Vedanta – Fire and Light

Acharya Prashant (AP): The first question comes from an MBA 2nd year student from IIT Kanpur named Prashant. He says:

“I have been reading Krishnamurti and Vivekanand since the past three years having learned from them, I genuinely feel that the teachings of such great teachers should be at the core of our education system. I personally feel that my decisions regarding my career and life would not have been emotionally driven had I studied these. But Sir, unfortunately, we do not find the teachings of our saints in our mainstream education system; either at school or at professional level – at most there might be a few books tucked away at some corner of the library. And I want to add that even in the premier institutions of this country, one would find a complete negligence by the student community with respect to the Vedantic teachings and the sayings of the saints. The students are preoccupied with their pre-decided career paths and don’t pay heed to these teachings. Sir, why are even so-called intelligent students ignoring these valuable teachings?”

Prashant, there are two reasons. The first reason is eternal and the second is contemporary. Let’s look at both.

The way man is, he is not designed to prioritize learning, wisdom or realization over his more basic, primary, animalistic needs and instincts. It’s a bodily thing; it’s an evolutionary thing. It’s there in entire mankind irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, gender, age; irrespective of what kind of identity you carry. We are not programmed to be naturally drawn towards the teachings of somebody like J. Krishnamurti or Swami Vivekanand. And there is ample reason why we would ignore their teachings, or at times even be hostile to them.

You see, when you look at a person and you say, “here comes a human being; a man or a woman”, what is the defining characteristic of the human being? It’s the body, right? It’s the body you look at. Everything else comes later. So, no body, no human being. And that’s the primary identity we all are carrying. We are bodies. And around that identity and from that identity all else is built. See, remove your body from your life and what is left of your life? The moment you remove your body you’re called as a dead man. And your world comes to an end.

So, it is our bodily presence, it is our body-identification that marks our very existence. Remove the body and we cease to exist, right? And as we said, from that body-identification, all our actions, thoughts, emotions, ways of the intellect, information gathering by the senses, and then analysis and codification of that information, its structuring into knowledge, all that happens. Remove the body, you don’t have any senses to even gather information; remove the body, you don’t have any brains to interpret the information; remove the body, you don’t have any science. Right? No language, nothing.

So, even that which we call as the ‘higher order’ characteristics of human beings that we claim separate them from animals, are actually arising only from the body. Right? We say man is different from animals, superior to animals because man thinks. And man’s thinking is of the higher order. And we say man takes in information, processes it, organizes it into knowledge, from there we have created such a vast body of science, and from that we have great advances of all kinds. We say these are the things that separate us from animals.

But if you look at the very basic fact, it is that there can be no science sans the body. Science is based on observation, and you cannot observe anything that is not material and you cannot observe anything without first yourself being material. In other words, you observe only bodies; bodies of very diverse and interesting shapes, names, forms, characteristics—but nevertheless, they remain bodies that you observe in the scientific process. Right? And who is the observer? The observer is, again, himself a body. Correct?

So, even those things that we say are unique to human beings, are actually just bodily, and if they arise from a bodily foundation, then man is really not very different from animals – because that’s how an animal operates; almost entirely like a body. Right? Not much thought. Yes, instincts it does have, but those instincts are again arising from, you know, bodily movements, bodily secretions, chemicals and glands and such things. So, an animal is almost entirely bodily. Man, too is almost entirely bodily.

So, here is your normal, well-adjusted, average human being. Whether on the road, or whether in the most prestigious and cherished campuses of this country, or any country in the world, doesn’t matter. What is he taking himself to be? A body. Right? A body. He might be working for the most advanced scientific laboratory in the world. He might have really important papers to his name. He might have been decorated with some really good awards and medals and recognitions. But all said and done, the fellow is still a body in his own eyes.

Now, enter people like Jiddu Krishnamurti and Swami Vivekananda. And don’t forget that both of them were basing their teachings on the very, very solid foundation of Vedanta. So, what do they tell you? They enter, and one of the first things that they tell you, rather The first thing that they tell you is – son, you are mistaken when you take yourself to be a body.

