Acharya Prashant responds to a question about getting closer to the truth through mindfulness and living in the present moment by strongly critiquing these concepts as they are popularly understood. He questions which Buddha is being referred to, suggesting it is the Buddha of the West's construction, of the new spiritualists and new Advaitins. He labels the "nowness movement" or "mindfulness movement" as an extremely foolish but dangerous cult, warning the listener to be very cautious of it. He argues that no scripture ever talks of the present moment and that this is a fake spiritual philosophy with industrial roots, driven by escapism and consumerism. He calls it ineffective, impractical, and dishonest. Acharya Prashant explains that trying to live in the now is a dishonest attempt to escape the past. He states that if one has lived a debauched life, the burden of the past will haunt them because they are still the same person. The teaching to disown the past is to disown the bills one has to settle. The only way to truly disown the past is to not remain the same person. He contrasts this with the paths of surrender and devotion, which the proponents of "nowness" never discuss. He asserts that there are only two honest ways to unburden oneself from the past: either settle all the bills and close the loops, or die completely in a spiritual sense. The third way, living in the now, is dishonest. He further criticizes practices like mindful walking or eating, calling them a form of concentration that makes one take every simple act seriously, which is a burden and a curse. True spirituality, he says, is about freedom, abandon, and the transcendence of consciousness, not about being mindful of every action. He quotes Kabir Saheb, who advised shaving the mind of its distortions rather than shaving the head, to emphasize that the focus should be on inner transformation. He concludes that the West is mighty scared of mysticism, and their spirituality is just timid psychology. He links the mindfulness movement to the credit card industry, which benefits from encouraging people to consume now and forget the future bills.