Love and loneliness || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00 Love and loneliness will actually go together.

00:17 You see, love is forever a movement.

00:37 Together with an attraction, a pull.

00:49 We all feel that irresistible urge and it is so quick and spontaneous and comes without

01:12 any specific preparation, planning or warning that we hardly have the time to know about

01:28 its origins or about the possible expanse it may take.

01:44 It just happens.

01:53 You would say that often you know the source of the attraction, often it is not so mystical,

02:10 often it can be resisted.

02:13 Yes, it does happen that way too but then the next wave arrives.

02:29 If you get over one attraction towards anything, anybody, the next round of attraction starts.

02:47 Attractions keep varying but tendency to be attracted remains.

03:01 Are we wrong with this?

03:03 Has this been our experience?

03:06 Today one may be attracted to one thing, tomorrow that thing may lose its shame but that does

03:19 not mean that one would not be attracted.

03:25 When I say attraction, I just mean the tendency of the mind to be drawn towards something,

03:38 that something could be an object, a material object, a thought, a person, a place, an idea,

03:51 money, religion, man, woman, house, property, enlightenment, anything.

04:05 The tendency to be attracted remains.

04:13 The mind wants to reach somewhere.

04:16 The mind very well knows that it is not alright as it is.

04:29 A feeling of being lost remains.

04:35 A feeling of being stranded, even abandoned remains.

04:45 One does not feel quiet at home and if one does, one often discovers that the feeling

05:00 is fleeting.

05:16 So there is that aspect of love in which there is clearly an object that you love and then

05:34 there is the continuity of love, the stream of love in which objects keep coming and going.

05:45 In which persons keep coming and going, thoughts keep coming and going, moods keep coming and

05:52 going but the attraction remains.

05:57 Today you are attracted to the left, tomorrow you may be attracted to the right.

06:07 Left has changed to right but the mind is still attracted and a point may come when

06:21 one is attracted neither to the left nor to the right.

06:25 One feels like going up or down or just keep standing but still an attraction towards something

06:40 has remained.

06:42 Now one is attracted towards just standing still.

06:58 Classically these are the two types of love that knowers and mystics have talked of.

07:11 Love that is with respect to an object and love that is perennial.

07:24 Love that is objectless in the sense that it has space for an infinite number of objects

07:30 to come and go.

07:33 So essentially objects do not matter in that because had objects mattered then the mind

07:41 would have found refuge and finality in some object but the mind stops at no object.

07:54 Objects keep coming and going, the mind still remains restless, the thirst does not get

08:00 quenched.

08:04 This love has been called as love for something beyond objects because the entire stream of

08:15 objects, the entire stream of time fails to fructify this love, to bring it to a final

08:36 contentment.

08:38 Mind keeps moving looking for something unknown but because the mind can never really know

08:48 the unknown so the mind does what it can.

08:55 Looking around for the unknown, it keeps hoping for the unknown in the known.

09:09 One does not know what one has lost, one does not know what one is looking for but still

09:16 there is an urge, which is almost a suffering, a feeling of loneliness, a feeling of deprivation,

09:25 a feeling of homelessness.

09:30 So something has to be done about it.

09:33 The mind does not know what to do so it does what it can do, it wanders.

09:44 And a wandering is not really a solution but when you are desperate for something then

09:57 you do all that is within your powers even if what you do is surely going to prove ineffective.

10:12 I saw a kid, he was walking and one of the fingers in his leg, they hit a stone.

10:42 He stumbled.

10:43 The impact must have been deep.

11:06 He started running and he ran for nothing less than 20-30 meters.

11:18 Limping he started running.

11:20 Now obviously running is no cure for pain.

11:26 We have watched this happen, you get hit and you start moving fast.

11:39 Now that running is no cure for pain but then that is what you can do so you do that.

11:47 Knowing fully well that it won't help the pain, you still run.

11:58 That is what the mind does.

11:59 It knows that running is no cure for the pain it experiences but the mind knows nothing

12:07 except running so it runs.

12:12 And the process of running it sometimes reaches one person, sometimes the other and then something

12:17 else and then something else and then something else.

12:21 Some book, some ideology, some fancy thought, some place, relocation, change of job, another

12:36 person, detachment, the mind runs because there is pain.

12:56 Man is thus born to keep running.

13:07 Man is thus born to love.

13:13 There is nobody who is not a lover.

13:27 Your love may make you run in different directions but that does not make us separate or different

13:44 beings.

