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Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 20.12.2021, Rishikesh, India
Context:
~ What work to choose in life?
~ Should one seek social validation while choosing work?
~ How important is money while choosing work?
~ Why do we often underestimate the circumstances?
~ How to start investigating into ones own behaviour?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates?
Join WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va6Z...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work?
Contribute: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/contri...
Want to work with Acharya Prashant?
Apply to the Foundation here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/hiring...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 20.12.2021, Rishikesh, India
Context:
~ What work to choose in life?
~ Should one seek social validation while choosing work?
~ How important is money while choosing work?
~ Why do we often underestimate the circumstances?
~ How to start investigating into ones own behaviour?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 Namaskaram Acharyaji, my question, I am actually reading one of his books called Freedom from
00:08 the Known, where he talks about removing authority to be free in the ego.
00:17 What does he mean by the authority?
00:19 Just keep your pace a bit mild.
00:23 So I am trying to say that if I want to understand what is authority, meaning to say that we
00:30 can take anything to be authority and then say this is, I mean, I am not going to accept
00:34 this.
00:35 And then he says that don't even have the authority of your past self.
00:39 So the confusion I have here is most often than not in life we learn from our past experiences.
00:46 See the definition of authority is anything that proclaims itself to be the truth in itself,
00:54 that is called authority.
00:58 Author means original, authority means originality.
01:06 Only the truth is original, the point from where everything comes.
01:11 So when Krishnamurti says there is no authority, he means no object can be taken as the truth.
01:20 Whether it's an inanimate object as a book or a living object as a guru, nobody is to
01:32 be taken as the absolute truth.
01:36 It is very fine.
01:39 Only the truth cannot come this way in a form.
01:46 The truth cannot be objectified, it cannot stand in front of you as a thing or place
01:51 or person or book or whatever.
01:57 So do not be too quick to accept your own assessments and judgments.
02:09 When you fall for something, don't you take it to be real.
02:13 Only the truth is real.
02:18 When you are afraid of something, aren't you taking the thing as real?
02:24 If you knew something is unreal, could you be afraid of it?
02:29 So nothing is to be taken as the truth.
02:32 Why?
02:33 Because whatever you are seeing is being seen by you.
02:38 To take a seen thing as the truth is to believe just too much in the capacity of the seer.
02:49 Who is the seer?
02:52 You are the seer.
02:53 So to take anything as the truth is to be egoistic.
02:59 I am saying this thing is the truth, therefore it is the truth and that's what the ego wants
03:04 to believe in.
03:05 The ego says this world is real.
03:08 If I have fallen for a woman, my love is real.
03:14 If my dreams call me, beckon me, my dreams are indeed real, I must invest in them.
03:28 Why all this?
03:29 Because they are mine.
03:32 The love affair is mine.
03:33 The dreams are mine.
03:34 The opinions are mine.
03:36 Therefore I want to take them as truthful.
03:42 Now you see why he says do not take your own likes, dislikes, experiences and past as authority.
03:48 Because they are yours, whose experiences, your experiences, whose past, your past.
03:53 None of that is to be taken very seriously.
03:56 Obviously all that will exist, you cannot just dismiss it.
03:59 But none of that is to be given the status of the truth.
04:03 When something is given the status of the truth, it becomes unquestionable.
04:08 Everybody gets stifled.
04:11 Whatsoever is there in front of you is in front of you and you are no absolute.
04:19 Therefore whatsoever is there must be available to enquiry, investigation, questioning.
04:25 When you are questioning something, you are seeing.
04:28 In fact you are not questioning that thing, you are questioning your own seeing.
04:33 Because whatsoever that thing appears like and means to you is your own perception.
04:40 All those meanings and appearances are in your own frame of reference.
04:45 So when you question your own world, your own objects, you are in fact questioning yourself.
04:50 That questioning cannot happen if you declare that you have already come to the truth.
04:57 Never never believe that the journey has ended.
05:00 Never believe that the ego itself is the truth.
05:04 Was I too swift even for you?
05:07 No, I just, the same confusion still persists with me.
05:14 Just an example, just few minutes back I talked very fast, fast right.
