Sankhya Yoga

What Is the Main Message of Bhagavad Gita?

People talk of personal time as opposed to professional time, right? They forget that the profession that they have chosen has also been chosen by the person. So, even that which they are mistakenly calling as professional time is only personal time.

Our lives have only personal time. To be… read_more

You have to fight. The world is the battlefield. To be born is to be born as a warrior, to be born is to be born with weapons and armour. That is the message: you cannot run away. Shunning action is not possible.

Western vs Indian Philosophy: Who Holds the Key to True Freedom?

They don't contradict each other. You see, what the existentialists including Sartre were saying was that the nature of the human being is such that even if you want to suppress or disown consciousness, you will not succeed. So, man is condemned to be free.

Suffering under peer pressure? || IIT Bombay (2022)

9 min

Questioner (Q): Man is typically a social animal who seeks to coexist with the society around him. I am a vegan but many people around me are not, and that creates a difficulty for me. I want to speak out my thoughts on animal cruelty and get into animal activism,… read_more

Feeling Caged in Your Chattering Mind?

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.

How to Overcome Sadness?

Why do you have so much personal time? How are you available to grief? Your consciousness is too self-centered; it needs expansion. Even as you grieve over one death, billions of goats, rabbits, lambs, fish, cows, and chickens are slaughtered. Commit your time. Dedicate it to a higher purpose. We attach great sanctity to our personal lives. Give it up!

How to Bring Real Change in Oneself?

31 min

There are a million spiritual seekers who keep on practising observation and find that their lives are not changing at all. Just observing your daily life will often be of very little help. Observation of your own condition must be accompanied by exposure to something beyond yourself. Those who keep saying, 'Just observe and things will happen.' No, nothing happens just by observing. Love is needed. Love gives you the patience to wait. You require the depth of love that is prepared to wait till eternity.

How to Handle Insults?

20 min

Any kind of harm that comes to you can only come due to a lack of self-knowledge. If you do not know who you are, you will be forced to believe whatever others tell you about yourself. We don’t even realize how big a slavery that is! Every time you allow circumstances to rule you, you are actually acting like a dead object. You are alive only if you have something within that circumstances cannot touch.

J. Krishnamurti's 'The Observer Is the Observed' Explained by Acharya Prashant

'The observer is the observed; an honest observation dissolves them both.' Or, 'The observer is the observed, and both are false.' We lay a lot of emphasis on the world, assuming it to be the Truth. If the world is an entity independent of everything, then it has to be the Truth, right? Truth is that which is independent of everything.

Thinking A Lot About Future?

Fear, you have to remember, is biological. Fear, you have to remember, is to the body. Fear is not to you. Fear is a letter addressed to the consciousness. Do you open the other's letters and read them? Do you do that? So, the letter has been delivered. The letter is coming from Mr. Fear and it is addressed to the body. So what do you do with the letter? You keep it aside. Let the body read it; I won't read it. It's not mine.

Living Without God: Principles For A Purposeful Life

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.

Advait or Dvait?

4 min

It doesn’t matter whether you talk of *Advait* or *Dvait*. Do you finally admit that you cannot proceed any further with words? If your *Advait* says that I have come to the final truth, then your *Advait* is bogus. If your *Dvait* says that this is the ultimate expression, then your *Dvait,* too, is a fallacy. You may say *Advait,* you may say *Dvait,* you may even say *Trait,* or you may say anything of your choice. You are free to say whatever you want to, but all of that must surrender.

Mind Alone Is Bondage And Liberation

29 min

The mind is the entire set, the whole universe of objects that the ‘I’ has a relationship with. Not the entire set of everything that is there in the universe. One does not have a relationship with everything. But whatsoever one develops a relationship with becomes mind. An object untouched by the self, the ego is just an object. But the moment the object is touched by ‘I’, it becomes vishay or mind. And, mind is an accumulation, a congregation of objects that it is in relationship with.

Is Your Mind Your Best Friend or Your Worst Enemy?

10 min

The mind is both your best friend and your worst enemy. It’s your friend when it operates with intelligence and attention, but when there is no attention, when there is no care or love, then intelligence does not function. And then, the mind is your worst enemy. A prisoner knows no joy, no freedom, no love. Your own sleep keeps you imprisoned. The moment you wake up, you are free.

Do Love And Attachment Go Together?

10 min

Attachment is just a promise. A lack of fulfilment. It is a substitute for love because the real thing is not available. If you find yourself attached, it means there is a desire for love; it means there is a call for love. Know that a fake is presenting itself as a substitute for the real thing.

How Do I Really Know Somebody?

