The Most Difficult Battle to Fight
Questioner: The next question comes from a student from Finland, who has been associated with Upanishad Samagam for quite a long time. The question is: Is there any place for consciously practicing indifference towards the world even when it still has meaning to you, or would that just be dishonesty?
Acharya Prashant: No, this is something quite advisable. Practice is very, very important, and all practice involves discomfort. All practice involves pushing your boundaries, all practice involves testing your limits and negating them. So the world, yes, will continue to exercise its charm over you, and you'll have to consciously negate it, deny it.
And that's not always a pretty thing to behold. It is obvious that you are in a struggle. But then, there's no other way. There's no other way. Conscious practice of anything is good — rather, the only possible way.
From the worldly point, the life of the spiritual man is not a pretty sight to behold, because there is a constant strife there.
The world is pulling you, pushing you, attacking you, charming you, threatening you, and you are doing all you can to resist the charm, to negate the threat. A battlefield is not a place for tourists, is it? You don't go there and take selfies, right? You don't go there to look pretty. So the life of the real man, the authentic person, it's quite possible does not look pretty. But if you can truly look, there would be great beauty in it — the beauty that is there in the Bhagavad Gita.
The armies are arranged on the two sides, and right in the middle are Shri Krishna and Arjun. And they have weapons, and there are chariots and horses and elephants, the blowing of the conch shells. And so much blood is to flow, so many relationships are to be stabbed, so much pain is to be endured. And from all that rises the Bhagavad Gita. Is it a meticulously manicured, orchard setting? Yeah, the peaceful monk discoursing to a very receptive listener — is that the scene of the Gita? Not pretty, you know.
There is tussle, there is anger, there is hurt, there is bloodshed — if not outwardly, at least inwardly, within you. And therein comes the role of conscious practice. In fact, that's what conscious practice entails — a lot of inner bloodshed. Do not look for prettiness, look for piousness.
Unfortunately, a lot of spirituality today is teddy-bear spirituality, right? Cozy, comfortable, soft — something you can go to bed with. Something you can tuck up under your quilt. Something that sits nicely with all the other toys in your life. Bhagavad Gita cannot sit well with the nonsense that pervades ordinary life. Bhagavad Gita disrupts — dynamite that annihilates. That's the role of consciousness.
Shri Krishna is imparting consciousness. Arjun is being encouraged to practice it. And when consciousness is practiced, heads roll — the first being your own head, right? That's the very purpose of deliberate practice of consciousness, to cut off your own head. And with your own head gone, you are headless enough and heedless enough to not to care for other’s heads. Being headless, I do not heed your head.
How did you get rid of your own head? Through conscious practice. It's incremental, remember. Practice means incremental improvement, daily improvement, moment-to-moment improvement. That's what we started this session with. Step by step you have to move — even towards the absolute. No one step can take you to the absolute. Not even a million steps can take you to the absolute. But still, there is no way except the million steps.
