Importance of regularity

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

Question: Sir, I would want to seek clarification on the requirement of regularity in life. In being regular we would be stressed to do things even when we aren’t feeling good about it on some days. For example, if we pray to God every day and don’t feel like doing it but for the sake of regularity/ niyam/ discipline we end up doing it.

Please share your thoughts on the same.

Acharya Prashant: All regularity is in time. To be regular means to repeat an act, or thought, in time intervals.

Time is past, time is future, time is the expanse in which the mind wanders around.

When you say you want to be regular in praying, or reflecting, or have certain codes of time-bound conduct, what do you want from being regular? You want peace. You want a deep relaxation. You want freedom from madly wandering thought. In other words, you want freedom from time itself.

Please note: the very purpose of bringing in regularity- in time- is that one can be free — from time.

Regularity is good if it frees you from time. Regularity is a burden if it attaches you to time.

The man who must wake up at 5 a.m., bathe at 6 a.m., pray at 6:30 a.m., eat at 7:30 a.m., and so on, is a man deeply affixed to time. His mind, instead of relaxing in the timeless, is moving in time. Obviously, such regularity is stupidity.

There is another kind of regularity that comes not from looking at the clock but arises from somewhere deep down in your being.

He was asked: “How do you follow the clock so punctually? You get up everyday sharp at 6 a.m.” He said: “I do not follow the clock. The clock follows me.”

When the mind is composed, surrendered, and free-flowing, it flows harmoniously in a cosmic rhythm. Let us call it a mind one with nature. One with the source, and one with nature. Now there is a sweet symphony, a mellifluous music.

The bees, the birds know when to wake up. The baby knows when to leave the womb. The seasons know when to come and when to go.

None of them need a clock!

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