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Birth and fear are one || Acharya Prashant (2016)
Acharya Prashant
965 views
7 years ago
Fear
Birth
Nature
Society
Self-deception
Honesty
Conditioning
Suffering
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that human beings are born into a state of fear and limitation, which is a discontinuity from their true nature. He asserts that birth itself is an aberration and that the beginning of life is essentially the beginning of fear. The body perceives the universe as a hostile entity, and this innate smallness remains regardless of physical growth. He challenges the notion of the 'childlike state' as divine perfection, arguing that children are born as bundles of instincts, fear, and greed inherited from their parents' desires. Society, he claims, is not an external imposition but a creation of these fearful individuals seeking security, which eventually becomes a sophisticated structure that institutionalizes and hides primal darkness under respectable names. He further discusses how adults use language to sanitize and deodorize suffering, giving it honorable names like 'responsibility', 'love', or 'social order'. This self-deception prevents any possibility of realization or freedom. While children are honest about their selfishness and demands, adults hide their primal urges behind masks of altruism and sophisticated behavior. Acharya Prashant emphasizes that the only path to redemption is through fundamental honesty and the direct acknowledgment of one's true condition. He suggests that instead of trying to change or improve oneself through spiritual practices, one should simply call things by their right names—labeling fear as fear and greed as greed—without the expectation of a specific result or change. Finally, he clarifies that real spirituality is not about becoming a 'better person' or achieving mystical experiences, which are often just escapes from reality. Instead, it is about being honest in the moment. He encourages a practice of 'right naming' where one acknowledges their true intentions as they happen, even if they seem unrefined or selfish. This acknowledgment should be done with a sense of humor rather than guilt. By exposing the facts of one's life to oneself, one accesses the only door to freedom, as the universe itself is amoral and does not judge, but internal dishonesty causes the spirit to shrink and suffer.