A Gnani is not a religious person. The religious person is not qualified to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.+

A Gnani is not a religious person. The religious person is not qualified to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana because the religion is based on faith, not the truth. The religion propagates ignorance, not the truth hidden by ignorance.

How religious man can get Gnana? He has not even taken the first step to knowing what God supposed to be in actuality.  He believes in heaven and hell as if he has personally been there on a conducted tour.

Religious man blindly prays without even knowing what God supposed to be according to his own scriptures.

Know God in truth

Religious Gods are based on blind belief. Belief is not God.  Religious God cannot be considered as the center because the Soul the  ‘Self’ is the center of all that exists. Without the Soul the world in which you exist ceases to exist, it means the religious God is dependent on the Soul for his existence. God in truth is only the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness.

Even The Bhagavad Gita says: ~ Brahmano hi pratisthaham ~ Brahman (God) is considered the all-pervading consciousness, which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material.  (14.27).

When Bhagavad Gita says, God is considered the all-pervading consciousness which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material then nothing has to be accepted as God other than consciousness. 

Even Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: ~ Brahman (God in truth) is in the form of the Athma, and it is indeed Athma itself.

Even Rig Veda: ~ The Atman is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman, the Self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5)

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declares: "He who worships the deities as entities entirely separate from him does not know the truth. For the Gods, he is like a pasu (beast)". (1. 4. 10)

 A religious man prays -- to the mythical Gods of his belief.  Mythical Gods are not God in truth.   There is a tremendous difference between prayer and Gnana.

Swami Vivekananda: ~ “The masses in India cry to sixty million Gods, and still die like dogs. Where are these Gods?

Knowing this, stand up and fight! Not one step back that is the idea. ... Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the sphere! Let the whole world stand against us! Death means only a change of garment. What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards. ... Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the Gods in the world. Has misery ceased? The masses in India cry to sixty million Gods and still die like dogs. Where are these Gods? ... The Gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. ... This bending the knee to superstitions, this selling yourself to your own mind does not befit you, my Soul. You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are the infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. ... Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are the entire world. Who can help you? - Swami Vivekananda  (Delivered In San Francisco, on May 28, 1900) -The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Gita II

Prayer is directed towards a mythological God, a fiction. Prayer is always directed outward. Gnana is an inward journey, not to some fiction but the reality hidden by the ignorance. Enlightenment happens when the Soul, the 'Self' wakes up from its sleep of ignorance.

Religious people are busy praying and worshipping to a God of their belief, thinking God is somewhere, up there, monitoring every act of the people, guiding the lost and uplifting the poor. God is the one who punishes the evil and rewards the benevolent.

Some people even claim of seeing them in stone idols or some conceptual belief, in inanimate or living things. Is it our faith that makes us believe that there is some supreme power above us or is it a reality, can never be answered.  

Till this conviction is there one is in the grip of the dualistic illusion (I). The dualistic illusion keeps one in the ignorance of the Self.  Therefore, there is a need to realize the fact that, the Self is not ‘I’ but it is the formless Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness.

Sage Sankara: ~   VC Neither sacred baths nor any amount of charity nor even Hundreds of pranayamas* can give us the knowledge about our own Self.  The firm experience of the nature of the Self is seen to proceed from inquiry along the lines of the salutary advice of the wise. (13)

 God is divine, only held in the bondage of the ignorance (matter); perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from ignorance.

No prayers or mantras help to get rid of ignorance. All the prayers and mantras and rituals are meant for the ignorant populace, which strongly believes, the world in which he exists as a reality.  For one who wants to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana, the mantas will not help to realize the truth, which is beyond the form, time and space.

That is why Sage  Sankara VC~.61. For one who has been bitten by the serpent of Ignorance, the only remedy is the knowledge of Brahman. Of what avail are the Vedas and (other) Scriptures, Mantras (sacred formulae) and medicines to such a one?

VC-  v6~ Let erudite scholars quote all the scripture, let Gods be invoked through sacrifices, let elaborate rituals be performed, let personal Gods be propitiated---yet, without the realization of one‘s identity with the Self, there shall be no liberation for the individual, not  even in the lifetimes of a hundred Brahmas put together

Sage Sankara goes on to say: ~A sickness is not cured by saying the word “medicine.” You must take the medicine. Liberation does not come by merely saying the word “Brahman (God).” Brahman must be realized. Until you allow this apparent universe to dissolve from your consciousness until you have realized Brahman, how can you find liberation just by saying the word Brahman? The result is merely noise. Until a man has destroyed his enemies and taken possession of the splendor and wealth of the kingdom, he cannot become a king by simply saying “I am a king.”

When one becomes aware of the fact that the Soul is the Self, then he realizes the fact that whatever known, seen, believed and experienced on the base of the ‘I’ is an illusion.

If you search for the ‘Self’  then you will find only the Soul.  If you search for truth then you will find only the Soul. If you search for God then you will find only the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. 

Thus, the Soul is the Goal.  The Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness, is the ultimate truth or Brahman or God in truth. 

Remember:~ 

Sage Sankara clearly indicates in Viveka Chudamani (2) that the Knower of the Atman (A Gnani) "bears no outward mark of a holy man" (Stanza 539).

So, Sage Sankara clearly indicates A Gnani "bears no outward mark of a holy man" then why to hold Gurus and Yogis who identify themselves as holy men.

A Gnani never identifies himself as a Guru or a Yogi or someone disciple. The one who accepts himself as a Guru or someone’s disciple is not a Gnani.

Ashtavakra Samhita: ~ "The man of knowledge (Gnani), though living like an ordinary man, is contrary to him and only those like him understand his state.

In Self-awareness, ignorance vanishes and the unreal nature of the form, time and space are exposed.

In Self-awareness (in the midst of duality), the body is not considered as the body, the ego is not considered as ego the world is not considered as the world because everything is created out of single stuff. That single stuff is consciousness (Soul

A Gnani has realized everything is consciousness (Brahman). For a Gnani, there is no second thing exists other than the consciousness. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar