You Didn't Find God. You Invented Him

Questoner: Sir, in your book I have read that belief is something which is not right. We shouldn't believe something blindly. That is what you have said.

Sir my question is, if I choose a path of devotion instead of brutal self-introspection, if I choose a path of devotion and I devote myself to somebody, some being, a spiritual being, or a guru, or God, anybody. But the thing is, if I believe in God, I just believe in God. Logically, I don't know whether God exists or not. Intelligently, I don't know. There's no proof. I just believe blindly.

So, you said believing is not right. So, isn't it negating the total *Bhakti Yoga, *or this?

Acharya Prashant: I must thank you for organizing this. I'm really enjoying this.

What's your name?

Questioner: Krishna.

Acharya Prashant:Krishna. Thank you so much, Krishna. Really sincere question.

You know, the question that Krishna has asked is at the root of all human suffering. It's such a tremendously important question. We understand the caveman had to believe. He had no option. What else could he do? So, belief is ingrained in our very DNA. And as a species, we are a pretty recent phenomenon, are we not?

How old is the planet? Please think of it. There was the Big Bang, and then there was a planet. Fourteen billion years, then four billion years. And compared to that, when was the cognitive revolution that enabled us to be called the Homo sapiens, the intelligent species? That was 70,000 years back, right? We are not yet even born. We are in the womb. And all throughout, we have a history of believing because there was nothing else we could turn to.

Even when there was the movement from the jungle to the village, to the fields, that is, the agricultural revolution, we still had very little science, very little technology. At most, we started knowing something about grains, and the weather cycles, and water, and soil. That's the maximum that we knew of.

Europe philosophy was dead for so long. Really, it came alive only in the last 400 years. The thinking part of us is really very nascent. And when it comes to the information revolution, you know how old it is? It is younger than you.

So, we have been believing all along, and we have believed for so long, it's become a part of the story of our evolution. Belief comes almost naturally to us. You know, belief is energy efficient. Think of it. If you were to really calculate how far Jupiter is from Earth, how much time and resource would it take? It would take many centuries. It really took mankind many centuries. And think of the institutions you need, the labs you need, the researchers you need, the experiments you need. All of that is tremendous. Now, you can do away with all of that with one stroke of belief.

"Jupiter is 4 trillion miles away from Earth." Who told you? "God appeared in my dream and told me. Write that down in the books. And if you don't believe that, blasphemy. Kill him. He doesn't believe in God." See how energy efficient belief is. No investment required, no effort required, no intellectual striving required. You simply have to say, "I know because I'm divine," or, "Believe in it because that's a tradition."

Belief has also served many practical purposes. When you were in the jungle and life needed to be saved, let's say you were walking through the green and there was this faint rustling of leaves from behind you. It paid to believe that there is a hunter behind. Now, it could even be a rabbit behind you. But it was useful to believe that it's a wolf. Why? Because if it's a wolf, the probability is 1x100. But if it's a wolf and you run away, you lose nothing. If it's a wolf and you run away, you lose nothing, even if the probability of the wolf being there is just 1x100, right? But if it's a wolf and you say, "I won't believe. I want to inquire," then you'll be killed. So you say, why run the risk? Simply believe in the old anecdote that a rustling leaf implies a wolf.

So belief served practical purposes. Please see, it was needed because the means of knowing were underdeveloped. However, means of knowing within were still fully developed because this does not require too many instruments. Looking honestly in the mirror is not something that is resource-intensive, or is it?

So, true religion is never, never, never about belief. Even when you go to the oldest wisdom literature that comes to us from two directions, Indian and Greek, to some extent also from the Chinese direction, but mostly Indian and Greek, there is no belief there, really.

Vedanta is the epitome of the Vedic literature and dismisses all belief. It is about knowing, not believing.You must know the method is Neti, Neti, and Neti, Neti is nothing but a stubborn refusal of everything the mind holds on to. I negate. I negate. I negate. No, I won't believe. I won't believe because I know why the ego wants to believe, and I also know that there is self-interest contained in every belief. No, the words of the teacher are not to be believed in.

A teacher is not a teacher at all if he asks you to believe in his words. The teacher is the pathway to inquiry.

