What is personal?

Acharya Prashant

4 min
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What is personal?

Q: Dear Sir, I have a question.

Why do you want people to be self-aware when it is meant for an individual who is intrinsically interested in this pursuit? This particular path/pursuit/learning is purely personal. Does it require an organisation to be set up for its recognition?

A: What is meant by ‘personal’?

Q: Means it is too personal for me if I share this with anyone. It might be misinterpreted.

A: Who shares? The person? His ‘personal’ stuff?

Q: Yes, the person.

A: Who is he?

Q: Of course if I go by negation, it may give infinite answers. Even ‘I am’ is objectified!

A: One does not look at herself as a negated entity. For each, she is ‘some’ positive, existing person. Who is this person?

Q: By negation I mean, as long as I can see an entity in front of me, I can’t be That. Every time I ask, ‘Who is this person?’ I get infinite answers or at maximum a silence, a bliss. But even that is observed.

A: Not a question of specifically answering ‘Who is the person?’, as a task. Not some academic answer. When you say, ‘this is personal’, you mean something. You say with conviction, there is a solid feeling. What is this ‘person’ and ‘personal’ that one keeps referring to?

Q: Means that this pursuit is something I am really serious about, that is why it is personal for me.

A: What is this ‘personal’ I ?

Q: I did not get your question.

A: What is this person that one calls as ‘I’ ? What is this ‘personal I’ ?

Q: Mind, thoughts.

A: Whose are they?

Q: They belong to me.

A: To whom?

Q: I can’t say.

A: But one refers to it with apparent sureness. One says ‘this is personal’. Personal anguish, personal pleasures. One is so convinced about the person.

Q: But don’t you think it will stay as till the truth is unknown? Even if there is no anguish, conviction, what remains is non-anguish, non-conviction. It still exists. Not to identify myself as a person, is not an answer.

A: So its a hazy person that appears brightly shining. More you see, more the haziness. What kind of ‘truth’ and ‘realisation’ will this hazy person chase? What will be the nature of all things ‘personal’?

Q: It hasn’t and can’t chase anything. Looks like a maze. Every time a chase begins, it ends in either silence when there is an understanding, or headache.

A: So, can there be any personal pursuit of Truth?

Q: No. But how to continue the understanding? This too is temporary. Why after a time weakness sets in?

A: That is the nature of personal effort.

Q: Even you might have made a personal effort. What makes you say that you know impersonal effort?

A: It cannot be known. I do not know it.

Effort gets known only due to fatigue. Resistance makes work felt. Change makes movement known. So, all I know is personal effort. And its severe limitation.

Q: Yes. I also realise its limitation each time I make an effort.

A: That is enough.

Q: Even rendering it ‘enough’, mentally is an effort.

A: To sharply realise the inadequacy of the person. And to honestly let the realisation penetrate.

Q: This shows a wait.

A: If one wants to suspend the realisation. If the person wants to protect herself.

Q: I have only an academic answer to this. I don’t know whether I have really understood the answerThe answer is, ‘If I am protecting myself, then it means it is already there.’

A: The person will make efforts, get tired, and not understand. At best, it can see the futility of its efforts and stop energising them. Maybe there won’t be a need for more.

Q: Yes.

Thank you for giving your time.

A: Thank you.

– Excerpts based on my Q & A session on various e-media.

Dated: 13th March,’15

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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