Why Do We Go to the Upanishads?
Questioner: As you have claimed in your YouTube videos, you have read and have knowledge of so many Upanishads, Gita, and other religious scriptures. In a few videos, you claim that our society has a downfall because of the corrupted explanations by the people who are self-proclaimed owners of the religion. And now, can I believe in you, that you will provide the exact meaning of these books — what they want to provide, or they want to convey the meaning?
And I am not asking you this question so that if I know you are correct in explaining it, I will become your follower blindly. I will recheck it, because I also want to read these books from the basics. At least I should know the basics of these. And one more thing, I have had confusion from my childhood, a basic question: What is right and wrong?
Acharya Prashant: Wonderful. So, this question of what is right and wrong can also be applied to the first part of your question. “How do I know which one is the right interpretation and which one is the wrong one?” Good, nice.
See, you have to go first of all to yourself. There has to be a reason behind all human action. We will start from the utter basics so that there is no question of believing in anything or following anybody. What is the one thing that anybody can be absolutely sure of?
Questioner: Self existence.
Acharya Prashant: Good. But you have skipped five steps in the equation and taken the pleasure out of it. This answer will be evident to a few and not so evident to many.
Why do you say that we cannot be absolutely sure of the existence of this material here in the background, this thing? How do you say that we cannot be absolutely sure of the existence of this? Who said our own existence? How do you claim that we cannot say that this wood exists?
Questioner: Every other form of perception could be a dream.
Acharya Prashant: Elaborate on that.
Questioner: If I say something, I can see a dinosaur standing there, right? So, it is impossible to argue with.
Acharya Prashant: So, take that to the fundamentals so that people can come to the same page.
Questioner: I am just saying that anything you perceive externally comes through your five senses.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, the key word here is senses. The next word would be subjectivity. The key word here is senses. And so we have moved into epistemology, the field of proof of truthfulness of knowledge, whether or not what you call knowledge is knowledge or just subjective perception.
We, as human beings, perceive through our senses and process through our mind, and the mind has its own internal divisions within which is another thing. We perceive things and a very basic practical experiment would reveal: Let's say we have been conversing here for the last 15 minutes. If I ask each of us to write down what we have discussed objectively in five points and we ask, exchange your notes with your neighbor, you will find a great degree of divergence.
And not just divergence, you might find that what you are writing is actually opposite to what your neighbor has written. Now, how is that possible? If you all perceive that there is just one speaker who is uttering just one line of these oral signals, then how is it that each of us is writing down different things in notebooks? Subjectivity.
Now, this subjectivity means that we do not know facts. We know our own facts. So we cannot be too sure of that. The moment we come to see and accept that anything and everything that is being perceived by the inner experiencer comes into scrutiny and loses its absolute claim as being the Truth. Right?
What is it, then, that remains and can be said to exist? The one who is perceiving, even if he is perceiving all kinds of nonsense. And our friend used the word dream. Even if he is dreaming, there is somebody dreaming. So there is a dreamer. Even if somebody is hallucinating, there is somebody who is hallucinating. Then somebody could come up and say that the hallucinator or the dreamer himself, the experiencer himself, is false. Well, that might be true. But that does not reduce your suffering.
Many of us suffer in dreams, don’t we? Even if it is a dream, we do suffer. And that suffering is real. People have died in their sleep, from heart attacks, because they were dreaming something very terrible. Right? Similarly, even if I show you this and you say these are six fingers and you have this concept that if you find a man with six or six and a half or seven fingers, then that means your death is imminent and that makes you collapse, you are still suffering even if what you are seeing is totally false. Getting it?
So the sufferer must be taken as real because the sufferer is who we are.
Even if that sufferer is suffering for false reasons, yet the sufferer does exist. There is somebody who is saying ‘I am,’ even if the claim ‘I am’ is false. Yet this claim has to be taken seriously because that is a claim we all make, and we all suffer.
You remember we said I am a student. And what is the missing word there? What is silent in this statement? I am a suffering student. I am an employee. And what is silent over there? Again, I am a suffering employee. So the sufferer is definitely there. We start from there.