A teacher is someone who says, "No, you don't need to believe, or trust, or even have faith in the sense the word 'faith' is typically used. Otherwise, faith can have better meanings." He says, "No, none of that is needed. You have all that is needed to know yourself and life. Proceed." Why must you live in a second-handed way? Why must you borrow concepts? And my job as a teacher, that real teacher will say in the *Upanishads, that is the real teacher, will say, "My job is not to load you with beliefs, but actually help you question your beliefs."

So, what you call the Sanatan Dharma really is not at all a path of devotion or belief. Not at all. If religion is about being devoted to your beliefs, then it's not religion. It's just theology. There is a great difference. What is Astikta? You know, what is Astikta? Astikta is not belief. Astikta means, "Yes, it exists." Astikta is about realizing that something beyond your experience, perception, and belief is the Truth. In other words, whatever you think of as real is not real. The reality is beyond what the ego can make of it. That is real Astik.

So, if you are a believer, you cannot be Astik in the ontological sense, in the existential and philosophical sense, in the original sense where the word Astikta came from. If you are a believer in anything, then you cannot be Astik. But today, the word Astik has come to mean someone who believes in God. Simple. It's a distortion. It's a great distortion of meaning. That's what happens to beautiful words over the course of history they get distorted. Not just changed, mutilated. And that is also what has happened to words like Dharma, Sanatan, or Astikta.

Today, you say the believer is religious. In the real sense, anybody can be religious, but not the believer. The believer can never be religious. The believer is still the caveman. And you'll say, "The believer believes in God." The believer will believe in a god of his own imagination and fancies. He will paint something and then worship it. Or he will paint something and be terrified by it. Think. Think of the wisdom contained in this.

I paint something on these wide and white walls. It's a white canvas available here. I paint a horrible picture here with all determination, and then I start shivering. I say, "My God, so horrible. I must hide somewhere, otherwise it will eat me up." Sir, you painted it on your own, and now you are shivering. That's what belief does to us.

Belief is not wisdom at all. And also, the great books, the great scriptures, the great works of philosophy, they will never, never ask you to trust or believe. They will invite you to question, inquire, scrutinize, and know on your own. It is in knowing on our own that human dignity lies. Otherwise, any animal or idiot can be made to believe, right?

It is in knowing that we say we are conscious beings. Conscious. Would you want your parents to believe, or would you want them to know?

Questioner: Know.

Acharya Prashant: Would you want to trust what your patients tell you of their disease, or would you rather go for a diagnosis? Because the diagnosis enables knowing. Otherwise, you can keep believing. “I believe, you know, anything.” Beliefs are stories, fancies. Any idle mind can come up with any kind of fancy, and you can start believing. And once it becomes a mass phenomenon, you say it is religion. This is just mass hysteria. People getting hypnotized on a grand scale altogether becomes a trend, and then you say, "This is our great tradition, and you must believe in such things."

You are truly religious if you are always questioning. That's the essence of true religion, to ask, to question, never to bow this thing down except in front of Truth.

I am devoted, yes, and that's real bhakti. Devoted, yes, not to my imaginations, but to the truth. That is bhakti. This thing will not surrender to this, that, and a thousand places. These hands will not be found folded at miscellaneous places. I will bow down, but only to the Truth, only to the one Truth.

And if I have already surrendered at a hundred places, what's left to surrender? How will I then go to theTruth and say, "I have come to surrender, sir"? You have nothing left to surrender. You have already sold yourself off at the altar of a thousand kinds of beliefs. Surrender is possible only to those who, first of all, do not surrender. Are you getting it?

You tell me, "Sir, I respect you," but you also meet some idiot on the street and say, "I respect you." Then will I be pleased if I hear that you respect me? If you say, "I respect the Truth," then you must also have the guts to say, "I disrespect everything except the Truth." I will not offer my respect to anything except the one absolute Truth. I refuse to surrender. That refusal is at the core of philosophy. Philosophy is rebellion. Vedanta is a fire.

