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The occurrence of the sacred

The occurrence of the sacred

by | May 30, 2025

“The occurrence of the sacred does not obey fixed locations. It is not distributed according to hierarchies or established by law or decree. It often bursts forth discreetly. It does not require grand gestures, but rather spaces of reception. A phrase that resists interpretive closure, a disarming glance, a silence that imposes itself without intention. In such moments, no certainty is imposed: what emerges is a more precise question. The sacred offers no solutions. It unsettles, it does not close; it leaves a crack open. It does not come to fill a void or complete a lack. It makes audible what the usual abundance had stifled. If something legitimately transcendental happens, it does not reside in a realm separate from ordinary life. There is no sharp cut between what counts as profane and what is considered exceptional. The spiritual is nothing more than a different way of inhabiting the same. To be without hardening, to resist the temptation to turn the other into a function and the self into a shield. To know that the body, time, even what we think we have understood, are not properties that belong to us, but realities entrusted to us for a time. And responding to that with an ethic of care, not with possessive attachment.
There are no predetermined routes, predetermined paths, or pre-established trails. Not because of a lack of directions, but because the itinerary is drawn as we go along; “the path is made by walking,” said the poet. The signs and signals, far from being spectacular, are subtle. A slight interruption in the continuity of discourse. A note that breaks the predictability. A sense of presence that cannot be articulated. They are not external: they arise from the transformation of the way of being. The world does not change; what changes is the willingness to receive it.
To seek, then, is not to be lost. It is to remain faithful to what has not yet been achieved. The impossibility of determining or naming what is desired does not mean that it is absent. Sometimes, the absence of definitions and nomenclatures preserves the possibility of encounter. Because faith—if one still accepts the use of that term—is not adherence to an immutable answer, but the decision to remain with the question without betraying it. To search without pretense, without shortcuts, without protective formulas: that is, perhaps, the most rigorous form of inner integrity.”
Prabhuji
Market-adapted spirituality

Market-adapted spirituality

by | May 29, 2025

“When spirituality becomes a business, it is not only its content that is lost, nor even a practice consistent with its origins: the breath that sustained it as an unconditional experience is extinguished. What disappears is not a doctrine, a technique, a methodology, or a ritual, but a form of presence that cannot be quantified: an attention that does not expect anything in return, a relationship without preconditions, a word spoken without an agenda. Where the bond between master and disciple was once asymmetrical, vertical, non-commercial, the logic of equivalence now takes hold: service and reward, service and fee, merchandise and remuneration. What was once time outside of time—a non-instrumental experience—becomes a program, a course, an experience with a date and a value. Transmission becomes a package. Teaching becomes a catalog. And the path becomes an offer that promises to “awaken” without anyone having to lose sleep.
When the master needs to cover expenses, sustain a structure, maintain visibility, their practice can no longer be guided by the truth that founded it. They inevitably begin to depend not on what they teach, but on the number of attendees. Not on the mystery they transmit, but on the flow of income that sustains them. In this context, the disciple ceases to be someone seeking transformation and becomes a customer who must return. The discourse adapts, softens, becomes functional. It does not aim at rupture, but at return. It does not propose the emptiness of ego collapse, but rather comfort, entertainment, and well-being. Because inviting someone to let go is risky when one depends on them staying. The pedagogy of detachment thus becomes a retention strategy. This is where the adulteration begins. The disciple stops listening and starts consuming. The master abandons his initiatory function to become a symbolic operator of a personal brand. What was once an austere, discontinuous path, full of detours and dangers, becomes an accessible aesthetic of mysticism. Silence becomes “retreat for reconnection.” Demandingness becomes “wellness coaching.” Renunciation dissolves into exercises in gratitude and visualization. Nothing hurts, nothing unsettles, nothing makes you uncomfortable, nothing bothers you. The strange becomes fashionable. What used to require years of maturation is now packaged into instantly downloadable modules.
This market-adapted spirituality no longer teaches us to die to the self: it respects it, adorns it, beautifies it, nourishes it. It speaks of freedom while sustaining itself on the fear of vacancy. It pronounces emptiness, but cannot bear an empty room. It invokes the eternal, but organizes itself according to editorial calendars. It calculates followers, engagement, visibility, and turns the soul into a KPI. Even devotional language is colonized by the lexicon of performance and marketing: “manifest,” “vibrate,” “raise your frequency,” “expand.” And yet, the sacred—if that word can still be used without cynicism—does not allow discounts or installments. It has no financing plan. It does not produce satisfaction or comfort. It is rupture, fracture, a tear that cannot be included as an “additional benefit.” It can be vertigo, sometimes emptiness, sometimes unbearable silence. It is always something that cannot be controlled. That is why not everyone crosses that border. Many prefer to pay for the illusion of having crossed it, without really risking anything. Refusing this simulacrum is not to despise the material. Nor is it idealizing precariousness. It is rejecting the way the market neutralizes all otherness. It is opposing the reduction of the invisible to a fungible good. It is affirming that the true master does not capitalize on their teaching, and that the authentic disciple does not seek comfort, personal improvement, or emotional management techniques. They seek, if they truly seek, that which takes the ground from under their feet. And that loss cannot be sold.
Spirituality offered as an experience is, at best, a pleasant form of distraction. At worst, it is an operation to legitimize the ego that it claims to want to dissolve. The highest cost is not borne by those who pay to attend a retreat. It is borne by those who believe that payment has opened a path. There is no wisdom where everything is designed to avoid conflict. There is no transformation where no internal price is demanded. And there is no freedom where everything can be bought without renunciation.
The soul, if one still wants to talk about it, does not grow in the warmth of comfort. It is not awakened by gentle formulas or cheap therapies. It only responds to that which tears it away from its habits, its safe zones, its instant promises. And that—precisely that—cannot be sold. Because it does not belong to the order of exchange. And because its value, even if it is priceless, demands everything.”
Prabhuji
The genuine spiritual life

