The monkey and the monk

[1]

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [1]

Gnana means “to know”, not “to philosophise”. Unfortunately, philosophy is mostly being passed off as gnana yoga today. Fundamentally, if you want to pursue gnana, you need to be alert and have a sharp intellect. Every day and every moment one must slowly sharpen one’s intellect.

It should not miss anything; it should go through everything, but nothing should stick to it, nor should it be influenced by things happening around. This is gnana.
If you can use your intellect in such a manner, it will penetrate through the process of life and show you what is true and what is untrue, what is real and what is unreal. Today, people just jump to conclusions without proper assessment. They make up philosophies. People tend to say, “Everything is maya. It is all illusion, so why worry?” They are just trying to console themselves. But when maya gets them properly, all their philosophies evaporate.
Something similar happened with the great Swami Vivekananda. All the time Swami Vivekananda went about his work with great strength, “Everything is maya, don’t bother about anything. The whole world that you experience is all illusion.” Once, when he was walking with two of his monks, a rabies-infected monkey, which had gone crazy, started chasing him. Vivekananda screamed and ran. Luckily, the monkey found some other distraction and went away.
Vivekananda stopped and realised that all his “maya” teaching suddenly fell through. “Monkey is also a maya, monkey’s madness is also a maya. That the monkey is going to bite me is also maya. Why did I run like this?” These things hit him very strongly and from then on, he was never the same man again.
So talking about the illusory nature of the world, or talking about the Creation and the Creator, or believing that the world is like this or that is not gnana. Gnana yogis cannot afford to believe or identify themselves with anything. The moment they do, the sharpness and effectiveness of their intellect diminishes.
Unfortunately, today, in the name of gnana, people believe so many things — “I am atman, I am paramatman”. They believe in the arrangement of the cosmos, the shape and size of the soul, how it will transcend; they read all this in books. This is not gnana yoga, because you are believing something without real assessment. People who walk the path of gnana are those whose intellect is such that they are not willing to believe anything, nor do they disbelieve anything. “What I know, I know; what I do not know, I do not know” — this is gnana.

— The author, a prominent spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, an author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org