You Get What You Are
Acharya Prashant: All kinds of teachers are available. Do not say that modern spirituality is full of superficiality. Modern spirituality has both superficiality and centrality. And spirituality, even in the times of Shri Krishna, equally had superficiality and centrality. It depends on you. If you are an Arjun, you will get a Shri Krishna. If you are a Duryodhan, you will get a Shakuni.
In that sense, you see, teachers are pretty passive entities. They’re like shops. Shops really can’t come after you and grab your hand or pick your pocket. Shops can, at most, exist and allure you passively. The active decision to walk into a shop has to be yours. It always is.
So these shops exist. You must ask yourself: why do you step into them? Let those shops be there. If you know so well that there are so many superficial methods these days to attain knowledge, then why do you allow yourself to be taken in by that superficiality?
Superficiality offers pleasures. Superficiality offers cheap salvation. Therefore, it is easy to be attracted to superficiality. On the other hand, true spirituality challenges you to pay a heavy price.
See what Arjun is going through. Shri Krishna is saying you will have to fight your kith and kin. Arjun is passing through a tremendous inner turmoil. That’s what inner and true spirituality demands.
Duryodhan does not have to pass through that pain. Arjun is paying a heavy price. Duryodhan is all very happy when Arjun is so shattered inwardly, and he’s shivering and trembling and has kept his weapon down and is in a very bad state. At that moment, you can almost visualize Duryodhan at the other end, popping some popcorn into his mouth, in a very gay manner, coolly, happily, saying, “Dude, what’s going on?”
Duryodhan is facing no inner turbulence. He’s paying no price. When you don’t want to pay any price, then you get teachers like Shakuni. Shri Krishna is beautiful, but he is tremendously beautiful.
You understand the word tremendous? You know the word tremor. What does tremor mean? What does tremendous mean then? That which makes you shake and shiver. So Shri Krishna is tremendous.
We can very easily tolerate someone who is just beautiful. The problem with being a Shri Krishna is that he would be tremendously beautiful. You go near him and you receive a 440-volt shock. Now he’s beautiful, so he’ll charm you and pull you in. Next time, again, you go near him and again a shock. The tremor strikes you.
You need to have the guts and the stamina to continue remaining with him. He will continue to do what he does. His tremendousness will stay unabated. You have to check whether your stamina can last that long. It would be a match between his tremendousness and your preparedness to take the kick, because the kicks won’t stop. Till you exist, the kicks would keep raining.
Somebody who has the ego of Duryodhan will not be prepared to take kicks. In fact, Duryodhan wanted to hold Shri Krishna captive, and he tried many other such antics. How will he take kicks?
Arjun has a lot of resilience. Shri Krishna keeps destroying him bit by bit. Shri Krishna keeps chipping away at his ego, and Arjun stays put, doesn’t run away. It would have been very easy for him to give in to himself and just quit. All right?
So you see, all this knowledge has existed since antiquity. Yet there are people who do not want to read the Gita. They want to try all kinds of fancy things. Somebody has come up with this method. Somebody has come up with some fancy kriya. Somebody is talking of a new kind of spirituality.
They just don’t want to go to the very bright, clear, and illuminating document that the Bhagavad Gita is. They don’t want to do this. They want to try all kinds of cheap and shortcut ways. That’s what they want. That’s what they get, something cheap.
