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Video Information: 29.09.23, IIT-Madras (Online), Greater Noida
Context:
~ Is there any authentic way of spirituality ?
~ How can person practice spirituality ?
~ Why anything just personal is worthless even enlightenment ?
~ How pressure of responsibility make us grow ?
~ Why another name for responsibility is Love ?
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?
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Want to work with Acharya Prashant?
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➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: 29.09.23, IIT-Madras (Online), Greater Noida
Context:
~ Is there any authentic way of spirituality ?
~ How can person practice spirituality ?
~ Why anything just personal is worthless even enlightenment ?
~ How pressure of responsibility make us grow ?
~ Why another name for responsibility is Love ?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 Welcome.
00:05 Good evening sir.
00:08 New thing interacting to you as an IIT alumnus.
00:12 Yeah.
00:14 Yeah, it looks very different for me actually I'm very glad that I could meet you in this forum as well.
00:21 First of all, I'm really glad that we and students of my alma mater getting this opportunity to interact with you closely. I hope we'll make the best use of it.
00:32 The question today I have is something very close to my heart.
00:37 In recent past as you know I quit my high paying job, and I'm exploring communities that encourage values like sustainable living veganism non coercive child driven education.
00:50 So what I have learned about spirituality over the years is that it's a deeply personal endeavor.
00:56 And I found that what is working for me right now is withdrawing from the normal ways of society and going my own way to explore and experiment my ideas about education relationships and life in general.
01:09 When I listen to you, it seems to me that you are in your way of spirituality is about addressing the ignorant ones directly on subjects like superstition veganism relationships education, and many such things.
01:25 I wanted to know if the way you follow is the only authentic approach to spirituality in your point of view, or is it also possible for a person to practice spirituality, or in fact to grow in having internal growth in the confines of his chosen space.
01:43 They operate in tandem Abhilashji. Hand in hand, you could even say hand in glove.
01:53 I too have my own personal space, my own inner sanctum sanctorum where my own things happen.
02:03 But then I have a public space as well, where I come to share what I might have cultivated inwardly in my silence and my aloneness.
02:16 And what I then see in public, observe and experience that leads to a furthering of the inner process.
02:29 These two go hand in hand. I do not see how one can be dissociated from the wider world one inhabits and yet operate a purely internal spiritual process.
02:47 It might be possible, but to me it looks a bit unlikely. Equally one cannot become totally outward looking and get dissociated from one's own interiors in the name of serving the society.
03:06 So, in the language of electrical engineering, there has to be a generator plant and there has to be a transmission side.
03:20 You need to have both. There needs to be the plant and there needs to be the grid.
03:27 Otherwise, how can even the plant generate electricity if it is not being transmitted to any place or being consumed anywhere?
03:38 So, there has to be a power plant within and there then have to be lines that take the power, the energy, the electricity, just euphemistically.
03:52 There is no real electricity, I hope. I have to be very careful otherwise everything becomes cannon fodder for superstition.
03:59 There is no electricity. I am just using that as a metaphor.
04:02 So, from the inner power plant, the thing has then to be taken outwards.
04:09 Otherwise, even the inner generation would cease.
04:13 So, it's a twofold process, inwards, outwards and also if there are long phases when you cannot share what you have with the world,
04:30 then one starts feeling a certain uncomfortable kind of fullness.
04:37 It's a peculiar phrase, uncomfortable fullness, like a full cloud not being allowed to rain.
04:49 The cloud is full but it's not being allowed to rain.
04:54 Now, what can the poor thing do now? It's just literally hanging about and waiting for its turn to rain.
05:04 And only when it can rain, its purpose is fulfilled.
05:10 You see, when you go within, you discover that it's not for yourself that you can meaningfully exist.
05:16 No point existing just for yourself.
05:19 So, that which we call as liberation or realization or whatever,
05:25 if that is only for yourself, then you have yet not breached the limits of your personal self, right?
05:33 And breaching the limits of your personal self, that exactly is the goal of the spiritual process.
05:40 So, I dare to say that even the ultimate thing called enlightenment, whatever it is, I do not know,
05:49 but it's known to be the ultimate thing.
