The myth of 'Consecrated spaces' || Acharya Prashant, with SPA Delhi (2023)

Questioner (Q): Good evening, Sir! Since we are talking at the school of planning and architecture, my question is regarding the structure. The geometry and aesthetics of the man-made structures have a deep impact on my mind, sort of an emotional impact. Is such impact a result of only the aesthetics and physics or is there a spiritual sense to this too? Because I have heard some spiritual Gurus speak of consecrated spaces.

Acharya Prashant (AP): What do you mean by a consecrated space?

Q: A space which is regarded with some sort of energy or a haunted place.

AP: You will not call a haunted place a consecrated place. You mean a place that radiates sacredness and when you reach that place you experience a certain divine feeling or something. That’s how we usually talk of consecrated spaces. The opposite of that would be a haunted house. So, when you reach that place, you start feeling jittery or something wrong is going on and all those things.

You see, most of that is obviously just your own conditioning. Just your own conditioning! That's the reason why you have to be told in advance that a particular place is a consecrated place. You have to be told in advance and you have to be told very-very strongly so that your mind is fully conditioned that that particular place is a consecrated place. And when you reach there then you find you are indeed experiencing divinity.

So, I have a curious incident to narrate on this. This is from my corporate days and my job as a consultant required that I would frequently travel. So, once I was staying in a hotel, in a suburban area close to a large automobile factory and at that point, I was a consultant to that factory. So, this is one of the largest producers of tractors in the country at this moment. So, I was there, and a few others were there staying in the same hotel. It was actually a guest house. So, it was a bit of a remote area, a little away from the city.

So, the guest house in-charge comes and says, “Sirs, because you are staying here, you must definitely visit that particular group of temples; it’s just around twenty kilometres from here and a lot of folklore is attached to it and specially the temple number eight. There are a lot of stories and even miracles attached to its name. So, we said, “Fine.”

I mean that entire group of little temples and those are pretty old temples, not in proper shape either, dilapidated and all, and there was a mystic attached to them. So, he directed us specifically towards temple number eight and all those temples were quite close by. So, you got down from the car and in front of you was this cluster of temples and we were told to go to temple number eight.

So, we got down and after a while, one of my fellows from the guest house, he comes and there was a peculiar glow on his face and he says, “I really experienced divinity! Really experienced divinity!” I was standing at temple number eight because that's the place I had been directed to. I had been told that’s the place where the magic is, so, you go right to that place. So, I was standing there. And of course, because the temples were old and all, there were no markings. You could not know really which one is the temple number eight. You had to manually count. You knew that that was one and this was eight and there were twelve or fourteen little temples.

So, I was standing in front of temple number eight trying hard to experience divinity from there and then this fellow comes to me and says, “Miraculous! Absolutely out of this world! Temple number eight for sure has some sacred vibes. What I have experienced just now, is definitely a paranormal phenomenon”. So, I said, “Okay you did that, fine”. And this fellow was a deeply religious fellow. All kinds of rituals we knew he was partaking in, and all those things, and he had a great belief in the meta-physical and the paranormal and such things.

So, he comes and says, “I just spent around ten to fifteen minutes in temple number eight, and you cannot, just cannot imagine what I have experienced.” So, I said, “Wow! Please narrate me your experience, but there is one little thing I want to tell you, that the temple you are coming from is temple number six. Temple number eight is where I am standing”. The moment I said that all his experience vanished. He said, “Oh! But then that must be a fluke.”

Do you understand this? You are already conditioned to experience so-called sacredness. You have been told that if you go to this place, there is sacredness. So, that fellow enters temple number six thinking that it is temple number eight and starts experiencing sacredness that you are supposed to experience at temple number eight. This thing applies obviously not only to temples but structures from all religions; it would apply to mosques, churches, and all other places.

That’s what; it’s all within you! It is your own belief that you experience. There is nothing special in the structure as such. Nothing in the structure, and if someone says, “Oh! You know, there is this temple and now I am consecrating it and now it becomes special”, that fellow is out to fool you, as simple as that!