Think of somebody like Socrates, or Diogenes. Think of their lives. Or Epictetus. He was a slave. Aurelius, he was a king. From the king to the slave. From the one who was killed for one reason, Socrates, to the one who lived in a self-imposed social asylum outside the city, in a barrel with the dogs. All of them were rebels.

The rishis that you think of as very peaceful, even placid kind of people, they were burning in fires of rebellion. And from there comes Neti, Neti. I refuse. I refuse. That's Neti, Neti. I refuse. I refuse to be co-opted. I refuse to be taken in. I refuse to be assimilated. I refuse to follow. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to believe.

Questioner: Sir, Ninety percent of the population goes by the belief of God, and what do we do about it? In this sense, the whole country, ninety percent of the population is God-believing, and they say, “We believe in God. Whether you like it or not, we believe in God.” And then that kind of statement, and the way they say it, like, we can't just do anything about it.

Acharya Prashant: See, lack of love for God results in belief in God. Please understand. If I truly, truly love something, would I want it to be distant? Please tell me. If you truly love something, would you want it to be distant? Would you wait for it till after death, or would you want it to be here and right now?

True God is the Truth right now in your heart. That is true godliness, true bhagavatta. The problem is that people want to avoid the real living Truth in their heart. Therefore, they come up with stories that place an imaginary God somewhere up in the skies. God is wonderful, but the stories and the imaginations about God are all very disrespectful towards God. When there is love for God, God is held very close to the chest, and that God is called Truth. That God is the very purpose of philosophy and the very origin.

The God here (pointing inward, toward the heart), not the God that is there, there, there. The God that controls everything from the outside. No. The God that will take care of me from the outside. No. I'm so intimate with God. God is here, just here. And that's what all the great seers have always told you, and the saints, “Moko kahan dhoondhe re bande, main to tere paas mein.”* Nowhere else but here.

But God being here is a thing of responsibility, and we want to avoid responsibility. And to avoid responsibility, we place God there and say, "That one has all the responsibility." Something you totally screw up in your life, and you say, "God has done this." What have I done? “Bhagwan, tune kya kiya? So who is responsible? God.

If something great is to happen, then you go and pray for the fulfillment of your desires to somebody outside of you, believing that that entity, that power there, has all the strings.

Love for God would mean God sits right here * (heart), right here in the form of, firstly, Truth, and secondly, your ability to know the Truth, your ability to be with the Truth, your deep, deep love for the Truth. That's godliness. That's God. But we are people who would rather want to divest ourselves of responsibility. No?

Questioner: What is the remedy, sir?

Acharya Prashant: This. What else?

Questioner: Because ninety percent of the population is afflicted by this problem. We have to find a remedy. People keep doing rituals and all the shows about all those things. Recently, we had this Ganesha thing, and now the Dirga. Everything is okay. Those rituals and all those things, they are all this fanfare and all those rituals, and it doesn't make any sense. People, as you say, don't correct themselves. They don't look at themselves. They are doing all kinds of rituals and all those things. It doesn't make any sense. That is what I'm trying to ask. What is the remedy for this? The whole country is doing this.

Acharya Prashant: We need to have more such discussions. We need to empower people so that they can see that authority sits here (pointing toward one's inner self). So that they can see that there can be an inner locus of control. So that they can see that their own lives can be worth worshiping, that their own heart can be a shrine.

If our lives are dead and dirty, then we'll be forced to worship something outside of ourselves. No? If I'm living a deeply miserable life, how can I be convinced that godliness is in my own heart? How? So, the answer starts from life as it is. You have to look at how people are living, and you have to have systems, most importantly systems of education.

We need to tell our kids, “You can be the owner, provided you surrender to the Truth; that you are not feeble; that you are not here just to suffer; that you are not a slave.” All that must be there in the education system. And even later on, you cannot have bureaucratic systems that leave you powerless and helpless. You have the power to vote. You must be voting for the kind of governance that empowers people. The more disempowered a people are, the more they will worship external authorities, and sycophancy will become the culture.

Most of the time, it might offend some people, so I will ask them to pardon me beforehand. But most of that which passes off for religion is just a kind of sycophancy. I will go and praise my favorite God and expect the fulfillment of my desires in return. Sometimes we even want to bribe God. “You do this for me, and ₹25,000 is guaranteed.” Where does this culture come from? This comes from our life.

