Only a Godless mind will be petty

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

यदि देहं पृथक् कृत्य चिति विश्राम्य तिष्ठसि।

अधुनैव सुखी शान्तो बन्धमुक्तो भविष्यसि॥

– अष्टावक्र गीता (१.४)

Translation: If you detach yourself from the body and rest in consciousness, you will become content, peaceful and free from bondage immediately.

Question: How to detach oneself from the body?

Acharya Prashant (AP): We remember the body all the time, we remember so many other things all the time, thoughts of the world occupy the mind all the time, memory is active all the time, and all these need to be remembered because something important has been forgotten.

The sense of self needs identification. The sense of self needs to find out what it is, who it is. After all, you do exist. Right? You do exist. If you do exist, you ought to be somebody, something or some entity, and if you forget who you are then you need to hold on to something else, you require to constantly clutch something else, latch on to something else, because you cannot be identity-less, that is impossible.

To be identity-less means to say, ‘I don’t exist.’ If you do exist, you must be something. Right? Who are you? Who am I? Who are you? Because you do not remember That, because you do not identify with That, so you need to identify with miscellaneous things, you need to identify with the world, you need to identify with the senses, with the material, and with the body.

Body identification in itself is not a problem, it is just a symptom. Don’t focus too much on this. Don’t say that how not to be body identified, this is especially for women. These questions in themselves are not very meaningful. Why are you asking that how not to be body identified? Why? Are you sure that you’re not only the body? See, if I am saying that please tell me the right way, then first of all I must be sure that I am moving on the wrong way. Are you sure you are moving on the wrong way? When you are not sure that you are moving on the wrong way, why do you ask these…