Superstition in The Name of Rituals
Questioner: I had been introduced to a fire ritual. It's Agnihotram, which is performed during every sunrise and sunset. I had seen and read some articles saying that this ritual actually clears the pollution from the environment. One particular article was about the survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy, who were the ones who actually performed this ritual regularly. But in this ritual, we use ghee, cow dung, everything.
This ritual actually — I got introduced to it when one person told me, he suggested that by doing this, there'll be a healthy environment in the house. It actually gives and relaxes the mind. There'll be more nitrogen released in the atmosphere, which will help in relaxation of the mind cells, and it'll be helping my son. So that's how I just started it. Initially, I just kept my son's health in focus, and I started doing the ritual.
But the Mantras — like the ones which we say, “Purna Madha Purna Midam,” all this — when I started actually understanding, it helped me become a little disciplined, and I followed it regularly. But after I got to know that the use of ghee is there in this and I'm using cow dung, I'm not willing to continue this any further. So I want to get a clearer picture on this. Actually, this Agnihotram word — I had seen it in one of the Upanishads. In English, they had translated it as “fire sacrifice,” and I did not actually get the actual meaning of that word.
Acharya Prashant: You talked of your son. Let's say your son is in class 10th. He would be one day and he comes to you with his board exams results, and he has flunked in science — 15 out of 100. You ask him, “How come? How did you manage this?” And he says, “But I did study science. I invested so much time in studying science.” You say, “Okay, let me see, show me your books.” He brings the books to you, and the books appear very untouched. They look brand new, virgin. Even the pages are smelling as if they are freshly out of the printer's shop.
So you ask him, “My son, it is very clear that you never even once opened your science books, and you are lying to me stating that you have been diligent with your science studies.” He says, “No, I have been studying science.”
You ask him, “From whom?” and he says that *Pandit ji,*He is my science teacher. That Mohalla temple is there, and Pandit ji is there, and he knows all the sciences in the world, and he has been my science teacher. I used to go to him to understand Newton, Pascal, Bernoulli, Kepler, and he used to tell me — he used to perform all kinds of sacrifices and tell me, “See, this is how you have to understand Archimedes.”
If the matter at hand is scientific, if it relates to matter, then would you refer to pandits and scriptures, or must you refer to scientists? Please.
Fifty years back, 100 years back, when people used to fall ill, even then they would go to the local priest, and he used to perform all kinds of wonderful miracles. He would beat someone up with some stick, and the fellow would get cured. Cured as in cured of this worldly existence. At that time it was considered medicine. Today, if you do that, you will say the fellow is so foolish, illiterate and full of superstition. But maybe even today in some remote interior part of the country, it is still happening.
If the matter refers to medicine, would you go to a priest or to a doctor? So if you have to talk about gases and the environment, would you listen to the so-called religious people and priests, or would you rather consult a scientist or environmentalist? Tell me. When I say that you have to go to a scientist, that does not mean YouTube. Scientists are not found on YouTube. If you have to take the opinion of a scientist, go to a proper scientific book or refer to a research journal.
What kind of scientific literature says that certain people who were performing a certain ritual sacrifice got saved at the time of the Bhopal gas tragedy, and the poisonous gas could not impact them because they were performing a certain Yagya or something else? What kind of science is this? Where does this science come to you from? WhatsApp? YouTube? I often ask people, "How do you know this?" They say, "You know, science is proving this."
Somebody, rather a lot of people, have been telling me water has memory. A month or so back, it happened. Somebody asked me about it, and a video was published. I rubbished this thing, saying, "A molecule is a molecule. What do you mean by memory?" So people have been coming to me with proofs, and what proofs? The proofs are YouTube videos. It is news to me that now scientists publish themselves on YouTube. Scientists are not found on YouTube. Pseudoscientists can be found. Scientific superstition can be found. Scientists are found elsewhere. Go to them and ask them.
The matter is very simple. Elementary science would give you conclusive answers to the question that you have. So, there is a certain chemical reaction happening, right? You say you pour ghee, you put in dung, and there must be some wood and some other material. And then all of that is put to fire, and then there is a flame, and there are gases. It is a very easy experiment. It can be conducted even in a school laboratory, a high school laboratory. Just collect the gases and analyze which gases are present and then ask yourself if this chemical reaction is producing nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, various oxides of sulfur, a little bit of maybe methane, and a lot of water vapor. How can it contribute to the cleansing of the environment? How? How exactly?
