Questioner: Namaskaar Acharya Ji.
Acharya Prashant: Welcome.
Questioner: Thank you. I tend to be a restless, overactive and anxious overachiever. The main reason for it seems to be that if I stop, I become in touch with suffering in me. I have understood that facing this pain is the way to self-knowledge. Even if watching means feeling hurt. Still I notice myself behaving repeatedly in this dissociating addictive way. It is a kind of an autopilot mode and it is exhausting. Could you help me with this? Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: This too is a story. This too is a very convenient part of the fiction that observation of the continuous, desperate movement will bring you suffering. No, it is not the observation that brings suffering. Suffering is inherent in the desperate and blind movement and the blind movement wants to continue itself. Therefore, it has woven a very convenient story, a cock and bull story which is, ‘If you observe what is happening then the observation will give you pain.’
Does it really pain you? No, it does not. Just this morning I tweeted. The tweet ran something like this, ‘Before: What is fun? Maya.’ Maya meaning illusion.
So when you really don't know stuff then it sometimes happens that you start decrying fun itself. You say, ‘No, if you go for fun and then you will land in trouble and all that.’ The more interesting part is the second half of the tweet. It said, After: what is Maya? Fun. What is Maya? Fun.
And that's what I'm pointing at. If you can observe the play of Maya in yourself, it is not really painful. It's a lot of fun. I put it this way. Sometimes it's a great thing to catch yourself red-handed. Catch your own thief red-handed.
See, you're already smiling. There is a certain pleasure in catching somebody else with his pants down. No? The fellow has been lying and you just catch him in the act and also click a few pics or make a video. Now you have irrefutable proof and now the fellow would be begging, ‘No, no. Please, please don't make the thing public whatever.’
So there is a certain pleasure in that and there is a greater much bigger pleasure in catching your own inner thief. See how one deceives herself and in the moment of deception you just say, ‘I got you. I can see what you're up to. You're devising that same story once again. I can catch you.’ So that's fun. What is Maya? Fun. Good fun. If you keep believing that you will experience suffering in the process of self-observation, obviously you see the result.
The result would be that the story will not allow you to see anything and you must also see very clearly where the story is coming from. The story is coming from the refusal to see. The refusal to see must have something that represents an argument, something that appears at least faintly logical. So this kind of logical argument, so to say, is concocted.
If you look at the wound, it will pain all the more. This is nonsensical, is it not? So on the contrary, one develops a taste for humor, probably this self-observation is the mother of all jokes. You see, what you were pretending to be not just to others but also to yourself and what you actually are. And the more dispassionately you look at yourself, the bigger is the laughter and really free is the person who can laugh recklessly at herself.
Laugh with no care at all. Why take oneself so seriously? What hurt, what wound can be so big? When we fully well know that the only thing that really is the Truth. Can there be two truths? The truth and the wound. The wound has to be a lie, right? But it will continue to pretend to be the truth as long as you avoid looking at it. The more you look at it, the more you will see that the wound is just some kind of dressing up that has been needlessly done.
Questioner: Yeah. I have wanted to ask you this because…(a pause). I know this is also the story but I will tell you still. I have this PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I go to therapy and some peer support groups and I have been thinking that what is it doing to this process? Of trying to get this self-knowledge because there, we are so much talking about that ‘I’ to suffer And I have this story and there is this pain and could you shed some light on that?
Acharya Prashant: See there is the pain that you experience and there is the therapy. So there is stuff going on right. The more you can in an uninvolved way, with detachment and abandon see what is really happening; the more you will find that the therapy works better for you. In fact, you will be able to more correctly deduce when you are no more in the need of any therapy.
See, if the disease stands exaggerated, so will the treatment. No?
Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: If my disease is this big, the treatment will have to be proportionately bigger. What if I discover slowly that the disease is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking? That will help me opt out of the treatment one day. No?
Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. Yeah. Don't be afraid. Watch yourself in all the small things that happen. There is nothing big any way inside us. All kinds of puny pettinesses and trivialities; they get together and coalesce to form this thing called the self. Nothing gigantic, nothing fabulous, nothing overwhelming is there within oneself.
We would want to believe that something enormous is sitting in our heart. Well, there is nothing, only very little things are there. Only very little things are there. And when you look at them, you are relieved of them. All those littlenesses are worth some good jokes. Come up with really wicked jokes. You should be the butt of all your own jokes.
Questioner: Yeah, like humor has helped a lot to be able to laugh at anything. So yeah, but still there is this tendency to take this pain too seriously. But…
Acharya Prashant: It's a mark of both freedom and intelligence, the ability to just suddenly burst out laughing at oneself.
Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: And it's a mark of stupidity and heaviness, dullness that one takes himself just too seriously all the time. Only very dull people do that. The dull people will be found being just too touchy and too sensitive about things like self-respect and such things. Now all the intelligent people, they will relish having a crack at themselves.
Socrates it was, who said, ’You know I am the most stupid person. All I know is that I know nothing.’ It takes Socrates to admit that one is one is de-facto stupid.
Questioner: Yeah. Thank you so much. I have been listening to this Vedanta English sessions a lot lately and it just keeps giving and giving and getting deeper. I feel like every time, I hear something new. And I'm so thankful for this teaching.
Acharya Prashant: I'm glad I'm glad. Welcome.