Hidden Lies Behind Success, Love, and Ego!
Questioner : Acharya Ji, the musical concert FOMO has been off the roof. Coldplay, one of the American bands, is performing in India. People are going crazy, spending tens of thousand and there's a lot of opportunity cost as well. But they justify all of this by saying that we are spreading the message of love and unity. There are temple visits, there are spiritual appearances. And all my friends are convinced that they have picked a wholesome bucket list. I can see this trend everywhere. Like actors, politicians have been doing it since Mahatma's time that they're using a spiritual filter on them to attract people like us.
On the other hand, I've been attending your Gita sessions. I've heard you saying a lot of time that attending and thoroughly listening to Gita and other wisdom literature is the only way to truly spread love and unity. I've seen that transformation in a few of the Gita sessions. But when I see my exam results, when I see my attendance, the performance looks poor.
So my question is whether I on this side and my friends on that side are a mirror image of each other. Like what is the right act of love? What they're trying to say is that we're spreading the message of Love. So what is the right act of love?
Is it dressing up, going on vacation, attending musical concerts? Increase your consumption? Or on the other hand, will it be attending Gita sessions? Improving my exam results, Improving my attendance, my exam? My consumption pattern personally has improvised but I still find myself in an illusion. Am I using your Gita wisdom to boost my ego the same way the artist and my friends are using it in their life?
Acharya Prashant Your name please.
Questioner: Kishore.
Acharya Prashant Kishore, who would say that he is spreading hatred? Who would say that his philosophy is shallow and broken? Who would admit that he is not exercising courage and is a coward? Ever seen anybody coming to you and saying, "Now let me tell you a lie." Has that happened to you?
Questioner: Never.
Acharya Prashant Okay. Have you ever done that?
Questioner: Definitely not.
Acharya Prashant Gone to someone and said, 'Let me tell you a lie.' Done that? In a relationship, have you ever seen somebody telling the other, 'All I have for you is lust?' Instead we say, 'I love you!' 'I lust you' — that's so unheard. You see, what I'm saying?
Why does it surprise you when somebody says that he's acting for a higher ideal, in the service of humanity, to spread love, to bring people together, to bring peace? What else can he possibly say? What do you want him to say? I am the devil's own personal agent. And could he come up and admit that he really is the devil's own personal agent? He would no more be with the devil. He is liberated. Facts have a great liberative power. We keep saying facts are the door to truth. The question is, why do we get taken in when we hear such sweet words — 'Sweet and repetitive, boring and hackneyed.' Don't we have any discernment?
There's a small secret here. It's not that we do not understand that we are being fooled. We choose to be fooled. When that fellow comes to you and professes his or her love it's not that you do not know that it's not love. It's just that you find it to be a convenient, comfortable bargain. Like masks greeting each other.
Truth should be the simplest, easiest, nearest thing. Because it is within you.
What you are doing and why you are doing it and what you are doing things as, what have you become, what is the identity you have chosen — Who can know all this better than you? If it's about you, you are the best placed to know it, no?
Yet we lie. We keep on lying to ourselves. There is nobody who lies more to us than we do. You want to know who fooled you? Look into the mirror. I'm good. I'm well. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. You begin a statement with 'I' and it's likely to be false.
And there is no statement of ours that does not contain the 'I' - directly or indirectly, which means all our statements are false whereas it should be very easy to live in the truth. Only a liberated one would represent facts to you. Let it hurt you, but let it come.
Anything that anybody else brings to you deserves thorough investigation. When everybody is driven by petty self interest, why is anybody going to bring the truth to you? There's no surprise in that. Rather, what is surprising is that you choose to believe others. And why do you choose to believe others? Because you have chosen to believe in your own lies since long. You have become used to believing in lies.
A manufacturer tells you, this is what my product would bring to you. I mean, 'Come on!' If you are trusting that, that simply means that you are charmed by the product. You want to trust in that. I saw a place selling dyed jalebis. Now, if you are a jalebi lover, you would be enthralled. Dyed jalebis. Would you even want to question? How can there be dyed jalebis? What is this thing made of? You won't want to question. Because you already are so full of desires and that desire will not allow you to even ask questions.
