- 2 years ago
Video Information: Shabdyog session, 15.05.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India
Context:
How to identify the real master?
Are all saints saying same thing?
What is the objective of spirituality?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Context:
How to identify the real master?
Are all saints saying same thing?
What is the objective of spirituality?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Ashtavakra Gita Chapter 9 Verse 5
00:10 Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the
00:16 differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?
00:20 Question A. Acharya ji, we go to saints and sages because we are suffering and we are
00:26 ignorant.
00:27 Saints have different opinions and teach different methods.
00:31 If someone asks me, "How do you know he is a realized master?
00:34 How can I answer?"
00:35 I am already ignorant and I don't have clarity.
00:38 That's why I am going to them.
00:40 How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge?
00:44 How can I judge his words to be true or false?
00:47 If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence, I am labeled as a blind believer.
00:54 What should I do?
00:58 Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the
01:03 differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?
01:08 What is all spirituality about?
01:17 If I were to ask you in one sentence as briefly as possible, what is the objective, the purpose
01:27 of all spirituality?
01:28 What would it be?
01:32 The?
01:33 Who is suffering?
01:44 So the objective of all spirituality is the annihilation of the I, the ego.
01:53 Simple?
01:55 It is the ego that suffers.
01:58 So it is not the suffering really that you want to get rid of, but the sufferer itself.
02:07 As long as the sufferer is there, how is it possible to not suffer?
02:12 Right?
02:13 Now, with this in mind, approach this verse.
02:20 Ashtavakra Gita, chapter 9, verse 5.
02:22 Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the
02:26 differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?
02:32 Whatsoever you see is a projection of the seer, basics.
02:44 And spirituality is not about what you see, but about the seer.
02:51 Is spirituality about commenting on and judging what you see or is it about the seer?
03:00 It is about the seer.
03:04 So if it is about the seer, how would you ever know that somebody is a great sage, saint
03:12 or yogi?
03:20 That's difficult.
03:21 The fact of the matter, Parameshwari, here is, we do not really know who is a great sage,
03:30 who is a great saint, who is a great yogi.
03:35 But we go by the ego's usual method of determining what is what.
03:46 How does the child know basic things, very, very basic things?
03:51 For example, how does the baby know who her mother is?
04:04 She is told.
04:08 That's bad.
04:10 She has just emerged from the womb after nine months and yet she needs to be told who her
04:17 mother is.
04:18 Do not tell her who her mother is and she has no way to find out.
04:21 Take her to another mother, another lady who would nurse her and the baby would easily
04:27 take the other lady as the mother.
04:34 That's how blind the ego is.
04:37 Now no point asking you how do you know your father is?
04:43 How do you know who your father is?
04:44 You just do not know.
04:45 You have been told.
04:46 When we do not even know who our mother is without being told, how would we ever know
04:52 who our father is?
04:54 Parameshwari, when we do not even know who our worldly father is, how would we know who
05:00 the real father is?
05:02 So we do not know, but still we know.
05:05 How do we know?
05:07 Because we have been told and that is how we know who a great sage is.
05:11 But we find it very difficult to accept that even the fundamentals in our life are dictated
05:21 by others, that we do not really authentically and originally know anything.
05:29 We say, oh, the kid and the mother are inseparable.
05:34 At least the infant and the mother are inseparable.
05:36 Don't we say that?
05:38 But even that is such a lie.
05:43 The infant emerges from the mother and take the infant to another nursing mother and the
05:52 infant would be happily busy suckling.
05:58 Would the infant complain?
06:02 Would the infant complain?
06:03 Not at all.
06:04 Not at all.
06:05 In fact, if the infant's own mother, biological mother, cannot feed her and the other woman
06:18 can feed him or her, then the infant would rather prefer the other mother.
06:31 We do not know anything, but it is so very disgusting to accept such helplessness and
06:43 such ignorance.
06:52 So we pretend that we know.
07:00 And that's how we also know who a great saint is, who a great yogi is.
07:20 Even those who are not students of science today, they would say, oh, we know that the
07:24 earth goes around the sun.
