Breaking Through Pride: Finding True Clarity in the Present
Questioner: So you talked about total change. I've been hearing Jiddu Krishnamurti also talked about it, but this became very clear today. And why is it difficult because you said that we are proud of some things, and we disdain other things. So, what is the way ahead?
Like, for example, we are proud of a few things about ourselves. Do we need to look into them and find out the flaws, which probably are subtle? Or what is it?
Acharya Prashant: It's like moving to the next quantum level, the next orbit. Fine, I have come to a certain place. I'm proud of the place I have come to. Coming to this place has involved its own struggles and its own share of tribulations, trials, and everything else. But it's a mixed bag. That's what duality is, right? Always a mixed bag.
So now, all right, this is the mixed bag. Now, can I just keep the bag aside and begin something afresh? But that's not how the mind wants to operate. It sticks to a few things in the bag. You put your hand inside the bag for that one or, two units, pieces that you like, and what do you get? Everything that's in the bag. You cannot be partially attached to a few things. You'll get, uh, everything—everything in the bargain.
You have to keep everything aside. If the process has really given you something valuable, it's not there in the bag. It's there in your heart. If the whole journey has actually benefited you, it would have benefited you in the internal sense, not in the sense of what you have gained by way of accomplishments in your hand. No.
So, so that entire bag can be kept aside. And you say, yes, whatsoever was worthy of being taken from the process till now. I'm 35 years of age now. These 35 years—if they have really given me anything worthwhile—it's now there within me. So, so it's there within me, and I can proceed on the back of that. I'll use that, and I'll move to the next quantum, next orbit.
The bottom line is, it is futile to expect that you can have one thing and not the other. That is just impossible.
Have you ever seen a person with half a face? The left cheek is there; the right is not? If the left is there, the right, too, will be there. There might be some difference, fine, but the left cannot exist without the right. That has to be understood. So acknowledge both. Acknowledge both. I'm proud of the way I got all that, I cherish in my journey so far. And I also see that I got a few other things. Now, it's time to move on. Move on. And this moving on must be a constant process, an everyday process. Every day, every morning I wake up, I keep my old self behind or aside, and I say, "It's time to move on."
Move on. Charaiyveti, Charaiyveti. Keep moving on. Keep moving on. Keep putting the old self behind you and take a step further. You're not obliged to carry your past on your shoulders, right?
Questioner: Be it good or bad.
Acharya Prashant: Be it good or bad, fine. See, if there was any worth in what life has given me so far, that worth can, anyway, not be taken away. That worth now sits here.
So all the other things I can safely just, you know, Visarjan. I had this, and now, Mother River, Prakriti, you take it back. Today is a new day. Today is a new birth. Let me try something new. Can I become better? Can I move to the next orbit? Is it mandatory to repeat the day gone by? Is it mandatory? Then why must you repeat the same nonsense every passing day? Why do you find yourself obliged to be the same old self? That's, that's called spiritual entrepreneurship—to start a new life every morning and to exit it every night.
A serial entrepreneur—I start a firm every morning, and I quit my own venture every night. And then I restart. This is not just poetry; this is practicality.
Questioner: So, it is like when you talk about the bad things you still want to get rid of, for example, you have been... but then the good things?
Acharya Prashant: Looks not possible. Not possible. It is not possible to separate it that way.
Questioner: The good things may have been so-called spiritually correct, but..
Acharya Prashant: If there is real goodness, it stays here. So don't be afraid. You're not, anyway, leaving anything behind. Or you could say, "I'm only leaving the nonsense behind because all the goodness I will, anyway, carry with me. The goodness is the heart itself." So don't be afraid. Sticking to the old self is the worst kind of, uh, boredom.
Huh. What's your favorite movie? Questioner: The Godfather.
Acharya Prashant: How many times have you seen it?
Questioner: Five, six times.
Acharya Prashant: Five, six times. How about a movie called Rohit Razdan: The Rasfather?
(it’s the name of the questioner, which Acharya Prashant used to convey the message.)
You keep watching that movie every day without ever getting bored. So a point must come when you simply get bored of yourself—the nonsense again. You look at yourself and say, "Get lost."
Reinventing yourself is very important. Huh. In fact, even very external measures—like changing your hairstyle or your wardrobe, or whatever, learning a new skill, a new language—whatever. Obviously, these are external and, therefore, a bit trivial, but even they matter.
