May 12, 2025 • 14 mins
The misconception that spiritual teachings need to be "more practical" reveals either a misunderstanding of what spiritual practice truly is or exposure to teachings that aren't genuinely spiritual. Non-dual traditions offer direct pointers to immediate experience of consciousness that are inherently practical when actually implemented.
• Non-dual teachings provide direct access to formless awareness without delay
• Basic moral and ethical teachings aren't spiritual—they're common sense
• The Upanishads and teachings like "Aham Brahmasmi" (I am Brahman) are deeply practical
• Spiritual knowledge must be experienced to be understood
• Only a human guru can embody teachings in a way AI cannot
• Those who claim teachings aren't practical enough often haven't put them into practice
• True connection with consciousness naturally guides all aspects of life
Join me on Discord to continue this discussion, and keep an eye out for my upcoming "Resting in Formless Awareness" course that will be launching soon.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded
Mystic podcast, and I'm yourhost, rahul N Singh.
Today we are just gonna go withthe flow of the conversation
and see where it goes, but dolike, comment and subscribe.
Obviously, do follow me ondiscord, where we can continue
(00:22):
on the discussion, and, as youknow, I'm gearing up to launch
my resting in formless awarenesscourse very soon, so do keep an
eye out for new announcementsthat will be coming out shortly.
I'm working really hard ongetting that done.
I was together with somefriends, you know, a couple of
(00:48):
weeks ago and I mentioned onething and, you know, whenever I
speak to people, especiallyyoung people in spirituality,
who are interested inspirituality, who you know go to
a mandir or gudwara or to anyspiritual place of worship, the
(01:10):
number one thing that I kind ofhear is, apart from language
being an issue, is that theyneed to make the teachings more
practical.
Make the teachings morepractical, and whenever I hear
(01:35):
this, it actually doesn't it.
It alarms me in two ways.
One you can't have.
Spirituality is practical.
There's nothing impracticalabout it.
To make it more practical isimpossible.
The reason being is that, forexample, if I just look at the
tradition of non-duality in theEast, there are thousands and
(01:58):
thousands of books, thousandsand thousands of hundreds of
thousands of verses that canshow you the directness of this
formless awareness, brahman,consciousness.
It can get you to thatexperience straight away.
(02:21):
There's no delay to it, there'sno delay.
There's no delay to it.
There's no um, no delay,there's no buffer period.
It is just directly seen, shown, experienced, known.
And when I use these words,remember, language is going to
fail me, but it's beyond thosethings too, like the, the.
(02:43):
The immediacy and directness ofconsciousness cannot be um,
obviously, put together inlanguage.
It goes beyond silence.
But for practical reasons, soto speak, we have to use these
words to point towards it.
But yes, the pointings cannever show the fullness of the
(03:07):
experience or the fullness ofwhat it's like to be resting in
formless awareness.
That can only be done byyourself.
And so, when you look at theteaching, when you look at the
Brahman Gyan, the knowledge thatshows you Brahman, that shows
you pure consciousness, that canonly be directly experienced.
(03:29):
To be understood and it'sinteresting to understand it,
you have to experience it.
You cannot understand it andnot experience it.
Or if you think that you canjust think you understand it
without experiencing it.
Even then there'll be somethingmissing, and so so, just so,
(03:51):
when?
So that's one part.
The other part is this if,wherever you're going, if you
don't think it's practicalenough, that means that the
teachings that are being sharedaren't deep, frankly speaking,
or remotely spiritual, andherein lies a problem.
A lot of people think that justmoral, ethical teachings are
(04:16):
enough.
You can live a life as a goodhuman being.
No doubt you don't needspirituality in that.
I think that is something thatcan be taught with just common
sense.
Just being a decent human being, knowing what to do, how to be,
is something that you know, youcan teach yourself.
(04:38):
You don't need a spiritual guruto tell you this.
If you need a spiritual guru totell you this, um, that guru is
basically saying you don't needa spiritual guru to tell you
this.
If you need a spiritual guru totell you this, that guru is
basically saying you don't evenknow how to be spiritual yet.
So it's more, not an indicationof the spiritual teacher, it's
more on the devotee and thedisciple.
