Most spirituality is either self-delusion or self-deception.

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

Q1: I see in the spiritual community, normally we spend lot of time talking about thoughts, about God, about concepts, about subjectivity of things and when we go back to our daily lives, we just do as everybody do.

We may do two hours of yoga practicing or little changes, but regarding the things that we really use every day, for example diet: we just ignore and eat as everybody eats and when we question people in the spiritual community about it, that they use spiritual excuses like Advaita Vedanta when say “everything is God, everything is Brahma or Asura, so there is no difference between me and the chicken in my plate, it’s just energy. When they start to study more and look up karuna or ahimsa then they go to a lacto-vegetarian diet and forget about the small things that happens like the dairy and eggs and just follow what everybody does and don’t go beyond. I just want to listen to your words on this.

AP: I will just repeat what you have said. I will repeat in probably more colourful ways but that’s what I mean.

This is spirituality- to observe our real ways, that’s how we are . You know in India here we say Maya, you know Maya, of course, as you were referring to Advaita Vedanta. Maya is like a bull. The ones who are not spiritual or not religious at all, Maya hits them, tosses them up with her. Oh she has to be a cow then, with her horns, she takes them head on and tosses them up with her horns!

And then the ones who are religious or spiritual, those who know all kinds of yoga and Vedanta, they are the ones who go past this animal, she tosses them up with her hind legs, Right!

And it’s probably the spiritual ones who get beaten up more savagely. The beast has a special liking for the spiritualist.

An ordinary man remains a victim of maya and never claims that he has been able to conquer maya or understand maya. The spiritual man is hit and defeated doubly, he remains as much victim of maya as the ordinary folk but with the added confidence that he has been able to transcend the world or go across its traps and delusions.