Questioner (Q): Sir, how can we define the ‘inner voice’? We obviously talk to ourselves!
Acharya Prashant (AP): There is no need to define ‘the inner voice’. You just have to see that it too is only just a voice. As there are so many voices all around you, this inner voice too is just one of them. Since the day you were born, you have been listening to so many voices. These voices have accumulated over these years. This is how the mind has been formed.
“There are so many voices everywhere, and I call one of them as ‘the inner voice’."
And that inner voice also keeps changing. Does it say the same thing every time? It keeps changing! Have you ever observed in which language it speaks?
Q: It speaks in a language that I understand.
AP: Right. Just as there are voices around us that are making noise, there is a voice from within that is making noise. There is no need to give any value to that voice. It is actually more dangerous as compared to other voices.
The other voices are still outside, but the inner voice is seated within you. It is as if your enemy has taken shelter in your own house. If the noise is coming from outside, we call it ‘noise’, if the noise is coming from within, we call it ‘the divine voice’. We say, “My conscience is speaking.”
Silence! Silence from external voices and silence from this inner voice too.
God has no voice; he doesn’t talk to you through any language. When there is complete and clear silence, then wordlessly, language-lessly, there is a oneness– not even communication, just oneness.
All these stories, that there was a king who was sleeping, and Lord Shiva came in his dream and said, “On that hill-top, you build my temple”, all this is rubbish. All these stories that “God came in my dreams and then gave instructions”, all these must be openly declared to be rubbish.
God doesn’t come in dreams.
God doesn’t talk in any language.
God has no fascination for Sanskrit, or Hebrew, or Arabic.
God is not sitting anywhere.
God is not running anywhere.
God has no reason to create anything.
And God is also not busy with helping or dissolving.
If you can keep all your concepts about God away, then you have a beautiful emptiness. If you want, you can call it God!
But first, keep God away.
(Laughingly) The most godless people that we have are the ones who have too much of God.
They are ‘full’ of God!
