Question: Acharya Ji, during the process of spiritual sadhana, we have some responsibilities related to both finances as well as physical availability. How to tackle this?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Who are you?
Questioner 1: Incomplete consciousness.
Acharya Prashant Ji: So what is your responsibility?
Questioner 1: To get completion.
Acharya Prashant Ji: Full stop.
Questioner 1: So, what to do of the responsibilities?
Acharya Prashant Ji: What is your responsibility?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Full stop.
Never forget who you are. If you will forget who you are, you will take up false responsibilities.
Are you getting it?
Questioner 2: Isn’t the other’s completeness, also our responsibility?
Acharya Prashant Ji: How do you know about other’s completion, when you have not fulfilled your basic responsibility towards yourself? Is it not great arrogance and story-telling? When you do not know what is your responsibility, and what will bring fulfillment to you, what do you know about others and others’ fulfillment?
May be you are the biggest barrier to others’ fulfillment.
Questioner 2: Suppose my child needs my…..
Acharya Prashant Ji: Why ‘suppose’? Why not stick to that, which you definitely know of? Why suppose so much, and make more stories?
(Referring to the ongoing three-day retreat) The very first day, we said that – what is the only thing that you definitely know of?
Questioner 2: Suffering.
Acharya Prashant Ji: “I am. And I am suffering.” Is there anything else that you definitely know of? Then why suppose so much? Why live in suppositions?
It hurts to realise that suppositions are stories. The more you live in stories about yourself, the more you will have ideas about the world. The more you gain clarity about yourself, the more you realise that your stories about the world were all cotton-wool stuff.
Questioner 3: They do effect. The friction that arises, does effect the state of the mind. And because of its effect on the state of the mind, it feels like coming back to square one. Every day one starts with something, then there is friction, and one comes back to the square one. It is a vicious circle.
How to deal with this?
Acharya Prashant Ji:
Others and situations are able to cause a drastic change in your mental environment, because you are not aligned with yourself, you are not sticking to something immovable.
Had you really been tethered to something that cannot be proven false, that cannot be easily blown away, others could not have just carry you along, and take you for a ride, and shake you, and displace you.
We are not firmly affixed to that definitive-ness. There is nothing in our life that is ‘certain’. And because of this lack of certainty, all external influences become too much on us.
Are you getting it?
We are not firmly rooted in Reality. We are not like a strong tree with deep roots. We are more like a fallen leaf. So every small influence, or a little bit of breeze, let alone a powerful gust, just takes us away.
What is the ‘reality’, the ‘certainty’ that I am talking of?
I AM – that is the only thing about which you can be sure. That is the only thing you must always remember.
When you remember That, you will have very little space to remember miscellaneous things. When your mind is constantly occupied by that fundamental Realisation, then how will there be any space to accommodate miscellaneous, worldly stuff?
But we displace the essential, and create space for the nonsensical. These two things happen together, both equally unfortunate – the tree is uprooted, and then the leaves start being taken away by the winds.
Don’t be uprooted! Don’t be uprooted! Remember one essential thing, and then all else will sound very trivial to you. You will be able to ignore it, reject it, dismiss it, without much effort. You will become unavailable. Things will keep happening, you won’t be available to them, because now you have reserved yourself fully for the Essential.
And this is common sense.
What must you attend to? That which is important, that which is critical, or that which is flimsy, casual, transient?
What must you attend to?
Keep attending to that which is definite, important, urgent. All else will fall in place.
Don’t blame others or society. They are able to influence you because you are faithless.
The wind blows for everybody. If you are a healthy being, you enjoy it. If you are weak and sick, with your immunity compromised, then you curse the wind and run indoors, complaining of fever.
The same external movement is delight for the one who is inwardly healthy. You say, “Wow! Lovely breeze. See, how my hair are flying in it.” Don’t you? But if you are two and half kilograms in weight, so pale, so emaciated, so diseased, then you would be found flying away to glory, along with your hair, in the same wind. Now, it is no more a delight. Now, it is a dread.
All the ones around you, who influence you, affect you, are just winds. Be strong, and enjoy the winds.
वेदांत को केवल इसलिए सही या श्रेष्ठ नहीं माना जा सकता कि वह किसी विशेष परंपरा से आता है। विज्ञान जहाँ भौतिक जगत की वस्तुनिष्ठ जाँच करता है, वहीं अद्वैत वेदांत सीधे मनुष्य के ‘मैं’, उसके दुख, बंधन और मुक्ति की पड़ताल करता है। इसकी कसौटी वैज्ञानिक प्रमाण नहीं, बल्कि अपने जीवन में इसकी सच्चाई को देख पाना है। किसी दर्शन को मान लेना नहीं, बल्कि उससे स्वयं को मुक्त करना ही उसका वास्तविक उद्देश्य है।
Knowledge alone cannot transform life; it can become another object of the ego. True knowledge is self-knowledge—a mirror that exposes and destroys false ideas about oneself. Ravana may have been knowledgeable, but without self-knowledge, knowledge can become a tool for exploitation. Wisdom is not something to acquire; it is innate. Self-knowledge is the process of unbecoming unwise by clearing away the nonsense we have gathered.
Acharya Prashant: Because, you are asking this question.
We ‘think’ that we are lost, equally, we ‘think’ that we are not lost. The same place from where the thought, the perception of being lost, or not lost arises, that place is the same place…
