There is Reality beyond your little universe || Acharya Prashant, on Vivekachudamani (2018)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?  Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...    Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?  Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~   Video Information: ShabdYoga sesssion, 01.06.2018, Advait Bodhsthal, Noida, India   Context:   वैराग्यान्न परं सुखस्य जनकं पश्यामि वश्यात्मनः  तच्चेच्छुद्धतरात्मबोधसहितं स्वाराज्यसाम्राज्यधुक् ।  एतद्द्वारमजस्रमुक्तियुवतेर्यस्मात्त्वमस्मात्परं  सर्वत्रास्पृहया सदात्मनि सदा प्रज्ञां कुरु श्रेयसे ॥   For the extremely dispassionate man alone, there is Samadhi and the man of Samadhi alone gets steady realization.   The man who has realized  the Truth is alone free from bondage and the free soul  only experiences eternal bliss.   ~ Vivekachudamani, Verse 376   ~ What is the reality of this universe?  ~ How to understand, what is beyond?  ~ What are various ways of pointing beyond?  ~ What is internal bliss?  ~ What is the personal universe?  ~ What is the Truth?    Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Parameswari says, Dear Acharyaji Pranam.

00:22Then she quotes Vivek Chudamani.

00:27For the extremely dispassionate man alone there is Samadhi.

00:32And the man of Samadhi alone gets steady realization.

00:39The man who has realized the truth is alone free from bondage.

00:46And the free soul only experiences eternal bliss.

00:51So she says by way of interpretation or conclusion that this description to her appears like

01:04a ladder or series of steps towards bliss.

01:09She has then actually pictorially represented the ladder to the bottom most rung according

01:18to her is the dispassionate man.

01:24And then there is the man of Samadhi.

01:26And then there is the realized man of truth.

01:29And then there is the bondage free soul.

01:31And then there is eternal bliss.

01:34And she has requested Acharyaji please throw light on these steps with love and gratitude.

01:41Parameswari, Tamil Nadu.

01:46No Parameswari, these are not steps.

01:54These are just various ways of pointing at the beyond.

02:10Dispassion, Samadhi, steady realization, freedom from bondage, free soul, eternal bliss.

02:27These are not a series of states.

02:44These are not dependent on each other as in cause and effect.

02:57They do not originate from each other.

03:00They do not lead to each other.

03:04One is not inferior and the other is not superior.

03:10None of these states are consequent on the other.

03:17None of these states qualify the other.

03:31All that the simple knowers, compassionate helpers have been trying to do is point at

03:54the beyond in several ways, in several words, using several means.

04:07Because you know passion, so to point at something beyond you, Adi Shankaracharya says dispassion.

04:29Please understand the significance of dispassion.

04:34You exist in your personal universe and your personal universe is a universe of passion,

04:43attachment, sorrow, clinging, attraction, hope, suffering.

04:58All that is passion.

05:05So that's your universe full of passion and you live in this universe taking this universe

05:16to be the truth.

05:19The moment you take your universe as the truth, you condemn yourself to needless suffering.

05:37The truth is that which ameliorates suffering.

05:46But look at your experiences, look at your life.

05:53You have taken your personal universe as true, have you not?

05:59Anybody who calls his personal universe as false, anybody who calls her feeling as false,

06:06her experiences as false, her interpretations as false, her relationships as false, her

06:11very self as false, anybody?

06:15We take our personal universe to be true.

06:22That is one fact universally seen, acknowledged and the other fact is that man suffers.

06:34These go together.

06:37Because you take your personal universe to be true, so you suffer.

06:46So how does the man of compassion deliver you from suffering?

06:54By showing you that there is a reality beyond your little and personal universe.

07:06There is truth outside of your little head.

07:12But that is too much for us to accept.

07:15We are stubborn beings and scared too.

07:23Think of a stubborn and scared child.

07:27It would be very difficult to make him fall in line, to get him to understand, to bring

07:44him to a point of conviction.