13:49 One may seek satisfaction in reading, the other may seek satisfaction in drinking, the

13:57 fourth may seek satisfaction in traveling, the fifth in raising money, the sixth in carnal

14:09 pleasures, the seventh in meditation techniques, the eighth in something else.

14:27 That does not make these eight fundamentally any different from each other.

14:34 We all are just the same.

14:36 We all are lovers.

14:38 To love is to search for the final peace.

14:45 Love is to look for that ultimate full stop and unless that full stop comes, we will not

14:52 stop.

14:53 Obviously, that is the definition of full stop.

14:58 Unless it comes, we will keep limping and we will keep running because it is hurting.

15:08 It is hurting quite bad.

15:21 Man's life is nothing but this movement from place to place, from person to person.

15:35 If you look at the smaller picture, you will feel that one is caring for his family, you

15:44 may feel that one is studying to gain a degree, you may feel that one is a responsible employee,

15:54 you may feel that one is an aspiring sportsman, you may feel that one is a good writer or

16:04 painter or artist or doctor or architect or engineer.

16:14 You may feel that one loves to travel, so one is going from country to country.

16:22 You may feel that one has thirst for knowledge, so he is reading book after book.

16:29 But behind all this, there is just the thirst of mind waiting for its final redemption.

16:47 Unless that final redemption comes, you can keep traveling to all the countries of the

16:54 world, visit all cities and villages large and small, have relationships with all men

17:01 and women and animals and places, cultivate all kinds of fancies that you can, but you

17:09 will not stop.

17:12 No man will be the last, no woman will be the last.

17:17 No ideology will be permanent, no state will last.

17:28 He will remain forever a searcher, an anchorless wanderer.

17:49 Loneliness is love.

17:52 To be lonely implies that you are being pulled.

18:07 To be lonely implies that loneliness hurts and if it hurts, you want to cure it, you

18:15 want to get rid of it.

18:21 This want to get rid of loneliness itself is love.

18:28 However, there is a catch.

18:43 The catch is that when one is lonely, then one may get so intimidated by one's loneliness

18:57 that one may not dare to come close to it.

19:04 That one may not dare to probe deeply into it and go to the roots of it.

19:14 And if one does not go to the roots of his feeling of loneliness, he will feel that loneliness

19:21 is a shallow phenomena which can be treated with superficial ointments.

19:29 So one will say I am feeling lonely, let me call up someone and one will think that a

19:37 little bit of electronic socialization will do the trick.

19:43 Or one may say I keep feeling lonely, let me get married.

19:52 Or one will say let me change cities and move to another place where my community or my

19:57 friends live.

20:02 Or one may just say let me switch on the television or visit the shopping mall.

20:09 This happens when one is afraid.

20:12 This happens when one is not courageous enough to understand his own thoughts and feelings

20:19 and that requires no wizardry.

20:23 It requires plain old-fashioned simple courage.

20:29 Yes, there is something that I am missing, but what is it?

20:35 Am I really missing that TV show?

20:39 Seriously?

20:42 But one behaves as if that TV show was the reason why you were feeling uneasy.

20:52 So one switches on the television.

20:54 One behaves as if a walk around the park or a new dress or a bout of physical intimacy

21:09 will help relieve the situation permanently.

21:16 Feeling a little queasy, alright, let's have some sex.

21:26 That will put you to sleep, but then the same cycle will be repeated the next day.

21:36 This is when loneliness is not understood.

21:42 This is when mind is taken as something to be afraid of.

22:00 Then one tries shortcuts.

22:06 Then one tries being a doctor unto himself and that is quackery.

22:23 Ever seen those guys at some pharmacy who go there and try to prescribe themselves out

22:37 of their ailments?

22:38 They would stand and then ask the retailer, which drugs are in circulation these days?

22:55 And you would say, fine, alright, give me that one as if they are ordering food from

23:03 the menu.

23:13 And often patients are less scared of the disease and more scared of knowing about the

23:22 disease.

23:23 Do you not know people would not get themselves tested in a pathology?

23:35 They would continue to live with their condition, but what they cannot bear is looking at the

23:46 reports from the pathology, reports that declare them to be patients.

23:51 They do not want to be declared abnormal.

23:55 They do not want their numbers to be highlighted in red.

23:59 As long as it is not coming in front of me, as long as it is not coming in front of the

24:05 conscious mind, I can at least pretend that I am alright.

