Video Information: 15.11.2024, Greater Noida
📋 Video Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:58 - The Role of Religious Affirmations
5:23 - The Purpose of Religion
7:43 - Clearing the Blockages in Religion
11:47 - The Importance of Inner Clarity
13:09 - The Role of Language in Religion
15:13 - The Journey of Self-Exploration
17:27 - The Balance Between Religion and Spirituality
22:02 - The Impact of Cultural Conditioning
24:16 - The Real Essence of Religion
Description:
In this discussion, Acharya Prashant addresses the role of habitual religious affirmations in spiritual growth. He emphasizes that true worship should not be about seeking rewards or adhering to conditioned beliefs but should stem from an internal desire for self-realization. He critiques the superficial practices often associated with religion, advocating for a deeper understanding of its essence.
Acharya Ji highlights that genuine spirituality transcends traditional beliefs and practices, urging individuals to explore their true selves. He asserts that religion, in its pure form, is essential for nourishing life, while distorted practices should be discarded. Ultimately, he encourages a return to the core values of spirituality, free from external conditioning.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
📋 Video Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:58 - The Role of Religious Affirmations
5:23 - The Purpose of Religion
7:43 - Clearing the Blockages in Religion
11:47 - The Importance of Inner Clarity
13:09 - The Role of Language in Religion
15:13 - The Journey of Self-Exploration
17:27 - The Balance Between Religion and Spirituality
22:02 - The Impact of Cultural Conditioning
24:16 - The Real Essence of Religion
Description:
In this discussion, Acharya Prashant addresses the role of habitual religious affirmations in spiritual growth. He emphasizes that true worship should not be about seeking rewards or adhering to conditioned beliefs but should stem from an internal desire for self-realization. He critiques the superficial practices often associated with religion, advocating for a deeper understanding of its essence.
Acharya Ji highlights that genuine spirituality transcends traditional beliefs and practices, urging individuals to explore their true selves. He asserts that religion, in its pure form, is essential for nourishing life, while distorted practices should be discarded. Ultimately, he encourages a return to the core values of spirituality, free from external conditioning.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00My question is something related to my background.
00:03The way the whole environment is set up, sometimes one will talk of God, sometimes one will talk
00:11of the Farishta, sometimes one will simply talk of Dhyan, somebody will talk of something
00:16else, somebody will talk of nature worship, if the thing that corrupts religion can be
00:22removed.
00:23There's still a lot of deep conditioning about, you know, some of the reflex affirmations
00:28if I may say, like Inshallah, Mashallah, or doing something and saying Bismillah.
00:34The purpose is to bring everything to its hollow state, a hollow state where the thing
00:40does not become an obstruction against what it was supposed to convey.
00:46The pipe, the vehicle, the vessel is supposed to convey the truth, not obstruct the truth.
00:59Namaskar Acharya ji, hope and pray you are doing well and recovering.
01:05My name is Noma Khan and my question is something related to my background.
01:11So I will put forth my question along with my background journey.
01:16My question is, can habitual religious affirmation, though deeply conditioned, still serve my
01:22spiritual growth, my self-realization path, or is it necessary to let them go?
01:31My journey has been from being observed to becoming the observer.
01:39Very early in my life, in my late teens, because I belong from the Muslim community, I became
01:46a student.
01:47And I think that the sole reason was for proving my purpose, finding my being.
01:54I think that was the search as a seeker.
01:57So in Bombay, I used to hunt for different groups, you know, that's how I was in getting
02:03knowledge for religion.
02:05In 20s, my 20s went in basically becoming a student of the Arabic language, learning
02:12the Quran by word, English and Urdu.
02:18Then in 30s, I came to Canada and here I began the journey of questioning actually, because
02:26due to certain things that happened in my life, I started questioning and then unlearning
02:31and then relearning through basically Indian culture.
02:35So I had a lot of the famous gurus of India's come into my life.
02:41I learned through them a lot.
02:43And then you came in.
