Shiva

There can be no self-respect without self-knowledge. And we have been repeatedly saying that the ego survives only in lack of self-knowledge. The less you know yourself, the denser and more crystallized your ego is. Self-respect is nothing but self-awareness. The more you know yourself, the more you realize who you are not, and that brings you to who you are. That is real self-respect, knowing oneself.

You really think the world is being run by an authority outside of yourself? No. We are the ones running this world, and we have made a mess of it. But we don’t want to own the responsibility, so we bring somebody else in between. And that somebody else, poor God, cannot even come and argue for Himself, defend Himself, and claim innocence and say, “No, no, no, no. I have not brought the world to such a pathetic position. You have done it.”

When the person is dead, you remember that person. But when the person is alive, do you remember death? Who is not dying every moment? Please tell me. Then why do you want to believe that the person, as you see him right now, would be carried over to the future? No one gets carried over to the future. No one. Death has to be seen as a fact, not a fact at the end of a string, but as a present reality. It is not death that scares us. Unlived life is what we grieve for.

We don’t remember death. We think of death as something ugly. But facts cannot be ugly. Facts are just facts. But in the moment of love, in the moment of ownership, attachment, possessiveness, we hate to remember death.

Beliefs can’t talk to each other. You will say, ‘The world was created on a Sunday.’ He’ll say, ‘No, on a Monday.’ He’ll say, ‘Tuesday.’ He’ll say, ‘Wednesday.’ Now talk, how will you reconcile this? You can only fight. Why do you need to believe? You look at the question, "What should I believe in?” Well, nothing.

A thousand feelings: envy, fear, hatred, competition will come to you. You cannot fight them all, and there is no need to fight them. Be courageous when that feeling comes, and sit down like friends and talk. Be honest that you are the one who is nurturing that feeling all the time. Be aware that it is coming. Let it not enter like a thief. And when it comes, don’t feel small. You only need to understand, not control.

Every living being, from humans to the smallest species, is trying to change the world to suit its own needs. But this is not intended to do any good to the world, it is just coming from the little ego. And the ego will not say, “I'm not all right;” it will try to change the world. So, if your idea of ‘good’ is only relative to your personal self, is it right to impose it on others? You must be clear about why you aspire to change the world, and whether you have brought about any change in yourself first.

Death is certain for everybody in the future. What matters is that today, you are alive. Wasting time is bad even for an otherwise healthy young person. But when you know that your clock is ticking, then wasting time makes no sense at all. Let every day be a celebration of some kind or the other. Be free, sit together, eat together, travel together, and make the best use of whatever time is there.

Joy is not a problem. Suffering is a problem. I am the sufferer. And if this ‘I’ is the problem, the sufferer, then firstly the ‘I’ itself has to be approached. And when I find that my efforts are getting saturated, I will have to go to a book that talks exclusively of the ‘I.’ The Upanishads are such books, because their subject matter is nothing but the ‘I.’ So, if you come across something that is dealing in stories, beliefs, and deviating from the self, you must know that it is not Vedanta at all.

The theoretical reply would be that if condemnation hurts you, then somewhere you are looking for praise. Even if it’s implicit praise or subtle praise, there is some hunger for praise. Or the inner condition that the ego has set is, don’t give me praise, but don’t condemn me either. So there is some condition that the ego is setting on the world. The fact is, the world has a movement, a flow of its own. You cannot set any condition on it. If you are getting hurt, it means there is an expectation, a condition.

At the level of the body, this world will have an influence on you, and there is no need to even contest that. Let it happen, because it is going to happen anyway. But inwardly, let there be a place so sacred that nobody is allowed to enter — not even you. And when that is there, you can freely participate in the world because you'll no longer be afraid. You'll say, “Come what may, I'm secure within.” Then you will live in deep security, and we all know how pleasing security is.

The self is a hollow, incomplete thing by its own admission. It has no free existence of its own; it is nothing but associations with the objects around it, absorbing its worth from the environment. To hide this absence of self-worth, you keep running after all kinds of things, yet the promise of fulfillment is never kept, and you are deceived. Therefore, to have any self-worth, you must have clarity about the self. All wisdom literature is about clearing away your false notions of the self.

