Why do we resist individuality? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: Why do persons not like to be individuals?
Speaker: Because the person is the opposite of the individual. The individual is the death of the person. The individual is the death of the person, just as waking up is the death of the dream. The person wants to continue. The dream is unreal, fake, but it still wants to continue. The person is unreal and fake, but it wants to live on. Hence it resists. Because the moment you become an individual, it is death for the person.
What is the person? The person is a stupid way of living. The moment you are an individual, an intelligent being, it means death of stupidity. And stupidity does not want to die. So, it will resist. It will create a wall. It will create an armor. It will give all types of argument. It will resist. It will say, ‘No, this is not alright. If everybody becomes an individual then what will happen to the world?’ And all kinds of stupid arguments will be raised by the ego. The ego does not want to die.
The ego is your very mind, afraid, trying its best to somehow survive, finding goals and targets, to somehow keep living on. That is the nature of the ego. Direct intelligence, is death of all this striving. The ego lives in strife. Do you know what strife is? This constant effort to become something. ‘Let me become this, let me get that.’ The ego lives in that. It is highly stupid, and the ego lives in that. Along with individuality comes a direct joy, calmness and peace that kills the ego.
The ego sees its instant death in intelligence. Hence the ego will resist intelligence with all its power, all its power. It will say, ‘No, freedom is not good.’ It will give you thousand kinds of arguments. It will say, ‘You know, right now you are a slave. You are in a cage. But in cage there is so much of protection. And your master feeds you twice, once in the morning, once in the evening. The cage is a very good place. Do not ask for freedom. If you will be free you will fly in the sky. And in the sky, in the open sky, there are so many dangers.’ It will resist. The ego will resist. Individuality means love. But ego says, ‘No. In love there is so much of hurt. Don’t open up. Don’t become vulnerable. Don’t open up.’
Individuality means Freedom. Ego resists freedom.
Individuality means Love. Ego resists love.
Individuality means Intelligence. Ego resists intelligence.
Individuality means Joy. Ego wants to live in misery and tension.
Ego says, ‘Life is a torture and you must bear it.’ Ego says, ‘Life is a big sacrifice.’ Ego says, ‘Life is suffering.’ And hence it wants to live in targets. It says that when you will achieve that target, then you can be happy otherwise life is suffering. Don’t you see the logic of the ego?
Everything that the ego stands for, dies in individuality. And hence the ego is greatly afraid of individuality, greatly afraid.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
