Discipleship: The Door to the Highest
Acharya Prashant: A few things about discipleship here: one, discipleship is a ripening. It is valuable. It cannot arbitrarily come to anybody with any kind of mind or any kind of attitude. The Upanishadic tradition is full of worldly and materially successful and accomplished people going to the sages. We have to see that firstly these are talented and industrious people. They are successful kings and lords. They know the ways of the world. They know how to win the world. At least, they are not victims of others’ shrewdness and their own indolence or dullness.
These are the two things that prevent a person from being worldly successful, or rather make a person the slave of the world: first is, if you are so naive or ignorant or greedy that others overwhelm you, over-smart you, overpower you by either tempting you or by defeating you with their efficiency, and industriousness, effortfulness, or by simply making a fool of you, then this is the likely, first reason you are not successful in the world—others are able to deceive you. The second reason is inner. Inwardly, you are slothful, lazy, a victim to your own tendencies that no well-directed effort arises from you. So how will you do anything worthwhile in the world?
Now, it is not very significant that those who often came to the sages were kings. What is very significant is that those who came to the sages did not carry either of the two follies we just discussed. Two follies: one, they were not so naive that the world could take them for a ride. They knew the ways of Maya when they saw Maya in others, and two, they were not inwardly dull or lazy. They could see Maya in themselves as well.
So, these were people with a certain qualification, and, I repeat, their qualification is not that they were kings. Their qualification is that they knew Maya and were successful against it, at least to some extent. A bumbling idiot will not manage to stay king for long, or would he? So, if somebody is a king, we know that he holds at least a certain degree of mental sharpness, right? Even if we say that the fellow just happened to have the kingdom in patrimony because his father too was a king, yet he won’t be able to carry his inheritance for long, if he is an utter idiot. So, these are sharp people, sharp enough to manage the state, and also sharp enough to see what’s cooking within them, what’s empty and hollow and abegging within them. Do you see this particular combination?
We are talking of the disciple. We are trying to go into the mind of the right disciple. First thing: the right disciple cannot be the one who is tempted or scared or defeated easily by the world. And that’s why it holds significance that these people—you know, Shaunak and Janaka and many others—were kings. And the second thing about the disciple is that he sees that, “Well, I do succeed in the world, and I probably can succeed even more in the world, but it’s not all quite adding up. Something remains to be fulfilled within. I’m not someone who is so incompetent that he cannot even win a small, worldly battle. I am not that kind of a fellow. I do win battles, if not all, at least many of them, but it’s not sufficing. Not that I’m not winning battles.” That’s another kind of a problem: “I’m not succeeding at all in the world.” That’s another kind of a man. We are not saying that kind of a man is fit to be a disciple. This is a different person who says, “I am indeed winning in the world, if not everything, then at least a lot of things, but it’s not sufficing. At least the outer Maya , I’m able to defeat, resist.”
People come to a king with all kinds of shrewdness, and inner mechanisms, and deviousness. Don’t they? If you are a king, you know what kind of conspiracies are hatched against you, and all the palace intrigues, and such things. You’ve heard of them, right? So, the king has to be a sharp fellow, and he is a sharp fellow. He’s not sharp, he won’t last. But he also sees that for all his sharpness, sound sleep eludes him. He’s sharper than probably the rest of the world, yet not sharp enough for himself. Now that’s the problem. He’s sharp enough to beat the mechanisms of the outer world, yet something sits within that he is not quite able to make sense of, read, and defeat. This is the disciple. This is the kind of mind that is needed. Why is the first condition important? The first condition is important because if you are not able to even compete with the outer world, it will just pick and carry you away, and you can be carried away in two ways: one, you are blown away against your wish, almost kidnapped, and two, you’re tempted and lured away. There’s not much difference between the two. Somebody could forcibly just pick you up and take you away, if you are powerless. Equally, if you are powerless, you can be dangled a carrot and tempted away. This person is not fit to be a disciple.
That’s why we see a lot of kings in the Upanishadic narrative. The world will be able to neither overwhelm them nor tempt them, so you have to ask yourself, “Are you smart enough?” If the world is sly, you at least need to be smart enough to read the world’s slyness. Or would you match slyness with stupidity? Tell me, please. You need not match slyness with slyness, but you at least need to be smart enough to know slyness where it exists. And slyness never comes announcing its name, or does it? Will shrewdness declare itself? Will the fox come and say, “I am so wily,” to the chicken it intends to pick up? No.