02:46And by this time, I would say that most of my religious practice, even the fact that
02:53you know, the tasbees that you do, the bead reading, the supplication, all that had gone
02:58probably in my 30s.
03:01Even being very regular in namaz was nearly gone.
03:04It was mostly like, you know, as you are between family or, you know, culture and Eid or something
03:12like that.
03:13So I know and I do be part of it.
03:16But there's still a lot of deep conditioning about, you know, some of the reflex affirmations,
03:23if I may say, like inshallah, mashallah, or doing something and saying bismillah, you
03:28know, bismillah means with the name of God.
03:32And then, like when I was doing yoga practice also, some of the chantings, even the like
03:39Om Shanti, you know, or as Ashtavakra says, sukhi bhava, shanti bhava, like you are sukhi,
03:46you are shanti.
03:48So, because I'm habitual of moving my lips and saying yes, they do come in my mind too.
03:54But because I'm habitual of reading and saying something, they also became part of my everyday
04:00chanting.
04:01So if I am a little restless, I would go in my mind, Om Shanti.
04:05And I can tell you that I would really relax.
04:08It really helps me soothe, you know, for me to public speaking, I was somebody who's
04:12always stayed at home, I have never done a nine to five job also.
04:16So coming from that being in home, and then coming out and seeking my passion, I'm an
04:20artist by profession.
04:22I'm a videographer, I'm an acrylic painter now, also learned classical singing, I did
04:27everything that, you know, as you say that, the Vedas start by looking outward.
04:33So everything that I needed to look outward, which I had hold myself from, I did all of
04:38that.
04:39And slowly, slowly, I streamlined and filtered and came down to something that is very sublime,
04:43and it is in tune to me becoming more of the observer than being the observed.
04:48Because all of my life, I have been doing things, thinking, oh, I'll get the appraisal
04:52of people, or even appraisal of God, actually.
04:56And all of these things dropped one by one, one by one.
05:00But this particular thing is still there every day, in my self realization, that Inshallah,
05:06MashaAllah, Bismillah, or even sometimes there are some duas that come out, just because
05:11they're so innate.
05:13And I do, it does help.
05:15So I don't want to know whether I should continue it, or they will slowly drop off, or is there
05:21a way to drop them off?
05:24There is no need to drop these things.
05:30Please understand, the purpose of all instruments of religion, methods of religion, is to unblock.
06:00The truth is here, there, inside, outside, everywhere, but there is a blockage.
06:13That blockage is called the ego.
06:17The ego prevents the truth from coming to itself.
06:24So religion is a device, a tool, so that truth can flow to the ego.
06:34The ego wants to defend itself against the truth, because once the truth flows in, it
06:40dissolves the ego.
06:42It's a great solvent.
06:48So there are different kinds of, what do I say, conveyors or pipes, carriers through
06:58which the truth can flow.
07:04The problem is that they get choked, blocked.
07:08They were supposed to flow freely and bring that flow to the ego.
07:14But the vessel, the pipe itself gets choked.
07:18What does it get choked by?
07:21It gets choked by things that are not really religion, but pass off in the name of religion.
07:30Several of those things get a lot of credibility, acceptability, because they are mentioned
07:39in the religious books themselves.
07:44And what we fail to understand often or refuse to understand is that the religious books
07:50contain two kinds of material always.
07:56One is the material that is dependent on place, time, situation, etc.
08:03And then there is material that is timeless, timeless and of eternal value and immeasurable
08:10value.
08:11Every religious book contains these two types of things.
08:15So there is already the possibility of pollution and corruption present inside the fundamental
08:22religious text itself, especially in religions of the book, all the Abrahamic streams that
08:30are heavily dependent on one particular book.
08:33And if the books themselves have a lot of stuff that is time relevant or time dependent,
08:41then there is a risk.
08:44On top of that are the practitioners of religion who have their own biases and own fears and
08:53own practices and traditions that they want to carry on with religious sanction as if
09:02those things are mentioned in the text.
