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

नाना मतं महर्षीणां साधूनां योगिनां तथा । दृष्ट्वा निर्वेदमापन्नः को न शाम्यति मानवः ॥

nānā mataṃ maharṣīṇāṃ sādhūnāṃ yogināṃ tathā dṛṣṭvā nirvedamāpannaḥ ko na śāmyati mānavaḥ

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.

~ Ashtavakra Gita, Chapter 9, Verse 5

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Questioner (Q): We go to saints and sages because we are suffering and ignorant. Saints have different opinions and teach different methods. If someone asks me, “How do you know he is a realized master?” how can I answer? I’m already ignorant and I don’t have clarity; that’s why I’m going to them.

How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge? How can I judge his words to be true or false? If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity or innocence, I’m labeled as a blind believer. What should I do?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is all spirituality about? If I were to ask you, in one sentence as briefly as possible, what is the objective, the purpose of all spirituality, what would it be?

Q: Peace, getting rid of suffering.

AP: Whose suffering?

Q: My suffering, the suffering of ‘I’.

AP: So, the objective of all spirituality is the annihilation of the ‘I’, the ego. Simple. It is the ego that suffers, so it is not the suffering, really, that you want to get rid of but the sufferer itself. As long as the sufferer is there, how is it possible to not suffer?

Now, with this in mind, approach this verse.

“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.”

Whatsoever you see is a projection of the seer. Basics. And spirituality is not about what you see but about the…?

Q: Seer.

AP: Seer. Is spirituality about commenting on and judging what you see, or is it about the seer?

Q: The seer.

AP: It is about the seer, right? So, if it is about the seer, how would you ever know that somebody is a great sage, saint, or yogi? That’s difficult. The fact of the matter here is, we do not really know who is a great sage, who is a great saint, who is a great yogi. But we go by the ego’s usual method of determining what is what.

How does the child know basic things, very very basic things? For example, how does the baby know who her mother is?

Q: She is told.

AP: She is told. That’s bad. She has just emerged from the womb after nine months, and yet she needs to be told who her mother is. Do not tell her who her mother is and she has no way to find out. Take her to another mother, another lady who would nurse her, and the baby would easily take the other lady as the mother.

That’s how blind the ego is. Now, no point asking you how do you know who your father is. How do you know who your father is? You just do not know. You have been told. When we do not even know who our mother is without being told, how would we ever know who our father is? When we do not even know who our worldly father is, how would we know who the real father is?

So, we do not know. But still we know. How do we know? Because we have been told. And that is how we know who a great sage is. But we find it very difficult to accept that even the fundamentals in our life are dictated by others; that we do not really authentically and originally know anything.

We say, “Oh, the kid and the mother are inseparable. At least the infant and the mother are inseparable.” Don’t we say that? But even that is such a lie. The infant emerges from the mother, and take the infant to another nursing mother, and the infant would be happily busy suckling. Would the infant complain? Not at all! In fact, if the infant’s own mother, biological mother cannot feed her and the other woman can feed him or her, then the infant would rather prefer the other mother.

We do not know anything. But it is so very disgusting to accept such helplessness and such ignorance. So, we pretend that we know. “We know, we know!” And that’s how we also know who a great saint is, who a great yogi is.

Even those who are not students of science today, they would say, “Oh, we know that the Earth goes around the sun!” Do they really know? The fact is they just don’t know; it’s just social opinion. It is not scientific; it is social. And therefore, it is actually a superstition. For 99% people of the world, it is actually a superstition that the Earth goes around the sun. Why is it a superstition? Because they don’t know, they have just believed. And therefore, they can be easily converted into believing that the sun and the moon go around the Earth. You only require some forceful and convincing speaker, and you can easily convince them.

We do not know anything. How do you know that you must go to school? Please tell me. How do you know that you must marry? But it is really really terrible, dreadful to think of these things. The very fundamentals of life will start shaking. The foundations are shivering; the building will collapse. So, we don’t even want to go into these things, and therefore we live in contradictions. When you really know, then there is no contradiction.

See, what do you call a contradiction? I take this as true (raises left hand) ; I take this as true (raises right hand) , and these two don’t agree with each other (brings hands together) , and then I say, “Oh my god. I have a contradiction.” But contradictions can’t exist, can they? Because there are no two Truths. Even if Truth is expressed in two different ways, the two different ways cannot but agree with each other.

But because we do not know, therefore for us this is true, this is true, this is true, this is true, and none of them agree with each other. That does not mean that they are true and still they don’t reconcile. That merely means that you do not know whether any of them is true or whether one of them is true or whether Truth exists at all.

And therefore, this line has to be seen in its real meaning. “Differences of opinions among the great sages, saints, and yogis.” To whom are these differences of opinions? These differences of opinions are to you. Why? Because it is you who has labeled this one as a great sage, this one as a great yogi, this one as a great prophet, this one as a great avatar. And how have you labeled them? Without knowing.

