Questioner (Q): What method is now needed to come to the Source?
Acharya Prashant (AP): We have already used many methods. The methods have already taken us far from the Source. That is why you are asking this question that what method is now needed to come to the Source.
The same thing that took you away from the Source will not bring you back to the Source. You are told that you are incomplete so you need education to become respectable and lovable. That was a method. Now, knowledge is not just knowledge. Knowledge is wonderful and beautiful if it is just knowledge. But when knowledge becomes a means for inner-fulfillment, then knowledge is a disease, is a method. It’s a method.
If knowledge was just to earn your bread, then knowledge is alright, but when knowledge is there to earn your identity, then knowledge is poisonous. Do you understand the difference between these two?
Mankind does need knowledge. Knowledge is needed so that you can have all this. It’s alright. Some of it is good. It facilitates. So in that sense, knowledge is alright. But when knowledge becomes your backbone - how do I express it - when knowledge becomes your foundation, your essence, then there is a very deep problem.
Do not ask for a method. Whatever we have been doing so far is a method. All methods have only given us more despondency. Now just see that methods will not work, that you do not need a method to get to the Source. It is alright. Just relax. That’s all.
Q2: I found Ashatavakra most relevant in this. He said, "You are pure consciousness. Be happy." He has this amazing clarity in all his explainations.
AP: Be happy. You see, how are you mentioning him again and again, that is the call of the Truth. That is your temple. See, how you have mentioned him not less than four times already.
Q2: Because I have read for about fifty years and suddenly this brought a lot of peace.
AP: And Ashatavakra will not tell you that ‘This or that is important’. He will not say that go and worship and this and that.
Q2: “Why do you need to go to ‘*Samadhi*’?”, he says.
AP: Why do you need even ‘*Vivek*’? What is ‘*Samadhi*’? What is ‘*Turiya*’? He says everything is false. Because whatever has been captured as a word is now just a word. The Real will not be expressed through the word ‘ Samadhi * ’. When there is real * Samadhi , you will not even call it Samadhi . So, that is why he is saying, "Why do you need Samadhi ?"
All that the wise ones, our friends, have ever told us is this - It’s perfect, as it is. Chill out. Smile. Laugh. Dance. And that also means that if you feel like changing something, even that is alright.
When it is said that "What is, is alright", does not mean that the status quo has to be maintained. It also means that you have all the right to change everything and that right is alright. If it remains as it is, lovely; if it wants to change, even more lovely. If the wind blows; wow, it’s singing; if the wind doesn’t blow; wow, it’s so silent.
Q2: There is a risk in change.
AP: Yes, there is always a risk in change.
Q2: It is not necessary that all the time change is for the better.
AP: It’s not a question of better or worse. Because whenever you say better or worse, you have your own benchmarks of right and wrong and morality and thought and the rest of it.
So, the saints never talk in the language of right-wrong, better-worse.
They only talk about the true and the false, what is and what is not.