07:28 Do they really know?
07:31 The fact is they just don't know.
07:34 It's just social opinion.
07:37 It is not scientific, it is social.
07:42 And therefore, it is actually a superstition.
07:45 For 99% people of the world, it is actually a superstition that the earth goes around
07:51 the sun.
07:52 Why is it a superstition?
07:55 Because they don't know.
07:56 They just believed and therefore they can be easily converted into believing that the
08:00 sun and the moon go around the earth.
08:02 You only require some forceful and convincing speaker and you can easily convince them.
08:19 We do not know anything.
08:25 How do you know that you must go to school?
08:27 Please tell me.
08:32 How do you know that you must marry?
08:38 But it is really, really terrible, dreadful to think of these things.
08:51 The very fundamentals of life will start shaking.
08:57 The foundations are shivering, the building will collapse.
09:13 So we don't even want to go into these things.
09:19 And therefore, we live in contradictions.
09:24 When you really know, then there is no contradiction, Parameswari.
09:30 See what do you call as contradiction?
09:33 I take this as true, I take this as true and these two don't agree with each other and
09:41 then I say, oh my God, I have a contradiction.
09:48 But contradictions can't exist, can they?
09:51 Because there are no two truths.
09:57 Even if truth is expressed in two different ways, the two different ways cannot but agree
10:04 with each other.
10:07 But because we do not know, therefore for us, this is true, this is true, this is true,
10:11 this is true and none of them agree with each other.
10:15 That does not mean that they are true and still they don't reconcile.
10:20 That merely means that you do not know whether any of them is true or whether one of them
10:25 is true or whether truth exists at all.
10:32 And therefore, this line has to be seen in its real meaning.
10:39 Differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis, to whom are these differences
10:45 of opinions?
10:48 These differences of opinions are to you.
10:51 Why?
10:52 Because it is you who has labeled this one as a great sage, this one as a great yogi,
10:58 this one as a great prophet, this one as a great avatar and how have you labeled them
11:03 without knowing.
11:06 So you can just label anybody as a great one.
11:11 You can label anybody as a great one and then to you, their opinions will not match with
11:18 each other and then you will say, their opinions are not matching with each other, whereas
11:23 they are all true.
11:24 The fact is, first of all, to you, it appears that their opinions are not matching.
11:30 Secondly, to you, they are all great.
11:34 Are they really great?
11:35 Do you really know that they are great?
11:36 How do you know?
11:40 How do you know that they are great?
11:46 To most people, great saints are great.
11:52 Just as kids talk of Akbar the great and Ashoka the great.
12:03 Without even having properly gone through their textbooks, they keep talking of Akbar
12:09 the great and Ashoka the great.
12:12 Do you really know that Ashoka was great?
12:14 Do you really know that Akbar was great?
12:20 Maybe you could not meet them, but at least you could have gone through the textbooks
12:25 properly.
12:36 That's how we declare who is a great and who is not.
12:44 And then when we find differences in opinions, we are puzzled.
12:50 First of all, to have an opinion, you must understand what they are saying.
12:56 Even before that, you must know whether they are worthy of being read at all.
13:07 So look at the multi-layered ignorance.
13:12 You go to someone without knowing whether he is worth going to.
13:18 You go to someone without knowing whether he is worth going to.
13:22 Then you read him and you don't properly read him.
13:28 You read two and a half paragraphs.
13:32 That is the entire literature that you have read from most greats.
13:39 And then you form an opinion about that person.
13:42 First of all, it is not certain whether that person was worth reading.
13:48 Secondly, you did not even read him properly.
13:54 And then thirdly, you make an opinion.
13:57 And fourthly, you try to reconcile this opinion with the opinion that you have of another
14:03 great.
14:07 And how did you go to the another great following the same process that you followed with this
14:10 great?
14:12 So neither do you know this one, nor do you know that one.
14:16 But still you have opinions about both and when they don't tally, then you feel victimized.
14:28 You know all saints are supposed to say the same thing.
14:34 They are all one.