05:19 And that's a mistake I did.
05:21 And you rectified my mistake and I learned a topic I am teaching in a softer tone right now.
05:26 And in the answer you said don't give up past experience also the truth stakers.
05:32 But I mean that was the truth that I did speak, I mean no, authority.
05:37 So that is authorizing me to change my behavior and I learned from that experience right.
05:42 So is it my past experience authorizing me right now to change myself?
05:48 I mean that's how to be a guru as well.
05:51 So that's just one of the conclusions.
05:54 Authorizing is not the same as taking something as authority.
06:01 Equate authority with truth.
06:04 Would you remember this?
06:07 Equate authority with truth.
06:09 That's why nothing is the authority.
06:11 To authorize is to license or allow.
06:15 That's another totally different thing.
06:19 See please understand this.
06:22 Even though the ego or the self we believe in is classically and absolutely unreal.
06:33 But to us that is the only reality.
06:35 What do we do?
06:36 We can't hoodwink ourselves.
06:38 We can't say oh the ego is false therefore I am not suffering when actually I am.
06:42 Doesn't matter how many times somebody like Jiddu Krishnamurthy comes and teaches you
06:50 the fallacy of the ego.
06:54 Your suffering would still remain.
07:00 Right?
07:06 So you have to work your way out of the ego through the ego, in the middle of the ego.
07:17 And you have to say well all this is not the truth.
07:21 But what do I do if everything in my body wants to take it as the truth?
07:31 Therefore what do I do?
07:34 I'll start from where I am and investigate.
07:39 Inquiry is the way.
07:42 Tell the ego alright, alright, you are telling me you are real.
07:50 And what does real mean?
07:51 Unchanging, uninfluenced, not composed of fragments, timeless.
08:01 You are telling me all these things about yourself.
08:04 May I please inquire?
08:07 I am not absolutely offhand dismissing you.
08:11 I am just asking, just asking.
08:14 May I just ask?
08:16 That's all.
08:18 So don't unilaterally dismiss the ego, engage it.
08:28 She keeps saying so many things.
08:34 Talk to her.
08:37 You are not to believe in her and you are not to pretend that you don't believe in her at all.
08:46 Because you do believe in her.
08:48 We all do.
08:53 Even if you believe in someone, can't you inquire?
08:57 So tell that to the ego.
08:59 Well, you are such a lovely lady, darling.
09:02 But I just wanted to know a few things.
09:04 Just asking.
09:06 Why was your face so different yesterday?
09:10 No, no, I am not alleging.
09:12 I am just asking.
09:14 If you are so eternal, how has your face changed in a matter of a day?
09:20 No, just asking, just asking.
09:26 Yes, I can answer. Thank you so much.
09:28 So it seems like the entire game is mind playing against itself.
09:36 Like initially it doesn't even look at itself.
09:41 It just looks at things outside and keeps going by the trend or by the society norms or all that from the childhood.
09:49 But then maybe because of certain teachings from teachers like you or certain books,
09:57 suddenly it starts getting an indication to look at itself at some point.
10:04 Now the one looking at itself is the same mind again.
10:08 There is this mind which wants to look at outside and just be carried away with it.
10:14 And there is this another mind which wants to another segment of the mind or fragment of the mind which wants to listen to your teachings and try to inquire and find falsity in all these things.
10:25 Now it looks like the game is almost rigged.
10:30 Anytime mind can favor towards itself to strengthen itself rather than dismissing itself.
10:38 Now initially it was when I started doing this, it was very obvious the mistakes that it is doing.
10:46 Like say for example, it is falling for some attractive clothes or maybe attractive women or anything like that.
10:53 It was very clear like you just check two, three questions, you find it very clearly.
10:58 But as we keep doing this further and further, I noticed that it kind of becomes very easy for it to conform to certain things.
11:11 Like let's say your teachings.
11:13 It might just consume it and it may not really digest it and go through it fully.
11:19 Rather it might simply conform to it right away without even letting it fully digest and become part of me.
11:29 So one trick I did at that time is to break certain patterns, go travel alone or do some things like that which will show again its falsity.
