Questioner: Hello, Sir, my question is: Can a person live without a belief in God? If yes, then what are the principle guidelines one should follow?
Acharya Prashant: You must live your life without any belief. Why just God's belief? You see, all beliefs emanate from the same center. Now, please pay attention. If you believe in anything, you will also be forced to believe in God. The belief in God is a logical extension of your belief in so many things. The belief in God is a logical extension of the blind believer himself. Please understand. Let's say there is something that you vaguely experience. Correct? You don't have fog in Hyderabad? Right?
Questioner: Yes sir.
Acharya Prashant: Is Hyderabad foggy, or was it foggy in January? No, it's never foggy there. Right?
Questioner: No, not really.
Acharya Prashant: Here in Delhi, there is a lot of fog. Fortunately, today it's sunny, beautifully sunny. So, in the fog, you just vaguely experience an apparition. You know what fogs are? What are fogs like? Right?
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: And you start believing that it's a ghost or a stone crusher or whatever. So your senses brought you some knowledge, and the knowledge that comes from senses is always incomplete, corrupted, and diluted. Your senses brought you some knowledge, and there was an “I”, “the self” sitting within, with a lot of self-belief, and he said - I know what I'm seeing.
He said, “Oh, it's a ghost I'm seeing. Oh, it's a two-story house that I'm seeing. No, it's a road roller that I'm seeing.” So what have you done? Have you seen or have you believed? Believed. Now, next step: Have you believed in the road roller, or have you believed in yourself?
Questioner: Road Roller, Sir.
Acharya Prashant: No, you have believed in yourself.
Questioner: Yeah. Yes sir.
Acharya Prashant: You say, “If I experience something, it has to be the truth because I experienced it.” Had you been uncertain of yourself, would you have believed in the road roller? So, your belief in whatever you see or experience or judge or conclude is actually a reflection of your self-confidence - misplaced confidence. It is that way because it is that way that it appears to me. So you are great because I think you are great, or that fellow is shabby because I think he is shabby, and if I think he is shabby, then he is shabby. What is it that I'm believing in?
Questioner: You are believing in yourself.
Acharya Prashant: In myself. Right. So, the belief in any object in the world. A belief not founded on true investigation, a belief not founded on unbiased experimentation, is always a belief in oneself. Right? And that oneself is called - The ego. So the ego says, “I am.”
That's the most fundamental belief it has. I am and I am the truth and therefore whatever I see is the truth. If I ratify or verify something it is real because I am real. The ego says I am real therefore if I see a phantom, if I see a road roller in the fog, if I sense a ghost in the fog it is real because I am real. I verified therefore the thing is real because fundamentally, I am real.
Okay. If I am real and I am real the way I am. What is the way I am? I am the way of the body. I am this body; I am this organism that walks on two legs, sees with the eyes, and hears with the ears. Right? This organism is real, and all that I think about this organism is that this entity is real. Correct? And the world is real because I perceive it. You see. I am real. Whatever I perceive has to be real.
See, if the thermometer is real, then whatever the reading that it gives you, you will believe it. Right? You believe in the 101.2 reading that the thermometer gives you because, fundamentally, you believe in the thermometer. Correct? Okay, so the world that I inhabit is real because I am real. If you are real, then the chair has to be real. Because it would be very absurd - a real person sitting on an unreal chair. So, if you are real, then by induction, the entire world becomes real. If you are real, the chair is real; if the chair is real, then the Earth, the chair is placed on is real; and if the Earth is real, then the entire universe is real.
And, in this real universe, everything is made by somebody. Somebody made the chair. So I am real and the law of reality is that every real thing is made by somebody. Therefore, there has to be a God. Because every real thing is made by somebody and that's the law of this real world that this real person lives in, therefore there has to be a God.
So, any belief that you have in anything is actually a belief in God. Any belief is stupid because all beliefs come from a lack of investigation, and a lack of investigation comes from deep fear and a feeling of insecurity. If you are insecure and afraid, then you will not dare to ask questions and investigate. And it is from that fear and insecurity that the concept of God has arisen.
Now, God and reality are two different things. God and Truth are not the same thing. The mark of religiosity or true spirituality is an abiding faith in the truth. Truth is not a concept, but God is a concept. The religious person lives by the truth, not by his concepts or beliefs. Are you getting it? If you want to give another name to the truth, that's fine, and if that another name is God, that's equally fine.
But as we are, God is not another name for truth; God is another name for belief. Is that not so? If you look at the religions of the world, God is hardly ever a name for truth. God is a name for what you believe in. And you start by saying I believe in God. Now, any belief is a stupid thing. Knowing is one thing, believing is another. These are two separate dimensions. If God is the name of your deepest understanding, then God is worth bowing down to. But if God is the name of your blind belief, then such a God needs to be discarded.
And God could be either. When it comes to the great mystics, philosophers, and saints, God was another name for truth for them. But when it comes to the ordinary person, which is you and me, and the bulk of the masses, God is another name for our belief system. I believe in God. Now, such a God is no good. Getting it?
So, not that you can live life without believing in God, you must live a life fundamentally free of beliefs themselves. Why believe when you can know? What do you do in your labs? Do you believe, or do you experiment? Do you test? So, why can't you have the same approach to everything that life brings to you? Why can't you ask questions? Why can't you impartially observe? Why do you need to suspend your faculty to know in order to be religious?
Real religiosity lies in deep curiosity, a deep sense of enquiry, and it is from that deep sense of enquiry that the truth emerges. Belief is another name for ego. Truth is the name for freedom from ego. So beliefs and ego go together, and truth and ego do not. If you want to keep God in your life. If you want that, then let God be the center of truth in your life.
God as stories, God as history, God as concept, God as belief, God as rituals, God as assumption, God as tradition - makes no sense and is actively toxic. God as truth is beautiful.
Questioner: Thank you so much, sir. I got my answer.