You need to have the smarts to see slyness behind its disguise. The disguise is slyness. Is it not? If it is not disguised, it has no power. So, that stereotype, if it exists at all in some of us, has to be challenged and broken. Which stereotype? That says that the man of scriptures, the spiritual man is a simpleton—not possible. Simplicity is a great virtue, but it is not what we think it to be. There is a great difference between innocence and ignorance. The ignorant mind cannot even see Maya and, therefore, remains happily blissful, so you say, “Ignorance is bliss,” right?
That bliss is, obviously, both temporary and dangerous. That’s the bliss of the drunkard, happily lying on the railway track, thinking it’s his bedroom—happy! The happiness won’t last; it’s temporary, and this happiness would lead to his destruction—dangerous. True simplicity exceeds cunningness. It reads cunningness and remains untouched by it. It is extremely important to be able to read cunningness. And if you can read cunningness, you won’t be a victim to it. True simplicity reads cunningness, smiles at it, and doesn’t feel obliged to reciprocate in cunningness. There is no reactionary cunningness that arises from simplicity and innocence. That’s a very different thing from, I repeat, not reading or sensing or detecting cunningness at all; that’s very different.
Usually, we have only two kinds of people. One, who cannot even see Maya where it exists and, therefore, remain happy, like our drunkard: “There is no Maya . I am happy. My life is cool. I have a nice life, nice neighbors, nice everything. The sunlight is so nice. My job is so nice. My family is so nice. My bed is so nice. Oh, what’s that? Whistle—no, no, that’s probably some video game my little johnny is playing. No, no, that’s not the train approaching on the tracks. No, no, no! I’m on my bed, what kind of train are you dreaming of? There’s no train. I’m happy.” A particular kind of people, right? You know them. You meet them. They just don’t see any evil anywhere. For them, evil is fiction. For them, evil is in the movies. That done-up and made-up caricature of a villain, they think he is evil.
So, ask them, “Who is evil?” and they will say, “Well, that demon with ten heads.” Because they live very gross lives, therefore they cannot see the subtle evil where it exists. Evil to them has to be a gross entity, so gross that it announces itself by carrying ten heads. Now, come on, will the evil one ever announce himself so loudly that he’ll declare, show, proclaim his ten heads to you and laugh as the villains do: “Hahahaha?" And because there is no such person they can see around, they declare there is no evil, because the evil is supposed to carry ten heads, and has to be loud, and must laugh in a very sinister way. You don’t see any such person around, so they say, “There’s no evil. Life is cool.” Such people are not fit to be disciples. And then there is the next category of people who see evil and are taken in by evil— taken in by evil not necessarily in the sense that they become evil—that they become reactionaries. Evil manages to induce shrewdness in them. Now, even these people are not fit to be disciples.
Evil can consume you in two ways. One is, you look at evil, and you find it beautiful, some people do. They are captivated by the sheer charm of evil: “Wow!” Aren’t the dons in the movies sometimes very charming? In fact, the most charming characters in the movies, in the last few decades have been all underworld dons. Scan your memory. Many of them, at least, if not all. I am entitled to exaggerate a bit, am I not? Can you recall some of those charming dons? And we don’t call them black. We say, you know, those are characters in grey. So, evil can be very charming. Or you can be so put off by evil, so incited by evil that you decide to turn evil to avenge evil. That’s another way in which the evil overpowers you. “The world has done so much wrong to me. The evil has done so much wrong to me, therefore, I will turn evil to avenge myself.” This person is also not entitled to be a disciple.
Those who cannot see evil are the first ones to be disqualified. Those who see evil and find it cute or worth idolizing, they are the next to be disqualified. And then the ones who resist evil by turning evil are the next in the queue.
