Why do people believe nonsense and get fooled? || Acharya Prashant, with NIT Trichy (2021)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00So, first of all, I am Ashmit from Varanasi. I have completed my post-graduation from Delhi

00:13University. And today, I am listening to you from last more than one year. The question

00:25today is why so easily we get so much convinced by anything. A few of my family members and

00:38friends follow things like energy, energy healing and other spiritual teachers just

00:45because they sound spiritually convincing or scientifically convincing or logically

00:51convincing. So, I also want to convince them that this is not very much right. So, how

00:59to prevent that? How to go with this?

01:02So, the question was that people get very easily convinced by things like vibrations,

01:14energy and many other superstitious and pseudo-scientific terms, concepts, theories. You asked why

01:32does that happen? Am I right?

01:36Yes sir.

01:37Right.

01:38Why does that happen and how can we convince those people and how can we make them more,

01:46how can we make them understand what is right and what should be done in this?

01:53See, if we can understand why that happens, we will also know whether to convince, how

02:01to convince, when to convince etc. First of all, let us go into what that thing really

02:09is. You see, we do not lead lives of truth. I will start from something that is very real,

02:21very close, very obvious and very intimate to us. No theories please. That is the first

02:28thing in spirituality. Start from where you already are. Begin from what you already know.

02:39Begin from something that is beyond dispute. So, if we look at ourselves, if we look at

02:47our lives and for sure we do exist, otherwise that this conversation would not have been

02:54taking place. So, it is beyond dispute that you and I exist and those who speak to you,

03:00the ones you are referring to, they too exist in our frame of reference. How do we exist?

03:08When you look at the life of the common man, how does he exist? Does he lead a life of

03:17great sharpness, understanding, equity, depth, insight? Do we really understand anything?

03:28Forget about whether we understand what real spirituality is about. Do we understand why

03:35we move in a certain way, why we work in a particular place, why we make a certain decision,

03:42why we enroll in a particular course, why we marry a particular person, why even we

03:49are fond of a particular color or a particular trouser or t-shirt or something. We just move

04:04about in a haze and we have become very accustomed to hazy vision and random movement, so much

04:22so that it stops bothering us after a point and we lose the very inclination to question

04:31it. The urge to know, very curiosity, the spirit to question is just lost. Also, after

04:44a point in life, we develop stakes in falseness. Are you getting it? Questioning then becomes

04:51dangerous. If you question, then the falseness of something you might be heavily invested

04:59in would be revealed to you and when that falseness would be revealed to you, you will

05:05be forced to withdraw your investment or it would be exposed that your investment has

05:11gone waste. We do not really have the courage to face that kind of a reality. Who wants

05:21to come to know that what he has invested his last 10 or 20 or 40 years in is just a

05:31wastage? So, we let the false continue, prevail and even pretend to be the truth and that

05:46becomes our default mode of functioning. Are you getting it? So, we start leading false

05:55lives altogether. It is not just that in spirituality we are mistaken. Remaining mistaken becomes

06:05our preferred mode of functioning. Our very mind, the consciousness itself becomes mistaken

06:17at its very center and the more you stay mistaken, the more you want to remain mistaken because

06:27now your world is nothing but a world of your mistakes and you are attached to your world,

06:33right? You want to proclaim that you are a man of effort and success. If you are attached to

06:46your world and your world is one of mistakes, then you are actually attached to your mistakes.

06:54Your inebriation, your inner haze, your nebulous decisions and you don't want to call yourself out.

07:06You say let the status quo continue. Why rock the boat? Why create disturbance? Why disrupt? What

07:21is going on? So, we become status quoists. We think that we are just letting our haze and our

07:32ignorance continue in one aspect of our life but as we just said it becomes a default mode of

07:42functioning. Irrespective of what we are doing then, we lose the faculty to inquire and question.

