Choose religiousness rather than religion

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Is Hinduism a religion that allows and accepts non-believers too?

Acharya Prashant (AP): If you are accepting non-believers, then you also have to accept that Muslims and Christians are also Hindus. So, this is obviously a non-question. If you are saying that Hinduism accepts both believers and non-believers, then believers and non-believers is the sum total of everybody. You are saying, ‘A and A compliment’, and that is the universal set. Then you are saying that everybody is a Hindu.

No religion can accept non-believers. So, you have to believe in something, yes you can have people who believe differently, that much can be accepted, but you cannot accept non-believers. A non-believer cannot belong to a religion. Do you know who is a non-believer? The one who lives in the aatman. The mind lives in beliefs, the non-believer lives somewhere else. For him, no Hinduism and no other -ism applies.

A spiritual man does not belong to a religion. And that is the reason why what you are calling as ‘Hinduism’ is actually very-very little of a religion, if you talk of the essence of Hinduism. The more you call Hinduism, a religion, the more you are destroying the real thing. So, Hinduism is great only as long…