Why Wisdom Comes Last in Democracy

Acharya Prashant: 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 and 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.

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, no?

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 this 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 masses are known to consider in some way or 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 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. It’s an elitist thing you see.

It might not appear very fashionable when I say this. It might not appear as per the times when I say this. But every height is a solitude and spirituality is specially 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 someway an abnormality.

Therefore, a great teacher will almost be an alien amid an population. So it is a great population, 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 are only counting heads, why will you count what is within the head?

We talk so much about protecting 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, no? 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 Satyug arrives. So, you keep ignoring the teacher, 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 Vedant 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. If that is not happening right now, it merely 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 and 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 will find that you have been annihilated. Either way truth has to win.

Right now, it does not quite look probable that the world would willingly embrace Vedant. Then, how would the world embrace Vedant? The world would be forced to embrace Vedant.

Depression and all kinds of mental disorders and conflict within the human being and conflict among human beings and conflict among sections and countries and wide spread 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 you are saying that everything 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 absolutely 50th option. So I will try out 1,2,3,4,5 right till number 49 and only after all 49 have failed and exhausted will I unwillingly embrace number 50.

So which means all your 49 options will have to be proven false. Which means 49 deep defeats to mankind. Which means mankind will invest everything that it has in those 49 false options. Which means that before mankind comes to the 50th option it would have practically already devastated itself.

But that’s the route it seems we all want to take.

Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/why-does-mainstream-education-neglect-wisdom-studies-iit-kanpur-1_79e7cf6

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