The mind’s biggest trick! || Acharya Prashant (2024)

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?...  📲 Download Acharya Prashant's mobile app: Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de... iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/acharya...   📝 Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...  ➖➖➖➖➖➖  #AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita  Video Information: 13.07.2023, Gita Samagam English, Greater Noida  The mind’s biggest trick || Acharya Prashant (2024)  📋 Video chapters:  0:00 - Intro 1:00 - Experience vs. Experiencer 4:53 - The Role of Choice in Ego 8:01 - Physical vs. Mental Pain 10:26 - Stillness Amidst Pain 12:35 - Levels of Pain and Pleasure 16:01 - Understanding vs. Doing  Description: In this conversation, Acharya Prashant talks with a questioner named Julius about the ego and how it works. The ego is like a part of us that wants to feel permanent and unchanging, even though everything around us is always changing. Acharya Prashant explains that this insistence on being unchanging is not just a trick of the mind; it’s a strong belief that the ego holds onto.  They also discuss pain and pleasure, pointing out that these feelings are not the same for everyone. What feels painful to one person might feel pleasurable to another, depending on their body and mind. Acharya Prashant emphasizes that understanding these feelings is more important than trying to act on them. He encourages people to see that the "I" or the self they identify with is not as solid as they think.  Acharya Prashant wants listeners to realize that his teachings are not just facts to memorize but invitations to explore their true potential. He describes the session as a workshop for personal growth, where participants can learn to recognize their conditioned thoughts and discover the choices they have in life. Ultimately, he highlights the importance of understanding ourselves and being aware of our experiences as a way to find deeper truth and meaning in life.    🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAA...

Transcript

00:00You were explaining the ego as something that takes ownership, that creates its existence

00:12through ownership of action. You were talking it from the angle of action. I was thinking

00:18if we could talk about it from the angle of experiencing itself, because you said earlier

00:26that the experience comes first, and then that creates the experience, so to speak.

00:35And also that the experiencer and the experience arise and fall together. So that's the basic

00:41duality of the mind. But this means that there is no static or permanent experience behind

00:50any of this. It's always just like the mirror image of anything experienced. So why is there

01:00the illusion of a continuity there? Because all of us experience ourselves as static entities.

01:12No, that's not an illusion. That's an insistence. That's a particular stubbornness, not an observation,

01:24not even a deduction. It's an insistence. See, there is something that does not change.

01:37And the very insistence of the ego is to claim that it is that. I am that. And that is called the truth.

01:54That which does not change and therefore in some sense has a continuity. If the ego accepts

02:01that it is changing every moment by virtue of its association with ever-changing Prakriti,

02:09then the ego will have to drop its claim of being that which is unchangeable. Please understand,

02:17the ego is stuck in a difficult position. On one hand, it has to say it is that which

02:23is the truth. And truth alone exists. But for its existence, the ego must cling to Prakriti

02:34because without Prakriti, the ego has no existence. The ego can never say I am.

02:40The ego always says I am P. And P can be P1 till Pn. Anything in Prakriti.

02:49So the ego has to cling to Prakriti to have existence. It must have existence. Why?

02:56Because truth exists. And the ego's insistence is that I am the truth. I am that.

03:05So the ego must first of all prove that I exist. To exist, it clings to Prakriti.

03:14But the second thing about truth is that not only does it exist, it exists unchangeably.

03:24So the ego is in, I said, a difficult spot. On one hand, it has to prove its existence.

03:31On the other hand, it has to prove its existence by sticking to someone that is continuously changing.

03:36So the ego tells itself, stuff is changing, I am not.

03:42Stuff is changing, I am not. My age is changing. I just changed jobs.

03:52Or I just changed my shirt. The point is to prove to itself that there did exist someone

04:01unchanged even while the shirt was being changed.

04:07The fact is, with the change of the shirt, you too have changed.

04:12The ego is lying to itself. But the ego says, I changed shirts, which means the shirts changed, I did not.

04:20You did. Don't lie. And if you could be someone who does not change with the change of shirts,

04:28then you are home.

