How to identify the real master? || Acharya Prashant, on Ashtavakra Gita (2019)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information: Shabdyog session, 15.05.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India   Context:  Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace  when he has seen the differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis? Asthavakra Gita (Chapter - 9, Verse - 5)  ~ How do you identify the real master? ~ Are all saints saying the same thing? ~ What is the objective of spirituality?  ~ What is all spirituality about? ~ What causes the ego blindness?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Ashtavakra Gita chapter 9 verse 5.

00:10Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the

00:16differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?

00:23Question A. Acharya ji, we go to saints and sages because we are suffering and we are

00:27ignorant.

00:28They have different opinions and teach different methods.

00:31If someone asks me, how do you know he is a realized master?

00:34How can I answer?

00:35I am already ignorant and I don't have clarity.

00:38That's why I am going to them.

00:40How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge?

00:44How can I judge his words to be true or false?

00:47If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence, I am labeled as a blind believer.

00:54What should I do?

00:58Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the

01:03differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?

01:08What is all spirituality about?

01:17If I were to ask you in one sentence as briefly as possible, what is the objective, the purpose

01:27of all spirituality?

01:28What would it be?

01:29The?

01:30Who is suffering?

01:31So, the objective of all spirituality is the annihilation of the I, the ego.

01:52Simple?

01:53It is the ego that suffers.

01:57So, it is not the suffering really that you want to get rid of, but the sufferer itself.

02:07As long as the sufferer is there, how is it possible to not suffer?

02:12Right?

02:14Now, with this in mind, approach this verse.

02:20Ashtavakra Gita, chapter 9, verse 5.

02:23Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the

02:26differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?

02:32Whatsoever you see is a projection of the seer basics and spirituality is not about what

02:45you see, but about the seer.

02:51Is spirituality about commenting on and judging what you see or is it about the seer?

03:00It is about the seer.

03:02Right?

03:03So, if it is about the seer, how would you ever know that somebody is a great sage, saint

03:12or yogi?

03:20That's difficult.

03:21The fact of the matter, Parameshwari, here is, we do not really know who is a great sage,

03:30who is a great saint, who is a great yogi, but we go by the ego's usual method of determining

03:41what is what.

03:46How does the child know basic things, very, very basic things?

03:51For example, how does the baby know who her mother is?

03:59How does the baby know who her mother is?

04:04She is told.

04:08That's bad.

04:10She has just emerged from the womb after nine months and yet she needs to be told who

04:17her mother is.

04:18Do not tell her who her mother is and she has no way to find out.

04:21Take her to another mother, another lady who would nurse her and the baby would easily

04:27take the other lady as the mother.

04:34That's how blind the ego is.

04:38Now, no point asking you how do you know your father is.

04:43How do you know who your father is?

04:44You just do not know.

04:45You have been told.

04:46When we do not even know who our mother is without being told, how would we ever know

04:52who our father is?

04:54Parameshwari, when we do not even know who our worldly father is, how would we know who

05:00the real father is?

05:03So we do not know.

05:04But still we know.

05:05How do we know?

05:07Because we have been told.

05:08And that is how we know who a great sage is.

05:11But we find it very difficult to accept that even the fundamentals in our life are dictated

05:21by others.

05:23That we do not really authentically and originally know anything.

05:28We say, oh, the kid and the mother are inseparable.

05:34At least the infant and the mother are inseparable.

05:37How do we see that?

05:38But even that is such a lie.

05:43The infant emerges from the mother and take the infant to another nursing mother and the

05:52infant would be happily busy suckling.

05:58Would the infant complain?

06:02Would the infant complain?

06:03Not at all.

06:04Not at all.

06:05In fact, if the infant's own mother, biological mother cannot feed her and the other woman

06:18can feed him or her, then the infant would rather prefer the other mother.

06:31We do not know anything.

06:33But it is so very disgusting to accept such helplessness and such ignorance.

06:52So we pretend that we know.

07:00And that's how we also know who a great saint is, who a great yogi is.

07:20Even those who are not students of science today, they would say, oh, we know that the

07:24earth goes around the sun.

07:29Do they really know?

07:31The fact is they just don't know.

07:34It's just social opinion.

07:37It is not scientific.

07:38It is social.

07:42And therefore, it is actually a superstition for 99% people of the world.

07:48It is actually a superstition that the earth goes around the sun.

07:53Why is it a superstition?

07:55Because they don't know.

07:56They have just believed.

07:57And therefore, they can be easily converted into believing that the sun and the moon go

08:01around the earth.

08:03You only require some forceful and convincing speaker and you can easily convince them.

