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#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 25.03.2023, Gita Samagam, Greater Noida
Context:
~ What is the fundamental desire?
~ What is the process of Liberation?
~ What is Life?
~ What do we desire from an object?
~ What is the process of Liberation from doership?
~ The immediate is the ultimate.
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 25.03.2023, Gita Samagam, Greater Noida
Context:
~ What is the fundamental desire?
~ What is the process of Liberation?
~ What is Life?
~ What do we desire from an object?
~ What is the process of Liberation from doership?
~ The immediate is the ultimate.
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Let's first start with the one about doership. I guess we will be going into those more later,
00:12but I want to take up at least a few things from there. So you just said that no karmaphala,
00:20no fruit of any action that the doer does is ever going to fulfill you.
00:25I can't get you, Julius. It's not very clear. Can you repeat?
00:31No fruit of any action that the doer does is ever going to fulfill you. When you give up
00:37your identity as the doer, as the actor, what is left is the truth. So
00:44is this just a matter of like instantly realizing it or is there a process to it?
00:55Am I still not audible? No, you're audible. You're audible. I'm getting you. So these two statements,
01:04it is something to be seen. It is there in the very process of living itself.
01:18So if you are asking, what is the process of liberation from doership?
01:25Then the process of liberation is the process of living. What is it that we usually call as living or life?
01:37Incessant desire. A continuous flow of desire is what one usually calls as life.
01:46One way of calling someone as dead is when the fellow can no more desire.
02:00That's one very central characteristic of a dead person. He is not going to desire anymore
02:09which means that life and desire in the usual sense are inseparable.
02:18If you are alive, you are desiring. So what do you do? You see what happens of the desire
02:25and that's commonsensical. Is that not? One invests himself into a desire,
02:34time, energy, money, everything, emotions, all else that one has.
02:43Does it not behove to know what happened to that investment?
02:49Or do you just invest your resources and forget them? You don't do that, right? You want to know.
02:56You want to keep a record. You want to have a meter, a tracker, a dashboard, something.
03:00You want to know what happened to those investments. That's the process of living
03:04which if observed becomes the process of liberation.
03:10The process of living itself becomes the process of liberation
03:15if you are observing the process of living which is life, which is desire.
03:21Observe your desire and you will be liberated of the desire.
03:25You cannot desire something, Julius, without being fascinated
03:33by an imagination with respect to its results, right? Nobody desires an object ever.
03:42What you desire is the end result. What you desire is the end result, right?
03:50What you desire is the experience that the object will give you.
03:59Actually, would this also be the case with thought and some kind of an idea of what
04:09the spiritual process would be like? That you could have an idea?
04:14All that is anyway happening. There is no thought free of desire.
04:21There is no excursion into spirituality. Sense an image, sense a desire.
04:31Nobody moves into whatever you call as a spiritual field without first having some image,
04:38some idea of what it's going to be like and what one's going to get from that.
04:47So, that's not at all different from the desire that you have when you go to a dentist
04:54or when you go to a shopping mall. Fundamentally, these are the same things.
04:59You go to a guru or a temple or a church and you go to a dentist and you go to
05:09a marketplace. These are not fundamentally different things.
05:15The usual process of life, we said, is necessarily the process of desire.
05:22Does not matter the object you are going to. You are going there because you seek an inner
05:31experience of fulfilment. That's the fundamental desire.
05:35So, first of all, language is at fault when we say that a particular object is being desired.
05:40Nobody desires any object. Nobody desires any object. All that we desire is our own
05:47fulfilment through that object. The object is always the medium. But if language were
05:56to clearly enunciate that the object is merely a medium, then we will have to turn inwards.
06:05Because if the object is merely a medium, we would have to acknowledge that the real thing
06:10that we want is within. Through that medium, through that object, we desire inner fulfilment.
06:16So, that inner fulfilment word, that phrase will have to become significant and somehow we have
06:23not wanted that. We do not want it to be known that we do not desire any object. We just demand
06:31inner fulfilment. We do not want that to be known. We do not tell that to our kids.
06:37We talk of objects as important. They are not. They are just not. We want something from them.
06:46So, when you observe the process of desire, you find yourself having gotten close to a lot of
06:53objects, having laid your hands on a lot of objects, having possessed a lot of objects
07:00and yet the inner fulfilment has not happened. When you see that, that's when
07:08you are liberated from the usual process of desire. You see that it is ineffective.
07:17You drop it not because it is evil or unholy or whatever. You drop it just because it is
07:23ineffective. It does not work. What's wrong with running after an object?
07:33The simple answer is, it's an inefficient investment of my resources. That's what is wrong.
07:40Nothing religious or spiritual or moral about it. Simple economics. Running after something
07:49is a very inefficient investment of my life, energy, time, resources. That's what you see
07:55spirituality is. Life economics. We talk of material economics. In the name of economics,
08:02all that we study is material stuff. Spirituality is life economics.
08:08You don't just have stuff in your wallet. You have stuff in your heartbeat.
08:14There is stuff in your wallet that is numbered and finite. Equally, the number of heartbeats
08:21that you have are very finite. So, spirituality is life economics. What to do with these limited
08:30number of heartbeats that you have? What to put your life into? If you put your life into desire,
08:36that's an inefficient investment. It does not give you what you want from it. The ROI is very bad.
08:42So, you observe that and that observance itself is liberation.