09:06You can have your own local tradition that you start calling as religion.
09:15Now that tradition is nowhere near the core of religion.
09:20But yet because you are practicing it, you give it a respectable name.
09:24You say this is a religious practice.
09:27It's not just a traditional thing.
09:28It's a religious practice.
09:31So all these things choke the pipe.
09:34Now tell me please, if the pipe can be cleared, if all that which blocks it can be removed,
09:49does the color of the pipe matter?
09:55Let the pipe remain and pipes come in different colors, shapes, sizes.
10:04Materials also, as long as they are hollow, everything is alright.
10:10The purpose of the pipe is to be hollow.
10:15If a pipe is coming from China, it will be made of a certain material which is fine.
10:20You understand material, right?
10:22Language, the way the whole environment is set up, sometimes one will talk of God, sometimes
10:30one will talk of the Farishta, sometimes one will simply talk of Dhyan, somebody will
10:36talk of something else, somebody will talk of nature worship.
10:40All these things, they are just the material of the pipe.
10:50If the thing that corrupts religion can be removed, the color of the pipe does not matter.
10:57The material of the pipe does not matter.
11:02What has been etched on the pipe or a certain calligraphy, even these things do not matter.
11:07A lot of things can be there.
11:10It will all be the same, no?
11:15You can have a duct of one particular color and one particular material and you can have
11:23a duct of another color, another material.
11:26They will bring in the same thing.
11:31But the stuff that chokes is what makes the pipes different from each other and that is
11:39what leads to conflict.
11:48Somebody says God, somebody says Allah, somebody says Ram.
11:56If they are coming from a point of inner vacuum, inner void, inner clarity that is,
12:04you know internally what they mean, all three of them is exactly the same thing.
12:12But if they are not coming from a point of inner clarity, these three mean three different
12:17things and then they will quarrel.
12:22The problem is the self-appointed meaning.
12:27The problem is the refusal to see that several parts of religious texts are irrelevant to
12:36this age and must be respectfully consigned to museums.
12:41That's the problem.
12:42Very respectfully, we are not being offensive here.
12:50If you look at the core of all religious texts, first of all the core is not voluminous.
12:59It is therefore something that even the layman can come to without being afraid of the mass.
13:09Otherwise you put a book of 20,000 pages in front of the fellow, he anyway does not read
13:16it.
13:17Hence you know why the layman does not go to the religious scripture and that's why
13:21the hegemony of the priest, the maulvi, the pundit.
13:27One language, two volume.
13:30Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, you have all kinds of languages that the common man
13:37does not know.
13:39And secondly, the volume.
13:44The Puranic literature, for example, contains 5 lakh verses, Rig Veda alone is 10,000 mantras
13:56and the common man, all that he reads is WhatsApp and anything beyond two sentences is an essay
14:05for him.
14:08Why will he ever go and read 10,000 verses from the Rig Veda and we are talking of only
14:16one Veda here and then Sanskrit.
14:20So the priest becomes the intermediary.
14:22He says, you know, I will tell you.
14:28And then all kinds of distortions get amplified, further amplified.
14:36The core message is very brief, precise.
14:41There is nothing much in it.
14:45Today is the day of Guru Nanak Dev.
14:50So precisely, for example, he said, ek onkar, ek onkar, everything is contained in it.
14:58You don't have to go to any priest, full stop, full stop.
15:13One has to get rid of the nonsense associated with religion.
15:18One does not have to get rid of religiousness, religiousness or essential spirituality is
15:27what keeps us alive as human beings.
15:34Otherwise we will just be animals with intellect.
15:38We are obviously not talking of religious morality here.
15:46We are talking of the essential spiritual value of self-exploration.
15:53That's what the essence of all religion is and that self-exploration, it can happen in
16:01any name.
16:02The name does not matter.
16:05If you say Inshallah or Bismillah, please do continue, that's wonderful.
16:15It happens with me very involuntarily, I don't even know and those who remain around me,
16:22they notice it very frequently.