So, if we want to take care of religion, we have to start from life because it is to elevate life that religion exists. That's the true purpose of religion, to help us lead better lives, not to help us have a better afterlife. This life, here and now, must be improved. That's the purpose of religion. But when you believe in a God of the skies, and this and that, all the fancies and the angels, then you start thinking of things like the afterlife.

And this world is nothing. You accumulate brownie points which will be redeemed later on, and all the time you are checking the accounts: how many points accumulated? And who will tell you how many points accumulated? The priest somewhere. He holds the ledgers. What kind of circus is this?

And this is especially bad because it turns away the intellectuals from religion. When religion is reduced to this kind of farce, then all the thinking people, all the capable people, say, "We are atheists," or "agnostics." And that's such a tragedy because religion really is the art of upliftment. It is the sharpening of wisdom. Instead, all those who are very mediocre, are touting their religiousness. "We are so religious." They are all over the roads, slogans, banners, rallies, gatherings, power, domination, majorities. And all those who can understand and think, they are shunning religion. They are saying, "We have nothing to do with religion," which is a great loss because religion must be life.

Religion must be the truest, purest, and greatest thing that uplifts life. Instead, we have reduced religion to the worst kind of mess, and that has to be cleansed and purified.

See, religion is not religion if it is stories or theology. Religion as a belief system is very toxic. Religion as a belief system is very toxic and also a cause of great strife.

If we think that the India-Pakistan trouble is just because of land, Kashmir, we are fooling ourselves. The central thing is religion. In fact, the partition itself was on the basis of religion. Similarly, if we think that the trouble in the Middle East is about land, then we are referring to only a small part of the problem. The bigger part of the problem is religious. It's Jews versus Muslims. That's the bigger part. And that is resulting in the kind of havoc we are seeing there, and the genocide, and the potential for conflagration, all that we are seeing.

So, if you don't set religion right, the world will become more and more of a dangerous place. Belief systems will continue to fight each other. Your belief is that white is sacred because God came to you in a dream and told you white is sacred, and God is also white. Her belief, you see, is that black is sacred because her God came to her in a dream and told her God is black and black is sacred.

Now the two of you will have to fight because there is no way you can reconcile. Beliefs cannot match each other. Facts can match each other. We need a religion of facts. Facts do not quarrel, or do they? Do facts quarrel? The language of facts can be different. Somebody could say, "I am 5 feet 8 inches." The other one could say, "No, no. You are 174 cm." And it might look like there is a problem, but very soon the two of them discover that facts do not fight each other, and they are saying the same thing.

But beliefs will fight each other because black and white cannot reconcile. One says God lives in that direction, north. So worship to the north and remain silent while praying. The other belief system says God lives towards the east, and God loves music, so play music while praying towards the east. Now these two will have to fight, what else can they do? Because belief systems will definitely fight. Facts, religion of facts, religions of inquiry, will not fight. And that is the way to peace. This has to be taken care of.

Instead, all the intellectuals are running away. They are saying, "We have nothing to do with religion." Man cannot live without religion. Just like in the Bible, Jesus says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." Without religion; and by religion I do not mean organized, belief-based religion. I mean the truest, most honest inquiry of the heartfelt kind. That's the religion I'm talking of. Man cannot live without that. And if the intellectuals show their backs to religion, what kind of world are we going to have? No wisdom, only intellect, great problem.

Questioner: Sir, if I can play devil's advocate for a minute, I'm not a religious person, not an extremely religious person, but the way I view religion is that the fear of a very bad afterlife is what drives a lot of people to do good acts in the current life. So, in that way, religion does promote good in the world. It does keep people on a better path. It makes them at least donate to charities, commit a few selfless acts.

Acharya Prashant: I'll correct you at two levels, if allowed.

First of all, it's not that you are not religious. This question itself is religious. This gathering itself is religion. What else is happening here? Why do you think that there must be some kind of a holy fire, or some kind of a religious performance, only then you can call an activity religious? Why do you think we must face in a particular direction, or there must be banners of a particular color, or a deity, only then the thing is religious?