07:47He is already too convinced.

07:52Stubborn and scared.

07:56That's mankind for you and that's an apt description of what is called the ego.

08:04Stubborn and scared like a child.

08:17So in many ways, with equal stubbornness, the compassionate helper has to convince the

08:28child that his fears, his scares are false.

08:37So the child says passion and the helper will say dispassion.

08:43Now, that's a technique.

08:46Why is that a technique?

08:47How did the child get trained in repeatedly saying passion?

08:57How did your personal universe get to be so full of passion?

09:04How did that happen?

09:08And how does conditioning proceed?

09:10Repetition.

09:11Wonderful.

09:12So, your personal universe is a universe full of passion because that is what you have gone

09:21through again and again.

09:25That is what you have been made to go through again and again.

09:29Passion.

09:30Wherever you look, there is the dance of passion.

09:32What do I mean by passion?

09:35Emotions, attachment and all that which goes with it.

09:42You know all that.

09:45Clinging, tears, excitement, that's passion for you.

09:52It appears like liveliness, but it scares like death.

10:06Your personal universe is a product of repetition.

10:12You repeated nonsense again and again and the nonsense just covered you up.

10:26The nonsense just got hold of you.

10:31The nonsense grew upon you.

10:37So the master, the helper is using your tendency to be affected by repetition to help you.

10:50Who are you?

10:51The one who gets affected by and the proof is that your personal universe has come to

11:00be full of suffering, passion, this, that, none of which are innate.

11:08All of them are products of time and time means repetition.

11:15It happened once, it happened again and again and again and again and again and finally

11:20it got hold of you.

11:23Finally you got identified with it and there is actually never a finality to it.

11:30It keeps possessing more and more of you.

11:37It keeps enslaving you more and more.

11:43That's what repetition does.

11:46And after a point, you don't even look at it as repetition because it is getting repeated

11:55so often.

11:56So you start calling it the uninterruptible truth.

12:02After all, that's the very mark of truth that it is not interruptible, that it has no discontinuity.

12:11And if repetition is continuously happening, that too appears uninterruptible.

12:21And so you start conflating identification with the self.

12:35You start taking conditioning as your nature.

12:42Isn't that a very common argument?

12:43Because it is happening continuously and is happening everywhere, so it must be the truth.

12:49And one must sympathize with you because one sees falseness continuously and everywhere.

12:56And these two are also the characteristics of truth that the truth is all pervasive spatially

13:04and continuous temporally.

13:08In terms of space, the truth is all pervasive and in terms of time, the truth is continuous.

13:18That's how you describe truth, don't you?

13:21But look at the common man's experience.

13:24He too finds something all pervasive and what is that?

13:27Falseness.

13:29And he too finds something continuous.

13:33What is that?

13:34Falseness.

13:35So, one must not be too harsh on the common mind when one sees that the common mind starts

13:44taking falseness itself as truth.

13:47Because falseness too is all pervasive and continuous.

13:56So, Adi Shankar looks at this mind and he says, what to do?

14:06And he sees that this mind is a product of time, is a product of repetition.

14:13It soaks in repetition and that which comes repeatedly to it, it starts taking as truth.

14:24So, now he uses the same tendency of the mind to help the mind.

14:32He uses the tendency of the mind to get affected by repetition to help the mind get rid of

14:40all previous and false repetitions.

14:44So here, what you see in this shloka is a wonderful application of this technique.

14:55So, you say passion, Parameswari gets up and says passion.

15:00And the woman's face is full of passion, her eyes are teary.

15:08The face itself is a product of passion or is it not?

15:12One man, one woman get passionate and mankind is born.

15:21So, you need not display passion at a particular instant.

15:28Every cell is passionate and every cell is continuously saying passion, passion, passion.

15:40And all that this body, this system knows then is passion.

15:48And it's a closed system, it won't look outside of itself.

15:52Remember the stubborn and scared child.