If someone says the architecture is special, even that can be admitted to an extent. Because there can be beauty in stuff that is man-made. Just as there is beauty in physical nature, there is also beauty in man-made stuff. So, that can be admitted. Yes, there are man-made paintings, there are man-made machines that are absolutely exquisite.

Someone can write a fabulous software. The same thing that was being accomplished by a computer program that ran over five-hundred lines; someone comes and finishes that in forty-five lines; it is a marvellous piece, a thing of beauty! I understand; there is beauty. There is beauty in the way you solve a problem in mathematics, there is beauty in the way you compose a poem or write an essay and there can obviously be beauty in architecture as well.

So, if you say, ‘Because the thing is beautiful, I love it!’ I understand. When you look at the mighty Himalayas, when you look at the snow-capped peaks, when you look at the Ganga gushing down— it definitely has a soothing effect on the mind. That too I can understand. But to say that a place can be consecrated through rituals or by a special man going and performing ceremonies, is absolutely hogwash. None of that!

People say, “No, look at the deity”. The deity is stone till a certain point and then a priest comes and performs a few rituals and narrates a few mantras and the deity comes alive or gets charged, gets energised, becomes real—all that is nonsense, none of that can happen. All that is just conditioning, conditioning and conditioning! That’s why one man’s sacred place is very ordinary for the other, is it not?

A Muslim passes in front of a mosque and the kind of experience that he gets is not the experience that a Jew would get passing in front of the same mosque, or a Hindu would get passing in front of the same mosque. It’s all very subjective. It’s within you, it’s not in that structure.

What can be in the structure is something else. There can be beauty in the structure; there can be sophistication in the structure; also, there can be one more thing in the structure, very important—I am glad I didn’t forget that—the structure can have great pointers towards higher values. And then the structure really becomes a living story; the structure then becomes a teacher. The structure is now teaching you something.

Let’s say there is something carved on the walls or let’s say there is a painting or let’s say there is a specific shape to the pillars—now that can mean something, I definitely admit that, and I respect that. But for that to mean anything you must know what the meaning is. But do you know what the meaning is? If you do not know what the meaning is, how have you just blindly started parroting sacred, sacred? Do you get this?

For example, think of the Swan—the Haṃsa . Now the Haṃsa is a very important motif in Vedanta, why? Because it refers to the Ātmā — the free bird, your fundamental inner nature of freedom—that’s what the Haṃsa refers to.

Also, when you write ‘Haṃ-so’ and you start chanting that — ‘Haṃ-so Haṃ-so Haṃ-so’ — that turns into ‘Soham’ and ‘Soham’ means ‘That Am I’. So, that answers the fundamental vedantic query: ‘Who am I?’—‘Koham?’. ‘Soham’ becomes the response to ‘Koham?’. So, if you look at a Haṃsa (Swan) drawn on a wall or etched or carved or something, and you are immediately reminded of the Ātmā — the pure self, then there is sacredness, definitely! But if you do not know what the bird stands for and you start staying, “Oh! Great! Peace! Wonderful vibes!” Then you are just fooling yourself.

That bird, that shape was put there to remind you of something. If indeed you are reminded, then the shape has worked for you. But if you are not being reminded at all and you are just saying, “No, no, no, I am getting vibes”, then you are hell-bent on remaining who you are. Then you don't want to benefit from the temple. Your ego is so strong that it has defeated the temple and you are just saying, “Oh! This consecrated place, so I am benefiting from being here.”

Nobody benefits from being anywhere unless the mind is active, unless the consciousness understands what is going on.

Right now, you might be benefiting from this conversation because your mind is attentive and is trying to understand what is going on, right? Similarly, if you go to a temple—I am saying temple because typically when you say consecrated space, you mean a temple. You can mean other spaces also, but typically a temple. When you go to the temple, you must know what everything stands for and if you know that, then the temple will indeed have a beneficial effect on you. But if you do not know, what is the point?

Similarly, the mantras, the verses, the shlok—do you know what that means? If you do not know, then it is a thing of stupidity to just keep hearing. In fact, you will become dull if you keep hearing something you do not understand.

