Nothing Is Beyond Inquiry
Questioner: Good evening, sir. My name is Pranjal Paresh Thakar. I am also a first-year student here at BITS Goa. So, right now all of us are divided by society into different faiths, different religions: be it Hinduism, be it Sanatan, Islam, Christianity, or any other. And what I have heard from all of the lore of these cultures is that there are a few overlapping things. There are a few things common in all these cultural-lores. Like Muslims After praying, they say Amin. The Christians say Amen. So they are the same word, just different dialects.
Also, the Ram Setu, the Ram Setu as we call it, because we have heard Rama, and all of us… the Christians refer to it as Adam’s Bridge. They say that when Adam came to Earth, he walked through this bridge. So I wanted to ask if all these things are actual things that happened.Was there actually a God who came to Earth, and different people interpreted His story in different ways, and that’s how different religions branched out? Or are these actually just concepts created by us humans, as you were explaining right now; in order to discipline other humans, in order to have a definite method of living?
Acharya Prashant: What do you gather from what I have said so far? What do you think of it?
Questioner: That's the things created by humans.
Acharya Prashant: You see, keep everything aside. Here you are on this planet, right? And all your concepts arise from your condition. You are the one who came first, right? You kept evolving, evolving over millions of years; and then, a few thousand years back, you developed what can be called an elevated consciousness, a thinking consciousness. Just around 50-80 thousand years back, you slowly started thinking. Before that, your inner infrastructure, the brain, was not evolved enough. You maybe could emote, you could have instincts, you could react like animals do, but you were not a really sentient creature.
So, with thought comes the capacity to appreciate one’s condition and to explore linkages, to search for causality. That’s the starting point. Nothing else is the starting point. Do you get this?
Suppose you are still a beast, right? A beast. We went back a million years; you’re still a beast. Would you be asking all these questions? If these questions don’t exist, does the content of these questions exist? And whatever you’re asking, faith, this, that; that’s the content of these questions. You go back a million years, even the questioner does not exist; from where will the content of this question come?
So, when you start thinking, then you start wondering: where have I come from? What has happened? And you are not yet well-equipped to come to a truthful answer. So what do you do then? You speculate. You hypothesize. Bluntly put, you simply imagine. What else can you do? Because these are troublesome questions. It’s very difficult to live with these unanswered.
You need some kind of an answer. So you come up with an answer, which is fine. Why am I saying it’s fine? Because I appreciate that there is at least a question. Animals don’t even question. At least you questioned, where did we come from? At least you started having a concept of something beyond ordinary humanity, and you called it divinity. And that’s wonderful, there is some progress. Now let’s keep progressing. Now let’s not stop at the answers at the first level. Let’s keep exploring.
Questioner: So when different people come up with different kinds of answers, I say that I have a god. He says that he has some other god. He does not believe in my god. So he says that because you have a different god, I will fight you. There are riots happening within our country, between two different countries, because they came up with different answers. They believe in different concepts of divinity.
Acharya Prashant: See, beliefs cannot talk to each other. “Keta kera mokako;” I believe I have said something. What have you understood?
Whatever I have said, “Keta kera mokako,” whatever, that makes sense only to me; it's a personal inner castle I have built. Now beliefs can’t talk. “I believe that this is black, that’s my personal system. Don’t you dare question it.” And you say, “No, no, this is yellow.” Now how can we talk to each other?
There has to be, first of all for a conversation, a mutual commitment towards the facts. Facts, not beliefs. Otherwise you will have your own belief, he’ll have his belief; he’ll have his belief, and there can be no conversation. Beliefs can’t talk to each other.
You will say, “The world was created on a Sunday.” He’ll say, “No, on a Monday.” He’ll say, “Tuesday.” He’ll say, “Wednesday.” Now talk, how will you reconcile this? You can only fight. You will say, “The world was created in five days.” He will say, “No, it took four years.” He will say, “Mota mokapo totako.” He will say, “Kika teka na.” Now talk.