(05:00):
So when we say the teachingsaren't practical, it means we're
not giving deep, practicalteachings, meaning the teachings
that are being shared justaren't deep enough.
And so, for example, theUpanishads is full of practical
teachings.
It's nothing but practicalteachings.
You have to immerse yourselfinto the text to understand it.
(05:23):
If there's that is practical,you get to experience this
consciousness directly by justthe four Mahavakyas.
But let's look at one of themAham Brahmasmi I am Brahman.
That becomes your realization.
That becomes your.
(05:44):
That becomes the very.
You become the very embodimentof that teaching.
That becomes the very.
You become the very embodimentof that teaching.
And that only happens if wehave the knowledge that can take
us there.
You know so.
For that and that practice isdeep, you don't need to make it
more practical to say that youare consciousness.
(06:07):
There's nothing more practicalthan that.
And yes, we are always aware ofthe things we do.
We may bypass that awareness bysinking into thoughts and
emotions and feelings,sensations and so on, and
memories, and we can go on andon.
But even then, for you to gothrough the incessant chat of
(06:29):
thoughts or the flooding ofemotions, or the rushing in of
memories and the influx of andthe changing nature of
sensations, you can go throughall of that and remind yourself
that you are aware of thosethings.
You are the witnessingconsciousness.
That is not changing despiteall of these activities
(06:53):
happening.
But for that to happen, yes, weneed a teacher, we need a guru
that can guide us.
And that's been true in my ownlife where, you know, my guru
has took me to that journey, hastaken me on that path, and I've
never questioned thepracticality of my Guru's
teachings.
I think, yes, I can questionmaybe the thoughts of fellow
(07:18):
disciples, of my Gurus, orfellow devotees, but I can't
question my Guru's teachingsbecause they are practical.
And when I say can't questionit, I'm not saying in the deep
inquiry type of way, I'm justsaying like I don't have any
doubt About the practicality ofmy Guru's teachings.
(07:39):
Like today, if I listen to myGuru's teachings, I find them
nothing but practical.
But when it comes to, yes, thedevotees, but when it comes to,
yes, other devotees, dependingwhere they are on the journey,
they're going to share thatright.
So, again, if I have the wisdomto understand, or the
(08:03):
discernment, the intellect tounderstand that, then I can
understand at what levelsomeone's speaking at and what
that's going to bring for me.
But one thing I will say is thatwhen it comes to things like
satsang being in the company ofholy people, being in the
company of your teacher, of yourguru, of your satguru, of your
(08:24):
master, that you have to be umyou.
You have to remember that thoseteachings are only going to
teach you about the supremeconsciousness, about this niraka
, about this formlessconsciousness.
(08:44):
Nothing more, nothing less.
That's what the main message isnow.
If the guru teaches you abouthow to live after that
realization, which is going tobe, you know, just be a decent
human being, don't be a prat anddon't lose your critical
thinking skills, because onething that I've found, also in
(09:05):
spiritual circles, is how, inthe name of thinking, they think
they're thinking critically,but actually, when they start
questioning facts, you knowwhether that's about medicine or
health or science, then youknow, like I'm not gonna, I'm
(09:26):
not gonna get in a debate withsomeone about whether the earth
is round or flat, like you seewhat I mean.
Like I know the earth is round,I know the earth spins on its
axis, I'm not going to believe aflat earth there and I'm not
going to even engage that whatthey're saying is even remotely
true.
You know.
Um same thing when it comes tothe efficacy of vaccines.
(09:49):
I'm not going to, I'm going tofollow whatever the experts say,
because they've done the study,not me.
I can look on Google, butGoogle is not going to give me
the fullness of the study thatthose people have put in.
(10:10):
And same thing with when itcomes to religion I'm going to
follow whatever the experts say.
I'm not going to go by whatsomeone says on a reddit forum,
like they may say some nastythings about a guru, but that
doesn't mean that the teachingsof the guru is wrong, or that
the teachings of, or if someonequestions the teachings of the
guru, even then have they fullyunderstood it or are they going
(10:32):
from their discernment and notseeing the bigger picture, which
is sometimes the case?
So and now, like, even if we goa bit deeper than this, do we
think that Chak Chibitik cangive practical spiritual
teachings?
It may point to it, but at theend of the day, you gotta do the
(10:54):
work.
