What Is Auspicious and Why Do We Avoid It?

Acharya Prashant: The word auspicious holds no relevance, no meaning, no value. ‘I,’ the ego, wants auspiciousness irrespective of what my condition is, irrespective of what name ‘I’, the ego has taken, what does that tell about me?

It doesn’t matter if I am a man, a woman, a rich one, a poor one, a young one, an old one, doesn’t matter which part of the earth or the universe I come from, doesn’t matter what belief I hold, I want and I require auspiciousness. What does that tell about me?

My conditions keep changing, my names keep changing, my associations keep changing and yet I must pray for auspiciousness. What does that tell about me?

It tells that irrespective of my state, irrespective of my location in my journey, I remain to myself; remember to whom that’s the question, I remain to myself basically inauspicious. I am not good for myself and hence I must keep praying for auspiciousness.

There is an innate inauspiciousness inbuilt in my existence. I am not good. And that’s the reason why man must seek improvement; that’s the reason why man seeks liberation; that’s the reason why man endeavors; that’s the reason why man has to look for successful navigation through life; that’s the reason why has man to look for success at all in some or the other field of life; that’s the reason man has desires. Because we are fundamentally not alright.

It’s a humbling thing, the ego needs to accept about itself. It cannot go about searching for something great and at the same time not acknowledge how it believes in its littleness. The ego would want to have its cake and eat it too. On one hand the existence of ego is an unending, unrelenting search for satisfaction and completion. On the other hand, it hurts it to acknowledge that it is not alright; that it is fundamentally not good.

If you are not incomplete, why do you search for completion? If you are great as you are, why do you harbor so many desires? But you would want to not only harbor desires but actually rush after them; succeed in fulfilling them at any cost and also pretend to yourself that you are good and complete. Don’t you see the obvious logical fallacy? If you are good and complete, why do you run about hither dither in such a mindless and insane way? Why do you have no rest?

So, this has to be understood. We must know who we are. If the starting point itself is not clear, not acknowledged, not seen, then it will be impossible to make any meaningful movement. At no point in our journey are we good, complete, auspicious for ourselves and alright. It’s not as if, if you are a sufferer right now, then there is something particularly wrong with this moment; No. Suffering that you are experiencing at this moment, it’s just suffering that has spilled over; suffering that has exhibited itself; suffering that has become detectable; suffering that you have somehow acknowledged as suffering in this moment. No way does it mean that in your other moments you were free of suffering.

Man’s journey through life is one of unmitigated and uninterrupted suffering. It’s not as if you are happy in phases and sad in patches; no. Right from the moment of your conception, right from your first breath till your last breath you remain discontented, restless, fearful, tense, unhappy. Sometimes when the unhappiness subsides a little, we pamper ourselves by calling that state as happiness. The ego loves flattery; does it not? One of the worst ways it flatters itself is by allowing itself to say, ”I am happy.”

Happiness is the pompous ego turning a sycophant unto itself. The ego turning its own flatterer — that’s happiness. What you call as happiness is just a moment in which the deep, existential, fundamental unhappiness has been screened for a while; it lies hidden; it hasn’t gone away anywhere; it’s very much there; the elephant continues to be in the room; somebody just turned off the lights. And you throw a party declaring you are happy because the elephant is no more.

That also suggests the relationship between happiness and darkness. You need to turn off the lights to be happy. You need the darkness of ignorance to be happy. That’s the reason people find it difficult to be happy as they become more self-aware. The more you know yourself, the more you come to see the unending depths of the inner ocean of suffering. In fact, self-knowledge is nothing but a progressive encounter of one’s inner suffering.

The fanciful and romantic notion that the earth is a place you have come to enjoy has to be discarded as a full stream. If you are alright and you are here to enjoy, then why do you pray? Why do you pray for your welfare? Why do you pray for auspiciousness? If you are honestly praying for your welfare, then in your prayer, there is implicit acknowledgment that you know that you are in distress. And if you are in distress, are you here to enjoy?

The ‘Shanti Path’ asks for auspiciousness, “May the ears hear what is auspicious, may the eyes see what is auspicious. The ears are not designed to hear what is auspicious, therefore you must pray. Therefore, you have to especially and additionally ask for strength. You have to ask for it as a favor; you have to ask for it as an addendum. It’s not automatically granted to you.

The way of prakriti is not the way of auspiciousness. She has not designed our ears to be receptive to auspiciousness, which means whatsoever the ears hear is another addition to the bleak chapters of our misery. More words, more sounds, more sentences and more paragraphs are being added to our miserable stories; more and more chapters are being written with the words we are hearing. The eyes, they are not designed to see auspiciousness. The eyes paint pictures and these are overwhelmingly sordid portraits. On their own, by themselves the eyes will never see something auspicious or show you something auspicious because that’s not what you have commanded them to do. Oh! The eyes are your slaves. They do your bidding.