Now, that really brings the house down. That cannot go down very well with you. Because all your life your achievements, your identities, your happiness’s, your hopes, even your despairs are all founded on the body. That’s how we are built in the evolutionary way; to operate purely as the body. And if you have the intellect, which again is a function of the body, then you use that intellect to create a lot of things as a body and for the body. You look at all the products of technology, tell me a single product that is not useful to you as a body. Right?

So, we may talk of our towering intellect, we may really touch the skies when it comes to exercising our brains. But what is all that really for? For the safety, upkeep and pleasure of the body, is it not? Try to think of a single product of technology that does not benefit the body. Think of it. Try to think of a single product of technology that you do not require your body to operate or benefit from. Even something like a telescope that you might have just to satisfy your curiosity, is ultimately pleasing you, right? And pleasure is a sensation in the brain. And that sensation couldn’t have come to you except through the sensual route. Would a telescope be able to please you had you had no eyes? Would you experience the pleasure that you do had you had no brain? You require a bodily brain; you require these bodily eyes; everything is for the service of the body.

And now come the sages, and what their saying is not going down well with anybody! They are bombing your favourite pic. Show spoilers! You’re happily going about the normal business of life; assured, certain that you are the body. And they come over and very strongly, very irrefutably they demonstrate to you how mistaken you are. How can you like this thing?

So, there is a definite evolutionary reason why man will never really like wisdom, and therefore, why man would never really be spontaneously or naturally attracted to a real teacher. The real teacher is a put off. He destroys your mood. And if you allow him too much leverage, he will destroy your world. Surely not somebody you would want to invite to your house for dinner. But you’ll say, “No Sir, many of the most important teachers, including the two we are right now talking of, have had legions of followers. How did that happen?” You see, how many of those followers were really getting what the teachers were saying? And how many of those followers were prepared to pay the requisite price to live by the teachings of a teacher? It’s one thing to be a part of a crowd. It is another thing to be willing to pay the price and lay down your life, if required, in the service of Truth. There are very few who are serious students. It’s just that, you know, it might be an ‘in thing’ in intellectual circles to be seen carrying a Krishnamurti book. And it might be almost a mandatory thing in Vedanta circles to be talking of Shri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekanand. And that’s easy. No price needs to be paid; it’s quite cheap. All you need to know is a couple of quotes from Krishnamurti. And a couple of anecdotes and fables related to Ramakrishna and Vivekanand. And you are home! You’re part of the crowd. You’re accepted.

So, you have to understand the primitive, Prakritik reason. The teacher is never, never a likeable figure. The teaching is always unpalatable. Doesn’t matter how compassionate the teacher may sound; doesn’t matter how well-meaning he is; doesn’t matter how clearly, he demonstrates to you that he’s a well-wisher. He is a captive to Truth. He’s helpless, the teacher. Even if he tries his best to keep you consoled and happy, even if he sweetens his words to the maximum, still there is one compromise that he can never make; he cannot dilute the Truth. He cannot say something false just to please you. So, in spite of his best efforts to appear amicable and nice and decent and civilized, he would soon be exposed. He cannot hide his true colors. And when he’s exposed, then you are after his life and that’s quite fair, isn’t it? He was destroying your world; you want to destroy his world. Tit for tat. Was he not bringing your world down? Of course, he was. It’s just that the old fogie was saying, “You know, I’m bringing your world down because your world is false and because you deserve the Truth.” “Two hoots to the Truth. I have my world and I worked hard to create it, who are you to disrupt it? Who are you to cause an explosion within it? And if you will harm my world, I will ensure that you are paid back in kind.” Are you getting it?

