Popcorn Spirituality and Holy Comic Strips || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: We seem to have romantic fantasies even in spirituality. We have been fed a lot of spiritual notions it seems. We carry images, rather long videos, of how a really spiritual person is like. Steady, firm, unwavering, unshaking, doing the right thing without the least trace of discomposure, fantastic, heroic, super heroic… That’s what we want—superhero movies! Juvenile, so very juvenile.
What’s your take on a spiritual master? Some kind of a Batman, able to conquer everybody without getting even the slightest bruise? That’s what you find in superhero movies, right? All the bad ones of the world are standing against your superhero, and they are carrying AK-47s, machine guns, Sten guns, Tommy Guns, and a few nuclear reactors. One or two bombs won’t suffice, so they have brought along a dozen reactors and uranium and plutonium enrichment plants as well, so that bombs can be delivered in real time!
And then, your stud, without so much as blinking his eyes, just whistles and blows them away. That’s what the movies have fed you, right? And either willingly or subconsciously you have extrapolated the same story to the spiritual domain.
How does the parallel scene look like in the spiritual domain? Here is your realized master, and in front of him are standing all the bad chaps: kāma , krodha , mātha , moha , lobha , māyā , mātsarya , bhaya , and they are carrying all the destructive weapons possible: property, sex, allurement, prestige. Those are the nuclear weapons, you see, to destroy you internally.
And then, your spiritual master, without so much as blinking an eye, just blows them away: “I command you to disappear! By the power of the Lord, thy shall be no more!” and they are all gone! Happy! Popcorn time! That’s your pop-spirituality with your popcorn, fed to you by mom and pop.
You know what you have done to all the saints and the masters and the heroes who loved you and fought for you? You have destroyed them. You have turned them into caricatures; you have created images of their infallibility. You have said, “They were supermen, so I will not leave behind any trace of their fallibility. I will not show that they too trembled; I will not allow it to be shown. In fact, I will distort history to represent them as a superhuman!”
So Jesus, for example, cannot be shown to be afraid; Buddha cannot be shown to be attached, and if Krishna or Rama are shown to have human fallibilities, then there is a large hue and cry and an uproar. You say, “But how could Rama be so vulnerable to the opinion of an outsider that he really shut the doors on his wife? But if Rama is really an incarnation of Vishnu, why was he weeping so inconsolably over Lakshman’s fainted body? If Rama is really God on earth, then why did he not know, using his magical powers and clairvoyance, where Ravana had taken Sita away? Why did he have to dispatch Hanuman?”
Superheroes have to be perfect, right? Superheroes can’t have weaknesses, frailties. Superheroes have to be cast in an image so distant that no relationship remains possible between you and the image, so that you can safely continue in your old rotten ways, and say, “Oh, but that chap was superhuman! He cannot be an example to me. He could do what he did because he was extraordinary, special, divine, belonging to the Beyond. He was transcendental; I am not. He belongs to the skies; I live on the earth. So, I have, therefore, no responsibility to learn from him or live like him.” Such an obnoxious inner conspiracy towards yourself! Bad. Very bad.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/the-fantastic-spiritual-superhero-on-bhagvad-gita-1_cebf326
