True God is the Truth right now in your heart. That is true godliness, true bhagavatta. The problem is that people want to avoid the real living Truth in their heart. Therefore, they come up with stories that place an imaginary God somewhere up in the skies. God is wonderful, but the stories and the imaginations about God are all very disrespectful towards God. When there is love for God, God is held very close to the chest, and that God is called Truth. That God is the very purpose of philosophy and the very origin.
Questioning pseudo-science and superstition is the first step toward genuine freedom. Beliefs such as *Vastu, Kundli,* and *Muhurat* should not be accepted merely because they have been followed traditionally. Fear and attachment to privileges often prevent people from questioning authority. A truth-seeker must be willing to challenge age, status, and authority. Human progress has come through curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, and reason—not through blind obedience.
Desires and beliefs may keep changing, but the deeper tendency to believe, think, choose, and seek fulfilment often remains unchanged. Real transformation begins by examining this constant inner pattern rather than changing superficial preferences. Instead of seeking conclusions about greed or desire, honestly observe recurring behavior and support the truth you already recognize. Expressing that truth can dissolve false identities, relationships, and habits, creating space for genuine change.
What is the relationship between quantum physics, consciousness, and the ego? This dialogue explores where scientific inquiry ends and self-enquiry begins. Through Vedanta, Acharya Prashant explains why the ego clings to its own existence, how beliefs and superstition shape our lives, and why lasting freedom lies beyond conditioned thinking.
If you do not have even a little light, then the great light will remain elusive. And that's a major tragedy that has befallen religious people. They expect the scriptures to give them a lot of light, which is fair. But they do not go to the scriptures with any light of their own, which is very, very unfair. The scriptures will give you a lot of light. But first of all, use whatever light you have to reach the scripture and read it properly. How will the scripture give you anything if you can't even apply basic sense to the verses or the stories or the injunctions?
If only the Upanishads are given to you, you will be overawed. You'll almost be struck with an inferiority complex—"Oh my God, where did this come from?" And you will not be able to develop any direct relationship with the Upanishads. But when you look at the entire body of the Vedas, what you see is a very human thing. But you look at the honesty of the compiler—he didn't hide anything. He said, "This is the entire process, this is the entire body of knowledge, and we are presenting everything to you."
Spirituality is neither a tradition nor a culture. Spirituality is not at all about following something or somebody. When it is said that you must follow the Guru, the Guru is the Truth, not a person not a man. Spirituality would never say, “Follow the words of a man.” Spirituality says, “Let the mind follow the Center, the Truth or you may call it the Heart or God.”
Any belief is stupid because all beliefs come from a lack of investigation, and a lack of investigation comes from deep fear and a feeling of insecurity. If you are insecure and afraid, then you will not dare to ask questions and investigate. And it is from that fear and insecurity that the concept of God has arisen. Now, God and reality are two different things. God and Truth are not the same thing. The mark of religiosity or true spirituality is an abiding faith in the truth.
Questioner: Good evening sir. I’m…. and I’m a PhD student here at IIT, Kanpur. Sir, I have a very personal question. Being a girl child, especially in India, comes with very different sets of consequences. Despite being given equal opportunities like education and skills, at the end where we’re supposed
Acharya Prashant: The four yugas in the Vedic tradition have been Satyug, Treta, Dvapara, and Kaliyug. Now, what do they represent? Do they represent the passage of time? Do they represent something historical? We have been led to believe that way, right? We believe that time is something external that
Acharya Prashant: Hell is a place where you get a lot of sympathy, consolation, condolence, and commiseration. You're told that we agree that you are in a miserable state. Your neighbor comes to you, puts his hand on your shoulder, and with a grave face tells you that you are…
If you say that you must provide your daughter with a protein rich diet, why does the protein have to come from dairy? When everything in your life is anyway factory produced, why not use factory produced protein as well? People say, “Oh! But that would be unnatural.” Hello? If…
You just keep feeling. Let the heart decide. The heart will decide. You feel, you think, you do whatever you want to do. You are a kid who is entitled to do everything and anything. Just don’t rebel against the father. As a kid, you are enlightened to live life as you want to. Just remain one with the father. Read more....
