No ritual is spiritual

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

Questioner (Q): Sir, could the people of India be enslaved for long because they were spiritual people?

Acharya Prashant (AP): If India was enslaved for so long, if the people here could be conquered and banished, and be made to live against their will, it was not because they were spiritual people, it was because they were not at all spiritual. I ask you a simple question. What is the most fundamental tenet of spirituality? It is to know what is this game called ‘the world’ and ‘Who am I?’ Right? That is the foundation. ‘What is all this going on?’ and it’s a most obvious question that any intelligent man must ask. Right? Only if you are very stupid, then you will be not spiritual otherwise you have to be spiritual.

What else can you be?

Spirituality is common sense. Don’t you want to know what all this is? That is spirituality. Now, if that is spirituality and the first question you are asking is, ‘Who am I?’ and if you have attained any depth, then, first of all, your body association weakens. Your body association weakens. You do not remain a slave of the material. What is the body? Material. You stop giving importance to material, and then you also stop giving importance to the body. The man or woman who gives so much importance to the body…