The genuine spiritual life

by | May 22, 2025

“Spiritual life, when experienced authentically, constitutes an inner journey, silent and irreducible to external models. Every genuine search begins in the deepest recesses of the soul, where the voices of social approval and the murmur of established formulas cease. However, it is not uncommon for this original impulse toward inner transformation to be absorbed by the institutional dynamics of religious life in community. Far from fostering freedom of spirit, such environments often impose a normative structure, a codified morality, and a collective identity that dissolves uniqueness in the name of belonging.
The community can offer refuge, guidance, and comfort. But it can also become a system that, under benevolent appearances, stifles individual expression through the repetition of ritual gestures, the subordination of thought, and the suspension of self-judgment. In the name of the sacred, obedience is institutionalized, consciences are standardized, and any questioning that disturbs the tranquility of consensus is marginalized. Simone Weil warns that “thought is not easily welcomed where power reigns,” and power—even religious power—resists what it cannot control. Where authenticity is replaced by fidelity to a form, spiritual life vanishes as a living experience and is preserved only as protocol.
Those who enter a religious environment in search of inner guidance often find themselves subjected to a pedagogy that does not cultivate freedom but reinforces dependence. They are taught to venerate memorized formulas, not to discover the meaning that justifies them. They are required to have faith, but they are not offered a path to understanding. Love is invoked, while any form of thought that has not been previously legitimized is discouraged. In this context, the soul that tries to advance on its own is viewed with suspicion, and the contemplative impulse is replaced by the mechanical repetition of what has been prescribed. Far from being kindled, the inner flame is consumed under the weight of custom.
Not every form of shared life deserves to be discarded. But when the community demands the suspension of personal judgment as proof of virtue, what is formed is not a spiritual consciousness, but a subject functional to the logic of the group. Where rituals are valued more than inner transformation, one ends up revering an empty form, not a living presence. In the words of Kierkegaard:
“The crowd is the lie.”
(Diary, 1851), and it is precisely because it nullifies individual responsibility in the name of undifferentiated belonging.
True spiritual experience does not require external approval, uniformity, or regulatory validation. It can mature in anonymous retreat, in the silence of an ordinary life, or in the lucidity of a consciousness that dares to think without guidance. It does not impose external abstinence as a merit in itself, but demands constant vigilance of the inner world. It does not call for separation from the environment, but rather a transformed gaze that illuminates its meaning. It does not depend on the recognition of a group, but on fidelity to an inner voice that does not always coincide with the dominant voice.
Meister Eckhart expresses it with radical clarity:
“As long as the soul seeks outside itself, it will not find the truth. The truth is found only in the depths of the soul, where God dwells without image.”
This is not an anti-institutional experience, but a demand for ontological depth that cannot be administered collectively. Those who have known the truth at the center of their being understand that this experience cannot be organized, transmitted by decree, or administered as doctrine. It is revealed in the unrepeatable space of intimacy, in the thrill of lucidity, in the solitary decision to live according to what one has understood. And that fidelity, even if it is not celebrated by others, is enough.”
Prabhuji
Ideologies and “ism”s

