Why Should I Trust you, Acharya Prashant? Why Should I Trust the Gita?

Questioner: My name is Hiren Patel. I'm a PhD student in the physics department. So, I'm also exploring the other science branches, like we have neuroscience and cognitive science, to understand ourselves, to understand human behavior. So, why do we need spirituality and the Vedas? What type of question will it address that is not covered in our science branches?

Acharya Prashant: The difference primarily is that when you go into neuroscience or the science of cognition, the various branches of philosophy including psychology, you remain at your own center. You hold on to your identity, the self, and holding on to yourself, you want to accumulate knowledge about this and that, which might even include knowledge about the self.

For example, in neuroscience, right? So here I am Hiren and Hiren wants to know about the inner neural networks, but Hiren wants to know about them, remaining— that’s not something to be questioned. And even if some kind of questioning does occur, even if some kind of deconstruction does occur, it’s going to be accidental.

Otherwise, remaining myself, I want to accumulate knowledge around myself. So, here I am. I sit on this chair, and there is knowledge on my table. Bring me more books here, bring me more knowledge here. All around myself, I gather knowledge. And what does that knowledge do? It fortifies me, it becomes my armor, it protects me. Now, who is being protected? Who is at the center of everything? — Hiren.

Now, spirituality, or rather the field of self-knowledge, starts from a very different point. It does not say, "I'll remain myself, and I'll accumulate knowledge," and that knowledge might actually reinforce who I am or have accidentally become, unconsciously become. I do not do that. I start from my suffering, my inner angst. I see I am not all right. I have no primary interest in knowledge.

When you are a student of, let's say, psychology, then your primary interest is psychology. In spirituality, the primary interest is not in any kind of knowledge, neither the knowledge of the world nor the knowledge of the self. The primary problem is the problem of human suffering. The problem of the fundamental human condition. We are born, we live, we die. What the hell is this? That's the primary problem. And I'm looking at it not just as an objective spectator but as an active participant. It is happening to me, It is very personal. It is happening to me.

But at the same time, it is universal because it is happening to everybody else, and it's a general problem worth addressing because it is a universal problem. What can be a bigger problem than the problem of universal human suffering? What can be a bigger challenge than that of universal human suffering?

The same suffering that we hide behind so many things— entertainment, even knowledge, so-called distractions, achievements, pleasures, accumulations, prestige, sanctions, and approvals from all around. We hide that fact of human suffering behind all these things. So, it's a big problem. It's a big problem that we want to address. So now, I want to look at — why am I suffering? Why am I suffering? And that immediately takes me to the question, "Who am I?" And when I look at myself, I say, "I might be Hiren, who is a student, but I'm still suffering." And suffering does not really mean that you have to exhibit loud symptoms of suffering. You don't really have to groan. You don't really have to yell. Suffering can be very subtle.

For example, ambition. Ambition is a subtle form of suffering. Are you getting it? And obviously, we know about anxiety and depression and other kinds of mental ailments with them. It is easier to associate the word "suffering." But when we say, "Love is another form of suffering," that raises heckles. How come love is another form of suffering? Because most of what we call love is just biological movement resulting in attachment. There's no real love in it.

So even ambition is suffering. Love is suffering. Whatever else we call stuff that we venerate is suffering. So there is Hiren. Hiren is a student, but he's a suffering student. Hiren is a male, but he's a suffering male. Hiren is an Indian, but he is suffering. Hiren is a cricket lover or a rugby lover, but he is a suffering cricket lover. Hiren is a well-paid employee, but he's a suffering well-paid employee.

So, if I want to address my condition, what is my fundamental condition? The underlying, all-pervasive foundation—what is it? Suffering. So, when I say, "Why am I suffering?" I said that brings us to the question, "Who am I?" And the only answer to that is, "I am the sufferer," because whatever else I might be, I suffer in that condition. I'm laughing. Even while laughing, I remain — suffering. Now that kind of sensitivity is rare.

