‘Sant Sarita’: Spirituality as Shedding, Not Adding

Acharya Prashant held his ‘Sant Sarita’ session in London on 7 June, taking as its theme the line “Santo So Nij Des Hamara.” The gathering drew participants from across the world, and an online audience of more than one lakh.

Working in the register of the sant tradition rather than formal scripture, Acharya Prashant advanced a claim that inverts the common picture of spiritual life. Spirituality, he said, is not a matter of adding anything to oneself, not new practices, credentials or experiences, but of shedding the false identities and mental narratives a person accumulates and mistakes for themselves. It is the ego, he explained, that manufactures a distorted experience of the world, and life becomes unforced only when one learns to see oneself as distinct from one’s stories, beliefs and circumstances. Religion, on this account, is not an external system of observance but a movement toward the dissolution of the ego, and honest observation remains the single reliable path to truth.

The session comes midway through the first leg of Acharya Prashant’s tour of Britain. He opened at the University of Cambridge, and has since held public sessions in London on 31 May and 4 June, addressed the UK India Youth Leadership Conclave 2026 on 1 June, and recorded a podcast conversation with Poorva Joshipura of PETA International on 3 June.