Now Sanskrit is a language most of us do not understand. It’s a beautiful language. More people should know Sanskrit, but in actuality we do not know. And then you sit through hours and hours of ritual listening to Sanskrit verses, how will that help you? But you say, “No, no, no, there is something special in the sound of the mantras; those vibrations are reaching my ears and even if I do not understand their meaning, they are still helping me.” No! they are not helping you. Just as watching the Haṃsa figure will not help you if you do not know what Haṃsa stands for. Similarly, listening to a mantra will not help you if you do not know its meaning.

Not only should you know its meaning, you should also know the deeper meaning. You should also know what that ultimately point towards. And ultimately if a mantra is worth the name, it should point towards Self-knowledge because that is all that there is to Spirituality.

Spirituality is not about spirits; Spirituality is not bhoot-pret (ghost) business. Spirituality basically means Ātmā jñāna — Self-knowledge. In fact, Spirituality is a word that I more and more now feel like dropping because it has become very misused. Spirituality now stands for so many obnoxious things. First of all, we destroyed the word religion. Now we have destroyed the word Spirituality as well. Self-knowledge is still something we have not put our dirty hands on. So, the real thing is Self-knowledge.

Can you tell me how the shape of a temple is encouraging Self-knowledge within you? If it is encouraging, then the temple is beneficial. Can you tell me how the sound of the mantra is removing your ignorance, clearing away your doubts, melting your ego, bringing clarity to you? If it is not bringing clarity to you, just that there is a lot of music and visual extravaganza and that is making you feel great, then you are being drugged in that place. A lot of temples, a lot of hyped temples—these things are now happening.

Not only in temples, in other places also; I must mention churches, I must mention synagogues; it’s happening everywhere. They have become places of entertainment. A lot of song, dance, optics, great sounds—so, all that is just food for the ego. The ego is becoming stronger by visiting such places, and to top it, the ego gets a licence to say, “I just came from some sacred place; a consecrated place where I got truly holy vibes”. You didn’t get any holy vibes, you just got fattened. You were an ordinary ego before you went to that place, now you are a totally ignorant drunk and arrogant ego that calls itself religious. So, that’s a great problem.

There are several temples that have shlokas from the Upanishads carved on them, it's beautiful! When you visit Varanasi, go to the temple inside BHU (Banaras Hindu University). For hours whenever I have visited BHU, I have found myself sitting there. And I was very young. I think my board results had just been declared; class tenth. Because my father came from Varanasi, I went there with him, and it was enthralling!

All the chosen verses from Upanishads were there in the temple; now that's what a temple really is! And I made notes, and I made lots of notes and for a very long time—I suppose a few decades—those little pieces of paper, they remained in my wallet. I just sat down and started copying from the walls. Think! Copying from the walls (smiles)! Now that’s a temple. And if I remember correctly, there were verses from Buddhist scriptures and also from Jain scriptures.

Spirituality is not mumbo jumbo. Spirituality is hard, unrelenting inquiry; you want to know what is going on. Spirituality is philosophy with the purpose of liberation from the ordeal of life. That is what Spirituality is.

Spirituality is not a belief system, ‘Come on, start believing in this; come on, start just dancing or parroting something totally mindlessly.’ You must ask, “What do the arms of the deity stand for? And if the figure is worth it, there would definitely be a meaning; figure out the meaning. And if there is no meaning then there is no compulsion to again and again visit that place.

Everything is symbolic and the right meaning has to be ascertained. You must know what is being pointed at and if the temple is real then it will definitely point only towards the Sky, the Truth, the absolute Freedom. And if you cannot see that then you must say: “Oh! The temple right now holds no meaning for me because the temple is not telling me of liberation. Not the temple's fault really, my own fault, I cannot read the meaning.”

Your emphasis should be on reading the meaning; that’s what you must try for—What is hidden here? What is the meaning? If there is a meaning, I should know. And unfortunately, there is some probability that some temples may not have any meaning because there are lakhs of temples you see. But all the great ones, all the real ones, definitely point towards the Absolute. And you must know how that pointer is working.