Who am I? Who am I? The ego. I did not beat the eyes to show me something that would destroy me. In my belief, in my estimation; my existence is life, my disappearance is death. Right? So, the ego, even if it is a bleeding wound, it wants to continue. If the wound disappears, it feels like death. Because it is the wound that is talking. You want to heal your wound only when you are not the wound. Ask the wound whether it wants to be healed.

You have a wound; you want to heal it. Right? Why? Because you see that the wound is an aberration. You see that the wound is a mis-happening; it is a distortion. The wound is a misfit. To whom? To you. Right? And so, you want the wound healed. Now ask the wound, there is pus and that means a large number of bacteria. Do they want the wound healed? No. When the wound heals, for you it is health, for the bacteria it is death. Now the ego is its own wound, the ego is its own wound. It keeps bleeding; it keeps oozing pus. It doesn’t want to be healed because healing is death and that’s the reason why you would have immediately recognized it is so important to dissociate and disidentify.

Think of this, you have a wound in your arm. If you identify with the wound, would you want to heal the wound or keep the wound?

Questioner: keep.

Acharya Prashant: And that is the reason why there is so much emphasis in spirituality, in wisdom on — disidentification. You must not be the wound. You must realize that you and the wound are separate. You deserve to exist; the wound does not. When you and the wound are separate, then you realize that the wound is an abnormality. And for you to be at ease, you must call the wound a disease. Right?

The wound is a disease only when, first of all, you want to be at ease. If you are the wound, then your existence is the wound’s existence. Getting it?

So, the ego wants to continue; continue as a wound, as a dissatisfied one, as a diseased one, as an incomplete one, as an imaginary one, as a non-existent one. It exists as non-existence. It's non-existence that calls as existence. And that which is really existent, it is that eyes and ears refuse to see — that’s the ego for you.

Getting it?

Do you see, are you getting a hang of why the rishi must say, “Please let my eyes see what is so auspicious and why it is so difficult to let auspiciousness enter your life through your ears, through your eyes.” It is not about the eyes and the ears; it’s about the fundamental force, the fundamental sense that guides the eyes and the ears.

You do not want to see anything that will rock your boat; you will refuse to see. It will be right in front of the eyes and you would not, would not have seen it. You would have seen it a thousand times and yet you would not have seen it. Acknowledging that you have seen it, would be an acknowledgment of your falseness. How can you admit that you have seen it? Therefore, the eyes would see only that which is compatible with the master of the eyes; which is palatable and acceptable to the master of the eyes. The ears would hear only that which the master wants to hear. The ears will not bring bad news to their master like a normal servant does. Which servant wants to irk the master by bringing him bad news.

Will the ears ever hear something that declares the ego to be false? No. And mind you if you are not utterly dishonest, then the entire existence is shrieking into your ears that you are false. But the ears would not listen or rather the ears would not acknowledge that they have listened. They do listen; they cannot avoid listening or you could say, “they hear but they do not listen”, whichever way.

Getting it?

And so, a special prayer has to be sent out, “Oh Gods! May we please see what is auspicious.” Read between the lines, so what is that the eyes see by default? That which is inauspicious; so much for your lovely eyes. They are designed to see only that which is not good for you; they are designed to see only that which will bring more and more misery to you as it has already done so far. Inauspicious will come on its own because inauspiciousness is what we invite. Because inauspicious is who we are. Inauspiciousness comes on its own. Auspiciousness has to be prayed for — such is our existence; such is our creed.

Yeah! And then we talk of self-love. No? There is this new bunch of spiritual hoodlums who come up and say, “Be yourself, accept yourself as you are.” And who are you? Somebody fundamentally dangerous to yourself. We said the ego is its own bleeding wound and you are being told, ‘be yourself, remain the wound; remain the wound that you are.’ And that’s the reason why the Upanishads are so critical today. Keep them aside and the ‘be-yourself’ brigade will take the day.

This cult of keeping the ego at the center of life, of society, of existence, of all human endeavor is destroying us badly. Ask the egoists, “What is auspicious? And their stock reply would be, “that which I want is auspicious. I am auspicious and my desires are auspicious.” “What is the most sacred thing in the world?” “My desires. I will do as I please and that is called freedom; that’s called liberty.” These are the worshippers of false liberty.

