Do influences come to influence you? || Acharya Prashant (2014)

Question 1: Sir, how can our mind be free of influence?

Speaker: Influences never come to influence you. The question is: how can the mind be free of influence? Does the influence come and say that I want to influence you? Go into this. There is a hoarding on the road. It is advertising something. Does it come and catch you by your throat and say that you must read it, and not only must you read it, you must also get influenced? Does it say that? It is there standing at its place. Influences don’t come to influence you.

You have a mind that is like a sponge waiting to be influenced. Differentiate between these two things. We all say that we want to get rid of influences. This mind is a hungry place that is demanding to be filled with influences, like a sponge, asking, “Can I have a drop of water so that I can absorb it?” Why is our mind of this quality that it is hungry for somebody to come? Why is our mind like a vacant drawing-room and we are standing at the door wanting somebody to come and fill our house? “My house is vacant. My house is empty. Can somebody come and please grace these chairs? My bedroom is waiting since thousand years, there is nobody to grace my bed. Can somebody please come?” Now there is nobody who is so eager to come. But like a beggar we are asking every passer-by, “Can you please come and sit in my house?”

“Pal bhar ke liye koi humein pyaar kar le, jhoota hi sahi (Someone love me even for a moment, even if it is false.)” (Listeners chuckle) Is that not our situation? Influences are not eager, you are eager. And you are eager because the place in the mind that should belong to the most sacred divinity, that place has been left vacant by you. So all kind of rubbish is trying to fill in that space. The royal chair is empty. There is nobody to sit on it. The king is missing. So all kind of loafers and undeserving people are rushing-in to sit upon the king’s chair. Why have you displaced the king? Why? Invite the king again. Let the king sit on his throne. And then you will find that you are not eager for influences anymore. Then influences will come and you’ll say, “No vacancy.” Have you seen these hotels at hill stations in the off-season? What do they do in the off-season? They have all these agents on the roads and they catch hold of every passer-by. “Please come and occupy a room in our hotel. Four hundred percent discount. If you come to our hotel we will give you two thousand rupees.”