16:25I just keep saying Hey Ram for no reason.
16:29I'm tired, I'll say Hey Ram, happy Hey Ram, about to sleep Hey Ram, wake up Hey Ram.
16:43That becomes a part of you and it's fine as long as it lets you flow in the truth.
16:50As long as it reminds me of that one nameless truth, if a particular word or sound or name
16:59reminds you of the nameless one, it's wonderful irrespective of what that word, sound or name
17:06in itself is.
17:09What matters is that it is pointing towards the nameless one.
17:14As we said, the color of the pipe does not matter and there will be pipes, yes, yes.
17:27Some are pipes and then some are pipes that did not have any connection but they are connected
17:35like the Chinese whispers, like you have the Puranas and we have the Hadiths, oh my God,
17:40they have done damage, like irreparable damage that they have done because people don't want
17:47to go to the core script anymore now and they are just satisfied with what they have in
17:53the stories and fantasies as you say.
17:55And now that I see this and I observe this because I question this a lot wherever I can
18:00on social media, I'm also trying to, with your permission, hopefully, Inshallah, I am
18:07trying to, the 113th chapter of the Quran that Surah Ikhlas is basically everything
18:14that the Quran needs to say.
18:15It's a very small chapter and it's the whole description of Advait that you had done.
18:22When I heard that lecture of yours, I was like, this is Surah Ikhlas, how come we don't
18:27even translate it this way?
18:28So for me, Allah is nothing but Advait.
18:31Now hopefully I can do this but I'm writing it through Ashraf.
18:37And through the Advait translation that you have given, I'm rewriting the translation
18:42in my own understanding of the Quran.
18:46And it is, and the way I see this now is like, oh my God, Sufis have told this long back
18:52and they still say it.
18:54Even the Sufis have been distorted a lot.
18:56But most of the good Sufis, they have been saying the same thing.
19:00That language is just the tool.
19:02Is that essence, is that, it's the feeling that you can implore the greater divine within
19:10you.
19:11For that, you don't have to look outside but look within.
19:15The whole journey within was supposed to be Islam or your Deen and Dharam but we made
19:22it the journey outside.
19:24Therefore, my entire approach is not to discard religion or religious terms.
19:34My approach is to bring them to their pure meaning.
19:41Even terms that are used in popular culture or popular religion in a very, very distorted
19:48way.
19:49I do not ask people to just quit or drop or refuse to accept or practice.
19:58So, if somebody will come and say, you know, I'm fasting today, I'll want to bring the
20:08real meaning of the word Vrat or Upvaas, similarly anything, Teerth, pilgrimage, the holy day
20:18worship, Jap, Tap, Shambham, these are all words that are prevalent in common religion.
20:29The purpose is to bring everything to its hollow state, a hollow state where the thing
20:36does not become an obstruction against what it was supposed to convey.
20:44The pipe, the vehicle, the vessel is supposed to convey the truth, not obstruct the truth.
20:54There can be an entire dictionary of words.
20:58When we started, in fact, compiling, making such a dictionary where we said we'll have
21:05all these spiritual or religious terms and write their real meaning so that they can
21:14never be used out of place or context, the project got shelved.
21:19That would be amazing, I think.
21:23But then the texts we are currently dealing with, the bhajans of Saint Kabir, Baba Bulleh
21:34Shah, we have the two Gita, Bhagavad Gita, Ashtavakra Gita and the Bauddha Shunyata Saptate
21:44and of course, Lao Tzu.
21:47They give us an ample supply of terms every session to present the real meaning of that
21:59we are already doing.
22:03There are those who want to take the approach of discarding religion altogether.
22:12I find that dangerous.
22:15They say religion has been the cause of so much strife and ignorance and superstition
22:23and exploitation.
22:24Why not drop religion altogether?
22:26Many think that religion is a thing of the past.
