How to live as Pure Consciousness?

Listener: Acharya Ji, Naman! I read Ashtavakra and surprisingly, my mind quickly and completely accepted the idea that I am pure consciousness and that I don’t need to do anything to get enlightened. However, someone inside me knows that this is the mind’s game to show acceptance to Ashtavakra’s theory. Ashtavakra Gita is a sacred knowledge. However I am confused, as to how to live like pure consciousness in non-duality, not like a doer?

Acharya Prashant: If you will look at your question, you will realise why what you are asking, is impossible to get. You are saying that you want to live like pure consciousness. Right?

One can want to live like the beetles one day, one can want to live like Ramkrishna Paramhans, the next day and then Pele, the third day. Many of us think that spirituality is the best mask we can put on our face. We have spent all our life, wearing and changing masks and now you want to put on another one, which has been called as the purest, eternal, final, most hallowed one. And obviously, the most respectable one, the mask of the spiritual one, the one who is pure consciousness.

It just doesn’t occurred to you, does it that it is not necessarily to wear masks. It not even strikes us. Even the possibility doesn’t appear to us. Right? The best that we can think for us is a mask. Not that we are trying to do bad to ourselves, we want the good to happen. But that’s our utmost conception of the good. Right? The best mask. We say that’s the best that can happen to us. I will give up the old masks and put on new ones. We are so, very under-ambitious. We even don’t desire beyond a point. And our self-worth is so compromised, that the best we can hope for ourselves is a better version of rags. It’s sad to see this.

Ashtavakra is not about you starting to live like pure consciousness. Ashtavakra is just a reminder to you, that you have the ability to see, what is impure, corrupted, and unconscious about you. Pure consciousness is not something that you can put upon yourself. Pure consciousness is your very root. It is your center. It is not the last wheel on your periphery. It is not the loose cloak that will conceal all the other garments that you are wearing. It is your very center, it is your heart beneath all garments.