Why have Religions emerged in only a few places in the world? || Acharya Prashant

Acharya Prashant

Video Information:   Video Information: 23.12.22, DTU, Delhi  Context: ~ Why has India been a birthing ground for religions and saints? ~ What is special in India?  ~ How does religion flourish?  ~ Is India inherently religious?  ~ How does Indian philosophy emerge? ~ What is religion? ~ Were our hunter-gatherer ancestors religious? ~ What differentiates man from animal?  ~ What is your destiny?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~  #acharyaprashant

Transcript

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01:05 - Namaste, sir.

01:07 So I have observed one thing that if we look

01:11 at the major religions and spiritual traditions

01:14 around the world, we see, and which are well accepted,

01:18 we see that they emerged from certain places only.

01:21 For example, the Abrahamic religions,

01:25 all of them happened in the Arab world

01:27 and around Israel and Saudi.

01:29 Then Zoroastrianism happened in Iran.

01:32 And then India has been the most fertile land

01:34 for the growth of these traditions and religions.

01:36 For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,

01:39 and even the foreign traditions when they came to India.

01:42 For example, Sufism, when it came to India,

01:45 it flourished in a very unique fashion.

01:47 And we have, the Indian subcontinent especially,

01:50 has had a long list of saints.

01:54 So, and we don't see these things in the European history

01:59 or in the Americas or any other places.

02:02 - Heard of a place called Greece?

02:06 - Oh yes, sir, even I, okay,

02:09 I'm ready to include Greece as well.

02:11 - Heard of Athens?

02:12 Heard of the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle?

02:18 They were not Europeans.

02:20 It's just that at particular patches in time,

02:25 there exist favorable ecosystems.

02:28 There was a wonderful ecosystem in Greece before Christ,

02:34 and you have excluded China, you have excluded Japan.

02:42 - Yes, sir, even China, yes, sir.

02:43 - So what remains then?

02:44 - Taoism and Confucianism.

02:46 - And then we have the Middle East, then we have Iran,

02:50 then we have India, and India, the entire subcontinent.

02:53 We have also included China, we have included Japan,

02:56 we have included Europe, what remains?

02:58 - But, sir, Europe is again, sir,

03:00 but the way it has flourished in India

03:02 and places around India and Pakistan.

03:05 - India is one, India, Pakistan, the subcontinent,

03:07 let's take that.

03:08 - It's a bit unique, the way they have flourished.

03:10 - Ecosystem, nothing else, ecosystem, ecosystem.

03:13 - Once something starts somewhere,

03:16 it becomes the thing for that place.

03:21 What do you know Detroit today for?

03:23 What do you know California today for?

03:28 Okay, what do you know Bangalore today for?

03:33 So is there something particular

03:36 in the geography of Bangalore

03:38 that makes it conducive to silica or something?

03:43 No, nothing.

03:46 It's just that due to historical and coincidental reasons,

03:51 an ecosystem develops there.

03:53 And once the ecosystem is there,

03:55 more and more stuff starts happening.

03:57 There's nothing, if you want to investigate more into it,

04:01 India was a more fertile land for religious inquiry

04:07 because the soil was fertile

04:08 because the monsoons were guaranteed

04:15 and you could do nothing about the monsoons.

04:20 Remember, in those days, there was hardly any irrigation.

04:26 So you simply had to wait for the rains.

04:29 What do you do when you wait for the rains?

04:31 And the population was sparse.

04:36 So there was good food, ample food for everyone.

04:38 And the Indus basin and the Ganga basin

04:44 are one of the most fertile basins in the world.

04:47 The alluvial soil here coming right from the Himalayas.

04:50 So you had abundance of everything.

04:54 When you have abundance of everything

04:55 and there is not much you can anyway do

04:57 because the monsoons will come when they have to.

05:00 What do you do?

05:02 You have ample leisure.

05:04 And in that leisure, you sit, you observe,

05:08 you talk to people.

05:10 There is space for intellectual inquiry.

05:14 For hours and hours, can you visualize the thinkers,

05:18 the sages, the seers just purposelessly

05:21 talking to each other?

05:22 And from that purposeless discussion,

05:27 from silent observation of life for hours, days, months, years,

05:32 come those insights that you today take as Indian philosophy.

05:37 You cannot have philosophical development

05:42 if you are running behind your ambitions

05:44 and if you have a tied up day

05:46 and you very well know that 8 a.m. you have to do this

05:49 and then 6 a.m. this and 8 a.m. that.

