All promises are false promises

Acharya Prashant
3 min readSep 1, 2020

One can simply discard the possibility of being cheated once again. One does not have to go into the question of whether or not the next promise is a genuine one. There are no two types of promises. There aren’t false promises and true promises.

There are only false promises.

Promises by themselves, by definition, are false because every promise takes you deeper into time.

It takes you into future.

Promise says “Fulfillment lies in future.”

Hence, there are no true promises.

Which means the way to detect the false, is to just see whether it is promising anything. You don’t have to ask whether the promise would be kept. You just have to ask whether there is a promise involved. These are two different things.

We try to inquire into the authenticity of the promise, right? We ask, “Will this fellow, will this new hope keep its promise.”

That is the question we ask. That is not the question to be asked. The question to be asked must be: Is there a promise involved somewhere? Am I being promised something? If you are being promised something, you already have been cheated.

The real is not the promise of the future.

The real is imminent, imminent and immanent both.

It is all pervasive and right now.

It does not belong to a far-off land. It does not belong to a distant day. It cannot be a matter of promise.

It is your living reality. It is either the living reality immediately or it is a total sham.

Either it is right now, or it is not at all. It is not a result of a process. It is not a beginning that will result in something after a few days.

You are not upon a bridge that will take you to the other side. Either you realize that you do not need a bridge or you will continue to be on a false journey forever. A journey that is not needed, a journey that is not actual, a journey that tires you down without taking you anywhere.

Is there a promise somewhere?

Is there future somewhere?