Simplicity is about seeing evil, seeing Maya , and walking past it: “How do you do, lady? Have a nice day. I have work to do. Can’t just stand and gossip with you. And I know you, auntie. Don’t feign a face. Drop that mask. I know you. To keep you in good humor I’ll say, ‘You are cute.’ That doesn’t mean I’ll fall to your charms. Good day, lady. Take care of yourself. I don’t value you so much that I’ll stop in my tracks to hug you. I won’t stop even to abuse you. I know you. Get this—won’t embrace you, won’t abuse you, I just know you. Just know you.” That’s simplicity. That’s innocence. The knowing element is paramount. Unfortunately, most of us just don’t know Maya . You’re sitting ducks then. If you don’t know Maya , that gives you no protection, that only gives you a certain righteousness. With a sense of uprightness, you manage to claim to others that you are not one of her victims or stooges, but that doesn’t save you. You may not have consciously embraced her, but subconsciously you have fallen to her because you do not know her. In fact, so pathetic is your defeat that you do not even know that you have been defeated. She has overpowered you, and you do not even know you have been captivated, so it’s no excuse. All it can give you is some moral kind of ego boost: “Well, you know, in my knowledge I have never done any wrong.” Now, your knowledge itself is so narrow, so blind. Outside your knowledge, you have always been wrong. In your subconscious ignorance, you have been doing all kinds of stupid things and partaking in evil, how will you be saved from the consequences just by offering this kind of a lame excuse: ‘I did not do it consciously?' So what? You did it.
Now and only now, only when the external world does not hold much power over you, you truly come to realize that there is something amiss within. You cannot have an inner focus if the external is taking away all your energy and attention. Only when the external world becomes irrelevant to you, that you are able to hear the murmurs from within. I said ‘irrelevant.' I did not say you have to be an outright winner. What do you mean by irrelevance? Walking past. When you walk past something, you have made it irrelevant to yourself. Only when you come to that condition when you know evil and walk past evil, you have made the evil irrelevant. It does not hold any meaning or significance to you anymore.
Now is the time when you can listen to the internal noises. Now is the time you can go to the sage. Again, a disclaimer here: listening to the internal voices, if you respond with an assertion that you will be able to defeat these internal problems just as you are able to defeat the external enemies, again, you are not fit to be a disciple. So many conditions, you see. Very few people, first of all, come to see that there is a problem within, for the most problems exist with-out. And the problems that exist externally can be of many kinds, we talked of them.
We said one problem is that you do not see any evil, the other problem is that you are charmed by evil, other problem is that you become evil to face evil, and there can be many other sub-variants of these things. The one who is able to somehow walk past the external chaos manages to hear the squabbling voices within. Again, there is something to be avoided—the confidence that the same faculty that enabled you to be a winner externally will be able to help you prevail over the internal problems.
“I’m a great man. I have wealth. I have power. I have success in business and so many other things. If you can manage all that, surely, I can also manage myself. I know the world, I know my mind. I’m a self-made person. If I could win it all without any help, and there were so many others to be won, I prevailed over all of them without much help from anybody, why do I require any help in winning the one person who sits within?” If you lend your weight to this argument, then again you cannot be a disciple.
It’s a very peculiar combination—a great fighter externally and very humble internally, knowing fully well that no problem outside is insurmountable and realizing that the problem within requires transcendental guidance. This is the disciple. These two things have to coexist: one, no problem outside is insurmountable—insurmountable in the sense that there is no problem in the external world that cannot be exceeded. In the external world, many a time, beyond-ness is victory.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, evil charms you, and it also puts you in a difficult state, as you said. So, does it not happen to the same person, simultaneously where in one segment of the world, it charms and in another segment, it says that the world is evil?
Acharya Prashant: You can imagine a huge person in front of a little child, a huge person with long arms, each arm much longer than the child’s entire height, and what does he do? With his left arm, he slaps the kid. Pretty long arm—slaps, and the child runs away. And with the right arm (the other arm) he offers him a toffee, a candy, a sweet, something. And after a while, he slaps him with the right arm, and then the child runs to this (the other arm). And what is the child thinking? “I’m escaping one person and going to a totally different person. This person who slapped me was my enemy, and the one I’m going to is my friend.”
What the child doesn’t see is that the two ends of this duality are one, and this is true of each and every duality—all you see is the two palms or hands or arms, you do not see how they become one, and how they are operated from a single centre. You feel as if these two are two different centres. No, these aren’t two different centres. They have a common centre — here (pointing towards the head). So, you run from here to here (pointing from one arm to another), you have actually not gone away anywhere. You are very much in the middle of the trap. This is the centre, here (pointing towards the head). The child is us and his running to and fro is the entire world—performing simple harmonic motion.
It’s very difficult to see in your moments of pleasure, that pleasure is pain, but if you can cultivate this practice, it will help you a lot, believe me. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by excitement—the so-called positive excitement: “Something good is happening to me or is about to happen to me,”—in that moment, in that very moment, remind yourself, “I’m preparing for a disaster. I’ll be hit very badly.” The more you find yourself excited by pleasure, in that moment tell yourself, “This is going to hit me really hard and very badly, very badly.”
