Liberation

Does Following Myself Lead to Freedom?

Questioner: Why is there a difference of intensity and love for mukti (liberation) between different human beings?

Acharya Prashant: The differences that you are talking of all relate to time; therefore, they all will be resolved in due course of time. Time gave rise to all those differences, and those… read_more

8 min

If following others is slavery, the mind quickly wants to conclude that following oneself is freedom. No, following oneself is deeper slavery because what we call the 'self' is just an aggregate of internalized, pervasive influences, like a crow mistaking a cuckoo’s eggs for its own. True freedom is to be free of others and, more importantly, yourself.

The Biggest Obstacle to a Spiritual Life || AP Neem Candies

1 min

Fulfillment is what you want, don’t you? There won’t be any fulfillment until you break your inner bondages. And the most central, critical, and primary bondage is body-identification.

Use everything that your birth, your body, and Prakriti (physical nature) have given you. Use all of that for the sake of… read_more

Love or Knowledge: Which is More Powerful for Liberation?

The Hypocrisy of Climate Warriors

Acharya Prashant: Love is the fire that melts down the bondage that is you. Knowledge is merely the light in which you can see your bondages. Even if you are able to look at your chains in the light of knowledge, that does not rid you of the chains. In… read_more

How to Make Oneself Do the Right Thing?

Acharya Prashant: The very urge for liberation, when it doesn’t find an outlet, becomes the urge to consume. Do you see this? Where does the tendency to consume so much come from? It comes from the misidentified and thwarted urge toward liberation. If you will not provide liberation to a… read_more

7 min

Questioner 1: In my experience, what’s happening is that I really like reading scriptures, so I’ve been reading them for quite some time. But with time, what I’ve observed is that earlier there used to be a freshness and it would stay with me. There was a sense of excitement… read_more

For Those who Want Freedom

Stay Cautious with Such Energies

Questioner: Namaskar Acharya Ji. You talked of Mukti. So, I would like to know, is it a Mukti from life and birth? I mean, more, If you can elaborate?

Acharya Prashant: Mukti from internal compulsions. The goal of life can be talked of as Mukti which is Liberation, which is… read_more

Questioner: My question is that I heard that there are two cosmic energies, these two Cosmic energies will take out all the sufferings of the people, which are from treta yuga of Lord Sri Ram and Lakshman get received the cosmic energies from Sage Vishwamitra, those are called some bala… read_more

What is Clarity?

Spontaneous, or Carried Away?

Questioner: Sir, what is clarity?

Acharya Prashant: Clarity is two things together: One, it is the absence of readymade concepts based on which one lives, one reacts, one sees the world, and parallelly, simultaneously, on the other hand, it is the ability to respond greatly. So, on the one hand,… read_more

Women in Revealing Dresses: Liberation or Titillation?

Questioner: Why think so much about decisions? Shouldn’t our decisions be spontaneous? I like to decide in a free flow.

Acharya Prashant: So the questioner is stressing on the spontaneity of decisions. He says that he likes to decide in a flow. It's a good thing, your intention is good.… read_more

9 min

To those who articulate that women should mind their clothes and dressings, the question arises: what kind of person are you, man or woman, if anything is able to disturb or provoke you so easily? The allegation is that when watching a woman dressed skimpily, it becomes a disturbance, a distraction, even a provocation. How will you insulate yourself, and how much will you insulate yourself from the world? And what are the limits to what you want to see and not see? Today, it is said that a woman’s legs or thighs provoke you. What prevents you from saying tomorrow that her ankles and fingernails provoke you? Would you then demand that she should cover up from head to toe?

Do I Know You? || AP Neem Candies

Choose the Right Career Using Bhagavad Gita's Teachings on Work

Acharya Prashant: We anyway live in attitudes, try to have a carefree attitude. Try to have an attitude of reasonless security, try to have an attitude in which you don't get daunted easily, you don't start shivering easily.

The world might be stamping its feet in front of you, angrily,… read_more

14 min

There can be two sets of actions to choose from. One action could be the one that will load one with more bondages. Action that will lead to a thickening or deepening of your bondages. Another is kartavya i.e. action that leads to Freedom from your bondages. You can see the chains, so your action is for the sake of your Freedom, Liberation.

What Is the Price of Freedom?

How to Make the World a Better Place?

Questioner: What is the price of freedom? What is it that convinces someone to pay that price? What is the reason for someone wanting freedom in the first place?

Acharya Prashant: Certain things do not even require a reason to validate them, because they are . What is need not… read_more

18 min

If you want something extraordinary like Liberation to happen in the society, then you have to take extraordinary care as a society. You need that kind of a society that chooses the right kinds of rulers and brings up the right kind of institutions. To get the society to do that, you have to teach the society.

