When you don’t give the world importance, it simply vanishes || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Listener 1: Acharya Ji, when I woke up today in the morning, I was afraid, I didn’t know why…
Listener 2: Earlier when I used to come for camps, I never felt like reading, but this time I wanted to read more and more and more.
Acharya Prashant: Whatever you feel , learn how to not to give it importance. Your knowledge will not help you, your mind, its content, all these readings, nothing will help you. What will help you is *this: s*o many things will keep happening, learn to not to give them importance.
So, if you woke up and you found out that you were afraid, is it really worth mentioning?
Learn to call this not as reflection but as gossip!
If ‘n’ things happen with you, I assure you that ‘5n’ things happen with me and they are not very sacred and beautiful things. Just that I have learned to not to give them importance. I keep doing what I have to do even when a thousand other things are happening.
I know what I have to do being what I am, all this dance of this and that keeps happening. I avoid giving it importance, body will say a few things, the mind will be afraid, thoughts of this and that will keep coming, why should they be called important?
L: I guess, the more we give importance to something the more thoughts it generates.
AP: But it’s a feeling of great power.
You know something is hurting and you are still walking. You know the mind is sad, it is almost feeling like crying out, and you are still speaking in a meditative way. It’s a feeling of, ‘You cannot touch me. I cannot be defeated.’
You think of a man, a crowd is beating him up black and blue, blows are landing on his face, on his chest, on his back, and he is still reciting a shlok, think of it, not that he is not experiencing the blow, not that pain is not arising; but he knows what is important; after a while he simply forgets.
Don’t give it importance and it will vanish, that’s the way to change the world.
What you do not give importance to simply vanishes, the world has changed.
L: Acharya Ji, sometimes it happens, like for example a girl passed by, and mind got bothered by it, but this strikes a minute after the event has already happened.
AP: The art is to wake up not after one minute but be awake even when this thought is there.
So, let’s say two of us are talking and one girl passes by, so even as you are noticing her even as she is disturbing you, even as there is something there you are yet fully absorbed here, that is the art of it all, not that you don’t notice this, not that I have not known that an animal has walked past this door; I have fully known that there was a black animal, it was wagging its tail, I noticed all this but the meditativeness of this should not get corrupted; that is the art of it all.
L: With me, it is not simultaneous although sometimes I succeed in not letting that effective but only after a point it seems.
AP: It will require effort at that moment when that event is there to disturb you it does require mental energy to keep it at bay.
L: Acharya Ji, I am able to do this at times, that I actually forget the world around but I still a lot times…
AP: The more you move into this thing, more you will practice it, the more will be your capacity to remain in this even when a lot is happening around. It will deepen with practice.
Point will come when you will continue talking even if an insect is biting you in thighs. You know it is biting you, yet you continuing to talk; you can also feel that the liquid is now oozing out. You can very clearly sense all of that; yet this is continuing because this is important.
L: Like, once it happened in a clarity session that an earthquake came and you told us that you were not simply aware of it. It was a heavy earthquake.
AP: I was not aware of many things. She talked of me having scolded her. I tried to recall, ‘Did I? When did I scold her?’
How do you remember scolding you, when I don’t remember scolding you! I scold and forget! I have no memory of me having said anything to you at all. No memory at all.
L: This is something that I want to learn, because when I first heard of this, an image came to my mind of some mystical event and what not.
AP: No not at all!
I just was not aware of any earthquake, and even if the earthquake would have been more severe, we all would have walked down to the road and I would have waited for the earthquake to subside so that we can resume the session. So there is no great method in all this at all.
L: Sir ignoring and not giving importance are same?
AP: In ignoring, you are thinking about it, it is not a thought-out ignorance it is a spontaneous-ignorance. It is happening, it is there in the consciousness but when you say, ‘I am ignoring something’ , it’s ‘you’ who is ignoring it. You are involved in ignoring it, so involvement is there.
When I am saying say I don’t pay attention it means not involved at all, not involved even in ignoring.
L: Acharya Ji, but when thought arises then it looks like as if it has something concrete and real in it. It looks very promising.
AP: If it appears so fascinating then be with it. You don’t have to always kick it away, if it appears so fascinating then say, ‘Alright! come let’s talk, sit face-to-face, let’s talk’, give it complete attention if there is any value in it. It will emerge.
When the thought comes and the thought is constantly chasing you saying that, ‘Please listen to me, please listen to me, I have something important to say’, then tell the thought that, ‘Alright! come over, let’s talk. You don’t want to go away, so let’s talk’.
L: And then if he doesn’t talk?
AP: Then it was just a rascal! Just trying to flirt with you. It had nothing to commit to you. So, you have seen these rascals who chase the girls and if the girls stop and say, ‘Come! let’s talk’.
What will happen to this flirtatious one?
L: They will run away!
AP: Girls don’t do that right?
They like being chased!
It is so easy, ‘Let’s talk.’
