Going beyond words
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Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.
Questioner (Q): What is beyond the words?
Acharya Prashant (AP):
Words will always belong to the mental realm, to the path. What is beyond the path? The destination. Whatever is being said is being said so that you can be close to the destination.
Words are for the sake of Silence if they are arising from silence. Words arising from the Silence are for the sake of Silence. Be directly established in the Silence.
You take a shortcut. You take a direct path.
When you cannot comprehend the words, just know that the destination of all the words is Silence.
So you directly go there.
Why take the circuitous route? Words are like that mischievous tourist guide who wants to inflate his billing, so he will take you by the longest route possible. And in taking you through the longest route, he’s assuring you of his own importance, “You see, it was such a torturous route. You would’ve lost your way. Good that you hired me. See now I am navigating you through all this maze.” This is what words do.
You directly reach where the guide would anyway take you in the end.
The end is right in front of you.
The end is more close to you than you can imagine.
When you cannot comprehend what I’m saying to them, know that all that is being said is being said for the sake of peace.
So, why don’t you directly be at peace?
Who wants to prolong the words? Who wants to stay with the words? Finally, it is about forgetting the words. If the words are any way to be forgotten, great that you are not getting them in the first place. Why take them then forget them? It is an opportunity, to not comprehend the words is an opportunity to use the direct path. And when you use the direct path you find that the path is just too short.
Listener (L): Sometimes the words are a distraction.
AP: They are.
But again there be very careful. Who’s the one who is finding the words to be a distraction? Sages since time immemorial have used words for some…
