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Be sincere with even your wrong choices || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2019)

Be sincere even with your wrong choices

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Question: Acharya ji, is it a right decision to dedicate one’s whole life to the pursuit of something unknown?

Also, kindly throw light on how should we choose something in life.

Acharya Prashant: Whatever you are doing, there has to be honesty in that. What is important is: you cannot say one thing, and do another thing.

If you look at the great scientific discoveries and inventions, the scientist, or the explorer, would be busy in his chosen area of pursuit, having disregarded everything else.

Columbus set out for India. And you very well know for how long a period was he, on the seas. And he was not reaching anywhere. Certainly, he was not reaching India, because he was not even headed towards India.

Now, in that period, if you would have gone to him, and looked at him: the food material, the ration, as well as the motivation, all were in short supply. You would have said that this fellow is a fool. He has left everything. In fact, he has left the entire continent, for the sake of nothing. Not only that, he is going in the wrong direction as well. But look at what he got. He got America.

He got America, because, what he was doing, was not a pretense. He was doing it sincerely. At times, there were rebellions on his little ship. People even thought of killing Columbus. They said that let us get rid of this man, throw him in water, and return.

But he persevered.

It doesn’t matter, what you are chasing.

Be very-very sincere.

You must know that you are committed to it.

And you must be very-very assured that you are not blindly chasing something. You understand that, that which you are looking for, is important.

Discovering an entire continent, is important. Finding a new sea-route to India, was important. So, if this fellow feels, that there is something, very important, that he must discover, let him get into it. Let him plunge into it.

The only condition is: if you are doing it, do  it fully.

Do it completely, do it honestly.

If you have left behind one kind of life, if you have left behind one kind of job, at least  do the other job honestly, diligently. Work really hard.

You have all the right, to make a choice. But if you make a choice, and don’t do justice to it, then that is very bad. In fact, correction of choices only happen, when first of all, you have fully tried out, what you are doing.

Please see. You choose something. Now, unless you dedicate yourself fully to it, how will you know whether your choice is correct? May be your choice is incorrect. But if you are not trying out your chosen area, in a complete sense, you would always be left with the hope, that something is still left to be tried out. So, let me stay put. Let me not opt out.

Once you make a choice, plunge fully into it.

Commit yourself completely.

And then, only then, if your choice is misplaced, you will come to know that you need to change something.

You know why people continue with even wrong choices, for very long in their life? Because they don’t do justice to their right choices, and even to their wrong choices.

If you are choosing a particular way, go down fully. Cover a lot of distance. And that will tell you, whether the way, the path, the road, that road that you have chosen, is right or not. If you choose particular road, and don’t go far on it, how will you know whether the road is right or wrong?

So when you say that you are making a choice, commit yourself to the choice, so that if the choice is wrong, you can quickly change it. Otherwise, you might find that you are spending the entire life-time just being in the wrong profession, with the wrong people, with the wrong thoughts, with the wrong ideologies, with the wrong habits.

Test, test and Test! That scientific rigour must be there. That spirit of inquiry is essential to the youth. Ask, and test. Laziness – you probably have enough time for that, once you are ninety. This is the time for some real hard work. Hard work that involves the muscles, and hard work that involves the brain.

Did you get this?

Even if we have made a wrong choice, like Columbus did. He had chosen a wrong path, had he not? The navigational path that he opted for, would have never brought him to India. Or it would have brought him to India, only after covering the entire earth, because he was going in exactly the opposite direction.

From Europe, instead of coming eastwards, he was actually traveling, westwards. But even if he was travelling westwards, he at least had confidence, that he was doing something worthy. Have that confidence. And that confidence can only come by serious questioning and examination. It cannot just come from belief. It cannot just come from a kind of superstition.

You must never be afraid of questioning others,

and also never be afraid of questioning oneself.

The second part is tougher. It is easy to ask questions to others, at least it is relatively easy. Questioning oneself, hurts the ego. But that’s one must practice.

