…ācarya devo bhava

Matri devo bhava, pitra devo bhava, acarya devo bhava, be unto your mother as unto god, be unto your father as unto god, be unto your teacher as unto god. This was the word prevalent in the Indian ethos till at least a few decades back. Thus interpreted, it was a sound practical advise since if we wish to learn and receive anything worthwhile from our parents and teachers, we must treat them as we would a god. That is to say, we must look upon them as a channel and messenger of God who is made visible and nearer to us through the persona of the significant figures in our life. This was the old ideal, an ideal meant to preserve the collective wisdom of the race by transmitting it passively to the younger generation. The student, the child was supposed to receive this ‘collective wisdom’ without questioning and with reverence towards the teacher. This was meant to ensure a sound pedigree, a well-rounded life harmonious in all aspects, a life relatively free from error and extremes. Whether it succeeded in achieving its goal or not is difficult to say. But if one has to go by the records, then it did possibly create a small nucleus of a cultured humanity, an elite class, sound in habits and noble in temperament. This highly cultured and enlightened group became then a beacon light for the race, so much so that the king himself listened to them and obeyed their command. Thus was preserved a great ancient culture transmitted through passive memory and isolation of a section of humanity dedicated to this higher learning. It went as far as it could, till all came back with a great reversal and a setback.

The setback came for two possible reasons. First, the isolation of a group made them progressively ineffective in dealing with the mundane side of life that unfortunately always forms the bulk. Secondly, and more importantly, the taste of power and respect led to a certain arrogance and sort of inner complacency that sets in men when they inherit success or find fortune lying at their doorsteps. These were men of knowledge no doubt but even the highest knowledge remains theoretical unless it is able to apply itself in every possible sphere of life and action. When the hour of application came, then the contact with the rich and many-sided expression of the life impulse proved too difficult to be handed by a knowledge that one arrived at by a process of passive learning and an exclusive concentration. Finally, and most importantly, the system failed because of an inherent defect. The very same thing that helped the system preserve the collective wisdom became the cause of its slow but inevitable decline. It is the method of passive learning based on reverence and obedience to the external authority of the parent and the teacher in whom one was supposed to see God! Such a method, leads over a time to a stagnation, a blocking of the fresh springs of creativity. It leads to a gradual sinking of the life-force due either to a lack of challenge as the external authority is taken for granted, or else because one keeps applying the old solutions to new problems that Nature keeps presenting before us so as to tease us out of inertia and somnolence. Over a period of time, the old solutions, even the authentic experience fades in its spirit and becomes a convention, a formal ritual, a church or a creed. The last nail on the coffin comes when the empty throne of a receding truth is usurped by the powers of falsehood and its ignorant ministers. The ācarya and the parent, once revered and worshiped, obeyed and followed blindly, become a tyrant themselves. Their eyes are no more on some high inner Truth but on the material gains they can derive from their pupil and the child. They think low, feel low and live for lesser aims and yet, — and that’s the irony of it all, — expect the children to follow the old dictum, no more as a happy expression of an inner feeling but as an externally imposed dictate.

Therefore has the Time-Spirit broken the old sāstra, for indeed, the old rule had become a misrule. But out of its scattered pieces a new truth must be discovered, or rather the old truth seen in a New Light. This rejuvenating mantra is contained in the old formula itself. Only we have read it the other way. Matri devo bhava, Pitra devo bhava, ācarya devo bhava, is a call to the parents and teachers much more than to the students for without the one the other is an incomplete and a half truth that easily turns into falsehood. The call goes forth, ‘O! ye mother, be as a God, O! ye father, be as a God, O! ye teacher, be as a God!’ In other words, the parents and the teachers alike must know that they are mere trustees of God and their true worth lies in how far they can be a good instrument and a channel for God’s work. Now that is not an easy task, for it means literally being on the summit of one’s consciousness. It means to be full of a fundamental humility that knows how little do we really know and is therefore always keen to progress and arrive at fresh vistas and vision of knowledge. It means to have a subtle and plastic consciousness that knows how to adapt the means to the end and is not rigidly stuck in a fixed groove of a particular method. It means also a deep inner freedom and vastness that can see all things calmly and discern rightly by seeing hidden aspects and powers that move us and the relation of each to the whole. It means a total vision and not one cabined in narrow and fixed frames of customary ideas and thoughts. It means to have all the love of the Divine as mother and all the wisdom and patience of the Divine as father.

Nature is breaking these fixed frames. Through our children and our circumstances she is throwing challenges at us or rather calling us to grow up. Today’s children live in a larger inner space and invite us to join them in the sublimest of all adventures, — the adventure and the joy of a constant self-finding and self-exceeding. That is what is required now for parents and teachers as well as for the students, for the vistas of an unending progress have been opened for man and the roads to an infinite journey laid down and made ready for his tread. Those alone will help most in this process who see this godlike possibility in the child and in the man; and not only in thought and idea and feeling but in life and in action, not only in speech and words but as a living example reveal what it means to be as a God, — matri devo bhava, pitra devo bhava, ācarya devo bhava.

Dr Alok Pandey