Still Carrying the Past?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, good evening and thank you for being in Hyderabad with us. You landed on a perfect word, and that was the starting point of my question. I was waiting for you to come to that choice. Often, I think in many of your sessions you've mentioned choice. Whatever we did, for example, I consider everything that is done until now, whether it comes from the body, it comes from society, all my identities, everything has then been done with a blindfold on.
So now I feel, let's say, if any choice was made in the past and I term that as an accidental decision, but if I examine it now and, after having examined and assessed, I feel, even though it was accidental in the past. Can I work on it, nurture it, and then can it become my conscious choice, though I landed up with that as an accident? Is it possible in relationships and professions, anywhere?
Acharya Prashant: It is possible, but it has to be an illumined choice. Everything is possible. It is entirely possible that we keep the past aside, and it is entirely possible that we keep carrying the unexamined burden of the past all our life. That too is possible. Both extremes. It's a choice. If you want to carry something from the past, if you want to remain related to it or identified with it even today, then you have to ask: how does it benefit you? Because it's an expensive decision to make.
You see, the purpose of life is to unburden yourself, is it not?
The purpose of life is to unburden yourself. Get rid of the objects that one has been unconsciously carrying.
Now, towards this purpose; the purpose is unburdening, towards this purpose, if we say, "I want to carry an additional burden, I want to keep carrying an additional burden, keep carrying what is pre-existing from the past," when I fully know that the purpose is to unburden, then that could be a wise choice, but very conditionally, very conditionally.
Because it seems counterintuitive. If I am to unburden myself, why, for the sake of unburdening myself, am I knowingly carrying some burden that I could have kept aside? So it doesn't sound good, but it might still be okay. How? Consider an example. You have eaten some rubbish, as you said, an accidental decision. You landed somewhere, some party, the entire vibes and relationships, and this and that, and they said, "Please, please, please consume more," and now you are feeling very funny inside, right?
That has happened because you took something in. You go to a doctor, right? You would expect that he would relieve you of what is inside. You'll say, "There's a burden here, and this burden is troubling me, and I've come to the doctor to be relieved of the burden," right? But instead, the doctor may say, "No, eat something more." That might sound strange, but that might just be the right thing to do because what he's offering is a medicine. He's saying, "Here is this medicine. Now eat it."
And you could say, "But it is because of eating that I have come to this trouble, and what you are offering me is more to eat. Isn't it nonsensical?" No, it's not nonsensical, provided what you additionally eat is something that will enable you to uneat what you have already eaten. You get this?
The pill goes in, and the food comes out. So yes, you can carry an additional burden, provided you are honestly convinced and you have proof, not just belief, that carrying this burden consciously will help you unburden yourself of a lot of things. So the net effect is positive. Yes. Yes, there is some legacy from the past, an accidental legacy, but I'm choosing to still carry it because I see honestly and clearly that it is going to be useful. Carrying that will enable me to not carry a lot that is otherwise useless. Only in that condition. Do we understand this?
And that also tells us how to have relationships with the past, with various objects, with places, with people.
Be related to someone who helps you be unrelated to nonsense. Relate to something or somebody in a way that will help you clear away a lot of useless relationships. Like we use cleansers on utensils. It's already carrying grease, oil, and other sticky stuff, right? And you don't just start scratching away all of that. It's carrying some material already. You add some more material to it, but it's a special kind of material.
And that's what it has to be a special kind of relationship. It has to be a kind of material that enters this (pointing towards the mind) utensil and clears away what has been sticking since long. And having cleared away what has been sticking since long, it does not itself either stay with all the rubbish, grease, edibles, and carbon gone. What happens to the soap, the cleanser? That too is gone. That is the right relationship.
Whether with memories, past, persons, job, or whatever, it has to be something that comes in and unburdens, not something that comes in and becomes a part of the burden.
Questioner: Pranam Acharya Ji, just now you said that something which would clean the past burden, which adds something new, choose that. But how do we get that understanding or vivek, that what we are choosing will add to the burden or will relieve the burden? How will we know that?
Acharya Prashant: Be honest to your experience. If you meet a person, right? And in the first week itself, the first couple of meetings, you see the person is adding to your burden, that's an experience you are already having. Probe it, explore it, be experimental.
Questioner: Every time we feel it is again a burden.
Acharya Prashant: Then reject it.
Questioner: Rejection doesn't seem easy. It's not that easy. At times we know this is a burden, still we choose. We don't know, why?
Acharya Prashant: Then one has to be sensitive to one's own suffering. Taking the medicine won't seem easy if one has not yet seen one's path reports, right? Honestly encounter your inner diagnosis, and then taking medicines, even the bitter pills will seem very easy.
The problem is the absence of the diagnosis, the absence of the mirror. So we don't know how deeply we are already suffering. We remain unconscious, numb to our own inner state, and then we say, "No, no, I'm troubled, but I'm almost fine. I'm almost fine." And if I'm almost fine, then why do I need to reject this or that? Or, "No doc, I'm almost fine. I don't need to reject sugar or oil or fat or this or that. I don't need to reject it."
