The Language of the Heart || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Acharya Prashant: So, what are we talking about today?
The voice of the Heart. The beautiful voice of the Heart, rather.
‘Beautiful’ — that reminds me of a city. They, just like you, were enamoured with beauty. They wanted to know, what makes the sky beautiful. What is the most beautiful thing in the sky? So the scientists, the astronomers, and the common public alike, they all got into a great debate. They wanted to know, “What is most beautiful about the sky?”
At first rose the voices of the common folks, a few said, “The moon”. Somebody said, “The Sun”. Others talked of the stars and still others talked of the planets. Some of them came up with very nice poems, praising the beauty of the objects that attracted them.
Then came the learned gentry. They started talking of comets, asteroids, and constellations. One star was not enough for them, so they said, “Look! How groups of stars get together to give us vivid images”. And they surely silenced those who were talking merely of one isolated star, here or there.
And then came the really learned ones – the scientists. The ones who had spent years and years with telescopes. They talked of nebulae, black holes, galaxies, proto-planetary disks. They said, “Do you know how beautiful they look? Come, your naked eyes show you nothing! All you see are these gross moons and the Sun. We will show you the real wonders of the sky! See what all keeps happening!”
So, it was very clear that the winner has to be amongst those who were talking of all these wondrous objects, but still, the contenders were many and the winner had to be one. So they decided to take the matter to the wisest man in the city. He was a blind man. He had never seen anything. Still, he was, for some reason, held to be the wisest.
So they went up to him, and they said, “We wanted to know, what is the most beautiful about the sky, about the universe? And we invited opinions and people got into a debate and here we have these learned scholars who have come up with their opinions, the pictures that they have taken, even their telescopes and they all want to prove a point. And we need to have one final judgement. So tell us please, O wise man, what is most beautiful about the sky?”
The wise man said, “I have never had the eyes with which you look at the suns and the moon and the stars, yet I know something of beauty and if you ask me, what is most beautiful about the sky? I know the answer, I simply know the answer. The answer is so obvious. What is most beautiful about the sky, is the sky itself. All the other things that you are talking of are anyway objects and I do not have the eyes to see objects. Only the sky is not an object, and eyes like yours are not needed to look at the sky. So I know the sky. I do not know of the great things that you are talking of. I do not know what a black hole is. I have never figured out a constellation, the rings of Saturn have never been appealing to me. But I know the sky. And there is nothing as beautiful as the sky. In fact, only the sky is beautiful. And if you praise the Sun or the moon and you have no eye for the sky, then you are the one who is blind.”
And does that not happen? When you look skywards, your eye rests on ‘something’ and you try to find beauty in that ‘thing’. You say, “Look at those clouds, what a neat formation.” You say, “See, how full the moon is tonight. Lovely!” You sometimes even do praise the pristine blue of the sky, but never the sky itself. And remember the sky is not really blue. It is what comes between the sky and your eyes that makes it look blue.
I have never really seen anybody captivated by the sheer nothingness , emptiness, immensity, the total void of the sky. Poets have written lovely poems praising the moon, children have often taken stars as their friends, but I’m yet to come across a composition loving the empty sky.
But why are we straying? We were to talk about the Heart today, why are we talking of the sky? We were to talk of the beautiful voice of the Heart.
We only know of voices . So we know of the common voices around us – we know of the sound of the traffic, we know of the common din, we know of the everyday sounds of living, and some of us are so attached or attracted to those voices that they see beauty nowhere else but in them. I have heard people say that they love the voice of their car engine, I have heard people say that they love the voice that comes from a construction site, I have heard people say that they love the voices arising from a group of gossip mongers.
And there are those who claim themselves to be a little more intellectually advanced. They say, “No, no, no, there are better voices, I love the innocent laughter of my kid, I love the way the birds twitter in the morning, I love the sound of the waterfall; I am energized by the sound of thunder. So these are ‘nature lovers’, they are a little more advanced, they say, “No, man-made sounds are not for us. Do not talk to us about sounds of men’s voices, or sounds of hammers and tongs, or machinery or traffic. We love other sounds. Leaves rattling as the wind blow, pines whispering upon the mountain sides.”
And then there are those, who say, “We have gone beyond the intellect, we are spiritual. So we say that there are even more beautiful sounds, why are you talking so much of nature?” So they say that most beautiful sound is the sound of the hymns, the sound of the recitation of shlokas , the sound of Om , or the sound of the morning azan , or the sound of bells from a church. They say, “These are really beautiful sounds. These are best that the ear can hear.” And they are probably right. This is the best that the ear can hear.