22:30They think of it as some kind of a social thing or a thing of thought that came in a
22:38particular time and age and as mankind progresses, religion will be altogether dropped and what
22:48kind of morality will be there?
22:50They say morality of humanity.
22:54What they do not understand is that religion is way beyond morality.
22:58The same thing is with ex-Muslims also, there is a lot of rise of ex-Muslims and people
23:07first thought that I was an ex-Muslim but I said no, I am not an atheist.
23:11I still am very spiritual because even when I was dropping the ideas, I was only dropping
23:17the ideas of the stories and fantasies.
23:20I went through a lot in terms of self-reflection in Canada.
23:25I went through a lot of means, I did a lot of different things, I tried a lot of different
23:29things including psychedelics and that only led me to going more inward and when it led
23:35me to go more inward, I became cautious because what happens is when you are going inward,
23:40it is also a place where you do a lot of psychoanalysis.
23:45You might think that you are going a little crazy and when people around you, when you
23:49question a lot, they may think that way.
23:53So that's why people like to stay in the safer places, either become completely atheist
23:57or become completely blind believers.
24:01Nobody is very difficult for them to stir in the middle path of being the seeker and
24:07being the person of balancing the non-duality.
24:12So that is the test every day, every moment.
24:16And it's very easy to be categorized into either of the two extremes.
24:24There are the religious people and there are those who shun religion.
24:28But to be somebody who wants to bring the real essence of religion into practice, that's
24:35very difficult and if you are that person, then you will get buffeted from both the sides.
24:44Both the sides think of you as an outsider.
24:47The religious people say, you know, this fellow is discarding all our traditional thought
24:52and practices.
24:53Therefore, he is not religious.
24:55Let's attack him.
24:57And the atheists, the modern ones who think that religion must belong to the waste bin,
25:03they say, you know, he is still talking the language of religion.
25:06So he is one of the regressive ones.
25:09Let's attack him.
25:10Or he is one of the, like what ex-Muslims tell me is basically because I bring new translations.
25:19You become an ex-Muslim, like I don't know, ex-Hindus also are there, but then ex-Muslims,
25:24they usually go for the translations of the extremists and really not delve into the language.
25:28They really not try to understand where the actual core is coming from.
25:34So because they have not gone into their own core, they are bookish.
25:37So when you leave the books, when you abandon all of that and you go into your, you wander
25:41into your own psyche and you question and you find different avenues, then you find
25:47avenues of really going into your own self-truth.
25:51Like for me, Iman, meaning this is only after I started hearing you, that for me Iman means
25:58the self-truth, the integrity that you are with yourself.
26:02Only if you are true to yourself will you be true to Allah and will you be true to the
26:06people around you. So this is Iman for me.
26:09So every now and then, wherever I come across a difficult time or a question that I need
26:16to answer, even in terms of religion, I reflect on whatever you have said.
26:21So actually people take notice of it.
26:23People are like, what is this?
26:26We've never heard anything like this.
26:28I'm like, yeah, have you ever thought about religion like this?
26:31So this is a very refreshing point.
26:33Maybe it was there years ago through Sufis, but now when you put this thing forward and
26:40they're like, when I tell them, see, shaitan is not somebody with horns.
26:43Shaitan is your own ego.
26:45And so they're like, what is this?
26:47Like, I'm like, yeah, let's try to think about this.
26:50So it actually leaves them with a question.
26:52They don't have anything to counter this.
26:55And because it is refreshing, they think of it as some kind of modern innovation.
27:05They do not understand that it is refreshing because it is as original as the source itself.
27:15So if you bring out the real meaning of scriptures, they will say, no, this is not the real meaning.
27:20This is a cultivated, artificial, manufactured meaning of your own.
27:26If it is your own meaning, then don't pass it off in the name of religion.
27:31You'll be accused of that.
27:33But that's what the real meaning really is.
27:37It is just that over the passage of time and due to the mechanics of the ego, the real
27:46meaning was obfuscated with all like lots of random stuff.
27:53Layers and layers.
