How Observing Desire Leads to Freedom from Doership? || Acharya Prashant (2023)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...  ➖➖➖➖➖➖  #acharyaprashant  Video Information: 25.03.2023, Gita Samagam, Greater Noida  Context: ~ What is the fundamental desire? ~ What is the process of Liberation? ~ What is Life? ~ What do we desire from an object? ~ What is the process of Liberation from doership? ~ The immediate is the ultimate.   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~

Transcript

00:00Let's first start with the one about doership. I guess we will be going into those more later,

00:12but I want to take up at least a few things from there. So you just said that no karmaphala,

00:20no fruit of any action that the doer does is ever going to fulfill you.

00:25I can't get you, Julius. It's not very clear. Can you repeat?

00:31No fruit of any action that the doer does is ever going to fulfill you. When you give up

00:37your identity as the doer, as the actor, what is left is the truth. So

00:44is this just a matter of like instantly realizing it or is there a process to it?

00:55Am I still not audible? No, you're audible. You're audible. I'm getting you. So these two statements,

01:04it is something to be seen. It is there in the very process of living itself.

01:18So if you are asking, what is the process of liberation from doership?

01:25Then the process of liberation is the process of living. What is it that we usually call as living or life?

01:37Incessant desire. A continuous flow of desire is what one usually calls as life.

01:46One way of calling someone as dead is when the fellow can no more desire.

02:00That's one very central characteristic of a dead person. He is not going to desire anymore

02:09which means that life and desire in the usual sense are inseparable.

02:18If you are alive, you are desiring. So what do you do? You see what happens of the desire

02:25and that's commonsensical. Is that not? One invests himself into a desire,

02:34time, energy, money, everything, emotions, all else that one has.

02:43Does it not behove to know what happened to that investment?

02:49Or do you just invest your resources and forget them? You don't do that, right? You want to know.

02:56You want to keep a record. You want to have a meter, a tracker, a dashboard, something.

03:00You want to know what happened to those investments. That's the process of living

03:04which if observed becomes the process of liberation.

03:10The process of living itself becomes the process of liberation

03:15if you are observing the process of living which is life, which is desire.

03:21Observe your desire and you will be liberated of the desire.

03:25You cannot desire something, Julius, without being fascinated

03:33by an imagination with respect to its results, right? Nobody desires an object ever.

03:42What you desire is the end result. What you desire is the end result, right?

03:50What you desire is the experience that the object will give you.

03:59Actually, would this also be the case with thought and some kind of an idea of what

04:09the spiritual process would be like? That you could have an idea?

04:14All that is anyway happening. There is no thought free of desire.

04:21There is no excursion into spirituality. Sense an image, sense a desire.

04:31Nobody moves into whatever you call as a spiritual field without first having some image,

04:38some idea of what it's going to be like and what one's going to get from that.

04:47So, that's not at all different from the desire that you have when you go to a dentist

04:54or when you go to a shopping mall. Fundamentally, these are the same things.

04:59You go to a guru or a temple or a church and you go to a dentist and you go to

05:09a marketplace. These are not fundamentally different things.

05:15The usual process of life, we said, is necessarily the process of desire.

05:22Does not matter the object you are going to. You are going there because you seek an inner

05:31experience of fulfilment. That's the fundamental desire.

05:35So, first of all, language is at fault when we say that a particular object is being desired.

05:40Nobody desires any object. Nobody desires any object. All that we desire is our own

05:47fulfilment through that object. The object is always the medium. But if language were

05:56to clearly enunciate that the object is merely a medium, then we will have to turn inwards.

06:05Because if the object is merely a medium, we would have to acknowledge that the real thing

06:10that we want is within. Through that medium, through that object, we desire inner fulfilment.

06:16So, that inner fulfilment word, that phrase will have to become significant and somehow we have

06:23not wanted that. We do not want it to be known that we do not desire any object. We just demand

06:31inner fulfilment. We do not want that to be known. We do not tell that to our kids.

06:37We talk of objects as important. They are not. They are just not. We want something from them.

06:46So, when you observe the process of desire, you find yourself having gotten close to a lot of

06:53objects, having laid your hands on a lot of objects, having possessed a lot of objects

07:00and yet the inner fulfilment has not happened. When you see that, that's when

07:08you are liberated from the usual process of desire. You see that it is ineffective.

07:17You drop it not because it is evil or unholy or whatever. You drop it just because it is

07:23ineffective. It does not work. What's wrong with running after an object?

07:33The simple answer is, it's an inefficient investment of my resources. That's what is wrong.

07:40Nothing religious or spiritual or moral about it. Simple economics. Running after something

07:49is a very inefficient investment of my life, energy, time, resources. That's what you see

07:55spirituality is. Life economics. We talk of material economics. In the name of economics,

08:02all that we study is material stuff. Spirituality is life economics.

08:08You don't just have stuff in your wallet. You have stuff in your heartbeat.

08:14There is stuff in your wallet that is numbered and finite. Equally, the number of heartbeats

08:21that you have are very finite. So, spirituality is life economics. What to do with these limited

08:30number of heartbeats that you have? What to put your life into? If you put your life into desire,

08:36that's an inefficient investment. It does not give you what you want from it. The ROI is very bad.

08:42So, you observe that and that observance itself is liberation.