You set up a date and the fellow comes late. And then she does not bother even to create a credible excuse. Instead she says something very lame and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand, I understand. Of course, of course. Not that inwardly you don't know that she is lying. Just that you have desire and questioning might impede the desire. So you will not question, you will believe in her lies, just as you have believed in your own lies for long.
Think of the entire field of popular religion. Do you dare raise a question? Whereas the stories are just so infantile that you've got to be absolutely dumb to not question them.
I was reading about a particular people in Africa and they have a particular God. They have a particular name for their God. I'll just call that God as something 'Boba'. So there is the boba God. And god is all by himself. Then god gets a bad stomach and he starts coughing, so he throws up, vomits and then there is a lot of water and then he keeps coughing and he coughs out the sun. And the sun shines so hard that it dries up some of the water, so land appears. And that's religion the world over, it's not just those cute people in Africa. Do you question?
The habit is to allow everything to make a fool of you. Now, why are you worried if a particular American band extends the tradition, the great tradition of the common man being fooled almost willingly?
I am surprised when someone comes up and says, you know, 'That fellow, he duped me and that one cheated.' That's the law of life. That's how the universe of the ego operates. What surprises you there? If you can believe in the Boba God, you can believe in anything. And with belief comes deception. Then you come crying, you know, I believed and I was looted. Who was asking you to believe in the first place? Why can't you have an inquiry? Why can't you have insight? Why can't you ask simple questions like a child does? You don't need to have knowledge, you don't need to be a scholar. But you need to have questions. Where are those questions?
Questioner: Sir. Thanks to you and your organization. I'm not part of the FOMO culture, my consumption pattern has improved. But what I was trying to look at is — 'Looking at my friends, I can also look at myself; I usually try to imitate your words to my family, friends and everybody. I use the teachings I have received in Gita sessions and use it outside. So what I can see is, "Am I using wisdom the way Coldplay is using it?''
Acharya Prashant Yes, obviously. Yes, yes. See, you will do that. You will do that. Because all of us come from certain traditions. The world over. Man stands at the live end of an old and dead tradition. Have you not seen your professors simply dictating notes to you? And those are notes that they have been carrying since years. So as a student, what do you learn?
Fine, take the Gita and even if you do not really understand it, boast it to others, throw it at others. Have you not seen elders and respectable ones preaching things that they never themselves neither understood nor actioned? That's the tradition and we are the recipients of that tradition.
My father had written a little funny limerick. Reminds me that Hindi ….
Guru ke guru ne tha kiya, guru ko amarpal bhet, Guru ke guru ne tha kiya, guru ko amarphal bhet tab se kar rahe guruji wahi note dictate.
So he wrote this on the blackboard in the BHU and I am told there were some consequences. But fine. You too do the same things. A lot of people do the same things. They gather the Gita from here and tab se guruji kar rahe wahi note dictate. They gather stuff from here and then they preach to others. Sometimes they preach something to others and put my name under it even if I never said those things. Make notes and dictate to others.
Questioner: by Acharya Prashant.
Acharya Prashant You write Acharya Prashant. That's a bit generous of you. Mostly you write your own name. You know, at least half a dozen people are running their own courses. So they take stuff from here and then they are running their own courses elsewhere.
Questioner: Yeah, it's happening in other YouTube channels. They are repeating, what you are saying.
Acharya Prashant Not just YouTube channels, actual courses. That's the way mankind has been. It should not surprise you. Take it as the default thing. Even if you feel it is not happening, suspect that it is happening somewhere. Our default state is not wellness. If you feel well, you should be alerted. Real wellness is not something that you feel without paying the price. If you feel generally good about yourself and illumined within and liberated, then pause and say, you know, 'I'm cooking something against myself. What conspiracy am I hatching? Let me look within.'
Questioner: So you said recently. Jis din aap pe bharosa aa jayega, to Main sansad mein bhi dahadunga. So that part has stuck with me since, like you've said this four or five days ago.
Acharya Prashant Yes, I said that.
