Question: Today, a lot of questions have come on this particular issue that we have been observing our life daily, our relationships, our relationship with work and the world outside, and we see a lot of agitation over there, disputes over there, discontent over there. So, Vishal Bamba is here with us who even recently attended one of the 2-day camps which were conducted last month. He has asked this question that reason or knowledge helps us to see that ugliness but our response towards that still comes from a center of dis-ease, so we start to fight the stupidities outside with our internal stupidities. Is that right? Also, is it possible to fight the battles outside without fighting the internal battles? Will that be of any help?
Acharya Prashant: First of all, the distinction between external and internal is merely a placeholder. It is a distinction useful to an extent but it is not a real distinction. In spirituality, we often talk of the external and the internal or the external vs the internal. The saints have spoken in that language. I too have used that terminology. It is useful to a point. Actually, the external and internal are one. What do you call external? The objects that you see, you call external.
You see a camera, that cupboard, that fan, that piece of furniture, that book and you say these are external things. What do you call internal? Yourself, the inner world, the subject. It is a matter of the first principle that the external and internal are one. The internal projects the external, the external conditions the internal. The object and the subject are two faces of the same coin. So, the external and internal actually don’t fight with each other. They complement each other. They are mirror images of each other which means that that which is going on within you, the internal stuff is very much related to that which you see outside of yourself. It is impossible to be someone and see something else. Being is seeing. So, it’s a closed system. And closed systems cannot just abruptly change from within.
