All About Emotions

Questioner 1: Namaskar Acharya Ji! My question is, how should I control my emotions, so that they don’t become too extreme in positive as well as in negative situations. Actually, it happens to me every time that whenever I achieve my goal, I feel so happy. But if I fail, I’ll start cursing myself, I’ll start crying.

So how should I behave in a normal way? How should I behave in a neutral way?

Acharya Prashant: Remember the real goal. Remember the real goal. Whatsoever you have achieved, is too little in front of the real goal, so there’s no need to be too happy. And irrespective of how little you’ve achieved, there is all the potential to achieve the real goal, so there’s no need to be too sad.

You forget the real thing and you start taking small things as big. So, when you get those small things in your palm, you feel as if the entire world is there on your palm, it’s nothing. It’s a globe, not the world, worth very little.

The celebrations are misplaced. Equally, irrespective of whether the little thing is a globe, or a kid’s little plastic ball, the fact is that you’re born to achieve the real goal. That is the purpose of your birth, otherwise you wouldn’t have been born. So, there is no need for any gloom or despondency.

Misplaced celebration is just as bad as depression, no? Misplaced celebration is foolish happiness. And depression, if I may say, it might sound insensitive to some, but I’ll proceed, is just foolish sadness, right? You’re never in too good a position as long as you’re alive. Because you’re alive, so the work is still incomplete. So, you can never be in such a good position, that you think that the work is complete and you start partying and put a full stop to the journey. No!

Equally, irrespective of how bad your condition is, you still have a chance, so you can party. So, what am I saying with respect to partying, I’m saying, “When there’s a lot of temptation to party, remember it’s not the time to party. And when you feel like sulking in your loneliness and weeping on the pillow, that exactly, is the time to party.”

So yes, we’re all allowed to celebrate and party, but not in ignorance. All celebrations must have wisdom at its core. Life is ruthless a lot of times, and when it hits you at just the wrong places and terribly hard, that’s when you must party. And when it’s very obvious that nice and pleasant things are happening, you should know that a trap is being laid out for you. Avoid the party. Avoid the party then.

Questioner 1: Ok. Thank you so much!

Questioner 2: Sir, I’ve a follow up question to this. Why is it not the right thing to be on the extremities of her emotions? If she’s sad, she’ll be sad for a time, and then she’ll be happy at another time. It’s like she’ll, let lose everything, maybe, let lose all her consciousness for some time, why is it not good for a person?

Acharya Prashant: It’s not that it’s not good, it’s just that it’s not your nature. Also, the kind of self-correcting mechanism you’re talking of, does not exist in all people, and at all times. You’re saying, “If someone is feeling sad or down, then let that person plunge into the depths of sadness, and from there she’ll bounce back on her own.” That may happen, that may also not happen. Further, that may take a lot of time to happen. Further, in your misplaced feeling of sadness, you might take certain decisions that are irreversible. At Least you might take decisions, that lead to a loss of lot of time, and that is irreversible.

Equally, when you’re unnecessarily jubilant, you may again make decisions that may cost you dearly, or at least you’ll waste time. So that’s why these extremities are to be avoided, both being false. Anything false is avoidable, no?

Questioner 2: But I feel that being at extremities will allow a person to maybe explore that side, and gain more clarity regarding the situation.

Acharya Prashant: If that person had such a knack for exploration, why would he have landed at the extremity first of all? What makes you land at that extreme? Your unconscious self, right? Because you don’t know yourself, therefore you find yourself in depths of despair or clouds of happiness. That’s because you’re unconscious towards yourself. That’s because you’ve not explored yourself fully or deeply.

Now you’re saying, “Being in those depths, I’ll suddenly become conscious and start exploring.” That may happen, by virtue of grace, more likely that may not happen.

Questioner 2: So, it is more like a safe play to be in between and oscillate?

Acharya Prashant: No, not in between. You have to seek safety at the only place where it exists. It exists only in your consciousness.

The two extremes are extremes of unconscious darkness. They’re not to be avoided because they are extremes, they’re to be avoided because they exist only in your ignorance. Only in your ignorance, can you become very happy or very sad. Ignorance is to be avoided. It’s ignorance that is avoidable.

Extremes, well, if you can be at your joyful best, in your most conscious state, wonderful, why not? Why not? That’s the entire purpose of consciousness, to bring you to one particular extreme. That extremity is very auspicious. So, it’s not as if extremes are to be avoided for the sake of being extreme. Extremes are to be avoided because these extremes, that our friend was referring to, are extremes of ignorance. Ignorance is avoidable,

Questioner 2: Sir, I’ve a doubt. Being conscious about our happiness, and being unconscious about the same, what’s the difference? Is it like, I know the exact reason, yeah! I’m happy for this and it’s right for me, is it like I’m conscious? And if I’m happy, just like that and I don’t know the reason, is that the unconscious state?

Acharya Prashant: Mostly when we’re just happy, we don’t even know where the happiness is coming from. You go to a monkey for example, you show it a banana. Right? The monkey immediately moves towards the banana, stretches its hands, leans towards it, tries to jump. Does the monkey know why is it doing such a thing?

Questioner2: To take the banana.

Acharya Prashant: Does it know what the banana means to it or whatever? Does it even have time or the intention to reflect? This is called compulsive behaviour, and the banana for sure, induced a certain happiness in the monkey. That is the quality of most of our happiness.

We see a banana, we get happy. We do not know what is the quality of this happiness, where is it coming from and what will it do to us? Is it taking us to the place where we need to be? Or is it just an animalistic thing, the old, ancient, pleasure-seeking tendency? That does us no good.

