Margaritas ante porcos

It is said that eyes only see what the mind is able to comprehend. The guru doesn’t appear until the disciple is ready.

There’s an anecdote of an interesting meeting between the popular anti-guru U.G. Krishnamurti, who derided everything holy & a profound yogi of recent times, Ramana Maharshi. This is from his memoirs : 

In 1939, when U.G. was 21 years of age, he went and met Sri Ramana Maharshi and asked him, "This thing called moksha [liberation], can you give it to me?" Ramana replied, "I can give it, but can you take it?" struck him like a "thunderbolt" and set him up on a relentless search for Truth that ended at the age of 49 with a totally unforeseen result.

Let me dissect this a bit. Unless one is prepared, one can’t handle the truth - the ultimate truth, that is. From a yogic standpoint, it requires a lot of preparation from an aspirant to attain the goal. It’s a lifetime of an effort. People who have gone searching for shortcuts have been beaten so badly. The symbolism of kundalini to a snake is very pertinent. Unless one knows how to handle it, one will be bitten badly and will suffer for the same.

There is one anecdote from Ancient Greece - that of philosopher Plotinus and his disciple Amelius. It’s from John Dillon’s book “Prayer and contemplation in the Neoplatonic and Sufi traditions”.

If it turns now abruptly to Plotinus, we can find from his pen or his lips scathing condemnations of what one might characterize as the ‘popular’ attitude to prayer - an attitude fully shared, it must be said, by contemporary Christians, whom he probably has in mind. First, there is his notorious response to his senior disciple Amelius, as reported by Porphyry, when Amelius invited him to accompany him on a sort of Temple-crawl, at the festival of the new moon: ‘The gods ought to come to me, not I to them’. ‘ what he meant by this exalted utterance, we could not understand and did not dare to ask’ says Porphyry. A Possible interpretation, surely, However, is that our relations with Gods should be based, Not on our going out of our way to solicit them for favors which we have not made an effort to deserve, but rather on our making ourselves ready, by the practice of spiritual exercises to receive their beneficial power. It is not the expression of impious or arrogant attitude to the gods; merely a properly Platonist one. We cannot except the gods to help us, maintains Plotinus if we are not prepared to help ourselves.

After the sacred, let’s come to the mundane: margaritas ante porcos literally translates into pearl before swine. The value of anything is apportioned by only the one who is capable of recognizing it. The entire idea of value is dependent on the beholder. This is applicable to so many things – knowledge, relationship, information, etc,.

There are two implications from this: First, we should be ready in all possible ways before wishing and realizing something; the second, we may be searching for great people but we may as well miss the great and exceptional people amongst us.