07:50Even if we are now out to buy bananas, it becomes beyond us to really inquire deeply. You might be

08:05thinking this to be trivial. No, it's not. The one who has lost the sense to inquire, the one who has

08:15lost all love for truth, is not going to really inquire in any situation of his life. So, all kinds

08:26of lies, deceptions, falsenesses will dance around him and he'll happily entertain them, right? So,

08:35this is the now ecosystem in which a fraudulent spiritual teacher emerges. Now, this teacher is

08:45sharp to an extent, at least sharper than the common man. He gets up, he looks around and he

08:57says, all this entire population around me is so ready to be fooled. They are begging to be

09:10cheated. In fact, they are already living very blind lives. The moment is ripe for me to ascend

09:23and dominate their minds. And so, he ascends very steeply. He has caught your weak nerve. He knows

09:41where to hit you. He knows where your buttons and handles are. He knows that he can get away

09:53with any kind of conceptual tomfoolery. Nobody is going to dissent and question. People just don't

10:11have it in them to question something that several others seem to be coolly accepting.

10:23In fact, the very norm of truth becomes popularity or general acceptance. If a thousand people accept

10:37something, then the thousand first need not even go into the veracity of that thing. The thousand

10:47people before him who accepted that thing are sufficient. Why inquire? So, all you need is to

10:59tell the thousand first person that see a thousand people before you have subscribed to what I am

11:07saying. Now, you don't even need those thousand people to actually subscribe to you. You just

11:14need to create that kind of an impression. You just need to make it feel to everybody that you

11:24are a big man followed by lakhs and millions. The moment you create this impression in the

11:33spiritual market, people will blindly follow you. We are sheep. And spirituality by its very

11:51distorted definition itself is something beyond logic. So, now you can say anything that is

12:00absolutely idiotic and it won't be questioned. Why? Because spirituality is supposed to be

12:07beyond logic. So, that's how these things pervade and multiply and become the common

12:19culture. But remember that the main culprit is not the one who propagates such falsehood. The

12:31main culprit is the common man who is anyway living a life of self-deception. When you are

12:40so inclined to deceive yourself, why will others not come and deceive you? The others are to be

12:56blamed later. First of all, we ourselves are to blame. Had we had some love for reality,

13:14some spine against falseness, then such charlatans wouldn't have arisen at all in the first place. So,

13:33we are the ones who should be blamed. Also, you know what happens? If you are accustomed to lies

13:46and comfortable falsehoods, then you start rejecting the truth even if the truth somehow

13:57tries to make its way to you. So, then it becomes a public conspiracy against the truth. We will

14:08not allow the truth to strike roots. It's dangerous for you, it's dangerous for me. So,

14:17the two of us are united in our fear against the truth and then that ecosystem loses whatever

14:35little remaining possibility there was for the light of the truth and the false becomes all

14:46pervasive. It's just that the false is false. Therefore, it cannot continue for too long.

14:51Sooner than later it will crumble under its own weight. So, that's how it happens. You are with

15:03me till this point? Yes sir, Smith? Yes sir. Pranam Acharya ji. So, I have a follow up to

15:17Ashmit's question. So, my question was, you said that even the mature people of the society are

15:23following these so called gurus and they are blindly following them. So, I wanted to ask,

15:29what is the thing that is stopping them from, I wanted to ask, so even if we assume that the

15:36normal people of the society follow the gurus, but what about the scientists and the intellectual

15:42people? So, what is the thing that is stopping them from inquiring into the thing and are they

15:50afraid of the society or what is the thing that is stopping them? What's your name please? Sir,

15:55my name is Bhushan. Bhushan, we started from a point, you remember that. We said,

16:01because we lead lives of falseness, so it becomes conducive for more falseness to capture us. It

16:13doesn't matter whether one is a teacher or a scientist, an explorer or researcher, look at

16:19how he is leading his life. What do you think? What do you think, scientists are all inwardly

16:30very honest to themselves? No, not at all. If science remains just a thing of employment to

16:45you, just a profession to you, then inwardly you can remain very very unscientific. You will keep

16:57researching on the things that you will see around you, but you will never research on the thing

17:05inside you. So, it should not surprise you that even scientists are prone to being superstitious

17:15and you will be amazed at the kind of superstition you might find in the scientific community. It is

17:27because of lack of self-knowledge and self-knowledge is not a necessary accompaniment

17:36of worldly knowledge. You might know everything about atoms and molecules and still not know

17:45anything about yourself. You might know how the waves function and how the universe proceeds,

18:01but you may not know how the mind functions and how your desires and tendencies proceed.

