When are you God? When are you not? || Acharya Prashant, on Guru Granth Sahib (2019)

He himself acts, and he himself contemplates. He Himself is the Master of both worlds. He plays and He enjoys; He is the Inner-knower, the Searcher of hearts. As He wills, He causes actions to be done. Nanak sees no other than Him. ||2||

Tell me – what can a mere mortal do? Whatever pleases God is what He causes us to do. If it were in our hands, we would grab up everything. Whatever pleases God – that is what He does. ||3||

~Guru Granth Sahib

Page: 277

Question: Acharya Ji, Pranaam!

I am reading Guru Granth Sahib, and loving it. Strangely, I agree with what is written there, but disagree with what it implies. In some of the lines it is stated that He wills, contemplates, acts, and causes actions to be done. It is also said that there is no other than Him.

These are harmless and acceptable assertions. However, they imply that there is no suffering, and hence no ‘I’. I resist this implication. Is it His will that ‘I’ exists, ‘I’ resists, and ‘I’ claims to be suffering?

Am I, Him?

He cannot be suffering. What I believe is, that I am suffering.

Please resolve this paradox.

Acharya Prashant Ji:

That which makes you suffer, the ‘I sense’, the ‘I sense’ too comes from Him. The ‘I sense’ is the suffering, the ‘I sense’ makes you suffer.

In other words, the ‘I sense’ makes itself suffer. That too is coming from Him.

So, all the actions that are generally attributed to the ‘I’, the Saints say that they actually come from Him.

There is a reason.

Does the ‘I’ really know what it is doing? If the ‘I’ is the originator of action, then it must know what it is doing? Does it really know? If it does not know what it is doing, then surely the action does not originate from the ‘I’, tt originates from somewhere else.

That ‘somewhere else’ is ‘God’.

The day the ‘I’ starts really knowing what it is doing, why it is doing, and who it is, then there is no difference between ‘I’ and ‘God’. ‘I’ exists as a separate ‘I’, as a separate doer, only as long as it does not know what it is doing.

It claims that it is doing something, without really being the doer.

It says, “I am thinking,” but does it know why it is thinking, what it is thinking. An impulse arises, and the ‘I’ says, “I am feeling in a certain way.” It can say what it is feeling. But can it say where the feeling is coming from?

So, the Saints have said that the ‘I’ feels like being the doer, but is actually not the doer; it’s just a puppet. If there is a puppet, then they say that let’s call the puppeteer as ‘God’.

That’s what is being implied here.

“Am I, Him?” You are Him, when you know who ‘you’ are. You are ‘yourself’, as long as you do not know who you are. As long as you are acting in your darkness, you are ‘yourself’. When you start acting in Light, you are Him.

So you have the option to be either.

You can be ‘yourself’ or you can be ‘God’. Who gave this option? You never wanted this option. You cannot do away with this option, which means that you are not the progenitor of these options.

Where are they coming from then? Wherever they are coming from, let’s call that point as ‘God’.

That’s the philosophy.

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