Questioner: Acharya Ji, in the previous discourse you mentioned that one should always choose That, instead of money, or fame, or other worldly things. But who is the one who makes this choice? Is that the same ‘I’, that same Ego that makes choice? Can it ever make choice against itself? What is that part of us that makes this choice?
(Referring to the trekking at Kedarnath Camp, of which this discourse is a part) When we were trekking, there were many instances when my body tendencies forced me to not go forward. But somehow we choose to go beyond that resistance. What is that part of us that makes these choices?
Acharya Prashant: It is not the part.
Choices made by the parts are always partial. It is your very Core that makes the right choice.
So who makes that choice? The one who believes that he has the power to choose, the one who sees a lot of choices, options, alternatives. The one who says, “I might do this, I might as well do that”, he is the one.
Who is he? The one you live, eat, breathe as, the one you exist as, the one you keep referring to as the ‘I’. This ‘I’ is a creature of thoughts, evaluation, criteria, effort, action, achievement, profit and loss. This ‘I’ is the only one who is addressed in any spiritual discourse.
Whenever a Teacher has addressed a student, it is actually this ‘I’ being addressed; addressed, counseled, tempted, awakened.
As long as you see choices, it is imperative upon you to make the choice that will progressively unburden you of the need to keep making choices.
It is straightforward.
Suffering comes to the sufferer. Out of suffering, choices are made. Suffering too is a choice. Therefore the choice has to be made in the direction of an unknowable choiceless compulsion. Once that happens, you know that your choice is no longer yours. You know that it was not really a choice, it was an inevitability; it was a deep inner compulsion.
And having known that, you cease to suffer.
Suffering requires a choosing ‘I’. There has to be someone to choose to suffer. Once the ‘I’ has given up its right to choose in favor of that unfathomable, inevitable, insurmountable compulsion, then the ‘I’ also becomes free from the need to suffer. To suffer you must be present, right? If you are not there at all, how would you really suffer?