18:13I am asking you, does becoming a scientist rid you of fear and jealousy? Not at all.

18:28Does becoming a scientist rid you of violence? No, not at all. So, this is superstition that

18:45if you are trained in science, you will be automatically liberated of superstition. Not

18:55true. Being trained in science just gives you a little more ammunition to avoid superstition,

19:04but whether or not you will use that ammunition still depends on your inner tendencies and

19:17knowledge of those inner tendencies is not contained in any book of science. That has

19:25to be done through rigorous self-observation. So, do not think that these are two ends of

19:34the spectrum, science and superstition. No, not at all. In fact, science and superstition can

19:44very comfortably coexist within the same person. The opposite of the superstitious mind is not the

19:58scientific mind. The opposite of the superstitious mind is the spiritual mind. Unfortunately,

20:08most people do not understand that. Even the framers of our constitution had no

20:15understanding of this thing. So, in the constitution, when they have spoken against

20:25superstition, for example, in the directive principles of state policy, they have said,

20:33we do not want superstition. So, we want to cultivate a scientific temper in India's

20:40population. Now, this is a lot of nonsense because scientific temper will not eradicate

20:50superstition. They should have written spiritual temper. Only spiritual temper can rid you of

21:00superstition. But then the framers of our constitution were just too secular to include

21:07the word spirituality in constitution. They thought spirituality is synonymous with communalism,

21:18with partition attitude or bigotry. So, they stayed clear of spirituality. They did not include

21:31spirituality even in the school and college curricula after independence. This is a great

21:42superstition. To think that superstition can be taken care of by science or by rationality.

21:50You know, we have these organizations, groups in the country who fight against superstition and

22:00they call themselves rationalists or free thinkers. They are superstitious in their own way.

22:12Their central superstition is that rationality can fight superstition. You see, you have to

22:26understand the superstitious entity. The ego is the first superstition. Why? Because the ego thinks

22:34it is, whereas it is not. When you are not and you think you are, that is the fundamental superstition.

22:44No? Superstition is to believe in something that does not exist. The first thing that does not

22:51exist is the ego itself. But it has a great belief in its own existence. So, the ego is bound to be

23:00superstitious because it itself is the first superstition. But we don't want to get into

23:05these things. We become afraid. The constitution was being framed at the time when religious

23:17hatred and passion and tempers and violence in the country were very very high. There was a lot

23:24of bloodshed. So, these educated people became very afraid of religion. They said if we talk

23:32of religion, then again there will be bloodshed. They did not understand the difference between

23:38religion and spirituality. They did not know the difference between a belief system and inquiry.

23:44What you call as religion is just an organized belief system. Believe in this,

23:50believe in that. Whereas spirituality is just an invitation to inquiry. There is

23:56hardly anything common between frozen belief and youthful inquiry. Getting it? Just do not

24:09think that by being well-educated or well-read or thoughtful, you have liberated yourself of

24:17superstition. Most people live in all kinds of superstition because they have no self-knowledge

24:23and I said the ego is the first superstition. As long as the false self remains, the mother

24:31superstition remains. But you know it boosts the ego to call that illiterate tribal superstitious.

24:44Why? Because he believes in gods and goddesses and magical powers of that great old tree. So,

24:52you say, oh he is so superstitious. He believes that the trees can speak. He believes that that

25:03particular rock can do some magic. But look at your own life. You chase a man or a woman and

25:14you think that that rock can do some magic for you. How are you not superstitious? Thinking that

25:22a rock can weave magic is superstition. But thinking that a new job can do magic for you is

25:32not superstition. The latter is even more vicious superstition because it is difficult to call it

25:45out and remove it. Something is outside of you, you can easily wipe it away. When the thing is

25:57inside of you, it requires courage to pluck it out. Is it an easy yes or a difficult yes?

26:14Never say yes easily. Never. Your default should be no. I am not asking you to never say yes. I

26:35am saying put a premiere on acceptance. Your acceptance must come at a price. Let the other

26:46person be worthy of your acceptance. Only then must you say yes. And then your yes is solemn.

26:55Your yes has then some sacredness.

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