Javed Akhtar once accused Sadhguru of “playing a dangerous game” with devotees — prompting a heated war of words during an event. The conversation had soon devolved into name-calling with the spiritual leader in turn accusing Akhtar of ‘not using his brain’. The well-known author and lyricist had stressed the difference between ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ as a counterpoint to remarks made by Sadhguru and insisted that he had never met a spiritual leader that he could take seriously. He had also taken umbrage to a claim made by the guru about the five human senses being ‘unreliable’.
“The first thing that spiritualists will do is to try and shake your confidence in these five senses. Only then can they control you. Now, if you really believe in this, why don’t you have a surgical procedure and remove your brain. Then let us see how he expands his personality. Whatever expansion happens, happens in your mind. You cannot undermine it. And whoever suggests that it can be undermined is playing a dangerous game with you,” Akhtar had insisted during a conclave.
The two had also debated ‘faith’ during the meeting — with Akhtar questioning the ” difference between faith and stupidity” and pointing out that both could be defined somewhat similarly.
“Anything that is devoid of reason, rationale, evidence, witness is faith. I really wonder what is the difference between faith and stupidity, because stupidity has the same definition. I am willing to accept ‘belief’, but it has to have rationale,” he had insisted.
“The way this is going, it’s coming from a certain presumption. When I met Javed saab last time, he was telling me that some guru told him not to use his mind. I do not know which guru said this, but one thing is clear, the advice has been taken seriously,” Sadhguru responded.
“I promise you guru ji, I have never taken any guru seriously,” came the rejoinder from Akhtar.
The author also revisited his infamous debate with Sadhguru during an interview with Midday last month — joking about the ‘pompous’ questions about the reason for human existence.
“It is a pompous question posed by homo sapiens. It doesn’t mean anything. You are redundant, like a blade of grass. You will never say that about an ant, about a cockroach, about a mosquito. You are the same, just a little bigger. In this universe, which is billions of years old, we die in 70-80 years. We are nothing,” he said.