Question yourself: what am I doing? Initially, there might be confusion. But this confusion will lead to clarity. Is it not better to be initially confused, than to have false clarity? So, afford a little confusion. That will give you a lot of clarity. And a young man, and a young woman, has to make lot of decisions. Some of those decisions have consequences for the entire life.

Therefore, you must have clarity. I have seen very, very bright people, from the best institutions, in the country and in the world, just get lost, because they made some awful decisions, and persisted with them.

The best of the country, the best of the world, even they need to continue questioning themselves. That alone leads to continuous correction, and continuous light.

Excerpts from a ‘Shabd-Yoga’ session. Edited for clarity.

Watch the session:  Be sincere with even your wrong choices || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2019)

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Acharya Prashant, with students: Freedom from expectations || (2012)

 

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Acharya Prashant: Are we young? Are we really young? To be young means, to be energetic, means to be open. Oscar Wilde had said, youth is lost on the young. Do you understand its meaning? That we only turn young in the body. Either we remain a child throughout life or enter old age directly, bypassing the real youth.

Do I really have to go too far, to enquire why am I living like this! And ‘Why’ still comes later. First, do I know ‘How am I living?’ Why am I doing engineering? Whenever I sit in a class, why do I get bored? Are we able to clearly look at these ways of our day to day living? Am I just dancing to the tunes of the external world in this life? Is there something really mine. One doesn’t need to go and read books to see ‘How am I living?’ One just needs to look at oneself, one’s actions with clarity. You are in the second year, most of you must be thinking about the jobs, whether you will get a good one or not? Always, buffeted by doubts, queries, insecurities, confusions.

Wherever I am, am actually never there -strained between the pulls of the past and the pulls of the future. Let us first look at our life.

When I honestly do this, only then will I realize that life is precious. I am important. And it cannot be wasted away like this. There must be something more to life. But that wholeness, that completeness, which life deserves, that you can give to it only when you first realize the incomplete, the fragmented, the divided, ways in which we are living.

First, become sensitive to your own suffering. Only then there is the possibility to go beyond it and live a rich, full, joyful, energetic life.

We are getting recorded here, and if right now I ask them to record the expressions on your faces and then I show that recording to you. For a moment if you forget that these are your faces, and if I ask you are these faces looking joyful. Then you yourself will say, no, they are rather looking depressed. What has happened to them! What made them like this? These people don’t look like young, energetic youth from any angle. So, first, we have to really understand this state of ours.

But we have become so accustomed to our own misery, that we have no realization, no sensitivity left to ourselves.

My request to you is, become a little more sensitive to yourself. Don’t be so cruel. We are utterly cruel towards ourselves. We do not even know how we are feeling. Given our so-called emotions, are nothing but conditioned reactions.

Become a little more sensitive, become a little more responsive towards yourself! Yes? Would you?

Is there anybody who wants to say something?

Student: It is about expectations. People keep expecting out of us, but no one would ask our expectations from them.

AP: Meghna, These expectations are a part of a trade-off that you have agreed to. These are part of a business transaction that has your approval. This I would rather call as, ‘extracting my pound of flesh.’ You see, we know how people are, we know how society is, we know how we are, we know how the families are.

If we give just a hundred rupees to somebody, we want it back. Right? Or we want some return of some kind. Now, somebody who is spending lakhs and lakhs upon you, you are taking that money from him, right? As adults. And you are not kids, three or four years old.

You are all adults. If you are taking lakhs and lakhs from somebody, rest assured he will extract it back from you. If not in cash, then in kind. Just to maintain a facade of relationship, the fellow may not ask you to return money in cash. But then, it will have to be returned in some way or the other. It will have to be returned in some way or the other. And hence, you are pressurized to follow other’s expectations. Can a man on the road pressurize you?

Students: No.

AP: Can just anybody come and pressurize you? No. Only, the one to whom you have surrendered by way of obligations, only he can pressurize you.

I am very very surprised, in my campus happened to be one of the most prominent institutions in this country. More than half the students were studying on education loan. Not that their parents were beggars, not that they really desperately needed to take a loan. But they had taken a loan because they wanted to remain free. And when I visit colleges of your University, I do not find many students on education loan.

