Consciousness is just dead duality. One really alive is crazy beyond consciousness || Acharya Prashant (2015)

Question: Sir, I was having an orientation class with students. And while taking that I had a strong feeling. We say that conditioning has a great role in what I am seeing on their faces. But that strong feeling was that it’s a conscious choice to remain in that state. And that feeling was very strong but I am not sure about it.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, that’s true! If you will observe the mechanism of consciousness, you will see this. You said ‘conscious’ choice. Yes, obviously.

What is consciousness?

Consciousness is the separation between me and you; between the self and the world, alright? For this entire game involving me and the world to continue, for consciousness itself to continue, it is necessary that consciousness believes in its own game.

I create this distinction, this dualistic thing – there is me, there is you, there is this and that. Now, simultaneously, will I come up and say that all this is false, and hence I am a nobody? Will I pronounce my own death? So, what we call as the normal functioning of man, what we call as the human being itself, is destined to start in illusion. The child is born and he is born in a world of duality. From his very beginning, the game is of duality. He opens his eyes, there is a world outside. His body ends somewhere, and he is not beyond that. Beyond that what is there? The world.