Is Your Mind Controlled by Society? || Acharya Prashant (2023)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? 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: 22.06.2023, GSE, Goa  Context: ~ What is conditioning? ~ What is death? ~ How are people processes?  ~ Why is there no person, only a form of chemicals? ~ Why is the wrong center actually no center? ~ Why does the ego always need someone's company?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~

Transcript

00:00Good evening, sir. So, sir, when we talk about the common consciousness and the way you were

00:10explaining it, is that also just the conditioning?

00:15See, material is conditioning. That which is a product of certain conditions is called

00:24material. Is there anything in Prakriti that is not a product of its conditions? So, what

00:30is conditioning? Conditioning is both a process and an output. Everything is conditioned.

00:41There is nothing that just shows up. Everything is a result of a process. That's called conditioning.

00:52So, when we say that there is no difference between life and death in this way, in Prakriti,

01:04but can we still say that death is end of the reaction?

01:09Change in reaction, but that reaction, but that change is anyway always happening. You

01:14see, an iron piece experiences an attractive force towards a magnet, right? The iron is

01:25at a distance of 1 meter from the magnet, right? And the iron piece is drawn towards

01:34the magnet and now it's at a distance of 0.5 meters from the magnet. What happens to the

01:40attractive pull? It grows stronger. Right. So, something has changed. Changed, nothing

01:49else. That's not death. That's not nothing else. That's just change. In one condition,

01:57you are behaving in one way. Now your condition has changed, so you are behaving in another way.

02:08So, if I were to put it very, very, very summarily, can we just say that we are like animals?

02:20That's a lot of aggrandization. But yes, given that no animal ostensibly has enrolled in

02:36this course, we can say that and get away with that. Once, you know, if you see people

03:01as people, you'll be very angry at them. If you see people as animals, you'd still

03:11have some expectations. But if you can see people as processes, the first thing that

03:18you will lose is anger. The fellow is not a fellow. The fellow is a process. How can

03:32you get angry at a process? The fellow is not a fellow. The fellow is a mass of chemicals.

03:43How can you get angry at hydrogen peroxide? You are calling that fellow by some name.

03:53Give me a name. Some fellow you get usually angry at. Tony. Tony is not a person. Tony

04:06is a per chloride. So, are we all. Ahimsa is to, ahimsa is not about not getting angry

04:21on people. Ahimsa is about seeing the pointlessness of anger. The fact is that the other fellow

04:33cannot help doing what he is doing because he is a process. The iron piece cannot help

04:43doing what he does, what it does. Just as you call animals not as he but as it, start

04:51calling people not as he but as it and then you find that anger becomes untenable. There

05:00is no person. There is just iron and magnet and nitric acid and sand. How do you get angry

05:07at sand? There is no person. But that is possible only if you first of all start seeing that

05:20I am not a person. I remaining a person, I cannot call that one as a process. There is

05:29a process here. There is a process there. What is there to get angry about? He did what

05:35he could. Therefore, I have been insisting continuously that consciousness, real consciousness

05:47is choice. In a process, there is no choice. The fellow in front of you, how much of choice

05:55does he have? If he has no choice, why get angry? And if he has choice, then the mark

06:12of having choice is that you will not choose wrongly and then you will not get a reason

06:19to be angry at him. Had he really had choice, he would have chosen rightly and had he chosen

06:30rightly, you would have found no reason to get mad at him. So, if you claim that he is

06:40choosing wrongly, actually he is not choosing at all. There is nothing called right choice

06:46and wrong choice. There is just called the presence, something called the presence and

06:51something called the absence of choice. Presence of choice is the right choice. Absence of

06:57choice is the wrong choice. When you find somebody making a wrong choice, please know

07:04that the fellow was helpless and choiceless. There was no fellow. There was just a process.

07:13Or there was a wrong choice. No process has the capacity to choose something beyond itself.

07:23You do not exist. How do I get angry at you? You do not exist. How do I get angry at you?

07:31You are a mass. A mass without a centre. Who do I get angry at? One cannot get angry at

07:41an amorphous mass of things. There must be some point to get angry at. You don't have a point.

07:50You don't have a centre. So, what we call as the wrong centre is actually no centre.

08:07There is either a centre or just looseness. There is nothing called the wrong centre really.

08:14This also kind of answers the question that I had. Ego is hell-bent upon identification.

08:30That's what Arjun is doing and that's what Krishna is trying to make him acknowledge and

08:38recognize. What purpose does it serve for ego? Think of someone who is trying to gate crash

08:50into a party. What will he tell the doorkeeper? There is somebody inside I know. So, if you are

09:03to enter a party uninvited, you must continuously assert that you know the people inside. You must

09:13continuously be seen hands-in-hands with someone. Otherwise, the bouncer will throw you out.

09:21Are you getting? Okay. There is a hotel. You don't really have a room there. You don't really have a

09:33room there. Still you want to enter the hotel. What is it that you must continuously keep telling

09:43the hotel staff? I know one of the guests. And the fact is you don't know any of the guests. So,

09:51what do you keep changing? The room number that you quote and the names that you quote. Do the

10:01residents need to make up a story? But does the intruder need to make up a story? Always. The

10:13ego is the intruder. So, the ego always needs somebody's company to roam around. If the ego is

10:21found roaming around the resort campus, solo, all by itself, what will happen? It will be thrown out.

10:31The only way it can survive inside the campus, the resort, the hotel campus is by being seen in

10:37somebody's company. And then, you know, the ego will be respected because it is with someone. The

10:46ego will be allowed to exist because it is with someone. So, that's the only way the ego can

10:51survive. By being with someone. And the ego always says in its own justification that the

11:09residents need me. Therefore, I exist. The fact is even without the intruder, the residents are

11:16completely adequate, at rest, satisfied, balanced, in harmony.

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