When a Guru Eats Meat || Acharya Prashant, on Raman Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj
Questioner: So, a question that comes up for me is: Ramana Maharishi says — one of the best ways to stabilize is to eat more satvik food and give up meat. And then, I like his words and his teachings. And then, Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose words also penetrated me very deeply.
Someone asked him the question, “Why do you eat meat?” And he says, “My body has these habits — so what of it?” And I find myself, for me personally, if I just have no desire to eat meat anymore. I'm just curious what Nisaragdatta Maharaj meant when he said, “My body has these habits — so what?”
Acharya Prashant: These are coming from two different points. These two statements that you have just quoted. Ramana Maharshi is advising a seeker. Ramana Maharshi's counsel is for someone who is still on the way, so he is offering you a method to be lighter on your way, so that your journey is less loaded against yourself.
Nisargadatta Maharaj is saying from the point of one who has already reached. And he's saying, “I am at a point, where there is complete separation between me and the body.” Now, that kind of a separation does not exist for the one who is still on the way. So, Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “Let the body do what it wants to do. The body is anyway a conditioned mechanism, and situated where I am, if I interfere with the body — even to bring some purity, some correction, some satvikta to it — that would again be a kind of entanglement, a kind of identification.”
So, I don't want to touch the body — not even to correct it, not even to bring satvikta to it. I don't want to meddle with the body anymore. But that statement, remember, is possible only to someone who has arrived at that complete distinction. Therefore, the statement that Nisargadatta Maharaj is making is wonderful, but not useful. It has very little utility, because all utility has to be for someone who is still struggling, still on the way, still trying to make his way through the various challenges that the body and mind offer.
Liquor consumption or flesh consumption or other kinds of unwise gratifications of the body, merely increase the obstacles that one faces. So, therefore, those kinds of things must not be practiced — even if it is observed that a realized man is practicing them. Nisargadatta Maharaj, by the way, was also an avid smoker. Not only would he smoke himself, he actually owned several little shops that would dispense local handmade cigarettes called beedis. In the locality where he stayed, he was famous as “Beedi wale Baba.”
But then — does that mean that you have to smoke to be enlightened? No. Those kinds of things, even if they are documented, recorded, observed in a realized man, must be respectfully kept aside as the idiosyncrasies of the realized man.
Ramakrishna Paramhans would run after fish. Being a Bengali, he found it very difficult to resist fish.
Jesus seemed to have his affinity towards meat and wine. There is much else that can be learned from the wise ones — not these aspects. Their inner force, their urge for liberation surely was so strong that they could arrive at their destination in spite of these obstacles. Are you getting it? And for sure, all these are obstacles — there is no doubt about it. But they were extraordinary people. In spite of liquor, flesh or cigarettes, they could overcome those obstacles. That only proves the strength — strength of their love, their resolve, their determination.
The common man does not have that kind of resolve. He is unable to overcome even the ordinary and commonplace obstacles that life places. Why add to your challenges? Why add to your troubles by indulging in avoidable stuff? Are you getting it?
There have been all kinds of stories associated with Saints, and many of those stories must be factually correct. Undoubtedly, there have been Saints who have been womanizers. There have been sages who have been shown to have their own fascination for their several kinds of passions. That's not something we are to learn from them or emulate from them.
If anything, what these stories tell us is that there is nothing called absolute Liberation. Are you getting it? That the stranglehold of Maya on the body and the mental tendencies always remain. Therefore, even at the so-called end point, what you can have is complete separation but not complete purification. These two are very different things.
Liberation, therefore, is the word — not purification. Liberation implies separation. You say the ‘I’ sense is now liberated from the body and mind. You do not say that the body and mind are liberated. Do you say that? So, when you say Liberation, who is liberated from whom? We must go into that. And the very emphasis on the word Liberation proves that ultimately you have no option but to distance yourself. That alone is Liberation.
But in the process of Liberation, purification is important, and that is what is satvikta. So, Ramana Maharshi is talking of purification. He's talking as a counselor to someone who is on his way, and therefore his words are useful here. Nisargadatta Maharaj is truthful here, but not useful. The seeker must look for that which is useful, even if it is not absolutely truthful. Getting it?