So first of all, the foundation has been solidly laid. I am not starting from a belief. I am not starting from a superstition. I am not saying that to enter the Upanishads, Vedanta, Bhagavad Gita, you have to have an a priori belief in something, which many of the world's religious systems mandate. They say if you want to enter our fold or go through our text, first of all you have to believe that there is this special thing sitting in the skies, and he made the world and we all have to obey his command.
No, we are not starting from there. And we have not yet gone to the Upanishads. It is not due to our belief in the Upanishads as sacred scriptures that we are starting from this point. We are still with ourselves. We do not know what the Upanishads are. We just do not know what the Upanishads are; we are purely with ourselves. And this is a very, very scientific thing. I am with myself, and I see that I suffer. Right?
So what is the next thing?
Questioner: I am saying that the same logic can be extrapolated to joy.
Acharya Prashant: The only difference is in your moments of true enjoyment, the question who am I? Where am I? This question disappears. So as long as there is the question who am I? it indicates the presence of suffering.
When you are joyful, do existential questions arise in your mind? And I am not talking about flimsy happiness. I am talking about the joy of immersion in something very meaningful. So this question of identity and all kinds of…
See, every question denotes a problem behind. Joy is not a problem. Suffering is a problem. So when you are joyful, then this question — Who am I? Why do I exist? And where is this suffering coming from; then it does not remain there. So the whole thing gets invalidated, gone. So the problem ‘Who am I?’ is only for the one who suffers. Otherwise, there is no question of ‘Who am I?’
The gyani, the mukt, if I refer to the scriptures, they do not ask, ‘koham, Who am I?’ ‘Koham’ is for the one who is entangled. So I start from there. I am the sufferer, and I have yet not gone to the Upanishad or the Gita. To whom should I go if the ‘I’ is the problem? And when I ask, ‘Who am I?’ I do not get an answer. Then please tell me logically, what should I do?
If the ‘I’ is the problem, the ‘I' is the sufferer, and I do not get an answer to ‘Who am I and why do I suffer?’ Who should be approached now? The ‘I’ has to be approached. Right? First of all, I’ll try things within myself. I’ll try thinking. I’ll try observing. I’ll do as much as I can. That’s the basic prerequisite of honesty. If I have a problem, the onus of challenging it lies firstly on myself. So I’ll try things at my own level, with my own capacity. I’ll do all those things, and when I find that I am getting saturated in terms of my own efforts, who will I go to?
Questioner: Acharya Prashant.
Acharya Prashant: The ‘I’ is the problem. So I will go to? Come on. The ‘I’ is here, and I have tried out everything. I have gained some success. I find I am better illuminated than before, but yet there are lots of cobwebs within. There is a haze I cannot penetrate.
Questioner: You will find that I have to go to somebody outside.
Acharya Prashant: Who? That’s true. I have to go to somebody outside. But how do I know who is the one outside I need to go to? The question is so easy. The ‘I’ is the problem. So I’ll have to go to? Please. The ‘I' is the problem, and I am not talking of going to a person because he is talking of the Gita and the Upanishads. So if ‘I’ is the problem, what kind of books will I go to or should I go to?
Questioner: Vedanta.
Acharya Prashant: No, don't say Vedanta.
Questioner: If ‘I’ is the problem, then I should not go to me?
Acharya Prashant: I have already gone within myself and found that I am getting obstructed, because I myself am the problem. So now I have to go to something else.
Questioner: So, anything which is not me.
Acharya Prashant: Anything that is not me might further complicate the problem of me because that is my own object. If I am confused and if I go to something random, who is choosing that random thing? ‘I.’
I’ll go to something that talks exclusively of the ‘I.’ If I have trouble in my tooth, I am not going to visit a cobbler. If I have trouble in my nose, I am not going to visit the renal department, nephrology. I am not going to do that.
So if ‘I' is the problem, I will have to go to a book that talks exclusively of the ‘I,’ purely of the ‘I.’ And using my own discretion, I will have to see whether the book is being honest about it or if there is a hidden agenda. Is the book trying to push stories, belief systems, or is the book helping me inquire in a better and more refined way?
The Upanishads are such books because their subject matter is nothing but the ‘I.’ And to some extent, the early Upanishads too, some of the primary Upanishads, including some of the Pramukh Upanishads have other subject matter as well, simple reason, because they are the primary ones, the first ones.
