Should I listen to the mind or the Heart? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)
Question: Should I listen to the mind or the Heart?
Speaker: Some people say, “Listen to your mind.” Others say, “Listen to your heart.” What is this choice? What is this comparison? Somebody says, “A is important,” somebody says, “B is bigger,” can I choose between A and B without knowing A and B? Can I decide which of the two is bigger, without knowing A and B?
A question comes to you: Is A greater than B? To answer this question, you must know that what is A and what is B. The people who say, “Listen to the mind,” do they understand what the mind is? The people who say, “Live by your heart,” do they know what the heart is?
You hardly know anything. It is not a question of the ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ alone. You hardly know anything. And it is not about twenty, twenty-five year olds. People who are fifty and eighty year old, they too do not know what they are talking about. Everyday concepts, general words that are being used twenty times a day, do people know their meaning? I just said, “Do people know what the mind is, and what is meant by the heart?” Do people understand what is meant by career, or money, or love, or family? Do they understand what is the Self, or what is God, or what Joy is? No, we don’t know. But we live by these words, without even knowing what their real meaning is.
Today’s newspapers are flooded with articles of the horrible story of parents in Delhi who have killed their daughter in the name of honor. Now, do we know what honor is? We do not know what honor is, and yet we are living our life, giving this word so much importance. That is tragic, very tragic.