Acharya Prashant: If you will observe, you will find that people who are living most contented lives do not find it necessary to intrude in the lives of their kids, their sons and daughters. Because they are complete and satisfied in themselves. If they have to do something, or get
Question: Acharya Ji, a few minutes back in the session you said that in today’s times we will not approach God to Love him. We will approach Him to stab Him. You also said that animal operates from the centre of
Question: Sir, at the age of ten, one has a particular intelligence level, at the age of twenty-one has a different level of intelligence. Do you think it is possible to be intelligent without getting exposed to external influences?
Acharya Prashant: No, you don’t gather intelligence from outside. Biologically…
Modern life is increasingly driven by materialism, social validation, and the desire to impress, leaving authenticity behind. When image becomes more important than substance, relationships, education, and success turn into performances rather than expressions of truth. Real transformation begins with inward honesty—the courage to stop seeking approval, confront inner emptiness, and choose authenticity over appearances, imitation, and external validation.
Excerpts from Articles
Justice Without Boundaries: Why Compassion Cannot Stop at Species
Oppression should not see caste, gender, creed or colour, and it should not see species either. The moral threshold is sentience, not intelligence. An animal feels pain as fully as a human does, whether or not it can explain its suffering.
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।
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।
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?
Many so-called spiritual practices falsely promote intoxication as a path to higher consciousness. In reality, this only deepens confusion. True spirituality is about clarity and self-understanding, not external experiences or blind belief. Neither gurus nor media can offer truth. It must be discovered within by honestly observing and rejecting inner falseness, with awareness and sincerity.
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Question: A gentleman was saying that a person, who is drinking or is drunk, he still has got some kind of stability on mind, and he too, can judge. That is what I felt to be perhaps wrong. A person who is drunk probably loses his judgement and whatever we…
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The universe does not care for any human being. The universe is a very, very neutral place and a very random place. We are all products of randomness. Do you get this? The universe is not going to have any specific intention towards a specific individual. All that we are experiencing is episodes and events of random distribution. That’s all. Please understand the philosophy.
Beliefs can’t talk to each other. You will say, ‘The world was created on a Sunday.’ He’ll say, ‘No, on a Monday.’ He’ll say, ‘Tuesday.’ He’ll say, ‘Wednesday.’ Now talk, how will you reconcile this? You can only fight. Why do you need to believe? You look at the question, "What should I believe in?” Well, nothing.
Spirituality is not belief. Please, please. In fact, spirituality is constantly sniffing for belief. And if I smell belief there, I’ll come hunting. Spirituality is the unrelenting enquiry into all beliefs in life. “Why am I living on imaginations? I want to question.” Enquiry does yield results, but it requires honesty. If you honestly look at yourself, you’ll discover there is a reason why you are irritated. In the absence of honesty, belief is the crutch.
Prasad is what you get by being in contact with a luminous source. You are close to the Bhagavad Gita, there are insights, you start living those insights, others look at you and see something special, something luminous, and feel inspired — that is prasad. There is a certain realization, and you want to share it with everybody — that is prasad. Your own inner illumination is prasad.
Real spirituality is actually a shameless path — not something that sounds elevated or admirable. In contrast, conventional spirituality or ‘Lokdharm’ feels poetic and enchanting — romantic mysticism. The most common statements are often the ones that deserve your scrutiny. Whenever you're bombarded with high-sounding fluff, ask: “What exactly do you mean by that?” Expect answers rooted in bare facts, not in abstractions, idioms, or euphemisms.
As young people, we mistakenly take tradition to be the Truth. Tradition tells you in advance, "This is important," and you believe it. This has to stop. You must question, inquire, and experiment. Because if you have readymade definitions of what is important, then you will never come to what is truly important. And when you independently inquire, a lot of unimportant nonsense disappears from life, and fresh space is revealed. Now, through your own discretion and wisdom, if you decide that these things are indeed important, then so be it.
