Who is God, and why should one strive for Him? || (2018)
Questioner: As I read couplets of Kabir Sahib, he talks of God in them. Who is ‘God’, and why should one strive for ‘Him’?
Acharya Prashant: Why should I answer your question? You don’t strive for God, I will not answer your question!
Next one.
How do you feel when I do not answer your question? That is exactly how one feels when he is godless. Because you want God that’s why you want the answer to this question.
‘God’ is the answer to all questions. Why does anybody ever want anything? Because he actually wants ‘God’. ‘God’ is the end of all the things that you want.
And therefore, all those who have gone a little mad, have said, “God is everything that you want.” As they say, “Love is all you need”, they have said, “God is all you need.”
The thing is, you are a man of need. You need, you need, you need, and you keep needing, you keep needing, you keep needing. So there must certainly be something that you are asking for. That is ‘God’.
You don’t have to strive for God.
You are striving for God.
Are you not needy? Then you are spiritual.
Don’t you want food? Then you are a devotee.
If you are wanting just as much as, or just as little as food on your plate, or clothes to wear, then you are already in the dimension of Kabir Sahib, or Meerabai. It’s just that you are centuries behind them.
Kabir Sahib is not six hundred years behind us. We are six hundred years behind Kabir Sahib. So we will keep roaming for six hundred years, in various kinds of shapes and bodies, till we come to the very shadow of some Kabir.
We are very-very out of touch with ourselves. We do not see how desirous we are. And, if we chance upon our desirous-ness, then we hardly ever enquire what all the desire is about.
We are extremely skilled at giving ourselves phony objects to desire. If there is one specialty that is unique to man – it is the skill to cheat oneself. And then, the woman asks the man, “Are you cheating on me?”
Darling, since twenty-thousand centuries he has been cheating on himself. How will he ever manage to not cheat on you?
Go find one man, or one woman, who does not cheat himself or herself. This question is one very glorious example of that kind of cheating: Why must I strive for God?
Alright, don’t drink water.
But it simply doesn’t hit us, that even mundane daily activities are actually incidents of spiritual pursuit. It simply doesn’t strike us. For us, spirituality is some isolated arena. So we say, “Right now we are in the worldly arena. Why must we enter the spiritual arena that is out ‘there’, away there?”
The spiritual arena is not – ‘out there’. The spiritual arena is – where you are. The spiritual arena is – all that is.
When you are chasing a man or a woman, you are actually engaged in a spiritual act; just a misdirected act.
But you will cheat yourself. And you will not accept that it is really Krishna that you want, and therefore you are chasing that man. You will say, “No, I am doing something worldly, something material. And I do not know why there should be something spiritual.”
You will, with such an apparently innocent and flat face, say, “No, but all I want is a man in flesh and blood.” No, you don’t want a man in flesh and blood. You have had seven-point-five men in flesh and blood. Could they appease you?
You are looking for a ‘Krishna’. No, you will not admit that.
So what then is a discotheque? It is nothing but Kirtan gone wrong.
(Laughter)
You wanted Him through music and through holy company. But instead of divine music, you got hooked to some wrapper singing ‘Patiala Peg‘ (a song). And instead of the holy company, you got hooked to a man or a woman. Too demonstrative of all the wholes.
There is no place that you are actually not approaching, with the will to be liberated. It’s half a will actually, you know, because we are fragmented. It is not a total will; it is half a will. So it doesn’t succeed. It succeeds only in maintaining itself; not fulfilling itself.
Do you understand the difference between these two?
Will, succeeding in maintaining itself, versus, will, succeeding in fulfilling itself.
Fulfillment of will is – the disappearance of will.
You decide what kind of success you want. You want to maintain yourself, that is one success.
In Prakriti (nature), the definition of success is – continue to be; maintain, maintain. But your spirit does not consider that a success; just as maintaining and defending pimples on your face, is hardly a mark of success. Or, is it?
Maintaining a cancerous tumor in your stomach, is it success? But Prakriti just wants maintenance, continuation – that which is, must continue to be. And if it goes away, then it must leave something else behind it.
Sounds like cancer?
Yeah!
