Questioner (Q): Every day, like a lot of my day I do practices like I get up every day at 3:30 and do the full morning of practices and even during the day later in the nature...
Acharya Prashant (AP): Have they helped?
Q: They have helped and yeah I also assess that inner beauty retreats and there's so much love there. It's beautiful but some days I just, there's, like these days come, like there could be the happiest day of my life and then the next day it could be like nothing helps. You know, like you just feel so much sadness.
And I'm so affected also by other people's energies, that like I constantly wanna be there for everyone but it also affects me in some way. And I don't know how do I put, like a protector around myself, so I can be there, honestly be there and I completely listen all time and be of service, as I say but without it affecting me?
AP: Practice, happiness, sadness, energies of people, how do you know that these are meaningful and important things? How do you know, for example, that energies of other people do affect you? How do you know that there is something called 'energy' of a person? How do you know that your practice is indeed suitable for you, or to put it a little bluntly, is any good?
Q: The practice I do?
AP: Yeah.
Q: (Questioner is silent and thinking)
AP: Because you see, we must inquire a little. If the output of this entire mix is sadness, maybe punctuated by happiness but still a lot of sadness then we must ask whether the elements of this mix are actually worthy and useful.
You talked of love. How do you know what is love? And is it too late to erase everything and re-learn?
Q: Re-learn what exactly?
AP: Why is it not possible that there is actually nothing to be sad about but there are assumptions and beliefs that might be causing the sadness? Beliefs about things like energies, practices, love, life, happiness, sadness. I'm not asserting. I am just presenting that as a possibility.
Q: Yes, It’s true. and I know that it’s like mind trick and there's a lot, like there, but some days I can feel so free of all of that. And I just, I can feel this “this light” and "this love" and wanting to share that with everyone and…
AP: How do you know what really is worth sharing with others? What exactly is this ‘light’? Is it something vague, hazy or is there clarity on this thing?
Q: I guess, I'm still figuring that out.
AP So, unless there is lucidity, there remains a lot of confusion. There would be the one odd happy day but after such happy days, the sadness hits even harder. You see, we base our lives on these words; relationship, love, sharing, being, happiness, but do we really have clarity on them?
When one says, “I love him or her or that entire group” what exactly is meant by that? If it is merely a hazy feeling then is it worth it to base one's life on that? And our important life decisions concern these things; our definition of a good life, our definition of freedom, our concept of love.
What exactly are these? Just because these words are common-place, just because everybody is using these words, that does not mean that their meaning, their import is obvious. In fact, just because they are in popular circulation, their meaning has become all the more contaminated.
Maybe one needs to go back to the fundamentals. Fundamentals of one's life. "What am I assuming?" Your assumptions guide your expectations and when expectations are belied then there is hurt and sadness. Expectations based on hazy assumptions are anyway going to be belied. So, there is going to be hurt. And if there is a lot of hurt in life that itself is a proof that the fundamentals of life are shaky. Otherwise, how can there be hurt and sadness and confusion and fear?
We live in a lot of stories, a lot of myths. Those myths need to be understood and thereby cleared off or demolished. Next time when one of those moods strike, just ask yourself what exactly is it? "What exactly is it?" And don't stop keep asking this.
Q2: Acharya Ji, I have almost a similar thinking of this energy thing like she (First questioner) told, I'm affected by other people. Saying it, like other people's energy; if they're angry, they're sad, or just now I'm in your presence and in your presence, I feel my mind is calm and even my body is at its best. Just like after a best sleep I could ever be. And I'm terribly greedy for this energy thing and I even try to avoid eye contact with the sad people or angry people and I want to keep in the presence of the people who have so much energy.
Is there some direct law of this energy thing, like “E=MC^2”, something like that? That I can have this energy.
AP: Beta (Son), energy is the capacity for work. If you look into somebody's eyes and your mood changes, that has nothing to do with energy. That is merely sensual contact, interpreted by your conditioned senses, your conditioned body in a certain way. It has nothing to do with energy.
The word ‘energy’ is purely physical, purely material, purely scientific and should not be used in a psychological, let alone a spiritual sense.
There is nothing called psychic energy. There is nothing called spiritual energy. There is only physical energy.
There were people and tribes in medieval times who would talk of psychic energies and therefore, in the Middle Ages you had people saying that they could move stones just by looking at them. That does not happen. That cannot happen.
Q2: People heal others by touching them.
