if in that journal you discover that everything was wrong with your day, would you now recover your day? Be so occupied with the right life that you do not even have the time to write a journal! And when I say, be so occupied, I mean be attentively occupied. I am not talking of unconscious occupation. I am not talking of mechanical movement. I am talking of a complete, continuous flow of conscious activity. That is how you should be.
You must be in such deep love with perfection that anything short of that should just shake you up. The word that I just uttered was sub-optimal. The thing that I just did was avoidable. The task that I just completed was quality-less. This should be clear to you even before that task is completed. That you are losing it, should be clear to you in the very moment when you are losing it. In fact, it should be clear to you even before the moment you lose it. The warning should come in advance, a little bit in advance.
When you are in love, that happens. You become very sensitive to all that can go wrong. You have something very precious with you. You don’t want to lose it. You are continuously alert.
Are you getting it?
And when you are not continuously alert, then at the end of the day you say, “You know, please give me half an hour to take stock of things. Please give me half an hour to make sense of what I have been doing since the last ten hours.” If you now require time to make sense of what you were doing since the last ten hours, what the hell were you doing since the last ten hours. Surely, something very unworthy!
Are you getting it?
Brooding or contemplation is a good thing, but only for those who are not living rightly. They must contemplate. The best thing is to live so rightly and so fully that there is neither a need, nor the space and opportunity to contemplate. You are so full. That’s the best thing.
However, if you are living wrongly, then, you must take time out, go somewhere, be on the hills for some 20 days and figure out that you have wasted your life. Does it sound great, going to the hills only to find that you have wasted your life?
So, there is nothing so very fascinating or romantic about being pensive? Leave that to the thinkers. If somebody is thinking a lot, it merely means that he has a lot to atone for. The mark of the one living rightly is that he does not really have the need to think too much.
Thought in some way is a compensatory mechanism. What you could not do right, you want to think right. But you cannot think right what you have done wrongly. Or, can you? In the answer sheet, you spoiled a mathematics question and now, once you are out of the hall, you are mentally solving the problem and doing it right. That cannot undo what you have done wrongly.
Write the paper in such a way that there is no need to think after the exam. Emerge from the hall, go play football, get kicked around, have a nice little brawl, and fall asleep.
Thought is good when you are in a bad situation and you want some incremental improvement. But a thinker is not of much use in missions that require total dedication, because a thinker will always remain uncertain. Not only is he uncertain, his consciousness is still plagued by doubt and illusions and the rest of it. He has not yet sorted it out. And if he has not yet sorted it out, how can you push such a person into the battle zone. He is inwardly already at war. How will he fight for any kind of mission?
In our kind of work specifically, we require people who are internally very sorted, who are not found sitting in some forlorn corner and brooding and envying the rabbits. That kind of a person who is found scratching his forehead or beard is dangerous for the mission. He has a lot of uncertainties within. Any day, he will fall off.
It’s fine if you have uncertainties for a while. But if you have been cultivating them since years and years, it merely means that you want to keep them. Why? Because certainty requires sacrifice and, in uncertainty, there is security. In uncertainty, you are keeping one, two or four, many options open. I am uncertain, so many options are open. That gives you security.
Certainty means, committing yourself. The ego does not want to do that. The ego would rather say, “You know, I am still chewing it, still thinking over it.” It’s not that I have problems with thought. What I am saying is that at a certain level of work, thinkers are problematic. At the same time, at lower levels of work and existence, thought is a great faculty. We require more people who think and think deeply.
Are you getting it?
When you are thinking too much, that which you are calling as reflection, you know spare time for reflection, what essentially we thought? And when you are thinking a lot, then you are missing out on the reality. You are confined to your inner arena and there is some kind of a silly game going on there and you are charmed by it. You are not available any more. You are not available to reality. You are not available to the fact. You are not available to action. You have been handicapped by your internal demons.
Are you getting it?
What we need is clarity. Clarity is contentment. Clarity is settlement. Clarity is spontaneous. I immediately see who has the need to think later and if you have the need to think later, it is a proof that you are not seeing. Just see, and that is your stock-keeping. Just see!
