Why do Teachers Sometimes Appear to Be Defending The False?
Questioner: “Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of eating and drinking."
And he said, “Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light. But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it be then an act of worship. And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.”
‘When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart, By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.'
‘And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart, Your seeds shall live in my body, and the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, and your fragrance shall be my breath. And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.'
And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard for the wine-press, say in your heart, 'I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress. And like new wine, I shall be kept in eternal vessels.'
Dear Aacharya Ji Pranaam, While reading the above text from Khalil Gibran, it seems to me that the poet is giving justifications to kill an animal to eat, or drink milk from a cow or other animals — as if we do not have a choice being a human.
In today's time, when the whole world is suffering due to man's aggravated sensory pleasure addictions in terms of unimaginable consumerism, how can he justify what the poet seems to be trying to say here? Could you talk about this poem for everyone to understand its hidden meaning in the right spirit?
Thank you, with my gratitude. USA
Acharya Prashant: I look, not all utterances by wise men are utterances of the absolute truth. The aim is to help. In fact, very few statements — even in the cardinal scriptures can be taken as absolutely pure.
Even in Vedanta, From the 11 principal Upanishads and the hundreds of others Upanishads, and in dozens of other texts, only four statements have been called the Mahavakyas. If only four have been called as the Mahavakyas, obviously some difference was seen between these four and the other thousands of statements contained in the Upanishads.
Those thousands are not false. In fact, to call them true or false is to miss the point. The objective of the rishis is to help. And many times it is not helpful to bring the absolute truth to the listener. Not that this is a shortcoming with the truth. It's just that the listener is often — rather, usually not in a position to appreciate, gather, and benefit from the purest of statements.
So, most of what you find as wisdom literature is just statements made with respect to the position of the listener. They do not intend to take the listener to the absolute heights. They just seek to shake up the listener from his deep sleep.
Now, if someone is to travel a long distance, and instead he is busy sleeping, and if you go and shake him up, then prima facie you are not assisting or encouraging the person in running up to the destination, right? He will reach the destination when he leaves the bed and starts moving. Whether he is sleeping, or whether he has just woken up, he's still on the bed. When you go and wake someone up, he probably still would remain on the bed for 5 minutes.
So, someone who considers only travel and movement as an indicator of progress towards the truth would probably find himself justified in saying that the so-called helper is not helping at all. Before the help, the sleeping fellow was on the bed. Even after the help, the fellow has woken up but is still on the bed.
The distance between the fellow and his destination is still the same. When he was sleeping, the distance between him and the destination was 1,000 kilometers. Now that he has been woken up, still the distance between him and the destination is 1,000 kilometers. So, what point is the help? No. There is definite help taking place when such a thing is being done. When help is being rendered in this form, then the criteria should not be with respect to the absolute.
You cannot say, "Oh! he is still very far from the absolute truth." That would be an unfair way of assessing the help. A fairer way of assessing help would be with respect to his current condition, not with respect to his targeted condition.
If you measure progress with respect to the targeted condition, you will be deluded into thinking that no progress has taken place at all, or that no help has been offered at all. But when you look at the effectiveness of help with respect to the current condition of the seeker, then you realize that help indeed has been effective. Please get this.
So let's look at the current condition of the practitioner, the seeker. What was he doing 5 minutes back? He was deeply absorbed in sleep on the bed. What is he doing right now, after being helped? He's still on the bed, but he has at least partly woken up. So, with respect to his condition 5 minutes back, is there improvement or not? There is improvement, right? And that is what the wise man has sought to achieve — improvement with respect to your current condition.
Incremental improvement, not absolute improvement. Improvement relative to where you are standing right now, improvement not relative to the absolute.
Because the absolute is so far away, any movement towards the absolute would appear so small that you would end up saying, "Oh, I'm still as far from the absolute as I was 2 years back."
Would it be unjustified to say that the absolute is infinitely far? Oh yes, we say many things about the absolute. We do say that the absolute is infinitely close as well. But you won't contest it if I say that the absolute is infinitely far, right?
