You think You’re Thinking — Really?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. So my question was: when we make important life decisions, how do we distinguish between natural thinking and conditioned thinking? There are some things like you get some genuine wisdom, and there are things which are conditioned to us. So how to distinguish between them?
Acharya Prashant: Inquiry is the only route. Otherwise, there is no way you can ever detect whether your thoughts, internal processes, feelings, and importantly, conclusions and decisions are your own, really original or whether they are products of an implanted process, you will never come to know. What has been implanted within, that which you are calling conditioning, is an implanted thing. And once it has entered your insides, it will always appear innate.
In the normal run of things, human beings lack the capacity to differentiate between what is original and what is borrowed. That which is borrowed very quickly, very unnoticeably, starts appearing one’s own, homemade, native. So one puts the force of all his confidence behind his thoughts and feelings and decisions. One says, “These are my own, and I’m confident. This is what I am thinking, right? This is what I am feeling. That’s what I have thought out for my future” — ‘I.’
The ‘I’ is such a lonely thing. It wastes no time in latching on to whatever object it can get hold of, and once it has touched something, it gets identified with that. So a very foreign idea might enter your mind, and once you get associated with it, you will start claiming ownership. You’ll say, “It is mine.”
And if somebody then questions that idea or invites you to debate, you might even feel offended or provoked. You’ll say, “This is my idea, and you are questioning it.” It is not the idea that you are questioning; it is my ‘I-ness’ that you are questioning. Because now my ‘I’ is attached, rather identified with the idea. So if you question that idea, you are questioning their ‘I-ness;’ you are questioning, by implication, their existence itself. ‘I’ is your existence, right?
So I am identified with a particular attire, trousers, jackets, saris, whatever, nothing an inanimate piece of clothing. But if that becomes a part of my identity, and we are saying the ego is such a hungry beast, it will very quickly associate itself with anything and everything it gets hold of, because nothing satisfies it. Since nothing satisfies it, it is always eager to bite into, to pierce into, to take grip of, to clutch whatever is the next thing, subtle or gross, that it comes across.
So it could be a piece of clothing, it could be an idea, thought, feeling, whatever. If it comes to the self, the self has a great tendency to get identified with it. Identification could be both in affirmation and negation. For example, “I am a conservative” or “I am a liberal.” So I’m already committed to a particular idea, right? I’m already committed. So if the opposite of that idea comes to me, I’ll again be identified to the opposite, because that’s my very nature, the nature of the ego — to be identified.
I’ll again be identified to that idea but via negation. So I’ll become a sworn enemy of the liberals or hater of the conservatives. That’s again identification. That’s again a statement of identity. Is it not? Who am I? Slayer of the liberals or hater of the conservatives. That's again a statement of identity. So one identity gives birth to several identities. There is no way the ego can let go of anything. It is, we are saying, always hungry, always lonely, always seeking company, always seeking an object that can fulfill it. So once the ego gets associated, it starts claiming ownership. It says, “The thing is mine. The thing is mine.”
“I want a fat pay package” — ‘I.’ How do you know it is your own thought? How do you know? How do you know? “I think mine is the best country of all. I think my thoughts are superior to those of my neighbors.” How do you know? “I think my gender has a biological and historical right to dominate. I think my gender is made to provide care and emotional nourishment.” How do you know?
That's the thing the questioner is asking, “How do I know?” And that’s what I’m bouncing back to you: how do you know? The thing is, we do not know, but still, we are very confident. That’s the problem. And there is nothing within that’s going to raise a red flag of suspicion. There’s nothing within that would ever say, “Sir, hold, wait, watch, question. You did not always believe in these things. From where did these things come to you? Can you ask?”
No, I don’t want to ask, because if I ask, then it is terrible, because I run the risk of making the ego lonely again. The ego is now finding some comfort associated with some idea. And if the basis of that association is questioned, and if that association happens to be ruptured, then the ego becomes, “I am so lonely. Again something is gone.” So even if the association is false, the association has to be maintained. And if the association is to be disrupted, then you will have to go through inner pain. That pain is the price for living a truthful life.
Well, believe me, whatever we are associated with, there is a great chance, I dare not say 100% chance, though the thing is it is a 100% thing — but there’s a great chance if you’ll question it, it will be proven to be false. That is the way of Vedant. That is the way of honesty: to keep questioning whatever you know. The epistemological lens, that filter that asks, “How do I know? How am I sure of the validity of my knowledge, my conclusions? How do I know of anything? How do I know that even I exist?”
