Freedom is for the Free || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: The question is, ‘Why must one be persuaded? What is the role of persuasion in teaching?’
Acharya Prashant: He is asking that is it alright if teaching involves a certain degree of persuasion. Let us try to understand this.
Freedom is only available to a free mind. A mind that has been deeply conditioned, deeply enslaved moves from no other factor except persuasion. He does not recognize any other factor. Even to wake him up, you have to persuade him, initially for little period. If you will leave him to himself, he will only do what he has been conditioned to do.
A free man can be left to himself, he must be left to himself. But a conditioned man cannot be left to himself. Are you getting it?
Freedom is for those who deserve it.
Listener 1: So, we don’t deserve it?
AP: You surely deserve it but right now you have convinced yourself that you are not free. You have deeply convinced yourself that you require, as you said, some force or persuasion and certain other things.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.