Gautama Buddha's sensitivity, where you can see suffering and angst even in a laughing face, in tears. Obviously, we all see suffering, while it is not really necessary that tears are symptomatic of suffering. But it requires a really sensitive mind to see that most of what we call laughter, pleasure, and enjoyment too is a product of suffering. So, spirituality addresses the sufferer—the one sitting here. Now, to address it, you might require knowledge.

So, for example, the Upanishads will say that if you want to go beyond this vast pool of suffering, the Bhava-sagar, then you require both Vidya and Avidya. What is Vidya? — Knowledge of the self. How my inner processes operate. What is Avidya? — Knowledge of all the other things in the universe. You require both of them. And not only do you require both of them, when the knowers are asked to choose which of these two is more important when it comes to liberation, you know what the sages said? They said Avidya is more important. Avidya meaning — this worldly knowledge. Worldly knowledge means knowledge of objects—things that you perceive through your senses.

This seeker of liberation is going to chase knowledge — not for the sake of knowledge, but for the sake of freedom from suffering.

That's the difference between something like neuroscience and spiritual science. Neuroscience, you can sit here, become somebody, become a scholar, become an HOD, and yet remain suffering because it was never your intention in the first place to get rid of suffering and live life as joyfully as possible. The very starting point was that of remaining who you are and gathering more knowledge to appear knowledgeable or to earn worldly goodies or to just become respectable and knowledgeable in your own eyes.

Spirituality too gathers knowledge. It is indispensable. You cannot not know the sciences, the arts. You cannot be low on general awareness and yet hope to be liberated. So even in the field of self-knowledge, there's a great emphasis on being knowledgeable in as many fields as possible.

But knowledge—not for the sake of knowledge, knowledge for the sake of liberation—that's a difference, and that's a massive difference, a massive difference. Because we have just so many examples of people who are just so knowledgeable—extremely scholarly, encyclopedias in flesh and blood — and yet their insides are very rotten. Don't we come across such people every day? Sometimes, we come across such a figure even in the mirror. Does it not happen? You know so much, and yet you know that you sting from within. Does it not happen? It does happen with me sometimes. Doesn't happen with you? — Surprise!

So, you get the difference. The difference is in the very intention, and the commonality is that both of these fields respect knowledge a lot. Kindly do not think that spirituality implies becoming a babaji who gives two hoots to the world. No.

If you do not know how the world operates, you cannot know how the self operates because the world and the self are mirror images of each other.

And the world is a place that is verifiable, where you can conduct experiments, where somebody else can come and falsify what you are claiming. When it comes to objective material, there, your claims can be verified, falsified, peer-reviewed, everything, right?

But when it comes to the inner world and you say, "You know, I'm feeling blissful because I'm meditating," nobody can come and verify it. And you might be bluffing to yourself, as most meditators do, and you're telling yourself, "You know, I'm all full of peace." How do we know? How do you even know? What's your definition of peace, sir? And where is it coming from?

So, if you want to know the self, you'll have to know the world because these two move in tandem. Even the spiritual person, the really spiritual person, is very, very keen on knowing the latest developments in science and all other fields. But not so that he can become more full of knowledge.

In fact, if you go to the highest scriptures, they will say the final bondage is knowledge itself.

Because if you are identified with your knowledge, then you remain just a *Gyani, not a Mukt. A point has to come where even knowledge becomes your plaything. Not that you delete it from your memory, not that you stop using it, but you stop identifying with it. Otherwise, knowledge can be a big burden. But the final thing is, keep all your knowledge aside and become free. This ultimate freedom is not something that scholars target usually. That's the difference.

Questioner: Hi, myself Puspendra. I have some questions. Before that, I will make some statements. So, as you have claimed in your YouTube videos, you have read and have knowledge of so many Upanishads, the Gita, and other religious scriptures, and in a few videos, you claim that our society has declined because of the corruption or explanations by the people who are self-proclaimed owners of the religion. Now, can I believe in you? Will you provide the exact meaning of these books, or do they want to convey the meaning?