Like chat gpt can guide you,same way like a guru can guide
you, but the guru can show youas an embodiment, which is
different to what chat gpt cando.
Or artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence can show
you, describe it, yes, but whenit comes to embodying, when it
(11:16):
comes to practically showing youhow to be the teaching.
Only a guru can do that, only ahuman guru can do that.
That transmission can onlyhappen between two human beings,
between the disciple and theteacher.
So so that's the main thing Iwanted to kind of talk about
(11:40):
today, because I feel like a lotof people want practical
teachings, but if they juststudied the scriptures a bit
more, studied what the Guru said, a bit more Thought about what
the Guru said, they wouldn't besaying this.
And so I think what I'm tryingto say is it's time to
(12:01):
introspect, you know, are youtruly taking in the knowledge as
it should be, or are we just,you know, taking the knowledge,
doing nothing with it and thenclaiming, oh, it's not practical
enough and we haven't put itinto practice?
See, if you have a teaching andyou don't put it into practice,
you're going to say it's notpractical.
(12:22):
But those that do put it intopractice, you can see it from a
mile away how that teaching hastransformed them.
And I can say for a fact thatnot one thing that my guru has
said is impractical.
All of it has been practical.
(12:44):
And I say that with greatauthority, like I never say
things with 100 guarantee, butthis I can and uh, another thing
that I wanted to kind of shareis that you know, once you have
experienced this divine, onceyou have experienced this divine
(13:08):
, once you've truly touched it,truly felt it, truly connected
to it, truly become one with it,then that wisdom will speak for
itself and you will find thatwisdom will be guiding
everything.
But that can only come fromtruly connecting in the first
place.
So for that, we have toactually practice the teachings
in order to get there.
(13:29):
So that's my thoughts.
So I'm going to do probablymore of these type of podcasts
and thoughts, and very quick uhones in the more in the run-up
(13:50):
to my course being published.
Uh, there may be a time when Iwon't do any podcasts for a week
or two, because I'll probablybe recording and I have to save
my voice, um, but who knows?
I'm just going with the flowand I think that's the best way,
because whatever I share, Ipray that it only comes from the
(14:21):
divine and not from my ego ormy limited understanding or my
limited practical application ofthe teachings.
Anyway, yes, so let me knowwhat you think.
Share your thoughts for me.
What do you think about peoplethat say you know, are you one
of those people that do say,like, spiritual teachings aren't
practical enough.
Why do you say that?
Um, maybe we can have a nicelittle discussion, or you can do
it on discord.
Okay, thank you very much.
Take care.
Bye, namaste.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded
Mystic podcast, and I'm yourhost, rahul N Singh.
Today we are just gonna go withthe flow of the conversation
and see where it goes, but dolike, comment and subscribe.
Obviously, do follow me ondiscord, where we can continue
(00:22):
on the discussion, and, as youknow, I'm gearing up to launch
my resting in formless awarenesscourse very soon, so do keep an
eye out for new announcementsthat will be coming out shortly.
I'm working really hard ongetting that done.
I was together with somefriends, you know, a couple of
(00:48):
weeks ago and I mentioned onething and, you know, whenever I
speak to people, especiallyyoung people in spirituality,
who are interested inspirituality, who you know go to
a mandir or gudwara or to anyspiritual place of worship, the
(01:10):
number one thing that I kind ofhear is, apart from language
being an issue, is that theyneed to make the teachings more
practical.
Make the teachings morepractical, and whenever I hear
(01:35):
this, it actually doesn't it.
It alarms me in two ways.
One you can't have.
Spirituality is practical.
There's nothing impracticalabout it.
To make it more practical isimpossible.
The reason being is that, forexample, if I just look at the
tradition of non-duality in theEast, there are thousands and
(01:58):
thousands of books, thousandsand thousands of hundreds of
thousands of verses that canshow you the directness of this
formless awareness, brahman,consciousness.
It can get you to thatexperience straight away.
(02:21):
There's no delay to it, there'sno delay.
There's no delay to it.
There's no um, no delay,there's no buffer period.
It is just directly seen, shown, experienced, known.
And when I use these words,remember, language is going to
fail me, but it's beyond thosethings too, like the, the.
(02:43):
The immediacy and directness ofconsciousness cannot be um,
obviously, put together inlanguage.