So that’s how we are paying the sages back by ignoring them. Didn’t they ignore your thoughts and feelings? Of course, they did. See, how you have said that, had you read these two teachers, early on in your life then your decisions wouldn’t have been so emotionally driven, which means very clearly, that when the teacher comes in then you cannot lead your same old emotionally charged life. Then your decision cannot keep coming from that same emotional or hormonal or instinctive centre. So, the teacher doesn’t really care for your emotions, all he cares for is the Truth. Boring fellow! Your emotions are so colourful, so spicy, so varied, right? And you demonstrate all your emotions to him. You in fact, even try to trap the teacher using your emotions but he offers no respect at all, he just doesn’t care and if he doesn’t care for your emotions, why should you care for his well-being? He took away what you cared for the most. What is it you care for the most? Your emotions, your hormones, your ideologies, your thoughts, your relationships, your false world—the teacher is hurting you where it hurts the most. Had he just said, “Son, your beliefs are false”, you could have probably tolerated, had he just said, “your knowledge is false”, you could have said, “Well, let’s keep talking,” even if he had only gone to the extent of declaring your relationships as false, you could have probably stood his assault, but here he is telling you, “Son, you are false. What you think of yourself is absolutely stupid and you don’t exist. You think you are the personality and you are mistaken.” He is taking away from you that which you value the most—your sense of self. So, you really have to do something about it.

What is it that you do? You say, “this teacher for all his emotionlessness, all his apparent dryness—still has a weak point, he is just too concerned about everybody’s welfare that’s one desire that he has, now I know how to hurt him, I will not allow that desire to be fulfilled. The teacher was prepared to lay down his life so that his words could reach the intended audience, so now you know what’s the best way to hurt the teacher—do not allow his words to reach the masses—that’s you revenge. You say, “Sir, you denied me what I wanted the most,” what is it I wanted the most? I wanted, the fulfilment of my desires, I wanted the continuity of my relationships, I wanted a certification of my sense of self and you denied all this to me. You denied to me what I wanted the most, I will deny to you what you want the most. So, that’s what we are doing. We are denying to them what they wanted the most. J. Krishnamurti was an educationist, he established schools, he had so much to say about our education system, and this is how we are honouring him by keeping him totally out of our education system. This is the world’s standard reply to all Krishnamurti—we will hurt you by ignoring you, we will kill you by being indifferent to you. It’s strange, how somebody can be killed just through indifference? Yes, somebody can be killed through indifference because that somebody is dying to get your attention. Is the teacher so desperate really? Yes, he is. Why else he is the teacher?

There is a difference between a saint and a teacher. Do you want to understand that? There is a difference between a realized person and a teacher. The realized person need not necessarily be a teacher, he has his realization and he can keep wallowing in its pure bliss, no? He has everything that one can ask for—pure, unadulterated, an uninterrupted Anand, that’s what he has attained. He can keep this invaluable property totally to himself and relax and retire. The teacher is made of crazy stuff then, the teacher says, “Yes I have everything that I possibly can have for myself. I have known the heights that are almost impossible for a human being to reach but I am prepared to give up all of that in order to share what I have with the world. My desire to help everybody is so strong that I am prepared to compromise on my personal bliss and solitude for the sake of the world.”

So, the teacher does not really allow this desire to recede. In fact, he stokes this fire. He lets this desire become the centre of his life. He says, “I exist to teach”. Teach whom? The world. I don’t exist for myself; I exist for the sake of the world—that’s my desire. And you know how to hurt a man? Don’t give him what he wants the most. A Vivekananda hurts you, you hurt him back, and you hurt him back in the cruellest way possible. Getting it?

So, there are those who will not listen to a wise man because they don’t just get what he is saying and then there are those who would listen to a realized man, partially get what he is saying and would therefore turn hostile to him. That hostility need not be a very conscious thing, it need not be a very considered decision; that hostility is mostly subconscious, it operates in a very passive way. You don’t really go and break the teacher’s skull, that would be an active revenge. We don’t engage in active wrongdoing against the teacher, instead, we hurt him passively, by ignoring him. Getting it?

Now the second part, you are asking, why it is so that in the education structures and in the curricular of the most prestigious institutions in the world, where we find the wise ones, the great ones—very absent. The second reason is power.

The first reason was Prakriti. We are made in a way that does not quite allow us to appreciate transcendence: we are built with our body at the centre of our being whereas all wisdom is fundamentally about transcending the body. So that was the Prakritik reason. And I had said I would be talking about an eternal reason and a contemporary reason. The eternal reason is Prakriti. The eternal reason is evolution.

