Do not stick to sick surroundings || Acharya Prashant (2018)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information:  Shabdyog session, 29.07.2018, Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India   Context:   ~ How to change our surroundings? ~ How to avoid the sickness of the society? ~ What is deep sorrow state of the body? ~ Is mind not interested in doing anything? ~ What if there is no enthusiasm and Passion arising in this body?  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00Dear Acharya Ji Pranam, Ever since I started listening to you, things

00:17started revealing themselves to me.

00:23Mind's race of getting somewhere, achieving something is settled now.

00:28My mind is not curious about spiritual concepts anymore, but what I observe now is a new pattern.

00:40My mind is not interested in doing anything.

00:46I thought it's temporary, but it's going on for over a month now.

00:55What does this mean?

00:56There will be no enthusiasm, no passion arising in this body.

01:03I have peace all the time because the mind is not distracted.

01:09It does not like to cling to past or dream about future.

01:15But this peace has no colors.

01:19It feels blank.

01:24Are these experiences just some dull colors painted by my mind on the canvas of consciousness?

01:35I sense a deep sorrowful state within this body, the mind, there is no joy.

01:48Is this a depression?

01:50I feel like doing nothing.

01:54I do things, but don't know who is doing and why I feel dead inside.

02:00What is this?

02:01And how long can this go?

02:13As long as one is a patient, a sick one, and the hospital is a suitable place, there is

02:39a confluence between the inner state and the outer environment.

02:50One is sick, so one is in a hospital, that is logical, that is the right order of things.

03:07But what would happen to the sick man if he loses his sickness and yet finds himself

03:32in the hospital?

03:41The sick man is no more sick and yet he is leading a lifestyle in which he is confined

03:54to the bed, to a routine that befits only sickness.

04:14He is still fettered in a lifestyle in which there is no challenge, there is only self-protection,

04:36and there is no deep fun.

04:50Such a lifestyle suits the sick man, is rather imperative for the sick man.

05:08You cannot let the sick man go to a football ground, it would not be helpful, it can even

05:23be calamitous.

05:30A cardiac patient playing soccer, the worst can happen, but if the heart is now alright

05:52and strength is returning to the body, to the entire system, to the limbs, to the mind,

05:58and still the fellow is being told not to accept challenges, then it would be a very

06:13dreary situation, it may even be worse than sickness, it is bad enough to be sick, but

06:27worse than that is not to be sick and still be in a hospital.

06:38Can you visualize a healthy man leading his life in a hospital?

06:48I can understand when you say that you feel depressed.

06:58You had a particular state of mind, and around that state of mind, you built a certain lifestyle.

07:07The entire purpose of that lifestyle is to keep protecting you, because a sick man needs

07:12protection.

07:20So what do you offer to the sick man, medicines, drips, shots, lots of medical devices to supervise

07:34on him all the time.

07:41These are visiting him, but they are nurses, lot of other people are also visiting him,

07:49but they are all just coming to offer well wishes, they are not coming in to have any

07:59healthy discussion, they come in and just say, get well soon.

08:08It's an environment built around disease, it's an environment built on the foundation

08:17of sickness, and that's how the entire world lives.

08:22Go to the house of a sick man, and you will find the entire house customized to his sickness.

08:33Don't you find that?

08:34Tell me.

08:40And we are saying sickness is bad enough, but a bigger tragedy sometimes befalls.

08:47The bigger tragedy is called health.

08:52The sick man sometimes miraculously does regain health, but what is he doing?

09:01Even after regaining health, he is continuing to live in the same old house, and that same

09:09old house reeks and stinks of the old sickness.

09:14The man is healthy, and the house is sick.

09:21And why is he continuing to live in the same old house?

09:28The force of inertia, habit of the past.

09:38I have always lived in this kind of a social structure.

09:43I have always lived this kind of a lifestyle.

09:46I've always been surrounded by these same people.

09:52I've always had this kind of a daily routine.

09:56Now how do I change it?

09:58Friend, why are you not realizing that everything has changed within, and you are not allowing

10:06things to change without, outside?

10:10So there is a deep asymmetry.

10:14There is a deep divide and incongruence.

10:22And now you will suffer more than when you were sick.

10:30I'm repeating this.

10:33The suffering of a healthy man stuck in a sick environment is deeper than that of the

10:43sick man in an obviously sick environment.