Questioner: Yeah. So, but then,
Acharya Prashant See, there is no way. I'm not offending the community and you all are dear to me, but the truth is always dearer, no? The fact is that we do not love the truth enough to stand for it and to stand by it at all costs. When the natural consequences of being truthful will strike us, we will retreat, we will surrender. And I do not want to lead an army that is so vulnerable to surrendering. I cannot lead you into something you are not yet ready for.
A lot of understanding that you are so confident of is just a reflected understanding. It is in my field that you feel that you understand. And I'm saying this at the cost of, at the risk of being called loud-mouthed and egoistic. But a fact is a fact, even if it leads to me being called arrogant. When you have me on the screen live, when the community is there to support you, then you are one person. Outside my field, you are yet not ready. Because I see that you are not yet fighting the right wars. I see that when it comes to paying the price, when it comes to taking the blows, you just...
Questioner: Sir I think, now I'm good at doing what I'm not supposed to do. But still I think I'm not good at doing what I'm supposed to do. So my question would be, 'How to go forward?' I can see clearly that you have done hard work on putting statistics like you see, ‘Look at your attendance, your exams, you can clearly see it, work on it. Else everything else will happen eventually.’ So that should be a smaller step for me.
Acharya Prashant We are just putting up facts so that you have a lesser chance of avoiding them. Else we want to live in lies, no? if those facts are not there, then somebody with even 20% attendance might internally actually feel that he has 70% attendance.
We are masters at self deception. So those facts therefore are needed. Numbers must be considered actually sacred. A fellow who avoids numbers is a fellow who wants to protect something very rotten within. So we'll be coming up with more numbers, we'll be coming up with deeper stats, more analytics to help you see where you actually stand. But all that takes time.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, what happens is we pick up a few of your wisdom and use it for our benefit. For example, when I joined you several years ago when the YouTube channel had 22,000 followers, at that time I heard a lecture in which you said that nobody in your family will listen to you or anybody will listen to you unless you have gained enough power, whether it be financial power or physical power or just power. So as a person, just stop being lethargic or avoid Aalas se Bahar aaa ke like become powerful. Only then you will be able to say something spiritual and make something happen.
So I. I try to convince myself that I have gone now into entrepreneurship, a business, family business in Mumbai. And I'm using all my time in that and not doing the more important thing that is attendance, more wisdom literature and attending your live sessions in both, like in Greater Noida or going even further.
So is it happening with everybody? Like is it common everywhere that everybody uses some of your wisdom for their own benefit?
Acharya Prashant I don't know about everybody, but if everybody includes this body, then you can hear it from the horse's mouth. If I have enough time to conduct 100% of the sessions, how come you do not have time to just attend hundred percent of the sessions? And again, at the risk of sounding immodest, let me say my managerial and administrative responsibilities far exceed yours. The entire day I am extremely busy as the head of this nascent organization.
The organization is so new, so tender, so brittle, so vulnerable that things just keep falling apart. The entire day, I have to embrace the organization like this, to keep checking the dissipative tendencies and yet in the nights I present myself to you conducting 100% of the sessions. And when I conduct sessions, that probably takes lesser time. When I finalize your question papers, that takes even more time. How come I have time and you are short of it?
I am not just a teacher. I am a CEO. How come this CEO, with all his managerial obligations, has time to come and teach and you don't have time to come and be taught? How come I can make a question paper or at least refine and edit it and you don't have time to even attempt it? Is it really about being busy? Or is it something else lurking within?
Questioner: There's a lot of. There's a lot of homework to do. There's a long way to go, I guess.
Acharya Prashant Love, sir. Love. Love. Love. That's the word. Love. This. This thing here. It should beat. Entire 2024, at least starting from the summer month of May or June, i kept bleeding from the throat. It's only now, since the last one month or so, that I feel a bit relieved. Did I skip the sessions? And I kept spitting blood and kilos of blood, i would have spitted. The entire wash basin would be painted red. Did I skip a session? And if I don't skip in spite of this, how do you skip so that you may. Whatever. Attend a wedding or go to sleep or whatever it is.
Questioner: Love it is. Thank you. Thank you, Acharya Ji.
