Acharya Prashant explains the existence of different religions and worship patterns using an analogy of the sun. He posits that the sun, representing the ultimate truth and the source of all life's energy, is too bright for the human eye to look at directly. Therefore, people must use a medium to perceive it. He illustrates this with a story of different individuals. One person, Hiba, looks at the sun through the leaves of a neem tree. When she describes the sun, her account includes the neem leaves, as that was her medium of perception. Another person, Rohit, looks at the sun through sunglasses, and his description of the sun includes the sunglasses. A third person might see the setting sun partially hidden by clouds, and their description would include the clouds and a half-sun. Others might see the sun from different locations like America or Africa, or during different seasons like the monsoon. Each person sees the sun, but always partially or through a specific medium. The speaker states that these original seers, who had a direct, albeit mediated, experience, are now gone. What remains are their scriptures, their written accounts. Their followers, unable to experience the sun directly as it is a matter of experience and not words, begin to worship the medium described in the scriptures. Hiba's followers worship the neem tree, and Rohit's followers worship the sunglasses. These groups then engage in fierce conflict, even killing each other, each claiming their medium is the only correct representation of the sun. They fight over the neem tree and the sunglasses, while the sun itself is forgotten. Acharya Prashant concludes that the sun, the truth, is one, but it cannot be fully captured in words; it must be experienced. The different religions and scriptures are the various mediums—the neem tree, the sunglasses, the clouds. The conflict arises because people mistake the medium for the truth. He advises that one must have the intelligence to distinguish between the sun (truth) and the medium (scripture) and to seek one's own direct experience rather than fighting over the descriptions left by others.
