Do you get stuck between hope and fear while thinking about the future? The problem isn’t the future, but your intention. Most people look ahead just to remain who they are. The right approach is to use the future as a chance to change. When the goal is truly challenging, there’s no time left to worry or expect results—only to act fully.
Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, you once said that motivation and ambitions are symptoms of suffering but I think if one lives with ambition, the journey will teach him a lot. Life will become disarrayed. Please explain.
Questioner: Ramana Maharshi says, “There is no difference between the dream and the waking state except that the dream is short and the waking state is long.” Further at another place he says, “Just before waking up from sleep there is a very brief state free from thought. That should…
Detachment and ambition are not opposites. Both arise from clear insight into what is truly valuable. Detachment means naturally dropping what is seen as false, futile, or harmful, while ambition means pursuing the highest and most meaningful truth with complete intensity. Spiritual surrender is continuous: as understanding deepens, false attachments are repeatedly abandoned, until renunciation becomes natural and almost choiceless.
Success and failure matter less when your work is driven by love rather than outcomes. Setbacks are opportunities to reflect, not reasons to quit, and true failure comes only when you stop trying. Regret and guilt become meaningful only if they transform you into a different person instead of becoming excuses for self-pity. Real growth begins by questioning your assumptions, facing reality honestly, and living with awareness rather than mechanical habit.
Acharya Prashant: We want to look at ‘ambition’. So, as I enter, I see that we have been singing Kabir; Kabir talking about achievement, about ambition, about greed and desire and he seems to be taking a clear position, it’s unmistakable. Let us not leave it ambiguous, there is a
So, in your day-to-day life, practically, obviously, you will have these goals—you have to go to your workplace, you have to go to this thing, that thing—fine, those goals are there. But you have to remember that, ultimately, going to your workplace yields you nothing—maybe financial or physical sustenance, that's all. So the illusion of meaning has to be destroyed. The ego will otherwise keep looking for meaning where there can be no meaning—and in that lies a lot of suffering.
Ambition is a very stale thing. It’s a dead thing. Do not forget where it comes from; it comes from your past in the jungle. You are conditioned to be desirous, and social forces just encourage you to be even more desirous of the same things that you have been wanting since a million years. The same things.
Dreams arise from internal restlessness and a deep subconscious desire; there is nothing wrong with that. But if that desire is not understood properly, you'll end up chasing the wrong objects, assuming that the objects of your dreams are all that you want. So, don't take your dreams at face value. Go deep and see what your heart really longs for. A hint: dreams can guide you, but only if you read them properly.
Acharya Prashant:
Are you day dreaming and knowing that it is day dreaming?
No! It’s not possible. You know that you have been dreaming only after the dreaming ceases. Right?
Now you are obviously helpless when the process of…
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Listener: Sir, in the last session we were told that all dreams arise from past experiences. I agree that dreams arise from past but then how do I dream of something which is not at all present in my past? How do I dream of something that I have not…
You were once a girl; you would have read mathematics, history, science, geography, languages. Didn’t you find inspiring figures there? Didn’t those books arouse fantastic ideas in you?
I am sure that when you were younger, you thought of excellence, didn’t you? You would have had dreams. In your dreams,…
Excerpts from Articles
ज्योतिष कितना सच है? कुंडली, ग्रह-नक्षत्र: इनका क्या अर्थ है?
वेदांत को केवल इसलिए सही या श्रेष्ठ नहीं माना जा सकता कि वह किसी विशेष परंपरा से आता है। विज्ञान जहाँ भौतिक जगत की वस्तुनिष्ठ जाँच करता है, वहीं अद्वैत वेदांत सीधे मनुष्य के ‘मैं’, उसके दुख, बंधन और मुक्ति की पड़ताल करता है। इसकी कसौटी वैज्ञानिक प्रमाण नहीं, बल्कि अपने जीवन में इसकी सच्चाई को देख पाना है। किसी दर्शन को मान लेना नहीं, बल्कि उससे स्वयं को मुक्त करना ही उसका वास्तविक उद्देश्य है।
Victory is not decided by the trophy you hold but by the battle you choose to fight. Real strength lies in making the right decisions, staying true to your deepest values, and refusing to be ruled by fear or circumstances. When your actions arise from clarity rather than ambition, the outcome loses its power over you. The moment you choose the right path, you have already won.
Struggling to choose between a secure job and the path you actually feel drawn to? This isn't really a question about careers. It's about why other people's opinions have so much power over you in the first place. Real clarity doesn't come from finding the 'right' choice. It comes from honestly looking at your own fear, again and again, until it stops running the decision for you.