The functioning of that pointer must be known with great application of intellect and logic. Do not keep your mind, your logic, your argument, your intellect aside when you enter a place of religion. Religion requires great application of intellect and logic. And it is this intellect-less, thoughtless, mindless religiosity that has brought us down to our sorry state. It is not without reason that India suffered so badly for so many centuries. To me the primary reason was misinterpretation and exploitation of religion, and that is still continuing. Also, in the last ten-twenty years that exploitation has somehow worsened.

We thought that with the arrival of science and education, and values of freedom and inquiry, superstition would reduce. The masses would refuse to be fooled. But very strangely that has not come to pass. What we are seeing is a phenomenon in the opposite direction. More and more blind kinds of cults are rising.

People are not reading. People are becoming more and more ignorant of their own central scriptures, and you have religious leaders who repeatedly say that there is no need to read. In fact, in some cults, I have heard, reading is prohibited. They say: “No, you don’t read anything; specifically, don’t read anything related to science. You just read these three, four books that our cults prescribed.” And become totally brainwashed. This is very unfortunate and very scary.

I do not know what we are making of this nation. There can be no religiosity without sound and sharp application of the mind. Don't keep your mind aside when you enter the scope and dimension of religion. Ask, seek to understand, and if you are told to believe in something blindly, just refuse. No, that's not what religion is about. Religion is the opposite of the blind belief. But as we said, ‘Religion’, the word has been corrupted. So, let’s simply say Self-knowledge is the opposite of blind belief. Let them usurp the word religion. They have taken it away; let’s give it to them. Let's stick to Self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge is inquiry. You want to know; you want to understand what is going on.

And create great structures with great sophistication. As a student, as a practitioner of architecture, create buildings that do not have just utilitarian value but that point towards something higher, that give life with a sense of purpose. When you look at that building you realise the building is saying something to you very purposefully and saying something very important and if you can understand what the building is saying, then you will be a better person. That's the kind of structure you should try to create. In that creation lies consecration. Consecration does not lie in standing in front of the building and narrating a few mantras and sprinkling water and using some rice and sandalwood and doing a few things and then you say: “Oh! Now, it is consecrated, now the deity is active and energised.” No, no, no!

Create a great building that speaks really. Let there be great pointers. Refer to great pieces from world literature including religious literature and have pointers that remind you of what happened in that particular story or that particular novel or that particular poem or in that particular Upanishad. That’s when the building will stand as something that elevates you. You look at the building and you say: “Well, life is worth living! Life is worth living!”—This building speaks. It is not there just to house a few people. It is not an animal’s cave. It is not an insect’s rock. It is a living structure.

So, if you can create such a thing, you would come very close to creating a temple and believe me—No, don’t believe me, you are not supposed to believe anything (smiles)—so, I would aver that’s how the first temple would have been built. You want to have a place where your ego can just bow down. You want to have something of beauty. You want to have something that is higher than yourself and that is how man would have built his first temple. He said: “Fine, life is just ordinary, mediocre, but that does not satisfy me. Let there be something higher than this everyday living, than this usual muck”. And then you say, ‘Let there be a temple! Let there be a temple!’ That temple stands for everything that is worth worshipping.

What is worth worshipping? What is something that you value highly? Tell me please. I would hear it from you. What is worth worshipping?

Q: Something that improves your consciousness to a great level.

AP: Yeah, but what is that you would value in life? Don’t go by the prescription. Tell me very originally, very honestly as a person what is it that you value in life?

Q: Existence of my own being.

AP: Simplify that for somebody as ignorant as me.

Q: I exist.

AP: Yes, that is right. So, you mean life. But what is it that you value in life? What is it that you find worth respecting in life or in a person, let's say.

Q: Knowledge of that person.

AP: Knowledge and...?

Think of the people you respect and please tell me what is in them that is worth respecting?

Q: Their freedom, their Independence.

AP: Freedom, and you said Knowledge and you said Independence and Courage, may be?

Q: Courage.

AP: So, can you create a structure that is a testament to courage? And by Knowledge you would mean Understanding, can you have a building that encourages you to Understand?—devoted to Bodh—Understanding? If you can create such a building, that’s a de-facto temple, that is a real temple. Let not religion have a monopoly over temples. If you can create a building that encourages you to be courageous, that building is a temple. And that is how the first temple would have been made.