The contemporary reason is power—power and politics. Saints have always required patronage. Be it the rishis of yore or a Gautam Buddha, their message couldn’t have reached millions and billions of people had they not received royal protection and patronage. So that is needed. And the ones in the seats of power today are probably not people who personally respect wisdom so much that they would want wisdom literature to be a part of school and college curricula.

And I’m not talking of only the people who are in power in 2020. I’m talking of all who have been responsible for shaping India’s education policy over the last 70 years. It doesn’t quite appear that there were many policymakers who valued wisdom or were really interested in the Truth. They were interested in other things. They were interested in vocational training, knowledge of various kinds, but spirituality or wisdom does not look like any of their concern. And that’s probably the case all over the world.

You see, the democratic system is a great one but there are some problems associated with it. One of the problems is this. The leader comes from the masses. And the masses by themselves, of their own will and volition, are never really attracted towards wisdom. The majority of the people need to be educated and trained in wisdom, they need external support. If that external support or that conducive external climate is there, then they would turn spiritual; then the fuel within their being would get ignited and there would be fire and light. But if the environment is not conducive, then the spark within them remains just that much: a spark. And a spark does not last long, you know very well, right?

So, when the choice of the leader is left to the majority, the masses, it is obvious that most of them are anyway not going to be very interested in knowing whether their would-be leader is spiritual or not. The masses have other priorities, you know. The masses would be interested in knowing: “So how many jobs will you generate for us? Whether or not you will attack that particular neighbor? What will you do with respect to that dispute regarding that particular river? What’s your religion, sir, if you want to be my leader? Tell me your caste, where do you come from? Which state do you belong to?” These are the things that the masses are known to consider in some way or the other, whether in India or abroad: “What’s your ideology? Conservative, liberal, orthodox—where are you coming from?”

Now in all of this, where is spirituality? Have you ever found a voter asking his leader: “Sir, have you read Krishnamurti? I am about to go and vote, but before I cast my vote, I want to know how many Upanishads have you read?” Ever found such a voter? So, the leaders know very well what is it that that they can easily ignore. They can ignore the scriptures. And they can ignore the teachings of the saints because the masses anyway don’t bother about the saints. The masses came to bother about the saints after royal patronage. Are you getting it?

It is an elitist thing, you see. It might not appear very fashionable when I say this. It might not appear as per times when I say this. But every height is a solitude. And spirituality especially is not egalitarian. It begins as a very personal thing. It’s really not a thing of the masses. Though a great teacher wants to benefit the masses, and definitely benefits the masses as much as he can, but then you really can never have a situation, or at least historically we have never had a situation, where every third man is a great teacher. Somehow, we don’t seem genetically disposed towards that kind of a happening. A great teacher is a rarity. A great teacher is in some way an abnormality. Therefore, a great teacher will almost be an alien amid a population. So it is a great population, a thousand people, a million people, and then there is a teacher. The teacher is the smallest minority possible in a democracy. Who cares for him? When you’re only counting heads, why will you count what is within the head? Are you getting it?

We talk so much about protecting the minorities. I say a Swami Vivekanand is an absolute minority in dire need of protection. So is J. Krishnamurti. So is every teacher worth his name. But the democratic process really does not offer anything worth it or something special to the teacher. In the democratic system, the teacher is only worth as much as a neighboring Tom. So, what’s the way out? There is no way out, it’s cyclical. There is a reason why Indians conceptualized time as cyclical. What does that mean? That means that when nonsense and foolishness increase too much, that is the point after which Satyuga arrives. So, you keep ignoring the teacher and that will bring you to such a pathetic state that you will be forced to change and listen to the teacher. It’s cyclical.

So, I appreciate your concern and your sadness, you would want to see Vedanta and Upanishads and Swami Vivekanand in the syllabi and that would be such a beautiful thing obviously. If that could happen, that would eradicate so much ignorance and pain from this world. But mind you, Satyamev Jayate (Truth alone triumphs). If that is not happening right now, it nearly means that it is waiting to happen. How would it happen?