And I'm not asking you the question like, "If I know your correct explanation, I will become your follower blindly." I will recheck it, but I want to read because I also want to read this book from the basics, at least I should know the basics of these. And, one more thing: I have had confusion since my childhood. The basic question—what is right and wrong?

Acharya Prashant: Wonderful. So, this "What is right and wrong?" can also be applied to the first part of your question. How do I know which one is the right interpretation and which one is the wrong one? Good. Nice.

See, you have to go first of all to yourself. There has to be a reason behind all human action. We'll start from the utter basics so that there is no question of believing in anything or following anybody. What is the one thing that anybody can be absolutely sure of?

Questioner: Self Existence.

Acharya Prashant: Good. But you have skipped five steps in the equation and taken the pleasure out of it. This answer will be evident to a few and not so evident to many. Alright. How, why do you say that we cannot be absolutely sure of the existence of this material here in the background, this thing? How do you say that we cannot be absolutely sure of the existence of this?

Listener: our own existence.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Who said our own existence? How do you claim that we cannot say that this exists?

Listener: Every other form of perception could be a dream.

Acharya Prashant: elaborate, elaborate on that.

Listener: If I smoke something, I can see a dinosaur standing there, right? So it is impossible to argue.

Acharya Prashant: So take that to the fundamentals so that people can come to the same page.

Listener: So, I'm just saying that anything you perceive externally comes through your five senses.

Acharya Prashant: The key word here is "senses," and the next word would be "subjectivity." The key word here is senses, all, and so we have moved into epistemology, right? The field of the proof of truthfulness of knowledge, whether or not what you call as knowledge is knowledge or just subjective perception.

So, we as human beings perceive through our senses and process through our mind, and the mind has its own internal divisions within, which is another thing we perceive through these things. And a very basic practical experiment would reveal, let's say, we have been speaking here, conversing here for the last 15 minutes, right?

If I ask each of us to write down what it is that we have discussed objectively in, let's say, five points, and we ask you to exchange your notes with your neighbor, you will find a great degree of divergence, right? And not just divergence, you might find what you are writing is actually opposite to what your neighbor has written. Now, how is that possible?

If you all perceive that there is just one speaker, no? Who is uttering just one line of these oral signals, then how is it that each of us are writing down different things in notebooks? — Subjectivity. This subjectivity means that we do not know facts. We know our own facts. So we cannot be too sure of that.

The moment we come to see and accept that anything and everything that is being perceived by the inner experiencer comes into scrutiny and loses its absolute claim as being the truth, right? What is it then that remains and can be said to exist?

The one who is perceiving, even if he is perceiving all kinds of nonsense. And our friend used the word dream. Even if he is dreaming, there is somebody dreaming. So there is a dreamer. Even if somebody is hallucinating, there is somebody who is hallucinating. Then somebody could come up and say that the hallucinator or the dreamer himself, the experiencer himself, is false. Well, that might be true. But that does not reduce your suffering.

Many of us suffer in dreams, don't we? Even if it's a dream, we do suffer. And that suffering is real. People have died in their sleep, heart attacks, because they were dreaming something very terrible, right?

Similarly, even if you know I show you this and you say these are six fingers, and you have this concept here that if you find a man with six or six and a half or seven fingers, then that means your death is imminent, and that makes you collapse. You're still suffering even if what you are seeing is totally false. Getting it?

So, the sufferer must be taken as real because the sufferer is who we are. Even if that sufferer is suffering for false reasons, yet the sufferer does exist. There is somebody who is saying "I am," even if the claim "I am" is false, yet this claim has to be taken with seriousness because that's a claim we all make and we all suffer. You remember we said, "I am a student," and what's the missing word there? What's silent in this statement? "I am a suffering student." "I am an employee." And what's silent over there? Again, "I'm a suffering employee." So the sufferer is definitely there. We start from there.

So first of all, the foundation has been solidly laid. I'm not starting from a belief. I'm not starting from a superstition. I'm not saying that to enter the Upanishads, Vedanta, Bhagavad Gita, you have to have an a priori belief in something, which many of the world's religious systems mandate. They say if you want to enter our fold or if you want to go through our text, first of all, you have to believe that there is this special thing sitting in the skies, and he made the world, and we all have to obey his command. No, we were not starting from there, and we have not yet gone to the Upanishads.