Climate change is more than an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of human choices. Our patterns of consumption, consumerism and endless pursuit of more are putting increasing pressure on the planet. But meaningful change does not necessarily begin with new technology or stricter policies. It begins with a deeper question: what are we willing to change within ourselves?
You Don't Understand the Bhagvad Gita, But You Still Claim That You Love Krishna?
The Bhagavad Gita deserves reverence not because of inherited beliefs about its author, but because of its power to dissolve falsehood and reveal Truth. Real devotion is not ritual or blind faith—it is understanding, inquiry, and living the wisdom of the Gita. Through sincere study, one discovers the true meaning of Krishna, making the Gita the most authentic path to knowing and worshipping Him.
Animal cruelty: Who deserves mercy, and who doesn’t?
Violence begins long before the knife or the slaughterhouse—it begins with the ego, the one that draws boundaries, seeks justification, and decides who deserves compassion. Laws and reforms may reduce suffering, but they cannot end violence while the ego remains intact. When the ego dissolves, exploitation ends naturally, and compassion no longer depends on regulation or moral boundaries.
कई तरह के डर—अकेले पड़ने, छवि खोने या छोटा समझे जाने—की जड़ अक्सर अतीत में बनी पहचान और कहानियों में होती है। शरीर की हाइट जैसी चीज़ों को समस्या मानकर उनसे जूझने के बजाय उनकी अप्रासंगिकता को समझकर आगे बढ़ना चाहिए। अतीत को दबाने से मुक्ति नहीं मिलती; उसके करीब जाकर अपनी स्मृतियों, धारणाओं और पुराने पैटर्न को निष्पक्षता से देखना ज़रूरी है।
Questioner: You advise us to have a purposeless, aimless life. But if we will not aim for anything, then how will I crack my exams? In your younger days, you too prepared for exams like MBA, IIT JEE, Civil services, etc. But now you say having aims is no good.…
Speaker:
The ones who coined this word ‘daydreaming’ used it as a kind of a pejorative, as a condemnation. Their assumption was that, dreaming befits only the sleeping state of consciousness and
in the waking state, dreaming must not happen
; that
dreaming must not be
…
Acharya Prashant (AP): Don’t you see an obvious contradiction in what you are saying?…
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Questioner (An engineering student): Acharya Ji, what made you inclined towards Spirituality, after education from premier institutions like IIT-D and IIM-A?
Acharya Prashant (AP): A couple of decades ago, I was on that side where you all are sitting now, in another engineering college, IIT-Delhi. We too used to…
Struggling to choose between a secure job and the path you actually feel drawn to? This isn't really a question about careers. It's about why other people's opinions have so much power over you in the first place. Real clarity doesn't come from finding the 'right' choice. It comes from honestly looking at your own fear, again and again, until it stops running the decision for you.
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Wrong career choices, unhealthy relationships, and endless entertainment are often symptoms of escaping oneself rather than seeking happiness. Self-deception, ego, and inner dissatisfaction drive people toward temporary relief through social media, gaming, movies, and distractions. Real transformation begins with self-inquiry, honest awareness, and the courage to face reality instead of running from it, leading to clarity, freedom, and meaningful living.
Success achieved under pressure or conditioning is not true success because the goal was never truly one's own. Before chasing any achievement, one must ask whether the desire is authentic or borrowed from society. Real change comes not from becoming stronger but from gaining clarity and honesty about oneself. Young people are already capable; what keeps them trapped is the comfort of obeying external expectations. Life is too short to spend serving invisible masters instead of pursuing what one genuinely loves and understands.
True dedication does not feel like painful sacrifice. When a goal becomes love, unnecessary distractions quietly lose importance instead of being forcefully abandoned. Personal growth and contribution to society are not separate; meaningful work naturally benefits both oneself and others. Real freedom is not outward performance but inner clarity. Life should be measured by inner elevation, not by comparison with others’ achievements.
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Saurabh Netravalakar, a software engineer and cricketer, discusses balancing multiple pursuits with Acharya Prashant. They explore how hidden wastage of time and energy prevents genuine progress. The conversation extends to team sports teaching ego-dissolution, broadening identity beyond self-interest, and addressing planetary crises through inner transformation. They examine how religion's core purpose—freedom from suffering—unites humanity despite different practices, and discuss practical solutions to environmental exploitation through proper pricing and intent.
Our mood is always dependent on others and situations. Results have not been up to your expectations. So now you require a morale booster, some motivating speaker. The moment that fellow is gone, your energy also goes away. But there is another way of living. Deep within myself, I find a point that no external situation can touch. Whatever happens, happens on the surface. That will remain stable, uninvolved, a non-participant. Then you are really free.
