The One Thing You Must Never Lose

Acharya Prashant

12 min
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The One Thing You Must Never Lose

Acharya Prashant: Chandogya Upanishad — Chapter 3, part 11, verses 2 and 3:

न वै तत्र न निम्लोच नोदियाय कदाचन । देवास्तेनाहंसत्येन मा विराधिषि ब्रह्मणेति ॥ ३.११.२ ॥

na vai tatra na nimloca nodiyāya kadācana | devāstenāhaṃsatyena mā virādhiṣi Brahmaṇeti || 3.11.2 ||

Never does this happen there; never did the sun set there nor did it rise. Oh Gods, by this, by my assertion of the Truth may I not fall from Brahm . ~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.11.2

न ह वा अस्मा उदेति न निम्लोचति सकृद्दिवा हैवास्मै भवति य एतामेवं ब्रह्मोपनिषदं वेद ॥ ३.११.३ ॥

na ha vā asmā udeti na nimlocati sakṛddivā haivāsmai bhavati ya etāmevaṃ Brahmopaniṣadaṃ veda || 3.11.3 ||

Verily, for him, the sun neither rises nor sets. He who thus knows this secret of the Vedas, for him, there is perpetual day. ~ Chandogya Upanishad 3.11.3

The sun neither rises nor sets, when you have core wisdom there is perpetual day. Let me realize this and not fall from Brahm . This is what the verses are asking for, they are saying this, it is in fact a prayer. There is a realization and there is a wish.

What is the realization? The realization is, all sunrises and sunsets belong to a certain level of existence. Above that is Brahm . Therefore, the reference to falling from Brahm .

When you fall from Brahm , these things become very material to you, very important—what comes, what goes, what takes birth or dies, all the entries and exits, the waxing and waning of life—it is then that life itself with all its dualities becomes something very important to you. That is what you start taking centrally—What has been gained? What has been lost? What is coming up? What's going down? When these things happen, it's a fall from Brahm . For the knower, these things become immaterial, immaterial in the sense that he learns to accord them their right place. Obviously, that's what the eyes see, obviously, that’s what this biological apparatus that gives rise to the mind is configured to perceive.

There is the gate; somebody comes in, somebody goes out. That's what this whole physical configuration is designed to experience, and that experience will be there. The experiencer has to be taught to give the right place to that experience. That experience is not the core of life, that experience is not the essence of life. The essence of life is Brahm . Brahm is a certain lack of sureness, Brahm is absolute sureness. You know, when anything attains its pinnacle, its peak, it kind of reverses and explodes and disappears. When lack of sureness attains its maxima, when lack of sureness attains its peak then you are absolutely sure. That's what Brahm is.

So, these things keep happening. You do not invest any sureness in them. You look at them as you look at a movie screen, as you look at all the tricks being doled out by a magician on the podium. You look at those tricks. You bought tickets for the magic show, you didn't buy tickets for the reality show. You very well knew in advance it is unreal and you still watch it. That's how the Brahm vidya is. He’s sitting, he is watching, knowing fully well it is false, he is still there knowing fully well it is false. He is still engaged knowing fully well it doesn't mean a thing and because he knows that it doesn't mean a thing, therefore there is a great pure quality to his engagement.

He enjoys magic as magic. There’s a great difference here—to be involved in magic as magic versus being engaged with magic as a reality. It is there, I'll be engaged with it but I also know that beyond a point it is not there. That point exists within me. Within me, there is a point beyond which there is no world. I am the world, the world is me, the world penetrates me till a point and then there is something where there is no world, the world cannot reach there, the world cannot touch that place. No sun, no moon rises there. Neither sunlight nor moonlight nothing illuminates that place. That place is Brahm . That place is me, that place is also called Ātma .

This is not just concepts being dished out. You have to understand where all of this comes from. This can come only from a very determined individual, a person with a great sense of dignity. Somebody who doesn't like being made a fool of, somebody who just doesn't enjoy being cheated and somebody who has no taste for slavery. Somebody who loves freedom more than loves life, somebody who is prepared to die for understanding, somebody who is not agreeable to living at the whims of capricious life circumstances.

That kind of a mind that loves dignity so much, that loves freedom so much and knows fully well that if one is dependent on the world, then dignity and freedom are a far cry. Only such a mind would say, “I am and I am beyond the world. No sun, no moon, no planet, no person, no thought, no feeling, no emotion; I am beyond, beyond, and beyond.” That beyondness is called Brahm .

I have to be beyond all that because, in the middle of all that, being limited by all that, there is no dignity. And I am a human being and my core cries for dignity. I can't be a plaything. I can't be toyed around. I am not born to be a slave. I can’t be a slave to circumstances. Who is the sun to dictate me? You understand what the sun means? Natural forces. The sun is the supplier of all the energy on this planet, including the energy that you have in your body. Why do I have to depend on prakṛti ? There has to be something in me that's not dependent on the sun outside of me and the borrowed energy inside of me. Who are you? What energy will you have if there is no sun? I don't want to feel so helpless, so dependent, but remaining a body, that's who I am—a hapless, dependent person. Therefore, I take the extreme decision. I declare that if being a body is being enslaved, I choose not to be the body.