And when all are to believe in the ego, then all are but bleeding wounds. Right? I am a wound and so are you and therefore we are equals and from there comes the next sacred word of the egoists — equality. What is liberty? Freedom to carry out the ego’s wishes. What is equality? I am a bleeding wound, you too are a bleeding wound; the two of us are obviously equal. And for the two of us to remain equal, neither of us should ever gain health. In fact, we have to declare that health is a myth. And if you believe in health, you will be called superstitious. If you believe in health, you will be called regressive. If you believe in health, you will be called an upholder of anachronistic values.

Are you getting it? Do you see how the whole thing is playing out?

You and I can be equal either in the sense that both of us are liberated from our bodily and mental delusions and hence we are equal. And then we are equal in the sense that we both do not exist in the conventional sense of existence. The two of us are equal just as zero is equal to zero. There is nothing left to fill up the equation on either side and hence there is perfect equality.

Either our equality can be of that kind or our equality can be the equality of the prisoners in a jail or patients in a hospital. A doctor may say to me, “All patients are equal because they all are sick.” A jailer may say to me, ”All the prisoners are equal because they all are imprisoned.” Aren’t all prisoners equal in the sense that they all are imprisoned? So, they are equally imprisoned. Right? That's equality, the world is living by today. And that’s the liberty we are living by today. What is liberty? Repeat, I will do what I want to do without knowing who I am, without knowing where my desires and wants come from — that’s liberty; liberty and equality.

And those kinds of juvenile notions can survive only as long as you do not come to the Upanishads; so, the Upanishads are dangerous. The moment you come to them, the first thing they tell you is you have come to us because you have been knocking a thousand doors all your life. It’s not that you have been restful so far and this moment is an aberration, this moment you have come seeking to us; no. You have been seeking since the first moment of your birth. You are born a beggar. You have never been alright. That is something the ego does not want to hear. It wants incremental improvement; it wants analgesics. It wants to ‘feel’ alright ,not, ‘be’ alright — there is a difference between these two. Right? They want us to ‘feel’ alright not ‘be’ alright. They want us to ‘think’ that it is alright; it doesn’t want to ‘be’ alright.

Feeling alright or thinking of alright-ness is easy and cheap. Being alright is an arduous thing; requires commitment, perseverance, resilience.

I have only been seeing what I want to see. I operate in my little circle; I don’t want to go out of it. I do not want to know anything outside of my circle; it would prove dangerous. My circle is more psychological than physical which means I might actually have acquaintances from across the world. It’s not that I have confined myself to my physical village; no. I have confined myself to my psychological village.

I might actually be someone who has roamed the entire galaxy. I might actually be someone who is thinking of colonizing other planets, yet I operate in a very, very small inner circle. My eyes do not want to see anything beyond the circle; my ears do not want to acknowledge any sound coming from beyond my walls; it would be dangerous. Which wall am I talking of? The walls of my house? My psychological walls. The walls of my identity. The walls of my existence. If I acknowledge any signals, any fillers, any notes, any music coming to me from the beyond, those waves would destroy me.

Acknowledging the beyond is submission to the beyond. You acknowledge the beyond and you have withdrawn acknowledgement from the ego. And here you and the ego are identical. So, the ego will have to acknowledge something beyond itself and in the same moment say, “If that is to be acknowledged I cannot be acknowledged in the same breath; that and this cannot parallelly co-exist.” It is easy and difficult at the same time. If the ego is truthful, honest and fed up with itself, it is very easy to come up with this acknowledgement. On the other hand, if the ego is arrogant, ignorant, unwilling to learn, it won’t see the auspicious; it won’t see the obvious.

Are you getting it?

What is auspicious then? How do we see the auspicious? Well, the auspicious to us is an unknown; we have deliberately kept it unknown and ‘that’s the hint’ — That which you have deliberately avoided seeing might be auspicious for you. That which you have stubbornly avoided listening to might be auspicious for you; no guarantees but worth a try.

Go where you have feared going; see what you have avoided seeing. Therein lies your redemption.

Ask yourself, “Is there something that calls to me and I shut it out. Is there something that I quickly brush away, the moment it comes to me?” Yeah! We all have such things. We deliberately avoid them sometimes, then those things come to us in dreams. The Truth has a way to continue to keep calling to us. It’s for the call of the Truth that we remain restless. What else is all our psychosis and anxiety for? The ego wants us to believe that all is hunky-dory. The ego wants us to party in a celebration of our accomplishment, our completeness, our wholeness. Truth spoils the party. We do everything possible to us to assure ourselves that all is well and yet that nasty dream destroys everything. You had so fully convinced yourself that you have made it and yet that little something, why did it have to pop-up? Why did that fellow have to utter those two words? Why did she have to throw that particular look at you? What made you go mad at the waiter in the party for such a trivial thing? What is it within, that knows fully well of its desolation, dejection, disappointment and yet is not courageous enough to acknowledge?

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