Are You Living Your Own Life, or Someone Else's Script?

Acharya Prashant

18 min
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Are You Living Your Own Life, or Someone Else's Script?
Just try figuring out where the thing is coming from. You'll not always succeed. It's a bit of a guesswork but it at least tells you that the thing is not original or authentic, it is coming from somewhere. So you find, for example, some descendant of an aristocratic lineage talking to you and he's talking in a particular manner and if you can see that the manner belongs to his great grandfather that brings a smile to you. Where is the thing coming from? That's not him talking, that's his great grandfather talking. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Questioner: Namaste sir. Sir what I understood today is we are governed by set principles. We are nothing but algorithms. It's just chemicals flowing in our body. We are accumulation of all these preconditioned, you know, conditioning that we are kind of living. Basically our upbringing and everything that what we are. Essentially, it's all the accumulation of things that we have gathered all our lives in the past.

I also understand that if all these things are conditioned, even my emotions are conditioned as well. So for example what I'm saying is I really see the choice between love and joy, hatred; pain and sorrow and all these things. And my deviation, my affinity towards the negative is more as opposed to the positive and I guess this is because of the conditioning that is happening in this society today wherein the media is bombarding us with a lot of these negativities in different forms. That's where my conditioning is also changing in one form or the other.

So could you help me understand if there is some way that we can really get the experiencer which is me to be separated from the experience that I'm seeing in whole, throughout my daily life? And how can I live a better life where I see all these things happening and surrounded by all these negativities all across me. So how could I deal with such…..

Acharya Prashant: It's a small trick that does not always work but you may try it out. Just try figuring out where the thing is coming from. You'll not always succeed. It's a bit of a guesswork but it at least tells you that the thing is not original or authentic, it is coming from somewhere. So you find, for example, some descendant of an aristocratic lineage talking to you and he's talking in a particular manner and if you can see that the manner belongs to his great grandfather that brings a smile to you. Where is the thing coming from?

That's not him talking, that's his great grandfather talking and why is the great grandfather still walking through him because this fellow today has neither money nor authority, no standing in the society. But his great grandfather was actually a raja 100 years, 150 years ago, he was actually a raja with some real power over the society and the ego wants power.

So this fellow is acting like his great-grandfather and he might not even know that. It's just that when you look at his mannerisms, his behavior, his accent, it appears a little odd and then you want to see where this comes from. And you might be totally mistaken because you don't have all the facts. But it pays to see that people are not original. Everything is coming from somewhere.

It used to be quite fascinating, intriguing when I was young. I would be surrounded by young friends, young people and I was young for quite a while, you know. So some people say I still am. And the way people would propose, propose as in Allah was so heavily dependent upon the latest romantic flick. And they would not even know why they are proposing that particular way. That's coming from that movie. Sometimes entire dialogues were copied and the fellow would think it's original. The fellow would say I'm bearing my soul to my sweetheart. That's not your soul. That's a script writer there. What are you doing? No, I'm crooning something. That's Anand Bakshi, not you. Are you getting it?

So, just trying to see where the thing is coming from. Even the expressions that people wear are sometimes the expressions of their favorite movie actors. And people will say, you know, ‘I like just like this. I just like this. There's nothing original.’ There used to be something called a sadhana cut. There was this actress many decades ago, Sadhana, and she would wear her hair in a particular way. And if you look at the pics of ladies of that era, you would find almost all of them have sadhana cut.

And if you can look at your dad's pics from the 60s till the 80s, they all have these… what do you call that? These pants suit with bell bottoms. The bell bottom. And where are the bell bottoms really coming from? They're probably coming from America and the hippie culture. From there and from there, they came to Amitabh and Vinod Khanna and from there they came to your house but daddy darling says, ‘I'm fond of my bell bottoms and the sideburns. Do you remember them?

And all the heroes would have two or three buttons open till here. You could watch their navel. Where's all that coming from? And people say, ‘You know, that's me.’ That's not you, that's somebody else. That's not even somebody else, that's nobody. That's a process where there is just nobody.

There is just a crowd you could say. There is no person, there is no individual. That's where spirituality begins. There is no individual. So observe, ‘Where things are coming from? Where's your behavior coming from? Where is the accent coming from? Where is even the emotion coming from? Look at how people are. You know that the fellow is weeping and you start feeling sympathy for him, and you go close to him. The first word he utters, you know the flick, it's coming from. And all the sympathy is dropped along with the tears. He's dropping tears and you have dropped your sympathy. because you see that he's coming from that latest tragedy. I'm choosing films because they impact us. You could choose anything else.

Questioner: Understanding this, dropping everything which is not the authentic self. And you also mentioned something which is compassion. I just wanted to understand a bit on what compassion is and how exactly it, you know, helps in really separating us from, maybe, the other species, or maybe, the other objects in the world.

