You must have heaven in your Heart || Acharya Prashant, on Saint Kabir (2016)

Questioner (Q): There are times when one meets a lot of resistance and suffering during the spiritual process. All kinds of fears and pains come to the surface, and the temptation to just drop the whole thing and go back to one’s normal patterns is high. How can one withstand all this and keep moving even when the situation seems hopeless?

Acharya Prashant (AP): There is no method here. One has to live through it. One has to pass through this hell. You can only pass through hell if you have heaven in your heart. You will have to live through it. It is the smoke; your accumulated conditioning is burning. It is the smoke, fear is the smoke. You will have to tolerate it. Jesus said, only faith enables you to tolerate it.

So, there is no shortcut here. And fear will tear you apart, fear will really make you tremble, shiver; don’t then ask for a remedy. The only remedy is only to go deeply within. The experience of fear, mind you, will still be there; it will still be there. What prevents us from just passing through this fear and be done with it is the hope that we can avoid it and yet become free. Just drop this hope.

You need not drop the fear. Drop the hope of some kind of an escape from fear. Let there be fear and be certain that you will have to face it. That is the price you pay. You see, fear is the smoke of the annihilation of the ego. If the ego will burn, this smoke will arise.

Q: This fear is probably the last thing that will go, particularly the fear of death.

AP: The more fear there is, the more you should know that some deep disease is at stake. Fear means the thought that you will lose something. What else can you lose? Can you lose the Truth? So, what would you lose? What is fear all about?

Q: The ego.

AP: Yes. If it is really frightening, it is really good.

Q: Really good!

AP: You know, Kabir—because we are talking of the burning and the smoke—he has put it extremely beautifully. He says, “ Birhan odhi laakdi sakuche aur dhudhuaae, chhut pade ya birhan se, jo sagree jali jaae (The wet wood is burning in the fire of separation, but it is not able to burn fully and just passes smoke because of hesitation; to be relieved of her pain, it has to burn totally).” He says that the mind is like wet timber, wet wood, wet firewood. What happens to the wet firewood when you try to put it on fire? It burns very slowly and emits a lot of smoke.

So, Kabir says, our mind is destined to burn down. It is the destiny of the ego to be burnt down, to reduce to ashes. But it is like wet firewood: it burns ever so slowly, and that is why there is so much smoke. He says there is just one remedy: burn down quickly. The more you will postpone it using methods and processes, the more you will just keep simmering, and that is no good—to keep simmering, to keep emitting smoke like that wet wood which is being set on fire from beneath and is wet at the top. Division, contradiction. Some part of it is burning, the other part of it is not burning—division, contradiction.

Burn down totally. Burn down. And that will give you the only reprieve that is possible; that is the only remedy. He is not saying that there can be a way to lubricate the process, to make the whole thing easier for you. He is saying, the only way it can become easier for you is that you let it happen quickly. The more it stretches in time, the more you postpone it, the more you will just keep simmering, and that is no good; that is such a torture.

So, let it happen here and now. Face your fears right now. Tremble, shiver, and die, and you are reborn.

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