But need the most beautiful voice be the one that reaches the ears?
That is the human tragedy, even the highest to us comes only through the mind and the senses. So when we talk of beauty, we only talk of that which looks beautiful to the eyes. When we talk of beautiful sounds, we only talk of that which the ears can hear. All the voices that we can talk of or hear are the voices of the mind. Even the most beautiful conceptions that we have are still ‘conceptions’. It may be a voice consisting of words, it may be a voice of nature, or it may be something so esoteric that it really means nothing in the human language, something like Om , yet it is just voice of the mind. It is not beyond that.
The Heart does not speak in a human language, the Heart does not even utter in a way that the ears can comprehend.
The voice of the Heart is the silence behind all voices and sounds.
If you hear something talking to you in any language, then you must immediately know that it is not the voice of the Heart. If you hear something that your mind can comprehend, in any way, then you must know that it is not the sound of the Heart. It may sound beautiful, it may totally possess you, but remember, what sounds beautiful to you today will not sound beautiful tomorrow. What possesses one man, does not possess another one. Hence whatever you call as “beautiful” is contingent and conditional, it is not the Truth. It will pass away.
The silence of the Heart expresses itself extremely eloquently – it colors all the voices that you can hear. But for silence to fill up everything that you hear, you must first have an ear for silence, rather a Heart for silence. If you look skywards, and you are only searching for ‘things’ then you will surely miss the sky.
But when you are connected to the vastness of the sky then suddenly the stars and the planets acquire a different meaning all together. Objectively, it is the same star, but it would mean and look totally different when something in you is deeply aware of the sky that contains it, the sky that gave birth to it and the sky in which it will ultimately dissolve. The sky that was the same before the coming of the star, the sky that is untouched by the presence of the star and the sky that will just be watching the day the star disappears, disappears into itself.
So that leaves us probably a little confused. Firstly, we said that beauty lies in no object, in no voice, beauty lies in the immense void and the great silence. And then we said that the silence can fill up all the words, the immense emptiness can touch and sanctify all the objects contained in it.
So does beauty lie in objects or not?
Is there a difference between the common place voices that we hear and a hearing which has been touched by silence?
Do voices change, upon being touched by silence?
Does hearing change upon being touched by silence?
Yes, it does.
The mind knows only transactional language. If the mind is not connected to the Heart, all you will hear is the language of ‘give and take ’. And ‘give and take’ is the same as fear and greed. ‘Take’ is greed and ‘give’ is fear. The mind talks the language of a business man, it keeps calculating – what am I getting? What am I learning?
The objects it might be seeking may be different. Somebody is seeking property, somebody is seeking recognition, somebody is seeking salvation, yet the mind is just looking after its own interests. And the man who is seeking property for himself is not very different from the man who is seeking enlightenment for himself. That is the language of the mind, which is not in touch with the Heart. It will keep on asking for security, its words will be tainted by doubts and suspicion. It will analyse a lot and it speaks a lot.
And then there is the voice of the Heart. Ah! ‘Voice’ of the Heart? We said that the Heart has no ‘voice’, we said that the Heart speaks only in silence , so from where has this voice of the heart come? (Smilingly)
But we have already covered it in the previous chapter, have we not? The heart has no voice, its voice is silence, but that silence can color all voices. It can fill up all voices. It can ring true in all voices. So when silence speaks through words, so when the Heart speaks through mind, then prose becomes poetry and poetry becomes Gita. The Gita has no special words. All the words that are there in a Gita , or an Upanishad , or the Bible, are words of everyday parlance. They can be found in the dictionary. There are no new or original words there. Every single word that is there in the Upanishad is also a word that can be used by the layman, for his everyday transactions, even to fulfill his carnal desires. But something has touched those words. When those words appear in an Upanishad they have been purified, made pious, sanctified by a certain special touch.
Krishna is speaking, and he is speaking in a language that so many others also know. It is Sanskrit and there would have been thousands, if not millions who knew Sanskrit . Surely at least Arjun knows Sanskrit because he is being communicated to in that language. And Sanskrit is just a language, an ordinary language like so many other languages. Ancient, but then so many other languages are also ancient.