If you do not understand spirituality, you will fail even in economics. Look at how common people live their daily lives. Do we inquire into what we are doing? We do things because others are doing the same things. Out of ignorance, you act; and out of greed, you keep acting. Economics does not address the problem of ignorance. Economics also does not address the problem of greed. It is the Upanishads and the Gita that address these problems.
All of us want a new future. But the brain cannot want anything new. How many of you would want to taste a dish like Kakatua? Forget about tasting it, you haven’t even heard the name before. So, there is a golden rule: all desire is nothing but a stale repetition of memories. Ambition is nothing but a repetition of the past. What you didn’t know in the past, you can’t want in the future. New is new only when it is totally unrelated to the past. The truly new comes as a surprise.
Be in love with your work and give it just everything that you have. The quality of the relationship must be so high that you are left choiceless in attending to it. Once you have given it all that you have, you will be left with very little time, space, or energy to bother about the result. “I gave everything that I had; now it is difficult to differentiate between defeat and victory.” Live so intensely that, in the end, you are left with no energy to be concerned with the result.
The money you pay for something must be commensurate with its practical utility, but how do you know something is worth its price? For example, does jewellery really have any utility that you pay so much for just a piece of metal? The average Indian household spends much more on the girl’s dowry than on her education. And poor farmers in India are often pushed to suicide because they spend a lot on weddings and funerals by borrowing at exorbitant rates. This is what happens when you are not deeply spiritual: you can be easily conditioned to earn from the wrong source and spend at the wrong place.
It is one kind of misfortune to not have money at all. The next kind of misfortune is to have a lot of money rotting in your bank account. Why must it be there in your bank account? You are so impoverished, you couldn't find a right place where you can spend your money. Money is meant to be spent. Spend it at the right places. Go enroll in a hobby class. Get a tennis coach. All that is expensive. Spend your money. If you won't, then you will end up just buying whatever your friends buy.
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Acharya Prashant: That's why the rājasika mind is better than the tāmsika mind. The rājasika says, “I’m not alright. I need to do something to become better. I feel inferior. I feel incomplete. I need to rise. I need to achieve.” That’s the rājasika mind. The rājasika mind at least…
We all have been trained to buy respect and barter it for life itself — through riches, status, etc. This means that you're a big man only as long as the small ones approve of you. But what is the point of being big, rich, and powerful, if it is still the small ones that call the shots for you? And this is not exclusive to the successful ones. Every single person who does not know the foundations of living will live in a secondhanded way — secondhanded love, success, and respect. And this will not allow you any kind of peace.
For change to happen, somebody has to be a change agent. But if that agent starts thinking, “I’m not exploited; I benefit from this discriminatory system too,” then who will demand change? My employer earns 11X from my intellectual labor, pays me X, and saves 10X. But that X enables me to run my household and fulfill my dreams. So, will I ever rise and rebel? The system bribes you into submission. The exploiter incentivizes the exploited to stay exploited.
Your entire identity comes from the world — society, religion, family, tradition. Had your identity been independent of the world, then you wouldn't have needed to get ahead or prove anything to the world. And when there is more internal hollowness and insecurity, there is more need to ostentate. The deeper the lovelessness, the more lavish the wedding is. So, the fundamental problem is the framework in which you cannot be successful without being ahead of the world. Real success is when you drop this framework.
Questioner (Q): The theme of today’s interaction is inner growth. Usually when we talk of growth, we talk of external growth. For example, for an individual growth usually means job promotions, better income, or more comforts, etc. For a company, growth may mean growing in profits. For an institution, it…
Good spirituality is good economics. We do not know what to purchase. We do not know what really is valuable, even in the material domain. The punishment of not being spiritual is that you lead a very bad, a very ruined worldly life and that includes an economic life, a ruined economic life. It is not merely the person, even nations, actually the entire world suffers when the one making the economic decision is spiritually bankrupt.
For those who already have a certain level of financial, social, intellectual, and familial attainment but are still not satisfied, the only thing that can fulfill them is forgetfulness towards their personal success. Serve a cause bigger than yourself, and there will be no time or opportunity to keep wondering whether your demands have been met. This is when you have really succeeded.
Those who work towards 'an end' find that they are defeated both in the work and in achieving 'the end' because even if they somehow manage to reach that end, they find that it's not really what they wanted. So, they proceed to the next destination; this is a vicious cycle. On the other hand, those who work because the work itself is a celebration, they win doubly because the work itself is the end, and they celebrate all the way to success.
