Video Information: Shabdyog session, 22.08.2018, Advait Bodhsthal, Noida, India
Context:
What is consciousness?
Is consciousness just physical?
Why is man more terrified of psychological death than physical death?
How does mysticism fool us?
Why is the Lord so inaccessible when he is always so close?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .
#acharyaprashant #consciousness #psychological
Context:
What is consciousness?
Is consciousness just physical?
Why is man more terrified of psychological death than physical death?
How does mysticism fool us?
Why is the Lord so inaccessible when he is always so close?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .
#acharyaprashant #consciousness #psychological
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Show me consciousness devoid of content.
00:19So thought is consciousness.
00:21Show me thought devoid of content.
00:23Tell me that you are thinking about nothing.
00:26When you think, don't you think about an object?
00:31So is there thought without object?
00:35Try thinking objectlessly.
00:41So consciousness is nothing but its own content.
00:47Consciousness is nothing but its own content.
00:59Once I was talking to an audience, so I showed this glass of water.
01:07So I said, you see, these are the contents of your consciousness and they have been poured
01:14into the consciousness from outside.
01:17So a wise girl, she got up and said, so if all the contents can be poured out, would
01:26I have a clean and empty consciousness?
01:28I said, no.
01:29To have a clean and empty consciousness, you have to throw away the glass as well.
01:35You cannot have the glass and not have anything in it.
01:38For when the water goes out, the air rushes in.
01:43You cannot have anything called empty consciousness.
01:48Empty consciousness is no consciousness.
01:55Consciousness does not like a vacuum.
01:59Because consciousness is objective, therefore like the objective world, it abhors vacuums.
02:08Whenever you have a very low pressure area, you know what happens, right?
02:12It tries to suck in anything and everything from everywhere.
02:16And it doesn't differentiate.
02:18Whatsoever can be sucked in, would be sucked in.
02:26If there is a very low pressure zone and you go close to it, you too would be sucked in.
02:36That is consciousness.
02:39Consciousness and its contents are inseparable.
02:46I know some teachers have talked of consciousness without content.
02:51That is a euphemism.
02:54That is a way of addressing zero consciousness or no consciousness.
03:04There is no point talking so much about consciousness because consciousness is conditioned.
03:15Even if you bathe, teach and decorate a slave, he won't become the master.
03:26Why are you so busy talking about the slave?
03:33Why are you so busy attending to and glorifying and investigating about the slave?
03:51If the slave troubles you, the trick lies in going to the master.
03:58And once you are with the master, the slave would fall in line on his own.
04:06And that's where the intellectuals are missing the point.
04:12The psychologists are missing the point.
04:16They too talk of consciousness.
04:21The psychologists, the intellectuals, even the neurologists.
04:26They all talk of consciousness and they are busy looking at nothing but the consciousness.
04:36The slave is behaving erratically, a mean slave who has come to acquire bad manners.
04:47And what are all the intellectuals and psychologists doing?
04:51They are trying to teach the slave a few good manners.
04:58What does the mystic do?
04:59He ignores the slave.
05:02The mystic has nothing to do with the slave.
05:04He goes right to the master.
05:06And once you are with the master, one look of the master is enough to discipline the
05:12slave.
05:14That's the trick that the intellectuals have been missing.
05:20All psychology keeps talking of mind and consciousness.
05:24What they don't talk of is the Lord.
05:27They won't talk of Lord.
05:29They are so afraid.
05:31Truth and mysticism are anathema to them.
05:33They would say, let's limit ourselves to the mind.
05:40So what happens in the mind?
05:42And who would understand that?
05:46If the mind were smart enough to understand itself and its rubbish, why would it stay
05:53engaged in rubbish?
05:57But you don't see this obvious fact.
06:00You want the mind to understand the mind, knowing fully well that that which you want
06:05to understand is stupid and that is why you want to understand it.
06:11Had it been functioning properly, would you have felt a need to investigate what is going
06:15on?
06:17So you want to test a malfunctioning machine using the same malfunctioning machine.
06:30The car is junk.
06:33The engine has collapsed.
06:36And you want to drive the car to the service station in the next city.
06:43You want to get the car repaired using the services of the car itself.
06:50It is so nonsensical.
06:53But then the intellectuals face a very acute dilemma.
07:07They are compulsive avoiders of all mysticism.
07:16It harasses their ego to accept that there is the unknowable and the unknowable is at
07:27the commanding heights.
07:34They would rather self-destruct than devote the self.
07:45You see, man is more terrified of psychological death than physical death.
07:53And the psychological life is the life of the ego and the ego says, I can accept anything
07:59and everything except mysticism.
08:05That is the mark of the stupid man.
08:09To him everything exists except him.
08:19All else is a possibility.
08:22The unknowable one is not a possibility.
08:27He says, I am very open-minded.
08:30I am a liberal.
08:31But he is greatly illiberal because he does not even want to consider the possibility
08:38that that and that alone exists.
08:50In some sense, the open-minded community is the most narrow-minded one.
09:03Their minds are so narrow that nothing broad, nothing immense can gain entry into it.
09:20Only little things find their way into these little minds.
09:39Even in this question, Dori, where is surrender, where is devotion?
09:51These things that you are asking cannot be grasped intellectually.
09:57Why don't you see that the intellect is such an incapacitated organ, a child's little finger
10:19and you want to move the mountains?
10:28You are determined.
10:29You have been exercising the finger regularly.
10:32It's a very muscular finger now.
10:43The Himalayas are shivering.
11:01Next you have asked, do you, Acharyaji, use the concept of consciousness as analogous
11:08to mind?
11:11Yes, broadly.
11:19States of consciousness, happenings in consciousness, are the states of mind and the happenings
11:27in mind, right?
11:37As far as awareness, the foundation of consciousness is awareness.
11:46Pure consciousness, which is zero consciousness, is awareness.
11:55However, that does not mean that to be aware, you have to give up on consciousness, no.
12:11Being aware implies not identifying with consciousness.
12:21So the stupid consciousness is busy with its own little matters.
12:27And where are you?
12:31An arm's length away, that's awareness.
12:38It's always a choice to abide in awareness or to fool around in the domain of consciousness.
12:51And the domain of consciousness, Dori, will keep existing as long as the body is there.
12:58You cannot drain consciousness of its contents.
13:07You cannot just take the vessel and pour out everything it has.
13:21How far back the seat of truth lies?
13:24Awareness and truth are one.
13:29So not very far back.
13:34Just one step behind.
13:37Just one step behind.
13:42You are standing on the edge of the cliff.
13:49Behind you is an abyss.
13:52Just one step behind.
14:00Close your eyes and take a step backwards.
14:09Taking that one step backwards is therefore so impossible to most people.
14:19Because the very dimension changes.
14:23You can take innumerable steps forward and the dimension remains the same.
14:31But behind is an abyss.
14:36That one step will not allow you to remain the one you are.
14:46The earth will change.
14:50The very physics will change.
14:57Your very station will change.
15:01You will change.
15:03That's why that one step is the most difficult thing in the world.
15:13And the saints therefore have gone on wondering that why is the Lord so inaccessible when
15:22He is always so close by.
15:25Now you see why He is so inaccessible?
15:29Where is He?
15:31Just one step behind.
15:34But you are standing on the edge of the cliff.
15:44And your eyes are always looking at the ground, not at the abyss.
15:51However, you are instinctively aware that there is no ground behind you.
16:03So taking that one step backwards is impossibly difficult.
16:11However, you can keep taking a lot of steps forward because nothing changes there.
16:20You are on the terrain and the terrain does not change whether you move left or right
16:33or forward.
16:34But if you move backward, everything changes.