Acharya Prashant states that it is very sad that 99% of what is called spirituality today is just illogical, unscientific superstition, which is being peddled very loudly and daringly. He emphasizes that a truly spiritual person can never contradict science, and there is nothing in spirituality that will be against logic. Spirituality is not the "godman" business. To be spiritual merely means not being stupid. Using an analogy, he explains that if water and poison are kept in front of you, and you have to make ten choices, spirituality means that ten out of ten times, you will pick water. It is about making the right decision every time, because even if you pick poison once, it is curtains for you. Spirituality is defined as basic honesty, which involves knowing both the world and yourself. If you are not honest with yourself, anything you observe in the world or about the world is bound to be wrongly seen by you. To be intelligent is to be able to tell apart the false from the true, and that alone is spirituality. Real spirituality is about rejecting the false. Therefore, real spirituality is uncompromising, harsh, and ruthless. However, in an age dominated by forces of falseness, it becomes imperative for them to invent a new kind of spirituality that endorses all falseness. This leads to terms like "don't judge me" or "don't judge anybody," which means not calling the false as false. If you start calling the false as false, the false cannot sell itself, and the sellers of falseness cannot profit from your pocket. Pop bestsellers and neo-spiritual classics that tell you to visualize what you will get are just stoking the fire of your greed and imagination. They do not ask what prompts you to go for that thing. This is contrasted with self-awareness. When it comes to the world, science and spirituality will fully agree. But when it comes to you, the "I," science will fall silent. There is no chapter in any scientific study titled "I." Self-knowledge means being conscious of the actions of the body and the thoughts of the mind, asking, "What am I doing?" and "What am I thinking?" This is self-knowledge. The more you see its falseness, the more you realize that what you call "yourself" is not yourself at all; it is a puppet, a machine. Self-knowledge is a process of annihilation. The deepest pleasure, called joy, is not getting disturbed when the entire world is conspiring to disturb you. Spirituality gives you the incapacity to be disturbed.