08:19We do not know anything.

08:25How do you know that you must go to school?

08:27Please tell me.

08:33How do you know that you must marry?

08:38But it is really, really terrible, dreadful to think of these things.

08:51The very fundamentals of life will start shaking.

08:57The foundations are shivering, the building will collapse.

09:13So we don't even want to go into these things.

09:19And therefore, we live in contradictions.

09:23When you really know that there is no contradiction, Parameswari.

09:30See what do you call as contradiction?

09:34I take this as true.

09:36I take this as true and these two don't agree with each other and then I say, oh my God,

09:44I have a contradiction.

09:48But contradictions can't exist, can they?

09:51Because there are no two truths.

09:57Even if truth is expressed in two different ways, the two different ways cannot but agree

10:04with each other.

10:07But because we do not know, therefore for us, this is true, this is true, this is true,

10:11this is true and none of them agree with each other.

10:15That does not mean that they are true and still they don't reconcile.

10:20That merely means that you do not know whether any of them is true or whether one of them

10:25is true or whether truth exists at all.

10:32And therefore, this line has to be seen in its real meaning.

10:39To whom are these differences of opinions?

10:48These differences of opinions are to you.

10:51Why?

10:52Because it is you who has labeled this one as a great sage, this one as a great yogi,

10:58this one as a great prophet, this one as a great avatar and how have you labeled them

11:04without knowing.

11:07So you can just label anybody as a great one.

11:11You can label anybody as a great one and then to you, their opinions will not match with

11:18each other and then you will say, their opinions are not matching with each other, whereas

11:23they are all true.

11:24The fact is, first of all, to you, it appears that their opinions are not matching.

11:30Secondly, to you, they are all great.

11:34Are they really great?

11:35Do you really know that they are great?

11:36How do you know?

11:40How do you know that they are great?

11:46To most people, great saints are great.

11:52Just as kids talk of Akbar the Great and Ashoka the Great, without even having properly gone

12:05through their textbooks, they keep talking of Akbar the Great and Ashoka the Great.

12:12Do you really know that Ashoka was great?

12:14Do you really know that Akbar was great?

12:20Maybe you could not meet them, but at least you could have gone through the textbooks

12:24properly.

12:36That's how we declare who is a great and who is not.

12:44And then when we find differences in opinions, we are puzzled.

12:50First of all, to have an opinion, you must understand what they are saying.

12:56Even before that, you must know whether they are worthy of being read at all.

13:07So look at the multi-layered ignorance.

13:12You go to someone without knowing whether he is worth going to.

13:18You go to someone without knowing whether he is worth going to.

13:22Then you read him and you don't properly read him.

13:28You read two and a half paragraphs.

13:32That is the entire literature that you have read from most greats.

13:39And then you form an opinion about that person.

13:43First of all, it is not certain whether that person was worth reading.

13:48Secondly, you did not even read him properly.

13:54And then thirdly, you make an opinion and fourthly, you try to reconcile this opinion

14:00with the opinion that you have of another great.

14:07And how did you go to another great following the same process that you followed with this

14:10great?

14:11So, neither do you know this one nor do you know that one.

14:16But still you have opinions about both and when they don't tally, then you feel victimized.

14:28You know all saints are supposed to say the same thing.

14:34They are all one.

14:35They are all family.

14:39Like the little Hindu homely temple, where you keep 50 idols all next to each other.

14:48They are all one.

14:52So let me just take the pooja kithali and 50 of them there, little Devi, big Deva, there

15:05is Shiva, there is Ganesh, there is Durga, there is some Ishtadev also belonging to your

15:17ancestral village and the old canal from Akbar the Great's times and 40 such idols are kept.

15:31You do not know any of them, but what do you do daily?

15:37How do you know that all 40 of them are worth worshipping?

15:40How do you know that even one of them is worth worshipping?

15:47But you take all of them as the same.

15:54I will not offend myself by taking names, but people come over and they say, I am a

16:00big fan.

16:01I am a big fan.

16:02I am a big fan and I am a big fan and then they say, you know what, all of you guys are

16:10painstakingly working to uplift the collective consciousness of the world.

16:17All of you guys.

16:18And then they will take 10 names, Swami Desh, Gurudev Desh, Falana Desh, Dhikana Desh,

16:28Madhguru Desh, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and you.

16:37And you, all of you together are working in the same direction.

16:49The little quaint Hindu homely puja ghar, 40 idols at one place.

17:00I won't be surprised if you worship Ram and Raavan together as well.

17:11What similarity did you find between what I say and what that Swami says?