14:35 They are all family.
14:39 Like the little Hindu homely temple where you keep 50 idols all next to each other.
14:48 They are all one.
14:51 So let me just take the pooja ki thali and 50 of them there.
15:00 Little Devi, Big Deva, there is Shiva, there is Ganesh, there is Durga, there is some Ishtadev
15:16 also belonging to your ancestral village and the old canal from Akbar the great's times
15:28 and 40 such idols are kept.
15:31 You do not know any of them, but what do you do daily?
15:37 How do you know that all 40 of them are worth worshipping?
15:39 How do you know that even one of them is worth worshipping?
15:47 But you take all of them as the same.
15:54 I will not offend myself by taking names, but people come over and they say, "I am
16:00 a big fan, I am a big fan, I am a big fan, I am a big fan" and then they say, "You
16:05 know what?
16:08 All of you guys are painstakingly working to uplift the collective consciousness of
16:15 the world.
16:16 All of you guys are…" and then they will take 10 names.
16:22 Swami Desh, Gurudev Desh, Falana Desh, Dhikana Desh, Sadguru Desh, this, this, this, this,
16:31 this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and you, and you, all of you together
16:39 are working in the same direction.
16:49 The little quaint Hindu homely puja ghar, 40 idols at one place.
17:00 I won't be surprised if you worship Ram and Ravan together as well.
17:11 What similarity did you find between what I say and what that Swami says?
17:18 The thing is neither do you understand me nor do you understand that Swami.
17:23 So you keep thinking that all of them are saying the same thing.
17:32 All my fight is against the Swamis and the Gurus.
17:39 I am not fighting the commoners.
17:41 Parameshwari, have you still not understood?
17:47 I am not fighting the commoners because they anyway do not cause much damage.
17:57 It is the Gurus, the teachers, the Swamis, the saints, the sages, the big names, the
18:02 big brands that I am fighting against.
18:07 They are the ones who are responsible for so much mischief, misery, suffering, superstition.
18:15 But you put all together in that one puja ghar and worship them together.
18:19 Oh, they are all one.
18:31 And you are alright as long as you can worship them together.
18:34 The trouble starts when for some reason somebody reveals to you that they are different.
18:44 And then you can't figure out like in this verse how there can be a difference of opinion
18:54 between great sages.
18:57 Differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis.
19:01 Now you have a problem.
19:04 You say but all of them are the same.
19:09 One Baba with Dadi, another Baba with Dadi.
19:13 One Baba using words like suffering and truth and yoga and another Baba also using words
19:19 like suffering and truth and yoga.
19:22 So they are all the same.
19:31 That's the thing with not having mathematical precision in spirituality.
19:41 So there is somebody who is saying a square plus b square is c square.
19:47 And there is another one who is saying a plus b is equal to c cube.
19:55 And you feel both of them are saying the same thing because both of them are talking the
19:59 language of a, b and c.
20:00 You do not see with precision that they are not saying the same thing.
20:11 They are not saying the same thing.
20:13 I am not saying what your Swamis and Gurus and great sages have said.
20:27 That does not mean that I stand against them.
20:30 That does not mean that I stand opposite to them.
20:36 It's just that you will not find me tallying with them.
20:40 Occasionally I might tally with them.
20:44 But equally occasionally I will not tally with them.
20:48 I don't have much to do with them.
20:53 Sometimes you would find a coincidental match.
20:58 Usually at other times you will find a coincidental mismatch.
21:03 Do not try to come to conclusions because there are no patterns here.
21:11 Sometimes I will praise some of the so-called greats and I will lavishly praise them.
21:17 But sometimes I will have to condemn them wholeheartedly.
21:26 Usually when I will have to condemn them, then I will try to simply ignore and not do
21:32 the dirty work.
21:34 But still there would be occasions when I will have no option but to come out and condemn.
21:45 Then you will send me this verse and say, you know, how can there be differences of
21:49 opinions among the great saints, sages and yogis
22:07 who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace.
22:16 Indifference to such things as what?
22:20 Is spirituality about being indifferent to this and that?
