At the Center, the Guru, Maya, and you, are all One and Nothing || Acharya Prashant on Khalil Gibran

When you reach the Heart of Life you will find yourself not higher than the felon, and not lower than the Prophet.

~ Khalil Gibran

Speaker: “When you reach the Heart of Life you will find yourself not higher than the felon, and not lower than the Prophet”. At the Heart of Life there are not even these two. There is neither the Prophet nor the felon. The Prophet stands for what we call the Guru in Indian traditions. The Felon would stand for what we call as Maya or Avidya in the eastern tradition. Both the Prophet and the felon or the Satan hold any meaning or significance only in the world of mind; that is where separation exists, that is where it makes any sense to talk of two or more, that is where there are at least two directions.

The two directions are: The one that takes the ego-center towards the Heart and the opposite one which takes the ego-center, the feeling of ‘I am’ further away from the Heart. Who is the Prophet? The One, the force, that takes your ego-center, your sense of self, your feeling of ‘I am’, towards the Heart. The same Heart that Khalil Gibran is calling as the Heart of Life, the same Heart that Ramana Maharishi calls as ‘*Hridayam*‘. No difference at all.

Now when you are located away from the Heart, when your sense of ‘I am’ is a mental sense, when that sense is located in the mind then there is a distinction that is created and that distinction is a significant distinction. That distinction is between the Prophet and the felon, Guru and Maya, God and the ungodly. Then it is necessary for the mind to choose wisely in surrender because there