Feel Nice Wasting Yourself Away?
Acharya Prashant: The man of knowledge avoids action that leads to miscellaneous places. Suvaad or Samvaad is an utterance that brings clarity and Truth to yourself and the other, right? That’s the mark of the right action — it brings clarity to yourself and the other. That’s the litmus test. He is alert all the time. “This that I am thinking, this that I am saying, this that I am doing, what is it going to lead to? If I am talking to someone, is it for the purpose of bringing clarity to the other, or is it for the sake of dominating the other?”
The moment he detects that his intention is to prove a point, to dominate the other, to bully or coerce the other, he simply withdraws, and he says, “No, no, no. I’m a traveler, and every action is a step. Every uttered word is a step. Every thought is a step. I am a traveler. I must step only in the direction of the destination. If I am stepping in any other miscellaneous direction, I am wasting time and energy. I won’t do that.” So, he freezes. He retreats. In the middle of a heated discussion, it might just strike him, “What the hell am I doing all this for? Why must I be entangled in this debate?”
And then you might find that in the middle of a sentence, he stops and withdraws, not caring even to finish that sentence. That’s the hallmark of honesty. “Now that I know. Now, this moment, suddenly, that I realize that I am into it for egoistic purposes, I won’t continue for even half a second more. Till this point, unfortunately, I was misled. I did not remember, so I was being carried away by emotion, by passion, by Maya. But suddenly, I have woken up.”
You always wake up suddenly, right? You are asleep till now, and now you have woken up. “Now, that I have woken up, I cannot pretend to still be in dreams. The dream is gone, and I am back to sanity.”
Are you getting it?
The man of knowledge will just not waste his precious moments, his energy, his words. You will not find him just splurging himself away. And one common, rather necessary characteristic of the man of ignorance, is that he dissipates himself a lot.
You will find this person wasting himself away in a very regrettable way — dissipation, dissipation, and dissipation! Like a block of ice, a lump of frozen water in sun, melting down, disappearing away its substance, its life — melting and meeting the soil and becoming mud, streaks of soiled water flowing in six different directions. Can you visualize? This is the life of the dissipator. Parts of him keep randomly flowing away, wasting away in six different directions. At the end of each day, there is very little of him left, and very little comes from each day he spends as a living entity.
If you ask him, “So, what comes out of this day that you have lived?” He will have no substantial answer. Something here, something there, bits and pieces, nothing concrete. Because most of the day, most of the energy, most of the opportunity has anyway been just squandered, frittered. Maybe, the ice was made of distilled, pure water. What happens to the water once it melts and meets the soil? What happens? That’s how we waste ourselves.
As I had said, “Stop in the middle of a sentence. Do not bother even to finish that sentence.” I used to watch a lot of movies, and I used to walk out of a lot of movies. Maybe, it was my Vritti, my tendency to try out movies — late night shows; 11, 11: 30 PM, when the hall would be practically empty. And then so many times, ten minutes, twenty minutes into the movie, I would decide to walk out. Once I know it is junk, what’s the point? I’ve already made a mistake by entering this hall. How can I prolong the mistake by staying in the hall?
Getting it?
Typically, I would walk out in the middle of a song-and-dance sequence. That’s what would conclusively suggest to me that I’m at the wrong place.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, you said that whenever a man of knowledge finds himself in a situation which he realizes is not the right situation, he just quits or leaves. It sounds like one has to keep finding oneself in such situations, and then keep leaving. So, this sounds, you know, like someone who will be in constant conflict.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, but then that’s what life is all about, no? Your body is not going to accept defeat very easily. The body will keep doing its thing, and the body will do it very deceptively. When I say body, I mean the body-mind complex — body and the mind. You won’t always be on top of the body-mind thing. They will play their game. They’ll make their shrewd moves. You’ll be deceived quite often. Your job is to discard it all, shrug it off immediately the moment you see through their wickedness, the moment you realize the plot.
So, yes, you are right. It is something you are going to constantly find yourself in. This kind of an interlocking, this kind of a game of chess that was guaranteed, that was scripted the day you were born as a human being. Life is in one sense you versus your body, you versus your body. It’s a dialectical movement. There is you — the consciousness — versus you — the body. The direction your life takes, depends on which of these two sides keeps prevailing. Mind you, it would always be the body making the first move, because the first move anyway was made by the body, when you were born.