Acharya Prashant: See, you will not find this written anywhere but this is what life has taught me. Compassion is at two levels. Ordinary compassion is when there is somebody in front of you who wants to exercise a choice but is just 50/50 sitting on the fence and you lend a helping hand. And extraordinary magnificent compassion is to awaken the chooser within him. And that's almost like bringing the dead to life, next to impossible. So, we'll not talk too much about that.

Ordinary compassion is about lending a helping hand to someone who is stuck in a burning house and wants to come out. He wants to come out. He just needs some help and you extend that help. That's compassion. Where compassion would totally fail is when the fellow has just no idea that the house is burning or that he needs to come out. He just has fancy imaginations. He thinks that the burning house is some kind of fancy palace or a heaven or some gods that are testing him or divine responsibility put upon him. That's when compassion fails.

Compassion depends a lot upon the willingness of the other to make a choice. Extraordinary compassion is when the other is not even willing to make a choice and yet you insist and keep trying. But that's difficult to put it mildly.

Questioner: So would this be the same compassion if Karn would have shown, you know, in front of his friend Duryodhan. It would have actually stopped a lot of these war outcries that happened.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah definitely, definitely. Compassion is not good-looking. Compassion can look very ugly. Compassion could look like heartlessness, ruthlessness. Compassion could look like torture, cruelty. What you ordinarily see in the name of compassion is just old-fashioned mercy. That's not compassion. That's again something very prakritic. Do you know we are very selectively merciful? People often talk of how animals help each other. No, they don't help each other. That's chemicals at work. In high school, we talked of the covalent bond where two of them get together to share their electrons and then their needs are fulfilled. Some kind of a symbiotic relationship. The covalent bond you remember right?

Questioner: Yes sir.

Acharya Prashant: There's no consciousness in that. But it appears as if the two are getting together and sharing things like a husband and wife. As they say, we know, we share our lives and that leads to betterment. That's just a covalent bond. There's nothing much there.

Animals also. They say, ‘You know, animals.’ See how one monkey had fallen almost dead on the railway track and then other monkeys came and saved and revived him. The baby monkey was saved and all those videos keep floating and we say even animals have compassion. No, that's not compassion. Monkeys would do only what monkeys are biologically programmed to do.

And all species are programmed to save their own species. Monkeys won't do this to a lion cub. If the mother monkey does something for the baby monkey, that's not compassion. It's a biological instinct, programmed, replicable, chemical, nothing in it.

Mercy appears so enchanting, so pretty, so divine. Compassion, even the ordinary one, would not look so pretty. And real compassion would definitely look very ugly. Real compassion, we said, looks almost like cruelty. So had Karn displayed real compassion he would have been called a traitor. As Vibhishan was. Nobody names his kid as Vibhishan. We are still angry with him.

The fellow must have been a truly spiritual one. No? To ditch his entire side and run the risk of being slaughtered physically and also being abused on the pages of history. But he never gets the credit. And if the myth is to be believed, the victory would not have been possible without Vibhishan. But he never gets the credit. In fact, there is something almost abusive attached to his name, ‘Ghar ka Bhedi Lanka Dhaaye.’

You ask someone, ‘Would you rather name your kid Indrajit or Vibhishan?’ The choice is obvious, Indrajit is better even if he almost killed Laxman. Still he is a better one, Indrajit is better. In fact I'm sure, there would be people actually named Indrajit. Indrajit is better, Vibhishan is not acceptable. If Ram is your beloved, then how can you name your kid after someone who almost killed Ram's brother? But Indrajit must be a fairly common name. Not entirely unknown. You can Google for it.

Vibhishan. No, no. I think it was in Hindi that I had once quoted or tweeted or probably it's the title of a video, ’Gaali khaane ki taiyaari ho, tabhi dusron ki madad karna. (Help others only if ready to face abuse.) That's what compassion begets. But if you are really compassionate then you also are wise enough to know all that is just chemical.

So it's like some toy that's been programmed to hurl abuses. You have toy robots, toy machines who speak or a parrot that has been trained to throw invectives. You have parrots like that. People play pranks and teach parrots all kinds of nasty things. And when someone comes and the parrot starts abusing him, you can't take that seriously, right? So if you indeed do grow compassionate then don't take all those things seriously that will then happen to you.

Questioner: Sure sir. So, in the case of Vibishan, because he was so compassionate about his brother, he was perceived as very cruel but from Vibishan’s standpoint he actually rejected his first life to be born twice again as you said. So is my understanding correct in that regard?

Acharya Prashant: We do not know the facts. See we do not know where history ends and fiction begins. We do not know but from the account that we get, Vibishan is truly an extraordinary person; the narrative is different in different versions of the story. If you look at Valmiki's version versus the version from Tulsidas versus the other versions, the narratives do not completely agree. So we do not know the exact facts. But just the thing that Vibhishan crossed over; he literally crossed over the sea. It's beautiful. It's very courageous.