It's only when the doctor shows you, fasting 450, two and a half kidneys gone.
Listener: Two and a half!
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, two and a half. Three and a half eyes gone, then you say, "Fine, tell me what do I need to drop. Please suggest to me, what all I need to drop," and then you will very comfortably reject everything.
Questioner: Until then, I lost two and a half kidneys, now what is the use of that advice?
Acharya Prashant: So, go to the doctor in time, that's what. Go to the doctor in time or be with people who love you enough to relieve you, to go to the doctor. Most of the time, we have relationships that want us or rather want to keep us to themselves. Even if you have to go to the doctor, they'll say, "No, no, what's the point? Why do you want to go to the doctor? It's such a romantic evening. Be with me. What will you do with the doctor, by the way? Doctor, he's in his 30s, handsome. Show me the pic. Why do you want to go to the doctor? Be with me."
Be with those who value your welfare more than your company, and then they'll willingly carry you to the doctor.
And if the doctor says, "Leave her alone, she has to be admitted, and you won't get to see her for eight months," the fellow should actually be grateful. Not because you are such a problem, but because the relationship is fine. Getting it?
See, there can be no improvement without an acknowledgment of the need to improve the situation that needs redressal. Please understand, and this might be the most important thing we are saying this evening: we are creatures of conditioning. We get internally acclimatized, which means if you suffer for long, you get habituated to it. You stop feeling it. Though the disease not just remains but actually deepens. It is there, but you find internal ways to cope with it.
That's one of the biggest problems we have, and that too is an evolutionary leftover. We needed to adjust with all kinds of surroundings because we didn't have the power to choose our surroundings. So that inner capacity or elasticity helped us survive. But that is also a great enemy.
If you remain at a place for long, you will become that place. Now, how will you be able to impartially assess that place? You have become that place. The experiencer becomes the regular experience, what you are regularly experiencing. Slowly, you become the same thing, and then you will not find any experience odd at all. You will say, "But this is regular because it is happening daily. So what's there to complain? It's all fine because it's happening daily and it's happening everywhere and to everybody. So there is nothing to complain about."
That's a problem, a great problem that we have. We become our surroundings. We become our experience. We become our past. Now, that could have been good news. Could we totally become our past? That too is not possible because your nature is freedom from experience, freedom from the past, and freedom from whatever is.
So superficially we adjust, and internally we remain hungry, unfulfilled, dissatisfied, and weeping. That's the human condition. Externally adjusted, internally frustrated. Do we see this? So we need company that digs out the inner frustration to the surface. But if you have company like that, you'll kick it away. You'll say, "But I was never frustrated. This fellow is the cause of the frustration."
All the rubbish I had swept under the carpet, now this fellow walks into my room, into my life, and what does he do? He rolls up the carpet and says, "See what is here." See, as if he is born to trouble me. "Get out of my house, troublemaker. If you came here, you should have offered me flowers or something wonderful, and we could have just sat together on the carpet and exchanged those sweet little pretty romantic things." Instead of that, you're tearing away the carpet and telling me, "See, there is so much dirt beneath the carpet." Nobody likes such a person, right? Nobody.
That's why you don't like me.
You see, think of the concentration camps the tranquil is coming from, or think of what we call, what's that particular phenomenon, the Stockholm syndrome. The victims, the kidnapped ones, grow fond of the abusers. That's how we behave.
If somebody manages to abuse you for too long, you may grow to worship that person. You may grow to worship that person, and that's very dangerous because there is something sitting within that can worship only the Truth, but it is being made to worship a tyrant, a whimsical lord. It can worship only the Truth, but you are saying, "No, no, no, please worship this one, else it will curse you."
But why am I being cursed? What's the logic? Where's the justice? No justice, and yet you worship. And because there is no justice, then you say justice will be served in the next birth so that you can relieve your oppressor of the allegation of being unjust. You see, you are defending your oppressor. Do you see this? Yes, you do, but you won't want to admit it.
There is life at the surface, and then there is the entire ocean below the surface. That's who we are. But out of fear, or you could simply say maya, we remain out of touch with ourselves. It seems profitable, convenient. We want to remain on the surface of life and claim all is hunky-dory.
Yeah. How do you do Singh Sahab? All good?
"Yeah. Yeah. All good. All good. Everything is fine."
It doesn't take us a second to come up with this utter lie. "Everything is fine. All good. All is well. Hi. How do you do? Good."
Like, really? I really wish, all were good. But one has to strive for that. That’s not a default. One has to come to that through effort, through patience, through struggle, through determination, through courage, through love. That goodness is not something your biological birth will give you. It has to be earned. And only then can you say, "Yes, I am good."
We are not good, and it's troubling to admit that, so we won't.