11:39 Again it is becoming maybe a fanboy to you and it is simply accepting things that is being told by you or told by Krishnamurthy as though they are right, as though it has understood rather than really experimenting.
11:53 So this kind of tricks becomes very difficult or at least for me it is becoming very difficult to catch them and experiment and let it not easily conform.
12:05 So any thoughts in this direction?
12:10 Read non-spiritual literature.
12:16 Get into things that you have declared as false just as you have declared, let's say Vedanta to be the truth.
12:34 Remember that just as there is a chance that you are declaring Vedanta to be the truth without having really known it to be the truth.
12:50 Equally you might be declaring lot of other things as false without having known them to be false.
13:00 So what do we do?
13:02 Separation from those things keeps hiding the fact that you still do not know those things to be false.
13:12 So go close to those things.
13:15 Do all those things that you might have rejected or barred yourself from since the last 2 or 4 years.
13:25 Read commercial literature.
13:29 Read what consumerists do.
13:34 See what is their philosophy.
13:38 Expose yourself to be converted by them and see whether their attempts have any effect.
13:48 Mind you they will have some effect and that will reveal to you why you are not still fully convinced of, let's say Vedanta.
14:01 So get into all these things.
14:04 Read news and see whether you can detect with precision what really is going on.
14:12 I strictly dislike spiritual people abhorring the world or rejecting it or not being in knowledge of it.
14:31 You don't have to consume the world but at least know how the world functions and what all is going on.
14:46 And then see whether you are totally effect proof.
14:57 I am advising in advance there would be some effect.
15:03 Visit a tempting shopping mall, some expensive place, see all the glittering stuff there.
15:14 See what is it doing to your senses.
15:17 See how people are operating.
15:20 At some point you will find yourself moving towards one of the items.
15:26 Don't resist.
15:29 Inquire what is it that you find tempting and all that.
15:32 And mind you we are not talking in language of one thing being bad versus one thing being good.
15:38 We want to find out.
15:40 It is actually very much possible that when you visit that shopping center you actually return with two or three items that you actually needed.
15:51 Not that it is your money gone waste.
15:57 So, read all these things, visit all these places, engage the other kind of people.
16:09 The more you keep them away behind the boundary of otherness, the more you will fail to realize that they still exist within you.
16:29 To what extent they still exist within you, you will know only when you are with them.
16:36 Be a part of one of the usual middle upper middle class weddings.
16:43 Check whether you too are being tempted to join the dance floor or be a part of one of the family pics.
17:01 Whether all the lights and the decoration and the glitz is having an effect on you.
17:11 All that has to be seen.
17:13 None of that has to be abhorred.
17:15 Now I'll tell you a little secret.
17:17 It's a dangerous secret but I think you have come far enough to know it.
17:26 A point comes when you are in that wedding and instead of falling prey to that wedding,
17:37 you stand there thinking how you can use all of this towards the right purpose.
17:51 It's like being surrounded by enemies with guns.
17:59 And you look at your enemies and instead of being afraid of something,
18:03 you find yourself thinking how their guns can be utilized for the right purpose.
18:11 You don't want to destroy their guns.
18:15 You want to carry their guns home because you need those guns.
18:22 It's a lousy warrior if he just kills the enemies and leaves their weapons behind.
18:32 Those lights, that decoration, that glamour, all that affects the ego so much.
18:42 Why can't we put it to the right use?
18:46 But remember this thing is dangerous because you never know when the thing you purport to use starts using you instead.
18:57 So this is not something you should start practicing in a hurry or too early.
19:06 It's just that a point comes.
19:11 Spirituality is about engaging with the world in the right way.
19:15 It's not about rejecting this, abhorring that, not being here, not being there.
19:23 Be everywhere.
19:25 It's a war.
19:27 All the territory is to be won.
19:31 You must know your enemy.
19:33 If you keep shying away, if you don't even want to look at your enemy, how will you know what your enemy is like?
19:42 But I repeat, these things are not for beginners.
19:46 If beginners keep frequenting wedding parties, they'll be carried away by the guns.
19:57 You could say at gunpoint, instead of bringing the guns home, you'll find that nobody returned home.
20:08 [Music]