There is something special about the words of a seer, or the words of Krishna . They are appearing in a man-made language. And all words will be man-made. There are no ‘words’ that dissent from the heavens. But even though the words are man-made, yet, it is the Silence that is talking. Even though they are being uttered from the mouth and appear like coming from the mind, yet they are really originating from the Heart. That is the language of the Heart.
Now the same mind that was talking fear, doubt, suspicion and insecurity starts talking of something abstract, something mystical, something of the beyond, something a little unreasonable. This confounds the listener. On one hand, he cannot analyse the language of the Heart, because it is not really a language. Had it been a language, he could have totally dissected it.
Mind can know only that which is mind-made. Man can have complete mastery over everything that is man-made. But unfortunately for the mind, what is the most important, is not really made by mind. So there the mind struggles and feels frustrated. Certain words are coming to you, you cannot really make sense of them. You cannot really apply logic to them. They appear a little unreasonable and yet they calm you down. Yet you want to listen to them again and again and you feel like a fool for wanting to listen to them again. Something calls and you are deeply attracted, you cannot resist the invitation. And then you pause and ask yourself, “What am I doing and where am I going? What beckons me? Why am I acting like an idiot? Why am I investing my time? What will be the return? Am I going to get anything?”
A voice is coming to you, and you feel like just closing your eyes just listening and listening. At the same time the mind doesn’t want that, it is trembling, it is cautioning you, “No! Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t allow yourself to be attentive, remain a little disturbed, remain a little fidgety.” Because if you remain still for two minutes, you’ll have to remain still your entire life. And entire life is an eternity.
That’s the language of the Heart – the mind doesn’t really like it; the mind really likes it. The mind hates it; the mind cannot live without it. The mind would want it to disappear; the mind would disappear in its want. The mind would give anything to get rid of it; the mind would get rid of itself and anything else to get to that voice. That is the voice of the Heart.
We are accustomed to listening only to the voices of the mind and I assure you all, at least most of what you call as “feelings of the Heart”, “voices of the Heart”, “callings of the Self”, are nothing but constructs of the mind. That is one sure way to miss the Heart – have a pseudo Heart. That is one sure way to miss the Truth – have a false one, camouflaging as the Truth.
Because we live in the mind, because we are identified with the mind, so for us, the way to the Heart goes via the mind. We will have to attentively listen to all the voices around us and within us – they are all voices of the mind. We will have to attentively listen to them and find them for what they are – superficial and artificial. Useful, in a sense of business, civilization, transaction, but useless when it comes to love and fulfillment.
Would you do that?
When so much is coming to you every day, every moment, in all sensory forms – visual, oral, the written word, would you pay attention to it and ask yourself, “Is it coming from the mind, or has it been touched by the Heart?” And I need not advise you on what next to do. (Smilingly)
The mind despises itself so much that when it discovers that what is coming to it is its own fabrication, then it does not like what is coming to it.
But I need not assert that in advance. You’ll find that, experience that on your own. Pay attention to whatever you see, whatever you hear. Try to locate its origin. And Listening and locating the origin are not two different activities. In fact, listening itself is not an activity. Just listen. Listen as you eat, listen as you breathe, listen as you hear, listen as you walk, and most importantly, listen as you talk. Listen to yourself and then ask, “Am I motivated by an object? Have the stars become too important for me? Am I missing the Sky? Am I connected to the ‘little people’ sitting in front of me? Or am I connected to an immensity that is speaking through me?” Ask.
The mind speaks too much. And when the mind stops speaking then the mind really speaks. The one who has attained to silence, he really starts speaking. Others are just babbling, we cannot call that ‘speech’. Silence makes you really talk . Otherwise, you can keep gossiping.
So what did the people say, when the blind man announced his judgement? Yes? (Smilingly) You are the people of the city. You are the star-gazers, you love the star dust. And the blind man is saying, “The sky is more beautiful than all the Suns and moons put together”.
That disappoints right? Here is somebody who has been looking at his lover and calling her the moon, and the blind man, look at his audacity, he is a blind man; he never has seen the moon. And such disregard he has for the moon, he is saying, “The moon means nothing. By implication – you do not know whom to love. You are needlessly calling this woman as the ‘moon’, and as the most beautiful.”
This woman might surely be as beautiful as the moon, but who says the moon is beautiful? Oh yes, she is the moon. And the moon means nothing to those who know Real beauty. And the moon means everything when you know that the moon is the sky. When the moon is just the moon, then you are just a body-lover. When the moon is the sky, then you have fallen in love with that which is truly lovable.