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You are promoting belief, and religion's mandate is to demolish belief. Religion's mandate is to promote inquiry. But as your example suggests, that has never really been the case. First of all, religion gets into all kinds of worldly things. Who made the rivers? Which tree is sacred and which tree is not? What to wear? Where to sleep? Whom to marry? What to eat? Religion gets into all these things which are none of religion's business. True religion is just an inquiry into the ego, the self. "Who am I?" That's religion.
You look at a person and you say, “This fellow gives me bad vibes.” Now, those bad vibes are your feelings about that person. But you are pretending as if your feelings are his quality. Vedanta says, “You are the source of all your experiences.” The cult of vibrations, auras, energies, positivity, and negativity — it is an enemy of self-observation. It will not allow you to look at yourself.
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To the one who believes in ghosts (Bhūta-Piśāca) — for him, they exist. When you are asleep and are engaged in some nightmare, you feel it actually exists. Bhūta-Piśāca Nikata Nahiṁ Āve, Mahāvīra Jab Nāma Sunāve: Mahavira Hanuman, devoted to Shri Ram, is to be taken as the representative of Truth. If you can be close to the representative of the Truth, you will get rid of all nonsensical and horrifying imaginations.
Don’t think of heaven and hell as the afterlife; both are here, right now. As the Niralamba Upanishad says: Right company is heaven; wrong company is hell. If you are someone who loves to be with people who will take you towards truth, joy, and simplicity, you are already in heaven. And if you surround yourself with people who pull down your consciousness, then verily, you are—right now—in hell.
Religion does not deal with gases and material and fire and oxidation. All that is not the rightful domain of religion. Religion deals with only one question: What is this "I"? What is it up to? What does it want? And why does it suffer? Religion deals only with ego and the liberation of ego. If, in the name of religion, you find other things being discussed, then this is the work of some fraud.
‘My life, my rules’. Whose life? Whose rules? Even this phrase, ‘my life, my rules’ is not coming from your own life. Even this rule, that if it’s my life, it has to be my rules, even this rule is not your own. So, you are being ruled by someone else when you say ‘my rules’. Even in saying ‘my rules’, it is somebody else’s rules that you are following and you still remain a slave, a slave by another name.
Afterlife is not even philosophy; it’s simply theology, present in every major religion. Science today confirms that there is nothing that survives the body. So, for whom are heaven and hell? It only takes one away from the direct realities of life because one is constantly dreaming of the afterlife. It is just an extremely venomous belief system.
The scientific community takes reincarnation as something of a joke. Studies have been done but those studies have amounted to nothing. When you are living an unfulfilled life then the concept of reincarnation comes as a savior because you think you deserve the bondage and there is no need to fight. It prevents you from bringing meaning to this one life that you have. The Gita too, very forcefully destroys this concept.
It has been extremely conclusively proven, demonstrated that astrology is not a science at all. It's a conjecture. It's a belief system. Belief system with no material basis at all.
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The center of the Gita is 'Nishkamta'—desireless action stemming from self-knowledge. Whereas popular religion is all about the fulfillment of desire. We go to a supernatural power and beg him to grant our desires. That is popular religion. You can either have the Gita or the entirety of religion as practiced in common culture. They are totally incompatible.
The best way to honor your ancestors is by becoming what they were destined to be — which Shri Krishna calls your Niyati or Liberation. Liberate yourself from ignorance and help the entire planet. That should be the meaning of Shraddh. Instead, it has become an elaborate ceremony of superstition, with beliefs about souls floating in other universes, being hungry, and talk of crows, sparrows, and crude myths.
Anybody who believes in astrology cannot be rational. All you have is a set of beliefs—the belief that this thing will happen. There is no logic in it, only fear and insecurity. Science is based on verifiable and falsifiable experiments, whereas astrology is not subject to verification; hence, it is just a story. It's a story that is making big money for a lot of storytellers.
