Living in facts versus living in thoughts || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Acharya Prashant: Want to begin this morning by talking of living in facts versus living in thoughts.

Is not, the whole system, the being, personality, even the face, very different when you are there connected to the fact? You visit a shopping mall. Have you observed our behavior when we are there? Have you observed the expression on the face; the whole drive, the whole energy? You want it. Now you are not looking lost, wondering, assuming. Have you ever seen somebody maintaining a safe distance from the goods while standing in a shopping mall?

You go to buy clothes. What do you do? Do you stand at a distance and look at them? What do you do? You go and touch them, right? You go close. You want to know what the whole thing is about. You want to know the price, you want to know the quality. Or do you stand five meters away? And what I am talking of is a fact. And the next fact is – it is a very common fact. You are aware of it. I am talking of your own behavior. So you surely know this. You very well know what happens to your behavior when you are genuinely interested and not faking.

You go to watch a movie — one of these common movies that we watch — and have you seen how your eyes are glued to the screen and how your ears hear nothing except the soundtrack, the dialog? How many people have you seen in a cinema hall looking the other way while watching the movie? Or even looking downwards as if they are introspecting? So in a cinema hall, you very well know that you ought to look at the screen, right? And again I am talking of a fact. And again I am talking of a very common fact. You need not even be taught about this. When you visit a cinema hall, you very well know that it is common sense that when there are visuals, and audio, I will look at the visuals and I will listen to the audio. There you know. And we are talking of — I repeat — one of those common movies that hold really so little value.