27:54Layers and layers.
27:56It is there somewhere.
27:57It's only about time of bringing it out.
28:00Once you show the light, then the light of truth or noor, then people will take notice.
28:06At least they start questioning.
28:07At least they start thinking somewhere.
28:09Like, you know, because they're seeing the state of the ummah.
28:12They're seeing the state of the Muslims around.
28:14And I see that they are somewhere restless to get an answer.
28:19And then they find something refreshing coming.
28:21And they're like, you know what?
28:22Because Islamic psychology is now kicking up a lot.
28:26Like I have a lot of friends who are psychotherapists.
28:29And they are dealing with a lot of religious trauma patients.
28:34So when this has come up, now people are realizing that, you know what?
28:37Maybe it was not about physical and material translations.
28:41It was something more deeper.
28:45See, it's a dangerous age we are living in.
28:49There are people who are turning more and more regressive.
28:54As you said, very, very extreme translations, interpretations of the texts.
29:01Sometimes their beliefs have nothing to do with texts at all.
29:05But they still carry on with their beliefs.
29:09And then there are those who want to totally drop religion.
29:13So throwing the baby out with the bath water.
29:17Religion itself is abhorrable.
29:19Please drop religion.
29:20Please drop religion.
29:21That's the attitude.
29:24We do have a fair number of ex-Hindus as well.
29:29It's only in Christians that the ones who drop religion come out very openly.
29:36So if you go to the developed world, you might find that 10, 20, even 30, 40 percent
29:43of people are formally declaring themselves as atheists.
29:48In Great Britain, if I correctly recall, Christians are no more a majority.
29:57Or they are close to being displaced from the position of majority.
30:01The atheists are taking over.
30:04In Hindus, what happens is that you subtly become irreligious.
30:09Because there is a certain fear against openly declaring yourself to be an atheist.
30:16It's not that you will be assaulted, just that it's not very socially acceptable.
30:22And also there is a section of Hindus who have been exploited in the past.
30:30So they would drop Hinduism and take to Buddhism.
30:33Their grievances are real and factual.
30:37There has been definite exploitation in the past.
30:40But because of that exploitation, they believe that religion itself is nonsense.
30:47Now religion is not nonsense.
30:49If you go to the core of religion, you will find everything there that nourishes life.
30:55In fact, you cannot carry on with life without being truly religious.
31:01When I make this statement, a lot of people get disturbed.
31:07They say, we understand when you say religion has something good to offer.
31:12But if you say religion is fundamental and indispensable, then we don't agree with you.
31:19My request to them always is to not to worry about agreeing with me,
31:26but to try to understand what religion really is.
31:30What religion really is.
31:31You don't really even have to start with religion.
31:33You have to start with yourself.
31:34Figure out who you are.
31:37Figure out where all your dissatisfaction and disquiet comes from.
31:42And then you will know what religion is.
31:45And then you will also know what should not be entertained in the name of religion.
31:5199% of the practices and traditions and beliefs and stories,
31:58they belong either to the museum or more correctly to the wastebasket.
32:05So, let them be thrown to that place.
32:14Stories, myths, feelings of superiority, feelings of exclusivity,
32:20all that is not religion at all.
32:24But religion is definitely needed.
32:26Definitely needed.
32:27And in the pure form, the same thing flows through all the pipes,
32:33irrespective of the color and the form and the shape and the material of the pipe.
32:38There is just no doubt about it.
32:42Like flutes, flutes made of different materials.
32:48Krishna's flute is such a great symbol.
32:51You have flutes of bamboo.
32:52You also have flutes of metal.
32:54You have little flutes that you give to kids.
32:57You have large flutes that professionals play.
33:00And there must be differences, variations of other kinds also.
33:05But the thing is that there is music.
33:07Religion is that music.
33:09That music cannot come without the pure hollowness.
33:13Pure hollowness.
33:16That's beautiful, Acharyaji.
33:21Let's see.
33:26Welcome. Most welcome.