What is reflected awareness? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: The question is, ‘what is reflected awareness?
There are two ways to know yourself. I will first take up the way we commonly know ourselves. What is that way?
So, here is Preeti and someone comes up to her and says, ‘Preeti, you are brilliant’. Right? And this sentence changes into her mind as, ‘I am brilliant’. Are you getting it?
An external entity comes to her and says, ‘Preeti, you are brilliant’. What does Preeti make of this statement? That I am brilliant. Now, has Preeti known for herself that she is brilliant? No. An external entity said something to her and she has just internalized it. The result will be that she would never be sure of herself, because it is not her own knowing, it is coming from outside. She will also live in fear , because if she accepts that I am brilliant which is coming from outside, then she will also have to accept that I am stupid which will also coming from outside. Are you getting it? The gates have been opened. You have given somebody else the power to determine what you are.
. You are knowing yourself in a second hand way, in an indirect way, this is also what is called the ‘ego’. Not knowing yourself directly; not having your own eyes to look at yourself instead, depending upon the opinion of others, identifying yourself with what others have given to you. So, somebody else hands over a religion to me, nobody chooses his or her religion himself and then we identify with it. I am a Hindu, I am a Muslim or something else. Somebody else gives us all our identities , our sense of the self, this is the second hand way of living, this is a dependent way of living, and this is what is called as ‘reflected awareness’. This is the way the vast majority of people know themselves, in a reflected way.
Even if the entire world comes to you and says that you are this and that, you can smile and say, ‘I know’. I know it for myself, nobody told it to me. I know it for myself and hence I am very sure’. Are you getting it? Now you are not confused or dependent. External forces cannot become powerful over you now.
What kind of life you want to live? One of ‘reflected awareness’ or one of ‘direct knowing’.
All listeners: Direct knowing.
Speaker: Good. Wonderful.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