If anything, it will contribute to climate change. If anything, it will produce a lot of ash which will increase the amount of suspended particulate matter in the air. I do not know of any gas that can purify the environment. In markets, you do have air purifiers, but they are not purifiers. Air has a certain composition. What do you mean by adding something to the air so that it gets purified? What kind of logic is this? What kind of science is this?
Even a class 6 student knows the chemical composition of air. It's a mixture of gases, gases combined in a certain proportion, just mixed. Combined not in the sense of chemically reacting, just mixed. All the gases retain their individuality.
Nitrogen is nitrogen. Oxygen is oxygen. Now, there is 80% nitrogen in the air, and if you add oxides of nitrogen to air, how is air getting purified? Tell me. And don't trust me on this, because on this matter, I cannot be an authority. Go and consult a scientist and there are so many scientists who are public figures as well, who will be prepared to answer your questions online. Just send this query to them.
We have greatly reduced religion and brought it down to the level of crass materialism. Why? Because we are material fellows.
What is the domain of religion? What is the question that religion deals with?
Religion does not deal with gases and material and fire and oxidation. All that is not the rightful domain of religion. Religion deals with only one question: What is this "I"? What is it up to? What does it want? And why does it suffer?
Religion deals only with ego and the liberation of ego. If, in the name of religion, you find other things being discussed, then this is the work of some fraud. Do you get this?
The proper domain of religion concerns just one question: What is this ego? This "I"? Why does it suffer, and how can it be liberated from its suffering? That's all. Finished.
Instead, if you find that religion is talking of other things, then that is not religion. That is some kind of tribal superstition in the name of religion. If you're talking of fruits and vegetables — wear this, don't wear that, eat this, don't eat that, your house should face this direction — and a thousand other things that you associate with religion, those are not in the purview of religion at all in the first place. Religion has nothing to do with those things. Nothing at all.
Are you getting it?
So please tell me, what is the one thing that religion concerns itself with? Ego and its liberation. That's all. What is the ego, from where does it come, and hence how it can be liberated? That's all.
Instead, if you find that in the name of religion somebody is talking about planets and stars and this and that and a thousand other things, then all that is just a sham. Either the fellow himself knows nothing, or he's out to fool an entire population. Getting it? Clear?
No religion can save you from carbon monoxide. Not at all. Or from the gas that was released in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Which gas was it? Whichever gas — it doesn't matter how spiritual you are. If your neck is inserted in a container of nitrous oxide or carbon monoxide, you will not be saved. Material is material. The body is material, and the body will react to material just as material reacts with material, just as molecule reacts with molecule. It doesn't matter whether it is the lung of a Buddha or the lung of the most fallen being in the universe — both will react similarly to a poisonous gas.
All these miraculous things that you hear — that some great Babaji was there and Babaji was given poison, and Babaji still did not die — surely the poison was supplied by Babaji himself. Babaji is running a lot of shops in the background. One of the shops sells fake poisons, like everything else that is fake in his shops.
Did Socrates not die when he had to drink poison? Hemlock, it was, I suppose. Or did it happen because Socrates is Socrates, so he will not die? Did Christ not bleed when he was impaled?
A very ordinary hunter struck Krishna, and that was enough for his body to succumb. Body is body. Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Jiddu Krishnamurti — all died of cancer. Gautam himself died of a stomach ailment. And they were luminaries. They could have performed some yagya and said, “To hell with cancer. Here is the divine yagya.”
If you want to really understand what yagya is, then go to the Bhagavad Gita. There, Shri Krishna has explained the real meaning of yagya.
** * Yagya* means to devote your actions to the Almighty.**
That is yagya — not that material thing that you keep doing in the morning and evening, burning wood, putting in ghee, and all that. That is a very gross form of yagya. The real yagya is what Sri Krishna talks of in the Bhagavad Gita.
And please get rid of this myth that yagya releases gases that purify the atmosphere. No, not at all. So, the Amazon is burning — just pour a lot of ghee on it. That will be a great yagya, and the great atmosphere of not only the Earth but the entire solar system will be purified? Nonsense.
These are the people who have no respect for religion. These are the people who have no respect for Sri Krishna. And these are the people who actually have no respect for the great word that is yagya. Yagya is a beautiful and great word. But these people, who do not understand anything and yet are very egoistic, have spoiled everything. They just touch even the most sacred of words, institutions, pointers — and distort them.
Questioner: There is a whole stream of therapy — they’ve named it as Homa-therapy.
Acharya Prashant: it spoils my mood to even hear of it. So how do I respond to it?