How many of you are on education loan here? One.

Now, is it any wonder that when you are taking lakhs and lakhs and lakhs from a person, that person automatically now gets the right to decide your future. When he is giving you so much doesn’t he now get the right to have a decisive say in the future?

Why are you doing that? All of you are adults, and we all know how much workload is there in the University! There is nothing. Absolutely nothing. But then you would go and beg for pocket money. Why can’t you do some small work, some chores and earn some stuff for yourself, at least for your daily expenditure? And then you claim that we are being pressurized! Others think that we are a slave and want us to follow their expectations.

You are the one who is making yourself a slave.

Nobody can make you a slave without your consent.

You are giving your consent to becoming a slave.

You withdraw your consent and you are free.

But withdrawing that consent would mean moving out of your comfort zone. Would mean that you do not squander away your time away, after college hours. Would mean that you actually go, work and earn something for yourself. Are you prepared?

Freedom does not come free.

Freedom has to be earned.

Are you prepared to earn your freedom?

Freedom from expectations, freedom from obligations!

Are you prepared to earn your freedom?

I do not hear anything from you. You are not at all prepared to earn your freedom. And hence you will remain slaves. You have chosen to remain slaves. Nobody has forced slavery upon you.

The day you decide, the day you see that I am free and I deserve a free life, you will actually be free. But first, let that realization come. Unless that realization comes, nothing can happen.

Watch Full Discourse: Acharya Prashant, with students: Freedom from expectations

 

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Jesus is a lover of youth

Aloneness is an elusive mirage for mankind.

Real aloneness is a prerogative only of the Buddhas.

 

We are always related.

We always find our identity in the other through the other.

 

We exist as someone with respect to something or somebody or this or that, that is not the best way of existing, but that’s the de-facto mode of our existence.

 

If we are in a crowd, we are the crowd.

The crowd is such a refuge.

 

To take a bath you must, first of all, dislike the stink. Shouldn’t you?

 

Spirituality is the art of breaking up.

God doesn’t come to those who are already engaged.

 

Spirituality is hard and tight, not soggy.

It’s not spongy. It’s upright, not flaccid.

Especially if you are coming to Jesus.

 

Jesus is a lover of youth.

His retinue didn’t have old and the aged.

All relatively roaring, green ones.

 

Don’t you see it’s just Maya,

and she knows when to strike?

Read more

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On Jesus Christ: Why is Jesus asking to hate one’s life?

Poster 5

“If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his

brother, father, wife and children and

his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

BIBLE (LUKE 14, VERSE 26-27)

 

Acharya Prashant:

Question says:

Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his brother, father, wife and children and his own life, he cannot be my disciple”. What does this mean? Because it seems something opposite to what I have been hearing all my life.

Thanks.

I’ll repeat the verse quoted.

Luke 14, Verse 26-27, Jesus is saying “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his brother, father, wife and children and his own life, he cannot be my disciple”.

Turbulent and choppy, hmm? But we’ll sail through it. “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his brother, mother, father, wife and children and his own life,” you must read the series of the names backward — my own life, my children, my wife, my father, my mother, my brother. So what comes first in the list of those that Jesus says deserve to be hated? One’s own life. Jesus says, look at your life and see the kind of relationships you have established with your children, with your father, brother, mother, wife. And unless you are totally dissatisfied, how can you be my disciple? If you feel alright with the way you are, with the way relationships exist in the world, then remain satisfied then you need no improvement, and I’m not available to entertain you. I do not treat those who are not convinced of their sickness.

We live in relationships. A man never exists and a silo. You are always with somebody.

Aloneness is an elusive mirage for mankind.

Real aloneness is a prerogative only of the Buddhas.

The others, they all live in mandatory relationship. I’m saying mandatory because they have brought themselves to a point where they cannot be alone.

We are always related.

We always find our identity in the other through the other.

