What is meant by ‘oneness with all’? || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Question: What is the meaning of: meeting the other person with Oneness?
Acharya Prashant:
Meeting the other person with Oneness, does not imply – being one with the other ‘person’. It means – you are one within, even as you look at the diverse world of many-ness, spread in space around you.
Outside you might be fragments, distinctions, numbers, diversities, within is no such fragmentation.
How does fragmentation arise within? It arises within, when the within becomes a mirror of the without. If that which is outside you, gains a part of you, then you get divided.
Take this, right now.
Here is me. If you take me as someone outside of you, then this figure will occupy a bit of mental space. (Referring to a listener in the audience) There is him, he too will occupy a bit of mental space. (Pointing at the collage of posters designed on Acharya Ji’s quotes) One of these posters will occupy a bit of mental space. May be this colour appeals to you, this too will occupy some space. The brand of this equipment may be nice, that too will occupy some space. So, the divisions outside, will become the divisions inside.
Nothing outside of you should be allowed to occupy you within, because ‘the Within’ is the sacred province of the Absolute. And the Absolute knows no divisions or fragments. Inside must sit ‘the One’, and outside the world may keep taking various forms and shapes. That is Oneness. Oneness within.
There would never be Oneness in the world. If there is Oneness in the world, you will have to physically disappear, because then you and the Earth would be one. So, you are gone. Either the Earth has become you, or you have become the Earth. And then there is no atmosphere either, because there is just Oneness.
So, outside there is never really going to be Oneness, as long as you are an embodied being.
Oneness must be within.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, can you please elaborate on this. For example, I met Alok Ji and Pranay, what does it mean that meeting them will not create any division inside?
Acharya Prashant Ji: It means that the Absolute Truth within you, must meet Alok or Pranay. These two are outside, and they are different. But the point that meets them, must be the point of integrity – Oneness. It must not be that a figure created by Alok, meets Alok, and a figure created by Pranay, meets Pranay.
Normally, as we are, we do not meet a minister, and a miserable one in the same way. Even before we meet them, we have turned different, because of their influence upon us.
Are you getting it?
The minister might be five minutes away, but you have already changed in anticipation of his arrival. The one who is meeting the minister, is not the same as the one who is meeting the commoner. And I am not talking of your behaviour towards these two persons. I am talking of the entity that is meeting.
Of course, the behaviour is bound to be different. You cannot behave in the same way with everybody. I am talking about the identity of the one, who is meeting the different objects in the world.
Your identity, when you are meeting an object, is decided by the object that you are meeting. Is that not really a miserable condition? Even before you meet the minister, the minister has cast his spell upon you. He is still some distance away, and you are already bowing down. So, the person has changed in influence of the field of the object, he is meeting. That must not happen.
Who gave you the impression that the contents of your mind, are the Truth, or Sacred, or Absolute. That which arises within you, is just your mental content. Why are you according it a lot of sanctity?
Turning ego into God!
A rapists instincts too arise from within, don’t they? You don’t have to motivate him. You don’t have to really exert yourself to motivate a rapist. It’s strongly from within. It’s just that their acts are definitely showing up as gruesome and horrible. So, you put them in jail.
But, the other hallucinating ones, might be holding respectable tags of spiritual seekers and yoga practitioners, so you do not put them in jail. But hallucinations are, hallucinations.
Questioner: So, is everyone hallucinated?
Acharya Prashant Ji: If you are hallucinating, how will you know what everyone else is doing? Why not bother only about yourself?
If you are in a dream, will you ever be able to know who are all the others, who are dreaming? If you are asleep, will you be able to know who is awake? So why not bother only on your own awakening?
This is one of the great fallacies: widely accepted, quite the norm, not merely socially circulating, but even in spiritual circulation.
You start calling your instincts, and feelings, and intuitions as the Truth. And you start saying, “You know, it is arising from within, so it must be the Truth,” without ever seeing that, that which is within, is just a pale imprint of that, which is without.
From where did something reach within?
Questioner: Outside.
Acharya Prashant Ji: From here and there.
Do not turn feelings and such things into Truth.
They are not.
