What is meant by genuinely speaking and hearing? || (2016)

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is going on, when apparently this process of speaking and hearing is happening? What is really going on? Obviously, someone is talking and someone is receiving the sound, but what is really going on?

Questioner: An interaction, an exchange.

AP: If it is really a good interaction, then it is a change in the quality of mind itself. The way the mind is conscious, that changes directly. Sitting there, you are transported to another place. One can equally say that one is brought back to That place. Both are right ways of expressing it.

It is as if another reality, more real than the chair you are sitting on, suddenly presents itself. It is not as if the chair disappears or the voice disappears, or the surroundings and the sensory perceptions disappear. They all remain. But consciousness becomes sensitive to a quality which is not per se there in the chair, or in the soup, or in the light. Something which the normal world cannot provide. Even if the normal world is ideal and perfect, still it cannot provide.

It is like being in two places at the same time. The second place, the more important place, envelops the first one, colors the first one, and takes the first one in its lap, in its ambit. So even though you might be just sitting on a chair, but just sitting, now has a special quality about it. And there is another one who is sitting on the next chair, and who is not quite engaged. He would not be sensitive to that quality.

Is that quality an experience? Yes and No.

You surely sense that something different is going on, yet you cannot put your finger on it. You cannot name it or put it in a boundary, or define it. So you cannot technically call it an experience. Because experience requires the validation of memories. This ‘Something’ is fantastic, but fantastic not because the past experiences declare it fantastic. It is fantastic in a brave way, in a daring way. You will have to search for the word fantastic. It won’t immediately come to you.

It is more of a feeling of awe. Something that sets you afire, sets you alive, but at the same time, strikes you cold. It is not as if you feel energized, in fact, outwardly, you become kind of numb. Right now, are you feeling energized? Right now are your limbs really eager to move? Are you experiencing energy?

So outwardly, all excitement settles down. But inwardly, the Heart starts burning. Not burning, just simmering, like the heartbeat. Just enough energy to make the heart beat. Any more energy would result in palpitations. So, a very quiet energy starts flowing through you. A very quiet, silent, deep current that is not visible from the outside. Outwardly, you would kind of fall cold; inwardly, you would start burning.

Normal worldly life is just the opposite. Outwardly you are afire with excitement, all your limbs, the mind, the eyes, the tongue, the genitals, seen how excited they are for no reason? And inwardly, there is no fire at all. The Heart is like frozen meat. And the limbs and the eyes, the mind, they are on a dose of hyperactive chemicals. Inwardly, no life.

This very thing has been tried to be represented through the symbolism of chakras.

When it is said that energy rises from the lower chakras to the higher chakras, this is what is meant. It’s a trope. It’s a way of saying. All it means is that energy becomes more subtle. When the energy is at the lower levels, then the energy is gross. Your hand is excited, you are unnecessarily flaying it about. You are hitting somebody, punching somebody. Seen such people? Can’t contain their own movements. Movements of both the body and the mind. Thoughts are running amok. The tongue, the mind, all are just wavering and unnecessarily active. That is when the energy is at the lower levels.

What is meant by energy being at a qualitatively higher level?

It is an energy that has moved from the gross to the subtle. Now it won’t be very visible energy. You would be a quiet man, you would be a quiet man with a burning heart. That is the rise of energy. One could as well say that what is happening in that picture is an exercise in the awakening of the Kundalini. Without naming it as such. Are you able to relate? Have you ever experienced that quiet energy?

Energy which is random, disorderly, leaves you with the burden to control it. Energy which is an order in itself, contained in the Heart, leaves you with the sureness of an inner power.

Now you know that you have it. And the question of this power being certified by others does not arise, because you know that the others can anyway not see it. They cannot see it because you are not displaying it. And that is why it is the most beautiful.

Whatsoever is beautiful about life is not a matter of ostentatious display. Those who have eyes, come to learn of it on their own. We don’t really announce it.

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