Now if the distance is infinite, and even if you cover a thousand miles towards the destination, have you made any progress? And that assessment with respect to the absolute would totally dishearten and demotivate you. You will say, "The absolute is like the horizon — it was infinitely far away before I began seeking, and it is still infinitely far away after 5 years of seeking. So why seek at all? Stop all seeking. Stop all effort." So —
The right way is to look at the current condition of the listener or seeker or audience and take it up from there.
So who is the person the author is addressing? He is saying — go to his words: "Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth and like an airplane be sustained by the light."
So he says, "Well, that would have been the most preferable condition." In other words, that would have been absolutely great. Could you live in a totally nonviolent manner? Could you live in a way where you simply didn’t have to have any relationship with other organisms in order to just physically survive?
And then he says, mark the words —“But since you must kill to eat...” So let's speculate about the kind of person he's speaking to. He's saying, “But since you must kill to eat,” he's talking to someone who is adamant on killing. Who is the person being spoken to? Someone who is adamant on killing. Maybe centuries of conditioning, maybe deeply and widely prevalent cultural norms — he is speaking to such a person.
“But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst…” He's talking to people who take it as a given that the milk of the calf’s mother has to be necessarily had. It has become a staple food in the region. It has become unimaginable for people of that region that they can live without flesh or milk.
Such are the people to whom Gibran is talking. And he must have really tried very hard to first of all convince them to do that which is perfectly right — that he does not state in this text, but that you must take it as a given. If the man is wise, why would he want anything short of the absolute for himself? And therefore, why would he want anything short of the absolute for the others?
So first preference would surely have been to bring the ultimate to the audience as well. But the audience is stubborn, the audience has been possessed by prakriti and aeons of social-cultural conditioning.
So what he now says must be taken not as the speaker’s first preference, but as a compromised statement. And there is no option but to offer this compromised statement, because it is humanly impossible for the best thing to be executed.
The wise man is practical. He says, "I see that you are not in a condition to reach the absolute in one go, in one jump. But that does not mean that I'll leave you to your state and to your fate. If you cannot have the best, I'll ensure that you have at least the second best. If you cannot progress absolutely, I'll ensure that you progress at least relatively.
I see that my efforts to prevent you from consuming flesh have all fallen flat. You will take time. Not that I'll be defeated. It's just that the victory will take some time to come. In the meanwhile, I'll keep fighting. I'll keep gaining ground. Before the final victory comes, I'll keep winning a series of small battles."
So he says, fine — if you have to eat flesh, eat it this way. If you have to drink milk, drink it this way. But remember that such a thing is to be said only after absolute efforts have been made and seen to be inadequate. Are you getting it?
Because it is a compromised statement, so the philosophy being conveyed here is obviously compromised. Do not measure these words for wisdom, you'll not find much wisdom here. Do not assess these words for perfection, you’ll not find much perfection there. Because there is no perfection really here.
Being perfect is probably not even the intention of the author. These words are coming from a practical need. So, you may not find wisdom, but you will find compassion. The author is deliberately compromising on himself. You could say he is ensuring that he lives to fight another day.
The fellow has been shaken up and woken up, and now there is a possibility that you can lure him about the destination. And after some time, he'll be found actually moving towards the destination. But before he moves towards the destination, you're doing something that is ensuring that more time is being wasted on the bed. What is that?
First of all, you woke him up. That was time spent on the bed, not time spent in covering the distance. Then, after he woke up and sat on the bed, you started talking to him in an absolute sense. This is a waste of time, because even as you're talking to him, the clock is ticking away. He's not making any tangible progress. You're just talking to him, luring him, motivating him. And that may take 1 hour, 2 hours, that may take 1 month, 2 months, that may take years.
And an onlooker might say that the helper is actually assisting the fellow on the bed to waste away his time. That is not really happening. The ground is being laid. The foundation is being laid.
But I see, Alok, what you are saying. These things can become great excuses, and it is only the purity of your intention then that can be the real judge. You can very well keep consuming flesh and milk and such things and say, “You know, I'm just preparing myself to leave all these things.” It's a great self-deception. Many will fall for it.