Ideologies and “ism”s

by | May 21, 2025

“I do not accept ideologies, whatever ‘ism’ they may be and whatever they may be called, because any thought that is confined to a doctrinal system abdicates its most demanding task: to understand without distorting and to judge without resorting to automatic patterns. All ideology operates through a conceptual reductionism that impoverishes the complexity of reality. In its quest for coherence, it simplifies the multiple and eliminates what does not fit into its pre-existing categories. Isaiah Berlin observed that closed systems of ideas sacrifice the plurality of human values for the sake of artificial consistency, which limits the capacity for discernment and restricts open-mindedness.
This impoverishment is accompanied by a normative dogmatism that presents its principles as self-evident truths, thus closing off any possibility of critical review. Karl Popper argued that falsifiability is the criterion that distinguishes rational knowledge from dogma. Similarly, thought that renounces the possibility of being refuted ceases to be thought and becomes doctrine.
Ideology does not describe the world: it shapes it discursively to generate adherence. Its use of language responds to a strategic rather than a cognitive function. Confucius already warned in the Lún Yǔ:
“If names are not correct, language is not adequate; if language is not adequate, actions are not carried out.”
Semantic manipulation not only corrupts discourse, it also distorts the action that derives from it.
All ideology eliminates singularity in favor of categories that are functional to the collective narrative. No individual can be reduced to an identity assigned by their position in a narrative system. Emmanuel Levinas asserted that the other cannot be understood as part of a whole, since their otherness transcends any conceptual structure. A similar insight is found in the Dhammapada:
“No being is identical to another; each must walk their own path.”
By subordinating the individual to an abstraction, ideology erases their concrete uniqueness. Added to this is the inhibition of self-criticism. Every ideological “ism” contains mechanisms that neutralize internal examination and exclude dissent. Michel Foucault showed how regimes of truth are intertwined with structures of power that legitimize certain discourses and silence others. In such an environment, thought is not questioned: it is reproduced. Ideology is not born of the desire to understand, but of the will to influence. Its purpose is not knowledge, but effectiveness. This subordination of thought to extra-theatrical ends betrays its original vocation. Nagarjuna, from the Madhyamaka philosophy, warned that “wisdom is not directed at an object or a utility; its nature is the emptiness of clinging.” Thinking implies stripping oneself of all self-interested uses of knowledge.
I do not reject ideologies out of moral neutrality, but out of fidelity to a more demanding form of rationality. Philosophy begins where dogma ends, not because it offers greater certainties, but because it keeps questions open. Therefore, instead of adhering to closed systems, I cultivate a questioning attitude, conscious, as Socrates pointed out, that “I only know that I know nothing,” and convinced, with Zhuangzi, that “the wise man is not attached to any form, for all forms are transitory.”
Prabhuji
Nature is sufficient

Nature is sufficient

by | May 19, 2025

“There is no need to rush the process or anticipate its outcome. The essential is already within you. You are not incomplete: you are potential waiting to be realized, not a deficit to be corrected. The seed does not design the tree it will become. Its entire future morphology—leaves, flowers, fruits—is contained in its original architecture. It does not project: it allows the unfolding to happen. Likewise, human beings do not construct their destiny through individual will, but rather accompany a direction inherent in their most intimate structure. They do not need external intervention, but rather internal conditions that favor development: sustained attention, watchful silence, non-reactive receptivity. Organic growth does not obey commands or require instructions: it emerges from within if the environment allows it. Attempting to guide the process of individuation through closed doctrines or prescriptive rituals interferes with its flow. It introduces dissonance between what is implied and what is imposed. It fragments the continuity of becoming. Consciousness cannot expand if it is subjected to fixed forms. It is the ratio universalis—not private intention—that legitimately guides us. As the Stoics affirmed, the logos spermatikós structures from within, without violence.
Human beings are not born as finished, complete entities. They are an opening, an ontological orientation in progress. At their core lies a tendency that aspires to a mode of existence beyond the restrictions of the egoic nature. This transformation does not require inherited beliefs or imposed renunciations. It does not demand external regulations or institutional validation. It requires a willingness to let this internal dynamic act without interruption.
Any demand for guarantees prevents transition. If the seed needed certainty before breaking its shell, it would remain inert. If the bird avoided leaving the egg for fear of the unknown, it would remain motionless. Growth is incompatible with the search for absolute security. It requires exposure to risk, passage through uncertainty, renunciation of the known. Transformation implies vulnerability, but without it, no expansion is possible. Those who wait for infallible promises become paralyzed. The only authentic certainty is the possibility that dwells within you. To be realized, this potential requires deliberate openness and suspension of control.
ὁ δὲ θεὸς παιδὶ ἐοικώς, παίζων πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.
“God is like a child playing dice; sovereignty belongs to the child.”
(Heraclitus, fr. DK 52)
The divine does not act as the engineer of a predetermined order. It does not execute a plan or impose an external purpose. It behaves like a free player who creates without calculation. Heraclitus introduces here an image that destabilizes all metaphysics of predictability: the sacred operates without rigidity, through a structuring spontaneity that needs no justification.
Entering into this logic requires abandoning the pretense of mastery and assuming a lucid surrender. Remaining attached to the shell of personal convictions prevents flight. Freedom does not emerge from control, but from trust in an orientation vaster than the autonomous self.
Ἐγγὺς ἐστὶν ὁ λόγος, ὁν ἀνθρώποι διατελοῦσιν ἀγνοοῦντες.
“The Logos is near, but men continually ignore it.”
(Heraclitus, fr. DK 72)
Truth is neither distant nor inaccessible. It dwells in immediacy, but becomes indiscernible when proof is demanded, when prior certainty is desired. The accumulation of knowledge does not guarantee access. Openness, on the other hand, does make it possible. Only those who abandon resistance mature. Only those who yield to this silent dynamic attain a broader state of being.
No agonizing effort or compulsive asceticism is required. It is enough to allow that original structure to express itself without interference. Transformation does not come from voluntaristic imposition, but from lucid consent. It is not achieved through confrontation, but through availability. Nature is sufficient. Trust in it’s knowledge.
Prabhuji