05:51 That kind of clockwork will never allow

05:54 any kind of internal leisure.

05:56 And if that internal leisure is not there,

05:59 no insight, no wisdom can develop.

06:02 You all must remember this.

06:05 Give yourself space, freedom, opportunities to take stock.

06:10 You understand what is meant by taking stock?

06:12 Just stop.

06:14 Stop for long durations, at least for a few hours.

06:18 And recollect what's going on.

06:21 Am I just running?

06:23 What's going on?

06:24 And this period of taking stock can extend to months.

06:29 If possible for you.

06:30 In fact, in my own growth,

06:35 the breaks that I used to get from school

06:39 and later on from IIT were very important.

06:42 Most of my initial poetry was composed in breaks

06:47 and the breaks were significant.

06:49 The entire December used to be free

06:51 and then May, June, July.

06:54 And that used to provide an ample space

06:59 in which one could just be himself.

07:01 So that's what it is.

07:04 Ecosystems are very important.

07:07 That's the reason universities are very important.

07:10 So as you said that,

07:14 because ecosystem was favorable in India,

07:17 but in the Arab world,

07:19 the survival conditions were very brutal.

07:21 They were very tough.

07:23 So how did Prophet Ibrahim or Prophet Muhammad

07:27 or Christ managed to awaken their consciousness?

07:33 Same thing can happen when the ecosystem is very unfavorable.

07:36 You very well know that nothing will happen

07:40 however hard you try.

07:42 So what do you do?

07:44 You stop trying.

07:44 If you think of the process of the Quran,

07:52 Prophet Muhammad used to go up a hill

07:56 and sit there for long durations.

07:58 That sitting alone for long durations

08:04 is at the core of insightful realization.

08:08 If you are someone who cannot be by himself,

08:12 if you are afraid of being alone,

08:15 if you cannot remain silent to yourself,

08:22 you will never realize anything.

08:24 The fact is, please understand,

08:30 even if you go to the Paleolithic times,

08:35 what you find is religion emerging in a very preliminary way.

08:45 So it's never specific to one geography.

08:49 Where there is man, there is dissatisfaction.

08:53 And where there is dissatisfaction,

08:56 there is an inquiry into the reason of dissatisfaction.

09:01 And that inquiry itself is called religion.

09:04 I am not whole, I am not well.

09:07 Why do I remain restless within?

09:09 How do I take care of this?

09:12 That itself is religion.

09:13 So that is found even in the caveman.

09:16 They did not know that they are restless

09:20 because something within is immense.

09:23 So what would they do?

09:25 They started out by looking into the physical universe.

09:30 So they would say, "Oh, probably that tree is great.

09:33 If that tree blesses me, I'll be all right.

09:37 Oh, probably that river is great.

09:39 Probably the sky God or the sun God,

09:44 they are the greatest, they are the absolute."

09:46 So there is a search within the human being.

09:49 Always, always for the greatest, the best, the absolute.

09:53 And that's what differentiates man from animals.

09:57 Animals do not search for the best, the greatest,

10:00 the final, the infinite, the absolute.

10:02 Man always searches for that.

10:05 And if life is not used in searching the absolute

10:09 and meeting it, then life is wasted.

10:13 So there was, you know, there was a,

10:16 there is a point in the history of evolution of human beings.

10:20 When we started to think,

10:23 that point comes 70, 80,000 years before today.

10:32 And the moment that point comes, also you start seeing

10:37 the emergence of some kind of worship.

10:43 Our brains, the moment they gain some maturity,

10:47 one of the things that come,

10:49 one of the things that come immediately to the brain,

10:52 the mind, is that it starts to worship.

10:55 Now what does worship mean? Think of it.

10:57 Worship means there has to be something bigger

11:00 and I prostrate in front of it.

11:02 So this search for bigness, bigness.

11:08 That bigness is your destiny.

11:10 That's what Vedanta calls as Atma.

11:14 And it's not a doctrine, it's not a dogma.

11:17 It's contained within you.

11:19 Even if you deny Vedanta, that restlessness will remain.

11:25 So Vedanta is not a concept or a principle.

11:28 It is just expressing what is already within you,

11:31 irrespective of whether you believe in Vedanta or not.

11:36 That's why I said that there is no need to believe.

11:38 It is. What is, need not be believed in.

11:43 It can be known.

11:45 There is no need to believe.

11:49 No part of this recording may be reproduced

11:51 without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

11:53 [Flute music]

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