Rapid Fire round with Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Okay, now great, fantastic. Now we are into the third round of our conversation and this

00:08is going to be rapid, conscious choice. I'm not going to call it unconscious because then

00:14you might actually say that it was unconscious and therefore you will not take any responsibility.

00:21So I'm going to give you two choices. You will have to pick one and you'll have to very

00:27briefly explain maybe in one sentence or maximum two sentences, why you chose what you chose.

00:37So choice number one or question number one, man or woman, woman, why? Possibility. You

00:51will have to explain this. If you can be so, if you can be so brief, I'll be entitled to be equally curt.

01:02No, you explain it. I want the explanation. You said possibility. Possibility. You see,

01:08when you say man and woman, man or woman, man and woman, classically, both are just prakriti.

01:16So both come under the umbrella name of woman, which is the human state, which is the human state.

01:25In some sense, all of us are women. You are a woman in just the biological sense. I too am a

01:32woman in the mental sense, right? So the word woman describes entire mankind. You could say

01:41womankind. So the possibility of redemption is there only to the woman. Who else will have that possibility?

01:50So a woman, you know, is used as a metaphor for the one who is seeking her beloved. So that's the mind,

02:02the mind seeking peace. So I would want to remember that we all are that unfulfilled conscious,

02:12unconsciousness, which is that we all are that woman who is seeking the ultimate beloved, in that sense, possibility.

02:23Desire or renunciation? Desire. Explain. The fundamental thing is love. Love is the highest desire.

02:33It is only when you desire the highest that you will have the guts or the daring to drop the lowly things,

02:44which you call as renunciation. So renunciation can never come first. Krishna in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita

02:52talks of Karmayog and Karmasannyas and he says they are ideally the same thing, but practically,

03:01Karmayog is preferable to Karmasannyas, which is much the same as saying that love takes precedence over renunciation

03:12or that love is the mother of renunciation. If you are in love, you will, without even knowing,

03:20drop a lot of nonsense and you will become a renunciate and you won't even know that.

03:25So love will bring about renunciation. At the same time, renunciation without love won't last

03:33and would become some kind of hypocrisy. Osho or J. Krishnamurti? J. Krishnamurti. Explain.

03:40Purity. You will have to explain that. You see, the higher you go, the purer you need to be.

03:55Methods and tactics are all great when you have just begun the climb.

04:10But the same thing that assists you to climb at the lower altitudes becomes a burden against climbing

04:26when you have reached the heights at higher altitudes. So Krishnamurti has an unparalleled purity.

04:39No methods, no distractions, no this and that, a very dedicated concentration on nothing but the truth.

04:59And that's the reason I said JK over Osho. At the same time, I have great respect for Osho.

05:07And I think he can be very useful to those who are just beginning their journey.

05:17But as you ascend, it is Krishnamurti that you will need to seek.

05:26Krishna or Shiva? Much the same. No choices there. But because these days, it's a topical thing,

05:37because these days I am with the Bhagavad Gita, so I'll say Krishna. On another day, I would have equally said Shiva.

05:44So explain to us that why are they the same thing and why Shiva today and Shiva tomorrow?

05:55Krishna today and Shiva tomorrow? Oh nothing, that's a mood, a fleeting mood, a fleeting moment.

06:01I mean just yesterday I conducted a session on the Bhagavad Gita and tomorrow I think there is another one.

06:08So it's just a human thing that Krishna is the top of the mind.

06:12Otherwise there is no difference between Krishna and Shiva.

06:16There have been phases when I have found myself immensely in love with just the word Shiva.

06:27In fact, just half an hour before you came, we had the head of the books department with us

06:36and because Mahashivratri is approaching, she drew my attention to one of our old books Om Namah Shivaya

06:44and I said rename it Shivoham. That becomes important because Mahashivratri happens to be my birthday.

06:51So in a very carnal way, I have a bit of a connection with Shiva, which is nothing but a very carnal connection, does not mean much.

07:02Krishna and Shiva are one, you see. Krishna, as he speaks in the Gita, speaks as pure truth

07:11and Shiva is another name again for the highest consciousness possible.

07:19So Krishna and Shiva are just the same. Someday you will feel like saying Krishna, someday Shiva

07:27and there are days when I just love to say Ram.

07:29Lakshmi or Saraswati?