15:58It has locked itself up in a room because it is scared and it won't open the room even

16:06if you keep calling from outside because it is stubborn.

16:10The ego is that child, stubborn and scared.

16:15It locks itself up, it is a closed system.

16:20The child has to be lured out, the child has to be gently called out.

16:29You can't coerce the child, coercion won't work.

16:37You have to gently, gently, using the process of repetition, get the child to open the doors.

16:50That's what Adi Shankar is doing here.

16:52You say passion, he says dispassion.

16:55Now dispassion by itself does not mean anything because all that this closed universe knows

17:01is passion.

17:06So why is Adi Shankar saying dispassion?

17:10Just to tell you that there is a reality outside of you.

17:19The little ego finds that very difficult to believe because all that it knows is itself.

17:27What does one know?

17:28One knows himself and one knows his projections.

17:36So you know yourself and you know your personal world which are one and the same.

17:44And here is somebody calling from the beyond and he's saying dispassion.

17:47You don't know dispassion but by saying dispassion, he is inducing a doubt in your mind and the

18:00ego is very susceptible to doubt.

18:05The one who is scared is also the one who will very easily doubt.

18:11The ego now is stubborn, scared and suspicious.

18:21The ego has been suspicious of the truth.

18:25Adi Shankar is using the same tendency of the ego, the same proclivity of the ego to

18:31suspect everything, to get the ego to suspect the personal universe as well.

18:40So the ego says passion and from there Adi Shankar says dispassion and the ego says what

18:45is that?

18:47The ego cannot trust anything.

18:48Because the ego cannot trust anything, the ego cannot trust even falseness.

18:54Obviously the ego cannot trust the truth but because the ego knows no trust, so it can

18:59also not trust the falseness.

19:02Adi Shankar is clever.

19:05He is getting the ego, the doubtful ego to doubt itself and that's easy.

19:11Because if you can doubt the truth, it would be very easy to get you to doubt the false.

19:21So the ego is shouting passion, passion, passion and from there, from afar, from a distance,

19:27from beyond, Adi Shankar says dispassion.

19:30The ego says something wrong, something wrong, something terrible is bound to happen.

19:39So the ego checks the entire little room in which it has confined itself and it finds

19:44no dispassion and now the ego is all the more scared.

19:49Something really terrible is going on.

19:57Then the ego says, fine, there seems something wrong in the passion department.

20:02So I'll keep it aside for a while.

20:04Then ego says disturbance, movement, distraction, restlessness.

20:20Because that's what the personal universe is full of.

20:23The ego says all this and Adi Shankar, we know, is clever.

20:29Sitting there, he says Samadhi and now the ego is utterly terrified.

20:38Because within the ego's own universe, Samadhi does not exist.

20:46Just by uttering the word Samadhi, Adi Shankar has brought about a storm in the teacup.

20:59Sitting there, he has induced a storm in the little room.

21:03Now the little room is shaking and all that he is doing from there is saying Samadhi and

21:11the ego says Samadhi, where is it?

21:13It searches for Samadhi in the entire room and does not find it.

21:17So ego says fine, even this seems like a doubtful word, I'll not utter it, I'll move on to my

21:25next favoured word, my next favourite and the next favourite is confusion.

21:35Because the ego's own little universe is full of confusion.

21:41So the ego then sings and dances confusion, confusion and from there, Adi Shankar says

21:48realization and ego jumps up, says what is that?

21:57Never heard of that, never experienced that, realization.

22:03The ego hires a detective from within its own universe, within the universe of the ego,

22:09everything exists, all existence is within the personal universe, beyond that we anyway

22:14don't know anything.

22:17So detective is hired, go dig out realization, see where this thing called realization is

22:22hiding and the detective returns empty handed, no realization.

22:31Now the ego is getting really jittery.

22:36Something really obnoxious is cooking somewhere.

22:43I'm pretty sure that there is nothing outside my universe, but somewhere, from somewhere

22:51certain words are coming that are not being found inside my universe.