24:08 So let it not be certified in black and white or in red that I am a patient.

24:17 After that it will be not so easy to deceive myself.

24:21 So let that report not arrive.

24:27 This is how scared we are of our own condition.

24:30 This is how scared we are of pathology reports and mirrors.

24:39 A mirror is a report from the pathology.

24:44 You look at yourself.

24:46 Most of us are tremendously scared of mirrors.

24:51 Most of us would not want to risk talking to someone who holds up a mirror to them.

25:01 Most of us would rather look at Photoshop material.

25:08 I understand Photoshop is probably getting little out of date, there are newer applications

25:18 and it is, you know what I mean.

25:33 But if you can go to the roots of your own loneliness, then you will not be duped into

25:38 running after objects.

25:40 Then you will not be tempted to give yourself superficial treatments.

25:54 On the weekend after lunch, you went off to sleep, when you wake up after a few hours,

26:04 it is dark and you feel an inexplicable uneasiness.

26:15 You do not know what has happened when you went to sleep, it was night, now it is dark

26:21 and it is weekend, you are not in your office, you are not surrounded by people and there

26:25 is nothing to do.

26:26 You are not surrounded even by work.

26:30 Have you felt the tremendous scare that these moments pose?

26:42 That is loneliness.

26:45 And if you cannot live with these moments, you pick up your mobile, call up your boyfriend

26:50 and say, can we meet over dinner?

26:55 You have given yourself a cheap solution.

27:01 Do you see this?

27:06 Or you would pick up the mobile phone and start looking at some website.

27:11 Okay, so what is happening in the football league?

27:17 What is happening in the presidential elections?

27:22 Is it really the presidential elections that you care for?

27:26 No, you are just deceiving yourself.

27:36 Or you may start thinking about something.

27:39 Thought is a great way to escape or you will go and make yourself a drink or a cup of tea.

27:53 You will give yourself something to do.

27:59 Or if you are spiritually oriented, you will go and pick up some religious text, book of

28:07 wisdoms.

28:09 But what we will not do is look squarely at what is happening.

28:18 That we will not do.

28:20 Because that is dangerous.

28:22 Dangerous to our way of living, dangerous to our patterns.

28:36 I asserted loneliness is love.

28:44 But that assertion is of no use unless loneliness is understood.

28:49 Loneliness might be love, but it would remain a love unfulfilled.

28:57 Unless loneliness is understood, unless one has the fearlessness and the faith to go in

29:07 direct contact with the feeling of loneliness.

29:10 Yes, I am feeling lonely.

29:12 Yes, I am feeling lonely and I will not run away from it.

29:18 I may shiver, I may tremble, I may feel a great discomfort.

29:25 Yet it does not pay to escape this.

29:36 So love and loneliness are together.

29:42 But love would reach its climax, its finality, its dissolution only if one understands his

29:53 loneliness.

29:57 Loneliness craves for its dissolution and that is called aloneness.

30:04 Loneliness craves to reach its end and that is called aloneness.

30:18 And in that aloneness, even love does not exist.

30:30 In that aloneness, there is no reaching, no arriving, no achieving and hence nothing to

30:43 get attracted to.

30:50 Even love disappears, it is gone.

30:56 Love requires that at least a minimum separation is there between you and that which you love.

31:07 Love requires the existence of two, even if the two are deeply intimate.

31:16 But two-ness must be there for love.

31:19 In aloneness that two-ness itself is gone.

31:22 Now whom would you love?

31:23 You are one with the beloved.

31:25 Whom to love?

31:28 Only the beloved remains.

31:29 To whom does one offer his love now?

31:51 Please take every single feeling of discomfort, of disquiet as a signal that there is something

32:05 that beckons you and that something is not a thing.

32:11 So you better not try out things.

32:20 There is something that is calling you but that which is calling you is not a thing.

32:25 So do not deceive yourself with one thing or the other.

32:37 Things will not suffice.

32:40 Nothing that the mind can conceive of would suffice.

32:48 Your next great idea would again fall flat.

32:55 Your next big hope would again be dashed.

33:04 You would be disappointed once again.

33:12 So do not place your hope in things.

33:21 Do not place your hope in thoughts.

33:28 Do not place your hope in yourself.

33:35 Whatever you are doing or can possibly do is not only insufficient but actually detrimental

33:48 to your own interests.

33:56 The more you live in the impression of finally reaching something that completes your destiny,

34:12 the more you will keep away from your destiny.

