Liberation that we want is an extension of bondage || Acharya Prashant, on Niralamba Upanishad(2020)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...  ⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates? Join WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va6Z...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work? Contribute: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/contri...   Want to work with Acharya Prashant? Apply to the Foundation here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/hiring...  ~~~~~   Video Information: 06.10.2020, Mulakat Samaroh, Greater Noida, U.P.  Context: केवलमोक्षापेक्षासंकल्पो बन्धः ।  Bondage is to plan to devote oneself exclusively to moksha. ~ Niralamba Upanishad, Verse - 27  ~ How we get into bondage? ~ How to shun the desires? ~ How the ego get dissolved? ~ How to get rid of 'Maya'? ~ How to know the two poles of duality? ~ What is freedom? ~What is fear?   Music Credits: Milind Date ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00 Bondage is to plan to devote oneself to Moksha.

00:16 Bondage is the exclusive pursuit of Moksha.

00:25 One does not know what to say, where to stand, whether to exist at all.

00:36 The teacher is telling him, "The very pursuit of Moksha is bondage."

00:41 And he says, "What have I come to you for then?

00:47 I have come to you to gain Moksha and you are saying the very pursuit of Moksha is bondage?"

00:54 Yes, it is.

00:59 The Moksha that the ego desires is nothing but an extension of the ego.

01:09 The liberation that bondage craves for is nothing but another dimension of bondage itself.

01:21 Bondage has no business, no right asking for liberation.

01:31 The only honest act permissible to bondage is self-observation.

01:42 Bondage is bondage because it does not know itself.

01:47 Bondage is bondage because ignorance is bondage.

01:55 Bondage does not know itself and someone who does not know himself has no business asking

02:09 for this or that or others.

02:15 If you do not know yourself, how do you know liberation?

02:22 You are not smart enough even to know yourself but you know the name of the utmost thing

02:30 possible.

02:37 What's your name, sir?

02:41 I do not know but I know the name of the greatest one that ever lived.

02:53 Are you a fool or do I look like a fool?

02:59 You do not know your own name but you are telling me that you are sensible enough to

03:06 first of all determine who is the greatest one that ever can be and secondly you are

03:14 knowledgeable enough to know his name.

03:18 Had you really been so smart, would you not have known firstly your own name?

03:27 That's the problem with ego.

03:29 It does not know itself but it thinks it knows liberation.

03:34 Not only does it think that it knows liberation, it can talk about liberation in great detail.

03:43 That gives the ego so much pleasure.

03:45 It sings of liberation.

03:48 It can write entire novels on liberation, many volumes.

03:54 It can create wonderful, colorful documentaries on liberation.

04:00 About liberation it pretends to be a specialist.

04:11 About liberation the ego thinks it is a specialist.

04:16 About itself it is completely naive, knows nothing.

04:23 And that is the reason why the ego's concept of liberation must be brought down.

04:34 Liberation is one thing.

04:36 Ego's concept of liberation is a totally different thing and the difference between

04:41 these two is the difference between bondage and liberation.

04:47 Are you getting it?

04:50 We know ourselves not but we think we know very well what will be best for us.

05:10 Like someone going to a doctor and the doctor says, "Write".

05:22 So what is your name?

05:24 That's usually the first thing that the doctors write on the prescription.

05:29 What do they ask for?

05:33 The fellow says, "My name I know not".

05:37 What's your age?

05:38 That's the second thing that doctors usually ask for.

05:41 The fellow says, "My age I know not".

05:43 What's your weight?

05:44 That I know not.

05:46 Then the doctor, puzzled, looks at the patient's face.

05:52 The patient says, "Why are you ogling at me?

05:57 Simply prescribe ibuprofen.

06:03 I know the medicine that would work on me."

06:09 That's the situation of the common student.

06:17 What's your name?

06:18 What's your weight?

06:19 What's your age?

06:20 I know not.

06:21 But I know what is best for me.

06:34 The patient is telling the doctor, "Here is the medicine that would be best for me.

06:41 Why don't you simply jot it down?"

06:46 That's how the ego behaves.

06:53 That's why the role of the right teacher is to not entertain the ego with fancy stories

07:03 about liberation, but to bring the ego down to earth.

07:14 No fancy stories.

07:16 See who you are.

07:17 What's your name?

07:20 What are you made of?

07:21 Where do you come from?

07:25 Where do you go?

07:35 That's the role of the teacher.

07:39 Even if the teacher is very eager to entertain the ego with all kinds of spiritual gimmicks,

07:51 then the teacher is an entertainer at best and a fraudster at worst.

08:03 Sometimes such teachers can be forgiven.

08:06 They offer good entertainment.

08:08 But usually such entertainment is very expensive.

08:15 Along with entertainment, you get an extra layer of bondages.

08:21 Are you getting it?

08:28 Bondage is whatever springs from imagination.

08:36 If you can imagine it, it is bondage.

08:46 Needless to reiterate, the truth is not an object to be imagined.

08:56 If you can imagine it, you can talk of it.

08:59 If you can imagine it, the imagination itself is an experience.

09:04 So you can experience what you are imagining.