As you’re sitting here, you are related to the cold. As you are sitting here, your identity is being defined even by whether you have taken a bath today or not. Have you seen how your clothes define your identity? Every single thing that you are in contact with, starts defining you.

We exist as someone with respect to something or somebody or this or that, that is not the best way of existing, but that’s the de-facto mode of our existence.

We cannot deny that.

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False completeness will not allow you to look even into the world.

I don’t know what’s worse, incompleteness or false completeness?

In the eyes of the person who is falsely complete, you would never find wonderment. You know what is wonderment? When you come upon something new! He would always look at you as if he already knows you, “Ha! I know.” Because within himself, he is possessed by the thought that he knows all. He is a Master of his kingdom, the God of his territory. His eyes can measure but never worship. In fact, he knows no sacredness, for him nothing is sacred. That is one quality of the man complete within himself. He knows no sacredness. He has no feeling for the beyond. He can utilize everything. Instead of a four-session series, it has become a five-session series – Incompleteness, Defeat, Shame, Lifelessness, False completeness.

Incompleteness now appears almost a virtue. Incompleteness, at least makes you look into the world, if not into yourself. False completeness will not allow you to look even into the world. You are your own world. You will have no liking for facts. You will have no interest in what’s going around. Why do you need to know about what’s happening in Europe or America, or in Amazon’s jungles? When you are so complete and comfortable within yourself, why do you need to have knowledge? Knowledge can disturb, “Why do I need to know what’s happening? The animals of the Arctic. When I have an entire Universe, within myself! I am occupied, I am busy, and I have important matters to take care of.”

But, howsoever, much you live in defiance of facts, facts have a way of affecting you, making their presence felt and troubling you. This self-contained man, copes with facts, by deliberately not putting them in perspective. You know what is perspective? Having a thing, belong to where it really belongs. Putting things in their proper place, that’s perspective. The self-contained man has an aversion to perspective. If he comes to know of a thing, he will make sure that he puts it in the wrong place. Deliberately puts it somewhere else, so that he may not have to face the import of the fact. So that he may not have to accept the full force of the fact.

If he goes to a temple and he is asked to put his footwear outside the premises of the temple, he will say, “Why? Don’t the feet and the footwear belong to God?” And he is right. You cannot quarrel with him. He is perfectly right. But, by raising, an impertinent argument, where there should be none, he has allowed himself sufficient disturbance to escape sacredness. Now, he has set his own terms. The temple could have turned him meditative, and in meditation, he would have seen all his falseness. But by bringing in an issue, which is actually a non-issue, he has successfully managed to subvert the real issue.

It’s like you receiving your medical reports from the pathology, and you start discussing the quality of the paper the report is printed on. And not only you are discussing, you are actively complaining, why is it not 80 gsm. By giving prominence to a non-issue, you have successfully diverted attention from the real issue, and the real issue is that the reports are declaring that you have Cancer. You don’t want to talk about that, so you are talking about the color and the weight of the paper.

Even if this self-contained stubborn man is in the most sacred of environments, he will find some way to somehow escape sacredness. He is like the fly in the temple. What does the fly in the temple do? From somewhere it finds filth and goes and sits on the filth. And by sitting on the filth it is successfully able to declare that the Universe is filthy. And even if it’s the cleanest of temples, the fly will manage to find filth. And create an alternate perspective, an alternate story. The priest will have one story to tell about the temple, the devotee will have one story to tell about the temple, and this self-contained man will have an entirely different story. That’s called lacking in perspective, or having a totally false perspective.

Read the complete article: Laziness is a dirty trick to defy the Truth

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Laziness is a dirty trick to defy the Truth

Question: What is Life?

How do you call somebody alive?

AP: A dewdrop vanishes in no time, does it have a life?

Talk about yourself. What do you call as ‘your life’, your aliveness? We have this instrument here. Anybody can push the buttons and get it to operate in the way they want to. You can record the noise of the marketplace in this, and you can record the most beautiful music in it. It’s all the same. It does something. It moves, it reacts. Would you call it alive?

Why not?

