Duality

In the office you are Mr. Nice; in front of the wife you are Mr. Submissive; then in the bar you will be the most raucous and unmanageable drinker, breaking bottles, throwing tantrums, inviting brawls.

The mind knows that it is suffering in one condition, but it is not intelligent…

Questioner: If positive and negative, good and bad, beauty and ugliness are all a matter of personal perspective, then can universal positivity, universal goodness, or universal beauty exist? If it is the majority that decides, then is the majority the judge of the deeds to be done by one in…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, what is the purpose of life if death comes and the body is born again and again?

Acharya Prashant (AP): When do worries exist?

Q: When you are scared.

Acharya Prashant (AP): There is a difference between a stupid mind, a dull mind, and a wise mind. A stupid mind is very used to it’s being, the stupid mind is very well adjusted to life. It sees no paradox there, it sees no contradictions, it's a very nicely patterned,…

Acharya Prashant: Māyā and Brahm are beginningless for you. ‘For you’ because the question is coming ‘from you’. So, to you, these two are beginningless. Why are these two beginningless? Why can’t their origin be known? Because Māyā does not comprise of an entity called ‘Māyā*’. *…

Questioner: What is the purpose of human life?

Acharya Prashant: See, we ask this question assuming that there is a purpose.

We ask this question assuming just as everything about us is purposeful so life must also be purposeful. Is there any validity to that assumption?

“No woman would have authority over man, no woman would disobey man and her job is to remain Silent.”

~ 1 Timothy 2:12

Acharya Prashant: Every single sutra here contains the essence of Bible, the essence of the word of God. It is just that it is expressed a little

Acharya Prashant (AP): What does it mean to be free from both happiness and sadness?

It means being free from obligations to label happiness as joy.

It means being free from obligations to label sadness as a loss of self-worth.

Acharya Prashant: The word ‘loneliness’ or ‘lonely’ is actually a misnomer. The one who calls himself lonely is actually never ‘lonely’. If lonely means not being with anybody, not having anybody to accompany you, then the one who is lonely is actually never without company. He or she always has…

Acharya Prashant: Can intelligence be wrong sometimes?

Tell me, all of you, “What is right and what is wrong?” How do you know what is right? And how do you know what is wrong? Someone told you what is right and someone told you what is wrong and not only…

Question: Sir, what do you mean when you say that Joy, Love, Peace are of another dimension?

Acharya Prashant: You may run very hard but, despite all your speed and the distance you cover you would still not fly upwards into the sky. Running is a dimension that can take…

Question: A gentleman was saying that a person, who is drinking or is drunk, he still has got some kind of stability on mind, and he too, can judge. That is what I felt to be perhaps wrong. A person who is drunk probably loses his judgement and whatever we…

Questioner: Is there any action that is bad?

Acharya Prashant (AP): No, there is no action at all that is inherently bad.

I repeat this with emphasis:

Questioner: Sir, what should be done when our personal life interferes with our educational life?

Acharya Prashant: These are no different lives. Life is one. There is nothing called an 'educational life'. All life is one. You do not become a different human being when you step out of the…

Question: Why has man labelled things as superior and inferior. Why does this division exist?

Acharya Prashant (AP): This division too can be false, useless or a very relevant division. Usually tasks, activities are divided into superior and inferior based on convention, morality, things that have nothing to do with…

Questioner: Sir, where does the mind get power from?

Acharya Prashant: Power is always in the context of doing something, achieving something, acting upon something.

What does the mind want?

Questioner: What if the ocean, we are thinking of as so immense, is not so immense?

Acharya Prashant: Good question!

The moment the ocean is a thought, it cannot be immense at all.

Questioner: I am seeing Shiva’s statue here, how it is dual? How duality is there?

Acharya Prashant: You close your eyes, this statue would no more be there.

And if there is nothing then even your eyes will not be there.

Questioner (Q): I like being in your Satsangs but what I want to say is, I just find it a big challenge to fly back to everyday life. You know, you’ve got a job, you’ve got to make plans and it’s tough.

Acharya Prashant (AP): If you really like this,…

Question: Has God–the creator, created all this without any purpose? Are we born without any purpose?

Acharya Prashant: When you say God has created the universe, then in our limited sense of using the word creator and creation, we say that just as man creates this (pointing to a nearby…

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.…

Question:

Dear Sir,

Since we talked the last time, I have been pondering on one question: why are you the way you are and why am I the way I am or Jiddu the way he is or Osho?

Questioner:Dear Sir,I have been following Nisargadatta Maharaj. I have read all his dialogues, books, and watched most of his videos. But I feel I have been just sticking his words as knowledge in my mind. What you bring to me is something alive, I ‘see’ and I ‘feel’ whatever…

Speaker: The real meaning of deceptive behaviour or false behaviour is that it is arising not from a pure mind but from a conditioned mind. Now, from a conditioned mind, whatever behaviour arises, even if it is morally sound, it deserves to be called a fake behaviour.

See, spirituality

Acharya Prashant: Not only do we give value to experience, we also give value to learning. And because the valuer is the same, so we put these two at the same level – ‘experience’ and ‘learning’.

We want to value everything; we want to attach some kind of a quantifiable

Speaker: ‘*If you want to love, you have to love a man with all his limitations.*‘ That’s the quote.