Well, that’s taking things too far; we will not go that far. But how do I know that such and such thing must happen? So there is this delimitation exercise, not the exercise, really, the debate currently raging. And if you look at what people are saying on both sides of the divide, it’s so interesting. Everybody is so confident, and nobody wants to ask, “Sir, how do you know?”
“You know, the North deserves to have a certain premium because it is the North that defended the South from all the external invasions.” Sir, how do you know? Is it coming from history or from where? How do you know? We don’t ask.
“Well, the North has been left behind because there was the freight equalization thing that enabled the South to leap ahead. You know, the South is ahead because the Chinese and Pakistani missiles were more prone to reaching the North, so all the industries were set up in the South.” All this is what is going around, and we don’t want to ask, “How do you know?” We are not saying what you are saying is false. We are just asking, “How do you know?”
“Anybody can earn money, but it is the North that defends the frontiers. Shouldn’t we subsidize them?” How do you know? Are you getting it? Now, in this case, it is probably easier to know because you could consult lots of history books. You could apply your own discretion, and you could come to some sort of fair judgment as to what is really going on, what the whole thing is about, what are the political dimensions, what are the historical angles, and you can come to know.
But when it comes to your insights, it becomes a little more difficult to know, because now something very personal is at stake — something very personal. That something very personal is called the ‘I.’ And there is no way of knowing whether you are conditioned or not except going through the process of inner pain.
You’ll have to question a lot of things. You’ll have to question everything. It requires a lot of inner boldness. It requires a commitment towards honesty. That’s what is called really being spiritual.
Are you getting it?
Otherwise, it’s a very easy, quick, and cheap way to just assert anything: “I am the best. My wife is the best. My kids are the best. My choices are the best. My marks are the best. My job is the best. My neighborhood is the best. My gods are the best. Everything that’s related to me is the best because I’m the best.” Fine. Very easy to claim all that.
What’s the real meaning of the term integrity?
It is to not have a dissonance between truth and your truth. And there is nothing further away from the truth than one’s own truth. Personal truth — that’s the enemy of truth.
We all know our track records, no? The kind of inner achievers we are. We might put things on our CV, I understand that. I come from a similar campus, so I know how we build up and decorate our CV. So that’s one thing. But we know internally who we are. We know our track record. Then how do we manage to back ourselves so strongly, so unflinchingly? One should have some suspicion, if not cynicism, no?
If I know who I am and what I have been, and I also know that I can’t change overnight, I won’t trust myself too easily. Or would I? In fact, I would say, if it’s appearing to me, then it ought to be false. That’s the mantra I sometimes give to some of my selected, most loved people: see, just do the opposite of what you feel like, and there’s a 90% chance you’ll get it right.
When I have to take a decision, sometimes I call in people to consult them, and I want to hear their opinion just so that I do the opposite of it. We all should have this kind of attitude towards ourselves. We love slippery slopes, no? So if that’s the direction our being is feeling impelled to, then we must know that the heights, the tops, the mountains lie in the opposite direction.
If I feel impelled towards that direction, then there’s a 90% chance that that’s the direction of the bottom. The right side would be there, probably exactly to the opposite. Aren’t slippery slopes always inviting? You don’t have to do anything, just slip. You could even slip while sleeping. Comfortably you are sleeping and yet so much movement is happening, like sometimes in two years on the campus, you don’t even know when you have graduated.
That internal sleep is a very typical thing. It keeps happening. Externally we might feel our eyes are open. The way of inquiry: the more confident you feel about something, the more suspicion it should arouse. The more sure you feel of something, the more you must realize that Maya is trying to shut the doors to inquiry.
Confidence is your enemy. Catch the inner thief red-handed. Look at its functioning. See how it manipulates and distorts. See how it has preset conclusions and then fabricates arguments in favor of the conclusions.
That’s such a bad way of arguing and concluding, no? If you do that in any of the sciences or in economics, statistics, commerce, accounting, anywhere, even in humanities, if you have a ready-made conclusion and then you manufacture arguments to support that conclusion, you would be called a third-rate philosopher, no? A third-rate arguer.
But that’s what we all do internally. “My kid is the best. My choices are all right.” That’s something already proven well in advance, and then you have to come up with arguments to somehow justify your choice. And we do not even know why we have already concluded in a particular way.
But that’s something we need to know, because the one sitting inside is not your friend. Please. The one who sits inside of us is not our friend. It’s the false ‘I.’ It’s a usurper. It has taken over, stolen somebody else’s name. The real ‘I’ is something else, somebody else.
