Acharya Prashant: Everybody in his own personal way is seeking fulfillment and that is love. If you are young you may seek fulfillment in somebody's body, if you are middle-aged you may seek fulfillment in wealth and prestige, if you are old you may seek fulfillment in security and property but mind is anyway always seeking fulfillment in his personal way according to his place, time, condition and all these things. Getting it?
So, the matter appears like closing here. We are anyway lovers and always so. So why discuss further? Not quite. The matter doesn’t close here, the matter in fact begins here. Now we can talk. All this was just the background to the real thing.
You see yes, we want fulfillment. That’s what our eyes are always looking for. Where is that which can fulfill me? It is as if man is born to seek fulfillment. We are always in hope. Right till our last breath. Where is that which will fulfill me? But as we said we seek fulfillment in our personal ways. Ah! That’s a bit let down. We do not seek fulfillment absolute; we seek fulfillment as we define it. Now the element of the personal comes in a big way. We do not seek that which will really fulfill us. We seek that which we think will fulfill us and that’s a huge difference. Appreciate that difference, please. Like a little kid. He is thirsty and he thinks that a bottle of any random fluid, liquid kept on the floor would quench his thirst, and he goes and sips a little. Obviously, when he sips a little, he realizes that this is not what he is looking for, and what he has just sipped in might even hurt him. But having had that experience he doesn’t stop; he says if not this then somewhere else is that which will fulfill me. When he goes to another room, finds another something that he thinks would fulfill him. And has another experience and this experience falls equally short and with another disappointment he goes on to try something else, keeps trying all these things. When nothing else works he starts sucking his own thumb, and when he is tired with the thumb of the hand then he tries his ingenuity and uses the toe.
So, the thumb, then the toe all these continue till the mother says, "Too much nonsense is happening and this bugger is now going to seriously hurt himself. And I have to now show up!" Mother either shows up on her own or the kid gets so fed up with his experimentation that he starts wailing, and then the mother says, “Fine I am coming, and before I come you must do what you want to do. Otherwise, you will not accept what I give you. Maybe boiled water is good for you. You were feverish till two days back and you must have water that is a little warm but you do not like warm water, and if I just give warm water to you, you throw it away. So, it is important that first, you struggle a little. And then when I’ll give you warm water you will gladly take it.” Is that not so? Even kids think of themselves as somebody. We are born like that. It’s not just about the society that conditions us. We are born like that. The kid wants to have reasonably cold water and that cold water gave him a cold so the doctor has suggested warm water. The kid would have no warm water. Bring warm water to him, dismisses it. So, he must try and experiment with it. Get hurt a little, and the mother is watching. The kid is demonstrating the usual worldly process of love. What the kid is demonstrating is how even adults move through the maze of love. You love this, you love this, you love this… and you keep getting hurt and you keep getting disappointed but you never lose your hope and you are sure that your next marriage will be greatly successful. Or you would find fulfillment in the next job, or in the next ideology, or in spirituality. Even spirituality is just ideology to most people.
So, you could have been this, that, Marxist and capitalist and then you turn a Spiritualist. The kid is trying a lot of things including the Gods, the God bottle, "Maybe this would quench me." He is prepared to try the God bottle but not call the mother. Because as long as you are trying something there is perverse satisfaction, “I am trying something. If I will gain fulfillment it would be through my personal route.” That raises a doubt. Do we really want fulfillment or do we want aggrandization of the person? It's like saying I made I thirsty but at least I have the satisfaction that I died thirsty trying on my own and that’s a big satisfaction. Common experience proves that.
People say, “leave me alone. I’ll try, get hit, get hurt but at least I will know that I have my personal freedom.” They say not so? “My personal freedom is bigger than the absolute truth.”
Man, unfortunately, has been blessed with this personal freedom. Man is a creature who has options. You always have a choice. That choice is available neither to material nor to plants not even to animals. Man has that choice. A choice is to either seek fulfillment in your own limited, personal way or simply go to fulfillment itself. A lover you always are. The question is what is the quality of your love and what is at the center of your love.