If it happens right now, if the masses embrace the teachers willingly, then the learning would come at a small price. The whole movement, the transition, would be smooth. But if the masses do not listen to the teachers and if the leaders of these masses are not sensitive and wise enough to incorporate spiritual teachers in the academic curricula, then the change would happen in a very explosively disruptive way. Truth has to win, either you happily surrender to it or if you don’t happily surrender to it, then the victory of Truth would come at the price of your existence. Either you align yourself with the Truth or you find that you have been annihilated. Either way, Truth has to win. Are you getting it?

Right now, it does not look quite probable that the world would willingly embrace Vedanta. Then how would the world embrace Vedanta? The world would be forced to embrace Vedanta. Depression and all kinds of mental disorders, and conflict within the human being, and conflict among the human beings, and conflict among sections and countries, and widespread chaos and strife would force humanity to listen to the teachers. But, it seems that we are so obstinate that we listen to the teachers only after all our other options are exhausted, and after we have totally decimated our world. We want to keep the teachers as our very last option, we want to try everything else before we turn to the teachers, as if we are saying that anything else is acceptable, more acceptable than the teachers. When nothing else works, only then will we go to the teacher, and if that’s the condition mankind has set then you must know the implications of that condition. What you are saying is—I have fifty options, and listening to the teacher is my absolute fiftieth option. So, I try out options 1-2-3-4-5, right till number 49, and only after all forty-nine options have failed and are exhausted, will I unwillingly embrace option number 50. Which means all your forty-nine options will have to be proven false, which means forty-nine deep defeats to mankind, which means mankind will invest everything that it has in those forty-nine options, which means that before mankind comes to the fiftieth option, it would have practically already devastated itself. But that’s the route it seems that we all want to take.

So yes, obviously, had the teachers been physically alive, they would have been greatly pained by this situation. But, nevertheless, if Truth is Truth, and if a teacher is actually representing the Truth, then there is no way you can ignore the teacher for long, maybe he won’t be physically there anymore, maybe you will listen to him two hundred years after he is gone, but listen you will, that’s an existential law, you cannot disrupt it, certain things are unbreakable, like this law. Are you getting it?

(reading the question, further) Additionally, you have said, students are preoccupied with their pre-decided career paths, and they don’t pay heed to the teachings. Why are even the so-called intelligent students ignoring the valuable teachings?

You see, this intelligence that you are talking of is not wisdom. What you are referring to is the intelligence that you usually measure as your ‘intelligence quotient’, right? That in no way denotes wisdom. All this is just a misuse of the word ‘intelligence’; actually, you are just talking of ‘intellect’. You are talking of the brain’s capacity to assimilate external knowledge. You are talking of the brain’s capacity to make sense of the world, detect patterns, and use those patterns to get useful answers, useful solutions; but useful to whom? To the body. That’s what you are calling as ‘intelligence’, that’s not intelligence.

So, if you think that the so-called premier institutions are places where intelligence resides, then—no sir, that is not the case. Yes, you have people with greatly sharp intellects, you have people with gifted brains, an average IQ at an IIT is likely to be significantly higher than the average IQ of the population. All that is there, but that in no way means that somebody who has cleared an engineering entrance examination or some other competitive exam or is topping in his/her batch, has any great capacity for self-reflection or self-enquiry; no, no such correlation exists, it’s a totally different faculty, it is not even a faculty, it’s a purity of intention.

You want to know what is really going on within you, you don’t merely want to know the object of your experience, you want to know who is it that is sitting within, who keeps experiencing everything, you are not interested merely in knowing whether this pillar is real, whether that clock is working just fine; you are interested in knowing whether you are real, and whether your insides are working just fine, it’s a very different way of looking at life and enquiring. The intellectual person, the intellectual mind is keenly interested in the world. The intelligent person—and, here I am using ‘intelligence’ as a synonym of wisdom—the intelligent person is much more interested in knowing that entity, which he calls as ‘I’. So, he does look at the world, but even if he looks at the world, his intention is to know the ways of the ‘I’. It’s the self that’s his primary attraction. But yes, if you do have that intellect, then that intellect can enable you to come to yourself via the world. Potentially, it can enable you, but whether or not you actualize that potential, again depends on your intention, not your intellect. That intention to move within has to be there. If that intention is there, then your sharp intellect can be of use, otherwise—no.