AP: All the pharma companies are going to go out of business pretty soon (Speaking in a sarcastic way). Your girlfriend touches you and your temperature rises that does not mean she is transferring heat energy to you.
(Listeners giggling on)
That is something else. Spirituality does not preclude science. Spirituality transcends science but never violates it. Please get the distinction very-very clear. It is one thing to transcend science because science does not look at the subject. Science is a study of the objective world, all the objects in the world. That's what science looks at.
Spirituality looks at both; the object and the subject together. So, spirituality transcends science but it never never contradicts or violates science. If you ever come across a spiritual premise that is in violation of science.
Q2: I have enquired everyone, I have ever heard or read, and when I read and heard you, not even a single word contradicted with the words of science. Even you talk about timelessness and I have read in the general theory of relativity that for a photon there is no time. Almost the same the same.
AP: No, not the same. When I am talking of timelessness, I am not talking of photons. Do not try to unnecessarily mix these two. They are different dimensions. It would almost be like asking the taste of green, "How does green taste?" But this has become such a popular fad.
Somebody tries to introduce quantum physics in spirituality. Somebody is trying to talk of something else and the brain and mind are being conflated. There are people researching which particular area of the brain does enlightenment occurs in. They're saying by activating that particular area of the brain we can have mass enlightenment, fine! ‘Buddha Factories’.
(Laughter)
Q3: There is somebody that I know and whenever she touches with her hand my arm, within a minute, it is very obvious my arm turns like it's of iron, very hard, cold and it's very unpleasant. I haven't been pulling my hand because I was wanting to see what's going on. And I have been in that situation more often. And whenever ‘the hand’ is away my arm goes like normal again.
So I used to say this is like something from her hand, like an energy or whatever but now I'm so confused, maybe it's something in me, I don't know.
AP: It's something in you not in her. The proof is if she touches you when you are asleep or in coma or under the influence of anesthesia, would you still experience the same effect? Try it out. Or try a placebo. Let four persons come to you, all disguised, now you do not know which one of them is that particular person whose touch does something to you. Now, you do not know. Now, see whether the touch is still significant. Or lose all your memory. Now you do not remember anything about that person. Now you have totally forgotten that the touch of that person used to do something to you. Now, let him or her touch you. Now see whether the same effect is produced.
The effect is coming not from that person but from your assumptions, conditioning, and readiness. 'Assumptions', 'conditioning', and 'readiness'. You are ready to be influenced and that influenced in a particular way. So, these things happen.
Q: Is the loss of memory, something that would have to happen instantly or a gradual process?
AP: In this respect?
Q: Yes.
AP: Doesn’t matter. It's just that you have to forget the consciousness, the prior consciousness of the event. It is not the event that is causing the effect. It is your conscious assumption that is causing the effect. It is an attribution error. You are attributing the effect to cause one, whereas the effect is due to cause two and that can be established when we eliminate cause one. Cause one is your consciousness, your waking consciousness, it can be eliminated when you are asleep, when you have fainted or when you do not remember.
So, we said any of these three things can be tried out. Easiest is to try out the experiment in your sleep. Sleep and arrange for that person to come to you at an indefinite time and arrange for that person to touch you gently. And then figure out whether anything happened.
Even these healing things, etc. can they function if you do not know that they have happened? Understand this, please. Let's say you are suffering from a pathogen, a virus, and without your knowledge, outside of your consciousness, you are injected a medicine, you are given a shot. You are sleeping and you are injected with medicine. You would still be healed, won't you be? Now you do not know that you have been injected with a medicine but you would still be healed, correct? Because the healing property lies in the medicine, not in your consciousness. Your consciousness knows nothing of the injection, you were sleeping. You were sleeping and you were injected. Your consciousness knows nothing but you'd still be healed.
But all these touch therapies and you know, distance therapies, would they work if you do not know that you are subjected to them? They work only when you are told that they work and that you are now being put through them. So, it is your own thing, here (indicating towards the head). It is a mass superstition.
Q3: Then how come a person that is in coma and has been treated by three four different people and would react differently to the voice and to the presence of that person and we can visualize that in terms of heart rate blood, blood pressure? How can that happen?
AP: Yes, because even in coma the conscious mind is never 100% inactive. In fact, that is the reason why one of the treatments of conditions like memory loss or even amnesia or dementia is that the patient is taken to familiar locations or is made to meet familiar old people. So, that the old things can be re-awakened, reactivated. He has lost on memory but not fully lost. Something is still left and that something is sought to be reawakened. If things had totally been lost then no method will work.
