Crawl Right, Don’t Fly Wrong
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. The title Truth Without Apology attracts me. It invokes a sense of strength, a kind of declaration. Thank you for this.
As I was reading Chapter 138, it stated, "It's far better to crawl on the right path than to fly down the wrong one." This sense of righteousness has always attracted me, perhaps that is what has distinguished humanity across history. Can we then say righteousness is greatness, but it comes with a price and it keeps getting challenging?
Acharya Prashant: The right path is not the righteous path. Righteous carries a sense of being on the right side of morality. We are not talking of being righteous. Being right and being righteous are different things.
The quote in question here is, "It's far better to crawl on the right path than to fly on the wrong one." Right and wrong here are neither moral concepts nor righteous precepts. Right and wrong are defined by the one who is the experiencer of those things.
You see, what is it that matters most to us? Experience, does it not? Behind all the lofty concepts and this and that, if at this moment you start experiencing a heartache or the head starts spinning, things will get difficult, won’t they? It is experience that matters, right?
So, right and wrong are in relation to the experiencer. And when it comes to human beings, the experiencer has a choice. The choice is to either see that he is a construct of the body and the society, or just blindly operate from wherever he is coming and whoever he is. That choice is available.
That experiencer, you’d have guessed it, we are talking of the ego. That experiencer has a choice. The easier choice is: don’t look at yourself. Just take notice of your instincts, your desires, and be propelled in some particular direction. You don’t know why, but you have a desire.
Do we choose our desires?
Once the desire arises, then the intellect chooses a path to fulfill that desire. But do we choose our desires? Similarly, do we choose our emotions or thoughts? We don’t. Thoughts, to some degree, we may choose — for example, you may say, “I’m choosing to open a book,” and then the book induces certain thoughts. So to that extent you can say yes. But when it comes to emotions, we hardly exercise any choice. That is a particular way of living, being blind to oneself and then moving in the direction of your feelings and thoughts and conditionings and beliefs, and so on. That’s one thing.
The other is: before I act to fulfill myself, should I not know who is the one unfulfilled? Right? It is in this context that one is being called right and the other is being called wrong. There is no other criterion.
We are not talking morality here. We are not talking religious commandments here. We are talking utility here. We are talking experience here.
If the experiencer operates from the wrong center — the center of blindness — then the experience will not be palatable.
As simple as that. The experience will be of suffering. Getting it? It’s as simple as that.
Spirituality is not about obtaining heaven, or pleasing gods, or accumulating virtue. It is about taking care of the quality of your experience, because that is all that is there in life. What else is life? Isn’t it a continuous series of experiences? Right? So, it’s as simple as this.
Somebody asks you, “What is the purpose of spirituality?” The purpose is, take care of experiences. Take care of experiences. Someone might say, “But one can have a great experience eating some snacks or visiting a new tourist destination.” Fine, you may try that, and you have already tried that, and you still remain unfulfilled.
And what does this lack of fulfillment point towards? What is lack of fulfillment? Experience. What else? So though I tried all kinds of diverse and colorful experiences, the reality is that my continuous experience is still that of remaining unfulfilled. Unfulfilled. Is it not?
Spirituality addresses that. Getting it?
So, the experiencer has to be seen. Seeing the experiencer is what is being called right. Acting blindly is what is being termed wrong. Nothing else. Nothing beyond that. No complications here. And when you are operating from the right center, then even if there is a particular way of operation which has been referred to as crawling, it is all right. And when you are operating from the wrong center, even if you seem to be flying, that won’t help you because the quality of experience would still not be something you can accept.
Our nature is joy. If the experience is not rooted in joy, then life is being wasted. Spirituality wants to prevent that waste from happening.
That’s all.
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. So, firstly, I want to thank you for writing this book. I’m sure many of us here need this, and I certainly needed this book. So, firstly, thank you.
I was just reading this book and there’s a chapter that struck me. I would like to quote it. There’s Chapter number 84, and it says, “We don’t love people, we love the ghost of our imagination, until reality shatters the dream.” I would like you to help me understand this.
But before that, I would like to quote some data here. According to NFHS, nearly 29% of married women have experienced spousal violence. According to NCRB data in 2022, family problems were the single largest cause of suicides in India. I repeat — single largest. And that’s not just in India. In the U.S., in 2023, they recorded 6 lakh 70 thousand divorce cases, and that’s a big number, 6 lakh 70 thousand.
