Summary
A Master’s Secret Whispers by Kapil Gupta is a conversation between the student and the master. It is laid out in a Q&A format and is a fairly quick read.
Unlike many spiritual, self-help gurus, Kapil Gupta does not believe in prescriptions, how-to’s, self-help, guru’s, mental hacks, psychology, motivation, and the like. He thinks that these things are for those who are not serious. According to Kapil, the truth is a path away from all fixes, away from all chases. It is for the one who is Serious. It is for the one who is Sincere.
Other books by Kapil Gupta are Atmamun and Direct Truth.
Key Takeaways from A Master’s Secret Whispers by Kapil Gupta
– Impossibility will bow at your alter. But first become a man worthy of being bowed to. Not through fame and accomplishment. But through Uncompromising Sincerity.
On chasing success:
– Musashi devoted the whole of his days and nights to a study of not only the sword, but of the mind. In seclusion. In the depths of the jungle. It was not a striving, nor a struggle. He became a Master of the sword. While others did not. And, therefore, he had no need to chase success. There was no success. There was no failure. He became the Supreme Master of the Sword. Of what use does such a man have to chase success?
– If one has given the whole of himself to becoming a Master, he will do what is necessary to become it. And it will be a joy for him. It will be an intense journey. And peaceful the entire way. Hard work and practice are for those who try to become that which they secretly believe that it is difficult for them to become.
On placing oneself into a role:
– A psychologist never truly sees the human being who walks into her office. She sees only a Patient. She sees herself as a psychologist, and thus the only thing in the world that she is able to see the other person as is a Patient. This destroys all possibility of human connection. She is playing a role. And thus she has no choice but to place the person who comes to her into a role. It is the same with a parent. A parent sees the child as His Child. He does not see the child as a human being. And thus it is doomed from the beginning.
– The child is an entity independent of the parent. He belongs to Nature. He does not belong to the Parent. Every parent is a surrogate. Nature uses the parent to bear the child. But it does not grant her ownership of him.
– When you place yourself into a role, you can only see the other through the eyes of that role. When you have no role, you begin to see the flesh and blood human being. Where I once parented my children, I now revere them. Where I once taught them, I now learn from them. And is it not the height of irony, that they now listen to my every word, when I no longer need them to listen.
On living a deplorable life:
– The overwhelming majority of men live a deplorable life. And they die in its grips. It is not only that they do not take action to seek a way out. They do not even recognize that they live in turmoil. They do not even see it. They believe that this is the way it was supposed to be. They believe that this is all there is. They believe that nothing beyond this misery, strife, and turmoil exists. They say things like, “that’s life.” And if one does not even suspect that something beyond all of this even exists, why would he seek help for a way out?
– “Incremental betterment” and “inching past the other” instantly relegates a man into struggle. He may have attained the heavens. But because his eyes are fixed upon the other, he barely attains the low hanging limb of the willow.
– The false game is to give legitimacy to the notion that there is a hierarchy of importance among human beings. If a man who is born is sure to one day die, what could possibly be of
any “importance?” How can something that is fleeting carry any importance at all? If you create a category called “importance” you will naturally be compelled to populate this category. And then you will be compelled to create a hierarchy of “importance.” Following which you will find yourself with the difficult task of placing yourself somewhere within this hierarchy. And the moment you place yourself within this hierarchy, you will have created a problem.
– It is not that attaining wisdom is so difficult. It is just that man is simply unwilling to separate himself from his ego. In his view, a man’s ego is all he has. It is his foundation. It is the place from which he acts, and from which he sees the world. How can one ask him to separate himself from such a thing?
– The man of wisdom has seen that all joys are followed by misery. All pleasures are followed by pain. He has seen the undeniable reproducibility of this fact. And thus he has grown tired of seeking pleasure. And in so doing he has become immune to the pain that follows.
– If you Wait, you will be a beggar who deserves nothing. If you Work, you will be a mule who attains nothing. You must seek to Understand, student. Understand the patterns of your life that have repeated themselves over and over again. And this understanding is borne of astute and incisive observation. And this astute and incisive observation is borne of the Genuine Desire to be immune to all things that life has to offer. Most especially the “good” things.