It goes beyond silence.
But for practical reasons, soto speak, we have to use these
words to point towards it.
But yes, the pointings cannever show the fullness of the
(03:07):
experience or the fullness ofwhat it's like to be resting in
formless awareness.
That can only be done byyourself.
And so, when you look at theteaching, when you look at the
Brahman Gyan, the knowledge thatshows you Brahman, that shows
you pure consciousness, that canonly be directly experienced.
(03:29):
To be understood and it'sinteresting to understand it,
you have to experience it.
You cannot understand it andnot experience it.
Or if you think that you canjust think you understand it
without experiencing it.
Even then there'll be somethingmissing, and so so, just so,
(03:51):
when?
So that's one part.
The other part is this if,wherever you're going, if you
don't think it's practicalenough, that means that the
teachings that are being sharedaren't deep, frankly speaking,
or remotely spiritual, andherein lies a problem.
A lot of people think that justmoral, ethical teachings are
(04:16):
enough.
You can live a life as a goodhuman being.
No doubt you don't needspirituality in that.
I think that is something thatcan be taught with just common
sense.
Just being a decent human being, knowing what to do, how to be,
is something that you know, youcan teach yourself.
(04:38):
You don't need a spiritual guruto tell you this.
If you need a spiritual guru totell you this, um, that guru is
basically saying you don't needa spiritual guru to tell you
this.
If you need a spiritual guru totell you this, that guru is
basically saying you don't evenknow how to be spiritual yet.
So it's more, not an indicationof the spiritual teacher, it's
more on the devotee and thedisciple.
(05:00):
So when we say the teachingsaren't practical, it means we're
not giving deep, practicalteachings, meaning the teachings
that are being shared justaren't deep enough.
And so, for example, theUpanishads is full of practical
teachings.
It's nothing but practicalteachings.
You have to immerse yourselfinto the text to understand it.
(05:23):
If there's that is practical,you get to experience this
consciousness directly by justthe four Mahavakyas.
But let's look at one of themAham Brahmasmi I am Brahman.
That becomes your realization.
That becomes your.
(05:44):
That becomes the very.
You become the very embodimentof that teaching.
That becomes the very.
You become the very embodimentof that teaching.
And that only happens if wehave the knowledge that can take
us there.
You know so.
For that and that practice isdeep, you don't need to make it
more practical to say that youare consciousness.
(06:07):
There's nothing more practicalthan that.
And yes, we are always aware ofthe things we do.
We may bypass that awareness bysinking into thoughts and
emotions and feelings,sensations and so on, and
memories, and we can go on andon.
But even then, for you to gothrough the incessant chat of
(06:29):
thoughts or the flooding ofemotions, or the rushing in of
memories and the influx of andthe changing nature of
sensations, you can go throughall of that and remind yourself
that you are aware of thosethings.
You are the witnessingconsciousness.
That is not changing despiteall of these activities
(06:53):
happening.
But for that to happen, yes, weneed a teacher, we need a guru
that can guide us.
And that's been true in my ownlife where, you know, my guru
has took me to that journey, hastaken me on that path, and I've
never questioned thepracticality of my Guru's
teachings.
I think, yes, I can questionmaybe the thoughts of fellow
(07:18):
disciples, of my Gurus, orfellow devotees, but I can't
question my Guru's teachingsbecause they are practical.
And when I say can't questionit, I'm not saying in the deep
inquiry type of way, I'm justsaying like I don't have any
doubt About the practicality ofmy Guru's teachings.
(07:39):
Like today, if I listen to myGuru's teachings, I find them
nothing but practical.
But when it comes to, yes, thedevotees, but when it comes to,
yes, other devotees, dependingwhere they are on the journey,
they're going to share thatright.
So, again, if I have the wisdomto understand, or the
(08:03):
discernment, the intellect tounderstand that, then I can
understand at what levelsomeone's speaking at and what
that's going to bring for me.
But one thing I will say is thatwhen it comes to things like
satsang being in the company ofholy people, being in the
company of your teacher, of yourguru, of your satguru, of your
(08:24):
master, that you have to be umyou.
You have to remember that thoseteachings are only going to
teach you about the supremeconsciousness, about this niraka
, about this formlessconsciousness.