This that is happening here, this is the purest essence of religion. We are all into something religious at this moment. So, you are a religious person, at least right now. First thing.

Second thing, you said the fear of the afterlife enables people to be good. No, not at all. Not at all. Nothing good can emerge from fear, any kind of fear, especially a fear of the imaginary, especially a fear regarding desires remaining unfulfilled. No, nothing good can come from a center of fear. Don't you see? People kill each other because they think that's what their scriptures tell them to do, and in their eyes it is something good.

Goodness or virtue is not something that can come from a belief. Real goodness comes only from understanding.

Do you get this?

How can goodness be something mentioned in advance in some manual for life? How do you know what is good for someone? How do you know what is good for someone unless you are really attentive, unless you are really present, unless you are really loving? How will you know what is good? How can just a book tell you what is good for someone? Am I making sense?

Fear of any kind will not lead to goodness.At most, it will lead to suppression. And we know what Freud and others have told us about suppression. We also know what kind of physical ailments come from suppression. So, fear of the afterlife, or greed for a great kind of birth in the next life, can never lead to goodness.

Questioner: But, sir, there are no truly selfless acts as such, right? If a fear of a bad afterlife drives somebody to donate to a charity or help a homeless person..."

Acharya Prashant: How do you know that the charity is doing something good? Yes, you will donate. But how do you know?

Questioner: Yes, but if it does cause that goodness, we could attribute it to the person believing.

Acharya Prashant: We can attribute it, yes. And you will donate. What if the donation that you are giving, do you know, so many terrorists who operate in India operate out of charities. How do you know that you are donating to something really good? Where do you think money for terrorism comes from? It's all donation money, and it's being donated in the name of religion. How do you know donation is really something good?

So many trusts and societies and NGOs in the religious sphere are absolutely corrupt, and the money goes towards very vile purposes. But the devotees blindly keep donating more and more money. And not only that, you see, money is a finite resource. If you have donated your money to somebody undeserving because you think it is good, you have also robbed a deserving person of the money that he deserved.

You said, “I believe in this thing, therefore let me donate my money there.” Why do you think that donation, per se, is a virtue? Donation to the wrong place is very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. The Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna talks of three kinds of daan, because you brought up a donation.

And daan is not absolutely all right. He says daan can be sattvic, can be rajasic, can be tamasic. And to add to it, daan can be gunatit as well. What if all your daan is tamasic, which 99% of it is? Donations can be a very, very problematic thing.

See, this performance of goodness is always a problem. Goodness is not something that is prescribed in advance. Goodness can come only out of a beating heart and open eyes. There must be attention here and love here. And only then can you know what real goodness looks like. Otherwise, you will be performing goodness as a ritual, and that is deadly.

Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. I am Dr. Dhanalakshmi, a nephrologist at ESIC. Extending her question, we usually have two types of learning. One is an ascending process, where we try to inquire into everything and learn by ourselves. It may take a very long time. As you gave the example that if I have to calculate the distance from Earth to Jupiter, I may not be able to do it in my own lifetime. But there is also a descending process, where one person has given everything. Even our education comes from the descending process.

Someone has done some research, has given me a conclusion, and I am following it. So, if we come to many of our scriptures, like Sanatan Dharma, if we say they are given in a descending process where very wise rishis have given us the knowledge.

Let me tell you this. Suppose I take the Bhagavad Gita, which is a Pancham Veda, in which Lord Krishna has discussed five topics. It is jiva, jagadish, prakriti, kala, karma. The material things which you are talking about, everything is described as prakriti there. The age of knowledge, the inner self, the absolute truth which you are talking about, is described as atma and paramatma in the literature. Now, this is my understanding.

And as you said, whether it be the Bhagavad Gita or the Bhagavatam, it is always a discourse, a questioning. There is nothing there, as you said very rightly, no ritualistic told. Like you have to offer a hundred coconuts for me, or you have to do so many things. No, nothing of that question. Even the Bhagavad Gita is a question between Arjuna and Shri Krishna. Even in the Bhagavatam, it is Parikshit with Shukha Yogi.