First of all, there has to be a common understanding and a common value system: we will adhere to the facts, and we’ll respect if we question each other. Right? Nothing is beyond inquiry. Unless that agreement is there, you cannot have conversation. And that’s the problem with this world.
You come to this table, you put your beliefs here; he puts his beliefs here; and they are mutually incompatible. There can only be war. Now you’ll say, “The war is for this reason or that reason.” But the fact remains that there will be war; be it an India‑Pakistan war or what’s happening in the Middle East. A big underlying reason is belief. Belief. Your beliefs do not tally with mine, and I hold my beliefs as sacred, so I’ll kill you. Full stop. And he holds his beliefs as sacred.
In other matters maybe we can tolerate each other’s beliefs. Who’s your favourite soccer player? “Oh, fine, fine, Messi.” Who’s your favourite? You’ll say, “No, my all‑time favourite is Pelé. Okay, the current one is Ronaldo. Fine, chalega.” So here maybe some kind of reconciliation is possible. But when it comes to your conception of the highest, if your beliefs don’t match with each other, obviously you will fight, and there can be a nuclear war as well. You understand?
He says his God is of one nature. He says, “No, no, no, what you are talking of as God is not God. My God is of this kind.” Now there will be a war.
Have you seen, when it comes to facts, that explorers collaborate with each other? You, in your institution for example, somebody is researching something in biotechnology. It’s quite likely that a fellow might be collaborating with a lab doing similar work in France. It’s possible.
When it comes to facts, there is collaboration. But when it comes to beliefs, there can only be destruction.
Scientists collaborate with each other; they pick up each other’s work and review it, don’t they? Because what one scientist has found out is acceptable to the other one, provided it is verifiable and falsifiable, so they collaborate.
But when it comes to what you call faith, they will fight with each other because there is no faith there. There is just imagination. There is just a dream. He had a dream, he had a dream, he had a dream, and their dreams can’t agree with each other because this is just personal fluff. There is no agreement possible, so there will be war.
And this kind of personal dream‑stuff has been responsible for so much of the misery of this world; whether it is about religion or culture or anything else. You consider one thing as good; the other one does not consider it as good, the two of you will fight.
Even economics, if you look at the Cold War, the US and USSR were not really fighting over religion. They were fighting over two economic systems. But even on those two systems, nothing was clearly yet proven. There was a lot of space for belief.
So, for example, the Soviet scientists, they resisted it for long when genetic research started revealing that even within species there are variations in abilities and capacities. They said, “This hits at the very core of communist belief. We cannot accept it.” So that proves that what they were holding very close to themselves was a belief system. And hence, you had the Cold War.
Wherever, instead of facts and instead of a shared commitment towards the Truth, you’ll have an insistence on some personal belief, there will be conflict.
Questioner: So there was this quote in your book (Truth Without Apology) that I deeply resonated with. It says: “The deepest inquiry begins as a tense, ruthless questioning demanding answers, and ends in a humble surrender knowing beyond answers.” So what I understood from this is that we as humans have quite misinterpreted what we call as religion or faith.
I myself greet some of my friends randomly with ‘assalamu alaykum.’ Now ‘assalamu alaykum’ is a Muslim greeting. It is actually an Arabic word which means stay in peace. But when I do that, they don’t like it.
Acharya Prashant: See, they will not like it because they have their own religious compulsions or their own insistences.
But my question to you is: Do you know what peace means? Those who dislike it just because it probably has an Arabic sound to it, fine, let’s keep them aside. But you are the one initiating the conversation. Do you know what peace is?
We use these words so frequently every day, don’t we? Very frequently, and equally casually. Love, peace, welfare, friendship, life, livelihood, career, education. Do we know their meaning? Do we? “I love you.” What exactly has been said? Again, “Keka metapo.” You have your personal concept of what you have said, nothing absolute about it. You have a feeling, a vague woolly feeling, and that you are expressing as; do you know exactly what you mean?