At the center of your love could be fulfillment and then you are always driven towards nothing but pure fulfillment. You say, “Everything else can be negotiated, compromised. All I want is fulfillment. In the process of getting fulfillment if the personal self, the ‘I’ is battered, bruised, destroyed so be it. I don’t bother.” And there are other lovers who are unfortunately in great abundance who keep themselves at the center of their love. They want fulfillment but they want fulfillment on their personal terms and conditions. it’s not that as if they don’t want fulfillment.
So, it’s a slight difference. The saint—why call him the saint, that too conjures a lot of images. Doesn’t it? Especially in these times. Let’s simply say the wise man, the wise person. We are not referring to a specific gender. The wise man is the one who keeps fulfillment at the center—he says, “Only fulfillment is important, how it comes, what price it extracts, what is the route to be taken. None of that matters. Even if my entire life is to be paid as a price, I will prepare to do that.”
Even if you sip something of this (sips from a glass of water) you don’t dissolve in the water. Do you? The water serves you; you don't serve the water. Are you getting it? Spiritually it is not like this. In spiritual fulfillment, having had fulfillment you do not remain. If this is fulfillment you don’t use it. It doesn’t serve you. Instead, you get dissolved in it. That’s why most people are afraid of fulfillment. That’s why most people say I will take fulfillment but first of all, you assure me that I will not get dissolved in the glass or in the water. So, what do we then have? We then have a greatly diluted and even corrupted version of personal fulfillment.
The ego also loves contentment but the ego loves itself more. Self-preservation is more important to the ego. But if it preserves itself, all it preserves is an entity that is always thirsty. So, the ego is always in a quandary. It wants to preserve itself. But if it preserves itself who has been preserved? The thirst has been preserved. So having preserved itself it goes to fulfillment. It says, “You know I am thirsty.” Fulfillment says, “Your thirst can be quenched. But if your thirst is quenched then you will be dissolved in the water that quenches the thirst.” So, ego says, “No-no that is too big a price to pay,” and it goes back. But it goes back and starts a fringe from an even greater thirst. So, it comes back and says, “You know, I am suffering from a great thirst. Can I have a little bit of the magical water?” The magical water responds, “You can have me but if you drink me you will be dissolved in me.” So, the ego says, “No-no that is too big a price to pay.”
Ego again goes back and the thirst is now becoming a burning experience. It rushes back. It says, “You know, I want something,” and the condition remains the same. “You can have me but if you have me only, I will remain, you will get dissolved.” The ego says, “No-no.”
Now, something very strange happens. And an entity who is said both to exist and not exist pops up from somewhere. That entity has been variously given both masculine and feminine names. That entity is watching the whole game. The ego wants to be quenched but does not have the guts to drink the magic water. It can neither drink the magic water nor can it totally discard it. So, it just keeps vacillating to and fro, to and fro.
So that new entity says, “It’s a good opportunity.” The next time the ego is returning disappointed from the magical water. This entity waves to the ego, calls it “Come, come to me. You want to be quenched. I have water. Take this water.” The ego says, “But I want that magical water that will quench...” “No-no! This water is the same. You take it. This will quench you.” The ego looks at that glass. And there is a big label there. What does the label say? “The magical water, ‘the divine water’.” So, all the proofs are there and the ego says, “Fine I want to have it.” That entity says, “Yes you can have it. But you know you will have to act as per my directions.” The ego says, “I am prepared to accept any condition. Just don’t ask me to disappear or dissolve.” This new entity says, “No that I won’t ask. You just act as per my instructions.” The ego says, “That is acceptable.” Because this seems a less harsh condition compared to the condition that the previous one was imposed upon me. The ego accepts that. And then that’s how the ego lives. Accepting that fake water, that spurious good not getting quite satisfied but gaining a resemblance of satisfaction.
And that resemblance of satisfaction is enough for one to vile away his or her 60 years, 80 years. One does not anyway have too long to live. You just have to pass a length of time. And you can pass that length of time easily deceiving yourself. The ego now totally forgets the real water and keeps turning to that entity again and again. Accepting fake water and that fake water does give a little bit of satisfaction for a while. That little bit of satisfaction for a while is called happiness. So, a little bit of happiness and the ego becomes a slave to the entity who is selling that happiness and all that you have to vile away some 60, 80 years that happens easily. And this birth is gone. The body dies. Full stop.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/always-remain-in-love-1_506532b
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