Acharya Prashant: The spiritual soldier, the religious warrior has to be extremely intelligent. You could go to the extent of saying that he has to be cunning in the service of Truth; I’m choosing this word with all deliberation.
He has to be cunning in the service of the Truth; cunning enough to beat the most cunning ones. The difference between the cunningness of the two is that - all the cunning ones have cunningness at their core; the soldier of Truth has Truth at his core and cunningness at the service of Truth. Are you getting it? Just go to the battle of Mahabharata, there are so many occasions when Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna, “This is not the time to pick-up Droṇā; just obediently, respectfully go past him. Today is not the day Arjuna, don’t pick-up this battle.” and then He tells, “Droṇā won’t give up his arms so easily; has to be Aśvatthāmā hatā, narovā kuñjarovā.”
First of all, you have to have Kṛṣṇa at your centre, and if you have Kṛṣṇa at your centre, use Maya very liberally. That’s what my teacher (Kabir Saheb) says:
जा ठग ने ठगनी ठगी, ता ठग को आदेश।
Ja ṭhag ne ṭhagnī ṭhagī, ta ṭhag ko ādeś.
She (Maya) cheats all but she can be cheated. No need to remain a simpleton. The image that we carry of the Prophets, the Saints, the Sages, the Rishis is very misleading. The way they have been presented to us is very conducive to our falsenesses and darknesses. We have been told that they were fellows who really did not have much to do with what was going on in the society. Almost like handicapped grandfathers at home who can do little, except dispense sage council, right? That’s what all the oldies do at home – octogenarians, and nonagenarians; the fellow is 94, what else can he do? He sits all day and talks; well, to the extent possible. That’s how we have painted our sages, right? They were the ones who were not capable of doing much but they kept on talking of all the nice things in life. They kept dispensing moral values probably – you should be good, as he said