Question: If love is death of ego, then how will we live? Man is made of only these things. So, the only thing left will be ‘soul’. So we can say that we have moksha (liberation).

Speaker: The question is: If love is death of ego, then a loving man…

Questioner: If love is death of ego, then loving man will be just soul. So, is love Moksha (Salvation)?

Acharya Prashant: Everything that you just said, is a concept in your mind. Ego lives on concepts; ego lives on thoughts—concepts are thoughts.

What is the definition of a concept? Where…

You are the quality of your present action. You are, right now, attention itself, if you are indeed listening to me. Unfortunately, this identity won't last. Soon you will be distracted. You'll become somebody else. The discipline lies in holding on to the highest identity possible, that which you know to be the highest, given your limited capacity. That's who you should be. That's the answer to — ‘Who am I?’

Death has a certain significance. But rituals, whether at the time of birth or death, mean nothing to Prakriti. And even at the level of the Truth, where there is neither birth nor death, rituals don’t matter. In between these two is the level of the social mind — this is where rituals seem to matter. Not an absolute significance but if you are heavily influenced by society, going against it has consequences. Those who still can't take blows don't need to get into needless rebellions. There are bigger battles to fight. But those who are ready; there has to be resolve within and tact outside.

In the universe, there is no good, no evil. Ask instead, ‘To whom is good, and to whom is evil?’ The self, the ‘I,’ the ‘me,’ the one who wants to define good, the one who wants to define evil — he is evil, because he does not exist. Spirituality is giving the evil something right to do. If you do not give the evil the right thing to do, it will pick something else, making itself feel relevant, whereas the fact is that it has zero relevance. Work to remove yourself. That's your task.

Death is a fact of the body. Whatever took birth, will die. Whatever is yours, will die. There is no need to entertain the notion that even after death, some part of oneself will remain or that one will take birth again. Go to graveyards, watch dead bodies. See a body burning and you will lose all seriousness that you have about your own body. Those who are afraid of dying, they will never be able to live. So, die fully and die completely, so that you may live. Order a pizza. Go and dance, have fun.

Opinions are opinions. There is nothing called ‘my opinion.’ All opinions are alien, foreign to you. They are always others. Even if they happen to be present in your mind, they are still others. It is just that you are so brain-identified that when an opinion is present in your brain, you start thinking that it is your opinion. And from where did that opinion come to your brain? It came either from biology or from society. How is the opinion yours then?

Doing or not doing — both are functions of the doer. The doer is the instrument. Is the instrument, first of all, reliable? Know who you are. Know what it is that you lack. Know what it is that you need to shed. And then the deed is right. Then you know the one right direction for you — choicelessly. It's not just about doing something. It's about knowing the doer.

In our entire life, in this entire world, whenever we have remembered something or somebody, we have remembered that thing, that person, for our own personal reasons. I do not remember you. I remember what I get from you. You are not important. What is important is what I seek to have from you. This is not only loveless but also quite exploitative. It is equally truthless and foolish.

A surgeon’s table is never a beautiful sight to look at. Poets will find nothing there. There are scissors and instruments, and iron and blood and flesh cut apart. There is no happiness there. There is nothing pleasant there. Seekers of pleasantness will be disappointed looking at a surgeon’s table. But that table saves lives.

What you call as God is a concept; Truth is not a concept. Therefore, you can have stories about God, various religions, and their miscellaneous beliefs. But you can have no story at all about Truth because it is that which is invariable. Time cannot change it, and it doesn't vary from person to person. Irrespective of your subjective state, it remains as it is. Truth just turns you silent.

A common misconception that many of us have is that ‘ego is pride’, but it is far more pervasive than pride. It is the sum total of everything that we have taken from the outside and accepted as our beliefs and identities without applying intelligence. But we are not a sum total of external influences. Even if everything external is taken away, the pure existence still remains — we have an existence of our own. Ego is this forgetfulness of our pure existence.

When your expectations are not fulfilled, that is the situation you call anger. Your expectation is nothing but a desire that the other person should behave according to your image of him. You create images because you are afraid. If you are not afraid, you cannot be angry. All these diseases come from a basic fountainhead — ignorance. They go away once ignorance goes away.