How to protect ourselves from the wrong the wrong-headed and the wrong-hearted – Suppose someone gives others wrong advice. Why might they do so? Because of three broad factors: wrong information, wrong intelligence or wrong intention. Let’s understand these three degrees of wrongs with respect to money and life. 

Wrong: Suppose a stock-broker is ill-informed. They advise their clients to invest in a bad share  and their clients end up losing their money, they are wrong. Suppose some teachers offer life-advice that neglects life’s spiritual dimension. If they don’t know about life’s spiritual dimension, their advice is wrong; their students’ lives will be bereft of any enduring meaning or enrichment. 

Wrong-headed: Suppose a stock-broker misuses their intelligence to reason wrongly. If they stubbornly insist that a share performing badly will pick up soon and urge others to invest in a sinking ship, they are wrong-headed. Suppose some teachers use wrong reasoning to deny or decry life’s spiritual dimension, then their advice is wrong-headed. Such misdirect intelligence insists that reality is opposite to how it actually is (Bhagavad-gita 18.32). 

Wrong-hearted: Suppose a stock-broker wants to fleece people of their money and deliberately advises investing in a share that is going to crash. Such stock-brokers get a kickback from that collapsing company’s owners, while their clients lose all their money. Suppose some teachers want to exploit people by making them more sensually attached. Therefore, they forcefully and falsely reason against life’s spiritual dimension, thereby making people materially manipulable. Such people are demoniac; they are the worst of misleaders. 

Gita wisdom provides us time-tested wisdom for living that can protect us from the wrong, the wrong-headed and the wrong-hearted. 

One-sentence summary: 

Those with incorrect information are wrong; those with misdirected intelligence are wrong-headed, those with malevolent intention are wrong-hearted — to be wrong is bad, to be wrong-headed is worse, to be wrong-hearted is worst. 

Think it over:

  • Why might people give wrong advice?
  • What is the difference between being wrong-headed and wrong-hearted?
  • Why is being wrong-hearted worse than being wrong-headed? 

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18.22: That understanding which considers irreligion to be religion and religion to be irreligion, under the spell of illusion and darkness, and strives always in the wrong direction, O Pārtha, is in the mode of ignorance.

How to protect ourselves from the wrong the wrong-headed and the wrong-hearted