We remember all the ones who crossed over to Lanka and we venerate them. But it was easier for them because they were being led by Ram. It's mighty difficult for someone to cross over to Ram because he's not being led by Ram. And Ram won't always come to lead you. The more difficult thing is to walk your own way to Ram, not waiting for him to come to you. Getting it?

Questioner: You mentioned that the miracle is deviating from conditioning, right? So all these examples that you gave while explaining the verse, for example, you know Rishi, ‘He's walking on a river and then he's kind of violating all the laws. Even Ram is ordering the river and the river is showing, I mean, the sea is showing its way. Today what I see is with miracles, it isl almost perceived as a superstition. So…..

Acharya Prashant: No, no. See it didn't actually happen. When I talked of miracles, I never said, ’They are physical. happenings.’ I said you have to stop the flow of the ocean within you. I hope I'm not being misunderstood. I never said that saints actually walk on water. No, no, no. I said all religions place great emphasis on miracles but miracles are misunderstood. Nobody can fly on air or walk on water, right? Physically, no. That is not going to happen because the laws of prakriti are inviolable.

Inviolable for everybody. So nobody walks on water rest assured. And if you find somebody walking on water, you shouldn't take a second to know that it's some cheap trick and there's anyway nothing in it. Walking on external water is nothing. It was, I think, Ram Krishna Paramahans. Somebody went to him and said you know there is that particular siddha or yogi somewhere in Bengal nearby; he said, ‘You know, he manages to walk on water and Paramahans said, ‘So what? So what?’ What's there in that? Even if he manages to do that there's nothing in it because that's not what spirituality is about.

Walking on water, these kinds of antics; what do these have to do with liberation of the self? So I am saying that's not going to happen, that's not possible. Paramhans said even if that is happening so what? What's there in it? Does that mean that the fellow is liberated? Does that mean that the fellow now has compassion? Does that mean that the fellow is now acting selflessly for the service towards others?

None of that, none of that. So all that means nothing. When I talked of miracles, I meant inwardly there are laws of prakriti and the ego just keeps flowing with them. By flowing with them, the ego somehow manages to assure itself of its existence. It says, you know, I'm flowing with the prakriti thing and that means I am making prakriti flow. So I exist.

There is an automatic flow of prakriti within. Right? The ego is within. Right? The ego does not sit on the wall. There is a flow of stuff within and ego manages to flow exactly with the stuff. By flowing exactly with the stuff, what does it convince itself? I am making the stuff flow.

See, it's like this. Please understand. You're sitting in a train compartment. The train begins to move. Somebody on the platform starts pushing the coach and starts moving with exactly the same speed as that of the train. It's only if he moves with the same speed as that of the train, can he fool you into thinking that he is making the train move. The train is moving on its own. You're sitting within the train and that fellow outside the train wants to fool you. He wants to fool you into thinking that the train is moving because of him. If he wants to do that, what condition must he fulfill? His speed must be exactly the same as that of the train.

So he will say, ‘You see, I am running now at 10kmph and the train too is running at 10kmph. What does that prove? I am making the train run. You see I'm pushing so hard. So the train is running. Yes? Do you get this?

That's what the ego is doing. The train is running on its own. The train is prakriti but the ego decides to flow exactly as prakriti does and does not want to exercise any choice, does not want any separation. If there is a separation between this fellow outside the train and the train; his bluff will be called. No? It will become obvious that he's not pushing the train. He's standing on the platform and the train is moving on its own. It will become obvious. So what does he necessarily have to do?

Two things. One, he must keep holding the train. This is called attachment or identification. So he must keep pressing against the wall of the coach with his palms. This is called identification. Secondly, he must move exactly with the same speed as the train does. This is called going with the prakritic flow. By doing these two things, this bugger manages to convince everybody and himself that he's actually moving the train. That's called the ego. Doing nothing. It just gets attached to the moving thing and convinces itself, ‘I am the one moving it.’

Look, look at the trick he's playing. The train is moving on its own and it's ensuring that it keeps running with the train at exactly the same speed as the train. In my example, there is a small defect. At least the fellow outside is running on its own legs. In real life, the ego has no legs of its own. You could imagine that the ego is actually standing on a platform jutting out from the train, a platform towards the bottom of the coach. So, it's not visible from the window. He's actually standing on the train itself, but pretending as if he's pushing the train. So, to the ignorant onlooker, it appears as if there is a doer, as if there is a pusher, as if there is a mover. No, there is no mover. There is just a movement. The train is doing stuff on its own. The train is called? The Train is called?

Questioner: Prakriti.

Acharya Prashant: Prakriti. And that fraud is called?

Questioner: Ego.

Acharya Prashant: Ego. And who is the one being cheated? That too is called the ego. The ego is fooling nobody but itself.

Questioner: Understood sir. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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