To call everything as one is not spirituality, but insanity || Acharya Prashant (2016)

There was a holy man who lived in a state of ecstasy, but was regarded by everyone as insane. One day, having begged for food in the village, he sat by the roadside and began to eat when dog came up and looked at him hungrily. The holy man then began to feed the dog; he himself would take a morsel, and then give a morsel to the dog as though he and the dog were old friends. Soon crowd gathered around the two of them to watch this extraordinary site.

One of the men in the crowd jeered at the holy man. He said to the others, “what can you expect from someone so crazy that he is not able to distinguish between a human being and a dog?”

The holy man replied, “Why do you laugh? Do you see Vishnu seated with Vishnu? Vishnu is being fed and Vishnu is doing the feeding. So why do you laugh, oh Vishnu?”

Question: Why can’t we see Vishnu?

Acharya Prashant: Because he is not to be seen. The story says, “Vishnu is feeding Vishnu, and Vishnu is watching. This is a gross representation. This is just very overt symbolism. Vishnu here stands for the essence. Vishnu here stands for the centre. You could call it—the Atma, the soul, the source, anything.

With Vishnu at the centre you are free to look at the world as it is. With Vishnu at the centre you get the fearlessness, the courage, the directness to not to load your prejudices, biases, and fears upon what you see with your eyes, and what you sense with your entire mental apparatus. What does this mean? This means that you do not need to label anything as Vishnu. Forget about labelling everything as Vishnu; you do not need to label anything as Vishnu. The wall is a wall, not Vishnu. The chair is a chair, not Vishnu; a boy is a boy; a woman is a woman; the earth is the earth; the sky is the sky; and there is no need to call them Vishnu.