Nothing Within Us Is the Truth
Acharya Prashant: The truth is not a side of you; the truth is not a part of you. The truth is the absence of this fictitious thing called ‘you.’ That's how the false survives by calling a part of itself ‘the truth.’ You know, yes, of course, I'm false, but here, this part of me, my big toe, that's the truth. Next time when the big toe is proven to be false, then this little finger of mine, this is the truth.
Then when even this little finger is proven to be false, oh, well my molars in here, they are the truth and that is proven to be false. Then my left ear, and you have so many things; you can keep doing left, right, left, right. The left eye is right, the right eye is right, the left nostril, the right nostril, and you can keep going lower down the body, left, right, left, right. This is truth, that is truth. The truth doesn't keep hanging like that, Sir.
Learn to deny anything that arises from within you, and if you can't deny it, at least scrutinize it very honestly. The movement you start granting it, quick entry; some kind of a wild card, uninterrogated, unquestioned. There is a big problem. Look how confident people are when they say, “I'm telling you the truth. It's coming right from here, my heart.” See, how confident they are that the truth is within them. And this fellow is saying, “Right from my heart, do my words come. I'm very, very truthful. You are my goddess.” What happens to that truth? Exactly? Five and a half weeks later, the goddess has changed.
Maybe that's why we have so many gods, and goddesses in India, because we are so quick to call anybody a goddess.
Next door, Sheila Kumari becomes a goddess for you. And she's convinced because you said, “What I'm telling you is coming from that side of me, that part of me, which is the truth.” No part of you is the truth. This thing called “you, me, I, myself ” is an entire absolute lie. Do not patronize any bit of it.
False is very vulnerable; It's in a very uncomfortable position because it is false. So, the facts keep exposing and humiliating it. So, how does falseness still manage to survive? Falseness says, “Oh, yes. I have been exposed today, but tomorrow I'll be better.” Some part of itself has been saved as being truthful; it has accepted that my present is rotten, but my future will be good. You see, tomorrow I'll be a different man. The thing is, your present changes to the future; have you changed? You haven't changed, so your present and your future belong to the same domain called “ you.” Even when you are denying and disowning your present, you are still managing to own your future, and when you own your future, you have, you have de-facto still preserved yourself.
So, I'll happily disown my past and my present: “Oh! no, no, you know, I was a very bad man, and I did very badly today as well, but tomorrow I'll be a better person, I promise.” That's how falseness keeps saving itself.
You see, for example, you take a balloon and let the balloon be cylindrical; let there be a cylindrical balloon of length(l) and radius(r). The radius is small; there is air in the balloon.
Now you want to push the air out of the balloon. So, what do you do? You squeeze the balloon from one end and it's been squeezed; it's gone. Has the air gone? Where's the air? The air hides in some other corner. That's how the ego manages to survive. You squeeze one part of it, it agrees you have squeezed me.
The poor ego has shriveled and gone, squeezed. But what has happened to the bloat within, to the air within? Has it gone out? No. It has just been relocated to some other part of the self. Therefore, I'm saying no part of the self is the truth. So now there is the bloat there. What do you do? You attack that part and you say, “I'm squeezing it here.” What does the ego do? It comes to some other part, some other part; you press here, it goes there, push it from here, and it hides there.
You have to puncture the whole thing. Any part of it that you keep safe, that's the problem. There are some parts of it that we want to stay safe. We say, “But you know, this is my sacred personal domain.” The other things I can disown, but this thing I cannot disown. Even a little that you are attached to, possessive about, and want to keep holding onto, becomes a safe sanctuary for the ego. Imagine some part of the balloon you have labeled as very sensitive or sacred and won't ever touch or squeeze. What will that part act as? A safe sanctuary for the air within. All else will be squeezed. That part will keep harboring the air.
At some point, you will let go of the squeeze and then the air will occupy the entire cylinder again. Nothing would have changed. Puncture the whole thing. Drop the whole thing. It's either all or nothing. There is nothing in the domain of the ego you need to preserve. Happily, abandon.
Save one thing, and you have saved the totality of your useless structure. That's the reason why spiritual seekers keep wondering, but I have been on the path of spirituality for 20 years. Why do I still feel frightened? Why do I still feel anxious and greedy and all that? Because you were too afraid or attached to let go of one part of yourself. The part that you called ‘ the truth.’ It was not the truth. It was the worst falseness possible.
Why am I calling it the worst falseness? Because that is the part that saved the entirety of your falseness by calling itself the truth.
The ego is like a net. If you remain entangled in one part of the net, is it one part of the net you're entangled in? Or the whole net? The whole net. That's why either you'll be free of the net or you will be caught in the net. You cannot say I'm partially free of the net. What happens to a fish that is partially free of the net? It is caught and cut.
You are on the railway track and the engine is approaching and you say, you know, I was just, partially out of the reach of the engine. What happens to those who are partially out of the reach of the engine? Do they die? Partially. You are either out or dead.
This is a gross, misconception that the truth and the falseness are both within me. It inflates the ego like anything, but it is a very popular misconception that the false is in you, and the truth also is in you and they're partying side by side. How are the two coexistent within you, sir?
We knew, we had been told and taught that the truth has no neighbor, that the truth does not coexist with anything because it is infinite. How is it so that within you, the true and false are coexisting? What kind of small truth is this?
All of us are left to say that, ask yourself and you will get the right answer. The truth is within you, and you feel so inflated and empowered. This fellow is talking sense. Ask yourself, the truth is within you and you will get the correct answer.
You ask yourself a question and from within you will get A, B, C, and D four options, and it is the type of MCQ in which all four A, B, C, and D are wrong, and there is no fifth option that says all four are wrong. The fifth one is out of the syllabus; therefore, it is called atit (beyond). It is beyond your inner syllabus. You ask yourself, an inner question, which job do I pick up? Which business do I start with? What do I do in such a situation? And immediately from within four answers pop up A, B, C, and D. Rest assured all four deserve to be discarded. The right answer, I said, is beyond the scope of the syllabus and the question paper, that is beyond the scope of both the questioner and the answer.
Now, you are bewildered. But then what do I do? If neither A, B, C, and D, if nothing is valid, then, what do I do in life? You need to have the courage to live with that uncertainty, and the right one will then be available to you. The right one keeps waiting for you to reject all four.
Searching for the truth within you is a bit like searching for a vegan burger in KFC - by definition, everything there has not only milk but flesh. What the hell are you looking there for? But the Seller is so dexterous and cunning, he will give you four options. If you asked for a vegan burger, you'd still get four options- Irrespective of the one you tick, what you'll get will have blood. That's the ego- it offers you what it does not have. It is so deceptive. You want peace - the ego says, “I have peace.”
Just as you say, “I want a vegan burger”, and KFC says,” I have a vegan burger,” the ego is the KFC within. You say, “I want peace”, and the ego says (by definition has no peace) but not only does it say, but “I do also have peace and it even gives you four (A, B, C, and D) options to get peace. Irrespective of the option you choose, there'll be blood. Don't choose anything, just walk out.
A little secret- vegan burgers exist, but you first need to walk out of the KFCs of the world.
No, but you know, how do I believe that only you are the truthful one? This innocent-looking manager just came to me and told me that they have four vegan options.
Later on, you ask him, but how are these options Vegan? Well, the chicken never drinks any milk? Vegan chicken.
That's ego for you. Manipulative, foolish, unreliable. Don't trust your inner voice.
