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Main Index
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right.
There are three types of listeners. One, who you try waking again and again but you can't wake them up. This kind of people are the vast majority. They hear but they don't listen. They look but they don't see. They understand but make their own interpretations -- patching up and whitewashing everything. They understand but still they hold on to their misunderstanding. They have a deep vested interest in misunderstanding. They are afraid to give up their old, familiar beliefs. There is a second type of listener in the middle. If someone makes an effort -- a Buddha, an Ashtavakra, a Krishna -- they will wake up. Arjuna was this kind of listener. Krishna had to work hard. Krishna had to work long and hard on him. The Gita was born out of this effort. At the very end Arjuna felt, "My illusions are far away, my doubts have fallen, I come to surrender at your feet, I have seen!" But this was after a great struggle had taken place, a great conflict. And there is an even more superior listener -- like Janak -- who hears when it has hardly been spoken. Just as Ashtavakra started to speak, Janak started seeing. Today's sutras are Janak's words. So quickly, immediately, Janak realized what Ashtavakra was saying was absolutely right. The blow struck home. So I say, rains fall, but sometimes the ground they rain on is stony: it is raining but seeds will not sprout. And sometimes it rains on ground that is a bit rocky: seeds sprout, but not as many as could. And sometimes it rains on ground that is completely ready, that is fertile and has no rocks -- there is a great harvest. Janak is that type of soil. A hint was enough. It is worth trying to understand Janak's state, because you will be somewhere among these three. And it depends on you, where you insist on placing yourself in these three.
You can be just an ordinary person who insists on not listening, who has vowed to fight against the truth; who, listening, hears something else; who interprets as he listens, who as he listens goes on projecting other things he has heard onto it... colors it, distorts it, hears whatever he wants. You do not hear what is being said. You hear
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