The Heart is enough

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

Listeners: I was reading a book of yours, Personality. It was written that whatever you liked from your heart, the same thing you should do in the outer world. But if we talk about it in a practical aspect, maybe in a professional or personal life point of view, that is something other, that people expect from you and mostly it is considered failure. What to do to connect the internal as well as the external world?

Acharya Prashant: Two things, firstly, what we usually call as our heartfelt liking, has not much to do with the heart. It is just another part of the conditioned mind. The heart is no particular entity. It does not have any set likes and dislikes. It is not in favor, or in opposition, of anything. It does not like activities. It does not have expectation from activities. And, what the heart might suggest is never knowable in advance.

One cannot come up and say that this is what my mind wants, and this is what my heart wants, and there is a conflict. The ways of the hearts are very very subtle, not comprehensible, not knowable, purposeless, indeterministic. Just because one has a sharp like for something, and that likeness might be mixed with some emotionality. It does not mean that the liking is arising from the heart.

The heart stands for spontaneous understanding.

When one is submitted to the heart, then one does not really bother about what others are saying, and whether it results in some kind of success or failure.

In fact, one of the proofs that one is not working from the heart is that he would be concerned about the results of the action.

When one is concerned about the results of the action, including a gain in prestige, material welfare, social standing and such things, it is certain that one is operating from the desirous mind.

Now, it is quite interesting because we want to have both. We say, “We will fulfill our desires, we will have the gratification associated with fulfillment of desires and parallelly we also want to live in the feeling that we are living by the heart. “I will live by my love and I also want the world to praise me for it,” That’s the stand that we take. I will live by the Truth and I also…