So, you can just label anybody as a great one. You can label anybody as a great one, and then to you their opinions will not match with each other, and then you will say, “Oh! Their opinions are not matching with each other whereas they are all true!” The fact is, first of all, to you it appears that their opinions are not matching. Secondly, to you they are all great—are they really great? Do you really know that they are great? How do you know? How do you know that they are great?

To most people, great saints are great. Just as kids talk of ‘Akbar the Great’ and ‘Ashoka the Great’. Without even having properly gone through their textbooks, they keep talking of ‘Akbar the Great’ and ‘Ashoka the Great’. Do you really know that Ashoka was great? Do you really know that Akbar was great? Maybe you could not meet them, but at least you could have gone through the textbooks properly. That’s how we declare who is a great and who is not. And then when we find differences in opinions, we are puzzled.

First of all, to have an opinion, you must understand what they are saying. Even before that, you must know whether they are worthy of being read at all. So, look at the multi-layered ignorance. You go to someone without knowing whether he is worth going to. Then you read him, and you don’t properly read him: you read two and a half paragraphs—that’s the entire literature that you have read from most greats—and then you form an opinion about that person.

First of all, it is not certain whether that person was worth reading. Secondly, you did not even read him properly! And then, thirdly, you make an opinion. And fourthly, you try to reconcile this opinion with the opinion that you have of another great. And how did you go to another great? Following the same process that you followed with this great.

So, neither do you know this one, nor do you know that one. But still you have opinions about both and when they don’t tally, then you feel victimized. “You know, all saints are supposed to say the same thing. They are all one. They are all family.” Like the little homely Hindu temple, where you keep fifty idols all next to each other. “They are all one, so let me just take the pooja ki thali (tray used in a religious rite) and fifty of them there!”

Little devī (goddess), big deva (deity), there is Shiva , there is Ganesha , there is Durga , there is some ishtdeva (favorite deity) also belonging to your ancestral village, and the old canal from Akbar the Great’s times. And forty such idols are kept. You do not know any of them. But what do you do daily? How do you know that all forty of them are worth worshipping? How do you know that even one of them is worth worshipping? But you take all of them as the same.

I will not offend myself by taking names, but people come over and they say, “I am a big fan, I am a big fan, I am a big fan, and I am a big fan!” And then they say, “You know what? All of you guys are painstakingly working to uplift the collective consciousness of the world!” All of you guys, huh?

And then they will take ten names: “Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten; swami-this, gurudeva-this, falaana-this, dhikaana-this, sadhguru-this; this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this—and you! And you! All of you together are working in the same direction!”

(Puts hand on cheek expressing amusement)

The little-quaint-Hindu-homely puja ghar (a place with idols of worship in a Hindu home)—forty idols at one place! I won’t be surprised if you worshipped Rama (a hero in Ramayana ) and Ravana (an antagonist in Ramayana ) together as well!

What similarity did you find between what I say and what that swami says? The thing is, neither do you understand me, nor do you understand that swami. So, you keep thinking that all of them are saying the same thing.

All my fight is against the swamis and the gurus. I am not fighting the commoners. Have you still not understood? I am not fighting the commoners because they anyway do not cause much damage. It is the gurus, the teachers, the swamis, the saints, the sages, the big names, the big brands that I am fighting against. They are the ones who are responsible for so much mischief, misery, suffering, superstition.

But you put all together in that one pooja ghar and worship them together: “Oh, they are all one!” And you are all right as long as you can worship them together. The trouble starts when for some reason, somebody reveals to you that they are different. And then you can’t figure out—like in this verse—how there can be a difference of opinion between great sages.

“The differences of opinions among the great sages, saints, and yogis.”

Now, you have a problem. You say, “But all of them are the same! One baba (old man) with daadi (beard), another baba with daadi! One baba using words like suffering and Truth and yoga, and another baba also using words like suffering and Truth and yoga. So, they are all the same!” That’s the thing with not having mathematical precision in spirituality.

So, there is somebody who is saying a2 + b2 is c2, and there is another one who is saying a + b = c3. And you feel both of them are saying the same thing because both of them are talking the language of a, b, and c. You do not see with precision that they are not saying the same thing. They are not saying the same thing! I’m not saying what your swamis and gurus and great sages have said. That does not mean that I stand against them. That does not mean that I stand opposite to them. It’s just that you will not find me tallying with them.

Occasionally, I might tally with them. But equally occasionally, I will not tally with them. I don’t have much to do with them. Sometimes you would find a coincidental match. Equally at other times, you will find a coincidental mismatch. Do not try to come to conclusions. Because there are no patterns here.