(reading the question) Don’t Vedanta and Upanishads too contain words and information? And, the mind is prone to forget any information. How is remembering information contained in the Upanishads useful for self-realization?

You seem worried that the mind will forget the information that comes to you via the Upanishads, you probably want to memorize it, and keep it with you forever. On the contrary, that’s not at all the objective of the Upanishads. The Upanishads do not want you to carry them in your mind by the way of memory for too long. Let us understand. You see, why does one require Vedanta and Upanishads at all? There has to be a reason. If you are otherwise and already perfectly fine, then why do require anything additional?

You are living your life in your particular way, and all is well with you, then you do not need to read anything, or do you? The Upanishads are not a thing of fashion or a thing of compulsion, you do not go to them just because a lot of people do, nor must you go to them, because religion or tradition demands so. There has to be a substantial reason, if you are to go to the Upanishads. The reason is your worried mind. The reason is your taxed and loaded mind. You are anxious, you are stressed, you are confused, you are agitated, or you are depressed. In either case, your mind is not healthy. Sometimes, you find yourself excited, sometimes you are dejected and desolate, sometimes you are extremely hopeful, and sometimes you are the epitome of nihilism. And, with this, and due to this diseased and center-less mind, one goes to the Upanishads. And, the Upanishads themselves make it amply clear, right at the outset. They say that you are diseased in many ways, and that’s why you have come to us.

There are many Shantipaths (verses for peace) that are associated with the various Upanishads, and if you read them, then you will get a fair idea as to why the Upanishads were composed in the first place. They want to help you in the matters of the mind, they address your fear, they address your insecurity, they address your inner conflicts, and they address your ignorance. That’s why you go to them; and, which means that when you go to the Upanishads, you are already carrying a lot in your mind. What is it that you are carrying? Ignorance, conflict, fear, hesitation, and all else. And, all this that you are carrying is actually sitting in the mind as information, so it is with a lot of information that you are going to the Upanishads. You are looking at the Upanishads as a body of information, whereas, first of all, you should be talking about your own body that is carrying so much information, and it is with this body and body centricity that you are approaching the Upanishads. It is a bundle of, a mountain of information that is coming to the Upanishads. And, this information is very concretely set in your being, it is not merely a thing of the mind, it is running in your veins, it has become your life matter, your face has become a depiction of all this knowledge that you are carrying in your mind. Every cell of your body is feeling the burden of this, that you are carrying in your mind. In fact, the mind is not much, except the informational load that it carries.

And, we are people with bloated, inflated minds. If some kind of a diagram of our subtle body could be drawn, it would be ninety-nine percent just the top storey (brain). In your day to day living, tell me, how much do your knees matter to you? Does the word ‘knee’ even occur to you, usually? It’s the brain that the ego identifies with and lives in. Are you getting it? And, human beings are usually identified with the brain, with the intellect, with the memory, and all else.

So, look at this person who is going to the Upanishads, he is just a huge truckload of information that he calls as knowledge, though it is not. And, he is going to the Upanishads, and here are the Upanishads, very sleek bodies of subtle verse, very very sleek bodies, even if they contain information, that information is not too much. They are not really encyclopedic. Very pithy, very terse. Nevertheless, when you read them, you do get some information, and you already have a lot of information, so what’s really happening?

The information contained in the Upanishads is of a special type, it does not really sit well with the information that you already have. The knowledge that the Upanishads give you—and, here I am using information and knowledge interchangeably, just for the purpose of this discussion. The knowledge that the Upanishads give you does not get co-opted into your existing structure of knowledge. It is a very special and exquisite type of knowledge that the Upanishads contain. You will not be able to absorb it nicely into your existing system. See, you take in some food, and what happens to that food? That food becomes your body, right? That food gets co-opted, that food gets absorbed. The Upanishads are not that kind of food that your body can absorb. When the Upanishads go in, forget about the body being able to absorb them, they go in and they start destroying all that is false within. Of course, your antibodies spring into action, and do whatever they can, but then the Upanishads and their knowledge are too much for the antibodies. Soon, your resistances will all fail and fall.