(08:44):
Nothing more, nothing less.
That's what the main message isnow.
If the guru teaches you abouthow to live after that
realization, which is going tobe, you know, just be a decent
human being, don't be a prat anddon't lose your critical
thinking skills, because onething that I've found, also in
(09:05):
spiritual circles, is how, inthe name of thinking, they think
they're thinking critically,but actually, when they start
questioning facts, you knowwhether that's about medicine or
health or science, then youknow, like I'm not gonna, I'm
(09:26):
not gonna get in a debate withsomeone about whether the earth
is round or flat, like you seewhat I mean.
Like I know the earth is round,I know the earth spins on its
axis, I'm not going to believe aflat earth there and I'm not
going to even engage that whatthey're saying is even remotely
true.
You know.
Um same thing when it comes tothe efficacy of vaccines.
(09:49):
I'm not going to, I'm going tofollow whatever the experts say,
because they've done the study,not me.
I can look on Google, butGoogle is not going to give me
the fullness of the study thatthose people have put in.
(10:10):
And same thing with when itcomes to religion I'm going to
follow whatever the experts say.
I'm not going to go by whatsomeone says on a reddit forum,
like they may say some nastythings about a guru, but that
doesn't mean that the teachingsof the guru is wrong, or that
the teachings of, or if someonequestions the teachings of the
guru, even then have they fullyunderstood it or are they going
(10:32):
from their discernment and notseeing the bigger picture, which
is sometimes the case?
So and now, like, even if we goa bit deeper than this, do we
think that Chak Chibitik cangive practical spiritual
teachings?
It may point to it, but at theend of the day, you gotta do the
(10:54):
work.
Like chat gpt can guide you,same way like a guru can guide
you, but the guru can show youas an embodiment, which is
different to what chat gpt cando.
Or artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence can show
you, describe it, yes, but whenit comes to embodying, when it
(11:16):
comes to practically showing youhow to be the teaching.
Only a guru can do that, only ahuman guru can do that.
That transmission can onlyhappen between two human beings,
between the disciple and theteacher.
So so that's the main thing Iwanted to kind of talk about
(11:40):
today, because I feel like a lotof people want practical
teachings, but if they juststudied the scriptures a bit
more, studied what the Guru said, a bit more Thought about what
the Guru said, they wouldn't besaying this.
And so I think what I'm tryingto say is it's time to
(12:01):
introspect, you know, are youtruly taking in the knowledge as
it should be, or are we just,you know, taking the knowledge,
doing nothing with it and thenclaiming, oh, it's not practical
enough and we haven't put itinto practice?
See, if you have a teaching andyou don't put it into practice,
you're going to say it's notpractical.
(12:22):
But those that do put it intopractice, you can see it from a
mile away how that teaching hastransformed them.
And I can say for a fact thatnot one thing that my guru has
said is impractical.
All of it has been practical.
(12:44):
And I say that with greatauthority, like I never say
things with 100 guarantee, butthis I can and uh, another thing
that I wanted to kind of shareis that you know, once you have
experienced this divine, onceyou have experienced this divine
(13:08):
, once you've truly touched it,truly felt it, truly connected
to it, truly become one with it,then that wisdom will speak for
itself and you will find thatwisdom will be guiding
everything.
But that can only come fromtruly connecting in the first
place.
So for that, we have toactually practice the teachings
in order to get there.
(13:29):
So that's my thoughts.
So I'm going to do probablymore of these type of podcasts
and thoughts, and very quick uhones in the more in the run-up
(13:50):
to my course being published.
Uh, there may be a time when Iwon't do any podcasts for a week
or two, because I'll probablybe recording and I have to save
my voice, um, but who knows?
I'm just going with the flowand I think that's the best way,
because whatever I share, Ipray that it only comes from the
(14:21):
divine and not from my ego ormy limited understanding or my
limited practical application ofthe teachings.
Anyway, yes, so let me knowwhat you think.
Share your thoughts for me.
What do you think about peoplethat say you know, are you one
of those people that do say,like, spiritual teachings aren't
practical enough.
Why do you say that?
Um, maybe we can have a nicelittle discussion, or you can do
it on discord.
Okay, thank you very much.
Take care.
Bye, namaste.
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