Superstitions are Your Worst Enemy
Questioner: I had been introduced to a fire ritual. It’s agnihotram, which is performed during every sunrise and sunset. In this ritual, we use ghee, the cow dung and everything. Once I got to know that the use of ghee is there in this, I am using the cow dung, I am not willing to continue this any further. In English, they had translated it as ‘fire sacrifice’. I did not get the actual meaning of that word.
Acharya Prashant: Let’s say your son is in Class X. He would be one day. And he comes to you with his Board Exam’s 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.” And you say, “Okay, let me see. Show me your books.” And he brings the books to you and the books appear so 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, “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 Panditji, He is my science teacher. That mohalla temple is there and that Panditji 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 matter, then would you refer to pandits and scriptures or must you refer to scientists? Please! Fifty years back, a hundred 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! And, at that time, it was considered medicine.
Today, if you do that, you will say, “The fellow is so foolish, illiterate, full of superstition.” 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 gasses and the environment, would you listen to the so-called religious people and priests, or would you rather consult a scientist or an environmentalist? Tell me!
And 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 is this that certain people who were performing a certain ritual sacrifice got saved at the time of 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 that water has memory. A month or so back, it happened. Somebody asked me about it and a video was published. And I rubbished this thing. The molecule is a molecule. What do you mean by memory? So, people have been coming to me with proof. 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. Yes, pseudo-scientists 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 gasses. It is a very easy experiment. It can be conducted even in a school laboratory, a high school laboratory.” Just collect the gasses and analyze which gasses are present, and then ask yourself if this chemical reaction is producing nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, various oxides of sulphur, a little bit of maybe methane, a lot of water vapor. How can it contribute to the cleansing of the environment, bhai? 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 VI student knows the chemical composition of air. It’s a mixture of gasses, gasses combined in a certain proportion. Just mixed, combined not in the sense of chemically reacting! Just mixed! All the gasses 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 gasses 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 are 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 can it 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 is out to fool an entire population. Are you 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 to 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 Mahrishi, Ramkrishna Paramhans, Jiddu Krishnamurthy, all died of cancer. Gautam Buddha himself died of a stomach ailment. But, then, 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, Sri 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. Real yagya is what Sri Krishna talks of in the Bhagavad Gita.
And please get rid of this myth that yagya releases gasses 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 a 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.
