As I sipped on my cucumber juice, chatting up with two very wise people at a cafe in Tiru, we watched a bunch of foreigners smoke.  I was perplexed.

“Wouldn’t a spiritual aspirant at least first aim to get rid of addictions before seeking higher levels?” I asked.

“None of this is real anyway”, my friend winked at me, and then added “Ram says that Swami Chinmayananda used to smoke too, and eat crappy food… He had 3 bypass surgeries.”

We were just back from a very intense talk by Ramji, who had strongly suggested that so many things we do, including praying, are not going to lead to enlightenment. “Must we stop doing them then?” someone asked. “No. As long as you’re still stuck in this duality, you’ve got to follow it’s rules.”

Isn’t this exactly where so many of us get stuck? Some wise person says or does something and we blindly believe or follow it, unaware that it isn’t relevant to us at all. We’ve got to know and follow our personal truths first.

Swami Chinmayananda, for instance, ate unhealthy food all the time, because he liked it. He knew first hand, that none of this was real anyway. He also knew that the pain and the surgeries weren’t real. Do you?

This is somewhat akin to a high school student declaring that he wouldn’t ever use history as he aims to be a scientist, so studying it would be a waste of time. Now this attitude would affect his grades and in the very least, make it harder for him to become a scientist.

Are you failing any history tests in life?