22:24 No, spirituality is fundamentally about being indifferent to yourself.
22:29 It is not others that you have to be cautious of.
22:31 You have to be cautious of that within you which gets influenced by others, which does
22:37 not know others but gets influenced by others.
22:42 It does not live in knowing.
22:44 It lives in indoctrination.
22:48 It is alright to have a relationship with others but what kind of relationship?
22:54 Is the relationship of realization or is the relationship of proselytization?
23:06 What are you doing with the other, knowing him or imaging and imagining him?
23:19 There is a great difference here.
23:22 How are you relating to the other?
23:24 Are you relating to the other or to the image of the other?
23:45 Now, you have asked how can I identify a master with my limited knowledge?
24:04 How can I judge his words to be true or false?
24:07 How does a patient know the Dr. Parameswari?
24:09 Basics, where are you?
24:11 What are you doing?
24:20 Which doctor do you thank?
24:21 The most reputed one in the town or the one who is curing you?
24:31 After delivering the baby, to whom does the mother go? to the great hospital in the town
24:44 or to the one doctor who helped her?
24:52 But the great hospital is so very reputed and imposing.
24:58 It's a multi-specialty hospital and it's also quite expensive.
25:02 It's just that it didn't take you in.
25:03 It was of no use to you.
25:05 Was that great brand, the great hospital of any use to you Parameswari?
25:09 Have they been of use to you so far?
25:11 And I ask that to everybody who is listening to me right now.
25:17 Have the big ones been of use to you?
25:19 If they have not been of use to you, why do you even call them big ones?
25:24 How are they big if they are not useful?
25:36 Now you will say, instead of being spiritual, you are being polemical.
25:46 Instead of being supportive, you are being disruptive.
25:58 Yes I am being disruptive.
26:02 The doctor's task is to disrupt the pattern of the disease.
26:13 Have some love towards yourself.
26:16 How can somebody be great if he has not been able to help you?
26:33 And if you go deeply into it, it is not even about that person.
26:42 It is about your own world and the images that you have of that person.
26:47 And it is against that image that I talk of.
26:58 When you do not even know me well, in spite of me being with you since probably a year
27:06 or more now, you obviously do not know the greats of the past.
27:11 You were never with them.
27:14 But still you claim that you know them.
27:17 What do you know in fact?
27:21 An image.
27:23 I am disrupting therefore not that person but his image.
27:31 The image that you carry of him is false.
27:36 But you worship that image.
27:38 Not only do you worship that image, you also call the image as the person.
27:46 I have no intention of attacking any person because the person is anyway gone.
27:51 And the person might have really done a lot of good.
27:57 The person is gone.
27:59 What is it that remains with you?
28:02 An image because most of us are lousy.
28:05 We do not even work hard enough to know what or how the person really was.
28:13 What do we carry?
28:14 We carry juvenile images, moth-eaten images.
28:22 And then we live by those images.
28:29 We have definite images about who Shri Krishna was, about who Shri Ram was, about who Jesus
28:34 was, about who this particular teacher was, about how that particular teacher was and
28:39 we have ideas and stories.
28:45 There are so many people who have never even touched the Gita.
28:50 But they still carry images about Shri Krishna.
28:54 And they want to live by those images.
28:55 I want to attack that image.
28:59 That image is false.
29:00 Go close to the Gita and then you will discover who Shri Krishna really was.
29:06 The image that you are carrying is a false and useless image.
29:11 It will not help you.
29:13 That image is just an extension of your own ego.
29:16 How will it help you?
29:17 But that's how the ego is.
29:36 It does not want to go to the Gita.
29:43 But it wants to maintain that it loves Krishna.
29:47 What kind of love is this?
29:50 How many people bother to really respect the Gita and read it?
29:57 Very few.
29:58 Very very few.
30:00 But so many people claim that they love and respect Shri Krishna.
30:05 Now this is hypocrisy.
30:15 I am attacking the image of gods and teachers and prophets that you carry because those
30:24 images are false.
30:28 Those images are false because first of all you have no originality.