However, you can still deny the Upanishadic knowledge, an outright victory. How do you do that? You do that by playing the biased referee. Remember, ultimately it is you who has to declare the winner. And, despite of the Upanishadic knowledge demonstrating its trueness and superiority, you may still choose to side with your old conditioned knowledge. That can happen. That can still happen. So, it is not really a given that you will read the Upanishad, and that the knowledge will go in, and that the knowledge will destroy all the falseness within, and that the next morning you will wake up enlightened. That doesn’t really happen.

If the Upanishads are allowed to work; and, it’s a big ask to allow the Upanishads to work upon oneself; it requires great commitment towards Truth and Liberation, otherwise, the Upanishads are too much to handle. You will just not be able to tolerate their rigor and their vigor, they cut through everything. So, if the Upanishads are somehow allowed to operate within, then their action is this—they will destroy the false patterns of knowledge that you are carrying within, and having destroyed your false patterns, they themselves would then evaporate or sublimate, like camphor, without leaving any residue behind. Something that has come to you just to cleanse, and once the cleansed object is gone, the cleaning agent too is not to be found. Otherwise, it would be a very absurd situation. The old dirt is gone, and some other new thing has occupied its place, that is no relief, or is it? Because, those who have known the mind has categorically said that anything that starts occupying the mind too much and for too long is just a burden and a disease. So, even if it is an apparently a holy verse, but if it becomes a permanent fixture upon the mind, if it gets situated very stubbornly upon the mind, then it is not good for you.

The Upanishads are like medicine. Medicine cannot become food, medicine cannot become your staple diet. Medicine comes just to fight the disease, and once the disease is gone, the medicine too is gone. So, you need not be worried that you need to memorize the Upanishads. Obviously, India has had a very rich and very practically useful tradition of memorization. We call our bodies of sacred literature as Shruti (learning through hearing), then as Smriti (from memory), for a reason. We hear we memorize, and that’s how the knowledge was transferred generation after generation. All those things were there. But remember, memorization is not what spirituality is about, alright? Understand the Upanishads. The real challenge does not pertain to memorization. The real challenge is about not playing the biased referee that we talked of, right? When the Upanishadic knowledge comes in, you will find yourself greatly impelled to declare it as false. You will want to side with your pre-existing knowledge, why? Because it is your knowledge. Before coming to the Upanishads, you are carrying it, so it is yours. So, there are two teams vying against each other, and one of the teams belong to the referee. The referee is saying, “this is my team.” When the other team is winning, it requires great truthfulness and discipline on behalf of the referee to remain unbiased. You are the referee, remember it’s your knowledge versus the Upanishadic knowledge. Upanishadic knowledge would prevail, provided you provide it with a fair and a level playing field. Mostly, we don’t, and that’s why the Upanishads remain ignored.

We say—“how come all my patterns, and beliefs, and knowledge systems be proven so false and so absurd, and that too so easily?” The Upanishads don’t take so long, you see. Five verses are enough to destroy five generations of your traditional knowledge system. Sometimes, just five words of one verse … and, the traditional knowledge system is gone, your entire personality is gone, the entire history is gone. So, they will win, but we don’t allow them to win. That’s where real discipline is required, not in memorization. We think, “oh! We have not been fair to the Upanishads, we have not memorized them.” No, no, no, we have not been fair to the Upanishads—if we have not really considered them if we have not been just to them if we have not given them a level playing field if we have not been unbiased. That’s the real challenge. Memorization is not the challenge, remaining unbiased is the challenge.

So, let the Upanishads come to you, and receive them in a neutral way. There is no need to be biased towards them, there is no need to be inclined towards them. And, there are some people who do that as well, they say, “oh, these are holy words, so surely they are right, so I declare them winners in advance.” No, you do not need to do that. Just in a neutral way, in a fair way, receive them, consider them. Let them work upon you, meditate upon them. And, that would suffice.

(reading another question) I am inspired by Swami Vivekanand. I want to know, how can I challenge my conditioning, reject distraction, and maintain continuity with the scriptures?

