Do you know the most dominant religion today?

Progress — that’s the religion of today. Everyone wants a good life, everyone wants comforts and everything. In fact, all the old religions have been defeated. Christianity has been defeated, Hinduism has been defeated, they all have been defeated. This one religion has defeated everything.

Greed is today’s religion.

If you fight this new religion called greed, and why must you not fight it? We are fighting religions that are anyway decadent, that are anyway taking their last breath.

What is the point in fighting these moribund religions?

Listener: But how do you fight it? It is so strongly prevalent and running away is not an option.

Acharya Prashant: You have to demonstrate it, you have to be it, otherwise there is no dearth of talkers. Waging one’s tongue is so easy. You have to really demonstrate it. Your life has to be the proof.

When you say that it is possible to challenge the false, then your life has to be proof of that challenge. And when you come up to people not only with your words but with the backing of your life, then people appreciate it, then you are credible. Otherwise, you are just talking, so it has to begin with you. First of all, you have to be that who can be the messenger, who can be the Teacher.

Listener: So you have to first be in that position so as to explain the people about it otherwise you are just repeating knowledge.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, and in repeating the knowledge, you are only perpetuating misery because they already have a lot of knowledge. And do you know what happens if you are not living what you are saying? Then you produce more and more cynicism in people, people say, “You see another one of the fake ones and because I see only the fake ones hence it is proven that Truth does not exist.” So, instead of being a teacher of Truth, you become a messenger or rather a proof of the false.

You go to someone and say, “What I am saying is coming from honesty.” And the other one is able to detect that what you are saying is basically dishonest. Then what have you proven to him? You have proven to him that dishonesty rules. So, he goes away more convinced that dishonesty is God; dishonesty lords.