Yes?
Listener 1: Sir, you said that this very often happens with us that we take the voice of the mind as the voice of the Heart. I have seen this happening repeatedly with me that those ideas, those thoughts that would have been truly of some help to me, are discarded by me, thinking that they are worthless because my mind is full of so many thoughts. So, in this crowd of thoughts, the gems really get discarded. So how do I identify? Is there a particular method? Or will the identification become clearer and clearer as the crowd will become less? Which is the way?
Speaker: You do not need to identify, just looking is sufficient. Because any method or any criteria that you will use to identify will again be mind-made. Just looking is sufficient. In that sharp looking is the Truth. I am saying, you do not look to discover the Truth, the looking itself is the Truth. Without the Truth, you cannot look. So just look at what you are seeing, just pay attention to what you are hearing and that attention magically tells you what is false. How? You need not bother.
But we bother, because we want to keep the process under our control. We say, “I should know what the method to know the false is”. You know what you will do, if I give you a method? You will adjust the method to suit your needs. You will tamper with the process to come to a pre-determined result. Something really attracts you, now you want to investigate it, at the same time you want to declare it as something true. Something is really attracting you, you can’t afford to call it false, right? Its appearance is lucrative; you cannot afford to call it false. But for the sake of morality, for the sake of your self-image, you also want to tell yourself that what is attracting you is true. So you will pass it under the scanner. You will test it with your method. But you will modify the test so that the result is as per your wish. This is the whole reason why we want methods, because methods give us a certain authority over the Truth.
Do not ask for a method, the only authority is Truth itself.
Just look. And then let the unknowable decide for you.
There is a knowledge that comes from the unknowable. You cannot know from where the knowledge is coming but the knowledge is coming, it’s a strange thing. He is giving you knowledge, yet there can be no knowledge of Him. Rely only on such knowledge. Rely only on that which no one has given you.
Take only when there is no giver. Give only when there is no taker. *Love only when there is no lover .*
That is so simple. Why do you complicate matters?
(Smilingly) Watch only when there is nothing to watch. Watch only when there is no watcher either. Listen only when there is no speaker either, why say only listener?
If you see that ‘someone’ is talking, then it is not worth spending your time there. And if you find that ‘someone’ is listening, then it is not worth wasting the time of the speaker.
Walk only when there is no road, reach only when there is no destination.
It’s so easy.
Listener 1: Sir, it’s paradoxical. Not easy. Because we said that just that simple looking would bring it. It seems that we don’t have to get into the crowd, we just have to look very sharply at it, but the point is that the very fact that the crowd exists, that the mind is running, does not allow the looking to happen. This is again a paradox.
Speaker: When I say that you have to ‘look very sharply’ at something that does not mean that you have to have some extra qualification in ‘looking’.
‘Looking sharply’ means looking simply and innocently.
The Truth has no intention of obfuscating itself. It does not want to hide somewhere. If you look at it simply, directly, it is there. You just have to look at it simply and not have concepts, nothing special is needed. No method, no going inwards, nothing. Our friend sitting here is sitting with his eyes closed. He probably does not want to look at something. Now, why should it not be possible to keep your eyes open and yet look at nothing? Why should it not be possible? How long will you keep your eyes closed?
Keep your eyes open and yet look at nothing in particular. And when you are looking at nothing in particular, then it is the Total that you see. Because you think it to be difficult you have made it difficult for yourself. It is nothing but a trap that you have dreamt for yourself. It is totally self-made, self-made and false, like a dream.
It is possible to be here with everybody, well connected to them, relating to them in a healthy way and yet be one with yourself. It does not require some special art. You don’t have to be trained in it. It is your intrinsic nature. Nobody needs to be trained in his nature.
