Gurudev, can an atheist get liberated?

GURUDEV SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR: Absolutely yes! But he should remove the label ‘I am an atheist’. If he is a ‘nobody’, he can get liberated. If you simply say, “I don’t know whether there is some other power or not, I have no idea”, then you are not an atheist. One who admits ignorance is not an atheist. Who is an atheist? One who says, “I know there is no God”, he is atheist.

What do atheists say? “What I know is all that is, what I don’t know does not exist! If something exists, I must know it! Since I don’t know, whatever I don’t know, does not exist!” If that is the atheism (that you believe in), then you will miss many things because you already ‘know’ that nothing exists, so you will not want to know whether anything exists or not.

If you are agnostic, it is fine. If you say, “I don’t know, I won’t believe unless I know”, this is fine. In fact, the Oriental philosophy never asks you to believe something that you don’t know, unlike the Occidental philosophy. In the Occident, they say that you believe in God, then one day you will get an experience. In the Orient, they will never say that.

In the Orient, first know the knowledge of the five principles (earth, water, fire, air, ether), then the three principles (mind, intellect and ego), and then the ninth one (the Self). If you know these eight, then will you know the Self. Once you know the Self, i.e., atma, then you will know that which is beyond the Self, i.e., Paramatma. Beyond I, there is something called Eshwar , which you know only by experience. When it comes to your experience, only then can you say you believe it! Before that, you don’t need to believe it. However, you can’t say, “I don’t believe it exists!”