What factors made India so spiritual? || Acharya Prashant, at DTU (2023)

Acharya Prashant

Full Video: Why have religions emerged only from a few places in the world? || Acharya Prashant, at DTU (2023) Link:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqgz1ujPF8w&t=0s  Video Information: 23.12.2022, 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 ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 India was a more fertile land for religious inquiry because the soil was fertile.

00:13 Because the monsoons were guaranteed.

00:18 And you could do nothing about the monsoons.

00:22 Remember in those days there was hardly any irrigation.

00:26 So you simply had to wait for the rains.

00:30 What do you do when you wait for the rains?

00:33 And the population was sparse.

00:37 So there was good food, ample food for everyone.

00:41 And the Indus basin and the Ganga basin are one of the most fertile basins in the world.

00:48 The alluvial soil here coming right from the Himalayas.

00:52 So you had abundance of everything.

00:54 When you have abundance of everything and there is not much you can anyway do because

00:58 the monsoons will come when they have to.

01:01 What do you do?

01:02 You have ample leisure.

01:05 And in that leisure you sit, you observe, you talk to people.

01:11 There is space for intellectual inquiry.

01:15 For hours and hours can you visualize the thinkers, the sages, the seers just purposelessly

01:21 talking to each other?

01:24 And from that purposeless discussion, from silent observation of life for hours, days,

01:31 months, years, come those insights that you today take as Indian philosophy.

01:39 You cannot have philosophical development if you are running behind your ambitions and

01:45 if you have a tied up day and you very well know that 8 am you have to do this and then

01:50 6 am this and 8 am that kind of clockwork will never allow any kind of internal leisure.

01:58 And if that internal leisure is not there, no insight, no wisdom can develop.

02:04 You all must remember this.

02:06 Give yourself space, freedom, opportunities to take stock.

02:11 You understand what is meant by taking stock?

02:13 Just stop.

02:15 Stop for long durations, at least for a few hours and recollect what's going on.

02:22 Am I just running?

02:24 What's going on?

02:27 And this period of taking stock can extend to months if possible for you.

02:33 In fact in my own growth, the breaks that I used to get from school and later on from

02:41 IIT were very important.

02:44 Most of my initial poetry was composed in breaks and the breaks were significant.

02:49 The entire December used to be free and then May, June, July and that used to provide an

02:59 ample space in which one could just be himself.

03:03 So that's what it is.

03:07 Ecosystems are very important.

03:08 That's the reason universities are very important.

03:13 So as you said that because ecosystem was favorable in India, but in the Arab world,

03:20 the survival conditions were very brutal.

03:22 They were very tough.

03:24 So how did Prophet Ibrahim or Prophet Muhammad or Christ managed to awaken their consciousness?

03:34 Same thing can happen when the ecosystem is very unfavorable.

03:39 You very well know that nothing will happen however hard you try.

03:44 So what do you do?

03:45 You stop trying.

03:47 If you think of the process of the Quran, Prophet Muhammad used to go up a hill and

03:57 sit there for long durations.

04:01 That sitting alone for long durations is at the core of insightful realization.

04:10 If you are someone who cannot be by himself, if you are afraid of being alone, if you cannot

04:19 remain silent to yourself, you will never realize anything.

04:30 The fact is, please understand, even if you go to the Paleolithic times, what you find

04:40 is religion emerging in a very preliminary way.

04:47 So it's never specific to one geography.

04:50 Where there is man, there is dissatisfaction.

04:55 And where there is dissatisfaction, there is an inquiry into the reason of dissatisfaction.

05:02 And that inquiry itself is called religion.

05:06 I am not whole, I am not well.

05:09 Why do I remain restless within?

05:12 How do I take care of this?

05:13 That itself is religion.

05:15 So that is found even in the cavemen.

05:19 They did not know that they are restless because something within is amiss.

05:24 So what would they do?

05:26 They started out by looking into the physical universe.

05:31 So they would say, "Oh, probably that tree is great.

05:34 If that tree blesses me, I would be all right.

05:38 Oh, probably that river is great.

05:41 Probably the sky god or the sun god, they are the greatest, they are the absolute."

05:47 So there is a search within the human being, always, always for the greatest, the best,

05:53 the absolute.

05:54 And that's what differentiates man from animals.

05:58 Animals do not search for the best, the greatest, the final, the infinite, the absolute.

06:03 Man always searches for that.

06:06 And if life is not used in searching the absolute and meeting it, then life is wasted.

06:13 [Music]

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