It is not due to our belief in the Upanishads as sacred scriptures that we are starting from this point. We are still with ourselves. We don't know what the Upanishads are. We are purely with ourselves. And this is a very, very scientific thing. I'm with myself, and I see that I suffer, right?

Listener: I'm saying that the same logic can be extrapolated in.

Acharya Prashant: The only difference is in your moments of true enjoyment, the question "Who am I? Where am I?" This question disappears. So as long as there is the question "Who am I?" it indicates the presence of suffering. When you are joyful, do existential questions arise in your mind? And I'm not talking of flimsy happiness. I'm talking about the joy of immersion in something very meaningful. So this question of identity and all kinds of... see, every question denotes a problem behind.

.>Joy is not a problem. Suffering is a problem.

So when you are joyful, then this question "Who am I? Why do I exist? And where is this suffering coming from?" Then it does not remain there. So the whole thing gets invalidated. Gone. So the problem "Who am I?" is only to the one who suffers. Otherwise, there is no question of "Who am I?"

The Gyani, the Mukt, if I refer to the scriptures, they do not ask "Koham?" — "Who am I?" "Koham?" is for the one who is entangled. "Koham?" Simple. "Who am I?"

So I start from there. I'm the sufferer, and I have yet not gone to the Upanishads or the Gita. Now, to whom should I go if the "I" is the problem? If the "I" is the problem and when I ask "Who am I?" I don't get an answer, then please tell me logically, what should I do?

If the "I" is the problem, "I" is the sufferer, and I do not get an answer to "Who am I?" and "Why do I suffer?" Who should be approached? Now the "I" has to be approached, right? First of all, I'll try things within myself. I'll try thinking. I'll try observing. I'll do as much as I can. That's the basic prerequisite of honesty.

If I have a problem, the onus of challenging it lies on, firstly, myself. So I'll try things at my own level, with my own capacity. I'll do all those things, and when I find that I'm getting saturated in terms of my own efforts, who will I go to? The "I" is the problem, so I'll go to... Come on. The "I" is here, and I've tried out everything, and I've gained some success. I find I'm better illuminated than before. But yet there are lots of cobwebs within. There's a haze I cannot penetrate. How do I know who is the one outside? I need to go to... The question is so easy. The "I" is the problem, so I'll have to go to...

The "I" is the problem, and I'm not talking of going to a person because he is talking of the Gita and the Upanishads. So if "I" is the problem, what kind of books will I go to, or should I go to? No, don't say Vedant.

Listener: If "I" is the problem, then I should not go to me.

Acharya Prashant: I have already gone within myself and found that I'm getting obstructed because I myself am the problem. So now I have to go to something else.

Listener: So anything which is not me,

Acharya Prashant: No, anything that is not me might further complicate the problem of me because that is my own object. If I am confused and if I go to something random, who is choosing that random thing? — “I”.

I'll go to something that talks exclusively of the "I." If I have trouble in my tooth, I'm not going to visit a cobbler. If I have trouble in my nose, I'm not going to visit the renal department — Nephrology. I'm not going to do that. So, if "I" is the problem, I'll have to go to a book that talks exclusively of the "I," purely of the "I." And using my own discretion, I'll have to see whether the book is being honest about it or if there is a hidden agenda. Is the book trying to push stories, belief systems, or is the book helping me inquire in a better and more refined way?

The Upanishads are such books because their subject matter is nothing but the "I." And to the extent the Upanishads too, some of the primary Upanishads, including some of the Pramukh Upanishads, they have other subject matter as well. Because they are the primary ones, the first ones. So, they are not yet as refined, and they are very thick volumes. Being thick, it means that they may contain other things as well beyond the inquiry into the "I."