If there is something except your nature that you are somehow attached to – just simply look at it. The look has a great power. That ‘look’ is called by various names, it is called as self-enquiry, it is called as attentiveness, it is even called as sadhna . But the more names you give to it, the more complicated you make it appear. And somehow, it is in the interest of falseness to remain complicated, to make it appear as if the matter is greatly nuanced. And that there is some hidden, deep, mysterious and dangerous secret behind it. The simple look exposes all falsenessess. And this is one mark of falseness, it does not like simplicity. It likes complexity. So it might be a very petty matter but falseness would present it as something very tremendous and very complex. Somebody is jealous of somebody else and he is talking to the man he is jealous of, and he is talking of a thousand things – this and that. “You know, last year you wrote that book and in that book you presented that certain theory and that theory is beautiful but there are some parts of the theory that do not match with what somebody else has said in some other book.” He will make the matter sound so complicated – “Oh my God! So it is about some academic thing. He has read his book and he has compared the book with something else and he is finding some mismatch, some discrepancy.” The simple matter is that he is jealous. But he will not come up and say, “You know what, I am jealous.”
The man is craving for the woman’s body or the woman is craving for the man’s body but an entire web of illusions will be woven. Long winding stories. “You know what, I cannot relate simply to you because four years back, you ate my strawberry and I suspect that six months back you were the one who ran away with my hairpin. And also that mole on your forehead, reminds me of my dead pig. And the dead pig reminds me of my great grandfather and that makes me have doubts upon my own identity.” Fantastic tales. “I had a dream that your mother is a member of the international witches association. And when I was a kid, my left ear lobe was bitten by a witch. You see this mark here.” And when he comes close to her to look at her earlobe, she grabs him. Why not simply say that I am dying to have some sex? But that is the hallmark of falseness – there is nothing simple about it. It thrives on complications and whenever you meet somebody who is talking a very complicated language, you must understand, he has something to hide. Otherwise there is no need to talk in such a convoluted way. Things are simple. We have lost all touch with directness. We have become used to matters looking tortuous. Like lanes of an old city, an intersect that creates a network, a mesh, leading nowhere.
Even now, you are trying to penetrate very deeply and you are working very hard at it. It is like the apple is kept in front of you and you are running very-very hard to get it, all around. Or that the target is right there, at an arm’s length but you are throwing the dart so hard that you are overshooting the target, over reaching it. Don’t try so hard. Sitting where you are, it is reachable. In fact it is reachable only sitting where you are. If you run around, if you seek, if chase and grasp, you miss it.
It is here. It is simple. Don’t bother yourself. Trust and relax.
Yes?
Listener 2: Sir, what we get from our senses is what creates thoughts in our mind. It just creates unrest. Uselessly. One looks at certain things and a vicious circle of thoughts gets created. There are a lot of places where it is said that one needs to control their senses. Sir, how to live with a body that operates on senses?
Speaker: The body will operate on senses, and let the body operate on senses. Had you been just this carnal body then you won’t be asking this question. Is there anything in the body that wants Peace? Is there anything in the body that wants Love? Show me which part of your body longs for Freedom? Show me. The body only wants what the body wants – physical survival, basic comfort, food, nothing else. Is the body asking this question? Yes? Would you ask this question when you are asleep, the body is still very much the same.
Of course, the question is being expressed through the body. Body-lessly there is no ‘you’, as you know yourself and hence there would be no question. But surely this question is not arising from the body. Or is your little finger hungry for Love, is it? Some tooth that wants Joy? Then you should be very careful while clipping your nails, who knows, a precious relationship might be hacked down. If the body loves, then surely love resides somewhere in the body. Haircuts would be dangerous. Along with the hair, you lost your lover. (Smilingly) That happens sometimes, but let’s not talk about that. Lovers these days are very particular about hair, in various parts of the body.
So let the body do, what the body would do. There is no problem that you are facing. Because anyway there is more to you than the body. You surely, very definitely, obviously are beyond the limitations of your body. Let the body keep doing what it wants to do. You stay firm in what you are.
And magically, when you remain firmly seated in what you are then the body also attains to a certain harmony. Your breath, your heartbeat, your gait, your voice – all become a little musical. But you need not bother about that, otherwise you will start ‘trying’ for that music. That music is not something that you achieve. When you are what you are, everything else rests in its proper place. You won’t even know why your face is shining. Others may come and tell you, there is something about you. Your eyes are looking different these days. They will not know that it is nothing about the eyes, the eyes are just flesh. It is something behind the eyes that is making them shine. Behind the eyes lies your essence. Be firmly with that. Then you don’t need eyeliners, you also don’t need lip gloss.
Listener 3: Sir, in our previous sessions we talked about fear and living fearlessly, so what is the relationship between being able to live fearlessly and listening to the call of the Heart?