17:18The thing is, neither do you understand me, nor do you understand that Swami.

17:24So you keep thinking that all of them are saying the same thing.

17:32All my fight is against the Swamis and the Gurus.

17:39I am not fighting the commoners.

17:41Parameshwari, have you still not understood?

17:47I am not fighting the commoners because they anyway do not cause much damage.

17:57It is the Gurus, the teachers, the Swamis, the saints, the sages, the big names, the

18:02big brands that I am fighting against.

18:07They are the ones who are responsible for so much mischief, misery, suffering, superstition.

18:15But you put all together in that one puja ghar and worship them together.

18:20Oh, they are all one.

18:21And you are alright as long as you can worship them together.

18:34The trouble starts when for some reason somebody reveals to you that they are different.

18:44And then you can't figure out, like in this verse, how there can be a difference of opinion

18:54between great sages, differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis.

19:01Now you have a problem.

19:04You say, but all of them are the same.

19:09One Baba with Dadi, another Baba with Dadi.

19:14One Baba using words like suffering and truth and yoga and another Baba also using words

19:20like suffering and truth and yoga.

19:22So they are all the same.

19:31That is the thing with not having mathematical precision in spirituality.

19:41So there is somebody who is saying a square plus b square is c square.

19:47And there is another one who is saying a plus b is equal to cq.

19:55And you feel both of them are saying the same thing because both of them are talking the

19:59language of a, b and c.

20:00You do not see with precision that they are not saying the same thing.

20:11They are not saying the same thing.

20:13I'm not saying what your swamis and gurus and great sages have said.

20:27That does not mean that I stand against them.

20:30That does not mean that I stand opposite to them.

20:37It's just that you will not find me tallying with them.

20:40Occasionally I might tally with them.

20:44But equally occasionally I will not tally with them.

20:48I don't have much to do with them.

20:53Sometimes you would find a coincidental match.

20:58Only at other times you will find a coincidental mismatch.

21:03Do not try to come to conclusions because there are no patterns here.

21:11Sometimes I will praise some of the so-called greats and I will lavishly praise them.

21:17But sometimes I will have to condemn them wholeheartedly.

21:27Then I'll try to simply ignore and not do the dirty work.

21:34But still there would be occasions when I'll have no option but to come out and condemn.

21:46Then you will send me this verse and say, you know, how can there be differences of

21:49opinions among the great saints, sages and yogis?

22:07Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace?

22:16Indifference to such things as what?

22:20Is spirituality about being indifferent to this and that?

22:24No.

22:25Spirituality is fundamentally about being indifferent to yourself.

22:29It is not others that you have to be cautious of.

22:31You have to be cautious of that within you which gets influenced by others, which does

22:37not know others but gets influenced by others.

22:42It does not live in knowing.

22:44It lives in indoctrination.

22:48It is alright to have a relationship with others.

22:51But what kind of relationship?

22:54Is the relationship of realization or is the real relationship of proselytization?

23:07What are you doing with the other, knowing him or imaging and imagining him?

23:19There is a great difference here.

23:22How are you relating to the other?

23:24Are you relating to the other or to the image of the other?

23:48Now, you have asked, how can I identify a master with my limited knowledge?

24:04How can I judge his words to be true or false?

24:07How does a patient know the Dr. Parameswari?

24:10Basics, where are you?

24:11What are you doing?

24:20Which doctor do you thank?

24:21The most reputed one in the town or the one who is curing you?

24:31When you are delivering the baby, to whom does the mother go, to the great hospital

24:40in the town or to the one doctor who helped her?

24:52But the great hospital is so very reputed and imposing.

24:58It's a multi-specialty hospital and it's also quite expensive.

25:02It's just that it didn't take you in.

25:03It was of no use to you.

25:05Was that great brand, great hospital of any use to you, Parameswari?

25:10Have they been of use to you so far?

25:11And I ask that to everybody who is listening to me right now.

25:17Have the big ones been of use to you?

25:19If they have not been of use to you, why do you even call them big ones?

25:24How are they big if they are not useful?

25:36Now you will say, instead of being spiritual, you are being polemical.

25:46Instead of being supportive, you are being disruptive.

25:53Yes, I am being disruptive.

26:02The doctor's task is to disrupt the pattern of the disease.

26:13Have some love towards yourself.

26:16How can somebody be great if he has not been able to help you?

26:34And if you go deeply into it, it is not even about that person.

26:42It is about your own world and the images that you have of your person, of that person.

26:47And it is against that image that I talk of.

26:58When you do not even know me well, in spite of me being with you since probably a year

27:06or more now, you obviously do not know the greats of the past.