Sometimes I will praise some of the so-called greats, and I will lavishly praise them. But sometimes, I will have to condemn them whole-heartedly. Actually, when I’ll have to condemn them, then I’ll try to simply ignore and not do the dirty work. But still, there would be occasions when I’ll have no option but to come out and condemn.

Then you will send me this verse and say, “You know, how can there be differences of opinions among the great saints, sages, and yogis?”

“…who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace.”

Indifference to ‘such things’ as what? Is spirituality about being indifferent to this and that? No. Spirituality is fundamentally about being indifferent to yourself.

It is not others that you have to be cautious of. You have to be cautious of that within you which gets influenced by others, which does not know others but gets influenced by others. It does not live in knowing. It lives in indoctrination.

It is all right to have a relationship with others. But what kind of relationship? Is the relationship of realization, or is the relationship of proselytization? What are you doing with the other? Knowing him, or imaging and imagining him? There is a great difference here. How are you relating to the other? Are you relating to the other, or to the image of the other?

Now, you have asked, “How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge? How can I judge his words to be true or false?” How does a patient know the doctor? Basics! Where are you? What are you doing? Which doctor do you thank? The most reputed one in the town, or the one who is curing you?

Q: The one who is curing you.

AP: After delivering the baby, to whom does the mother go? To the great hospital in the town, or to the one doctor who helped her?

But the great hospital is so very reputed and imposing. It’s a multi-specialty hospital and it is also quite expensive. It’s just that it didn’t take you in. It was of no use to you. Was that great brand, great hospital of any use to you? Have they been of use to you so far? And I ask that to everybody who is listening to me right now. Have the big ones been of use to you? If they have not been of use to you, why do you even call them big ones? How are they big if they are not useful?

Now, you will say, “Oh, instead of being spiritual, you are being polemical. Instead of being supportive, you are being disruptive!” Yes, I am being disruptive. The doctor’s task is to disrupt the pattern of the disease.

Have some love towards yourself. How can somebody be great if he has not been able to help you? And if you’ll go deeply into it, it is not even about that person. It is about your own world and the images that you have of that person. And it is against that image that I talk of.

When you do not even know me well—in spite of me being with you since probably a year or more now—you obviously do not know the greats of the past; you were never with them. But still you claim that you know them. What do you know in fact? An image. I am disrupting, therefore, not that person but his image. The image that you carry of him is false, but you worship that image. Not only do you worship that image, you also call the image as the person. I have no intention of attacking any person because the person is anyway gone. And the person might have really done a lot of good.

The person is gone. What is it that remains with you? An image. Because most of us are lousy. We do not even work hard enough to know what or how the person really was. What do we carry? We carry juvenile images, moth-eaten images. And then we live by those images.

We have definite images about who Shri Krishna was, about who Shri Rama was, about who Jesus was, about who this particular teacher was, about how that particular teacher was, and we have ideas and stories. There are so many people who have never even touched the Gita, but they still carry images about Shri Krishna, and they want to live by those images. I want to attack that image. That image is false.

Go close to the Gita and then you will discover who Sri Krishna really was. The image that you are carrying is a false and useless image, it will not help you. That image is just an extension of your own ego. How will it help you? But that’s how the ego is. It does not want to go to the Gita, but it wants to maintain that it loves Krishna. What kind of love is this? How many people bother to really respect the Gita and read it? Very few, very very few. But so many people claim that they love and respect Shri Krishna! Now, this is hypocrisy.

I’m attacking the image of gods and teachers and prophets that you carry because those images are false. Those images are false because, first of all, you have no originality, you have no meditativeness, and all your knowledge is second hand. Secondly, even if you were not meditative, you could have at least gone to the original scriptures.

There are two ways of knowing. The best way is to know through one’s own meditativeness; the next best way is to learn from the scriptures. You neither know through your own meditativeness nor are you hard-working enough to give time to the scriptures, but you still have opinions! How do you have those opinions? By listening to this and that.

Either be so meditative that all the knowledge contained in the Upanishads starts arising from your own heart—that can happen—or at least be honest and diligent enough to read the Upanishads.

But neither are we meditative, nor are we diligent. We still claim that the Upanishads are wonderful, and we maintain an image of the Upanishads. How? By listening to the neighbor. The neighbor says that Upanishads are great, so they must be great. And the neighbor has told a few other things about the Upanishads, and that’s how we carry that pretty picture: “Oh, this is how the Upanishads are.” I want to attack that picture. I want you to really go to the Upanishads. Either really go to the Upanishads, or at least don’t say that you know the Upanishads; at least don’t pretend that you respect them; at least don’t start randomly quoting the Upanishads.

So, some random story you would bring from an Upanishad, and then you will try to make opinions and conclusions based on that story. Now, how will you be able to derive any meaning from that story if you have not read the scripture? And no Upanishad is greatly tedious to read; they are very very precise documents. And some of them indeed do contain stories.

