Don’t let them touch you

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): The words our friend is referring to read “Remain untouched. Remain unshakeable. Remain untouched and remain firm centered undisplaced.” Those words make sense only in the context of our present condition.

What is our condition? Everything touches us. It touches us and puts its imprints upon us. So much so, that we are actually nothing but a collection of, a compendium of the various imprints that life, time, and experiences have given us.

This touches us and molds us. That touches us and dirties us, then something else comes over to touch us and touches us and breaks us, and that’s how our inner content, our consciousness, is formed through the touch of others — not through any innate principle or organic sprouting and not through which is original or of the heart.

We merely are layer upon layers of imprints, and therefore there is very little true individuality.

Similarly, we have very little rootedness. We are like pale leaves dissociated from a tree. Even a feeble wave carries it away.

We are at the mercy of the winds, with very little connection with the root. That is the condition of the mind and mankind. And that condition is suffering, lifelessness. So that poster simply exalts one to rebel against the condition.

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, as you have said, we are layer upon layers imprints and have very little rootedness. How to break layers and be centered?

AP: You see, there can be a very good literary academic answer to this. One could talk of the various theories of mental conditioning in psychology. One could talk of the various methods of spiritual liberation. And if we talked about that, it would all appear quite nice convincing, logical, and polished.

But practically, there is only one method to cut through these layers of conditioning and reach right down to the root. That method is not a polished, well-defined, or secure method. It is a very raw thing. It’s quite crude. That method is called suffering, or you call that method as love.

We don’t know what the root is. Those who talked of the root clearly said that just as the tree’s…