So, what I'm trying to say is, intellectuals who are learned, if you say question on the belief process, then how do we take such very precious knowledge which we have got? Everyone will question it. How does the younger generation take it? So, I just want to talk about your Vedanta knowledge and everything.

Acharya Prashant: I'm glad this question came up. See, the answer is very, very simple. The Bhagavad Gita is one pillar of the prasthana-trayi of Vedanta, and Vedanta is a philosophy. And philosophy starts with epistemology. Gyan Mimamsa. Pramana is needed for everything. Nobody hands down anything to you. So, yes, you are very right with the descending process.

What you have here in your institution is a descending process. But do you hand anything over to them without proof? Yes, it's a descending process. You tell them things, but with due proof. And that proof is available to be verified and falsified. And that's the method of the scriptures.

And any book that does not give you the right to verify or falsify is not fit to be called a scripture. No, not at all.

Vedanta is Shruti. Bhagavatam is Smriti. There is a difference. A great difference. In the Smriti, there are a lot of things that you're told to believe in. But at the same time, the rule is: anything in Smriti that violates Shruti must be rejected totally. And Shruti is all about proof, not at all about belief. So, descending knowledge is wonderful. You are very right. But that has to be given with proof. And if there is no proof, Shruti totally rejects it. There has to be pramana, epistemology.

Whatever the scripture is saying, be it the Gita, or be it the Upanishads, or the Brahma Sutras, that has to be epistemically viable. The question would always be: what is the proof? And if there is no proof, reject it. Immediately reject it.

So, Bhagavatam, Bhagavata Purana, Puranic literature, is Smriti, which is wonderful. The stories can carry deep meanings, but often the stories are just stories. And if no deep meaning is there, then there is no necessity to really accept."

Questioner: Bhagavad Gita is not a story.

Acharya Prashant: No, it is philosophy.

Questioner: It is a philosophy altogether. Everything which you said, the food, the thoughts, everything is sattvic, rajasic, tamasic, has divided everything."

Acharya Prashant: Yes, it's philosophy. And Bhagavad Gita, I repeat, is nothing but an extension of the Upanishads, which is philosophy itself. Nothing. In the Bhagavad Gita, the core thing there is not five, but only three:

Who you are, Aham.

What this entire thing is, Prakriti. And the Atman. Nothing else. Only three.

Questioner: Kala and karma, how do we...?"

**Acharya Prashant: ** That is Prakriti. Time is Prakriti. All karma is Prakriti. Time, space, it is the universe. So, kala is Prakriti. So, Bhagavad Gita is not about many miscellaneous things. Bhagavad Gita is only about your own liberation. That's all. Everything else is secondary, peripheral. And everything, even in the descending process, must be given with total proof. And what is the hallmark of an authentic proof? I repeat, it must be falsifiable. It must be falsifiable.

You are not supposed to believe in it. You are supposed to test it. It must be verifiable, and it must be falsifiable. If it is not falsifiable, if it is dependent only on somebody's subjective assertion, it cannot be called a proof.

Questioner: I'm very curious about this Shruti part, sir. We call it Apaurusheya, and the ancient sages got that knowledge from… I mean, what is the source of knowledge, sir?

Acharya Prashant: The source of knowledge? Life itself.

Questioner: But then what they say is that it's very sacred, in the sense that they got it from somewhere.

Acharya Prashant: In the sense that common life is dirty.

Questioner: No. Where did they derive that knowledge from only?

Acharya Prashant: Life itself.

Questioner: It's not from somewhere outside?

Acharya Prashant: There is nothing outside. Even the outside is inside. What you call as beyond mind is just more mind. When you say something is beyond the senses, you are again imagining using the senses. So outside or inside, less or more, everything is just wordplay. Everything is just mentation, more use of this sense called the mind.

Questioner: So, all the ancient sages, whatever scriptures they have written, they processed it in their mind by seeing life?

Acharya Prashant: Not the way we do it.

Questioner: Oh yeah, of course, definitely not the way...