09:02I guess it feels that the process, it feels like an incremental thing that
09:10you find yourself running after objects less and less. Because at least for these few weeks,
09:18the Gita has been very, like, reading it has been very, I don't know if fulfilling is a good word
09:26here, but you get what I mean. And then also for some reason, what I have read in the Gita has also
09:35led me back to Nisargadatta. I started from him, this whole thing. And I actually wanted to ask
09:43this, something about him, because sometimes it feels like that, well, you know his style, he's
09:54not very compromising and he doesn't really come down to the particulars. And then when I read him,
10:00I always feel like, no, I'm so happy reading all this. And then I come to Acharyaji and Acharyaji
10:08will spoil my fun. But for some reason, when I read him, it's just somehow, it feels like that's
10:17where my love really is. That's kind of like absolute drive and love for transcendence.
10:25It feels so stupid to say that because, well, not even stupid, it's just honest.
10:33But for some reason, it feels like I'm not allowing myself to really love it.
10:42Without that, he will not help. He's not going to go out of his way to help you.
10:55He's second brief in factors
11:03and he's direct to the point of being curt.
11:07He's not going to cater to your weaknesses. He just says what he has to in one sentence. In
11:13five sentences, he is not going to answer you for an hour or something.
11:21And he was notorious for kicking people out of his little place, especially westerners.
11:34Because they would not understand his ways. Not too many people came to him anyway.
11:41But of the few that came to him, there were very few who were able to
11:46were able to
11:51get some benefit from him. Because you need to be very
12:03surrendered, very open and very, very ready to benefit from him.
12:09And he had no desire to be famous as a guru. He did not want to start an institution.
12:30The very upliftment of humanity or such things were not his stated goals.
12:39He remained anonymous for most of his life.
12:45Before someone from Europe came and translated his...
12:55It's not even about translation. First of all, I'm forgetting the name of the gentleman.
13:01First of all, he recorded...
13:03Maurice Friedman. First of all, he recorded what he had to say and then he
13:09put it in one of the European languages, I suppose Dutch.
13:15I think that was English right from the beginning. Right from the beginning? Was it English?
13:20I think it was. And then from there, he gained some popularity.
13:27That was quite at the fag end of his life. You know, such people, they live contended within themselves.
13:39And what obviously they offer you is pure wisdom, very precious jewels.
13:50But because they want nothing from you at all, therefore they will not try at all to please you.
14:01The responsibility is all yours to strive and learn from them.
14:09But if you can indeed learn from him, it's a blessing.
14:14There are places where he'll strike your insides like a thunderbolt.
14:21So, it's beautiful to be with him and if you are with him, please continue to be.
14:29At times, he will appear very unintelligible. So, do not feel bored or repulsed
14:39and drop him then. Show some patience and continue to be with him.
14:50There's actually one thing going back to the running after objects for fulfillment.
14:59The way Nisargadatta has stated it in some places is that he says that consciousness itself
15:06is the first trap, that you will never find fulfillment in consciousness. And this has been
15:14an immense help to me because sometimes it feels like that without putting it that directly,
15:23you leave yourself some kind of space to still try something, even in a very subtle way.
15:30But if you just realize that all this appearance has never given fulfillment to anyone,
15:36that it's prior to it, at least that's how he puts it, that somehow makes it very
15:41straightforward.
15:46It is very straightforward. You don't even need to take a long winding explanation. Consciousness
15:51is simply you and the world, the basic game of duality, you and the world. So,
15:56consciousness will not fulfill you. All that it means is that the objects will not fulfill you.
16:03That's something that you have known since many many years.
16:07But it's good when it comes to you in another world. So, objects cannot fulfill you,
16:12fine. The world cannot fulfill you, fine. The world is your projection, fine. When that is
16:17stated sometimes in another world, consciousness cannot fulfill you. That appears quite exotic
16:24and if that helps, wonderful.
16:27Earlier, I think I was afraid to come to you because I wanted to hide myself.
16:35And now it feels like I'm afraid to come to you because you're just so magnetic somehow.
16:46It feels like that if I come too close, then I can't stop coming close, you know.
16:53Yes, poetry is good as long as it serves truth. Otherwise, poetic expressions
17:05can be counterproductive. All this is just imagery and a lot of image making, no?
17:15A lot of euphemisms. If I come close, I can't stop coming close.
17:22No, but isn't that what you said that ultimately it's love that kills the ego?
17:29Isn't this about that or something?
17:31So, what's there ultimately is for the ultimate, right? It's not for the
17:38one who is far from the ultimate. Ultimately, when the ego will be killed by love, that ultimate
17:47kind of love for the ultimate kind of ego would be something very tempting, very inviting, very
17:58kind of ego would be something very tempting, very inviting, very sweet, very acceptable.
18:07But right now, that ultimate kind of expression is being heard by a not so ultimate kind of ego
18:16and this ego will misuse that ultimate expression.
18:20Ultimately, a lot of things are there. Ultimately, nothing is there. Ultimately,
18:31when the ultimate is not there. So, why talk of what's going to ultimately happen?
18:38Leave all that. Just do what is to be done today.
18:50I don't know. I've never thought of the ultimate or anything.
18:57I could have said it sounds like apostasy but it just doesn't sound sensible.
19:16There is enough of the day to take care of. How do I think of the timeless?
19:24And the timeless will not admit me if first of all I have not cleaned my vessels
19:30and dried my clothes and done my bidding.
19:37He says you are admitted to the party only first of all when you have finished your daily work.
19:42You are admitted to the party only first of all when you have finished your daily chores.
19:50Who am I to talk of that when I am found wanting in this?
20:00I try to keep myself busy with this. I don't try. Life is such that it pounces
20:07at you from all sides and keeps you occupied and giving the right response to daily life situations.
20:16That's all that there is to life and that is sufficient. You don't have to think of the ultimate.
20:31You could put it in your poetic way. The ultimate is immediate.
20:37Or the immediate is the ultimate. Full stop.
20:50Maybe that's a that's a good good statement.
20:56Right, thanks a lot.
21:00Welcome.