You Can Respect the Formless Only by Respecting His Forms

Intellectual gorilla or a simple human being? || Neem Candies

Questioner: Sir, we just heard one of the couplets of Kabir, saying,

“जो सुख साधू संग में, सो बैकुंठ न होय”

(The Joy that I find in the company of Saint, that Joy is greater than the Joy of heaven).

Is this verse being used in a negative connotation? What… read_more

1 min

Acharya Prashant: If you find religion bad, then just honestly consider a world totally without religion. Then probably you will not find religion so bad.

I assure you, there is nothing in man’s physical constitution that prevents him from being envious or lustful or tense or attached. In fact, man… read_more

3 Levels of Happiness - Hell, Heaven and Liberation

25 min

Overview

Hell focuses on what you have. Heaven reminds you of who you are. And once you clearly remember who you are, you don’t even need heaven; then what you have is Liberation. Do not starve yourselves of happiness. If you are giving up on lower happiness, make sure that… read_more

Should You Sacrifice Your Pleasures - When and How Much? || AP Neem Candies

It is not arrogance to expect the highest for yourself. It is not at all your destiny to remain small. Arrogance lies in expecting the highest while remaining exactly as one is. The Vedas say, “If you underestimate yourself, you are doing a disfavor to yourself. If you overestimate yourself, you are still giving yourself a raw deal.”

Acharya Prashant: You have to ask yourself what your primary identity is. If your primary identity is that of the body, then do what the body commands you to do. Good. The body has an inbuilt software of its own, and it’s a self-improving software. Its capacity to keep improving… read_more

What is Arrogance?

9 min

Who Am I?

21 min

Who am I?' arises from a relatively unconscious state, simply meaning, 'I will not remain the one who asked it.' You will have to become conscious. So the one who asks this question will have to disappear to get the answer. 'Who am I?' is for the wise, who are no longer interested in remaining troubled.

'I Want to be Free'- Your Eligibility for Spirituality

The first instinct has to be — I want to be free. I do not like my current state. The first thing is — I do not want to be like this and the seeker or the student, if he is not uttering this very basic admission; then he stands disqualified. Your first utterance of your eligibility is — I do not like myself. I do not like the way I am. There has to be a burning intent to not to remain who you are, or the way you are.

Does an Early Morning Routine Matter?

12 min

If there is work to do, how do I say that my routine necessitates going to bed at 11 pm. When you say routine that means, these are the hours I will study, these are the hours and I’ll do this, do that and these are the hours when I will have my spare time for leisure etc. So, a routine is some kind of luxury, you require a discipline beyond a routine. A successful life, in some sense, is about dancing to somebody else's tune. Who’s tunes? Something bigger than yourself. Something bigger than yourself.

What Is the Price of Freedom?

Freedom is invaluable, it is who you are, and you won’t get any kind of rest or peace without freedom. If you are not free, something within you would keep bleeding, wailing, crying for liberation. It’s just that once you agree to pay the price, you discover that the thing that you are paying for freedom actually carries very little value, even negative value. Your bondages is the price that you pay; your bondages are the things that you renounce to be free.

Why Are Women So Emotional?

The usual feminism always proceeds keeping the man at the center. The woman is saying, “The man is alright and I want to be like the man.” This is such a low standard to set, whereas true feminism would proceed keeping the person that the female is, her real potential at the center. Real feminism is raising to your own individual center, called the true self or Atman.

Niralamba Upanishad: What Is Heaven and What Is Hell?

14 min

Your deepest dream is to just be what you are, what you really are. And the world gives you a thousand dreams, but not this one. Heaven is the moment when you realize that this dream is possible. Hell is when you have already lost your way, and there are voices around that say, "You cannot go back, there is no home." All that forces tell you not to fly too high, the forces that tell you that compromise is the name of the game-the company of such voices is hell. A point comes where there is neither heaven nor hell. There is just an empty stillness- Beyond.

What Is My Destiny? How Do I Achieve It?

Destiny is the inviolable thing. You cannot get rid of it. You have to reach there. So, better choose in favour of your destiny. Now, destiny is something that can, at most, keep waiting till eternity. But you can never dismiss it. So, make a choice in the favour of destiny. Bow down to your destiny, surrender to your destiny. If it has to happen, why keep postponing it? Because that postponement is just suffering. Destiny is love. Destiny is what each of us craves, is crazy for.

Is Enlightenment More Difficult for Women?

17 min

A man has to give up on greed, on this and that. A woman has to give up on the feelings related to the body. On all the assumptions and other stuff related to the body. Leaving the house, for her, is like becoming naked. And then the rest of the journey is very easy for her. If you have a woman who can drop her physicality, who can get rid of the basic woman-ness, then you have a great saint in front of you.

Take This Test: Check Whether You Are Stone or Gold || AP Neem Candies

n some sense, spirituality is all about unleashing yourself, which is freedom from bondage. The leash is the bondage. Read more....

