‘Speak to Us of Houses' by Kahlil Gibran
Question: In the book, ‘The Prophet’, the protagonist wants to got to his home, his people are calling out for him.
Acharya Ji, what is ‘this home’, ‘his people’, and ‘journey back home’?
Acharya Prashant: ‘Home’ is where you are. ‘Outside’ is where you think you are.
‘Home’ is, where you are. ‘Outside’ is where you think you are.
Do you get the difference?
You are always in Home, but there are some people who open their eyes and see that they are always at Home. And there are some people, who are in the Home, and yet they keep sleeping and dreaming that they are somewhere far away.
And not only are they dreaming that they are somewhere far away, they are actually planning, of course in their dreams, to go further far away. That is the ‘Home’ that Khalil Gibran is talking of – where you really are.
And you can never go away from that Home. That Home is ‘you’. You are always homed. You are always at Home. It is impossible to be anywhere else. It is just that you don’t know that.
You think you are away from Home.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, why do these people call him?
Acharya Prashant: We will have to look at this. When you say ‘these people’, it appears that there are many people at Home.
It is not as if there are ‘many’ people at Home.
In your dreams, what you see is ‘many’. All occurrence of ‘many’, is a dream. There are no ‘many’, except in dreams. To the extent we perceive many people sitting in this room, we are dreaming. However, among these people that you see in your dream, some call out. After all, you only dream of what you know. Dreams do not come from anywhere else.
Some of these people in your dreams, you know them. They belong so much to your past, that they belong to the beginning of time. They belong to the Source of time itself in that dream. You know them, because they are your very past, your very Source.
In that very dream, where there are many people, some of these people call out to you. They call out to you, to wake up.
Have you not noticed, and I am saying something new today, that some dreams have the power to wake you up? Have you not noticed that when you fell down a cliff in your dream, you suddenly wake up?
Have you not noticed that?
Now, it’s a very dangerous thing to say, because the mind will misuse it. The mind will say, “Yes I am dreaming, but this is a very useful dream.” I don’t want to say that, but you raised it, so I am saying this. So, some of these people, they call out in the dream.
Remember, they are not really ‘people’. They are not really ‘people’. To the extent, they are only characters in a dream.
Questioner: Isn’t it the Source manifesting itself in the dream?
Acharya Prashant: You are the Source. You are Source. And that is why you know those people. And that is the only reason why they can be there in the dreams, because there is intimacy at a deep level. The other people that you know, your relation with them is only very superficial.
But, there are these ‘people’, and your relation with them is very-very deep. They are coming right from that Source, from where you come. They are identical to you. They are just the same as you. They call out. And they call out in a way, in which the dream can be broken.
That’s what he is referring to.
Questioner: But in this dream only, he talks about many things, and says most of the times some existential truth exists in that dream only.
Acharya Prashant: When he is talking of many people?
Questioner: Yes, when he is talking of many people.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, of course. When he is talking of ‘many people’, ‘many’ that he is talking of are ultimately coming from his own experience. These people, who are calling him back to Home, are also coming from his own experience.
These people who are calling out to him are nobody else, but Kahlil Gibran (the protaganist) . If they can call out to him, that means he knows. He can surely talk of existential truths. It’s Kahlil (the protaganist), in his own dream.
Are you getting it?
It’s Kahlil in his own dream. The real Kahlil in his own dream. And that Kahlil will know far more, than the dreaming Kahlil can know.
Questioner: Can real Khalil dream and go into dream?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, of course. That’s a part of his Freedom.
Think of it: Where else can dreams come from? Where else can illusions come from? If there is one Reality, one Truth, how can there be space for illusion?
If everything is just Truth, just Reality, how illusion is possible?
But illusion is there.
Questioner: Illusion is there to the illusive mind.
Acharya Prashant: How can the illusive mind be possible? If only Truth is there, how can there be any space for any kind of ignorance? Tell me.
Ignorance is a part of Truth.
Questioner: We are validating Truth.
Acharya Prashant: Of course.
Who are you to not to validate it?
Ignorance is the freedom of Truth. It is so absolutely free, that it is free even to be ignorant. You are so absolutely free, that you are free to wake up, and you are also free to sleep.