Questioner: So, what you said, Acharya ji, was quite new to hear. When you were speaking, it came to my mind that our education has given us the highest thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and others. So, it’s like we have seen their life or seen their pictures, so probably we idolise that, they are sitting, they are writing and so on.
Acharya Prashant: A thinker obviously is to be respected. A thinker is far superior to an unthinking person, because an unthinking person is a silly automaton. What I am talking of is the spiritual zone. In that zone, thinking is not to be taken as something very worthy or desirable. If you continue to think necessarily, compulsively, then, when will you understand? Thought, at best, can be a precursor to understanding. Thought, at best, can be a facilitator to understanding. And remember that all thought involves time. Therefore, if understanding comes piggy riding on thought, then there is a time gap. You thought and then you became clear. And that will not allow you to be spontaneous.
Are you getting it?
You ask me a question. How will I respond to you in real time if I have to first think about it for half an hour? How will I respond? And that’s the nature of life. Does it wait for you to think and conclude? No. Life asks one question after the other, throws one opportunity after the other. If you keep thinking about everything, then you are losing out on everything because thought involves time.
And also remember that the output of thought is far from perfect. There is no guarantee that your thinking will yield you a perfect or right conclusion. Spontaneous understanding is a different thing altogether. There is no possibility of an error there. You just know. Without time, without method, you just know. That’s what is real mysticism. You just know. And if somebody asks you from where did your response come, you will just shrug your shoulders, wriggle your hands and say, “Well, if only I knew. Even I do not know how I know.” That’s mysticism, to understand without thought, to know without knowledge, to know without time!
Are you getting it?
And that is not to be confused with the automatic operation of your conditioning because these two in some way are very similar to each other. A fellow who is deeply conditioned, won’t think. He will just conclude. At the same time, the rishi of the Upanishad won’t think, he would just know. So, these two look dangerously similar. You have to be careful.
Therefore, thought has value. Thought has value for the conditioned mind, because it allows you space to temporarily, at least, break away from the conditioning and look at it.
I have said both things, mind you, the importance of thought and the limitation of thought.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, from observation I have noted that one thinks about that scenario, that person, more about which one is afraid. So, I see a very close relationship between fear and thought. If you could please elaborate on the relationship between fear and thought.
Acharya Prashant: If there is something that you hold close to yourself, then you work for it. Right? You work for it and if you feel it’s secured, then all is alright, there is no need to think. And if it is still not secured, then you continue working for it. In either scenario where do you get the time to think? If I’m fearful about something, if I think I might lose something, what do I do? If I’m an honest person, if I have some sincerity, what will I do? I will work. I will work, I will do whatever it takes to. Leave it at that thing, not lose it.
I work and work. I don’t have time to think. If I really love that thing, I don’t have time to think. If I really love that thing, I will not operate from my conditioning in working for that thing. I will be very sincere because I love it. I want to keep it. I am afraid of losing it. So, I will be sincere. I will be sincere in my work. And if I am sincere in my work, how do I get the space to keep the work apart and think? Now, that’s the difference between attention and thought.
Attention makes your action even more powerful. Attention is like giving your action a right direction and a boost of energy. When you are attentive while acting, then your action gets a shot of energy and also the right direction.
On the contrary, when you are thinking while acting, thought saps away energy from the action. Have you not seen that? So, if you are sincere about the thing that you are afraid of losing, would you think? Because by thinking, you are impeding your work towards securing that thing. By thinking, you are only ensuring more and more that the thing will be lost. What kind of an inner slyness it is, that professes to care for a thing and works to destroy the same thing?
And how do you destroy that thing? By thinking instead of working. The time, the energy that should have gone into concrete work is instead squandered in open-ended and endless thought. And to keep yourself morally defended, you say, “You no, I am thinking because I love that thing, because I am afraid of losing that thing.” Had you really been afraid, you would have worked.
The house is on fire. The kid is inside. You are so afraid, you lose the kid. You stand outside and brood! Tell me what would you do? You would leap into action. You would jump into the fire. Instead of jumping into the fire, you were found scratching your forehead and your beard and posing as a philosopher! And the child is turning to ashes. Sheer cunningness!
Do you have any love? That’s the question. Do you have any love? Have you ever loved?
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