What lies beyond mind? || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Questioner (Q): What lies beyond mind? More mind. What is more mind? It is not a question. It's actually a concept.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Any question about beyondness would be a useless question because the question itself is coming from the mind and the question decides the scope of the answer. If the question is mental, it is demanding a mental answer as well.

The mental answer is mental within mind so it cannot take it beyond mind which means that it is not the answers that can give spiritual solutions. They come from somewhere else.

Even as we are talking and let's say I ask the question and you give me an answer. Yet if your answer is really useful to me it will not be the words of the answer but something behind the words. Words keep you in the same dimension as the question. Answers can never be useful. Maybe they can be…

Q: Indicators.

AP: Indicators.

Q: Keep trying to figure it out.

AP: Indicators to where?

Q: To nowhere.

AP: Then an indicator to nowhere would be a no indicator. You cannot have a signboard pointing to nowhere. It will point to somewhere. Yes you can have an indicator of that kind but it could be a no indicator.

So, the words of the real teacher must have that quality of emptiness. They must be no words. It is not from words that you learn, it is from something very clean, pure, empty behind the words that is from where we learn.

That is why it is called Satsang - closeness and in that closeness, if words are there, all right; if words are not there, all right. Sang means closeness. Sat means the essential, the truth. Just closeness and that closeness does not mean a conversation or a dialogue, just closeness.

Yeah, then why do we talk? Because we're chatterboxes. We cannot help talking.

We are so accustomed to talking that it would appear awkward if the four of us, five of us sit here without talking. In 15 minutes we'll feel like saying goodbye. So, just to make each other comfortable, we must talk.

Q: It’s kind of experiential subjective. You can sync up a word, are can repeat that word. It seems that I'm the one who consumed the word, repeated the word, experienced the word. The one who was there before, during, and after the words.

So, enough capacity and it can also be addressed and then there is stillness, presence, awareness. Is that part of the mind?

AP: But that, I’m repeating. You would be experiencing only the word. The peace that we often refer to in spirituality or awareness is a non-experience.

And what is meant by that? I'm not just throwing around words. It has a specific meaning. We talk of peace only in context of supreme.

Silence is to be talked of only when there is noise. So if there is noise what are we experiencing? If there is noise, what does one experience?

(audience goes blank)

AP: Noise, what else?

Q: It’s noise.

AP: You are habituated to complexity, right? You don't give simple answers. So if there is noise what does one experience?

Q: Noise.

AP: Peace is a coming down, a subsiding of experience. You cannot experience peace because peace is no experience. All you now experience is that the previous noise is now relatively lesser, lesser, lesser, and when the noise is zero then you say it is absolute peace.

So there can be no experience of peace. There can only be a reduction in the experience of that which you are already experiencing and because we are already experiencing suffering all the time, so, joy is just the cessation of suffering.

Q: Here’s to me that I as I take myself to be a capacity to cultivate that non-experience.

AP: To cultivate the non-experience.

Q: Yes.

AP: Yes, that capacity is there. But that non-experience is not cultivated. It is the stopping of the cultivation.

Q: So, the capacity is there to reduce the cultivation and then what?

AP: It is not reduction in the sense of doing. It is reduction in the sense of non-doing.

Q: Stepping back.

AP: Stepping back. It is not as if you are actively reducing something. It is just that whatever was there was due to your support, your action, your intention and now you have withdrawn your support and your energy. So, it is reducing. You are just withdrawing your energy.

Q: So, that’s an intelligent use of …

AP: That’s an intelligent non-use.

Q: Non-use. Intelligent non-doing.

AP: Intelligent non-doing. But that non-doing again, we have talked of it many times that non-doing is not a stopping of physical action. That non-doing, which is a psychological non-doing, only means that the mind will not stand in the way of existential action now.

Q: So I guess one thing to non-doing. So, one step is withdraw, we become aware, we withdraw our support to find the stillness.

AP: Yes.