It’s not capitalism versus socialism; if the center I am operating from is itself animalistic, then I will want to earn profits for myself, whatever be the social cost. The change that we need is inward- ‘self-knowledge’. We need an education system in which the child is very openly helped to face his/her animalistic nature, then we will develop a certain humility to look for solutions beyond our tendencies.
…
If you know that a thought is not beneficial to you, you won't support it, and it cannot survive. So, if a bad thought continues in your mind, it means you're only calling it a "bad thought," yet deep down, you support it. Deep down, you think it is a ‘good thought.’ Had you really known it was ‘bad', it would have gone. But our minds are full of so-called bad thoughts. What does that mean? We call them ‘bad', but we do not truly consider them bad. We enjoy them.
The Gita is useful because its setting is extremely relatable. Just like us, Arjuna does not know himself—he's a victim of multiple identities and all kinds of conditioning. Therefore, the Gita is about letting Arjuna know who he is, and this illumination enables him to do what he must. So, first of all, see that you are Arjuna. Then, step by step, verse by verse, there will be some resolution.
All words have existential connotations to the ego. That existential connotation is the meaning. If that connotation is removed, words will do nothing. All words carry something that impinges on your very existence. If you can clear the word of that, then words will remain just words, and no words will have the power to shake you up or disturb you.
By all means, have goals. But the goal should not be more important than the game itself. If there is any meaning, the meaning is in the game. The goal might be achieved in the process of the game—fine. But the meaning does not lie in the goal. The meaning lies in the game. Play with abandon. You’ll forget to count the number of goals. Somebody will have to draw your attention towards the scoreboard. "I got so much into the game, I lost count of goals." This is not some impractical, utopian fiction. This is what the greats have lived by. This is the very substance of greatness.
A worthy motive would always have something to do with your current condition. It would either be something that gives you joy, or it would be something that gives you liberation. And even these two, after a point, you will see, are identical. It would either be something that gives you unconditional joy—purposeless joy. It is something you can do without getting any reward. If there is something that attracts you this way, then it's fit to be your goal.
No, no, you don't have to be empty of anything. You just have to be empty of the choice to use anything in your defense. You are born with ammunition; you don't have to keep the ammunition aside. Let the gun be there with you—just don't fire at the teacher. That's all that Shri Krishna is saying. You don't have to empty the gun. Keep it loaded; it's all right.
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If you choose a goal that's not worthy, you'll try hard to concentrate on it, but you'll invariably get distracted. That's not because the distractions are powerful; it's because your goal is powerless. If your goal offers you unconditional joy or leads to your freedom and liberation, you will never be distracted.
I have been insisting continuously that consciousness, real consciousness is a choice. In a process, there is no choice. The fellow in front of you, how much of a choice does he have? If he has no choice, why get angry? And if he has choice, then the mark of having choice is that you will not choose wrongly. And then you will not get a reason to be angry at him. Had he really had a choice, he would have chosen rightly. And had chosen rightly, you would have found no reason to get mad at him.
Thought is a servant; thought is a shadow. The shadow cannot betray its owner, its master. So, what changes is the nature of the ego itself, not the nature of thought. So when we say, for example, selfless thought, that primarily implies that the ego has improved, loosely put. Since I have become better, so have my thoughts. Now, I cannot remain the same and say my thoughts have become selfless, and if I do that, then I'm being pretentious and just fooling myself.
I’m already bad, and through the thought process, I make a choice that makes my condition worse. I will always choose a woman who does me no good. And if a woman exists, coincidentally, who can be of real help to me, the job of thought will be to push that woman aside. Ditto for the other combination. As a woman, you don’t want a man who will challenge your most fundamental beliefs.
Questioner:* I am Darshan, and my question is very simple yet complicated. So why do we not work? So even after knowing that if we work, we will get something that we are looking for. So, to take an example, I had the opportunity to interact with a lot…
Be compassionate towards yourself, and have faith that freedom is possible and that life can be enjoyed really. Life need not be a melancholy song; it can be a symphony of ecstasy. That faith has to be there.
Do not surrender so easily to the forces of littleness. They will…
Work is the most important component of your life, it will take away all your time. You cannot approach work with these considerations: salary & stability. Discover your calling, not just a job, a calling. What is it that calls you as a lover? What kind of work that would be which you are ready to do even without being paid? If that work can be your life, then life is beautiful.
The mind chatters only about little and inconsequential things. First of all, the matter would be a petty one; secondly, irrespective of how long the chatter is, the matter can never be brought to an end; so it is inconsequential. The mind loves to engage itself with itself. The mind loves to roll in its own stuff. Give the mind a proper purpose. Let the entire body, your entire system, everything in your existence be focused, be channelized towards the right purpose in life.