‘If you want to love, you have to love a man with all his limitations.’

Speaker: Parts change, the whole remains unchanged.

First of all, this whole, that is being talked of, is not a sum of the parts. Usually, when we refer to a whole, what we mean is, that there are the parts and when they are taken together, we get the whole.…

Question: Sir, for some time now, throughout the day, I see that I really don’t know anything. What is ‘knowing’?

Speaker: Yes, yes. This is it. This is it. This, this sincerity, this try.

पौर्णमास्यां यथा चन्द्र एक एवातिनिर्मलः। तेन तत्सदृशं पश्येद्द्विधादृष्टिर्विपर्ययः।।

There is only one very clear moon on the full moon night. One should perceive That (the Self) like the moon. Seeing duality is perversion.

When you reach the Heart of Life you will find yourself not higher than the felon, and not lower than the Prophet.

~ Khalil Gibran

Drunks fear the police but the police are drunk too.

~ Rumi

Speaker: We are prone to thinking that a ‘thing’ is cancelled or neutralized by its opposite and our

Comfort! Comfort the treacherous, the deadly! Comfort that cheats our senses and makes us slaves to the passing hour!

~ Khalil Gibran – “Lazarus and His Beloved”

*सत्यमेव* जयते नानृतं सत्येन पन्था विततो देवयानः *।* *येनाऽऽक्रमन्त्यृषयो* ह्याप्तकामा यत्र तत् सत्यस्य परमं निधानम् *।।*

The True prevails, not the untrue; by the True the path is laid out, the way of the gods, on which the old sages, satisfied in their desires,

The Questioner is denoted by Q and the Speaker by S.

Q: Hello, Sir. Many things about you are changing.

S: Yes, and a lot is not changing. Try seeing what does not change. Go to the Real thing.

Question: How does one deal with orthodoxy, stupidity and foolishness? How does one deal with orthodox parents and spouses?

The foolish will always hunt the wise. If the wise recede to the forest, the foolish will condemn them for that. If the wise stay and fight, they shall be condemned…

Question : Sir, is truth necessarily cruel and dangerous? Whenever I listen to you, I feel fear of losing something. Why is it so?

Speaker : Who is losing something? If you unnecessarily identify yourself with somebody who has possessions, only then you feel that you are losing something. We…

True words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not true. (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching)

Speaker: Lao Tzu says, “True words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not true.”

Question: Sir, I have observed that if I have someone to blame, then my anger gets energy. Otherwise, it subsides with time. Why does this happen?

Answer: Isn’t it true that even our anger expresses itself only at the relatively weak? Can we dare to be angry at everybody? Calculated…

Question: Sir, what does the name of the group ‘You belong here’ signify?

Speaker: The name ‘You Belong Here’ signifies that our real home cannot be at a disturbed point. ‘xyz’ means others and ‘t’ means past and future.

When the mind is free of the conditioning of others and…

Question: Sir, everybody has been programmed in the same way which we call as ‘conditioning’. And if everything is happening because of this conditioning, if every action is programmed then all our happinesses and difficulties should be same. But it is not the case. Everyone has his/her own problems and…

Question: Sir, is duality in brain?

Speaker: Whenever you say brain, it is ‘my’ brain. My brain means me and the world. It is duality. This is fundamental duality that ‘I’ exist as something different from the world.

Basic characteristics of duality are:

Question: Is Ego the opposite of true self?

Speaker: Whenever something has an opposite, it means the thing is in itself dependent on its opposite. Black has its opposite as?

Question: What are the ways in which we can maintain a balance between the real centre and the false centre?

Speaker: What is the false centre?

Speaker: Breaking the question into two simpler parts, one is- all of us have positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses. How to enhance the strengths and diminish the weaknesses. We will look into this.And second is- I know what is right but when it comes to the moment of happening,…

Listener: What is Reality?

Speaker: What is reality? That which includes- that which appears real and that which appears unreal. Real is directly real; unreal is indirectly real. Everything is real. The real is directly real, the unreal is indirectly real but everything is real. Even when we say it…

Questioner: I have fear and greed, thus a life of duality. How long to live like this? Should I try to force a change?

Speaker: There is no other life and duality is wonderful. Duality is sacred. There is nothing reprehensible about duality. Can there be duality without the non-dual?…

Acharya Prashant: Nancy has asked: “How to get rid of negative thoughts?” She wants to keep all the positive thoughts and just get rid of the negative ones: “Let me please, please, have all the positive ones and throw away all the negative ones.”

Positive and negative are two…

Question : What do you understand by ‘failure’ and ‘success’? What is the relation between them?

Speaker : When do you call something a ‘success’? You call yourself successful when you have a goal, and you reach it. It is this attainment of that goal that you name as ‘success’.…

Speaker: You have assumed that there must be strengths and weaknesses.What if you just are and there are no strengths or no weaknesses?

What are the weaknesses of a Daisy flower? What are the weaknesses of a Rose flower?

Questioning pseudo-science and superstition is the first step toward genuine freedom. Beliefs such as *Vastu, Kundli,* and *Muhurat* should not be accepted merely because they have been followed traditionally. Fear and attachment to privileges often prevent people from questioning authority. A truth-seeker must be willing to challenge age, status, and authority. Human progress has come through curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, and reason—not through blind obedience.