Speaker: Unless you are with the Heart, you cannot look at fear. You will remain a slave to fear but never be able to look at fear in the eye. Have you seen such slaves? They have never really seen the master whose command they are obeying. They are too small to be introduced to the master. The master lives somewhere in his high mansion, and the slaves are laboring in the fields and if the slaves are told that today, that the master will come, then they go and hide in some hole; they dare not stand in front of the master, they are so petty and afraid. Such are we. Fear lords over us, but it is such a dominating and overwhelming master that we never really come face to face with it. We don’t even look at it from a distance.
We pray that the master stays away because if the master is so powerful and so exploitative even when he is away, god knows what will happen if he comes right in front. He may sentence us to death, so we don’t really want to confront the master. Let the master stay away.
That is our situation.
But when you are connected to the Heart then for the first time, you get the guts to come face to face with this master. You say, “Who is this one who is ruling my life? Who is writing my script? I want to see his face.” And when you look at his face, his face is all hollow. He himself is sick and diseased, he has no life of his own. He is thriving on the energy that you provide to him. Such is his dependency. In fact, he is called a “great master” only because and only as long as he stays away. It is this distance that protects him. You come close and his weakness, his vulnerability, his non-existence really – are all exposed.
But you cannot come close to him. Unless you are You. Unless you learn to have a little Faith, unless you are a little assured. You are trembling so much, you can’t pay attention. You know like a small animal, a baby of an animal that has been scared by some loud and unknown sound – it is shivering and crying. In such a situation, obviously, it cannot pay attention. You have to first of all, calm it down. Make it feel relaxed, little safe.
You must also learn to feel safe. You must feel assured of your security. Don’t give energy to thoughts that make you feel small, petty, vulnerable, exposed, and insecure. Things are good. Alright. You are not in an alien land. This is your home, don’t tremble so much. Stretch your arms and feel the earth. See it is not really shaking, it is holding you in her lap. Nobody is conspiring against you. There is no need to fear. There is no need to run helter-skelter for security. There is no need to hate yourself so much.
There is no need to ‘try’ to listen to me. There is no need to ‘try’ to infer the meaning of what I am saying. There is no meaning here. I am not saying something very deep, there is no mystery here, nothing is hidden, nothing is away. You are needlessly carrying a bundle of pain within you. It’s just a load. You can quietly drop it. As you go back, today, just leave it here. As they put it in the ‘lost and found’ section, pretend that it is not yours. And don’t attach a little slip to it, carrying your name. It came to you from nowhere, leave it here, for nobody.
Leave it here, you will lose some weight. A lot of weight. Try health for once, you will feel good. Try being simple, you’ll feel relieved. Try opening up, you’ll feel relaxed. Why are you tormenting yourself?
Yes?
Listener 3: Sir, this system that is all around. It appears the someday, somebody saw it very directly but then he also saw all these people running around to make an alternative to existence, an alternative to all that which is anyway available. Sir, the whole system is so vulnerable that if one looks at it clearly one sees its falseness, but since childhood there has been so much propaganda that one should be a part of this system and one should protect it, only then will one be safe.
Speaker: You know, there are different levels of looking at the world. There is a totally unconscious mind that looks at the world and says, “Well, this is the world. It has always been like this. I don’t see anything that is wrong here.” In fact, it is so unconscious it does not even say this much. It says, “Yes this is the world, what about it?” Then there are those who look at the world, perceive a certain disease, a certain falseness about it. But they justify it, they say, “Yes, the world is not a perfect system, but then nothing is perfect and in this imperfection, lie a lot of positives. And if it is a little imperfect, then let us try to improve it.” These are the apologists. And then there are the people who come up with things like what you just said, they perceive the falseness of the world and lament it. They want to reason out why the world is such a sick place. They feel sad and disappointed. Even this third category of people is not going to become free of the world because deeply somewhere it is wishing that things were different. It has some stake in the world. It is trying to analyse why things are in a particular way. Nothing will come out of this analysis.
You can never figure out the source of illusion. You will never reach to the roots of it. You can only be at your own roots. That is sufficient.
So there is a fourth class of people, a fourth type of mind, a fourth level of consciousness – when it looks at falseness it does not even regret it or lament it, it smiles. It says, “Yes, it is like this.” This fourth class looks rather similar to the first class. The first class, the first level, the unconscious people, they too say, “Yes, this is the world. What about it?” and the highest level also says, “Yes, this is the world. It is like this. It is just like this. Had it not been like this, it would not have been called ‘the world’.”