05:52 Even that ultimate thing, if it is just personal, then I hold it to be worthless.
06:00 How different is that from fetching a shirt just for yourself or a shoe just for yourself
06:10 or gathering copious amounts of money and fame just for yourself.
06:16 Everybody does that.
06:19 If enlightenment is just for myself, then how different am I from someone who gathers wealth just for himself?
06:29 So, by definition, the spiritual process is something that has to radiate out.
06:36 Like the sun, what would happen to all the energy that's being generated in the core of the sun
06:44 if it could not be radiated outwards.
06:51 So, both the steps are important.
06:55 The inner solitude is very very important, very important.
06:59 If you are surrounded all the time, you go mad.
07:02 So, you need your own space and everything.
07:07 It's another matter that in time, you learn to be quiet and alone even when you are physically surrounded.
07:16 But that comes in with practice, you know.
07:19 Because as your social obligations, I am using the word loosely, obligations.
07:25 As your social obligations increase, you find you are being left with little and little personal time.
07:33 So, then you are forced to find solitude even amongst surroundings, crowds, people, sessions, seminars.
07:49 But it has to always be both the things parallelly.
07:55 No point having transmission lines when the power plant is down.
08:01 Would be absurd, right?
08:03 Though we have lots of such instances, there is no power plant.
08:08 But there are transmission lines right from India till US.
08:12 And the folks in US genuinely believe that they are receiving something from India.
08:18 How can you receive anything?
08:20 Yes, there is a very very sophisticated transmission line.
08:24 But at the other end of the line, there is no power plant at all.
08:28 What are you receiving?
08:31 So, that's absurd.
08:33 And equally absurd is the situation when you raise a very wonderful power plant
08:40 without raising the right kind of network that it can feed.
08:50 You remember Saint Kabir?
08:54 What's the point in whatever elevation you have achieved?
09:02 What do you call dates in English? Palm, right?
09:06 Dates.
09:08 So, what's the point in being elevated like that date tree or palm tree, whatever, coconut tree?
09:15 Nobody is benefiting from what you have attained.
09:21 "Panthi ko chhaya nahi, phal aagey ati door"
09:24 No point.
09:26 Equally that does not mean that to be of public use you have to remain a lowly shrub.
09:32 Do rise, do rise, but rise in a way that benefits everybody.
09:37 Otherwise you are not breaching the boundaries of your personhood.
09:44 And the person as we know is the fundamental superstition.
09:48 The person is the one whose falseness we have to ultimately see in the spiritual thing.
10:00 One small follow-up question.
10:03 So, one thing I have noticed in recent past is when I try experimenting these ideas of how to change the way of educating a child and things like that.
10:13 I have noticed lot of hidden things within me coming out, which I never experienced before.
10:22 I never thought such thing also lied in me which needs to be cured or which needs to be grown.
10:29 I think the transformer also grows only when this…
10:35 Beautifully put, obviously. See, it's under the pressure of responsibility that your capabilities grow.
10:50 So, you have to hold yourself responsible to those who are just not normally related to you.
11:03 The general crowd, the usual folk, when you start seeing that you indeed are responsible to them and not just to a small cross-section,
11:14 but to the entire humanity and not just to humanity, but to all living species.
11:21 When you start seeing that, then I am using the word very cautiously.
11:28 It's the pressure of that responsibility that makes you grow.
11:34 Believe me, there are lot of scriptures that I might have never gone into with such keenness and dedication and probe
11:53 had I not been responsible towards you.
12:00 So, when it came to reading them only for myself, I read them in one particular way and I was satisfied.
12:10 I now see what they are pointing at.
12:14 But when it comes to bringing that scripture to you, that's when I feel really stretched.
12:23 That's when I extend myself beyond my usual capacity to give something extra to you.
12:33 Something that was not ordinarily possible had I been reading just for my own sake.
12:40 So, it's responsibility. Another name for that responsibility is love.
12:46 Thanks Ajayji. Thank you very much. I'll keep asking more questions.
12:57 I'm glad. I'm glad.
12:58 I'm glad.
12:59 (music)
13:01 (music)