30:34 You have no meditativeness and all your knowledge is secondhand.
30:39 Secondly, even if you were not meditative, you could have at least gone to the original
30:46 scriptures.
30:47 There are two ways of knowing.
30:51 The best way is to know through one's own meditativeness.
30:56 The next best way is to learn from the scriptures.
31:01 You neither know through your own meditativeness nor are you hardworking enough to give time
31:10 to the scriptures.
31:16 But you still have opinions.
31:17 How do you have those opinions?
31:20 By listening to this and that.
31:32 Either be so meditative that all the knowledge contained in the Upanishads starts arising
31:37 from your own heart.
31:39 That can happen.
31:42 Or at least be honest and diligent enough to read the Upanishads, but neither are we
31:49 meditative nor are we diligent.
31:56 We still claim that the Upanishads are wonderful and we maintain an image of the Upanishads.
32:03 How?
32:04 By listening to the neighbor.
32:08 The neighbor says that Upanishads are great, so they must be great.
32:12 And the neighbor has told a few other things about the Upanishads and that's how we carry
32:17 that pretty picture.
32:19 This is how the Upanishads are.
32:20 I want to attack that picture.
32:22 I want you to really go to the Upanishads.
32:27 Either really go to the Upanishads or at least don't say that you know the Upanishads.
32:36 At least don't pretend that you respect them.
32:39 At least don't start randomly quoting the Upanishads.
32:47 So some random story you would bring from an Upanishad and then you will try to make
32:54 opinions and conclusions based on that story.
32:58 Now how will you be able to derive any meaning from that story?
33:04 If you have not read the scripture and no Upanishad is greatly tedious to read.
33:12 They are very very precise documents and some of them indeed do contain stories.
33:20 So you pick up a story from an Upanishad without knowing what that Upanishad is really about,
33:25 without knowing what Vedanta is really about and then from that story you come to some
33:29 conclusion.
33:30 How are you coming to that conclusion?
33:32 Have you worked hard enough?
33:34 Is your meditativeness telling you the essence of that story?
33:39 No.
33:40 Secondly, have you read a few Upanishads?
33:47 Have you read even that particular Upanishad from where the story is coming?
33:50 No, not even that much.
33:52 But you will quote that story and from that story you want to arrive to conclusions.
33:58 This is disgusting.
34:07 Ramakrishna Paramhansa used to deal so much in parables.
34:12 But without either being Ramakrishna or at least reading sufficiently about Ramakrishna,
34:22 how do you randomly quote one of his parables?
34:26 Most people do that because his small stories are sweet, very sweet.
34:33 But the essence of those stories would be apparent only to somebody like Ramakrishna
34:40 who is in love with Ma.
34:43 If you are not in love with Kali, how would you know what Ramakrishna is saying through
34:47 that story?
34:49 But you have no concern, no respect, no veneration, no heartful feeling for the mother and still
34:57 you want to quote Ramakrishna's story, some little parable about two birds, a crow and
35:04 a swan.
35:06 And when you will quote that, not only will you misinterpret, you will willfully misinterpret
35:12 to serve your own purpose.
35:14 And that's how we use spiritual literature, especially the stories.
35:21 Are you getting it?
35:31 You know what's worse?
35:32 Not only do we use those stories to suit our ego.
35:40 We often actively distort those stories.
35:45 Swami Vivekananda is one name that has been very frequently used to spread all kinds of
36:01 nonsensical propaganda.
36:09 So the story will begin with Swami Vivekananda was traveling through Manchuria.
36:15 When exactly did he go to Manchuria?
36:20 In the name of biographical accounts, fiction is circulating.
36:33 All kinds of nonsense is being tagged along with the name Swami Vivekananda.
36:41 Did Swami Vivekananda ever say that?
36:43 Do you want to check out?
36:48 Don't you want to check first?
37:00 And the best way to really know what did Swami Vivekananda say is to be a Swami Vivekananda.
37:11 Because even if you fully know what he did, your knowledge would still be incomplete.
37:18 Knowledge is never complete.