Q: But that they outburn. That dynamic, spontaneous action that flows so that…

AP: See, that center is already a very weak center. Weak in the sense that even in the middle of noise, you do not want noise. Peace is calling even when noise is there. In fact, the greater the noise, the louder is the call of peace. Is it not? Is it not so?

So, it is with blessing of peace or silence that the reduction in noise starts. In some way, peace lies not at the end of noise but even in the middle of noise. Had you really liked noise, why would you have gone towards silence? Nobody likes noise.

What is the meaning of disliking noise? Who can dislike noise? Can noise dislike noise? Who dislikes noise? The peaceful center, that is not really compatible with noise. So, the peaceful center is always on top, always ruling. It is ruling even when noise is ruling. Because the more noise there is, the more is the call of peace.

You, you read that na, that, “Reach the destination and begin the journey”. So, the journey begins after the destination is reached. Noise will reduce only when the peace is first there. Peace will not come at the end of noise. Peace must come in the beginning itself. Which means that no method should claim that at the end of the method lies liberation.

Liberation must always lie at the beginning of the method.

So, today if you want to begin your Sādhanā you must first say, “I’ve already reached where I wanted to reach. I’ve discovered that I’m already home.”

And then you can begin whatever Sādhanā you want to. No Sādhanā should give you the promise of delivering the goods.

Incompletion will only give rise to more incompletion. Sādhanā , if it proceeds from the assumption that there is something wrong in me and I want to correct that through Sādhanā , then something will always remain wrong in you.

Sādhanā must begin with the firm faith that all is already alright. Now, all is already alright and now I’m trying to correct that which is anyway correct. Sādhanā must say, “All is already alright and my Sādhanā is to correct that which is already correct. So, my Sādhanā is just fun.” A game. We have called it Leela here.

Q: You spoke like every moment and used like spontaneous response to whatever the situations. A normal talk of Sādhanā are practice. For example, if we talk about OSHO, on the place of suggest some method like which allows spontaneous movement of the body. So….

AP: No, no. I want to ask you something. Suppose you have never heard of OSHO, would you not allow spontaneous movements of the body? Have you ever watched kids? Have you seen how spontaneously they dance? Have they learnt it from OSHO? Have they gone to some Sādhanā center or Āsharam ? So, it is not OSHO’s meditation. All that OSHO is teaching you is to let yourself loose.

Q: Be natural.

AP: Be natural and then you’ll dance on your own because dancing is you use that beautiful expression that overflowing of energy. When it is there then you feel like something starts happening. You start tapping your feet, you feel like going crazy and dancing.

Even animals dance. Have not seen dancing animals? Pet animals so frequently dance. I’ve seen rabbits dancing. It's not very rhythmic or something but it is surely a dance from here to there. It's very clear that they are enjoying themselves.

Q: Like playing.

AP: Yes, playing. Sometimes even playing when no other rabbit is there. So, all by itself. The rabbit is just hopping around, doing this, doing that. Hop-hop. Dance.

Q: You also dance sometimes?

AP: Many a times. Sometimes I'm forced to dance.

Q: Internal force or external?

AP: Internal, external both. And I found myself surrendering to both - the internal and the external as well.

Q: That’s what I was wanting to express. When the Sādhanā begins, the destination is already reached and it’s an expression. Just to be natural be it any….

AP: You can even call it a dance. And then that Sādhanā is similar to dance. You are dancing in joy. You are not dancing to get joy. You are already joyful, so you are dancing. You are not dancing so that at the end of the dance you will get that apple.

Q: It is not a strategy.

AP: It is not a strategy. Every strategy is kind of cunning. Is it not?

Q: Yes.

AP: It is a ploy against existence.

Q: It’s a celebration.

AP: It’s a celebration. Yes. Today he sang a lot. I suppose some 5-7 songs on his guitar. This camping that we are having here is a dance. When I was on that podium, I was dancing. If that be the definition of dancing then what? If dancing is when you are enjoying and energy wants to express itself. You don't have anything to gain through that action. It's just the play of energy. So that on the podium was a dance.

Q: Dancing is a spontaneous expression.

AP: Hmm…

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