What is not external? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Listener: Sir, all the contents of the mind are external influences. So, directly or indirectly the personality that I have is external. Sir, the thing is, do I have a quality of my own and if I have, how to identify that?
Speaker: This is that quality. This question is not coming out of personality, it is coming out of attention.That is what you are, that is the only thing you are, rest all is fake, everything else is fake, this is that quality. You do not need to find it out, it is always there with you, you are that. What to find out?
Listener: But sir, how will I distinguish that it is not any kind of external influence, its my own quality?
Speaker: Because you can see the external influence. There has to be somebody to see the external influence. Right? How do you know that something is an external influences? You will see; you will realize. I am saying, ‘that is a car’. That means there has to be ‘me’; there has to be a ‘car’. I am saying that there is ‘external influence’. There has to be an ‘external influence’ and there has to be ‘me’, this cannot be external. If that is an external influence, then the entity that is seeing that cannot be an external influence; that is what you are. But he has said a beautiful line, we have come to it that ‘all personality is false’. Your complete personality is a borrowed phenomenon. Likes, dislikes, attitudes, of course the body, it is all borrowed. None of it is of real use. Your smartness; your cleverness; your shyness; your outspokenness, and it is not bad news at all, its very very good news. When you are intelligence; the knower of everything, then you are not limited to act and be in a particular way, then everything becomes open to you. If you are anything, then that means you are limited. Did you get that? To Be ‘A’, I am not ‘B’,’C’,’D’,’E’, ‘F’, till ‘Z’. Being ‘S’ means, that I am not the other 25 letters of the alphabet. To be anything is to be limited. What is your name?
Listener: Mayank.
Speaker: To be ‘Mayank’ is to not to be ‘Nitin’, do you see this? Otherwise there would be no ‘Mayank’. ‘Mayank’ means ‘Mayank’ is ‘Mayank’, ‘Mayank’ cannot be anybody else. If the elements of personality are false, that is very very enabling news for you. Yes Mayank! But ‘Mayank’ will have to go for Mayank to become wide and expensive. This limited being called ‘Mayank’ will have to go. You understand what I mean, ‘Mayank’ has to go? What is ‘Mayank’? ‘Mayank’ is the sum total of the identities and personalities, this ‘Mayank’ will have to go. Some people will find it scary. I am ‘Mayank’, and ‘Mayank’ will have to go, what will happen to me? Very scary. No, it is not scary at all. Not at all. Its wonderful to not to be limited, to not to be a salve, life opens up. You really experience what it is to live.Yes.
Listener: Is there example of any person who is actually a free man?
Speaker: Oh! Hundreds, thousands, if not million examples. How will you recognize them? Let there will be a Buddha walking very very close to you, let there be Buddha sitting right in front of you, how will you recognize him? Do you have the eyes? I may give you a hundred examples but they will remain my examples, how will you find out. Do you have the eyes? Only a Buddha can realize another Buddha. Are you a Buddha? How will you know, even if I will give you examples? If you were Buddha, you will not ask for examples, you will know by yourselves. Difficult, very difficult. So, don’t look for examples, people, outside you. Look within, look into yourself; that is more important.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
