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 to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information: 06.10.2020, Mulakat Samaroh, Greater Noida, U.P.  Context: ~ How do we get into bondage? ~ How to shun the desires? ~ How does 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

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

00:16Bondage is the exclusive pursuit of Moksha.

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

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

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

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

00:55Yes, it is.

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

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

01:22Bondage has no business, no right asking for liberation.

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

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

01:47Bondage is bondage because ignorance is bondage.

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

02:09for this or that or others.

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

02:22You are not smart enough even to know yourself.

02:27But you know the name of the utmost thing possible.

02:37What's your name, sir?

02:41I do not know.

02:43But I know the name of the greatest one that ever lived.

02:54Are you a fool or do I look like a fool?

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

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

03:14knowledgeable enough to know his name.

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

03:27That's the problem with ego.

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

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

03:43That gives the ego so much pleasure.

03:45It sings of liberation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

04:34Liberation is one thing.

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

04:41is the difference between bondage and liberation.

04:47Are you getting it?

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

05:10Like someone going to a doctor and the doctor says, right, so what is your name?

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

05:29What do they ask for?

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

05:37What's your age?

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

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

05:43What's your weight?

05:44That I know not.

05:47Then the doctor, puzzled, looks at the patient's face and the patient says, why are you ogling

05:53at me?

05:57Simply prescribe ibuprofen?

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

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

06:12That's the situation of the common student.

06:17What's your name?

06:21What's your weight?

06:22What's your age?

06:23I know not.

06:27But I know what is best for me.

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

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

06:46That's how the ego behaves.

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

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

07:14No fancy stories.

07:16See who you are.

07:18What's your name?

07:20What are you made of?

07:21Where do you come from?

07:25Where do you go?

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

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

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

08:03Sometimes such teachers can be forgiven.

08:06They offer good entertainment.

08:09But usually such entertainment is very expensive.

08:16Along with entertainment, you get an extra layer of bondages.

08:20Are you getting it?

08:28Bondage is whatever springs from imagination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

09:12We know that.

09:14So basically, the teacher is saying, whatsoever you can experience is really bondage.

09:31Truth is freedom from experience.

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

09:45more and more novel experiences.

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

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

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

10:41aware you are to that feeling.

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

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

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

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

11:43It is not about how you feel.

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

11:55Feelings could run this way, that way.

11:56They could really run amok.

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

12:11and the spiritually immature one?

12:13No, there is definitely a difference.

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

12:27matter to him.

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

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

12:42There is a difference, certainly.

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

12:51Not this difference.

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

13:02his spiritual evolution.

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

13:21and feelings.

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

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

13:42but still he does not identify with them knowing fully well that evolved or unevolved thoughts

13:50and feelings are just thoughts and feelings.

13:54It does not matter what their quality is, irrespective of their quality, I cease to

14:02associate with them.

14:04Now it's strange.

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

14:20feelings and still he was sticking to them.

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

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

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

14:47And you get this.

14:50Acharyaji, in the last verse that you discussed, you said that the one who is spiritually matured

15:03has certain distance from his evolved feelings.

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

15:14happens on its own?

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

15:18Otherwise feelings won't evolve.

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

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

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

15:36How else would your feelings reach maturity?

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

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

16:02Those thoughts can even aid in liberation.

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

16:16is nothing but a burden.

16:21What do you think?

16:24The liberated one cannot think.

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

16:37center.

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

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

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

17:00are quite emotional.

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

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

17:19Now, you should wonder that if all feeling is conditioned, why are the saints so emotional?

17:32The answer is, it is possible to think and feel and emote from an impersonal center.

17:43You can have tears.

17:47You can cry buckets without crying for yourself.

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

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

18:13further yourself.

18:15Now this really is called free thinking.

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

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

18:30A free thinker is one whose thought is free of himself.

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

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

18:51thinkers, even if they think copiously.

18:59And they do.

19:00They are just thinking, thinking, thinking.

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

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

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

19:17That's free thinking.

19:20Same with feeling.

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

19:37What is meant by high quality thought?

19:42Thought that is free of yourself.

19:46What is meant by low quality thought?

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

19:57And same with feeling.

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