Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, as we know that we are not the body, then why there is such a strong association with the body?
Acharya Prashant (AP): If you are not the body, who is called Rishabh (the questioner)? The wall, the Sky, the woods? Who is Rishabh then?
Q: Acharya Ji, that is what I want to ask if it is true or not.
AP: Then you cannot start your statement with, “Though I know, I am not the body…” It’s a false statement. You cannot start off with that. You ‘are’ the body. Why are we born at all?
To be born in itself is such a calamity, not how to say, “I am not the body.” If you are not the body, then who was born? This is like one of the sermons inside the jail. Even there, they have some educational classes, right? This is all like that. We all are anyway inside a prison because we are born.
To be born is to be born inside a prison.
Why were you born? Why are you in jail, first of all? Now you cannot say that you are not the body. Every instinct of yours will cry aloud and say, “I am the body.”
So many people are walking in and out of the room. What are they doing outside? Are they doing something that is not related to the body? What are they doing? Everything that they are doing outside is – bodily.
So, the body goes out to do something bodily. And then comes in and says, “I am not the body.”
(Laughter)
Start honestly from where you are – you are the body – and see what that does to you. Living as the body, thinking as the body, see what that does to you. Perceive the damage. Come face-to-face with it.
And then is a certain detachment from the body.
You cannot just theoretically parrot, “I am not the body.”
“Pass on the cake, please. I am not the body.”
(Laughter)
We are bodies. You are a body listening to me. I am a body sipping this tea. These are the bodies, in congregation.
Those who uttered “ Naham deh-asmi (I am not the body)”, they had reached there, after paying the fullest price. Have you paid that price? If you haven’t, then how are you saying, “*Naham deh-asmi*“? It is not an easy statement to make. Certain things have to be uttered after making the complete payment.
Q2: Acharya Ji, still we are more than the body.
AP: Depends on you, totally. Depends on how you are living.
You obviously can be much much more than the body. ‘Can be’ – potentially. But whether or not you are much much more than the body, depends on your choices: how are you living, how are you deciding, how are you eating, working. Your choices.
Q3: Acharya Ji, why is it important to visit a temple?
AP: It has to be seen in the context of what you otherwise do. The question is not, whether it is important to visit a temple. The question is: If you do not visit the temple, what are you busy doing?
If you are someone who can constantly be in the inner shrine, then you do not need to visit an external Temple. But, you are not that person. If you are not in the Temple, then you are absorbed in some nonsense. Therefore, to wean you away from that nonsense, it is important that there exists a Temple.
Tell me, had you not been here, would you have been as meditative as you have been in the last one hour? Can you visualize the kind of distractions that were possible to come to you, had you not been here?
In general, what do you spend your evenings doing? Are you as still usually, as you are right now? Are you? And that is why this place is important. Not because I am saying something special, but because right now, you are not the corrupted self that you usually are. Nothing special can ever be said, anyway.
My task is, in some sense, to distract you. When distractions become a way of life, then Spirituality is about distracting you, away from distractions.
For most of us, distractions are life. Are they not? We can’t even call them ‘dis-tractions’. They are the ‘track’.
See, if you are on the right track, the right path, and for some reason, for a while, there is some kind of a deviation, then you call it a ‘distraction’. But for us, rubbish is not a rare or temporary deviation. For us, the rubbish is the constant happening. Therefore, ‘this’ (the Satsang) is a distraction.
We are here so that we are not, I am repeating this, what we normally are.
Our ‘normal’ is very dangerous.