09:08 Imagination can give you some pretty strong experiences.

09:12 We know that.

09:15 Basically the teacher is saying, whatsoever you can experience is really bondage.

09:31 Truth is freedom from experience.

09:36 More accurately, truth is freedom from the urge of the experiencer to gather more and

09:45 more and more novel experiences.

09:53 The more fascinated you are by a particular quality of new or exclusive experiences that

10:08 you have had, the more ignorant you are about the nature of your bondage.

10:18 The more you say that I felt liberated in the company of such and such person, the more

10:41 survile you are to that feeling.

10:57 It is not about feeling in a particular way.

11:04 It is about your association with the very concept of feeling.

11:18 If you feel great and you call it liberation or if you feel liberated and you call it liberation,

11:28 then you know neither liberation nor the nature of feeling itself.

11:43 It is not about how you feel.

11:45 It is about the distance you have from how you feel.

11:54 Feelings could run this way, that way, they could really run amok.

12:02 Does it mean that there is no difference between the feelings of the spiritually evolved one

12:11 and the spiritually immature one?

12:13 No, there is definitely a difference.

12:18 But that does not mean that the spiritually evolved one allows his evolved feelings to

12:27 matter to him.

12:30 The thoughts and feelings of the spiritually evolved one are definitely different from

12:37 the thoughts and feelings of the spiritually immature person.

12:42 There is a difference, certainly.

12:46 But it is not the difference that characterizes a spiritually evolved person, not this difference.

12:53 It is the distance that the evolved person has even from his evolved feelings that characterizes

13:02 his spiritual evolution.

13:12 So the spiritually unevolved person, first of all, has very raw and juvenile thoughts

13:21 and feelings.

13:23 Secondly, he is not able to maintain any separation between himself and his thoughts and feelings.

13:34 On the contrary, the spiritually evolved person has evolved thoughts and feelings, but still

13:43 he does not identify with them, knowing fully well that evolved or unevolved thoughts and

13:50 feelings are just thoughts and feelings.

13:53 It does not matter what their quality is.

13:59 Irrespective of their quality, I cease to associate with them.

14:04 Now it's strange.

14:08 The other fellow had really poor quality of thought, had really excitable and puerile

14:19 feelings and still he was sticking to them.

14:24 And here is the evolved fellow whose thoughts are wonderful to behold, whose feelings carry

14:33 a certain beauty and still he does not want to identify with his thoughts and feelings.

14:41 Wonderful are his thoughts and feelings and still he maintains a separation.

14:47 You get this?

14:54 Acharyaji, in the last verse that you discussed, you said that the one who is spiritually matured

15:03 has attained distance from his evolved feelings.

15:07 So is this distance something which has been deliberately created or practiced or it just

15:13 happens on its own?

15:15 Feelings are evolved only when you have a distance from them.

15:18 Otherwise feelings won't evolve.

15:20 Feelings would remain raw, mature-ish.

15:24 So it's not as if there are great feelings that you want to really hug, but you want

15:29 to practice at the same time the discipline of distancing yourself from the feelings.

15:36 How else would your feelings reach maturity?

15:41 Feelings reach maturity when you dissociate, detach yourself from them.

15:50 Thoughts not burdened by the 'I' are the best thoughts.

16:02 Those thoughts can even aid in liberation.

16:07 But when at the center of all thoughts lies 'I' or the urge to self-defense, then thought

16:16 is nothing but a burden.

16:21 What do you think?

16:24 The liberated one cannot think.

16:27 So you for sure can have thoughts that really do not come from your little, petty, personal

16:37 center.

16:39 It is possible to think without the personal center.

16:44 Similarly, it is possible to feel without the personal center.

16:52 If you read the life stories of the saints, you might get an impression that many of them

17:00 are quite emotional.

17:04 So they indeed were people of great feeling.

17:11 They used to feel much more than the usual person.

17:18 Now, you should wonder that if all feeling is conditioned, why are the saints so emotional?

17:31 The answer is, it is possible to think and feel and emote from an impersonal center.

17:43 You can have tears, you can cry buckets without crying for yourself.

17:55 So there is emotion without the need for self-preservation.

18:01 You can think a lot without the intention to protect yourself or enrich yourself or

18:13 further yourself.

18:15 Now this really is called free thinking.

18:21 A free thinker is not someone who keeps thinking in all directions.

18:25 That's our usual definition of a free thinker.

18:31 Free thinker is one whose thought is free of himself.

18:35 That's the right definition of a free thinker.

18:45 All the people in universities and all the intellectuals, they are not necessarily free

18:51 thinkers.

18:53 Even if they think copiously, and they do, they are just thinking, thinking, thinking,

19:02 it's not about how much you think.

19:07 It's not even about how freely you think.

19:10 It's really about whether your thought is free of yourself.

19:17 That's free thinking.

19:20 Same with feeling.

19:26 And that by the way is also the criteria to assess the quality of thought or feeling.

19:37 What is meant by high quality thought?

19:42 Thought that is free of yourself.

19:46 What is meant by low quality thought?

19:50 Thought that has your interests at its center.

19:57 And same with feeling.

19:59 [Music]

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