09:02I guess it feels that the process, it feels like an incremental thing that

09:10you find yourself running after objects less and less. Because at least for these few weeks,

09:18the Gita has been very, like, reading it has been very, I don't know if fulfilling is a good word

09:26here, but you get what I mean. And then also for some reason, what I have read in the Gita has also

09:35led me back to Nisargadatta. I started from him, this whole thing. And I actually wanted to ask

09:43this, something about him, because sometimes it feels like that, well, you know his style, he's

09:54not very compromising and he doesn't really come down to the particulars. And then when I read him,

10:00I always feel like, no, I'm so happy reading all this. And then I come to Acharyaji and Acharyaji

10:08will spoil my fun. But for some reason, when I read him, it's just somehow, it feels like that's

10:17where my love really is. That's kind of like absolute drive and love for transcendence.

10:25It feels so stupid to say that because, well, not even stupid, it's just honest.

10:33But for some reason, it feels like I'm not allowing myself to really love it.

10:42Without that, he will not help. He's not going to go out of his way to help you.

10:55He's second brief in factors

11:03and he's direct to the point of being curt.

11:07He's not going to cater to your weaknesses. He just says what he has to in one sentence. In

11:13five sentences, he is not going to answer you for an hour or something.

11:21And he was notorious for kicking people out of his little place, especially westerners.

11:34Because they would not understand his ways. Not too many people came to him anyway.

11:41But of the few that came to him, there were very few who were able to

11:46were able to

11:51get some benefit from him. Because you need to be very

12:03surrendered, very open and very, very ready to benefit from him.

12:09And he had no desire to be famous as a guru. He did not want to start an institution.

12:30The very upliftment of humanity or such things were not his stated goals.

12:39He remained anonymous for most of his life.

12:45Before someone from Europe came and translated his...

12:55It's not even about translation. First of all, I'm forgetting the name of the gentleman.

13:01First of all, he recorded...

13:03Maurice Friedman. First of all, he recorded what he had to say and then he

13:09put it in one of the European languages, I suppose Dutch.

13:15I think that was English right from the beginning. Right from the beginning? Was it English?

13:20I think it was. And then from there, he gained some popularity.

13:27That was quite at the fag end of his life. You know, such people, they live contended within themselves.

13:39And what obviously they offer you is pure wisdom, very precious jewels.

13:50But because they want nothing from you at all, therefore they will not try at all to please you.

14:01The responsibility is all yours to strive and learn from them.

14:09But if you can indeed learn from him, it's a blessing.

14:14There are places where he'll strike your insides like a thunderbolt.

14:21So, it's beautiful to be with him and if you are with him, please continue to be.

14:29At times, he will appear very unintelligible. So, do not feel bored or repulsed

14:39and drop him then. Show some patience and continue to be with him.

14:50There's actually one thing going back to the running after objects for fulfillment.

14:59The way Nisargadatta has stated it in some places is that he says that consciousness itself

15:06is the first trap, that you will never find fulfillment in consciousness. And this has been

15:14an immense help to me because sometimes it feels like that without putting it that directly,

15:23you leave yourself some kind of space to still try something, even in a very subtle way.

15:30But if you just realize that all this appearance has never given fulfillment to anyone,

15:36that it's prior to it, at least that's how he puts it, that somehow makes it very

15:41straightforward.

15:46It is very straightforward. You don't even need to take a long winding explanation. Consciousness

15:51is simply you and the world, the basic game of duality, you and the world. So,

15:56consciousness will not fulfill you. All that it means is that the objects will not fulfill you.

16:03That's something that you have known since many many years.

16:07But it's good when it comes to you in another world. So, objects cannot fulfill you,

16:12fine. The world cannot fulfill you, fine. The world is your projection, fine. When that is

16:17stated sometimes in another world, consciousness cannot fulfill you. That appears quite exotic

16:24and if that helps, wonderful.

16:27Earlier, I think I was afraid to come to you because I wanted to hide myself.

16:35And now it feels like I'm afraid to come to you because you're just so magnetic somehow.

16:46It feels like that if I come too close, then I can't stop coming close, you know.

16:53Yes, poetry is good as long as it serves truth. Otherwise, poetic expressions

17:05can be counterproductive. All this is just imagery and a lot of image making, no?

17:15A lot of euphemisms. If I come close, I can't stop coming close.

17:22No, but isn't that what you said that ultimately it's love that kills the ego?

17:29Isn't this about that or something?

17:31So, what's there ultimately is for the ultimate, right? It's not for the

17:38one who is far from the ultimate. Ultimately, when the ego will be killed by love, that ultimate

17:47kind of love for the ultimate kind of ego would be something very tempting, very inviting, very

17:58kind of ego would be something very tempting, very inviting, very sweet, very acceptable.

18:07But right now, that ultimate kind of expression is being heard by a not so ultimate kind of ego

18:16and this ego will misuse that ultimate expression.

18:20Ultimately, a lot of things are there. Ultimately, nothing is there. Ultimately,

18:31when the ultimate is not there. So, why talk of what's going to ultimately happen?

18:38Leave all that. Just do what is to be done today.

18:50I don't know. I've never thought of the ultimate or anything.

18:57I could have said it sounds like apostasy but it just doesn't sound sensible.

19:16There is enough of the day to take care of. How do I think of the timeless?

19:24And the timeless will not admit me if first of all I have not cleaned my vessels

19:30and dried my clothes and done my bidding.

19:37He says you are admitted to the party only first of all when you have finished your daily work.

19:42You are admitted to the party only first of all when you have finished your daily chores.

19:50Who am I to talk of that when I am found wanting in this?

20:00I try to keep myself busy with this. I don't try. Life is such that it pounces

20:07at you from all sides and keeps you occupied and giving the right response to daily life situations.

20:16That's all that there is to life and that is sufficient. You don't have to think of the ultimate.

20:31You could put it in your poetic way. The ultimate is immediate.

20:37Or the immediate is the ultimate. Full stop.

20:50Maybe that's a that's a good good statement.

20:56Right, thanks a lot.

21:00Welcome.

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