Those who really want to change their life, are prepared to pay with their death || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Question: I often find my life revolving around petty issues, issues around ‘me’, mine’. And there is a deep frustration because of this. I feel that I want something more. Is that just an ideology, or there is something more to it?
Speaker: Life is not something, cast in stone. Life is not something, pre-determined or rigid. What you call as ‘life’ is a sequence in time. It is happening constantly. Not for a moment do you skip life. If life has a lot of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’ present, that can be taken care of, any moment. The very realization stops that. And nobody else is enforcing it on you. If you feel that you are sick of it, it stops there, then.
Even this sense of helplessness that – “What do I do if my life is like this?”- is just an inner ploy to continue things as they are. It is a very calculated helplessness; calculated and cultivated. There is nothing authentic about it. One is healthy, educated, young, but one acts as if one is under so much pressure and compulsion. And what exactly is that ‘pressure and compulsion’? What exactly? Where are the facts? It is just that the training is so deep, and the desire to break out of the training, is not so strong. Nothing else.
Listener 1: if one wants to change one’s life, one can only change it from point to another. There is a limit to change. Is there any possibility that one can look at his limits, and go beyond them?
Speaker: It is not something as calm and composed, as you have just stated it. It is probably more intense, more throbbing, and more lively than that. ‘Going beyond’ requires the energy of your entire being. What you usually call as ‘looking at something’, is just an intellectual observation. That does not suffice.
Intellectually, just as an idea or thought, we all know a lot of things. That knowledge does not really help in critical matters of life. It can help in coffee-table discussions. It can help you argue and make a point. It can help you spend a good evening. But it does not help you change the fundamentals of life. The fundamentals of life are changed when you are prepared to pay with your blood.
So I am not really convinced with the passionlessness, when you say, “Can I look at my limitations and go beyond them?” Lot of people keep looking at their limitations, and nobody really goes beyond them. ‘Going beyond your limitations’ means – going beyond yourself. It is almost like jumping out of your body. It is almost like being born again. So, it requires all your intensity, and it requires you to pay the highest price possible. It is not something so intellectual, so impersonal, so cold and calculated.
One’s being shakes and shivers. You feel as if your very spine is being broken; your legs lose the power to keep standing. One trembles. Yet, the situation is not as pathetic as I might be making it sound, because there is a power beyond yourself that helps you and sustains you. So even as all your personal energies fail, there is a support beyond you that becomes available. It requires faith to live by that support.
Listener 1: Sir, listening all these things, I am not able to understand ‘going by faith’.
One never understands them, without living them. These are not concepts. This is not something that you can read about in a newspaper, or a book. Or watch a documentary, and come to learn. You will never come to learn these things, by just hearing about them from another man’s mouth. One has to pay the price, and live that life.
And it is not a fairy tale, a pleasant story, when you are paying that price. Remember, that price is ‘yourself’. One is battered, and bruised, and the being is full of wounds. And it is only then, that you realize that there is a great healing power within you, which holds you together, in spite of all the wounds that you have.
Are you getting it?
These are not things that can happen in a comfortable room, on a Sunday morning, over a nice, hot cup of tea. It is more about ‘Blood’ than Tea.
