Why Have Religions Emerged Only From a Few Places in the World?
Questioner: Namaste Sir. So, I have observed one thing: if we look at the major religions and spiritual traditions around the world that are well accepted, we see that they emerged from certain places only. For example, the Abrahamic religions—all of them happened in the Arab world and around Israel and Saudi Arabia. Zoroastrianism happened in Iran, and India has been the most fertile land for the growth of these traditions and religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Even foreign traditions, when they came to India, for example, Sufism, flourished in a very unique fashion. The Indian subcontinent especially has had a long list of saints, and we don’t see these things in European history or in the Americas or any other places.
Acharya Prashant: Heard of a place called Greece?
Questioner: Okay, I am ready to include Greece, as well.
Acharya Prashant: Heard of Athens? Heard of the sophists: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? They were not Europeans. It’s just that at particular patches in time, there exist favorable ecosystems. There was a wonderful ecosystem in Greece before Christ. And you have excluded China. You have excluded Japan.
Questioner: Yes, sir, even China. Daoism and Confucianism.
Acharya Prashant: Then we have the Middle East, then we have Iran, then we have India, and India is an entire subcontinent. We have also included China. We’ve included Japan. We have included Europe. What remains?
Questioner: But sir, the way it has flourished in India and places around India and Pakistan...
Acharya Prashant: India is one. India, Pakistan, the subcontinent, let’s take them as one.
Questioner: It’s a bit unique. The way they flourished.
Acharya Prashant: Ecosystem, nothing else. Once something starts somewhere, it becomes the thing for that place. What do you know Detroit today for? What do you know California today for? Okay, what do you know Bangalore today for? So, is there something particular in the geography of Bangalore that makes it conducive to silica or something? Nothing. It’s just that due to historical and coincidental reasons, an ecosystem develops there. And once the ecosystem is there, more and more stuff starts happening.
If you want to investigate more into it, India was a more fertile land for religious inquiry because the soil was fertile, because the monsoons were guaranteed, and you could do nothing about the monsoons. Remember, in those days, there was hardly any irrigation, so you simply had to wait for the rains. What do you do when you wait for the rains? The population was sparse, so there was good food and ample food for everyone. The Indus Basin and the Ganga Basin are some of the most fertile basins in the world; the alluvial soil here comes right from the Himalayas.
So, you had an abundance of everything. When you have an abundance of everything–and there is not much you can anyway do because the monsoons will come when they have to–what do you do? You have ample leisure, and in that leisure, you sit, you observe, you talk to people. There is space for intellectual inquiry. For hours and hours, can you visualize the thinkers, the sages, the seers just purposelessly talking to each other. And from that purposeless discussion, from silent observation of life for hours, days, months, and years, come those insights that you today take as Indian philosophy.
You cannot have philosophical development if you are running behind your ambitions, and if you have a tied up day, and you very well know that eight AM you have to do this and then six AM this and so on. That kind of clockwork will never allow any kind of internal leisure. And if that internal leisure is not there, no insight, no wisdom can develop. You all must remember this: give yourself space, freedom, and opportunities to take stock. Do you understand what is meant by taking stock? Just stop! Stop for long durations, at least for a few hours, and recollect: "What’s going on? Am I just running? What’s going on?"
And this period of taking stock can extend to months, if possible for you. In fact, in my own growth, the breaks that I used to get from school and later on from IIT were very important. Most of my initial poetry was composed in breaks, and the breaks were significant; the entire December used to be free, and then May, June, July, and that used to provide an ample space in which one could just be himself. So that’s what it is. Ecosystems are very important. That’s the reason universities are very important.
Questioner: So, as you said, the ecosystem was favorable in India, but in the Arab world, the survival conditions were very brutal; they were very tough. So, how did Prophet Ibrahim, Prophet Muhammad, or Christ manage to awaken their consciousness?
Acharya Prashant: The same thing can happen when the ecosystem is very unfavorable. You very well know that nothing will happen however hard you try. So, what do you do? You stop trying. If you think of the of the process of the Quran, Prophet Muhammad used to go up a hill and sit there for long durations. That sitting alone for long durations is at the core of insightful realization. If you are someone who cannot be by himself, if you are afraid of being alone, if you cannot remain silent to yourself, you’ll never realize anything.
The fact is, please understand, even if you go to the Palaeolithic times, what you find is religion emerging in a very preliminary way, so it’s never specific to one geography. Where there is man, there is dissatisfaction, and where there is dissatisfaction, there is an inquiry into the reason for dissatisfaction, and that inquiry itself is called religion. "I am not whole. I am not well. Why do I remain restless within? How do I take care of this?" – that itself is religion. So, that is found even in the caveman.
They did not know that they were restless because something within was amiss, so what would they do? They started out by looking into the physical universe, so they would say, "Oh, probably that tree is great. If that tree blesses me, I will be all right. Oh, probably that river is great. Probably, the sky god, or the Sun god, they are the greatest, they are the absolute."
So, there is a search within the human being always, always for the greatest, the best, the absolute, and that’s what differentiates man from animals. Animals do not search for the best, the greatest, the final, the infinite, or the absolute. Man always searches for that. And if life is not used in searching for the absolute and meeting it, then life is wasted. You know, there is a point in the history of evolution of human beings when we started to think. That point comes seventy, eighty thousand years before today. And the moment that point comes, also you start seeing the emergence of some kind of worship.
Our brains the moment they gain some maturity, one of the things that comes immediately to the brain, the mind, is it starts to worship. Now, what does worship mean? Think of it. Worship means: "There has to be something bigger, and I prostrate in front of it." So this search for ‘bigness’ – that bigness is your destiny. That’s what Vedant calls Atma, and it’s not a doctrine; it’s not a dogma. It’s contained within you.
Even If you deny Vedant, that restlessness will remain. So, Vedant is not a concept or a principle. It is just expressing what is already within you, irrespective of whether you believe in Vedant or not. That’s why I said that there is no need to believe – it is. What is, it needs not to be believed in. It can be known; there is no need to believe.