They say, “If I leave everything all at once, then there will be a recoil. So I am trying to gradually drop stuff one by one. You know, this year maybe I'll drop cheese. Next year maybe I'll drop paneer, and then I'll drop butter and ghee.” Only they know whether they really mean what they are saying.
Finally, you have to answer yourself. Delaying the assault can mean either of the two things: it could mean you are gathering strength so as to launch a vigorous assault. Or it could mean that you are so frightened that you are just somehow whiling away time to find an opportunity to retreat and run away. What is your intention? Only you can tell.
The things that Gibran says here are all philosophically quite weak. They do not have much relation with the truth. This poetry has any value only in terms of the relative assistance it can offer to an adamant flesh-eater. Beyond that, it has very little value. In fact, it can be dangerously misused by someone in order to remain what he already is.
In assisting someone towards freedom, there are no rules. Sometimes you push him to cover the entire distance in one go. Sometimes you say, let’s take it step by step. Sometimes you contradict what you previously told him.
It has to be a situation, an approach where the destination is clear, strategy is flexible, and the tactics — they keep varying almost moment by moment. And even that is not certain. In certain cases, you will need to stick to one strategy followed by one tactic. No real rules work there. Only love works. You must know in your heart that you are honestly trying, you're doing your best. That is the only criteria.
Any rule can become a tool for self-deception. So it is best if one's inner honesty is the only rule. But then that’s a great danger. If there are rules, they keep you straight. If there are no rules, and your own honesty is the only judge, then that’s an incentive for you to just cheat and lie — to yourself and to others.
A lot of what is contained in wisdom texts, Alok, is just with reference to the time and the situations and the people and the contingencies. They are not at all absolute statements, and they must be read as such. Only very few statements correspond to the truth—and that too, let me add, conditionally. That too only if you read them in the right spirit, and you have someone who can bring the right spirit to you.
Otherwise, everything that is there in wisdom texts, in the holy scriptures, is actually just relative to the prevailing conditions of the time.
It demands a certain intelligence on behalf of the reader to draw the real essence out of those words.
After all, words are just words. It's your light that shines upon them first of all, before the words can fill you up with light.
It's almost like searching for the switchboard with a little torch. Once you have reached the switchboard, then the entire house can be illuminated. But before there can be so much light, you must at least have a little light, a little torch to reach the switchboard.
If you do not have even a little light, then the great light will remain elusive. And that's a major tragedy that has befallen religious people. They expect the scriptures to give them a lot of light, which is fair. But they do not go to the scriptures with any light of their own, which is very, very unfair.
The scriptures will give you a lot of light. But first of all, use whatever light you have to reach the scripture and read it properly. How will the scripture give you anything if you can't even apply basic sense to the verses or the stories or the injunctions?
What does light mean to somebody who is blind or has stubbornly closed his eyes? Some light must be there within, already before you can benefit from the wider light. Some work must be done in one's isolation, in one’s solitude, before one is in a position to benefit from the teachings of others.
Someone who does no homework gains very little even from the best of classrooms. Don’t we know that? And often it so happens that the more quality a classroom has, the more intensive is the homework that it requires of you. Is it not so? That’s a price that you have to pay for benefiting from a high text or teacher or institution — you have to come prepared. Without due preparation, the texts will not benefit and may even backfire.
So you’re right, it is quite possible that this particular text from Gibran is used by the flesh eaters to justify what they are doing. They will say, “We do slaughter the animal, and as we are slaughtering the animal, we just recite the poem that Gibran has advised us to recite. We tell the animal, ‘You know, by the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed, for the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.’”
Oh glorious poetry! Glorious poetry that would enable the mindless, senseless, merciless slaughter of billions of more animals. It is quite possible. But I assure you, that was not Gibran’s intention.
So much nonsense is happening in the name of religion. I assure you, that was not the intention of the founders of those religions. The catch is — they will give what they can. You take what you want to. So there is always a great difference between what the great ones are giving and what the receivers are receiving.
