Once there is Love, there must be a roaring declaration || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, in one of your videos, you have mentioned that everybody gets to experience Him in few small moments, sometimes by luck, by chance. One has to maintain that. It is not like that once one has reached there, one will remain there forever. If one breaks attention and gets back to the world, one loses it.
You have also said that during your Satsangs, we are able to reach there. My question is: If one is actually there, why is one not able to recognize that? Why is that Joy not so big that we are able to recognize it?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You have to declare that it is ‘big’. It sounds absurd, but that’s what.
We are people of definitions and declarations.
What matters is not really the fact, but the declaration of the fact.
Till yesterday, the man and the woman were strangers. And today the priest says, “I declare you husband-and-wife”, and everything changes. So you have to declare yourself ‘the wife’, otherwise things will remain the way they are. You will stand right in front of the man, the declaration won’t come, and you will find yourself receding.
Love requires that you finally give it your respectful consent. You have to say, “I do.” Even to God, you have to say, “I do.” ‘Say’ means – actually, literally, physically, mentally. Say. You have to commit yourself in whichever way you can, you have to physically hold the hand. Otherwise, there would be closeness, and separation.
Q: In acknowledging, it is some…
AP: Acknowledging and declaring it to yourself.
Truth is Freedom, and Freedom does not enforce itself upon anybody. It waits for your free consent. So, in all your freedom, you have to declare your consent.
“Yes, as a free being I declare that I am in love, and committed.” Unless that declaration is there, the inner thoughts and intentions, this-this-this, they will amount to something, but nothing much.
Q: So, we actually are going through these moments of Truth. But since we are not acknowledging it, we don’t really explain the mind that…
AP: You have to withdraw from yourself the right to pull back.
As long as you keep vested in yourself the right to pull back, you will keep pulling back. And it is your sovereign right. Nobody can take it away from you. You will have to very freely, very willingly abjure that right on your own.
Even God waits for you.
He won’t impose himself.
It’s a strange thing you know – how we are all creatures of flesh and blood, in all ways of life we live as the body, we talk of ourselves as the body, we very well know how the bodily and material things matter to us, but when it comes to love, we are so quick to say, “Oh! Love is in the soul.”
What about the body? What are you saying, that your soul loves something or somebody, but your body and mind are committed to something and somebody else? This deception, this inner treachery is so much suffering.
Is it not?
And don’t you come across so much of this?
“My soul is in love with God. And I am in love with the devil.” What is this?
Put your body, put your mind, where your so-called soul is, and declare it, because these things are a matter of declaration. The body by its material presence at a place, at a physical place, declares something.
Does it not?
You are making a declaration by being materially and physically present here. It’s a declaration. And when you will go away, you would be making another declaration.
Are you getting it?
The mind makes a certain declaration by wearing a certain identity. Let the mind make the right declaration. Otherwise, we all have just one identity – the identity of the ashamed lover, the coy lover, who loves but doesn’t have the guts to come out with his love.
And this he covers up by saying, “You know, all delicate and true things must be kept secret.” Look at the pretense – “The thing is so delicate and pure, that I cannot expose it socially.”
If you cannot expose it socially, then the society will take control of you.
And then, why do you wonder, why do you regress after every contact with the Truth? Because you are not declaring something socially, because you are not coming out in the open. And that itself is the signal available to the society, that you are yet available to be possessed. Had you really been sold out to the Truth, you would have clearly told the society – ‘Not for sale’.
But that board has yet not come up. That board has yet not come up, so the society knows very well that you are still available. So the buyers come over, and they quickly take you home.
Why do you get surprised then?
In India, there is a custom that married women wear some mark of their commitment. That keeps the society at bay – “Hands-off, she is taken.” But we want to love secretly and not wear the mark. And then if those goose and hoodlums chase you, why are you surprised?
Your Lover (God), happens to be the strongest one in the world, and yet you are being chased by the gully-goons.
That’s because you don’t want to display that you are taken.
One wants to remain available. One doesn’t want to close the various options.
Q: So, even now there appears the pull…
AP: That you will never have. That you will never have, till you wear the mark. What do they call it in English?
Q: Vermilion.
AP: Vermilion.
Q: If I declare, does it mean that I am married to Truth?
AP: Not a mere declaration would do.
Once there is Love, there must be a declaration.
A declaration without love means an arranged marriage. That doesn’t help.
Q: How to do this declaration? What do we mean by ‘declaration’?
AP: "Wo to gali, gali hari gun gaane lagi (She started roaming in the streets, singing in the praise and glory of Lord). Mahlon pe pali, ban ke jogan chali (She was raised in palaces, she left everything for God)."
This is what is ‘declaration’.
"Meera rani deewani kahani lagi (Meera started being known and called as a ‘lover’)."
Not like this deception as – listening to the Satsang in the closed room here, and then hide this or shy away from sharing, and declaring after moving out of the room.
(Laughter)
No camp has ever happened in which one or two participants have actually hidden it from their family, that they are attending the camp.
Live as His bride. You don’t merely have to love Him deeply, secretly, internally. You actually have to live like His bride.