Take your foot off the accelerator. The speed, the revving of the engine, it all depends on you, mind you. None of it happens totally without your permission. You may not have built or designed the car. You may find yourself accidentally seated behind the wheel, but still, you are the one with the foot on the pedal. That inner accelerator is yours. You decide how much to fire the engine. And when you are feeding it fuel, when you are firing it all up, that’s just the moment to remind yourself, “It will hit very badly. This will come back to haunt me. I’ll pay very dearly for this. I’m preparing for an equal intensity of pain.” You know, choose your dialogue, inner one. Mine is, ‘It is going to hit very hard.’
It happens that there are days when the world is just all pink, so beautiful, only nice things are happening to you, and you just feel like getting carried away. I mean, life is giving you so much, why not just take it? Why merely take it, just gobble it before it disappears. You know it happens, does it not? It’s yours to be taken. Just jump at it. Arrest yourself in your tracks. Apply the inner brakes, or just say, “No,” (turning his head in revulsion) as you say to a nagging kid. It’s very similar to “Om! No, no. Not again. Not again.” Otherwise—(motioning from one arm to the other).
They say the law has long arms, they don’t know Maya . She holds the entire universe in her two palms. She is the directions. The moment you say ‘directions’, you are talking in duality, aren’t you? Maya is directions. Maya is all kinds of linearity. Maya is all dualities. Maya is everything that carries an opposite. Maya is everything that is! So, if ever you feel besotted, that’s just the time to check yourself, and it will happen only with practice. It requires discipline. Just when you are about to plunge into the pleasure pool—you know, you have torn and thrown away all your clothes and the pleasure pool beckons, and you’re running to it and about to dive—that’s when you must come to a screeching halt. I know how inwardly tortuous it must be to apply those inner brakes right in the moment of pleasure. But what if it is not a pleasure pool but the edge of a cliff, won’t you apply the brakes? You’re running towards this edge (indicating the edge of the table). You’re perceiving that beyond this lies the pool of unmitigated pleasure, “Wow! Let me just plunge.” What if you, in the moment, realize that this is a blind valley, this is an abyss without a base? What if you realize that you won’t emerge intact, the thing is just bottomless? What if you realize that? Won’t you apply the brakes? That’s the moment.
Be extremely discreet in your pleasures. Not that pleasures are forbidden, indiscretion is forbidden. Apply the brakes, stand there, watch the pool, inquire into it. Most of the times, inquiry will evaporate the charm. The moment you just stand still and investigate, you’ll find the charm, the attraction is all gone. But if the attraction can still remain in spite of the investigation, if the charm can hold its own in spite of the inquiry, if you can perceive a beauty that surpasses pleasure, then proceed—you won’t sink, you will fly. But never without pausing and inquiring, never!
So, Angiras (Angiras or Angira was a Vedic rishi (sage) of Hinduism) says in verse 4: “Twofold is the knowledge that must be known, of which the knowers of Brahm tell: higher knowledge and lower knowledge.”
What has Shaunak asked? “Tell me that which encapsulates all knowledge.”
What does Angiras say? “Knowers of Brahm talk of two kinds of knowledge: higher and lower.”
To him thus spoke Angiras, “Twofold is the knowledge that must be known, of which the knowers of Brahm tell: higher and lower knowledge.”
Verse 5: “Of which the lower,” Be very attentive. Look at what is contained in the realm of lower knowledge or Avidya or Aparavidya : “Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda , chanting, rituals, grammar etymological interpretations, prosody, astronomy. “Kalp, vyakarana, nirukt, chhand, jyotish and all the four Vedas. All this is just lower knowledge.”
And this is what the Upanishads are saying, and that is why the Upanishads are just so pure and so beautiful. The Upanishads are part of the Vedas. And the Vedas, through the Upanishads, are saying, “We are lower knowledge.” Look at the wisdom, and look at the humility. Vedas, through the Upanishads, are saying, “You know, we are lower knowledge,” and they are not employing symbolism to put this across. Here, they are as forthright as possible. They are leaving no ambiguity, no possibility of misinterpretation, otherwise, the religious ones would gladly take the ambiguity and interpret it to say, “No, no, the Vedas are not really saying that they are lower knowledge,” so, the sage has kept it very direct here, very unambiguous.