27:11You were never with them.

27:14But still you claim that you know them.

27:17What do you know in fact?

27:21An image.

27:23I am disrupting, therefore, not that person, but his image.

27:32The image that you carry of him is false.

27:36But you worship that image.

27:38Not only do you worship that image, you also call the image as the person.

27:46I have no intention of attacking any person because the person is anyway gone.

27:51And the person might have really done a lot of good.

27:58The person is gone, what is it that remains with you?

28:02An image.

28:03Because most of us are lousy.

28:05We do not even work hard enough to know what or how the person really was.

28:13What do we carry?

28:14We carry juvenile images, moth-eaten images and then we live by those images.

28:29We have definite images about who Shri Krishna was, about who Shri Ram was, about who Jesus

28:34was, about who this particular teacher was, about how that particular teacher was and

28:39we have ideas and stories.

28:45There are so many people who have never even touched the Gita, but they still carry images

28:51about Shri Krishna and they want to live by those images.

28:56I want to attack that image.

28:59That image is false.

29:00Go close to the Gita and then you will discover who Shri Krishna really was.

29:06The image that you are carrying is a false and useless image.

29:12It will not help you.

29:13That image is just an extension of your own ego.

29:15How will it help you?

29:30But that's how the ego is.

29:36It does not want to go to the Gita.

29:43But it wants to maintain that it loves Krishna.

29:47What kind of love is this?

29:50How many people bother to really respect the Gita and read it?

29:57Very few.

29:58Very, very few.

29:59But so many people claim that they love and respect Shri Krishna.

30:05Now, this is hypocrisy.

30:15I'm attacking the image of gods and teachers and prophets that you carry because those

30:24images are false.

30:28Those images are false because first of all, you have no originality.

30:34You have no meditativeness and all your knowledge is secondhand.

30:40Even if you were not meditative, you could have at least gone to the original scriptures.

30:48There are two ways of knowing.

30:51The best way is to know through one's own meditativeness.

30:56The next best way is to learn from the scriptures.

31:01You neither know through your own meditativeness nor are you hardworking enough to give time

31:10to the scriptures.

31:16But you still have opinions.

31:17How do you have those opinions?

31:20Either be so meditative that all the knowledge contained in the Upanishads starts arising

31:37from your own heart.

31:39That can happen.

31:42Or at least be honest and diligent enough to read the Upanishads.

31:48But neither are we meditative nor are we diligent.

31:56We still claim that the Upanishads are wonderful and we maintain an image of the Upanishads.

32:03How?

32:04By listening to the neighbor.

32:05The neighbor says that Upanishads are great.

32:10So they must be great and the neighbor has told a few other things about the Upanishads

32:16and that's how we carry that pretty picture.

32:19This is how the Upanishads are.

32:20I want to attack that picture.

32:22I want you to really go to the Upanishads.

32:27Either really go to the Upanishads or at least don't say that you know the Upanishads.

32:36At least don't pretend that you respect them.

32:39At least don't start randomly quoting the Upanishads.

32:47So some random story you would bring from an Upanishad and then you will try to make

32:54opinions and conclusions based on that story.

32:58Now how will you be able to derive any meaning from that story if you have not read the scripture

33:07and no Upanishad is greatly tedious to read.

33:13They are very very precise documents and some of them indeed do contain stories.

33:20So you pick up a story from an Upanishad without knowing what that Upanishad is really about,

33:25without knowing what Vedanta is really about and then from that story you come to some

33:29conclusion.

33:30How are you coming to that conclusion?

33:32Have you worked hard enough?

33:34Is your meditativeness telling you the essence of that story?

33:39No.

33:40Secondly, have you read a few Upanishads?

33:47Have you read even that particular Upanishad from where the story is coming?

33:50No, not even that much.

33:52But you will quote that story and from that story you want to arrive to conclusions.

33:58This is disgusting.

34:07Ramakrishna Paramhansa used to deal so much in parables.

34:12But without either being Ramakrishna or at least reading sufficiently about Ramakrishna,

34:22how do you randomly quote one of his parables?

34:26But people do that because his small stories are sweet, very sweet.

34:33But the essence of those stories would be apparent only to somebody like Ramakrishna

34:40who is in love with Ma.

34:43If you are not in love with Kali, how would you know what Ramakrishna is saying through

34:47that story?

34:49But you have no concern, no respect, no veneration, no heartful feeling for the mother and still

34:57you want to quote Ramakrishna's story.

35:00Some little parable about two birds, a crow and a swan.

35:06And when you will quote that, not only will you misinterpret, you will willfully misinterpret

35:12to serve your own purpose.