Acharya Prashant: And that's why the Shruti is called Apaurusheya. Because, as I said, common life is dirty. There was a reason they said, “We will not live with you. We boycott you, in a sense. We are going to the jungles.” Because your civilization, your culture, your family system, your beliefs, your rituals, if we stay here, nothing sacred can come to us. So they just got away to live a life of freedom, freedom and attention. And they looked at life in the closest way possible, with due attention. They wanted to understand what's really going on.

It was from this attention that the verses, the richas, the mantras arose. They saw life, therefore they are called Mantra-drashta Rishis. They saw life. They heard life. So it's called Shruti. They heard it. You see, the process is seeing and hearing in the cleanest way possible because, you see, there is nothing except all this. So this itself has to be the teacher. There can be no teacher but this. If you cannot learn from life, you cannot learn from anything.

Questioner: Sir, one last thing.

Acharya Prashant: Did Mahabharata really happen? In the sense, Shri Krishna on this earth, did he really recite all those things to Arjuna? Did it really happen?

Acharya Prashant: You see, the **Gita is there because you have the copies of the Gita with you. The Gita is there. Pratyaksh praman. It is there. If the Gita is there, it came from somewhere. If the Gita is there, it came from somewhere. Wherever it came from must be called Shri Krishna.

So, you have to start from the immediate. You don't have to start from Shri Krishna. You have to start from the Gita. If the Gita is there, somebody is the author. Whosoever is the author is Shri Krishna.

Is that logical?

Questioner: No, it's logical, sir. Just the curiosity part.

Acharya Prashant: When it comes to wisdom, historicity does not count. Historicity is irrelevant. Therefore, wisdom stories are not narrated as history. They are related in this way: “Once upon a time, prachinkaal me ek rishi rahete the.” And it would not be wise to ask, “Which century BC?” It's an irrelevant question because the whole point is to impart wisdom, not teach history. Wisdom is the point. History is not the point.

But these days it has become a trend to trace history where it cannot be traced. Even if it did happen historically, it will be very difficult to find proof. Very, very difficult. But you can invent proofs. These days, we are in the phase of inventing proofs, inventing history also. It is pointless because the real thing has already been given. The real thing is the Gita. The real thing is the Upanishads.

The rishis, so many times, didn't even attach their names to the verses, to the mantras. We don't know who the author was. The reason is simple. It does not matter. There is a message contained in the anonymity attached to the verses. The name, the place, the time, do not matter. So do not ask for those things. Don't bother yourself with those things. Bother yourself with what matters. The wisdom contained in the work is what was intended to be imparted. Only the wisdom, not the history part. Historically, it might have happened, might not have happened. Might have happened in some way, might have happened in a smaller way.

The version that you have of Mahabharata might have been different. Ramayan, you have so many Ramayans. Tulsi Ramayan is very different from Valmiki's Ramayan. In South India, the Ramayans are very different from the North Indian Ramayans. In Southeast Asia, again, there are so many versions of Ramayan. How can we tell history?

And Lanka, which is the seat of the climax, there is no Ramayan. There is no Ram. There is not even Ravan. So how can we tell history? But it doesn't matter because Ram, in the purest sense, is beyond history. Kalatita, timeless Ram. “Ram brahm parmarath roopa.”*

If you say that you worship Ram, you must de facto say that you worship Truth. Truth. Only then it makes sense, and only then it is useful for you.

Questioner: Yes. Thank you, sir.

Questioner: Sir, being a non-believer, a religious person, sometimes I feel like, given a situation, one of my friends who is a believer is more happy. Because I know the Truth, I can't leave everything to God. So, sometimes I'm suffering more than her.

Acharya Prashant: Such suffering is blessed. And such happiness is stupid. You know. It is better to be in the right kind of struggle and suffer than to happily believe that somebody else is taking care of things, so I have no responsibility and therefore I can rejoice. Let there be struggle. It's fine. What else do we have our intellect for? What else do we have our knowledge for? What else are these arms for? We will struggle.

And somebody could say, “You know, it's a burning house.” What else is climate change? Our house is burning. It's a burning house. But my favorite God will soon rain upon me. So I'm sitting in a corner and clapping, and I'm very happy. I don't want that kind of happiness. I would rather be responsible and tense than be irresponsible and happy.

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