Acharya Prashant addresses the question of whether one should seek God in this life or the next. He dismisses the idea of a future solution as a simple and obvious fallacy, stating that if you are in trouble now, you must seek to get rid of it now, not in a supposed next life. The entire purpose of spirituality, he explains, is to address the suffering that one experiences in the present moment. If a person were truly in a state of bliss and ease, there would be no need for spiritual practices or knowledge like the Upanishads. The very act of seeking is born from present suffering, so the solution must also be in the present. The speaker finds the concept of performing good deeds now for rewards in a future life to be ridiculous. He criticizes those who ask, "If there is no rebirth, why should we do good deeds?" by asserting that the reason to do the right thing is for the sake of the present. You are in great suffering right now, and doing the right thing is the way to reduce that pain. To postpone this for a future life is a sign of being cruel to oneself, of not even acknowledging one's own pain. He likens those who believe in rebirth to a hopeless student who, having failed his half-yearly exams, gives up on the current academic year and starts preparing to repeat the class next year. This belief in a future life, he argues, stems from a deep-seated hopelessness and laziness regarding the present one. It is an escape from the responsibility of dealing with one's life now. Acharya Prashant clarifies that a truly spiritual person possesses a profound restlessness. They cannot use the thought of 'tomorrow' or a 'next life' as a comfort to postpone their spiritual work. For them, the future is an unreliable pillow of thorns. He emphasizes that bondage is now, and therefore, liberation must also be sought now. The spiritual path is not about gaining some special knowledge of the afterlife but about removing the ego, the 'I', which is the fundamental problem. The entire spiritual process is about creating an inner emptiness by removing the unnecessary self. The responsibility for one's suffering and liberation lies squarely with the individual in the present moment, not on some external concept or a future time.