34:19 Your destiny obviously is contentment, is aloneness, is a realization that not only

34:32 have you arrived but actually there had been never any departure.

34:49 Do not castigate loneliness.

35:00 Do not calumnize it.

35:06 Everybody is lonely and that is great news.

35:13 And do not unnecessarily lionize aloneness.

35:19 Loneliness is not a concept, aloneness is not a state, aloneness is a total disappearance.

35:32 What are you praising it for?

35:38 We are lonely beings.

35:39 Let us be reconciled to that.

35:45 Let us accept that.

35:55 There is nobody who is at any given point too far away from crying.

36:05 There is nobody who is too far away from breaking down.

36:17 We have trained our tears to not to be disobedient.

36:24 So they do not make unrequited appearances.

36:34 We are social beings you see.

36:42 We very well know the right place where to discharge any of the bodily fluids including

36:47 tears.

36:55 One should not discharge in the open even from the eyes.

37:18 Look at the face of your neighbor, look at the face of your child or husband or wife.

37:31 And if you have not trained yourself to be totally insensitive, you will know what the

37:38 entire misery of this world is about.

37:55 And that is not something to feel bad about.

38:01 It only shows that we are not totally dead yet.

38:07 It only shows that that which is calling us has not yet given up upon us.

38:16 If that which calls us would give up upon us, you would not feel what you feel.

38:36 You would become accustomed to suffering.

38:42 The very fact that we dislike suffering, that we suffer in suffering is proof that something

38:51 beyond suffering is constantly calling us.

39:02 That is proof that suffering is not our nature and that is proof that one need not get adjusted

39:11 to living a lukewarm life.

39:17 Nothing less than the total, the final, the ultimate beckons us.

39:24 So there is no need to compromise.

39:29 And if you compromise, that would be such a pathetic compromise because it would give

39:34 you nothing.

39:38 You were distraught before the compromise and you remain distraught after the compromise.

39:46 What is the point of this compromise?

39:50 Do not compromise, keep moving and when I say keep moving, I mean keep in touch with

40:01 your loneliness.

40:06 Those who suppress their loneliness become victims of suppression.

40:11 Those who keep in touch with their loneliness come up with great creativity.

40:19 Beautiful songs have risen out of human melancholy.

40:23 People talk of songs written in joy.

40:30 I say that all songs that have any truth in them have actually risen from the honest depth

40:45 of man's suffering.

40:48 One who has not suffered can never write a song.

40:52 One who has not wept can never sing a song.

41:02 All art rises from the artist's inner turmoil.

41:15 If you shelf that turmoil, if you lock it away, there will be no art in your lives.

41:27 There will be nothing fluid and real in your lives.

41:42 And one of the worst culprits in this dimension are the so-called spiritual people.

41:50 They have been told that to suffer is weakness.

41:54 They have been told that suffering is sin.

41:59 So they wear a rotten mask of joyful appearance.

42:09 You go to so many of these so-called spiritual places and you will find people walking around

42:16 with smiles because they have been told that unless you are smiling, you have reached nowhere

42:29 in your spiritual pursuit.

42:34 They have been told that joy is akin to pleasure.

42:43 Poor are they because they have no experience of the joy that lies in the total depths of

42:53 despair.

42:54 They do not know the truth that shines when you are in total darkness.

43:20 They do not know the realization that occurs when you have been beated, embraced, cheated,

43:33 deceived totally and badly.

43:38 They do not know the great fun that lies in tears.

44:02 Do not don those masks.

44:09 Whom are we trying to please with our smiling faces?

44:23 Who are we cheating?

44:29 We are trying to please ourselves.

44:37 Does that help?

44:41 Honestly, directly, simply, without pretense, know where you stand and wherever we stand,

44:54 we stand at a point that is distant from the home.

45:01 We all are lonely.

45:02 We all are loving beings.

45:06 Loneliness is not a blemish.

45:07 Loneliness is not an insult.

45:16 Loneliness and desire are very close.

45:25 To desire is not a humiliation.

45:35 But in many spiritual circles it is.

45:38 So what do you do?

45:42 You turn to hypocrisy.

45:46 With desire still burning in your mind, you say, "Well, you know, I have no desires."

45:59 Or you seek backdoor entries to forbidden places to satisfy your desires.

46:08 It should not be seen that I am still desirous.

46:17 All that matters is whether or not you are being seen.

