Explanations blind you,
they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Questioner: Acharya Ji, JK says, “Explanations blind you, they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’.” But I require explanations all the time from the Guru.
Please throw some light on this.
Acharya Prashant: The problem is linguistic. It relates to the use of words Keshav (the questioner).
When Krishnamurti says, “Explanations blind you, they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’,” what he means is that you want to describe something at its own level, at its own plane. And the dissolution of anything never lies in its own plane.
And therefore all your explanations are merely elaborations or translations. You are just restating the situation. Your explanations are just the problem stated in other words. And that obviously won’t help.
Somebody asks you, “What is X+Y”, and you say, “Y+X,” won’t help. Or would it?
I ask you, “Keshav, where do you live?,” you tell me, “In front of Raghav’s house.” I ask you, “Where does Raghav live?,” you say, “In front of my house.” That won’t help. You are just describing an unknown in terms of another unknown. Therefore the plane has to be different.
Unknown cannot be understood in the plane of the unknown itself.
To understand the unknown, you have to take it to the plane of the known at least.
The Real Teacher does not offer you explanations in the same plane.
In the same plane, your own explanations are sufficient because you anyway have too many of them. There is no man who is ever clueless about his situation. Ever come across any such man? In fact, we know just too much about our situation and that prevents us from really knowing what stares us in the face.
Ask someone, “Why can’t you quit drinking?,” he will say, “Because, because, because...” He already knows so much. If you already know so much, why are you unable to quit? Ever come across a man who says, “I have no idea”? It would be rare to find such a response. Right?
So in the known plane, in our personal mental plane, we anyway have a lot of explanations.
The Teacher is needed not to explain the question, but to carry the question to some other level, some other dimension.
So the question then remains merely a tool, a useful tool.
In answering the question the student has been taken to the level of the solution. Now the question was incidental, what really matters is that the student has been transported to another dimension.
And that’s what my role is Keshav. It doesn’t matter what you ask me, I will tell you that the answer lies ‘there’. And because the answer lies ‘there’, I will hold your hands and take you ‘there’.
I do not give you various answers, I give you just one thing.
In some sense, I am like Henry Ford. He was producing cars and people were greatly fond of his cars. There was so much demand that he could not produce cars of various colors. Model T was the car that was so much in demand. We are talking of the early days of the last century.
So he would say, “You can have any color as long as it is Black.” When people would ask him, “In what colors is the Model T available?,” he would say, “You can have any color as long as it is black.”
Same with me.
You can have any answer but the answer will be the same. (Pointing upwards) You can have any answer, but the answer would take you to the same place. Or have you heard me taking you to different places?
Divya (one of the listeners) will ask me, “What is a brick?” I will take her ‘there’. I will say, “If you want to know what a brick is, you must come there.” Manish (another listener) will ask me, “What is a kick?” I will say, “If you want to know what a kick is, you will have to come there.”
Obviously, the routes that I will prescribe to Divya and Manish might be different, after all, she is enquiring about bricks and he is enquiring about kicks. So they have to be taken through different routes. So the answers might appear different, but the answers are taking you to the same place.
I am not at all bothered with explanations. Explanations are so bogus and boring. I just want to take you ‘there’. Explanations are convenient eyewash. You think that I am explaining, whereas I am doing something else.
You are being tricked.
Are you getting it?
Explanations, even the good explanations, at most translate the situation from an unknown language to a known language. That is the best the explanations can do. The unknown language has turned into a known language and then you say, “I have understood.”
The Teacher’s job is not to explain.
The Teacher’s job is to take you beyond the known, and then even beyond the unknown.