04:35This is just something very hard to get because I think in a previous session you also,

04:43I think you said that the ego is a choice in some sense. Now you are using the word insistence.

04:50When I say the ego is a choice, that's the teaching.

04:59When I say the ego insists to live a choiceless and dead life, that's the fact.

05:07One thing is how the reality is. The other thing is where I want to take you to.

05:16In most people, there is no choice. But potentially the choice can exist.

05:25So whenever I will teach, I will talk continuously of choices.

05:29Please understand that when I am talking of choices, I am not talking of choices as if they already exist.

05:34By talking of choices, I am invoking choices. I am not talking of pre-existing choices

05:41because for most people there are no choices.

05:43So when I say you have a choice, I am not pointing to a choice that you already have.

05:49When I say you have a choice, I am actually invoking a choice.

05:54It's not as if you already have it.

05:57It's like going to a sleeping man and telling him loudly, you are awake.

06:03Is he really awake?

06:06But when you will loudly tell him that he is awake, he will wake up.

06:12So you are not telling him his current state.

06:16You are trying to bring about a change in his current state.

06:20So choice is not what you have. Choice is what you need to have.

06:33When the great sages tell you, you are the Atman,

06:37do you look at your face and find the Atman there?

06:39When the realized ones tell you, you are the pure self,

06:45are they telling you the facts of your life? No.

06:48They are telling you the potentiality that you have.

06:50Therefore, the lesson is, the teaching must not be taken as just a description of the fact of our life.

07:13This is not a lecture hall. You would have understood by now it is a workshop.

07:17In a lecture hall, you just listen. In a workshop, you actively create something.

07:23This is a workshop.

07:25The choice is being created here.

07:28You are not just here to listen.

07:31You are here to go through active transformation in this moment itself.

07:47But then we still have the word insistence you just used.

07:52That would imply...

07:54That insistence, Julius, is the resistance to the teaching.

08:01The ego must insist that it is the truth already.

08:07Therefore, it must resist the teaching.

08:12Because if you are the truth already,

08:14if you are the truth already, then somebody is just wasting your time telling you all these wonderful sounding things.

08:21You are already the truth. Why do you need to listen to all this?

08:24Yeah, but isn't that the thing that you can never claim it because when the truth is in operation, you are not really there to experience anything.

08:32That too depends on how severe your insistence is.

08:39Because there can be no two truths.

08:41Right?

08:43If you are already the truth, why would you pay heed to an alternate truth?

08:52The first thing, therefore, is to acknowledge.

08:55Well, you know, the insistence has to be dropped.

09:02You need to continue on this, but I think now is not a good time.

09:07But I have one more thing from the verse itself.

09:10If that's okay.

09:12No, that's okay. And it's a good time. No issues.

09:15I mean, we have things to continue from here, but right now I just don't have anything to, I'm not sure what to carry on.

09:24We'll get there.

09:26But from the verse itself, it uses the word that notions of heat and cold, of pain and pleasure are born only of the contact of the senses with their objects.

09:38And I'm not sure if it's a thing with the translation, but I got the impression that the notion of something being painful or pleasurable is in the experience itself.

09:53But is it really so? Because we need to use the conditioning to interpret something as painful or pleasurable. Right?

10:04I mean, how do I say that something is likable or dislikable to me?

10:10It's the thing with the word notion?

10:14Yeah, like the notions of pain and pleasure are born only of the contact of the senses with the objects.

10:23It's a bit with the translation. The word here is,

10:26शीतोष्णसुखदुखदाह

10:30So, the givers of the feeling of hot and cold and sukh, dukh, which is pain, pleasure.

10:39So, all that is coming from just the contact of senses with the prakritic world.

10:49So, notion is not really there in the verse. It's coming from the translation.

10:57Yeah, it's just confusing because I've actually, the last time we spoke, I was saying that I'm reading Nisargadatta.

11:10And right afterwards, I actually went pretty fast to Yuji Krishnamurti.