07:31Saraswati, obviously. I don't even need to explain, I suppose.

07:35So they are not one?

07:36No, they are not one.

07:37Why?

07:38Learning and wealth cannot be one, obviously, but at the same time, if you want to go deeper into it,

07:49if you pick up the Durga Saptshati, there both Lakshmi and Saraswati are simply two names for the mother goddess.

08:00If you want to go there, then I'll say just as I can't pick between Krishna and Shiva, I cannot pick between Lakshmi and Saraswati.

08:10But if you want to take, if you want to accord the popular meanings to their names, right,

08:18then Lakshmi stands for wealth and all, Saraswati stands for wisdom.

08:23Wisdom any day over wealth.

08:27Eastern philosophy or western philosophy?

08:29Eastern.

08:30Why?

08:31I.

08:32Explain.

08:35Western philosophy pays relatively, puts relatively lesser emphasis on who you are.

08:50There is a lot of ideation, there is a very honest and laborious exploration of man's condition, society, economics,

09:05but the purity and rigor that Vedanta displays in coming to man's fundamental identity

09:19and then declaring that liberation from all the identities that you hold is the very purpose of life,

09:29that is something that you do not find in western philosophy.

09:34In fact, nowhere in western philosophy do you find the word Mukti, liberation.

09:39There is knowledge, there is exploration, there is realization, and I'm fond of western philosophy, right,

09:45I'm not deprecating one over the other, no, no, no.

09:49I love western philosophy, I want to go deeper into it, but liberation is something the west does not talk of.

10:01India or world?

10:04How can you have India without the world?

10:10So, that becomes just too hypothetical, but again as someone sitting in India, right,

10:18I would simply say India, but when I say India again, my India is not a political unit,

10:27not a geographical location, not a piece of land.

10:31When I say India, I refer to the place, to the set of conditions that enabled man for the first time

10:44to both look towards the sky and into himself.

10:49So, that's the India that I love, the India of self-knowledge.

10:56Life or death?

10:58Death.

11:00Explain.

11:07That which we call as life must be put to death, and only then does real life begin.

11:15So, there's a life after death?

11:17No, no, not after death, when you say after, you mean a flow of time.

11:22So, at 4 p.m. life as we know it ended, and at 5 p.m. you had an afterlife.

11:28I'm not talking of that.

11:30I'm talking of a certain beyondness.

11:33I'm saying that this eating, talking, walking, mating, this is what we consider as life, right?

11:41When we are able to transcend this definition of life, then we really come alive.

11:49So, let this life be put to death, and then there is joy, and the fear of death is gone.

11:59And the Upanishads say that is what is immortality, when the fear of death is gone.

12:04This that we call as life, it is always in the shadow of death.

12:08We are always afraid of things coming to an end in some way or the other.

12:12So, this life is no good, because in this life there is always the fear of death.

12:17This has to be exceeded. This has to be transcended.

12:20That's why I said death. I said death so that we may come alive.

12:24Now, the last segment. I am going to ask you about your first and the last love, which is books.

12:31Give us five books that you have loved all your life.

12:35Depends on the audience segment. Suggest me an audience segment.

12:39Well, on love, on enlightenment.

12:44Okay, one book each on these? Yes.

12:50On enlightenment for beginners, Siddhāt by Hermann Hesse.

12:55Love.

13:02Nārada Bhakti Sūtra.

13:06On science.

13:09Several. You could have a Feynman lecture on physics.

13:14You could have the Hawkins book on time.

13:22Several books. But I would say, stick to your textbooks.

13:27That's where you get science from. Science you just cannot read.

13:31Science without mathematics means nothing.

13:33So, when we say science, there has to be an exercise book, a notebook by your side,

13:39where you keep solving equations. Science is not just literature.

13:45Name a book on women.

13:51Ayn Rand's We the Living.

13:53Name a book on sex.

13:59Specifically on sex.

14:03There are so many books that touch upon sex.

14:14Yes.

14:18Of human bondage. Somerset Maugham.

14:23Name a book on Indian literature.

14:29That encapsulates Indian literature.

14:36Or maybe an Indian fiction.

14:39Indian fiction.

14:49Thank you so much for this fascinating, enlightening discussion.

14:55I hope we can carry on once again, probably in future, for another conversation and for more love.

15:03Wonderful.

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