And unfortunately, even the great ones are helpless in this matter. They have discretion and control only over what they give. They have really no power over what we selectively receive or what we selectively interpret.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, When you said these lines, then there was a line where it was said that — you didn’t exactly say that, but it can be interpreted anyway that — it's okay to kill somebody with lower consciousness. It can be interpreted like that. And people do that. They find reasons to justify what they’re doing.
And in the last question by Alok ji as well, Khalil Gibran can be misused. So what question was coming into my mind was that when a guru is saying a few things — guru is an idol for us, and whenever he’s speaking something or doing something, we try to copy it, we try to understand it in our own ways and then follow. So how responsible should these words be?
In fact, like how responsible a guru is when he’s speaking these words? And I’m asking this again because there are many, many gurus who are talking about these kinds of things, which are actually misleading people. So this is what I wanted to know about this.
Acharya Prashant: The words of the guru are always going to be imperfect. That’s his helplessness. You have to resonate with his intention. You have to resonate with the source he is coming from. Anybody who is dealing in words is dealing in imperfection. Let that be clear.
If you want the guru to be perfect, then don’t insist him to speak. Let him live in his own silent domain. The moment the guru is to take a human form and open his mouth to speak, imperfection is bound to creep in. That is why it would not be entirely misplaced to say that no word ever spoken really represents the absolute. It is relatively a high utterance, but not an absolutely high utterance. It still has imperfections.
So, whatsoever any teacher says is bound to have limits. There are bound to be gaps, contradictions — and those gaps and contradictions, as you said, can always be played upon, picked up, and misutilized. That is possible.
So it depends on you. If you want to benefit from the teacher, resonate with him. You have to have a certain connectivity so that you know where he is coming from. If you just feast upon his words, then you will only be pleasing yourself.
Now the thing is, if you really were so fond of the source the guru is coming from, you would not have wanted the guru to be formally and physically present in front of you. You would have said, "The source is sufficient." So, in your desire for a physical guru, anyway some kind of malice is hidden.
I’m asking you, you see — to resonate with the source the guru is coming from, and not to be too particular about his words. But then, had you really wanted to resonate with the source, the source is formless — then why would you have desired a physical, formal, personal guru in front of you?
Asking for a personal guru is almost like asking for a bit of imperfection. Because the moment the source takes a physical form, the source has assumed imperfection. What else is form? Can any form be perfect? Can anybody or any person be perfect? So the moment the teacher comes in front of you as a person, the teacher is already imperfect. And that is what you have asked for. If you really valued perfection, then you would have said, “I do not need any physical teacher.”
But if you do not need any physical teacher, if you value perfection so much that you do not value physicality at all, then first of all you would have not valued your own physicality. But then you do exist as a body, happily, which means you value your own physicality.
If you value your own physicality, you will want a physical teacher. In wanting a physical teacher, you have valued imperfection. So the student, being a physical student, cannot really ask for a perfect teacher. Physicality is imperfection, and the student is physical. So the student will deliberately ask for a physical teacher, and a physical teacher is bound to be a little helpless, because to be physical is to be incomplete, to be physical is to be a little imperfect at least.
You can be relatively far ahead of the world, but in the absolute sense, even the best of teachers are going to carry some imperfection, and that would reflect in their words. So that's the thing with words. They help you, they elevate you, but do not expect perfection in words. Use words carefully. Know very well that what the teacher is saying is not contained in the words. Be one with the teacher.
If you like the teacher's words too much, is that not a way to avoid the real teacher? And that's what so many people do, don't they? They stick to the scriptures. They'll say, "We don't want the teacher, the scripture is sufficient." They'll stick to the videos. They'll say, "The video is sufficient. We do not want the teacher."
If you stick to the video, you must know that the video is always going to be a little imperfect. If you stick to the words, you must know that the books are always going to be a little imperfect. And you will somewhere be deceived by the same glorious book. And I'm saying that with respect to even the holiest books — even they are a little imperfect. And that is not their intention, that is their helplessness.