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Most of us live a life of poor man

If today you find that your energy gets expressed in all kinds of stupid ways, it’s only because it’s not flowing in the right channels. When it doesn’t flow in the right channels then it gets invested into all idiocies. So, what do you do? You gossip. Have you ever tried to estimate the kind of time that you spend in gossip? Or, day dreaming. Just sitting or lying down. Just randomly thinking. And mind is wandering here and there, going to different planets, different galaxies. Doing unthinkable things. And what we we doing? Lying down and sleeping.

Why does that happen? That happens because there is energy but it’s being squandered. You’ve not given it the right channel. Then there is no intensity on your face. Then there is only stupid idiocy. The face itself tells that life is being wasted. And it is so pathetic. One life, one youth, and slipping away.

When your energy and attention is flowing in the right channels, then you have no time left for gossiping and complaining, for random squabbles, for picking up stupid fights, or feeling hurt. Who has the time to feel hurt? Life is so precious. And there are a thousand things to do. Who has the inclination to complain? There is so much coming my way. Why complain? Instead, take what is coming. Then life is rich. Not the life of a poor man.

Most of us live a life of poor man. Life can be very very very rich. But not when you say “Either this, or that”. Life is rich when you say, “And. And. And”. And, “And” does not mean that I’m greedy for more. It only means that I’m available to everything. I’m not closed. When the opportunity comes knocking, I’m available. When the sun rises, I’m available to look at it. When the stars shine, I’m available to dance under them. When the birds are singing, I’m available to listen to them. I’m not closed. When I’m besides a river, I’m available to enter the river, I don’t say “Oh my God what will happen. River? Good boys don’t go to river.”
Remain available. You won’t lose out.

Read the complete article: How to set priorities in life?

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How to set priorities in life?

21762214_1227353527370622_921021697824714700_nQuestion: Sir, how to balance between different things? Like there are studies, and extra-curricular activities. Then there is family and friends. Different priorities.

Acharya Prashant: What’s your name?

L: Animesh.

AP: Sit, Animesh. You are asking how do we balance between our different priorities. The word ‘balance’ is a very violent word. It denotes competition. That the different priorities are competing amongst each other, and I want to decide who deserves my time. You’re speaking the language of ‘or’.

‘Or’ denotes either this or that. Can’t be both. Now, this is conflict. Somebody has to lose.  If you give you time to this then that has to lose, if you give time to that then this has to lose. Life does not proceed like this. Have you heard of a term ‘polymath’? A polymath is a person who is very versed in a thousand things, whose excellence pervades many different domains.

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If a Christian is one who loves Christ, I am absolutely a Christian

Listener: Sir I have heard or maybe read somewhere that you are a Christian, is that right?

Acharya Prashant: I love Jesus, l love Krishna, I love Buddha, they are all wonderful. There is no doubt that there is a lot about me which is Christian. I won’t even say Christian, I would say – in tune with Christ, in accordance with Christ, in love with Christ. Obviously I do not follow the way of life suggested by the Church. So going by rituals and organized conduct, there is hardly anybody who would call me a Christian, but essentially if a Christian is one who loves Christ then I am absolutely a Christian.

You know what I love about the Christ the most, you would be surprised – His words are wonderful, his short life was glorious but what I like the most about him is that he was a very handsome young man. Obviously all we have is images of his physical form but I am so sure that he would have been one hell of a beautiful man. In fact a lot of my students are in there 20’s and I often quote ‘Jesus on the Cross’ to them as a perfect example of what vigorous youth is like, what is means to be fully young. To me Jesus epitomizes the fullness of life, the rebellion of a young man. He is absolutely lovable.

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Religion is young

Feel free, totally free, don’t have that fear that you must follow the conventional.

Religion is not at all about going a particular line, going down the beaten track.

Not at all.

Religion is extremely dynamic, religion is more modern than modern.

Religion does not consist of rituals.

Religion means, ‘I will live my life with honesty and Truth’. And are honesty and Truth outdated things? Are honesty and Truth something that belongs to the seventh or first centuries. They don’t. Right?

Is love something that would be taken as primordial?

