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गज़ब enlightenment! || आचार्य प्रशांत के नीम लड्डू
25K views
5 years ago
Enlightenment
Experience
Ego
Truth
Liberation
Time
Spirituality
Kabir Saheb
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that while one can have all sorts of experiences in the world, there can be no experience of completeness or Truth. People who claim to have experienced Truth, liberation, salvation, or enlightenment, by their very statement, establish that they still have a long spiritual journey ahead and have not understood fundamental concepts. He clarifies that spirituality means liberation *from* experiences, not the experience *of* liberation. The desire for new, colorful, and juicy experiences belongs to the ego, which is restless and incomplete, seeking fulfillment through them. All experiences happen only to the ego. The speaker argues that the ego cannot experience Truth because the ego must be annihilated for Truth to be realized. Once the ego is gone, there is no one left to have the experience. He likens someone claiming to have experienced liberation to someone narrating their own death—the experiencer would no longer exist to report it. Therefore, an experience of enlightenment, Truth, or liberation is impossible, though all other kinds of experiences are possible. Acharya Prashant criticizes the spiritual marketplace where people trade fantastical stories of their experiences, such as levitation or divine visions. He dismisses these as boastful tales and warns against self-proclaimed enlightened individuals. He points out that great masters like Kabir Saheb never made such claims; they were simple, great human beings. He contrasts them with those who narrate dramatic stories of their enlightenment, which he suggests are more likely symptoms of intoxication. He further deconstructs the idea of enlightenment as a one-time event by explaining the relationship between time and matter. Time and substance are one; any event that occurs in time is a material event. Since the soul is not a substance, it is beyond time. Therefore, enlightenment, being related to the soul, cannot happen at a specific time. Assigning a date to enlightenment is to treat it as a material event, which is a fundamental misunderstanding. The speaker concludes by stating that he is not an enlightened being but a human in struggle, just like everyone else. If enlightenment exists, it is a moment-to-moment phenomenon that is found and lost in the present, requiring constant vigilance.