So, you would always be the defender. You’d always be the one reacting to or responding to the shrewd moves of the body. And remember, when I am saying body, I mean body-mind. The body will make the first move, and the move will be unknown to you — very unpredictable. So, you will take your time realizing what your body is doing to you. You will take your time decoding what has been just communicated to you by your own physical system — physical, mental system. The shorter the time, the better. And if the realization can be spontaneous, then you have arrived.
What do you mean by spontaneous realization? The body makes its moves, and you are so alert, so present, so conscious that immediately you see through the moves of the body. You say, “Ahh, I know this is what you’re trying baby. Sorry, I’m not going to fall for it.” That’s the way it is, you know. You are the goalkeeper. She has all the penalty strokes. You are the defender. That’s what life is. She has no goal post behind her. You have a huge goal post behind yourself. You need to successfully defend ten out of ten times. She needs to breach your defense just one out of ten times.
If you are successful nine out of ten times, you have lost. If she has failed nine out of ten times, she has won. To win, you have to win ten out of ten times. To win, she has to win just once. This is Tapasya — to win ten out of ten times. And as the goalkeeper, as a defender, you are left just to respond. You do not know where the ball is going to come from and to which direction. You look tense.
Questioner: Essentially, it means that the ideal has to always be beyond you. The ideal which is being targeted, the point of instantly recognizing whenever you are astraying, that is ideal.
Acharya Prashant: You have to be in love with recognition. You have to be in love with freedom. When you are in love with freedom, then the moment somebody tries to take it away, you respond with a jerk, no? right? Love gives you alertness. If you love something, then you might stay alert and awake the entire night to keep it secure, no? That’s what. Love freedom, love Truth, love reality, so that when somebody is trying to take these away, when somebody is trying to encroach upon your sacred territory, you do not hesitate for a moment to spontaneously respond. Then, there is fearlessness. Love alone can make you fearless.
Questioner: In the moment, a lot of times in that moment of decision making, there comes a certain blankness.
Acharya Prashant: No, that blankness can only occupy a space devoid of love. If love fills that space up, where is the opportunity for blankness to come and sit and squirt? Because you leave the mental space vacant, so blankness comes and occupies it. Don’t leave it vacant.
Questioner: Is that what love is — to not leave the mental space vacant?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, obviously, obviously, because that space just cannot survive vacancy. Something or the other is necessarily going to fill it up. Love is to fill it up with the highest possible to you. That option of not having anything in mind is not available. A mind totally free of any stuff is the last thing to happen. It cannot be an immediate thing. It cannot happen today or tomorrow to you. Right now, you’re in a situation where you will definitely have some stuff, some thought, some object in the mind.
Love is to have the highest object in the mind, and when you have the highest object in the mind, you will not tolerate somebody substituting it with something inferior.
Are you getting it?
If this desk in front of me is totally free and you come and keep something on it. I’m not going to resist, right? It’s a free desk. It’s an empty desk. The space here is available, so you came and kept something on it. I don’t have a great incentive to resist. But what if this table, this desk is full of the great books that I love? You have the Upanishads here. You have the great saints here. You have the great philosophers there, and the surface is fully occupied. Now, you come, and you want to keep some trash on it, what will you necessarily have to do? You will have to remove some of my books, and now love will make me resist.
That is love, and that is the importance of keeping your mental space occupied with the highest possible. If your mental space is occupied by the highest possible, then you will definitely resist somebody trying to play a trick with you. But if it’s free, then you can come and keep your rubbish here. I don’t have an incentive to react, no? The space was free, you kept your rubbish here. Don’t leave your space, your plot vacant. It will be taken away. It will be occupied.
Questioner: If that has to essentially be, all the time is the problem there, because even if it is vacant for five seconds and that five seconds expands.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, that’s true. So, not much can be done then. It’s just that whether it’s five seconds or five minutes, the moment you realize something untoward is happening, jam the breaks, immediately. As long as you don’t realize, you are optionless, you are kind of asleep. You are asleep, and the snake is crawling upon you — can’t do much. You do not exist to resist, no? You are asleep. The moment you wake up, jerk the thing away. And I’m using snakes here only symbolically. We have nothing against reptiles.