Because they are dealing in black and white. They are dealing in paper and ink. Wherever there is paper and ink, there is bound to be a marginal imperfection, despite the best attempts of the teacher. Because the teacher is receiving something in silence. What the teacher has received has come to him in silence. But he has to translate it in your worldly language.
Now, silence is not really translatable into words. So words would always carry some noise. And that noise, I repeat, is not the intention of the teacher — it is his helplessness.
What does he do?
And you are insisting that you will not read silence. You are insisting that, “No, we do not read formlessness, we do not read silence, we only read a physical body, we only read words, we only read books.” So you insist that you are fond of imperfection.
What is the way? Even if the teacher is physically there in front of you, you'll have to do a tightrope walk. On one hand, you'll have to see that the body is there, and you'll have to pay due respect to the body. At the same time, you'll have to consciously remember, deliberately remember, constantly remember that there is something beyond the body.
Unless the student is able to do that tightrope walk, he will miss the teacher. He’ll maybe gather the words, but he'll miss the teacher.
Don’t hear a story? So the teacher is dying. The teacher is dying. The teacher is sick and the teacher is dying. And his favorite student is by his bedside. And the teacher says, "So, I'm going now. Show me what you have learned from me."
So the student keeps standing, and does not do anything. The teacher says, "I'm going." He roars. So the cup containing the teacher's medicine is there by the teacher's side. The student pushes the cup a little towards the teacher. The teacher has not taken his medicines. And the teacher is saying, "Show me what you have learned from me."
The student pushes the cup towards the teacher. Now the dying teacher roars even more loudly. He says, "Is that all? Is that all you have learned from me?"
The student withdraws from the teacher. The teacher laughs, deeply laughs and joyfully dies.
That must be your approach towards the teacher. In pushing the cup towards the teacher, the student demonstrated, "I care for your body." But that is not sufficient. In withdrawing the cup from the teacher, the student said, "But I know that you really do not need any medicine."
In pushing the cup towards the teacher, the student said, "I care for your body. I do give weightage in regards to your body because your body is very important. Without your body, you would have been no help to anybody. It is because you have taken a bodily self, so you have been able to help so many people. So your body must be taken care of. Here is the medicine. Please take the medicine."
The teacher says, "No, this is not sufficient. Just taking care of the teacher's body, or just taking the teacher as a body, it is not sufficient. What more have you learned?"
And the student withdraws. The student says, "On one hand, I'm offering you medicine. On the other hand, sir, I continuously remember that you are someone who does not need any medicine. I remember that you are the Great White. You are the True Self. And the True Self is *Niramay*—it does not need any medicine."
The teacher says, "Now you know."
And that must be the attitude of every student. That must be the attitude of every reader who picks up a scripture to read. On the one hand, you must be highly respectful towards the words. On the other hand, you must know that the real thing is a little beyond these words. And the real thing will not come to you through the medium of words.
The real thing comes to you when there is no mediator. The real thing comes to you only in love. So you must have a love for the real thing.
Words are like an introduction. Words are like a common friend who introduces the two of you. A common friend is needed, but the common friend must also go away in due time. Otherwise, there is no union, really. Are you getting it?
The imperfection is needed so that the two are brought together. Who is the imperfection? The common friend, the mediator, the words. So till a point, imperfections are good. Words are good. But after a point, they must go away so that there is only the two of you, and hence there is union.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, if somebody is saying it’s imperfection, so the one who is saying, then he has an image of perfection. So?
Acharya Prashant: No. You need not have an image of perfection. You only need to humbly remember that this is not that. You need not say that "I know what that is." You only need to say this is not that. This is not that.
Questioner: And yet be respectful.
Acharya Prashant: yet be respectful towards them. Because this is the utmost that anything in the world can do to help me. These words are the highest thing that the world can offer me. But all said and done, they are the highest that the world can offer me.
There is purest imperfection. These are the purest imperfections that can be there. So, have deep regards for them. Do offer the medicine to the teacher. Do not say, “You are not the body, so why do you need the medicine?”
But you must also remember that the truth does not need any medicine.
