Secrets of the body || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2020)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 25.07.2020, Shastra Kaumudi, Greater Noida, U.P.  Context:  What is the importance of knowledge? Does Understanding come from knowledge? Is faith more important than knowledge? What is knowledge? What is devotion? Which path is better: Knowledge or devotion?  Music Credits: Milind Date ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 This body is made of finite, mortal, earthly elements.

00:20 What happens to this body and where this body comes from is no secret at all.

00:27 This body comes from other bodies and all the bodies arise from the soil just as all

00:39 parts arise from the soil and who does not know what fate each of these parts meet.

00:50 The soil carries no specific form.

00:58 When it takes the form of a pot, then it assumes a particular name and individuality.

01:10 But that name and individuality are just playthings for a little while.

01:19 Sooner than later, the pot again meets the same earth and the pot and the earth become

01:29 indistinguishable.

01:35 This is the peaceful, silent realisation.

01:45 Remember the futility of this body.

01:51 Remember how misplaced is your belief in anything valuable that can emerge from body identification.

02:13 Please understand, what is it that we say?

02:18 I, who am the body, will achieve this.

02:24 I as the body will reach there.

02:29 I, who am the body, will amass wealth.

02:40 Whatsoever we want to do, we want to do as the body.

02:47 Whereas the body is just earth, waiting to meet the earth.

02:54 It is not even waiting to meet the earth.

02:56 It is already just earth, soil.

03:00 Time as an intermediary, time as an illusion has deceived us.

03:06 We think we walk on the earth.

03:09 No.

03:10 There is just the earth.

03:15 There is just the earth.

03:16 It is not as if you are walking on the earth.

03:19 It is not as if you have stepped on the soil.

03:23 There is just the soil.

03:24 Soil on soil.

03:25 You remember Baba Bulleh Shah?

03:31 There is just soil on soil.

03:33 The soil is waiting for us.

03:45 And that is the reason why I say, you see, that the Upanishads are the source of all

03:52 spirituality irrespective of place, time or a particular branch of religion.

04:06 Upanishads are the very core of religion.

04:11 Religion without any name.

04:12 Not any particular religion.

04:16 Upanishads are the heart of religiousness itself.

04:21 Now from this heart a lot of streams can emerge and those streams will have names.

04:29 Irrespective of what the name of the religious stream is, at its heart sit the Upanishads.

04:41 Irrespective of where that stream was flowing.

04:47 That stream could have been that of the Ganga in the alluvial plains of India.

05:02 That stream could have been the Yellow River in China.

05:08 That stream could have been the Danube or that stream could even have been a desert

05:22 river in the sands of Arabia.

05:30 At its heart lie the Upanishads.

05:34 However if one has not studied the Upanishads, it will be very difficult to understand religion

05:42 at all.

05:43 Any religion.

05:46 Equally, if one resonates with the Upanishads, one will be able to appreciate all religions,

06:01 any and every religion.

06:05 Because all the streams, all the religious streams, whenever they flew and wherever they

06:11 came from, they all have the same heart.

06:18 The outer characteristics are different.

06:21 The heart is the same.

06:25 You know.

06:27 Your hand definitely looks very different from your leg and your eyes surely do not

06:36 look the same as your ears.

06:39 Yet they are powered by the same heart.

06:42 Are they not?

06:45 Same is the case with all religious extensions.

06:51 That which we call as religions are not really religions.

06:57 They are religious streams.

07:00 They could be called as extensions of the one unified body of religion itself.

07:08 So religion is a body.

07:11 One particular religion you can call as its arm, one you can call as its nose.

07:15 It depends on your mood.

07:21 Whatsoever is the stream, the power is coming from the Upanishads or you could say that

07:29 the power is most neatly expressed in the Upanishads.

07:36 Therefore, the Upanishads are a must if you are a genuine seeker of the truth.

07:52 So that's what the body is all about.

07:59 In all our life, we have been just glorifying the body itself.

08:06 I am your friend.

08:10 The moment I say that, what has actually been put on a pedestal?

08:16 The body.

08:17 I am a body.

08:18 You are a body.

08:19 Friendship is a side affair.

08:23 The central thing is that I have considered you and me as a body.

08:29 I am your wife or I am your husband.

08:32 What's the foremost and central assertion here?

08:36 You are a body.

08:37 I am a body.

08:38 Whatever we have done, we have just done as bodies.

08:43 Even to God, when we have prayed, we have prayed as bodies.

08:50 Oh my God, I have just come to your temple or to your church or to your mosque.

08:57 You have come to a mosque.

08:59 The truth doesn't move.

09:02 What has come to some place?

09:06 Obviously the limited body.

09:08 The 70 kilograms that you call as yourself.

09:10 This is me.

09:12 The 70 kg is me and I have come to the temple.

09:17 This body is not you and yet whatever you have done, you have done as the body.

09:26 If you can just take away this much.

09:28 Remember, remember, remember.

09:30 The Upanishads are not saying forget your past and enjoy the present.

