How does the ego drop? || Acharya Prashant, on ‘The Prophet’ by Khalil Gibran (2018)
“Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache. It is not a garment that I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.”
~Khalil Gibran
Questioner (Q): Please help me understand the meaning of “It is not a garment that I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.” And also I feel it in the same way in our day-to-day life, though that skin gives us pain but still we cling to it, as apart from that we don’t know anything about ourselves. Can’t it be so that we shed our skins like a snake, involuntarily?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You know why Khalil Gibran had to make this distinction. He said it is not a garment that I cast off but skin that I tear. Identification is involved, pain is involved, difficulty is involved. You are not just keeping something aside, you are keeping a part of you aside. That's what he means when he says that to keep one's longing away, one has to go through a lot of pain. You have asked, why must there be so much pain involved in giving up the unnecessary, in giving up the skin, in peeling off the skin? You are saying that “Can’t we just do it as the snakes do it—easily, periodically, necessarily and involuntarily?
You may do it as the snakes do it, but then, do remember that snakes even after casting off their skins a hundred times, still remain just snakes. So, what’s the point? You don’t want to continue with your snake-ness, do you? What is the point in deceiving oneself with actions? That would not really take you ahead. What is the point in keeping something aside, putting something away, sacrificing something, or dropping something? That was anyway not very important or central or essential to you. What is the point in giving that up, which anyway is going to be lost because of the dictates of time, like the worn out and broken skin of a snake?