Whatsoever is precious will be non-dualistic, and if it is non-dualistic, it cannot have an object. Totally, if you are anything, then you are spiritual. The totality itself is spirituality. The emphasis, then, will not be on materialistic totally. The totality is important. Being total means you are total—not divided, not limited, not small.
Remember, it is not as if Krishna did not try with Duryodhana. Krishna goes to Duryodhana and what does Duryodhana do? He tries to arrest him. Krishna goes as the messenger of peace and Duryodhana says no, no, no! The action of Love is still taking place. He is not saying that I will leave Duryodhana to his fate. He says it is my responsibility to teach even Duryodhana. But when Duryodhana proves it beyond doubt, that he is incorrigible, then Krishna says, “Fine, now that the battle is destined, let the blows rain.”
There is an innate inauspiciousness inbuilt in my existence. I am not good. And that’s the reason why man must seek improvement; that’s the reason why man seeks liberation; that’s the reason why man endeavors; that’s the reason why man has to look for successful navigation through life; that’s the reason why has man to look for success at all in some or the other field of life; that’s the reason man has desires. Because we are fundamentally not alright.
There is no way to rid yourself of sins except by coming very close to God, so close that you lose your individual identity. This is why the Upanishadic Mahavakya, 'Aham Brahmasmi' (I am Brahma), is central to all spirituality. Without this realization, no redemption is possible. No matter what you say about yourself, Truth, God, or the world, nothing will bring you peace. Only the declaration ‘I am That and That am I’ can offer true rest. Everything else is sin.
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Ghosts and gods and goddesses and all the stories we have read about this and that, obviously, they come from our own minds. Spirituality isn't about God; spirituality isn't about believing in anything. Neither ghosts nor gods. Not only does it say, ‘Do not believe in ghosts, do not believe in God,’ but it’s also so brutally honest that it says, ‘Do not believe even in yourself.’
If your trust has an object, it is mere belief, like saying, "I’ll be rescued because my friend will come." Faith is: "I do not bother whether I’m rescued; I am alright either way." Faith is not dependent on a person or reason; it reflects a fulfilled Self that is unbothered, when you are alright without an objective reason to be alright.
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Tiredness is a recognition, it is an admission, it is a surrender. One has to be so tired that he has no motivation left even to decide. As long as you are deciding, you are still acting, so you still have got some energy left. You are not tired. Tiredness means seeing that you have given all that you could, and that hope is useless. Tiredness means seeing that you cannot do anything new that you have not done so far.
When you stop taking yourself seriously, the world loses its power to hurt you. If someone can hurt you, they can also control and possess you. But you don’t want to be controlled, right? You are not the person who is controllable. The real ‘you’ is beyond hurt and domination. Ask yourself, do you want to be dominated? No! You are the one who cannot be controlled, and that is your true strength.
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Acharya Prashant: How can I identify a master with my limited knowledge? How can I judge his words to be true or false? If I go by faith or seeing their simplicity or innocence, I’m labeled as a blind believer. What should I do?
What is all spirituality about? If…
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Acharya Prashant: Latha is saying, why does she get angry so often even over small matters? Especially with some people, she is unable to control anger and she says she tried to change her attitude but hasn’t been quite successful. She is saying, now, how to change myself. Because anger…
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Questioner: Namskar Acharya ji. Pardon me for not remembering exactly but in one of the shivirs where we had read ‘Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’ to come to terms with this expression called ‘Adhikar Bhed.’
So therein Ramakrishna was saying that, “now in modern times there cannot be any Adhikar Bhed,…
prakriti
(nature), and the Saint operates from the centre
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Acharya Prashant:
So, here we are, sitting in a spiritual city. Everything here, the whole context is spiritual. Some of us are not from India, and they have come here for spiritual reasons.
So, what is Spirituality?
There is that which is visible, which appears substantial, is perceptible – we…
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Question: I have seen that the doer does not exist. I have seen that I am nothing.
Acharya Prashant: Who was seeing?
L: Witnessing of this witnesses.
AP: Who was seeing?
L: I can’t say.
AP: Then you must not say. Witnessing is not about coming to conclusions. You can…