The hell of life is repetitiveness. Same things over and over again. Same words, same habits, same clothes, same places. Same, same. Just the sameness.
And why the sameness? Because there is security in sameness. And there's a little bit of happiness in sameness. And because sameness stands proven. Sometimes, one must change things just for the heck of it.
You go to a café. You order something you do not know what it is. That's okay. That's okay. At most, you'll reject that item, and some 200 rupees will be lost. Every time you go there, and you say, "Chola Kulcha." What? What is that nonsense? 20,000 times, he has ordered Chola Kulcha. Still ordering the same thing! Try some new dresses, some new places.
Moving on is being bored of oneself. Allow yourself to be bored of yourself.
I'm not saying that real newness lies in getting a new kind of hairstyle or whatever, but I'm saying even this is better than rotting in the same oldness.
Questioner: Sir, you said just while answering a question that every morning you should have something new to be done. I mean, uh, and something new—projects should be taken a step. Then you explained to us that even getting different types of food different types of clothes, or whatever it is—it has to be something different. And you should get bored of yourself whatever your routine life is. But number one is—what confusion is coming to me is it is more of internal thoughts. Internal things have to be changed.
Acharya Prashant: Yes.
Questioner: It is not that today I'm brushing with Colgate, tomorrow I'm having a... I mean, it is not like that. It's just an example. But how to have... because my thought process is a continuous thought process, which is going on. How to have a radical change in that thought process? Because whatever will come will come from the past only.
Acharya Prashant: See, what I am suggesting, Rohit, is that if you are so resistant to change that you cannot even change your wardrobe, how will you allow anything else in life to change?
We categorically said that all these things we are talking of—food, clothes, and hairstyle—these are external and trivial, huh? These are external and trivial.
The question is, if one does not have the courage or the intention to bring even trivial change in life, how will one bring deeper change in life? That's the question.
I'm not saying that deeper change will necessarily follow external change because there are a lot of people who keep changing their hairstyles every second month and yet there is no real inner change. We know all that.
But the point to be conveyed is that there has to be a resistance to sameness because sameness is security, sameness is stagnation. In some sense, sameness is what you would classically call tamsikta, is it not?
Even to achieve the same successes over and over again, please tell me, how is it not so? I said "even," huh? So I'm saying, even to attain the same successes again and again, how is it not tamsikta? If tamsikta is about settling down at a suboptimal place, how is it not the same kind of inertia to repeat your successes—your proven and secure successes—again and again?
In business, that often happens, right? If you're an established firm, then you have a formula for success. You know the market. You already know things in advance that would lead to success. It's not as if you are playing in the dark. How is that not tamsikta?
And wherever there is a lot of security, there is death. Death, in some sense, is the final security, is it not? Guaranteed. Assured. Nothing at risk there. Nothing in terms of probabilities there. So it is the final assurance. Somebody asks you, "Will there be death?" You say, "The probability is 1.00—absolute certainty."
So if you are looking for even an assured kind of formulaic success, that is just the antithesis of life. So it is better to have experimental failures and setbacks rather than having assured successes.
Try this thing out. Do that. Do this. What I see, Sanjit ji, and you know, I'm not that kind of seer or something, but just with my mortal eyes, what I can see on the screen is what you call as ennui—a sense of boredom. There is not much vigor that I see. And if that great destination is to be achieved—that great destination called Atma or liberation—then one requires a lot of energy.
You cannot travel all the way without having the requisite energy. How can you lose energy in the middle of the process? Your face must be radiating with an eagerness—the eagerness to go all the way, the eagerness to change tracks when and where needed.
I repeat: assured success is another name for failure.
Questioner: I do agree.
Acharya Prashant: So even if it is coming very easily to you, reject it. If you're established in one kind of game and you know very well now the tricks of the game, stop playing that game. What fun is there anymore?
Questioner: So, going to unknown territory, unknown terrain. And being..
Acharya Prashant: Not just unknown—higher and unknown. Unknown could also mean doing... you know, now going and joining the mafioso in Italy. That too is something unknown to you. So, not just unknown—higher and unknown.
And in that, there will be fear and a lot of wonderment, a feeling of insecurity. But that's what keeps one young, no?.
Questioner: Definitely, sir. I will act upon. There may not be radiation of energy, but definitely, I know myself. I have a lot of energy towards achieving this goal, and I will.
Acharya Prashant: I'm glad you will, and all my best wishes. And the face has already begun to radiate.