How to Fight Our Inner Conditioning?

10 min

That's what self-knowledge does. It makes you a person of taste, a person of good taste. You will now not be found going after worthless people, men, women, whatever.

Looking for Love?

As long as you are trying to locate love outside of you in the world, as long as you are trying to find a lovely object somewhere out there, it would remain a reason for disappointment.

Do We Have the Choice to Surrender?

You never go and ask real questions. You ask, “How to surrender to the Truth?” but you never ask, “How to surrender to money?” There you very conveniently and easily surrender. Anybody who has faced difficulty in surrendering to fear? Have you seen how easy that is! But in surrendering to Truth you say, “It is so impossible, how do I make that choice?”

Having Achieved a lot, why Am I Still Dissatisfied?

17 min

Questioner: Whenever I succeed in achieving something, I immediately start looking for something else, and when I succeed in finding that something else, again I find myself in the same situation. What am I really looking for?

Acharya Prashant: That which you commonly look for and that which you achieve… read_more

Why Help Others be Liberated?

8 min

Questioner: You have said that individual liberation is not possible: that either we go together, or nobody can go. So, we have to help others to cross over. But I can’t help even the people close to me; they are caught up in routine work or indulge in entertainment; no… read_more

Facing Life Is More Real than Facing Death (Kath Upanishad) || AP Neem Candies

In All that You Want, Liberation Is All You Want

Acharya Prashant: Nachiketa is a mere boy dependent on his father, and he has the honesty and the guts to go to his father and say, “Of what use is all this that you are doing? Who will benefit from these old and sick and milkless cows?” I assure you… read_more

Does Remembrance Help in Liberation?

Questioner: Acharya Ji, only sometimes do I consciously know that I really want Liberation. How to increase one’s quality, so that this want is continuous?

Acharya Prashant: Only sometimes do you use the word ‘Liberation’. At other times, you use a lot of other words for Liberation. So the mistake… read_more

9 min

Questioner: Does the continuous remembrance of liberation lead one to the right way?

Acharya Prashant: One has to be reminded of it. It’s a very strange thing. One need not be reminded of the false, the false is anyway always ready to tempt you, assault you. One does not need… read_more

Your Battle, Your Battlefield || AP Neem Candies

Your Partner Cheats on You in Three Ways

Acharya Prashant: Arjuna's hell was in his day-to-day activities, your hell too lies in your day-to-day activities. Arjuna could sense the evil in what appeared normal to the others, you must also be able to sense that there is something extremely fishy in what appears normal to others.

Do not… read_more

15 min

Cheating a partner happens on three planes. Physical plane where the foundation of relationship has just been fulfilling one’s bodily needs, emotional plane where a partner is supposed to please other partner and on spiritual plane where a partner’s attention is withdrawn from the Higher Self to one’s own lower self. It’s quite rare that relationships are based on a higher plane where both the partners have come together to push each other to get close to ‘Something’. The thing is although we have moved out of the jungle, but within we are animals.

That Which Neither Changes Nor Is Unchanging

8 min

When you have seen where your desires come from, you are very close to fulfilling your real desire. Your real desire is not attainment; it is liberation. That desire to be liberated unfortunately, it expresses itself as the desire for a thousand things. Read more....

Sir, From Where Do You Get This Wisdom?

The fact is that Vedant is obviously wonderful. I live by it. I definitely see that Vedant is the basis of all great philosophies of East and West. It is the foundation of everything that is beautiful. Vedant brings me to a deep peace and silence. But it is Saint Kabir precisely among all the Saints who reduces me to tears. Read more....

Liberation Demands Everything: The Highest Price You Must Pay

7 min

Your expectations are premature and misplaced. That which you are asking for is so very sublime, bounteous, beautiful, and fulfilling that it cannot come cheap; it will extract a high price from you. Remember that any price you pay will not really be big enough to buy out Liberation for you. Liberation is priceless. So even the highest price that you offer for Liberation will be insignificant, but still, you have to pay the highest price that you can.

Attain Fulfillment in Life While Being in Worldly Relations: Ribhu Gita Wisdom

The one who will abide as ‘Brahm-Self’ will only take care of the genuine interests of the other. She will not act to fulfill her own little insecurities. A mother who abides as Brahm will be really a divine mother, now the daughter will truly prosper. And a father who does not abide as the ‘Brahm-Self’ will be a very dangerous father because he will ask his son to do things that the father likes, not things that are really good for the son. Brahm does not extract any flesh from anybody. Brahm does not say, “I gave you birth, so now you do what I'm asking you to do.” Brahm says, “To really give birth is to give freedom and if I cannot give you freedom, then I'm very dangerous for you.” That is why abiding as Brahm is even more necessary in a family.

What is freedom || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)