Sharanagati

(from a lecture of Swami Tirtha, 06.01.2019 evening, Sofia)

(continues from the previous Friday)

Question: You said about the fake and the real, the truth and the untruth. Nowadays there are already many computers, artificial intelligence that can read emotions better than any human. It can be used in medicine, it can be a lawyer, it can be an accountant, it can be a lot of things. Also bio-technologies are developing. Scientists are trying to hack the human being, turn it into algorithm: they can guess what you will eat, what you will do, when you will sleep. If they try to make an ultimate, let’s say, spiritual being, some sort of guru… If something like that could be possible, then what makes a human a human, what makes a guru a guru? 

Swami Tirtha: The algorithm of life goes back to three principles: you are a spirit soul, you belong to God, and there is a loving and living connection between the two of you. These are the rules of life, this is the algorithm of life. And there is this competition between artificial intelligence and the human beings. Yet you know, wisdom is not a pile of information, but it is the knowledge, the awareness of the most important truths, of the essence. So, it’s a big difference. The capacities of artificial information storage started to become bigger than the complete, the overall capacities of all the human brains to store information back in the 70s. So in that sense we can say that this competition is lost on the level of information. But it’s definitely not lost on the level of life, on the level of emotions or artistic expression. 

But your question, what makes a human being a real human, is very important. Because we have a pear nature. We are similar to the tree. We are similar to the ideal. The human body, for example, is compared to a small world. And the world is compared to a huge human body. The macro- and the microcosm. So in one sense we can say that we have divine qualities inside. We are cit-kana, the sparks of consciousness, originally. And that is very practical to understand this relationship, because the fire is the fire, and we are the sparks – sharing the same quantities, but the quality is different. And we don’t need a computer to understand this. By the way, do you know what the definition of an IT manager is? Such a person who throughout all his life is resolving problems that wouldn’t even exist without a computer. It’s not a very high thing. Electricity finishes, computers finish. So, sometimes we need to develop some practical knowledge as well. 

But the other question was what makes a guru a guru? One quality is the light, the enlightened state. Because guru is such a light that will dispel our own individual darkness. And the other meaning of the word guru is ‘heavy’. He is unshakable in his conviction. So, what makes a guru a guru is his being a disciple – this is the real quality. A disciple of his own master. So, this is one very important quality. And there are a lot more, but I think for today it’s enough.