35:14And that's how we use spiritual literature, especially the stories.

35:21Are you getting it?

35:31You know what's worse, not only do we use those stories to suit our ego, we often actively

35:43distort those stories.

35:48Swami Vivekananda is one name that has been very frequently used to spread all kinds of

36:01nonsensical propaganda.

36:09So the story will begin with Swami Vivekananda was travelling through Manchuria.

36:15When exactly did he go to Manchuria?

36:20In the name of biographical accounts, fiction is circulating.

36:33All kinds of nonsense is being tagged along with the name Swami Vivekananda.

36:41Did Swami Vivekananda ever say that?

36:43Do you want to check out?

36:48Don't you want to check first?

37:00And the best way to really know what did Swami Vivekananda say is to be a Swami Vivekananda.

37:11Because even if you fully know what he did, your knowledge would still be incomplete.

37:18Knowledge is never complete.

37:20Even if you have great knowledge about Swami Vivekananda, still you can come to erroneous

37:24conclusions because knowledge is always insufficient.

37:30Knowledge does not really know.

37:34But if you are a Swami Vivekananda, then you would never fail in reading the essence of

37:42his words or his accounts or stories.

37:47Then you would always be precisely correct.

37:55The story would come to you and you would hit the jackpot.

38:03Be a Swami Vivekananda, then you will know.

38:07And if you say that you cannot immediately be Swami Vivekananda, then at least make the

38:15efforts of going through his literature, going through his original literature, not articles

38:22on Swami Vivekananda, not what somebody says about Swami Vivekananda, but go through what

38:29he himself really said.

38:32Read his biography, see where he went, see in what conditions he lived.

38:44That's the way.

38:56There was one message circulating a couple of years back, I suppose.

39:05The message read, mobile phone and TV are the bane of India's youth.

39:12India can never shine till its youth give up on the usage of, or rather the excessive

39:23usage of mobile phone and television, Swami Vivekananda.

39:35So Swami Vivekananda said that India's youth is suffering because of excessive usage of

39:43mobile phone and television.

39:48And then after this message, the sender had written a huge and emotional description of

39:56how really harmful social media and TV serials are.

40:07And this is a story that is even objectively false.

40:14Here you can at least demonstrate that falseness is happening.

40:21But what happens when you pick up a genuine story from the Upanishads or from Ramakrishna

40:28Paramhansa and then use it in your own way?

40:35Do you know the context?

40:38Do you understand the source from where it is coming?

40:43All you have is images.

40:51You are saying if I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence, what Parameshwari?

40:55Do you know what simplicity is?

40:57Do you know what innocence is?

40:58What is simplicity?

40:59To live half-naked?

41:00To roam around in a loincloth?

41:05What is innocence?

41:06To have a face that resembles that of a kid?

41:11What is simplicity and what is innocence, Parameshwari?

41:13You are saying if I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence?

41:21Some of the members of this audience are in a YouTube volunteering group where they are

41:32responding to the comments that the wider audience makes on my videos.

41:42They would only read the sanitized comments.

41:49They would only read the approved comments.

41:51What they would not read is the comments that are deleted and one of the most common comments

42:01amongst the ones that are deleted is, this man is evil, he is shrewd, wicked, come up

42:10with a few more synonymous words, please.

42:25Just as you know, Parameshwari, somebody to be simple and innocent, there are equally

42:36smart audiences as you who claim that they know that this man here is the epitome of

42:44wickedness.

42:51Do you really know what is innocence?

42:52Do you really know what is guilt?

42:54Do you really know what is shrewdness?

42:57How do you know?

43:10Is there any curse word that they do not use for me?

43:16It starts with, this man is mad and then they take pleasure in describing my entire

43:32family and extended family and they are just as confident as you are, Parameshwari.

43:45In your world, I probably appear innocent.

43:47I do not know whether you used it for me.

43:49I'm just, you know, maybe misinterpreting you or taking you for granted.

43:54Maybe used it only for the other greats who look very innocent.

43:57I obviously do not look innocent to you.

43:59I keep scolding you and there is no day when somebody does not threaten to physically annihilate

44:23me on some social media or the other.

44:26It's just that you never get to read those comments because they are purged away.

44:47How do you know?

44:51How do you know?

44:57And I have said how to know.

45:00How to know?

45:02See who is treating your disease.

45:09How do you know a doctor?

45:11Not by his degrees, but by his ability to treat you.

45:23In the physical world, the degrees are at least a rudimentary indicator.

45:30In the spiritual world, degrees are not even a rudimentary indicator.

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