So, you pick up a story from an Upanishad without knowing what that Upanishad is really about, without knowing what Vedanta is really about, and then from that story you come to some conclusion. How are you coming to that conclusion? Have you worked hard enough? Is your meditativeness telling you the essence of that story? No.

Secondly, have you read a few Upanishads? All right. Have you read even that particular Upanishad from where the story is coming from? No, not even that much. But you will quote that story, and from that story you want to arrive to conclusions. This is disgusting.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to deal so much in parables. But without either being Ramakrishna, or at least reading sufficiently about Ramakrishna, how do you randomly quote one of his parables? But people do that because his small stories are sweet, very sweet. But the essence of those stories would be apparent only to somebody like Ramakrishna who is in love with Ma (mother). If you are not in love with Kali (goddess of death), how would you know what Ramakrishna is saying through that story? But you have no concern, no respect, no veneration, no heartful feeling for the Mother, and still you want to quote Ramakrishna’s story. Some little parable about two birds, a crow and a swan. And when you will quote that, not only will you misinterpret, you will willfully misinterpret to serve your own purpose. And that’s how we use spiritual literature, especially the stories.

You know what’s worse? Not only do we use those stories to suit our ego, we often actively distort those stories. Swami Vivekananda is one name that has been very frequently used to spread all kinds of nonsensical propaganda.

So, the story will begin with: “Swami Vivekananda was travelling through Manchuria.” When exactly did he go to Manchuria? In the name of biographical accounts, fiction is circulating. All kinds of nonsense is being tagged along with the name ‘Swami Vivekananda’.

Did Swami Vivekananda ever say that? Do you want to check out? Don’t you want to check first? And the best way to really know what did Swami Vivekananda say is to be a Swami Vivekananda because even if you fully know what he did, your knowledge would still be incomplete. Knowledge is never complete. Even if you have great knowledge about Swami Vivekananda, still you can come to erroneous conclusions because knowledge is always insufficient. Knowledge does not really know.

But if you are a Swami Vivekananda, then you would never fail in reading the essence of his words or his accounts or stories. Then you would always be precisely correct. The story would come to you and you would hit the jackpot.

Be a Swami Vivekananda and then you will know. And if you say that you cannot immediately be Swami Vivekananda, then at least make the efforts of going through his literature; going through his original literature, not articles on Swami Vivekananda, not what somebody says about Swami Vivekananda, but go through what he himself really said. Read his biography, see where he went, see in what conditions he lived. That’s the way.

There was one message circulating a couple of years back I suppose. The message read: “Mobile phone and TV are the bane of India’s youth. India can never shine till its youth give up on the usage of, or rather the excessive usage of mobile phone and television.”

Quote-unquote, Swami Vivekananda.

(Laughter)

Swami Vivekananda! So, Swami Vivekananda said that India’s youth is suffering because of excessive usage of…?

Q: Smartphones.

AP: Mobile phone and television. And then after this message, the sender had written a huge and emotional description of how really harmful social media and TV serials are.

And this is a story that is even objectively false. Here you can at least demonstrate that falseness is happening. But what happens when you pick up a genuine story from the Upanishads or from Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and then use it in your own way? Do you know the context? Do you understand the source from where it is coming? All you have is images.

You are saying, “If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity or innocence”—what? Do you know what simplicity is? Do you know what innocence is? What is simplicity? To live half-naked? To roam around in a loincloth? What is innocence? To have a face that resembles that of a kid? What is simplicity and what is innocence? You are saying, “If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity or innocence…”

Some of the members of this audience are in a YouTube volunteering group where they are responding to the comments that the wider audience makes on my videos. They would only read the sanitized comments. They would only read the approved comments. What they would not read is the comments that are deleted. And one of the most common comments amongst the ones that are deleted is: “This man is evil! He is shrewd, wicked!” Come up with a few more synonymous words please! Just as you know somebody to be simple and innocent, there are equally smart audiences as you who claim that they know that this man here (points to himself) is the epitome of wickedness.

Do you really know what is innocence? Do you really know what is guilt? Do you really know what is shrewdness? How do you know? Is there any curse word that they do not use for me? It starts with *‘ye aadmi paagal hai’*—’this man is mad’—and then they take pleasure in, you know, describing my entire family and extended family. And they are just as confident as you are.

In your world, I probably appear innocent. I do not know whether you used it for me, I’m just, you know, maybe misinterpreting you or taking you for granted. Maybe you used it only for the other greats who look very innocent. I obviously do not look innocent to you. I keep scolding you and…

There is no day when somebody does not threaten to physically annihilate me on some social media or the other. It’s just that you never get to read those comments because they are purged away.

How do you know? And I have told how to know.

How to know? See who is treating your disease. How do you know a doctor? Not by his degrees but by his ability to treat you.

In the physical world, the degrees are at least a rudimentary indicator. In the spiritual world, degrees are not even a rudimentary indicator.

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