22:57The ego is stubborn that there is no universe except the personal little universe and from

23:05there Adi Shankar is saying dispassion, samadhi, realization.

23:09So the ego is hell bent on finding all these things inside the little universe and the

23:15ego is failing and each failure is hitting the ego very hard.

23:22The ego is about to break down, cry, but it is stubborn, so it tries a little more.

23:34So the ego now starts uttering, reciting, bondage, bondage, bondage, bondage, because

23:46the personal universe is a universe of bondage and Adi Shankar hears that and as usual he

23:56is ready with his reply, his ammunition.

24:04He says freedom.

24:05The ego says, my God, where is freedom?

24:10What is this thing called freedom?

24:13And freedom is again intrinsic, where do I find it?

24:20No freedom in my universe.

24:22What is this thing called freedom?

24:27That does not mean that ego has realized freedom.

24:32The ego only knows bondage, but Adi Shankar is telling the ego that there does exist something

24:43beyond all your experience and knowledge.

24:47The ego will not easily accept that.

24:51So it will search within the province of experience and knowledge and not find anything there.

24:59And the ego is not honest enough to easily admit that freedom has not been found within

25:06its own province.

25:07So it may also play one dirty trick.

25:10It may say, yes, I have found freedom within my world.

25:13It may say, I have found Samadhi within my world.

25:16It may name any spurious thing as freedom or Samadhi, fake goods, fake medicines, just

25:24labels.

25:26But that doesn't last long because even when the ego says, I have found freedom from afar,

25:35Adi Shankar is still uttering freedom and the freedom that Adi Shankar is talking of

25:45sounds fundamentally different from the freedom that ego has.

25:50Ego tries to pretend for a while that it has found the same freedom that Adi Shankar is

25:55talking of, but it can't deceive itself for too long because the helper is very patient.

26:05The helper won't go away.

26:06The ego says freedom, from there he too says freedom and very soon the ego realizes that

26:11the freedom that the helper is talking of is not the same freedom that the ego knows.

26:21It becomes clear and when it becomes clear, it's a very frustrating thing to face.

26:33When the ego says suffering and from there comes the reply, bliss and Adi Shankar repeats

26:47this and repeats this and the words coming from there are beautiful.

27:01They scare because they are new, unknown, but they also have a great beauty, they are

27:10an invitation, they are a temptation.

27:15The child gets tempted, almost seduced and then the door gets opened slowly and the child

27:28peeps outside.

27:29Who does he see there?

27:36The Guru.

27:39The Guru is smiling and calling, come over.

27:43The child had expected to see nobody because he had always believed that there is nothing

27:49outside the room.

27:52Outside the room of your confinement is standing the Guru.

28:01When you first open the door it is scary to see that there does exist someone outside

28:06the room.

28:09So you quickly again shut the door.

28:13But now the proof is irresistible.

28:20Now the admission is irrevocable.

28:26So you get internally compelled to again open the door and this time you open it a bit more

28:35and instead of just peeping out with scared eyes, you actually walk out a little.

28:41And now you look at the teacher a little more closely.

28:46The fear subsides a little.

28:49He is not as scary as you had painted him to be.

28:56But still when he comes closer you again come back and you should close the door.

29:04Can't do that for too long.

29:07Next time when you open the door you find him standing right at the doorsteps.

29:13And this time he extends his hand and you are helpless.

29:21You take the hand.

29:26A little bit of abusing and cursing is still going on inside the mind.

29:32But that keeps dimming down as you walk out.

29:46So Parameswari, don't try to give the whole thing a structure.

29:51There is no ladder here.

29:54You are just being told that your personal stuff, your personal universe, the personality,

30:08the person herself counts for little.

30:12You are being told that something outside of you, something beyond you is waiting for

30:20you.

30:24Let's see how long you will take to say yes.

30:46It's simple.

30:47Like love.

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