And as you move on, you find that the later Upanishads, they keep gaining in brevity. They keep on becoming smaller in terms of the length of the volume, and they do not deviate from the central problem of the self. That's the reason why we go to the Upanishads, okay? Getting it? Not because we are Hindus or Sanatanis, not because we have to believe in some creed, but because "I" is a real problem that I must find a real solution to. That's why we go here.

Now, even among the Upanishads, There is diversity because they were composed over a long stretch of time, extending even the Upanishads. I'm not talking of the Samhita part of the Vedas, even the Upanishads were composed over a period of around 10 centuries. 10 centuries, and spread across a vast geography, right from you could say, Sindh and parts even to the west of Sindh, extending right till almost Bengal, and then from there, Kashmir till down south as south, as the sages of that time could have gone. So, it's a vast territory, and means of communication were not very well developed. So even among the Upanishads there is a fair degree of diversity.

So, how do we know what is the very-very precise subject matter of the Upanishads. Because I am looking for something very precise — “I”. So, then we refer to the Mahavakyas of the Upanishads Mahavakyas. So four of them are universally accepted. We know of them in general knowledge but it's not just four. The list can be extended to 20 or 40. Right? And then you see from there that the Upanishads talk of nothing but the problem of the self. They are philosophical documents.

They're talking of the problem of the self, which means that anything that claims to be based on the Upanishads. but talks of things other than the self has to be negated, right or wrong? That is how you detect when you are reading a wrong kind of line of interpretation.

Sir, the agenda of the meeting was self, and you are blabbering about something else. You are talking about this kind of ritual, that kind of ritual, this belief, that belief, the *Varna system, the Ashram system. Sir, we are not here to talk of that. We are not here to talk of the wife's responsibilities towards the husband. We are here to talk of the central and universal problem of the self. And you say that your interpretation, your Bhasya, your Vyakha, your Tika, Your exodus is based on Vedanta. But Vedanta is self. Why are you talking about other things? And so many stories you have come up with. What does the problem of self have to do with stories? So many stories you are coming up with.

Sometimes the stories can be useful in delivering a point. But that point has to be the self. But look at your stories. To what extent are your stories bringing me closer to myself? And to what extent are they actually taking me away from myself?

So whenever you come across something that is dealing in stories and beliefs, you must know that is not Vedanta. That is not Vedanta at all. This is how you detect right and wrong. This is how you know which interpretation is worth it and which is just a product of human mind, human thought, human imagination. We have imaginations of our own. Why do you want to overload ourselves with the imaginations of others as well? Sir, if I have to dream, I have my own dreams. If I have to hallucinate, If I have to be foolish, I already have my own foolishness. Enough of them. Why do I have to embrace your foolishness as well?

So, Vedanta and anything related to Vedanta has to deal exclusively with the self. A little bit of deviation from the self and you must keep the book away. This is not worth it. You do not understand Vedanta. Instead of Vedanta, you are dealing with something else. You are bringing your personal prejudices in your thoughts of your racial superiority or the supremacy of your beliefs or the greatness of your land. All those things you are bringing in. Vedanta has no time for this kind of stupidity.

My place is superior, these people are superior, this gender is superior, this is superior, that is superior, you have to believe in this. Those who don't believe in this, they go to Swarga and Naraka. Sir, we are not interested in going to swarga. Sir, We are interested in getting liberation from the inner hell we currently, right now, presently are in. I don't want relief after death. I want relief right now. So anything that talks of all these things, what will happen to you after you die, what was happening to you before you took birth, that's not Vedanta. That's not Vedanta.

Vedanta deals with only one problem: the problem of the self. The false self is "Aham," the final truth is "Atma."

That's the importance Vedanta accords to the self. The self itself is the absolute truth because everything else is just a product, a manifestation, a projection of the self. The final truth itself is "Atma." And by "Atma," we do not mean the thing that flies out of your body after your death.

We are not talking about something bodily. Atma is the absolute truth, not something related to the body. Not something that enters your body when you are in your mother's womb and then flies away and goes to some other loka and then enters your body when you are about to take another birth. No, no. That's not Vedanta. No. These are very, very easy kinds of beliefs that were slipped into the system later on.

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