And without religion what love are you talking about?

So, religion is cool, religion is young, religion is vigour but not the religion that is touted, not the religion that is being publicised.

To read the complete article: How to read the scriptures?

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Why I am afraid of the society?

Have you asked yourself, “Why is money important and to what extent is money important? What is money?” The society has told you that money is important and is important to this and that extent, and you keep running after it.

You spend your individual life in a pursuit of a social goal. Is that not stupid? You are spending your individual life pursuing a social goal, a goal given by the society.

Whose life is it?

“Mine.”

Whose goals are they?

“Society’s”.

Is that not a wastage of life? Your life is spent in pursuing a goal given by others. Whose life is being wasted? “My own life.”

Have you asked yourself, “What is the meaning of work? What is the relation of work to life? Why must one work? What is the relation of work to money?” Have you asked yourself, “What is employment? What is meant by one man serving the needs of other? What is meant by one man accepting a salary from another?”

Have you asked these questions? You all are adults. Have you asked yourself, “What is meant by love? What is sex? What is body? What is marriage? What is reproduction? What is family?” Have you ever asked these questions? No. And you will blindly move into them because the entire society blindly moves into them.

A particular age and you are fit for marriage, and you must have a family. Do you ask yourself, “What is all this? This one body, what am I doing with it? This one life, what am I doing with it?”

But the society has clearly laid down the norms and you will follow those norms. When you are following the norms given by the society, obviously you will be afraid of the society, because the society has now become your master.

Have you asked yourself, “What is meant by settling down? What is meant by the so-called good life where you have a car, an apartment, two kids, a nice job and a particular reputation?” What is meant by all these?

Have you asked, “What is religion?” You go and celebrate festivals. Would you ask yourself, “What is religion? Why am I following a certain religion? What is meant by following a religion? Is religion individual or social?”

Religion must be totally individual, but the religion that we follow is completely social. Even our God is a social god that the society has given us. Have you found out God? No. But you are blindly following certain scriptures that the society handed over to you, a social God.

It’s like I am sitting over here, all of you dream up a God, make certain pictures, create certain stories and then come to me and say, “This is God. Start believing in this and live your life according to this.”

When everything is social, when every breath is social, why wonder that why am I afraid of the society? You will continue to be afraid till the time you don’t let intelligence function.

Let intelligence function and then there will be no fear.

~ Excerpts from the article, ‘Why am I always thinking of the society?‘

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It is not experience that helps, but your openness to total experience

hu

Acharya Prashant: Experience is something that ‘you’ call as experience, right? Okay, we’ll go into it as it is happening here, please stay with me.

I am speaking to the group. So, you’ll say you have had an experience. This, right here, is an experience, is it not? What is happening since the last one hour, is it an experience or not? It is an experience? You have had an experience? Read more

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Give your best time to the Best One

“You failed to know your Love in your youth

Wake up and see your Love is gone.”

~ Kabir ~

Shri Prashant: Youth refers to a time when you are physically neither dependent nor incapable. After a particular time, you become physically incapable. And what happens to the rest of the body also happens to the brain. There is senility and there is lack of memory and such things. And before a particular age, you don’t have enough grey material. So that is why in the spiritual domain, youth has a very special place. That, that which is your highest goal, surely requires the best of your abilities. If your goal is a worthy goal then it requires the best of your abilities. And the best of your abilities include your physical abilities as well. So the best time to chase that highest goal, which is Truth or God, is during your youth. You cannot do it when you are a kid, and you cannot do it when you are too old.  Read more

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To questions of your life, who else would know the answers?

Questioner: How should I identify my calling? If I have two options in front of me – I am doing engineering but I want to know and go for film-making. Would it be okay if I go in that direction? I like both the ways, Engineering as well as film-making.

