What makes you reject the God standing right in front of you? || Acharya Prashant (2016)
Questioner (Q): I have a surrendered mind. But if I have to choose one thing of two, then my mind interrupts, and you are saying that a surrendered mind doesn’t interpret.
Acharya Prashant (AP): So, it is not then a surrendered mind.
Surrender is not the imagination of surrender. Surrender is Surrender.
Don’t ever fall into this trap—We try to imagine what it would be like when we are free. Now being bonded, fully imagining yourself to be in bondage, how can you even imagine freedom? And then you will imagine freedom in terms of bondage because you are the bonded one. And seeing this, then that freedom will appear very scary to you. So the net result will be that you will want to avoid freedom.
We all have an image of Truth; there is nobody who has no image of God. There is nobody who has no image of Freedom.
And the image of freedom prevents you from being free right now.
Do you see this?
Two or three days back I asked - What makes us reject the God standing right in front of us? - The fact that we believe in God.
Because you believe in God you will have an image of God. So, you will reject the God standing in front of you. And, you will say, “I am searching, searching”.
Never use ifs and buts in these matters. And you say, "If I am surrendered", it means that you already know what surrender is. And do you know, speaking as the Ego, do you already know what surrender is? No, you don’t know surrender but you have an idea of surrender. And that idea of surrender comes from the one who is not surrendered.
So, that idea will be an idea so that will perpetuate and continue the lack of surrender.
Don’t you ask, “What if everyone becomes a Buddha?” What do you mean by that? Now you can ask this question only because you have an image of the Buddha. And the Ego is so arrogant that it tries to have an image of everything. He leaves nothing, spares nothing—it has an image of Truth, God, love, everything.
Q: And then we say, theoretically I understand everything and practically I am not able to follow that.
AP: And that is the state of all the learned ones. They say, “Theoretically, I understand”. What kind of statement is this? ‘Theoretical understanding!’, that is like calling dinner as theoretical food. Who will be satiated by theoretical food? Then how can understanding be theoretical?
Such a great deception!
Q: Then believing in God and not believing in God is exactly the same.
AP: Yes, exactly the same. Wonderful, very well said.
The believer and the atheist are brothers. One believes in something he does not know; the other does not believe in something he does not know.
But, both are very certain of their beliefs.
God never knows God. God has no conception of God. Only ungodliness knows God a lot.
The believers, they have so many books about Gods and so many fairy-tales. And the atheists, they have so many arguments against God as if they know God at all.
Go to God and ask, “What is God?” He will say, “Never heard of him.” You will have to educate God about God. God is totally ignorant about anything called God.