Courage is the deity; Knowledge is the deity! So, when you visit that place you say, “Well, well, well, well! All my life on one side; all the places that I usually visit on one side; and this place on one side and this place is just somehow more lovely. I come here and I am reminded of something very superior, very elevated, very sublime. I come here and it’s like coming to a senior, to a guide, to a well-wisher, to a beloved who tells me: “Daughter don’t get lost in the humdrum affairs of life, remember what is truly important. Knowledge is important, Courage is important, Freedom is important”. That’s what consecration is! So, consecration is not a ritual. Consecration is when you are reminded of that which is truly sacred and the name of that is Freedom.

Q: So, my follow up question is that you mentioned that all the objects like, say, in a temple or anywhere you go, they are like pointers right to the higher Truth. So, in this case shouldn’t we do a little more inquiry with our relation to everything around us like all the objects that we are surrounded by, because why do we just limit ourselves to scriptures or temples or something that’s been given to us, why can’t we assign our own meaning?

AP: Wonderful! Beautiful! Lovely…Lovely!

Think of the person who raised the first temple. He had no precedent to go by, right? In some sense he created his personal temple; his or her personal temple. Because there was no tradition he was following. He said, “Obviously life is not worth living if there is no sacredness in it. If there is no sacredness then life is dull, boring, monotonous, just a mass of mediocrity. I don’t want to live that way. There has to be something higher”. So, that was a personal aspiration that took the shape of a temple and that can happen even today, obviously.

You can have your personal sacred space. You must have that. And you know, those who have known, they have said: “Now we have no need of sacred spaces because we are in so deep love with sacredness that we cannot live without sacredness at any point, at any place.” So, there is no need for especially made sacred spots. The kind of inquiry that we live in now, the purity of mind that we live with now, renders the entire universe sacred for us; the entire universe is now an open book of Truth to us.

So, there is no need for us to even visit temples or any other place. But that’s obviously a very advanced stage, one of the higher and final stages. So, let's not talk of that. But you are very right, that sacredness is something obviously for us. So, it is something very intimate, very personal. So, you can have your little personal shrine, definitely. And if you can have that then you are entering true religiosity.

Q: You said that it is for higher levels, right? So, when you are initially, may be starting out, it is okay to go to these places because the environment is a little more conducive for that type of work that you want…

AP: By ‘these places’ you mean the commonly accepted temples?

Q: Places that claim to be you know…

AP: Many of them are very beautifully built and very purposefully designed. It's just that we are such stupid people that we have destroyed those places. Those were works of masterminds; people who could think, probe, inquire, understand; and the ones who are visiting those places now are all just dumb, blind, followers who do not understand a thing. They come there just very ritualistically, very blindly in no knowledge of what that place stands for, right?

So, there are a few temples I have a special relationship with, and it breaks my heart to visit them when there is a crowd. It becomes a bit like an intimate love affair, you don’t want to share it with a crowd. Especially, if the crowd is insensitive, violent, ignorant and disrespectful to the sacredness of that place.

So, I found myself gazing at my beloved temples from a distance, especially in the night. So, yes, it's not just alright to visit great places of worship, it is also beneficial but then you must understand what’s going on. Just going to the Ganga and taking a few dips is not going to help. That's not helping. People visit Kedarnath; they exploit the mules, the donkeys there and they go and then they do all kinds of stupidities, and they return—that’s not going to help.

So, when you go to a sacred place, meet that place with your own sacredness. Don’t let it be a dead ritual, right? And stick to the thing that you first talked of—creating your personal shrine! Nobody can monopolise the Truth and the Truth never said that it is going to be based only at a particular geographical location.

Truth is your own personal reality which when approached becomes totally impersonal but for you, to begin with, you must say: “It is my own thing. It is the thing within.” So, it is good to visit religious places, places of pilgrimage and all those things, it's alright. But also, you must constantly be in touch with your own core. You must constantly be assessing the quality of your own mind: Is there anger? Is there greed? Is there a lot of fear? Is there blind faith? Is there ignorance? You must keep asking these questions—That’s true religiosity!

Q: That’s beautiful! Thank you, Sir.

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