37:20 Even if you have great knowledge about Swami Vivekananda, still you can come to erroneous
37:24 conclusions because knowledge is always insufficient.
37:29 Knowledge does not really know.
37:34 But if you are a Swami Vivekananda, then you would never fail in reading the essence of
37:42 his words or his accounts or stories.
37:47 Then you would always be precisely correct.
37:55 The story would come to you and you would hit the jackpot.
38:03 Be a Swami Vivekananda, then you will know.
38:07 And if you say that you cannot immediately be Swami Vivekananda, then at least make the
38:15 efforts of going through his literature, going through his original literature, not articles
38:22 on Swami Vivekananda, not what somebody says about Swami Vivekananda, but go through what
38:29 he himself really said.
38:32 Read his biography.
38:37 See where he went.
38:38 See in what conditions he lived.
38:44 That's the way.
38:56 There was one message circulating a couple of years back, I suppose.
39:05 The message read, "Mobile phone and TV are the bane of India's youth.
39:12 India can never shine till its youth give up on the usage of, or rather the excessive
39:23 usage of mobile phone and television."
39:31 Swami Vivekananda.
39:35 So Swami Vivekananda said that India's youth is suffering because of excessive usage of
39:43 mobile phone and television.
39:48 And then after this message, the sender had written a huge and emotional description of
39:56 how really harmful social media and TV serials are.
40:07 And this is a story that is even objectively false.
40:14 Here you can at least demonstrate that falseness is happening.
40:21 But what happens when you pick up a genuine story from the Upanishads or from Ramakrishna
40:28 Paramhansa and then use it in your own way?
40:35 Do you know the context?
40:38 Do you understand the source from where it is coming?
40:43 All you have is images.
40:51 You are saying if I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence, what Parameshwari?
40:55 Do you know what simplicity is?
40:57 Do you know what innocence is?
40:58 What is simplicity?
40:59 To live half naked?
41:00 To roam around in a loincloth?
41:05 What is innocence?
41:06 To have a face that resembles that of a kid?
41:11 What is simplicity and what is innocence Parameshwari?
41:13 You are saying if I go by faith or seeing their simplicity and innocence?
41:21 Some of the members of this audience are in a YouTube volunteering group where they are
41:32 responding to the comments that the wider audience makes on my videos.
41:41 They would only read the sanitized comments.
41:49 They would only read the approved comments.
41:51 What they would not read is the comments that are deleted.
41:58 And one of the most common comments amongst the ones that are deleted is this man is evil.
42:08 He is shrewd, wicked.
42:09 Come up with a few more synonymous words please.
42:25 Just as you know Parameshwari, somebody to be simple and innocent.
42:33 There are equally smart audiences as you who claim that they know that this man here is
42:43 the epitome of wickedness.
42:51 Do you really know what is innocence?
42:52 Do you really know what is guilt?
42:54 Do you really know what is shrewdness?
42:57 How do you know?
43:10 Is there any curse word that they do not use for me?
43:16 It starts with, "Yeh aadmi paagal hai"
43:19 This man is mad.
43:25 And then they take pleasure in describing my entire family and extended family.
43:39 And they are just as confident as you are Parameshwari.
43:45 In your world, I probably appear innocent.
43:47 I do not know whether you used it for me.
43:49 I am just, you know, maybe misinterpreting you or taking you for granted.
43:54 Maybe used it only for the other greats who look very innocent.
43:57 I obviously do not look innocent to you.
43:59 I keep scolding you and...
44:16 There is no day when somebody does not threaten to physically annihilate me on some social
44:24 media or the other.
44:26 It's just that you never get to read those comments because they are purged away.
44:40 How do you know?
44:51 How do you know?
44:57 And I have said how to know.
44:59 How to know?
45:02 See who is treating your disease.
45:09 How do you know a doctor?
45:11 Not by his degrees, but by his ability to treat you.
45:23 In the physical world, the degrees are at least a rudimentary indicator.
45:30 In the spiritual world, degrees are not even a rudimentary indicator.
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