The one who sits inside us has stolen the name. How can this thief be our friend? Where is this thief coming from? It’s not homegrown. It’s not arising from inside. It is coming from here and there. It’s not our innate sense of self. It’s a biological and social sense of self, mostly random, time-bound, conditioned influences of family, culture, religion, education, media, and the rest of it.
When it’s coming from all these external places, how do we call it ‘I’? How would you feel if I said, “You, sir, you are sitting there, you are there, you are there, you are there, you are all over the place.” Does it make sense? So physically, we want to be a unit, right? An integrated unit. There has to be a certain oneness, no? This is me. And if this is me, then please tell me that is not me. And if this is me, then that’s not me.
But look at how it operates internally, psychologically, here (pointing towards the mind). When it comes to your arm, your arm is at one place, and it cannot be coming from five other places. But look at what you have here (pointing towards the mind), it’s coming from five, five thousand different places, and the flux is continuous. The tragedy is unmitigated, continuous movement of influences, and these are coming from everywhere.
And yet we manage to call the content here as “my own.” How is it my own? How do I say, “I am thinking? You’re hurting my feelings.” Are your feelings your own? Really? Are any of your concepts your own? A little hit on the head, and if you lose your memory, would these concepts stay with you? How are they your own? They are things stored in your memory, stored in memory and picked up by the ego to associate with. How is anything here your own?
“My caste, my geography, my nationality, my aims, targets, hopes, dreams,” are they our own? If we ask a set of people, like we have here, to write down their dreams, please enumerate five top dreams you have. I guess there would be a 50 to 80% commonality, and I might be underestimating. How is it possible if we are individuals? How is it possible that we all have such very common dreams? How is it possible? Does that not trigger suspicion? Primafacie, does that not point towards a need for inquiry?
Something very dangerous is happening inside. And what’s the danger? I am not at all there inside. I am calling it my insights. The fact is, inside of me there is very little of me. How big a danger is that? That’s a danger that the learned ones have called a danger bigger than death. Bigger than death, to the extent that they say that you are not even alive. They say you need to take birth. This that emerges from the mother’s womb is just a thing of flesh. You cannot call that thing as living or alive or conscious.
Life is for the sake of actually attaining birth. And you attain birth when you are able, via the process of self-inquiry, to cleanse yourself of all that is not you.
When only that remains that’s just me — pure me — that’s when you can claim that you are now alive. And that’s the point referred to as “jivan mukti.”
So how big a danger is it to lead a conditioned life?
Listener: A danger bigger than death.
Acharya Prashant: A danger bigger than death. Death is something we see as coming in the future, whereas this is a danger about not even being born. Not even being born is said to be a danger bigger than death. Most of us, well, that’s the way of those who know; they don’t mince words, they say most of us die physically without ever having taken birth.
So here’s the dead body. The tragedy is, the fellow was never even born. He died without taking birth. He was eating, breathing, all that was happening, walking, talking, mating, reproducing, making a CV, getting a job, that’s fine. The little problem is that he was never alive. All that was so conditioned, so mechanical. And we don’t call machines sentient beings, do we?
So even a machine can do most of the stuff that we do. And with AI, it has become even clearer. Everything that we do, including emoting, can be done by a machine. So how do we say that we are even born? We don’t call machines born. We call them manufactured. So we are manufactured beings, right? D.O.M. (Date of Manufacturing), not D.O.B (Date of birth). Don’t be sure of yourself.
They say only one-ninth of the iceberg is exposed above the surface. When it comes to the human mind, it is probably one-ninety. That is the extent of our self-awareness. You’ll have to watch yourself continuously, dispassionately, ruthlessly — your words, your thoughts, your feelings, your associations, desires, hopes, heartbreaks. You’ll have to observe them like in a case study. The most intimate case study — our own life, our own movements.
And when I say life, I don’t mean historical life. I don’t mean what you were doing between the age of eight and eighteen. By life, I mean that which is happening, the dynamic process itself, here, now. One will have to very dispassionately, very objectively look at oneself like one looks at a case study and see what is really happening.
We say facts are the door to truth. One will have to have a fact-oriented attitude towards oneself. I say I am this, but is that borne out by how I behave, how I relate, how I desire? Desires are wonderful things to observe, no? They are more honest than actions because actions are very fearful things. You might desire something but never act on it because of fear of consequences. But look at your desires, they’ll tell you a lot about what you have become. When you look at all that, then there is a cleansing thing, it happens inside.
