Questioner (Q): Mind creates so much illusions, so how to accept reality totally?
Acharya Prashant (AP): How do you know they are illusions? How do you know mind creates illusions?
Q: Doubts, like whenever I try to think this or something then illusions like intellect are all around you “You are not That…”
AP: Intellect can give you arguments in support of being fake. But does intellect ever tell you that you are not being fake? Intellect will give you something to justify yourself. But will intellect ever tell you, “No this is not being fake?”
When you are being fake – kindly notice – there is always an element of deliberation in it. You know you are being fake. You have to do it. It is not spontaneous. And when you are doing it deliberately obviously you know that this is not natural, this is fake.
When you are faking it, it always comes with a certain effort. Be sensitive to yourself and you will detect that effort. When you are lying you have to put in a certain effort. Don’t you have to? You have to put pressure on memory, you have to build up a story, and all that requires effort; you know that you are lying. Whereas you don’t have to lie then it is free and light and spontaneous.
You come back home and somebody asked you, “How did you spend the day?” And if you don’t have to lie, you don’t have to think about what to answer, you just say something while you are unbuttoning your shirt, while you are washing your face, combing your hair. You keep saying because you don’t have to cook up anything. But if you have to lie, then it’s a tense situation, an internal stress is there. You strive to be consistent. You have to cook up a story that is credible.
Q: You stumble.
AP: You stumble. And if you don’t stumble then, you try not to stumble.
Q: Yes.
AP: It is an effort. There is a deliberation involved in this. So you know, always know. What do you mean by, “I do not know what my illusions are”? You always know. You know, justify them; justification is another matter, we are not talking of that.
Q: Even sometimes I feel like I am in peace, sometimes like I have to do yoga or something, “Oh, I am in peace” and suddenly something happens and we are totally out of peace and we are totally in so much anger.
AP: So you know what that peace was.
Q: It is temporary.
AP: Not even temporary. There is a plate in front of me, (holding a glass of water) there is this glass in front of me and somebody says “There is water in it.” When the moment comes for it to quench my thirst and I sip and there is no water; will I say the water was temporary? Now there is this glass in front of me and my Yoga Guru has told me, “It has great water, Yogic Jal . And it will quench all your spiritual thirst.” But when the wave of fear arrives and I use this, I find it is empty, hollow. Does that mean the water was temporary? What does that mean?
Q: There was no water.
AP: There was no water. There was no peace. It is just that you came to know of the absence of peace a little later. There is no water in it but I came to know of that two hours later, does that mean for two hours there was water in it? There was never any water in it. There was never any peace. It is just that situation had not yet tested you so you could console yourself that there is peace. There was never any peace.
Peace that goes away is no peace. The real can never go away. That is the test of the real. If it deserts you in the time of need, it is not real. Truth is not affair with our friend.
Q: Unless it becomes a part of your nature.
AP: It is not a part of your nature. It is you. It doesn’t desert you. And there is something that remains with you even in the most testing of time; live with that. The rest you can easily dump.
There is a peace deeper than the peace your intellect can conceive of, that is real peace. The peace that we call as peace is just an enforced silence. The real peace, you don’t have to fetch from anywhere. Are you getting it? The real can never be separated from you.
So boldly you can jettison all that which can be jettisoned. Let this peace go away. Now ‘in’ peace, then proceed and do all your yoga exercise, peacefully. Now it is alright.
Never do yoga for the sake of peace. Peace comes first, yoga comes later. Yoga cannot be a route to peace. Peace is the foundation of all Yoga.
