Religion is that which helps one find no way to Truth
Question: Sir, I want to know what is religion – an ideology, a community or something else?
Shri Prashant: There are a few things that are very simple. But a lot many complications, noise has been introduced around it, thus making it very much polluted. As for example, Love. It is very simple and beautiful but we have abused this word in every manner possible. Just pronounce this word and you will find numerous images floating around in your mind and the worst part is none of them has to do anything with the word ‘Love’. And so is the case with ‘Religion’.
When the word religion is pronounced, if you are a Hindu, temple bells start ringing and if you are a Muslim, you will start hearing the Azaan. The word ‘Religion’ does not say that you have to think of a temple or a mosque, Jesus or Allah, Ganesh or Ram.
That is the problem with our mind. It gives rise to images or ideas. As soon as I utter a word, the mind starts associating it with something. For example, the moment I say ‘parents’, you will find an image has been formed inside your mind. In fact, not one image but the number of people present in the hall multiplied by two. One for the mother and another for the father and it does not stop there. It goes on as one image gives birth to another and a never ending trail starts.
Every word is carrying a huge burden of noise surrounding it but a few words are the most unfortunate in this respect. ‘Religion’ is one of those words. It is a clean and clear word but now smirched with so much of dirt that it has started to seem very unclear and dirty.
L1: It seems mind is like the Google search engine. As soon as you type a letter there, it starts suggesting the words starting from it or related to it.
SP: Yes. More or less it works as our mind does. As Google can search only that which is has been fed into it, similarly, mind searches in the areas that already are there into its experience. But in some manner, Google is much better than the mind as it will search only that, that it has been asked for. But mind searches all the irrelevant stuff as well that has nothing to do with what has been said or asked. Take a word – weather. In the mind, this word may generate a thought of ‘cold’ which gives rise to a thought of summer, and summer gets linked to fan which gives rise to a thought of electricity which gives rise to electron which gives rise to atom which gives rise to chemistry which gives rise to the teacher of chemistry which gives rise to the principle which gives rise to… what not! The process is never ending. Freud called this as ‘Free Association’. Google has the decency to sort the unrelated pages to the last of the search but there is no such efficiency in our minds.
So, let’s call back our minds to the topic we started with, that is religion.
(laughter)
Right now, if you are attentively listening to me, that is Religion. It is as simple as that. So simple that it is unbelievable.
You might argue that this is not religion. Religion, as we know it, is about doing good deeds, morality, ethics. It is related to celebrating festivals, having fast, doing prayers etc. But none of this is religion. Any code of conduct is not religion, to believe a particular book is not religion, to go to a temple or a mosque is not religion, to give value to a particular set of thoughts and ideas and discarding the other sets is not religion.
Whatever you can ‘think’ of is not religion.
So you might ask that are we all non-religious? No, the statement itself is wrongly put. As soon as we give ourselves a label – that we are non-religious – then we are saying that religion, or lack of it, is a continuity. But religion is not a continuous process. If I am religious at this moment that does not mean that I will be the same the next moment. It is not a permanent qualification to attain that once attained, is possessed forever.
Whichever moment you are in attention, you are religious and as soon as the consciousness is lost, you are no more religious. It is not continuous but discrete in nature. So before coming to college if you have done your morning prayers and given your respect to the deities on the way, it does not make you religious. So you better try not to fool anyone or yourself.
L2: Sir, is helping others is not religion?
SP: Depends. Depends on what do you understand by helping others. How do you help? How do you know that you are helping others? How do you know that whatever you are doing is ‘help’? All the parents try to help their kids since their childhood. And how do the children turn up? Like this, like you (pointing towards everyone in the hall). Do I need to explain how they turn up? Deep down we all know that. We are all highly helped specimens. We have been helped a lot to become like this. It’s not about the intention to help but what matters is whether you have this awareness that what are the measures of help? If there is a drunkard who wants to help, what will or what can he do in the name of help?
L3: I help according to what feels right to me.
SP: Help is not someone’s opinion or someone’s accordance. So as soon as you say that “according to me I am helping”, this means that you are highly conditioned. Help is not to be provided according to me or someone else. It is just like saying “my religion and your religion”. Just as there cannot be multiple truths, similarly there cannot be multiple true helps.
Religion, Truth, Grace – these are absolutes of the existence. They do not have to do anything with anyone’s personal view, opinion or history. They are not relative.
What do we do in the name of help? How do we help?
“You look so worried. I am not able to see your pain. Go to sleep. I will pull a few levers and make sure you pass the examination!”
Is this help?
L4: But Sir, there is a positive and a negative side of everything.
