Place of ego- either at the Master's feet or in the Master's embrace || Acharya Prashant (2014)

Question: What should I do if something is clear, but I do not act according to that understanding?

Speaker: We had talked about the limitation of clarity. Clarity alone is not sufficient. You can be very clear that you are diseased, but unless you are also sure that you can be disease-free, that clarity will only give you pain.

You see, if I am told that I am suffering from a disease, and that disease has no treatment, then what is the point in earning this knowledge? Till date I do not know that I have a particular disease, I might be suffering but I have no clarity. I go to a doctor, he tells me, ‘You are carrying this disease’, and he does not tell me that there is this treatment possible. Then what will this information do to me? It will only make me depressed. Will it help me? Will this information help me?

Diagnosis without prognosis is of no help. If someone just keeps telling you, ‘You are an idiot’, and you might also realize, ‘Yes, I am an idiot’, if someone just keeps telling you, ‘You are caught in falseness’ and it might be true that you are caught in falseness, but all this telling does not empower you to get rid of the falseness, then this telling is of no use. This so-called ‘clarity’ is of no use.

One needs that inner firmness that ‘Alright, I might be sick right now, but sickness is not my destiny, sickness is not my nature. I can shake away the sickness. I can regain that health which is anyway always available to me’. That firm faith has to be there that ‘I might be in dumps, but being in dumps is not what I am here for. I can be reborn. There is so much dust over me, but it is alright. One shower, one shower is all that I require’.