So they are not yet as refined, and they are very thick volumes. Being thick means that they may contain other things as well beyond the inquiry into the ‘I.’ As you move on, you find that the later Upanishads keep gaining in brevity. They keep becoming smaller in terms of the length of the volume, and they do not deviate from the central problem of the self.
That is the reason why we go to the Upanishads. Okay, getting it? Not because we are Hindus or Sanatanis, not because we have to believe in some creed, but because ‘I’ is a real problem that I must find a real solution to. That is why we go there.
Now, even among the Upanishads there is diversity because they were composed over a long stretch of time, even the Upanishads, I am not talking of the Samhita part of the Vedas. Even the Upanishads were composed over a period of around ten centuries, and spread across a vast geography, right from Sindh and parts even to the west of Sindh, extending right till almost Bengal, and then from there Kashmir till down south, as far as the sages of that time could have gone.
So it is a vast territory, and the means of communication were not very well developed. So, even among the Upanishads, there is a fair degree of diversity. So how do we know what is the very-very precise subject matter of the Upanishads? Because I am looking for something very precise, ‘I.’ So, then we refer to the Mahavakyas of the Upanishads. Mahavakyas.
So, four of them are universally accepted. We know of them as general knowledge, but it is not just four. The list can be extended to twenty or forty. And then you see from there that the Upanishads talk of nothing but the problem of the self. They are philosophical documents. They are talking of the problem of the self, which means that anything that claims to be based on the Upanishads but talks of things other than the self have to be negated. Right or wrong?
That is how you detect when you are reading a wrong kind of line of interpretation.
Sir, the agenda of the meeting was the self, and you are blabbering about something else. You are talking about this kind of ritual, that kind of ritual, this belief, that belief, the varna system, the ashram system. Sir, we are not here to talk of that. We are not here to talk of the wife’s responsibilities towards the husband. We are here to talk of the central and universal problem of the self. And you say that your interpretation, your bhashya, your vakya, your tikka, your exegesis is based on Vedanta. But Vedanta is about the self. Why are you talking about other things?
And so many stories you have come up with. What does the problem of the self have to do with stories? So many stories you are coming up with. Sometimes the stories can be useful in delivering a point, but that point has to be the self. But look at your stories. To what extent are your stories bringing me closer to myself? And to what extent are they actually taking me away from myself? So
Whenever you come across something that is dealing in stories and beliefs, you must know that is not Vedanta. That is not Vedanta at all. This is how you detect right and wrong.
This is how you know which interpretation is worth it and which is just a product of the human mind, human thought, human imagination. We have imaginations of our own. Why do you want to overload ourselves with the imaginations of others as well?
Sir, if I have to dream, I have my own dreams. If I have to hallucinate. If I have to be foolish, I already have my own foolishness. Enough of them. Why do I have to embrace your foolishness as well?
Vedanta and anything related to Vedanta has to deal exclusively with the self. A little bit of deviation from the self, and you must keep the book away. This is not worth it. You do not understand Vedanta.
Instead of Vedanta, you are dealing in something else. You are bringing your personal prejudices in your thoughts, your racial superiority, or the supremacy of your beliefs, or the greatness of your land. All those things you are bringing in.
Vedanta has no time for this kind of stupidity. “This place is superior. These people are superior. This gender is superior. This is superior. That is superior. You have to believe in this. Those who do not believe in this, they go to swarg and nark.” Sir, we are not interested in going to swarg. We are interested in getting liberation from the inner hell we are currently, right now, presently in. I do not want relief after death. I want relief right now.
So anything that talks of all these things — what will happen to you after you die, what was happening to you before you took birth — that is not Vedanta. Vedanta deals with only one problem: the problem of the self. The false self is aham. The final Truth is Ātmā. That’s the importance Vedanta accords to the self.
The self itself is the absolute Truth because everything else is just a product, a manifestation, a projection of the self. The final Truth itself is Ātmā.
By Ātmā we do not mean the thing that flies out of your body after your death. We are not talking about something bodily. Ātmā is the absolute Truth. Not something related to the body. Not something that enters your body when you are in your mother’s womb and then flies away and goes to some other lok, and then enters your body when you are about to take another birth. No, no. That is not Vedanta. These are very easy kinds of beliefs that were slipped into the system later on.
