Acharya Prashant: The question is, if one wants to help, how does one go about helping? How does one create the right conditions for the other? Good, practical question.
I have often and repeatedly said, that to help the other, you have to be a nobody. Now, that sounds quite theoretical and abstract. What is meant by this statement that, to help the other you have to be a nobody? It means, that you have to be a someone, a no one, who has no choices or preferences of his own, except the preference to love. Except the desire to be loving, all other desires are now gone. Or at least all other desires are now secondary. The primary desire is just love. All other desires are subservient to it now. Which means that I am now not really bothered about what I am doing, as long as it is serving the purpose of loving.
I don’t have any preferences, choices, left now. I won’t say that I will do this work only my way. Then, how will I do this work? Which way will I do this work? Now, I will do this work your way. If I am nobody then I get all the freedom to act as per your wishes. Are you getting it?
In trying to help the other, often a big barrier is the helper himself. Because the helper says, “I will help, but only in this particular way.” This particular way which is the way according to my ideology. “I want to help you by helping you behave as per my wishes.” Now that’s a barrier. To help someone, you have to be a no one, which means that your own likes and dislikes relegate to the background. Now you look at the other. Now you look at the other’s conditioned mind.
Obviously the other is conditioned, obviously the other is trapped, that is why he needs help? So, you look closely at the mind of the one you intend to help. And you say, “I have no preferences. Openly, with a clean slate, I will see, how this person can be helped. I have no ideology. I am not approaching this person with a preset agenda. Instead, I am seeing, that if this person is conditioned, what is the contour of the conditioning. What is the whole landscape of the city that he has built inside his mind? What are the patterns of his or her conditioning? And to liberate her, I will recognize and use those patterns.” Now, in using those patterns, the barrier is your own patterns. Because you say, that if I use those patterns then I am doing something wrong something immoral. Or at least I am doing something that I do not stand for, that does not correspond to? My ideals.