No wonder that India, the cradle of religion, remained enslaved and backward for so long. Religion is the greatest of all liberating forces — when religion is pure. And there is no bondage like religion — when religion becomes superstition. India’s religion became superstition, and that is why India remained backward and enslaved.
Religion has to be a burning inquiry. Religion cannot become a system of fossilized beliefs. Religion has to always be fresh. The religious mind has to be a very, very sharp mind — not prepared to believe easily, not prepared to sell himself cheaply. Only the strong ones can be religious, not the ones who kneel down weakly in front of any popular convention.
For almost a thousand years, India remained a land with zero scientific growth. At the same time, everybody was religious. Don’t you see what is happening? The great force of religion became rotten and distorted and became an anti-life force.
Will you have innovations and patents and Nobel Prizes and creativity if people are prepared to believe in anything? Yes? Will you have great artists, great originality, great music, great movies if people are just following the trend and copying each other? But that’s what is happening. You just hear something and you believe it. Now, how will you be boldly original?
And that shows up in all spheres of our life — scientific progress is stagnant, artistically we stand in mediocrity — sports, all fields of human endeavor.
I’m not saying religion is the only culprit. There are diverse factors. But the one force that could overcome all the debilitating forces and rejuvenate the nation has been compromised. And that one force is called religion. If you have nothing else, save religion — then religion will provide you with everything else.
Religion is the one thing that can provide you with all other things. If you have religion, you will get a great polity. If you have religion, you will get great science. If you have religion, you'll get great poetry. If you have religion, you will get great architecture. If you have religion, fundamentally, you will get a great human being.
But that same religion, when it gets disfigured, lifeless, and rotten, then the entire population turns into pygmies — little people with nothing grand about them.
India was greatly blessed that it was, as I said, the cradle of religion. We had the great saints, and to begin with, we had the Upanishads. So many great religions were born here. They were pioneers, leaders, pathbreaking people — extremely stubborn, extremely non-compromising. They did not follow the herd or trend. Did they?
Look at Buddha, Mahavira, Nanak, Kabir. They were all great beginnings in themselves, they were not sheep. And then this cradle of religion lives long enough to see life turning into death. So what are you going to tell your son? He’ll be preparing — reappearing now — for the boards.
And Pandit ji is saying, “It is all the fault of the education system. Great science I have taught you, but those fools do not know how to evaluate. They have given you only 15 out of 100. Now what we will do is — we will have a separate science of our own. Why do you want to follow their science? We will follow our science!”
This kind of thing too you are hearing these days. “This science and that science,” as if there are multiple sciences all opposed to each other. “Spiritual sciences.” What kind of foolishness is this —“spiritual sciences”?
But Pandit ji is saying, “There is no need to appear in the CBSE exams. I have my own syllabus, my own science. I will set a paper, and you write the exam, and I will declare you 100 out of 100. And in my exam, when you burn wood, the air gets cleaned.”
Science is for the lovers of truth — who do not believe, who find out, who experiment, who say, “We want to check.”
It is for those who are prepared to see their notions being dismantled. For the weak ones, beliefs are enough. In fact, they get hurt when their beliefs are challenged. No? Now it has become a trend to call anything science. Somebody is calling astrology a science. Somebody is calling palmistry a science. Somebody is saying, “This is a scientific thing.” A lot of people — they have been telling me — “Water has memory.”
You know, there are many countries in which you can actually be jailed if you propagate such a thing, because to instill such a belief in the population is to make the population incapable of the scientific spirit. And not without reason have these same countries progressed greatly in science — because they do not tolerate nonsense of this nature.
If you want to be religious, the first thing is: stop being superstitious. Tell yourself — the material world is the realm of the scientist in the laboratory.
If somebody wants to talk about science, first of all ask him, “Where is your laboratory?” Because science cannot proceed without experimentation. In science, there is no scope for conjecturing or believing or dreaming up stuff. You need to have a laboratory where you conduct your experiments, then you submit your paper. The papers are peer-reviewed, then published, and then the entire scientific community tests them, comments on them, assesses them for their merit, and then there are other people who take things forward. That's how the process of science moves.
The moment you hear somebody talking about vibrations or energy circles — something like spiritual fields, what else is there? Aura, and sending healing from here to Canada? Just — immediately — you should know that you are in the wrong place. Walk away.
Repeat: What is the right domain of all religion, all spirituality? Investigating the ego and trying for its liberation. That's all. Simple. Simple and pure.
No mumbo-jumbo, Abracadabra. Nothing.
