Meditation Can be Dangerous
Questioner: Namaste, Sir. My question today is that World Meditation Day is around the corner, and we see that, with this inner change, meditation is being promoted globally as a tool for stress relief, productivity, and mental wellness. My question is regarding how can modern meditation practitioners, that we are seeing with the younger generation as well, move beyond using meditation as just being a personal calming technique, where mindfulness and heartfulness are used very casually?
Acharya Prashant: The false cannot be turned into Truth. The false can only be seen as false. The false has to be seen as false and just dropped. You cannot paint it as the Truth now. Meditation is nothing but an observation of the naked inner fact. That is meditation. To stand naked and honest in front of what is, that is meditation.
You stand without defenses, justifications, armors, apologies, in front of the bare fact. That is meditation. This breath-in, breath-out, stomach-in, tummy-out. This is not meditation.
Questioner: And sir, just related to that only, we see that mindfulness and heartfulness are used very casually these days.
Acharya Prashant: I am trying gutfulness these days. How about the poor guts feeling sidelined? How about lungfulness, brainfulness, heartfulness? What do I say? The inner work is about emptying yourself, not about this or that kind of fullness. You are already full of nonsense. What more do you want to be full of? The root is ‘Neti-Neti.’ You are already full to the brim. You are overflowing, oversaturated. Now drain it out. That is what wisdom is about, not this fullness, that fullness.
You say you will be mindful. Mindful of what? Of all your nonsense. So you will concentrate more on it. I will not forget this; it was Puducherry. Once I found a woman walking with a very creepy kind of poise. She would keep one step and then wait, and keep another step and then wait. So I inquired, and I was told, “She is walking mindfully.” He said, “She will go mad. This is neurotic.” They said, “No, this is mindful walking. You have to be mindful of everything that is happening. You have to be mindful of everything; not everything that you eat, every movement of the chewing action. So now you are eating mindfully.”
The real thing is about being so absorbed in the Truth that you leave prakritik processes to their own territory. You do not interfere there. You do not have to be mindful. You simply have to say, atma apni prakriti parayi. You have to say, walking is not something I will concentrate on. Walking will happen on its own. My job is to surrender myself to the Truth, not focus on walking or chewing.
Walking will happen. Digestion will happen. What if you are mindful of your digestion also? You know, you should breathe mindfully. Why? Is there anything wrong with your breath? Then you should also make your heart beat mindfully.
The best things happen in your absence. In your prakritik apparatus the best movement happens in your absence, not in your presence. The mind must be empty, never full. What is this cult of mindfulness? Your job is to withdraw, recede, and disappear from where you are not needed at all. When to sleep, when to wake up, this is not your territory, sir. Let the ancient mother take care of all these things. Which foot to place first on the ground when you get up. This is nonsense.
You go to the saints and they will say, “We have forgotten everything. Nothing is remembered anymore.” And you are talking of being mindful. And in being mindful, you have given so much importance to all the petty things in life: how to eat, where to step, which color to wear. Let that happen spontaneously in your immersion.
No, I am not straw-manning mindfulness. I studied it, and there is a deep philosophical flaw with the concept. Observation is not mindfulness. Observation is not about placing something in the mind. Observation is about seeing the futility of all that is already in the mind.
Observation is about seeing the futility of the mind itself. Observation is about freedom from the objects contained in the mind.
And mindfulness tends to be the opposite.
Am I mindful right now? No, I am free. I don’t care for a thing. There is nothing in the mind. Where are the words coming from, then? Not my business to know. How will you utter your next sentence? Just as I would take my next breath, without my will, without my volition, without my plan, without my agency. The ego is not needed.
If I can breathe without being present, I can also speak without being present.
And to be able to speak without being present requires faith. To be carefree of how your words would be received requires faith. To be mindful of what you are saying is a very ordinary thing. To be mindful of how others would take your words is again something very ordinary. Freedom lies in keeping these mental concerns aside. No, I am not mindful of my words or your reaction to my words. You are talking of mindfulness. I am carefree. Not mindful, but carefree. You could even say mind-free, not mindful.
Questioner: And it is because of keeping a lot of objects in our mind and being more mindful that what is getting reflected in prakriti is the devastation happening.
Acharya Prashant: Obviously. You remember what the saints sung of? ‘Murlibaaj uthi anghaata.’ And then? ‘Sun-sun bhool gaiyaan sab baataan.’
The emphasis is always on forgetting, never on remembering. When the divine flute comes to you, you don’t need to keep anything anymore in mind. You just drop it. It’s gone, forgotten, left behind, pushed aside.
Why should I be mindful of something as petty as the next morsel or the next step on the ground? Am I an animal? Even animals do not need training in breathing, and we are being taught how to breathe. What’s going on? This is faithlessness. We distrust the entire existence. Even breathing has to happen as per our will, our plan, our volition, our architecture.
Questioner: And perhaps this is also what is meant when you say that the right meaning of living in the moment is having the right center.
Acharya Prashant: Your job is to do the one right thing and then be relieved of all else. What do you do? One thing. And then I say, I take my leave now. Do the one thing that needs to be done, and then disappear.
Sir, existence knows how to take care of you. Don’t worry. You are in the lap of badi maa. She knows how to give birth. She also knows how to give death. She also knows how to give breath. So don’t practice all that.
Questioner: And doing that one right thing is all about self-knowledge and seeing oneself.
Acharya Prashant: Even that one right thing you don’t have to do. You only have to know all the nonsense you have been doing. You have to drop the nonsense, not even do the one right thing. The one right thing is your fundamental nature. It will happen on its own. It is continuously happening, just that it is shrouded, circumscribed. You have to remove the shroud.
That is ‘Neti-Neti’ of Vedanta. You don’t have to do the right thing. You have to stop doing the rubbish. The right thing, you cannot plan. The right thing, you cannot execute. It just happens on its own. And if you do it, it cannot be the right thing. If it is right, it will always happen without your agency, without your doership.
The right breath is when the ego is absent. The moment the ego is there, the breath gets disbalanced, disturbed. You want to correct the breath, stop focusing on the breath. Look at yourself. You’ll find a bundle of lies there. Drop those lies, and the breath will be automatically taken care of. You don’t need to focus on the breath.
You don’t need to focus on the contents of the mind, because all that the mind has is nothing but objects the ego has preferred to relate itself to. So look at the subject. It is the subject that has accumulated all the mental objects. And once you see through the falseness of the subject, all those objects will find no reason to stay there, because those objects exist only for the deluded subject. Once the subject is gone, the mind is empty.
Professional practitioners of all these things will find my words toxic. That’s fine. You have already poisoned life so much with these half-baked concepts. You do not really know what toxicity really means.
Questioner: Sir, I think to know that toxicity, something which is really important, is to do the bodhkarya, volunteer at the book stalls. That’s what really helps us to see our falseness.
Acharya Prashant: Obviously. You see, there is a utensil that you perceive as hot, glowing hot, red hot. What will you do? Will you start putting ice packs on the surface of the utensil? Is that what you do? What do you do? Gloves? Wait? Or do you look at the burner below the utensil and do something with the knob itself? The utensil is hot, really hot, and your solution is to put some ice on it or try some other smart trick. But one thing you don’t want to see, where does the heat come from? It’s sitting on a burner. Rotate the knob, sir. That’s self-observation.
See where all of it is coming from. All your life, you will happily run around with ice packs instead of just turning the knob.
Questioner: Thank you, sir.