09:35 The Upanishads are emphasizing again and again.

09:40 Don't forget, don't ever forget what you have been doing all your life.

09:43 All your life you have been making the central mistake and the central mistake is to think

09:49 that life belongs to the body.

09:52 The central mistake is to think that the body lives.

10:00 Tell me, tell me, tell me.

10:06 I mean, he is your friend, right?

10:11 Had he had no consciousness, how valuable would he be to you?

10:17 Why?

10:19 The body is the same.

10:26 You are attracted to a woman, let's say.

10:32 If her consciousness distorts, how valuable does she remain to you?

10:36 I mean, I am not even talking of an absence of consciousness.

10:40 I am talking of just distorted consciousness.

10:42 Does she remain valuable to you?

10:45 And yet we behave as if the body is the real thing.

10:50 Had the body been the real thing, then you would have continued to preserve the body

10:57 even after death.

10:59 And today you have scientific medical means to preserve the body for a really long time.

11:05 I mean, those means were there even in the days of the mummies.

11:14 And today those means are far more advanced.

11:17 You can preserve the body.

11:18 Would you do that?

11:23 Your best friend passes away.

11:25 Would you preserve the body?

11:28 Why not?

11:29 Your friend is the body.

11:30 You are the body.

11:31 The friend is the body.

11:32 And the body can be preserved.

11:33 Why don't you preserve the body?

11:36 But that appears so stupid.

11:38 If that appears so stupid, then kratosmar kratamsmar.

11:41 Remember this is what you have done to your friend all his life, all your life.

11:45 You have looked at him just as the body.

11:48 Have you bothered to really know his real name?

11:54 His real name is consciousness.

11:58 His real name is the little self, the ego.

12:03 I call it the atripta chetana.

12:05 That's what our one shared common name is, the real name.

12:09 We all are unfulfilled consciousness.

12:16 Are you getting it?

12:21 But is that how we look at each other?

12:23 No.

12:24 We look at each other as bodies.

12:26 And that is even more tempting if the other body is alluring, belongs to the other gender

12:33 or is alluring in some other way.

12:35 The body is of let's say your little kid.

12:39 Then it becomes even more difficult to look at your kid as actually consciousness in motion.

12:48 You care for his body.

12:50 Do you care so much for his consciousness?

12:54 Really not.

12:57 The kid comes to you, the kid is hungry and that will disturb you.

13:04 Right?

13:06 But what if the kid is really hungry from within?

13:08 Do you even detect that?

13:11 The kid returns from the playground.

13:14 It's evening time.

13:16 There's a scratch on his leg.

13:21 And you will be alerted.

13:22 Oh, what is it?

13:24 Where did you get it from?

13:26 Let me clean the wound.

13:28 Let me put some aid on it.

13:32 What if there is a mark on his consciousness, on his mind?

13:37 Are you worried even a little bit?

13:42 There's a little scratch on the body and an alarm is raised.

13:53 And so much on the mind.

13:58 Nobody bothers.

14:01 That's what must be remembered.

14:03 That's what we have done throughout and that's what we are not to do any further.

14:08 Getting it?

14:13 The past is a great resource.

14:15 It is not to be wasted away or thrown away or forgotten.

14:24 If you do not really decode your past, you are bound to repeat your past.

14:35 Are you getting it?

14:43 If you have not been able to unravel your past, then you will simply relive your past.

15:01 So forget all the propaganda coming from the neo-spiritual circles that say that past is

15:16 something to be just kept aside and you have to move on and life is in the present.

15:21 So what will you do with the past?

15:25 No.

15:29 Go back.

15:30 Return to the past again and again.

15:33 Why must you return to the past again and again?

15:36 Because your fundamental tendencies have not changed.

15:39 So when you are returning to the past, you are actually looking at yourself as you are

15:44 right now.

15:45 Are you getting it?

15:49 You cannot look at yourself as you are right now because in this moment there is no space,

15:54 no allowance for that.

15:59 So how will you know who you are?

16:01 You are someone who hasn't really changed.

16:03 Very few people really manage to transcend their old self.

16:08 So who are you?

16:10 You are much the same as you were two years back.

16:14 So how do you know yourself?

16:17 Just look at what you did two years back.

16:18 That's exactly what is happening in your life right now.

16:23 Worse still, that is also what is waiting to happen tomorrow.

16:30 Unless you attend to the past, learn clearly from it, your past will just rename itself

16:40 as your future.

16:44 Actually there is no future.

16:47 It's just the past returning to you in another name and that's the punishment you get for

16:56 not learning from the past, for not remembering the past.

17:02 Therefore the Upanishad is saying, "Om Krato Smar Krato Smar Krato Smar Krato Smar" and

17:08 do that again and again.

17:10 See how the cycle is operating within you.

17:13 See how you are much the same as you were at the age of five.

17:18 See how only the external stuff has changed.

17:21 See how the inner tendencies have just not evolved or sublimated.

17:27 Are you getting it?

17:31 [Music]

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