Acharya Prashant addresses the question of how the West progressed without spirituality or Vedanta. He begins by correcting the premise, stating that the West has progressed precisely because it is 'half-spiritual'. He defines spirituality as the pursuit of the truth of both the outer and the inner world. The West, he explains, has been half-spiritual because it has diligently and honestly sought the truth of the external, material world. Anyone who is genuinely curious about the reality of matter is spiritual, albeit only halfway. He posits that if the West were fully spiritual, meaning it also explored the inner truth, its progress would have been even greater. He contrasts this with the situation in India, which he says has lagged behind because it has investigated neither the outer nor the inner truth. To justify the laziness and lack of discipline required for scientific inquiry, the outer world is dismissed as illusory (mithya) or transient (maya). This becomes an excuse to avoid the hard work of knowing the facts of the world. Regarding the inner world, instead of investigation, there is a reliance on unverifiable stories and tales. These tales about the inner self are accepted without question because they cannot be experimentally challenged, unlike claims about the external world which can be tested and proven false. Acharya Prashant describes different levels of society. The lowest level is one that lives in imagination and fantasy, which he implies is the current state of India. A higher level is the Western society, which at least lives in facts. The highest and most evolved society would be one that lives in the complete Truth, which means knowing the truth of the world (Jagat) and the truth of the self (Jeev) simultaneously. The West is still deprived of this complete understanding because it has focused on the truth of matter but not the truth of the mind or the human being. However, he notes that in recent decades, the West has started to show curiosity about the inner world as well. In conclusion, the speaker asserts that the West is not ahead because it is non-spiritual, but because it is at least half-spiritual. India, on the other hand, is behind because it is neither half-spiritual nor fully spiritual, showing no genuine interest in knowing the truth of either the world or the self. India's plight, he argues, is a result of this dual neglect, leading to a state where the population lives in imagination and beliefs rather than a quest for truth.