10:51If you are regaining health, then it is your duty, rather your dharma, towards yourself

11:01to let your surroundings change.

11:06And if they do not seem to be changing by themselves, then you change them forcefully.

11:16Otherwise, you will feel suffocated.

11:25Do you know the angst of the sportsperson who is for a long period not allowed to enter

11:37the field?

11:39He is always warming the bench.

11:46He is an extra player.

11:49Let's say the 12th man in cricket.

11:54Such provisions are there in most sports, are they not?

11:58There is a bunch of guys on the field and there are a few warming the benches.

12:04Now think of the one who is just warming the bench.

12:07He is well equipped to enter the field.

12:14But he's not allowed to enter the field.

12:16Such is your condition, Alok.

12:18You have now become equipped to enter the field like a player, like a warrior.

12:26But you're still carrying on with your old lifestyle.

12:32You are now a butterfly still finding itself in the cocoon.

12:39It was not very painful as long as you were just the little old larva.

12:47The larva and the cocoon go together, there is a symmetry.

12:54The butterfly and the cocoon don't go together.

12:57Ask yourself, why are you not ready to drop the cocoon?

13:02I fully will see what you are saying.

13:11You are now like a man with strong thighs and calves muscles, powerful legs, who is

13:25not allowing himself to get up from the wheelchair.

13:29How will this man feel?

13:33Tell me, how would he feel?

13:39With the scriptures, he is exercising his legs every day.

13:42So the legs are gaining in power every day.

13:53Right nutrition, right massage, all kinds of right things are happening to the legs

14:05and now the legs are itching to hit the road.

14:16Now the legs are yelling, we want to run, we want to run.

14:20But the old habit of wheelchair is not being given up.

14:25So you have now powerful thighs resting on a wheelchair.

14:31How would you feel Alok?

14:35Of course, life would appear done and you would not feel like doing anything.

14:39When you say you don't feel like doing anything, please see that you do not feel like doing

14:46anything that you have been so far doing.

14:50What do you mean by anything?

14:51Have you tried all the things possible in the world?

14:54No.

14:55You were doing a few things till now and now you don't feel interested in those particular

15:04things.

15:08It is not all things that you dislike.

15:11You don't feel interested only in those particular things that you have been doing till now.

15:17And that is obvious, that is natural, that is bound to happen because those things suited

15:23only a sick man and you are not sick anymore.

15:28So how can you feel interested in those same things now?

15:32Those things will have to drop.

15:36The man has grown healthy or rather the child has become a man now.

15:53The inside has changed.

15:56How can the outside not change now?

15:59What is the man still insisting?

16:02He's saying I'll wear the same clothes that the child used to wear.

16:07Obviously, there would be an awkwardness, irritation and you are saying I don't want

16:18to wear clothes.

16:19It is not clothes that you don't want to wear.

16:22It is the old clothes that you don't want to wear and that is okay.

16:25You must drop the old clothes.

16:27You must drop everything that is old about your relationships, about your work, about

16:32your world, about your diet, about your attitude, about your face, about your very personality.

16:41The entire being, I'm saying the whole personality must change now.

16:45The entire personality must reflect your essence.

16:51Let everything change.

17:00If you are not feeling interested in your old set of activities, it is an auspicious

17:04sign.

17:05Drop the old set and only then will there be space for the new and suitable things to

17:14enter your life.

17:17If you keep clinging to the old person and his attitudes and his thoughts and his ways

17:25and means, how would life change?

17:33The beggar was living in a hut and one day a joker came to the beggar.

17:52The joker, in his own stupid and funny ways, started digging inside the beggar's house.

18:05It was just a dilapidated hut.

18:09We can't even call it a house.

18:12But the joker is stupid.

18:14So he starts digging the floor of the beggar's hut.

18:23And what does he come up with?

18:25Gold and gold and gold and diamonds and diamonds and diamonds.

18:34The beggar has been helped to discover that there is gold right where he is.

18:43And now the beggar is rich.

18:47Suddenly he has discovered that he is rich, very rich.

18:53But the old force of habit continues.

18:57The beggar is deeply attached to his old hut and his old clothes and his poor utensils

19:13and his shabby cot.

19:20He has become very accustomed to all those old things.

19:23Now he is a rich man, a billionaire, but the billionaire continues to live in the hut.

19:32How would he feel?

19:39Would you see a great dissonance?

