The Truth cannot be objectified as a thing, place, person, or book. So, don't be too quick to accept your own assessments, judgments, likes, dislikes, and experiences. Whatever you're seeing is seen by "you" — the Ego — and you are no absolute. Everything must be available to enquiry, investigation, and questioning — and questioning cannot happen if you declare that you’ve already come to the Truth. Never believe that the journey has ended or that the ego itself is the Truth.
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Questioner: Namaskar Acharya ji. I am reading a book called “Freedom from the Known,” where the author, Jiddu Krishnamurti, talks about removing authority to be free from the ego. What does he mean by authority? Can we take anything to be the authority and then say, “I’m not going to accept this.” And then, he says that don’t even have the authority of your past self. The confusion I have here is that: more often than not, in our life, we learn from our past experiences.
Acharya Prashant: See, the definition of authority is: anything that proclaims itself to be the Truth in itself, that’s called authority. Author means original; authority means originality. Only the Truth is original — the point from where everything comes. So, when Krishnamurti says, “There is no authority,” he means no object can be taken as the Truth. Whether it’s an inanimate object such as a book or a living object as a Guru — nobody is to be taken as the absolute Truth.
Obviously, the Truth cannot come this way in a form; the Truth cannot be objectified, it cannot stand in front of you as a thing, or place, or person, or a book, or whatever. So don’t be too quick to accept your own assessments and judgments. When you fall for something, don’t you take it to be real? Only the Truth is real.