You have a giant no less than Swami Vivekanand to get your answers from. See what he did. He lived by his convictions. Merely being impressed by somebody, or impressed with something, is not sufficient. It might be alright as a beginning, but only as a beginning. It doesn’t take one far on its own. If something impresses you as being true and valuable, then the onus is upon you to, now, bring that thing into your life. Otherwise, it’s a strange situation. How can you call something as true, and still live in a way quite opposite to it? If Swami Vivekanand felt that the great teachings of Vedanta need to reach the masses, then he very vigorously went about propagating the message of Vedanta. So much so that his zeal carried him beyond the borders of not merely this country (India), but actually beyond this continent. It was not very easy to sail to America in those days, and if you read the description on how he managed it, and what all he had to go through before that famous and historical address in Chicago, you will learn something.

In fact, there is no bigger betrayal to oneself than to not live by one’s deepest convictions. You see, there are people who don’t have any convictions at all, they are rolling stones. There is not even an ideology in their life, let alone Truth. They use thought just to get the desired object. They never think about the subject at all. Most people belong to this category. Then, there are a few, who are indeed sure of a few things, these people are rare, but even among these people who are convinced of something, rare is the one who displays the honesty and the courage to actualize his conviction into action. Otherwise, you meet a lot of people who at concept level, mentally, would be absolutely convinced of this or that, but in their lives, there would be no trace of that conviction. That’s what you have to guard against. Are you getting it? That is the only way to challenge your conditioning, as you have asked; and, that is the only way to maintain continuity with scriptures. How will you maintain continuity with scriptures, if you are continuously deceiving the scriptures?

So, there are 108 prominent Upanishads, you have already read twenty-two of them, and nothing from those twenty-two Upanishads has penetrated you deep enough to show up in your life. And, you are planning to approach the twenty-third Upanishad now. Is this not an obvious fraud of some kind? And, when you will perpetrate this fraud, sooner rather than later, your so-called conscience will revolt, or you will get bored. You might be able to deceive others, but you will know for sure, for yourself, that the stuff that you are reading has not been useful to you. It has not been useful to you, because you have not put it into action. But, whatever be the reason, it is certain that the twenty-two Upanishads didn’t benefit you. Well, if they didn’t benefit you, then for how long will you continue with the twenty-third Upanishad? Will you really be enthusiastic about the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth Upanishads? You know fully well that these Upanishads are merely book stuff to you, they are merely words, and no more. So, you will discontinue reading the scriptures. And, let every person who has picked-up the scriptures, and kept them down, understand this—your interest in the scriptures faded away, because of your dishonesty. How do you move to the next chapter or the next book, if you have not been fair to the chapter already read? It starts pricking from within, and it becomes an exercise in humiliation to keep reading, when you know fully well that you have not been executing what you have been reading, you have not been living by your convictions. Then, you drop the scripture. Simply drop it. You drop the scripture and you bury your convictions, because those convictions are harmful to your comfort and convenience.

The Upanishads were not composed to give you the normal kind of comfort and happiness. The Upanishads are there to give you an exalted happiness, a transcendental happiness, an eternal happiness, a happiness so rare and exquisite that it is not called as Harsh or Modh or Prasannata. A special word is needed to denote that happiness—Anand. It is a difficult happiness, it is a challenging happiness, it is a happiness that you must pay for. It is not one of those cheap happiness that comes to you, because somebody tickled your tummy, or because your eyes have just landed upon some object that you can lust at; not that kind of your everyday happiness. Are you getting it?

So, these two are related. You asked—how do I challenge my conditioning, and how do I continue with the scriptures and spirituality? These two are related. The only way to continue with the scripture that you are reading or the spiritual practice that you are following, is to keep demolishing your conditioning. If you are not constantly progressing against your conditioning, then you will soon lose interest in the scriptures. The very sight of the scripture or the teacher will become a humiliating experience for you, you will want to avoid the scripture, the spiritual practice, and the teacher at all costs. The scripture will remind you of your impotence and self-deception. Why will you want to look at the scripture? The scripture will remind you of a promise un-kept, of payment pending. Who wants to keep looking at an unsettled bill? Painful, isn’t it?

Scriptures are not just ordinary books. They are difficult love.

show_less