46:22 Ultimately, all propaganda is for others.

46:32 All the masks are for others.

46:35 Don't be so clever.

46:41 In fooling others, you first of all fool yourself.

46:45 In deceiving others, please see that first of all you deceive yourself.

46:52 You may do something that nobody else is able to see.

46:57 But kindly tell me how would you do something that even you are not able to see?

47:12 You may cut off everybody else from knowing what you do and who you are.

47:24 But there would still be at least one entity that would know what you do and who you are.

47:36 Which entity?

47:37 Yourself.

47:38 So in deceiving others, you will have to inevitably deceive yourself first.

47:48 So don't try that smartness.

47:58 At least to yourself, honestly, simply confess.

48:08 There may be no need to sing about it in the markets.

48:17 There may be no need to wear a banner proclaiming your loneliness.

48:32 Or a car sticker or a hat or a t-shirt or a Facebook status.

48:48 I don't know that they have that option.

48:52 Feeling lonely, they have that option.

48:56 That should have been a default option.

49:09 You are not reduced if you are lonely.

49:11 You are not belittled.

49:13 I repeat, it is not an insult, not an offense to be wanting, to be desirous, to be lonely,

49:25 to be seeking, to be searching.

49:28 It only shows that you are still human.

49:33 That you have not been totally taken over by machines.

49:39 That you are not yet totally programmed.

49:43 Yes, that something of the mystical still lives in your heart.

49:54 You do not need to act macho.

49:56 You do not need to act superhuman.

50:01 We all are little fragile beings and in that lies our glory.

50:10 We are already glorious.

50:13 But by rejecting our littleness, we subject ourselves to ignobility.

50:26 By rejecting ourselves, we act as if something is offensive about our very existence, as

50:39 if to be is crime.

50:51 You may be down in the dumps and there is nothing wrong about it.

50:57 But to pretend that you are flying when you are actually being flayed, that is hypocrisy

51:08 and that would perpetuate your suffering.

51:22 You might be the worst social offender.

51:25 You might have broken laws.

51:28 You might not have kept your vows.

51:32 You might not have completed your degrees.

51:36 You might be economically unproductive.

51:41 You might not be knowledgeable.

51:45 You might not be a star war expert in any field.

51:55 That does not matter.

51:59 Existence has no care for your achievements.

52:04 The sun would still shine upon you.

52:10 The rose would not turn its face away from you.

52:17 The moon would still be available to you.

52:27 Existence is not anthropomorphic.

52:30 It does not believe in man-made ways.

52:41 The society may say that you do not look pretty.

52:45 But if you go and look at your face in a pond, in a pool, in a lake, the lake would not despise

52:55 you.

52:56 The lake would welcome you just as the lake welcomes a beautiful moon.

53:07 So it does not matter where you stand and what people think of you and what is your

53:13 social standing.

53:17 It does not matter even what you think of yourself.

53:30 You are an accepted child of the universe.

53:39 The universe accepts you just as much as it accepts a Buddha.

53:49 It gives them no special favors and it does not discriminate against you.

54:04 Even in your worst hour you may find that a butterfly comes and quietly sits upon your

54:14 shoulder.

54:15 The judge there is pronouncing you guilty of the most heinous offenses.

54:22 And the butterfly is quietly sitting upon your shoulder, not at all bothered by what

54:30 man-made laws are proclaiming you to be.

54:38 Yeah?

54:41 You get this?

54:50 Equally, they might be crowning you the most beautiful woman in the universe, but that

55:03 does not deter the crow from dropping a little bit of blessings on your forehead.

55:14 Maybe that is his way of accepting that you are so beautiful.

55:23 I am repeating this.

55:32 It is a very simple thing.

55:38 Nothing complicated about it.

55:40 There is nothing at all wrong about being whatever you are.

55:46 Tall, short, good, bad, man, woman, qualified, unqualified, red, unread, achiever, non-achiever.

56:03 Everything is just okay.

56:06 It is not even okay.

56:13 It is irrelevant.

56:19 It is irrelevant.

56:20 The universe is indifferent to your qualifications.

56:37 What is not okay is hiding, pretending, rejecting, suppressing.

56:57 That is not okay.

57:15 Loneliness is alright.

57:16 Pretending that you are not lonely is not alright.

57:30 Trying cheap substitutes for the real one is not alright.

57:43 Being in self-deception is not alright.

57:46 It is not okay.

58:15 It is irrelevant.

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