How do I make that choice? By refusing to surrender to bodily impulses. That's how I deny the world control over me. The world controls me through my own body. I won't admit that. I don't like that. In some sense, it's just a matter of personal choice. I don't like that.

We keep talking of so many likes and dislikes, no? “I don't like this, I don't like that...” there is just one thing that you must dislike—bondages; there's just one thing you must like—liberation, freedom. And from this core like and core dislike which has been called as your nature, not your physical nature, your real nature, all your other likes and dislikes and decisions must flow.

You are fully entitled to go for that, leave that, accept this, reject that. First of all, reject bondages. Reject bondages and then from that rejection if other rejections follow, that’s auspicious. But on the contrary, if you have not rejected bondages and still you fool around as somebody big exercising his right to dislike so many things, it's just very pompous and empty you know. “Oh, I don't like sugar in my tea; I'm very particular about that, you know, I dislike that”. You have never said ‘no’ to slavery, what's the point in saying ‘no’ to sugar? And there is so much fervour and energy in your emphatic ‘no’ to sugar. I am not advocating sugar here, please!

But we are very clear and emphatic about so many of our likes and dislikes, it's just that there is no emphasis, no verve, no life, when it comes to saying ‘no’ in the critical moments, in the critical places in life. There, we don't have a stand at all. There, we do not even know that it is possible to say ‘no’. Why? Because when that decision was to be made, we were not even awake. How can you even say, ‘no’? How can you even say, ‘yes’? You're not even awake, like being captured in one’s sleep.

So, think of a person being arrested when he's asleep. He cannot say ‘no’ to his arrest. He cannot even say ‘yes’ to his arrest. Think of a person being wedded while asleep; can he say ‘no’ to the wedding? Can he say ‘yes’ to the marriage? That's how we are. To all the critical things, we are simply asleep. We say neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’, we are indifferent. We do not even know that the matter exists.

We cannot even be accused of making the wrong choice. Why can't we be accused of even making the wrong choice? Because for us, the choice never existed in the first place. Things just happened, there is no choice. So, how can you allege that the fellow made a wrong choice? He didn't see any choice. He was asleep, where is the choice? But in all the trivial matters, we very vigorously exercise our choices.

You are very particular. “This is my favourite airline; I fly only Luftansa; I like to wear blue, and my particular wavelength of blue, not shade. No! Angstrom. You see, I'm very choosy. My flesh should have that specific tenderness. It should have been boiled for exactly thirty-nine minutes and thirteen seconds. I'm very choosy, you see!”

Where the choice is really meaningful, there we are asleep. There, we don't even see that a choice exists and needs to be made. These verses are prayer towards being indifferent to all the meaningless choices and towards being committed to the one right choice that matters; all the other things, I don't care too much about.

“The sambar is too hot for me.” It's okay, doesn't matter so much. “The room is too cold for me.” I’ll somehow manage, doesn't matter.

The room partner will corrupt you. I would rather sleep on the street and be frozen to death. That's the choice I must make. It's not the temperature in the room that matters so much to me but the room partner is a choice that I want to make with much deliberation. That's a choice that mazes the world. That's the choice being made here.

“Kindly give me the strength to ignore all the little things. Kindly enable me to be dismissive of all trivia. Kindly allow me to conserve my energy only for that which matters. Allow me to let the world have all the victories over me except the one, final one; the one that matters. I don't want to console and entertain myself thinking that the world can be won.”

As far as physical existence goes, the world will always be the winner. But there is one victory I’ll always deny to the world, that one victory is called Brahm . That one thing I'll never allow the world to have. The world will have everything; I will have Brahm . And having lost a million times to the world, that will be my final victory. That’s one thing I never want to forfeit and therefore, the words—‘May I not fall from *Brahm*’.

“May I fall from everything, may I lose everything, may I come a cropper in all affairs of life, but in this one thing, I pray I do not fail. With all my imperfections, let me remain firmly devoted to perfection. Imperfections will have their victories, in the sense that they will continue to exist irrespective of my utmost efforts. I will never be able to say I have won over my imperfections, but let me never drop my devotion to perfection to the perfect one. That's Brahm That's the one thing I never want to lose. And somehow if I can win that one particular front, the war is won. And if I win everything and lose on this particular front, then all my victories amount to nothing.”

This is human dignity talking. This is the only glory possible in the dire murk of human circumstance. We are soil. You know, we call human excreta as night soil. We are excreta! How then to have some dignity? This is the quest for dignity!

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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