19:45You are not the Alok Bhute of the past.

19:55You are not anymore what you were an year back.

20:01But you visit the same places, you go to the same office, you continue to move around in

20:07the same circles, and all those old things will obviously seem uninteresting to you now.

20:17In fact, had they not seemed uninteresting to you, then I would have questioned you.

20:22I would have said, how is it that you are still finding interest in the old order, in

20:27the old people, in the old things, in the old habits, in the old places?

20:32So it is but obvious that you are not interested in the old.

20:42What is not obvious is why you are still not allowing yourself to enter fearlessly into

20:55the new.

20:58You will need to go and buy new clothes, Alok, that's your prescription.

21:04Go and get yourself new clothes.

21:07If you know what clothes mean, I'm talking about the exterior aspects of life.

21:15Sitting here, I have helped you rediscover your interiors.

21:23Now you go and change the exteriors.

21:29Your entire day must change.

21:33The personality must reflect what you newly and truly are.

21:43Go get some new clothes.

21:45Go buy new shoes.

21:47Go get a new house.

21:49Go transform your relationships.

21:55The same attitudes, the same workplace won't do.

22:03Even if you have to be at the same workplace, something has to drastically change.

22:11Don't be like the pregnant woman who is refusing to give birth even in the 11th month.

22:22How will she feel?

22:24There is something in the interior that is not showing up in the exterior.

22:34And the interior is bulging and bulging.

22:39There is nothing.

22:42The woman may in fact even die.

22:45You are that woman, Alok.

22:48Pregnant with possibility, but not letting that possibility take concrete shape.

22:59It's your time to give birth.

23:03You have to give birth to a new life.

23:10You must eat differently.

23:16You must think differently.

23:25New ways of leisure have to be found.

23:31Your entire worldview has to change.

23:36You have already been born again.

23:41Now why are you continuing with the same body?

23:46Rebirth means a new body.

23:50Please go and get yourself not only new clothes, but in fact a new body.

23:57If you continue to be in the same old body, you will feel suffocated.

24:08That's the responsibility of the seekers of truth.

24:15When truth will come to you, it will come with a new world, a new universe.

24:24You cannot ask for truth and reject the new universe.

24:35You cannot just die and refuse to be reborn.

24:42In India we say that those who die and are not reborn are either the siddhas whose cycle

24:53of birth and death is over now or they are pishachas.

25:07What do you want to be?

25:08A siddha or a preta, a pishacha?

25:13You know who a pishacha is, who dies, but is not prepared to be reborn.

25:21So he keeps roaming about in a very anguished way.

25:32That's how the folklore goes, but it's instructed.

25:42If you are gone, if you are dead, either be fully gone like the Buddha or come back

25:53immediately like an ordinary mortal.

26:03Now that the old has gone, don't refuse rebirth to yourself.

26:21You have asked about energy and enthusiasm.

26:28The energy that the old self used to experience was the energy of fear and fear generates

26:40a lot of energy.

26:42This entire world has a lot of energy.

26:47The energy of this world is a testimony to the potential of fear.

26:53Fear can generate so much energy, people are so afraid and therefore energetic.

27:00You never run as energetically and as fastly as when you are being chased by a hound.

27:13A barking hound behind your back arouses a lot of energy in you, or does it not?

27:23You may even set a new Olympic record.

27:29So energetic do you feel, even with a fractured leg, you may start running.

27:41The energy of this world is the energy of fear or the energy of hope, which are the

27:48same thing.

27:51But there is another quality of energy possible.

27:55Why do you discount that possibility?

27:59That energy is motiveless.

28:03That energy is called free energy, the energy of freedom, not the energy of fear.

28:10And there is a beauty in that energy.

28:19How do you want to run?

28:21Like a child playing about or like a man being chased by a hound?

28:28Please tell me.

28:32What kind of energy do you want?

28:38And there is, I said, beauty and innocence in that energy.

28:44But you have experienced the old kind of energy for a little too long and you are missing

28:53that energy.

28:59That energy won't return.

29:02The old self is gone.

29:05The old self has been extirpated by the truth.

29:16Let the new kind of energy come to you.

29:20And once this comes to you, you will forget everything about the old one.

29:30It's Sunday.

29:33Time to shop.

29:36Go get yourself new clothes, new shoes, a new life.

29:43Nothing short of that will suffice.

29:59God Bless.

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