Speaker: I have four kinds of answers, would it be okay if I give you answer 2 or answer 3? If I have to give an answer, who must know the answer? Whose life is it? If I have to give the answer, should you decide the answer? And if Shivam (referring to the questioner) has to decide the answer then I am a worthless man sitting on this chair. Read more

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The misguided craving for inner fulfillment becomes attachment

Question: In one of your videos you say that attachment is the result of space and time. But, often in a situation, if somebody talks to us politely or sweetly, we tend to want to spend more time with that person. On the contrary, if somebody abuses me or throws harsh words on me, I won’t like to sit with him even if he is close to me, even if I have spent lot of time with him. So how is it attachment in this case?

Speaker: See, attachment like everything else, is in the mind. When somebody is nice and polite to you, when somebody is not hurting you, you remember him. You remember him nicely. You will probably call him a ‘friend’. And when somebody is hurtful or abrasive, then too you remember him. Now, you probably remember him as a villain, as an enemy, as somebody to be avoided, right? But in either case, you do remember him. What is common between friends and enemies? You have thoughts about them. You remember both of them, right? You are not indifferent to either of them, and this is attachment. This is attachment.

What is the real meaning of attachment? Understand this.

Deep within us there is a desire to know ‘who we are’. We want to say, “I am” and then we stop there, awkwardly, we don’t know what to say, there is a blank. This ‘I am’ desperately wants to get attached to something, so that the sentence may be completed. Do you see that, this is a very awkward blank; ‘I am’, and then you can’t proceed any further. Attachment is the urge to fill in this blank; so that the sentence may be completed.

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A young man must have a healthy contempt towards the world

Question: Sir, it is recognized that there is a thirst. Where is the miss? Is It forgotten, or may be just missed? What is the reason? Why is it happening?

Speaker: You still have some belief, in all that has been fed into you. Society, culture, all kinds of inputs that your mind has received, have told you that menus of emancipation do exist within this world. You have been told that there are objects and people within the world, that can offer you the ultimate. And you have been repeatedly told that. You have been repeatedly told that the Highest that is possible to a man, is a worldly thing. So even though you experience the urge for the Highest, yet you rush outwards, to fulfill that urge.

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Why can’t I do what is right?

Question: How do we make our mind do what is important at that moment?

Speaker: Once you know what is important, there will be no need to make the mind work on it. Realization is such a potent force, that cannot be surmounted. If you think that even after realization you require some other prop, some kind of a support or motivation, for you to act as per the realization, then realization has not really happened at all.

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What is depression?

Question: My question is about depression. For quite some time I have been observing that the mind is like a sine curve. There are highs and there are lows. But the lows are more frequent and wider than the highs. Why it is so?

Speaker: Lows are lows. The problem arises when the highs are also lows. Then all that you get is only lows. In a sine curve you ought to have lows and highs. Now lows are lows, but it becomes tragic when the highs are also lows. What is sad and depressing is indeed sad and depressing, but what was supposed to be exciting and wonderful, that too turns out to be sad and depressing. Then it is a betrayal of hope. Then it is indeed twice depressing. Read more

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What is guilt?

Question: What is guilt? Does it facilitate, or hinder spiritual growth?

Speaker: We often use the term ‘spiritual growth’. It is alright if it is used loosely, just to indicate something. But it is not alright, if you mean ‘spiritual growth’, as actually the growth of some entity. There is no spiritual growth as such. ‘Spiritual growth’ only means ‘spiritual dissolution’. Nothing grows. All growth is that of the ego. Only the ego grows, accumulates, becomes larger. Read more

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What is your ultimate desire?

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I once had a thousand desires,

 but in my one desire to know you,  all else melted away.

– Rumi

Acharya Prashant: “I once had a thousand desires.” We all have a thousand desires. We all have thousand desires, right? What does each desire say? Each desire says, “Fulfil me, and you will get satisfaction.” Now, what is this satisfaction? When you are satisfied, do you still have desire? Does the desire say, “Fulfil me and still I will remain?” No, what does the desire say? “Fulfil me and I will go.”

So what does each desire want? To be fulfilled. And to be fulfilled means that the desire gets vanished. So each desire wishes for its own disappearance. So the desire only desires the disappearance of itself. That is what every desire wants. That is the nature of desire. Read more