SP: How do you know what is positive and what is negative? What is positive for a Hindu might be negative for a Muslim. What is positive for a boy might be negative for a girl. In sports, what is positive for one side has to be negative for the opposite side. Positive and negative are just your personal thoughts. They totally depend upon the kind of conditioning you have got. They are not even permanent. They all change according to person or community, time or conditions. It has nothing to do with the truth. So please do not live in an impression that I am very positive or I am very helpful.
L5: If I am giving something to a beggar, am I not helping?
SP: You have to understand that. Why are you giving him something? Look at this very carefully and try to understand. If you give something to someone and he takes it and walks without showing any gratitude, how would you feel?
L6: We would feel bad.
SP: Your feeling bad proves that there was an expectation attached to the deed. He must feel the gratitude, he must be obliged. And what happens when someone feels obliged to you? Directly or indirectly he says that you are bigger/better than me and that statement is important to you. If it was not so, you would not have bothered about his response after you gave him something. And this too, when you are giving like, just Rs. 2 to someone, what would have happened if you had given Rs. 2 lakhs or more?
So your giving is hiding your ego in it. Can we see how subtly the mind is playing games with us and we don’t even have an idea about it? We think we are helping but what we are doing is giving a boost to our own ego. Whatever we do, we are inflating our ego. To understand that is Intelligence. At that very moment, when you are about to help someone, if you can know that it is your selfishness that is behind this, then, you can say that you are different from your mind and at that very moment you are the master of your mind. But it rarely happens with us. The ego is every time present in your doings but rarely do you get to understand it, and hence, it gets itself inflated silently.
L7: Sir, the ego comes after the process of giving is done. But the thought of ‘help’ comes before that.
SP: Look at it carefully. From where does this thought of help come? What is the motivation behind? If it was just related to the person you are helping, then the situation would have been different, but it does have a lot to do with you and your ego.
L7: So, what can be the definition of ‘help’?
SP: That you have to understand my dear. I am asking this again: Who does not know himself, how can he know someone else?
Who is a drunkard? The one who is not conscious, right? So no matter how good his intentions are, he cannot help anybody. One who is not conscious of whatever he does can help nobody. But the one who is conscious, whatever will he do, it will be a help to others and it will not be important whether he has done that on purpose or it just happened. Just forget that you have to help someone. You better try to get out of the long coma you have been into and be conscious.
Only a conscious being can help. Whatever a conscious being does is help.
The world is too full of people who want to help and much blood is being shed in the name of help. We are like this because we are too much helped by others and we have allowed so many of them to help us. So first understand in a real sense, and when you will do so, you will be really helping yourself and others. And the first thing to be understood is the instrument through which we understand – that is our mind. So understand your mind first. Understand your Self.
L8: But how can we try to understand mind when that is the instrument to understand?
SP: You do not have to ‘try’. Ok, how many students are here who are ‘trying’ before listening?
We do not have to ‘try’ when we are listening, and who is trying for it will never be able to listen. To understand, you do not have to ‘try’, you just have to be completely available to the moment.
To understand, presence is needed, not efforts.
But you cannot help it because since childhood you have been taught nothing but to try.
“Nothing happens without efforts”
“Hard work is the key to success”
Now this is a problem to you. How can that which you have known since the last 18-20 years be wrong? Yes, that can be wrong because whatever you have learnt in your whole life is coming out of the help from people who were not even conscious of themselves. So it cannot be a surprise if what I am saying seems very doubtful, difficult and may be wrong to you.
You will forget me. You will forget it all, like a bad dream. There will not be even a trace of this in sometimes. You will be back to the same world of yours where you come from. Where religion means some holy chants and Love means Valentine’s Day.
L9: Sir, are you saying that all that we have been told is wrong?
SP: Again, that you have to understand. Who am I to say so?
You must ask yourself: Everything that I know is just borrowed or is there something I have found out on my own? Did you ever question what has been told to you? Do you have your intelligence and did you ever apply it? Have you ever rejected anything out of your intelligence?
We have made our gods, written our books – according to us! We have established them according to our needs and requirements. So if Buddha is born in India, he will look like an Indian and a Buddha born in China will be utterly Chinese. What we have known as religion or god is nothing but the fantasies of human mind; the Truth has nothing to do with all this rubbish. History or Mythology can be borrowed, but Truth can only be understood. Truth and Religion cannot be the product of human mind.
L9: Sir, but we have to accept a lot that has been told in our religion.
SP: You do. But do you have to accept that or must you know it?
L9: I must know it.
SP: Religion is like this only. In religion, you do not have to accept but know . Anything that can be accepted can be rejected some other day, and religion is not a thing of acceptance or rejection. To understand yourself is Religion. To understand the Self, not as a function of anything, is Religion.
