Questioner: Namaste, Acharya Ji.
I am Saransh, an 18-year-old student from Lucknow. Sir, my question is that can we take nature worship part of the Vedas with a special meaning today, with a higher meaning today because I've heard you saying once that there would have been a great consciousness which would have addressed Ganga as Ma or worshiped a tree. Can we take these Vedic gods with a special meaning or a higher meaning today?
Acharya Prashant: The higher meaning is desirelessness. You cannot worship something with a view to obtain favors from it. That's exploitation. That's consumption. That's worship only in name. That's like worshipping Margarita. You don't worship Margarita because you are charmed and you want to become one day like Margarita. You want to lose yourself and one day be dissolved. You worship margarita so that you can consume it fully and finish it off.
So the real kind of nature worship that we talk of, let's say, in Durga Saptshati, that's different. That's where the relationship is not of bhog. You remember that particular quotation, Prakriti Maa Hai, Bhogya Nahin. That's worship.
But when you go to Prakriti asking favors, ‘Can you give me that?’ Can you give me, like you go to a cow and say, ‘Can you give me milk.’ That's not worship please. Real worship is when you do not use any dairy product and yet you have respect for the cow. That's worship. You have respect for the cow because you will be getting ghee and lassi and then you'll also sell it off to the butcher and now that's not worship.
You cannot have worship along with desire to worship.
First of all you must have something that's above you. Right? In consumption, the thing is always at your own level. How can you consume and worship at the same time? These two are incompatible. Do you see that?
If I am to consume something, it has to be at my own level. Whereas to worship it, it has to be above me. The consumption of prakriti and worship of prakriti do not go together. Those who worship and then consume it are like those who worship the goat and then slaughter it and eat it. Does that not happen?
There are people who will fatten it for an entire month and say, you know, this is like our own son and then slaughter and eat it. Is that worship? Does that carry any feeling of respect? Is there any sacredness in all this?
The touchstone is, you will not consume. You will not look at the other as a means to fulfill your desire. That's the attitude you must have towards prakriti. And that attitude itself is called worship. You don't have to prostrate or offer goodies. Worship is not all that.
You understand sacredness. I'm not to touch it. It's above me or it reminds me of something that is untouchable within me. It is so high, it reminds me of my highest possibility. That's worship. I look at the flow of the river and my attentiveness reminds me of the pure flow within myself. Now that's worship.
River worship is not about going and taking the holy dip and polluting the river. That's not river worship.
Watch the river from a distance, please. The river does not want you to enter it. The river is totally fed up with you.
River worship means watching it from a distance very attentively and that's meditation. Just sit there and look at it purposelessly. You don't have to say I have come here and I have only 20 minutes to watch the river, so let me extract the value. The flight tickets were so expensive.
Then you'll start hallucinating. You'll start thinking that the river has taken a female form and is coming out to bless you and you'll say, ‘Can I have a very juicy wife? The river will say, ‘Tathastu’. Baba ji, he made his career on this.
You understand that worship and sacredness go together. The problem with the common man is that for him nothing is sacred at all. Everything is an object that he can lay his hands on and consume. Is there anything that you will never, never agree to, dare to, want to touch? If there is even one such thing in your life, then you know sacredness and only with sacredness can there be worship.
Most of us can lay our dirty hands on anything. Nothing is sacred. Learn to touch things without spoiling them. Learn to enter a room without disturbing the room. Learn to exist as if you are not. Learn to make your presence unfelt. That's worship.
That's one mark often of the spiritual man. He enters and leaves silently as if he was always there or as if he was never there. You know that sacredness. I'm not here to consume. I'm not here to destroy. I'm not here to alter the scheme of things. I'm here to flow in the scheme of things. That's worship.
Worship is not all the theatrics that you see in the name of religion. Somebody's rolling on the road. Somebody is climbing some tree and all other kinds of gymnastics that you call religion. You don't have to fold your hands to worship. Not needed. You don't have to take off your shoes. You don't have to visit a special place. When you look at the world, do not ask what can I get from it. Ask what it is. That's worship.
And you don't have to ask what it is. You just have to see and you will know what it is. That's the attitude of the spiritual mind. That's the worshipper. You don't find thirst and perpetual hunger and craving in his eyes. Some swanky car and he, ‘How can I get it?’ What is the whole thing about?
You remember Ashtavakra saying just day before yesterday, ‘No great wonderment here in the sense that no great fulfillment in that; therefore I don't need to be amazed by all this, yet I'm an observer. In some way it is, indeed, mesmerizing but not in the way of fulfillment of desire. Are you getting it?
Yes, I look at it with awe, with wonderment in terms of knowing it, not in terms of consuming it. I look at a magnificent tree and I dance around it. That's wonderful. That's fine. Not that I start thinking of chopping it down and calculating how much the proceeds can be sold for.
If you have, it happened once. We had Jitu, the legendary cock. The books department should publish a book: Jitu, the legendary cock. There were these carpenters who came and Jitu was always, you know, strutting and prancing around like he owned the place. He was never kept caged. The entire thing belonged to him.
He would go wherever and you really needed to be in his good books to even enter Bodh Sthal, otherwise he would chase you away. Many here might have experienced what it meant to not have Jitu's favor. Peck, peck, peck, peck and you're out and he really had an evil beak.
So they came, the carpenters and they were looking at Jitu and discussing something that got me curious and I went and they were discussing how much is the weight and how much would it cost. No, that's not sacredness. That's not worship. In fact, they were thinking how come this Acharya is raising.
