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By seeking God, you prevent God from finding you || Acharya Prashant, on Saint Rumi (2017)
Scriptures and Saints
1.6K views
1 year ago
God
Ego
Truth
Surrender
Separation
Spiritual Experience
Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Mind
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that the search for God is often the very barrier that prevents one from finding Him. He clarifies that when an individual looks for God, they operate from an ego-centric position, assuming they are powerful enough to find the Divine. This effort creates a sense of separation. He suggests that God is absolute and sufficient, and human effort is merely a distraction or a spoiler. True seeking involves letting God find you by stopping your own efforts. He points out that searching implies something is lost or absent, but since God is omnipresent, the real question is not where God is, but why the individual is unable to see the obvious. The speaker further discusses the nature of spiritual experiences, dismissing them as mere mental activities or 'games of the mind.' He asserts that truth is not an object, person, or a 'hallmark event' that can be experienced through the senses or the mind. Whether one experiences routine daily life or a fantastic spiritual vision, both are equally within the realm of the mind and should be discounted. He emphasizes that truth has no characteristics and cannot be detected by the limited senses. Therefore, surrender and the cessation of expectations and memories are the only ways to realize the truth. Finally, Acharya Prashant addresses the concept of 'seeing' God, using the example of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He explains that seeing God does not mean perceiving a specific object or body at a particular time. Instead, it means that the 'seeing' itself becomes godly. God is not an object in front of the eye but the foundation behind the eye. When the eye is immersed in God, everything it perceives—whether a tree, the sky, or a camera—is seen through that godly perspective. He concludes that any claim of seeing God as a specific, localized event is a hallucination, as the Divine is the foundation of all happenings rather than a particular happening itself.