Within the Charvaka or Lokayata perspective, anything termed “supernatural” is treated with radical suspicion and ultimately rejected. Only the physical world, accessible through direct sensory perception, is granted reality. Claims about gods, heavens and hells, or any hidden realms beyond what the senses disclose are viewed as fabrications, lacking any firm grounding in experience. This stance extends to the authority of sacred texts: the Vedas and similar scriptures are not seen as divine revelations, but as human compositions that do not provide reliable knowledge of unseen entities.

Charvaka thought also denies the existence of non-physical souls, spirits, or any enduring spiritual essence distinct from the body. Consciousness is understood as arising from the combination and interaction of material elements, rather than from an immaterial self. When the body dissolves, consciousness ceases, leaving no room for an afterlife, rebirth, or continued journey of a soul. Concepts such as karma operating beyond observable cause and effect, or rebirth in other worlds, are therefore dismissed as unprovable and speculative.

This thoroughgoing skepticism rests on a clear epistemological commitment: direct perception is upheld as the only fully trustworthy means of knowledge. Inference is treated cautiously and is not allowed to justify belief in what cannot, even in principle, be tied back to sensory evidence. Scriptural testimony and priestly claims about divine intervention or hidden cosmic laws are thus refused any special status. Religious rituals, supernatural promises, and threats of post-mortem reward or punishment are seen as superstitions that can be used to exploit human fear and ignorance.

From this vantage point, all phenomena are to be explained through material causation, even when they appear mysterious or extraordinary. Rather than invoking invisible powers or realms, Charvaka encourages looking to natural causes, whether or not they are currently understood in detail. Death, in this view, is simply the final dissolution of the body, with no continuation of consciousness in another plane. The result is a starkly naturalistic outlook that leaves no conceptual space for the supernatural, grounding spiritual inquiry firmly in the immediacy of lived, embodied experience.