11:16And there, you know, the thing that has really hit me from there is that it really feels like that these kind of experiences of duality are kind of born out of the demand to avoid pain.

11:39And it feels like that if there's no movement, if there's no demand to feel pleasurable, then it feels like that the mind is not in operation.

11:50Does this make sense? I'm just thinking if this is even pertinent to the verse right now, but it just came to my mind because

12:00it feels like that the verse says that this physical nature is painful or pleasurable as it is.

12:13But is it really? How can we know it as pleasurable or painful without being conditioned to feel something about it?

12:25But that's exactly what the verse is saying.

12:28Then I'm just not understanding.

12:31Okay. Pain and pleasure come at two levels. One is physical, one is mental. Let's look at the physical thing.

12:39I don't know swimming. You put me in water. I don't know swimming. You put me in water. What is that to me? Pain.

12:49Pain. Right? I don't know swimming. You have thrown me into a pond. I'm going to be asphyxiated. Finished.

13:01And you have just taken out a fish from the pond and you throw it back into the water. What is that for the fish?

13:09Pleasure.

13:11So pain and pleasure depend on my prakritic composition that the difference is just bodily.

13:17My lungs are not designed to extract oxygen from water. I can have oxygen only from air.

13:26But if you look at the fish, its body is designed to extract oxygen even from water.

13:33So the fish happily lives there. Difference is just physical.

13:36And the physical difference becomes the difference between pain and pleasure. That's what he is saying.

13:42Now come to the mind.

13:47So I am attached to let's say my nationality.

13:56And someone else is attached to his.

14:00And these two nations are at war.

14:02A and B belong to their respective nations.

14:09And then you receive the news that A's nation is winning.

14:15This is pleasure for A and pain for B.

14:19Because their mental constitution is different.

14:23So that exactly is the point.

14:26That your pain and pleasure are defined by your physical and mental constitution.

14:30There is nothing absolute in them.

14:34They are relative to who you are.

14:38And who you are is again a function of what your experiences have turned you into.

14:43So there is nothing there in for you.

14:47You have been made by your experiences and according to what you have been made,

14:53you decode your experiences as pain or pleasure.

14:56Where are you in all this?

14:58The emphasis is on seeing the non-existence of what you call as the I.

15:08That's all.

15:11But in some sense, if the I is not, then can there be any experience?

15:19Because can there be such a thing as just experience?

15:23Because if we say that there is just experience, then we will ask for whom exactly?

15:30It has to be to the conditioned entity, right?

15:37Yeah, but the conditioned entity need not be you.

15:41But how can I separate myself from it and say that I am nothing?

15:49That's what the entire session was about. Surprising yourself.

15:53Obviously, you throw me into the water and I don't know swimming.

16:06So there will be pain.

16:09But can I look at the pain with a stillness that does not naturally come to a drowning person?

16:21Not sure whether that would save me from drowning.

16:26But it's still of great value.

16:30There would be pain, there would be pleasure.

16:39But I have to see that I am not the experiencer of those things.

16:45Not that the experience would cease.

16:48Just that the experiencer is not who I am.

16:53I get it because I've used this so much as a method almost during these years.

17:02But sometimes it just feels like even something like this is so easy to co-opt.

17:08It just becomes the same structure, you know.

17:11And I guess that's why reading Yuji has been so refreshing because he really denies everything like this.

17:20He just says what actually you said earlier also, that there's nothing you can do.

17:25And it's very good to hear sometimes because you just realize that you're not really doing anything.

17:32But there's something you can do, if it can be called doing at all, which is understanding.

17:40Otherwise, even Yuji is incomprehensible.

17:45Even if he tells you you can do nothing, still you are doing something just to get those words.

17:53That's called understanding.

17:55And that's what all spirituality is about, understanding.

17:59Not doing, understanding.

18:06That clarifies it very well actually.

18:08I felt kind of a friction there sometimes reading him.

18:14Now there's no friction.

18:19I hope that I've had some miracles on my way.

18:26Wonderful.

18:41No part of this recording may be reproduced

18:43without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

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