And that is also the reason why one must avoid peeping too much into personal lives of people like Nisargadatta Maharaj or, for that matter, any sage. They can afford what they do. We will probably not be able to afford what they do. And the knowledge, the undue information that we will gain by looking into their personal life, will only prove to be to our own detriment. Far better to go by their advice.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, I have something more on this. You mentioned useful even if not truthful and that a seeker should look for — can you elaborate please?
Acharya Prashant: You see, the absolute truth is not useful. In fact, the more you want utility, the more you'll have to dilute the truth. Absolute truth, in a sense, is absolutely useless — because absolute truth is nothing, silence, avoid. It doesn't speak to you. Are you getting it? It has no value, no purpose, no utility whatsoever.
Therefore, when the liberated ones have spoken, they have been forced to say things that have an iota of falseness in them. So, if you detect falseness in the words of a liberated one, kindly do not take it to mean that the liberated one could not tell the truth apart from the false. It merely means that he wanted to be of help.
The Brahma Sutras are quite truthful — though not absolutely, because the moment something is expressed in words, it ceases to have any absolute truthfulness to it. But still, Brahma Sutras — they come as close to truth as words can possibly come. But then very few people find them of any use — very, very few people.
Of far greater use are, let’s say, the parables of Ramakrishna Paramhans — simple stories for the common people — and a far greater number of people have benefited from these stories than have benefited from the Brahma Sutras. Are you getting it?
But there is an amusing, ironic part to it.
If the one who knows wants to be of use to you, he will have to mix it up a little, dilute his teaching a little. In fact, to teach is to dilute. There can be no teaching without dilution.
But the moment there is dilution, the teacher becomes vulnerable against charges of falseness. You can now indict him. You can say, “Here, this is what you have said, this is what you have done, and I can conclusively prove that a lot of it is false.” Yes, of course, a lot of that is false for your sake. Had it not been false, would you have been able to make any sense out of it?
All these prayers you hear, these mantras being recited, somewhere in the city — they take you towards the truth, but they are not the truth. Get the distinction straight.
They are very useful assistants, but they are not the real thing itself. You could say they are the secretaries that would take you to the boss’s cabin, but they are not the boss. And do not confuse the secretary for the boss.
Questioner: So then, the concept “fake Guru” is invalid. There is nothing like a fake Guru by the same logic.
Acharya Prashant: A fake Guru Then there is someone who can't even be of help. See, there are three categories.
There is the realized one, who will not budge from his absolute heights. He is sitting right at top — Mount Everest — the highest peak possible to consciousness, right? And he won't move an inch. And since he won't move an inch, you have no access to him. He is absolute and therefore absolutely unreachable — up there. So he is great. You can worship him, but you cannot benefit from him. Keep worshiping him, and he does not bother even for your worship. He does not care for anything because he's beyond all care, there is that one.
Then there is the one who has been to the mountaintop and for some unknown reason decided not to stay there. Having known what that absolute height is like, he has still descended to the ground, to the valleys, to the cities and villages, and he brings to you something of that absolute height and narrates that to you in your language. And obviously, your language is the language of the false. Therefore, when the truth is expressed in your language — for your sake, for your benefit — it does not retain its absolute purity anymore. It cannot. But it becomes — to you, it becomes?
Questioner: Useful.
Acharya Prashant: It becomes useful to you. So this fellow takes the blame upon himself. There is no doubt that, first of all, he has disrespected the invitation of the absolute by being there and yet not staying there, lodging there. And secondly, he is bringing to you something that does not quite belong to your world, that cannot quite be expressed in your language, but is being somehow, perforce — made to be expressed in your language. This is the second category that we have talked about.
Then, you used the term “fake Guru.” This is the fellow who has never been to the mountaintop. He belongs to the lanes and the crossings. Maybe he has seen some photo or two, or has heard some description from someone who has gone up some distance, and is using all that to further his own ego and little self-interests. This third chap is the fake one. The third chap is necessarily harmful.
The first fellow is not useful. It's the second one who proves useful, but is also the one who has been blamed, insulted, and derided the most in history. Often, he earns flak from both sides. The ones who care only for the absolute — they blame him for mingling too much with the masses. And the masses, after they have learned a bit from him, start using the teaching given by him against him. And then they tell him, “You know, what you are doing goes against your own teaching.” So he receives it from both sides. But this second fellow is the one who proves useful.
Incidentally, the really fake Guru is quite unlikely to be detected as a fake Guru. The title of “fake Guru” is usually reserved for the fellow of the second type.