“I want to be happy.” Now what is this happiness? Do we know? Are you getting it? Any of these words that we hold very central to life, to our being; do we know their real meaning?
“I belong to you, you belong to me; you are mine, let’s get married; I am well‑settled now.” Do you know what it means, settlement and such words? But we are familiar with them, and that familiarity breeds a confidence of knowledgeability. Just because you encounter a sound so many times every day, you start assuming you know what it means. Do you really know?
They don’t know what they’re resisting. When you say ‘assalamu alaykum,’ they don’t know what they’re resisting. But they’re not here, right? Let them meet their fate.
My question to you is: when you greet someone with what you call a religious addressal, do you know what you are saying?
Questioner: Exactly, that is not a religious addressal, people just associate that.
Acharya Prashant: It may be religious, it may not be. But you uttered it. It came out of your mouth. Do you know what you just uttered? Do you know what you just said?
To know what you are saying, that is real religiousness. To really know whatever you are saying.
Questioner: I think different people believe in their own faith because that gives them hope; a hope that at the end they would end up where they have always wanted to be. They will end up somewhere better off than they are now. That is what.
Acharya Prashant: Do they know where they are now? How can hope be a substitute for knowing? When you want to clear an exam, first of all you look at the syllabus and you look at your own preparation, or you just sit hoping? Of what worth is such hope? You know neither the syllabus nor the extent of your preparation and you sit hoping for salvation. Where will that take you?
Elders bless you; that too, you can say, is not religious but cultural. They say, “May you be happy; may you live long.” Why? What are you saying? Do we know what we are saying, or are we performing, just performing like an automaton? Performance is something that you can get even from a machine, an unconscious machine. Right? So you breathe, why should that not be called a performance? You speak, how is that not just performance?
Even a machine can be programmed to say something like this.My car greets me when I open the door, and my car bids me goodbye when I close the door. You too can do that: “Welcome, you have arrived; now you are going. May you be taken care of.” And such things.
Questioner: So, according to you, we should discard this concept of divinity beyond? What?
Acharya Prashant: How can you discard something you know nothing of? That’s equally unintelligent as accepting something you know nothing of. Something is kept here, and you know nothing of it. Will you throw it away? So that’s the problem with atheism, they are discarding something they know nothing of. So if we are calling theists as ignorant people, atheists are probably equally ignorant.
Questioner: So what should we believe in?
Acharya Prashant: Why do you need to believe? What is this weakness, this helplessness coming from a young man who says, “I need crutches of belief?” Are you in this institute to know or to believe? Any kind of education, any kind of man‑building; does it have to do with knowing or believing? If you are to believe, why do you need to be here? Sit at home and believe in something.
That’s the way a car functions, a great buffalo is there under the bonnet, right? And you pull the tail of the buffalo and the buffalo powers the car. Believe in that. Why do you need to enter the Mechanical Engineering department?
You look at the question: “What should I believe in?” Well, nothing. You have your capacity to see, ask questions, and you have your honesty to admit that you don’t yet know. “Fine, I don’t yet know, but I’ll keep asking, I’ll keep trying.” Isn’t that sufficient? Or do you need to imagine that you have arrived when you have still not?
Questioner: Sir, you have been mentioning the word belief again and again. Can you please differentiate the meaning of knowing and believing? Because on its base, isn’t knowing something also, are we believing it because of all the evidence of what we can observe? Isn’t that also a belief?
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. But in belief there is no evidence. In knowing, yes, there is evidence. That might be tentative, then you call it a theory, right? It is tentative, subject to falsification, subject to future developments. But belief says, “This is the final Truth, and without any evidence.” So there is a clear distinction, is there not?
When it comes to exploration, when it comes to honest inquiry, you at least try to have it verifiable. When it comes to beliefs, even an attempt at verification is blasphemy, is it not? You go and ask some religious authority: “Well, here is the belief that you propagate, may I question it?” And he will say, “Where is my gun?” There is a clear distinction there.
