Even when you are lost, you are already Home || Acharya Prashant on Khalil Gibran (2015)

“The significance of a man is not in what he attains,

but rather what he longs to attain.”

-Khalil Gibran, ‘Sand and Foam’

Question: Once during a discourse on the Bible, you too have said, “The more you know the Truth, the more you want to know; such is the expanse of the Truth, infinite.” If this be so, then what is coming back to Home? What is this whole thing about coming back Home? Can one ever really be Home? Khalil Gibran seems to say that more than arriving at Home, it is the longing for Home which is important.

Acharya Prashant: Listen again to what Khalil Gibran says. He says, “The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.”

Man is a constant search, man is a restlessness; that is how man is constituted. That is the basic definition of man. Owing to this, often the religious mind builds a mental model that there surely exists a point at which this restlessness is extinguished. In this mental model there exists a problem statement. The problem statement is – the restlessness of man. And finally there exists a full stop to the story, a solution, and the solution is – coming Home.