So, when these thoughts arise, when emotions arise, then a human being as opposed to an animal, has to know what is really going on. The animal just gives in, the animal neither reflects, nor pauses. It does not really have any need to reflect or pause, because it has no urge towards liberation in the first place.

But you being a human being, if you behave like animals, then you’ll suffer. The monkey does not suffer for being a monkey, but a human being will suffer deeply for being a monkey, so we have to be knowledgeable.

Self-knowledge is about knowing your inner processes. Where do your tendencies come from? How is one aspect of your behaviour linked to the other thing? What is your relationship with the world? What’s the content of your mind? Where do your insecurities come from? Where do your plans come from? Happiness, sadness and so many other things. What is it going on within?

There is something exclusive to human beings, we must reflect.

Questioner 2: Sir, I’ve this question which I was supposed to ask afterwards, but I think it’ll make more sense now. When we wake up or maybe say, “I’m doing meditation and I’m purifying myself or the image or my mood, and I come afresh.” But after sometime, again I feel impure because of the behaviour of people around me.

My question is, how to focus on ourselves, and not get affected by what others say or do?

Acharya Prashant: If meditation brings that purity in the mind, why don’t you continue your meditation all through the day?

Questioner2: Because we do have to work.

Acharya Prashant: Which means you love something more than purity, so you get what you love. You don’t love purity, you don’t get it, you love something else, you get it.

Questioner 2: No, my point was, when we wake up, we’re totally fresh and I feel that there’s a clean image, but throughout the day, that image gets dirty. From the image I mean, you can say pieces of clothes that get dirty.

Acharya Prashant: So why don’t you then spend your day, your entire day as if you’re still fresh. You know what fresh means? Not tainted, not corrupted. Fresh means something that has just come up from the source. So why don’t you live your entire life that way, in a certain freshness?

No idea?

Questioner 2: No

Acharya Prashant: One requires love for that.

The meditation that most people practice is a very limited thing. Therefore, it can give you that purity that you talked of, only for a limited period. Its effect wanes off very rapidly. But it gives you some relief, so you come back to it every morning. The thing is to remain meditative your entire day. And if you’ve to be meditative your entire day, then that kind of meditation will not help. That kind of meditation can at best initiate you, but it cannot carry you the distance, right?

Questioner2: Sir, it’s still very unclear in my mind.

Acharya Prashant: I didn’t say it can become clear so quickly. I’ve no illusions of that nature. It took me several decades to utter these simple sentences. You’ll take at least a few years of listening.

Please understand this, you’re asking this question because you’re missing something, right? What do you miss? You miss that purity, that freshness, these are the words you used. When we miss something, we say, “We love it,” right? When you love someone and that someone is not present, you say, “Oh, I missed you.”

So, missing something is meaningful only in the context of love. Are you with me till here?

Questioner2: Yes sir.

Acharya Prashant: So let that love deepen. Let that love deepen. That’s why I said, “Continue your meditation throughout,” and then you cannot sit and meditate. Therefore, you have to talk and meditate, walk and meditate, eat and meditate, run and meditate, quarrel and meditate. That’s meditation 24x7.

And that can happen only if you’ve love for that purity. That can happen only when you’re not thinking of methods as meditation. Mostly what we call meditation is just a few methods.

Methods are not meditation, meditation is something internal, and meditation is nothing that you can really practice. Meditation is something that you can only remember.

Meditation is to remember that one thing continuously, that one thing that has no name, no form, no shape. It exists both as a hard core within us and also as a hollow, a void within us. That has to be continuously remembered, only that can keep you fresh. Otherwise, the world will be very quick to taint you. You wake up, and your mind will be full of thoughts.

Thoughts taint us, thoughts of miscellaneous things, thought of this, thought of that. Meditation is to remember that there’s something far more important, far more lovable than this and that. So, these thoughts, even if they are there, they don’t carry great importance, that’s meditation.

Questioner 2: Sir, personally for me, meditation is like being at, I call it ground state for myself, when I’m not feeling myself. As in, I’m not happy, I’m not even sad, I’m just there. Maybe I’m not just there. When I’m not thinking about a lot of things, or maybe I’m not thinking about anything.

But you can say, Ok, I’ve switched on my net, and the moment I turn on my net, there’ll be lots of messages on my phone. So, I avoid that first thing in the morning to keep myself fresh. But the moment I do that, I just feel that the world is putting a lot of weight over me.

Acharya Prashant: So either throw away your phone, permanently disconnect your net.

Questioner2: I do feel like doing that.

Acharya Prashant: No, you feel like doing that, but you’ll never do that. So, if you’ll never do that, then you better figure out a way to coexist with peace, with some of that. I said some of that, because in peace, a lot of that’ll become irrelevant and you’ll not need it. Only that part of the messages or the worldly contacts is going to remain, that is really useful and auspicious.

Not switching on the net is no solution at all, because we are born into the net, life itself is the net. You really have no option to never switch it on. Sooner than later, it will be switched on. Even if you keep it switched off in one way, it’s already switched on in several other ways. So, you’ve to remain meditative in the middle of the net. And that can happen only when the mind is in love, the mind is in a very subtle love.

Remembrance of something that’s far more valuable than any of these things outside of us. You look at anything and it’s not tempting enough, not promising enough. Obviously, things have their utility, their value, their practical functionalities, so we have things for that purpose. But things are things, things are not love.

Questioner 2: Ok, it means loving simplicity in a way that other things can’t tempt you.

Acharya Prashant: You’re coming closer, yes.

Questioner 2: Now I’m not even thinking about anything.

Acharya Prashant: That’s how you get glimpses and these glimpses are the opportunity to fall in love.

Questioner 2: Thank you so much Acharya Ji!

Acharya Prashant: Thank you.