Acharya Prashant explains that the feeling and foolhardy certainty of "I am the body" is the progenitor of all other bondages. He calls this certainty "foolhardy" because even a little application of the mind reveals that you and the body cannot be one. The body is a machine, while you are consciousness; these two cannot be identical. The very nature of the body, if studied, makes it clear that it is something alien to you. The real mystery is the fact that you are apparently tied to the body. This unlikely union of two disparate, alien entitiesâlike oil and water mixingâis the wonder of wonders and the root of all human misery. The speaker further elaborates that the body is a conditioned phenomenon that comes from two other bodies and undergoes a predictable cycle of growth, development, decay, and death. This is all the body knows. Because all bodies are similar, generic medicines can be developed that work on all individuals. There is nothing unique about bodies. In contrast, consciousness is non-material, mystical, and almost unknowable. Its needs are entirely different from the body's needs. No medicine applicable to the body is equally applicable to consciousness, except to the extent that consciousness is identified with the body. This absurd combination of body and consciousness is the root of all human suffering. When consciousness is identified with the body, it starts behaving in ways unnatural to itself. The nature of consciousness is absolute freedom, but when tied to the body, it cannot behave freely. The quality of its experience becomes one of bondage or suffering. All experience is of bondage because to have an experience, there must first be an experiencer, which is the partial, impure, and dualistic consciousness. Therefore, there can be no experience of the Real. Truth or freedom cannot be experiences; they come as the cessation of the experiencer. Truth is the great destroyer. As Shri Krishna said, "Now I am death, the destroyer of worlds." Truth is a great ending, a finality. When you are no longer dominated by the body and become its master, you find that the body can be a useful servant. Liberation is when, irrespective of the body's status, the tendency to affiliate with it is overcome. Life is then no longer a sequence of random events. To be free is to be free from the tyranny of randomness. Come what may, "I am."