They said, ‘Fine might be such a thing that happens in Hindus. But they were pretty delighted to look at this. How much did he weigh, we have never seen a rooster weighing some 11 kg or something this big, always eating. You look at an animal and you start thinking of pounds of flesh. That's not sacredness. You look at a man or a woman and you start thinking what it would be like to bang her. That's not sacredness. But that's the way we are.
You have these mannequins. What are they there for? Look at it and imagine how the thing would look on you. It is assumed that that's the normal way of our being. That you would look only to consume. Look at the mannequin and imagine how that dress or ornament would look on you.
Look at Jitu and imagine how it would look on the plate. We have a very corrupted notion of religion, worship, sacredness, devotion, bhakti— extremely corrupted.
And the result is that today if you have to choose between a devotee and an atheist, my advice is that you go with the atheist. The atheist might be debauched, but he cannot match the depths to which the devotee can plunge. The so-called religious man is a real menace, to be avoided as much as possible. Baba Ji...
What I'm saying will not be very lucid to you right now. You're just 18. But let these words remain. One day, gradually, half a decade, 20 decades....
Questioner: Sir, just a small follow up. So if a person is witnessing a river and you once mentioned that there is just joy in seeing it. So sir, how is it different from a consumption through eyes? Is it not a consumption which we are doing through…?
Acharya Prashant: Good. Good. Nice. Very nice. Whenever there is consumption through eyes, there is a pre-planted image. Pre-planted image. You already know what you want from it. You want to repeat a previous experience.
Joy, on the other hand, is about sublimation of the experiencer. You're very right. You can consume even through your eyes. And that's what the religious mind does. The so-called religious, the lok dharmik mind, that's what he does. He will go to the river and he will say, "I'm supposed to watch the river." And in the process of watching, as I had warned, in the process of watching, he will invoke all the pre-existing images.
The river is now arising as a mermaid. You understand? Mermaid, half woman, half fish. Taxi mermaid. The river is now arising. And now the river is coming to me and saying, you know, if you kiss me properly, I'll be your wife. That's consumption. That's the pleasure of consumption. Joy is a different thing altogether. In joy, the watcher, the experiencer, the consumer finds no place to remain.
You allow the fact to take over and you are gone because the ego is not a fact. When you allow the fact to dominate you as it rightfully must, then all that which is not a fact is gone. So the ego too is gone and that's joy. Pleasure is ingratiation of the ego, joy is the disappearance of the ego. There is a great difference.
Pleasure is never in the present. Pleasure is always about recycling some old experience and whatever you got out of it. In joy, there is no question of experience. If someone says you know I experience joy, he's a bluffing buffoon.
Joy is nothing to be experienced. Joy is like deep sleep.
Only when it is gone, can you say that you had it when in deep sleep. Can you claim that you are asleep? Joy is like that. Joy is a state of negation. Of disappearance. You're not. However, when somebody brings you back to the mortal plane, then you say, "Oh, now something precious is lost." Only in that way, can joy be pointed at. Only in the sense of its absence.
When it is there then you will not say, ‘I'm so joyful, I'm so joyful.’ No, you're not joyful, you're just yourself. Joy is no state of exuberant pleasure. Some people equate joy with subtle pleasure. They say you know when you are laughing then that maps to pleasure but when you are just gently smiling that's ananda joy. Baba ji, baba uwaach. No Sir, no. It's not that way.
Baba Ji, he has his own argument. See, he claims this is joy. Look at his face. This is not joy. Remember, claiming to be joyful is like claiming to be deeply asleep. You are lying. The joyful one is just sahaj, one with existence. Not separate, therefore not desirous. Not desirous, therefore very spontaneous. You getting it?
Classically the thing that you referred to is called Chakshu Vilas. Chakshubhog, Indriyabhog. All the senses have their own channels for consumption. Every sense is de facto a separate channel for consumption. So you can consume on through eyes also.
You know that very well, right? You come from Lucknow, 18 year old. Popular culture will not allow you to easily consume through your other senses. So in Lucknow, you consume more through just this (pointing to eyes.)
‘Chal naa bhai, taapne chalte hain. Ganjing Karenge. (Everybody laughs.)
You understand Ganjing? Hazratganj. You can go there and look at a few pretty faces and consume through your eyes. That's not that. Pleasure is when the eyes are "looking for". Joy is when the eyes are 'just looking'.
When you already know that you want a particular object, when the object in question is already a thing of a previous experience, then the maximum you can get is pleasure. You're looking for repetition. In joy, you are just looking. There is no desire because there is nobody to desire. So the sense is just operating without anybody to be fulfilled from the sense. There is a vacuum in the eyes.
The eyes are operating but without desire and then the eyes can see very clearly. Shri Krishna calls that as being ’Nirmal Indriya’. Whereas when the eyes are operating from a center of desire the eyes cannot see. The world is very afraid of eyes that do not want. People almost collapse.
If you look at them with desire, they will know this fellow belongs to our own clan or tribe. He's one like us. I have desire, this fellow too has desire. But if you just look at them, they shiver and almost collapse. That's the power of desirelessness. The desirous mind cannot face somebody, who doesn't have desire.
And it's not a moral virtue or something, not having desire. It's a consequence. You very well know. Where does nishkamta come from? Atmagyan. If you know yourself, then you also know it is foolish to run after that thing.
We are not talking about morality here. We are talking about practicality. That's rat poison. And I'm not even a rat.