So the question is: given this reality, why do we then still cling to the image of love that’s there in our head, in our mind?
Acharya Prashant: As long as you do not know who you are, you do not do anything. It’s almost like asking, “Why does the stone roll in that direction?” The stone doesn’t roll, it is kicked. We don’t do anything. We are forced.
But when a stone is kicked, it is very obvious, right? The event is there out in the open for all to see. The stone has been kicked and is rolling in that direction. But among human beings, things are subtler, though in the same dimension. What you call your choices are not your choices, you have been forced. But in an unconscious way, in a civilized way.
You are presenting this data. This data is something that, let’s say, this audience might have encountered for the first time, or for the third or fourth time at maximum. Do you hear of these things — facts, numbers, statistics, comparisons, data-gathering bodies and their names, very often in the media or anywhere? We don’t.
What is it that we are frequently made to experience? We are made to experience the romantic dream, right?
Listener: Fantasies.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, fantasies. If you look at India especially, the majority of the movies that we watch are about a man and a woman. When you are experiencing that movie, is there somebody alongside quoting this data to you? No, not at all.
So when you are just an unconscious piece of material like a stone, the direction that you take is not your own, but the resultant of the various forces that are acting on you, on us. Most of the time, most of the forces are acting with the purpose of making us believe in that very clichéd paradigm.
You grow up, you get education of some kind, mostly the dream is about professional education, right? And then you get married, and then you have kids, and that’s what is called a happy life. And that is repeated again and again and again and again and so very often that it just gets into you. It’s like the stone being kicked again and again in the same direction, and the stone has no volition of its own. The stone has no free will of its own. That’s where spirituality comes in. It’s not about adding something to yourself, it’s about coming alive. Otherwise, you are just a stone, just a stone subjected to the moods and fancies and vagaries of others, their kicks in particular. They just keep kicking us.
But that’s not how we would frame it or phrase it. Watching a movie or listening to your favorite romantic song in a loop, it would never occur to you that you are being kicked, and that too continuously in one direction. It won’t occur to you, right? You think of it as something soft, smooth, sweet, healing, soothing. And once you take it as sweet and soothing, you will subject yourself again and again to it.
And then, intermittently, even if you come across this data, this impact, this effort, this spraying of water on a sleeping person’s face will be largely ineffective. Those drops of water will be too few and far between. You won’t wake up. You have been lulled into a very compelling dream.
Even if somebody presents data to you right in your face, you look at it, be moved for a while, and then either ignore it or, worse still, even reject it. You may say, “This data has been compiled by forces that want to destroy the family system. They have been funded by aliens.” Right?
These data-compiling bodies, do you know who is funding them? Why are you so gullible? They are funded by those from Jupiter! Or you’ll be called an anti-national, or anti-this, or anti-that, or something anti-tradition. And you’ll say, “Yeah, when it’s already sweet and smooth, why take the pins?” Anyway, looking in this direction subjects me to unwanted nags and comments and such things. So, better keep going with the flow.
It’s not at all difficult to wake up from the dream. All that you need is facts.
And the facts in this age are readily available. Tell me one decision you want to take in life, you don’t even have to be subjective about it. Data is available because you’re not the first one about to take that decision. Millions before you, hundreds of generations before you, were faced with the same dilemma and had to make the same decision. They made that decision, and you can benefit from their experience.
All that data is available. Why don’t you just look up? But we won’t look up. Something within us already knows that looking up is dangerous. So we’ll just proceed as per impressions and beliefs. “I think this is a great thing to do. I think enrolling in that particular course is wonderful.” No you’re not the first one enrolling there, right? Look up what happened to those who enrolled there. What are they doing now?
Any critical thing in life, “I want to enter this industry. I want to go there. I want to do this. I want to practice this. I want to enjoy it. I want to get into that method of treatment of my disease.” Whatever it is, are you the first one? You know data is available. And with AI, not just data, but even analysis is available. Go for it. The risk of subjective bias will be greatly reduced, if not brought down to zero. Even AI might have some bias, but the bias that AI has is far, far lesser compared to the bias that an individual has.
Questioner: Thank you.