If you are regretting the state of the world then you need to ask yourself, what stakes do I have here? Because you cannot regret something to which your self-interest is not attached. Surely, the interests of the ego are being hurt somewhere. Surely, in this expression of sorrow, lies a desire for continuation. You will not allow the world to come to an end. But when you just look at it and you say, “*Yes, this is it.*” That is the moment when you have stopped giving your energy to the world and then it comes to an end. You look at it and you have nothing to do with it. You say, “Yes, yes this is the way it is.” That’s when the disease comes to an end. What remains is pure health.
Even otherwise, if you look at all the problems of the world, are they not man-made? The energy that the various ideologies and their conflicts carry, even the energy that has accumulated in the atmosphere and in the seas and is showing up as climate change, is it not the energy of man?
Leave the world. Don’t regret its state. Don’t try to improve it. Don’t strive for a better future. All those are nice sounding social phrases – “Let’s create a better future”. “Let’s leave a better Earth for our kids.” But that is exactly the kind of mind that has brought this Earth to the state where it is now.
What do you think, these are the first people who are trying to create a better future? What do you think, these are the first people who have come up with the magnanimous thought of leaving a better planet for the next generation? That’s what all previous generations have been saying. It is not as if wisdom has suddenly dawned upon us in the 21st century. People have always been saying this – “Let’s create better cities, better monuments, better systems, better ideologies” and the net result of all that is what you see around you and what you are regretting right now.
Don’t try to improve affairs. Just stop participating.
Your non-participation is the best gift you can give to yourself and to the world.
Incidentally, this is a very healthy and a very active non-participation. This is not the non-participation of indifference. It is the non-participation of Love – “I love you so much that I cannot participate in what you are doing. I love you so much that I will have to do everything that will bring you to your health and if that means that I have to quarantine you, or myself, I’ll do that. If that means that we have to stay away, I am prepared for that.”
Please realize that the world has no life, rather, the problems of the world have no life of their own. They are living on an artificial, borrowed energy and that energy is your energy. Stop providing that energy, that’s all that you need.
(Silence)
Nothing to say to the blind man? (Smilingly) He’s insisting that the stars are not special at all.
Listener 4: Sir, if we start listening to the language of the Heart, don’t you think that life will be complicated for us?
Speaker: No, the language of the Heart is not about what you ‘feel’ and it does not come with an ‘if’. If it comes with an ‘if’, and if it has something to do with ‘your’ feelings, it is just the language of the mind. And mind necessarily gives you complications, so your doubt is in place. People often keep calling the various versions of the language of their mind as the language of the Heart. Feelings are all frozen conditioning. Just because you ‘appear’ emotional, does not mean that you are in the Truth.
We have this great tendency to equate emotions with Truthfulness. In fact, there is nothing that obfuscates the Truth more than emotions. When your eyes are all welled-up, you can’t even look at the fly in front of you, how will you see the Truth?
It’s a common, common, common misconception. “If I am weeping, kindly give me a little more consideration, my tears bear testimony to my piousness.” That is why they use so much of glycerin in the movies. Especially women, when they have to clinch a deal or seal some matter, they start raining in various ways.
I am not speaking out of ‘feeling’, you too are not listening with some feeling. If there are people here, who are carrying feelings, they will not listen.
But there is another concept which says that if you don’t have feelings, then there is something missing in your ‘humanness’. You must ‘feel’ a lot and that’s why these people keep ‘feeling-up’ other people and then you want to send them to jail. What was his offence? “He was feeling me up.” But that’s what your entire education has taught him – ‘Feeling is a proof of virtuosity’. He was just trying to show that he is virtuous.
Spirituality is not so touchy-feely.
Simple innocence. Like a child looking in wonderment. This is not really ‘feeling’. At least not in the sense that you use the word ‘feeling’. I repeat: Our feelings are just energetic movements of the mind. A little bit of movement – that is called thought. A lot of movement – that is called emotion.
If it’s just a breeze, you call it ‘thought’. It becomes a cyclone and it starts raining, you call it ‘emotion’. Have you seen how, like a cyclone, your mind whirls? The cyclone also has something in its center that is called the ‘eye’ of the cyclone and there is a lot of rain.
Spirituality is about a calm mind, not about having a cyclone in the mind.
Alright, so the blind man has seen something and we agree that one requires to be blind to see . Good.