Because we all carry identities wherever we go, from these identities come ready-made opinions, and these opinions never allow us to look at the truth. We have no understanding of who we are, and all over, self-knowledge is limited to these identities that have been handed over to us by the environment, by others, by parents, by society, by education, by others, and it’s a very funny situation. You are unable to know the reality because you are determined not to know the reality.

What Does Equanimity Mean in Life?

12 min

When you know that you can not be harmed, then you let the change come to you. Then, you do not lose your inner poise in front of changing conditions. This is equanimity. For equanimity, you require a very good driver, a totally dependable driver. Our driver is the Ego. It does not allow the Absolute to drive us. The Ego is so arrogant that it goes and sits on the throne, the sacred place, that is reserved only for the Beloved, only for God. It has no right to be there. Dethrone it!

Stop Calling These as Scriptures

A scripture is a book that tells you about yourself. A scripture has to deal essentially with self-knowledge. A book that talks of dietary choices cannot be called a scripture. A person who talks of the kind of things you must eat to enhance your health and such things cannot be called a Guru. Shastra is what deals with self-knowledge; a guru is one who encourages self-knowledge in you.

How to Get Rid of Pain and Suffering?

17 min

If you are suffering, all that you need to be told is that freedom from disease is possible. No positive, affirmative statement needs to be given. If you are really crying out of pain, do you need to be given dreams of the pink of health? No, You only need to be assured that this pain is not your nature, and that is all.

God's Presence Everywhere: What Does It Really Mean?

Gita and philosophy and Vedanta have nothing to do with God. They are in search of Truth, not God. These are different things — Truth and God. Secondly, all the objects that you look at, you look at them in search of something. In search of the Truth, you look at all these objects. In that sense you could say, I am looking at everything in search of the absolute. To the ego, everything carries a promise, a possibility of the absolute. That does not mean that all the objects that you look at contain the infinite or something.

Mind Work Ends When True Realization Takes Hold

18 min

Realization is extremely powerful. You cannot realize and not act. It is impossible. You cannot realize and not act. Action follows realization. So if you come and say, “I realize, I understand but I cannot act,” then you are mistaken; you actually do not realize at all! The action after realization is not time-bound; it does not even have a time lag. It is instantaneous and spontaneous.

Who Created the World?

Brahm is not the creator. When you desperately want to invent a creator, then you come up with īśvára. But Vedanta is not very enamored of īśvára. So, Vedanta says, "Īśvara is just Maya, just Maya.” Because you experience the universe, therefore, you feel the need to justify the origin of the universe. Therefore, you must have an īśvára. But how can the creator of a false universe be real? If the universe is false, what do you say about its creator?

Why Is God So Biased?

Why do you think that, first of all, a creating entity, a creator, exists in the same way this world exists? Secondly, why do you think that all values that you hold dear to your chest must be espoused by that God as well? You like somebody to be merciful to you, so you say, “Oh, God is merciful.” How do you know God is merciful? Are you bigger than God? Have you penetrated God's head—if there exists somebody called God at all?

Can Guilt Be Useful?

16 min

Guilt can either free you from your limitations or become a powerful defense of the ego. If you really love heights, guilt will assist you; but if you’re comfortable being pulled down, it will merely offer consolation. Far better than guilt is the realization of your actual state. Once you truly see what you’ve turned yourself into, transformation happens spontaneously.

Yoga - The Biggest 'Spiritual' Myth Today

17 min

You have ample gurus who come over and say, “You know, you do this and then you can do whatever you want to do.” Now the moment you hear this kind of philosophy that Yoga will help you do better whatever you want to do, I suppose one must run away. Because that’s exactly antithetical to Yoga. Yoga is not about doing whatever you want to do; it’s the ego that says that, not the dedicated, devoted, wise mind. That does not come from there.

How Do We Know Anything about Life? Where Do Our Thoughts Come from?

How to Deal with Attachment?

Questioner: It’s well known that simple living and high thinking are what we should aim at, but how do we know what is simple living and high thinking?

Acharya Prashant: You talked of simple living and high thinking, and you said that it's well-known that simple living and high thinking… read_more

12 min

Attachment is not a problem; the problem is being attached to something totally unworthy. If you are attached to someone, check out the facts of their importance. Ask yourself, “Does this person bring Truth, Fearlessness & Light into my life?” If you have been wise enough, or simply lucky enough to have the right person in your life, then continue to remain attached. But assess them well with Truth at your core.

Trouble or Just a Story?

It is not events, but the meanings that you hold of them that agitate you. A great happening in the world that you do not take to be related to yourself, does it bother you greatly? It doesn’t because you do not enforce the ‘outer equals inner’ rule in such cases. But the moment you bring about, bring in that dangerous equation, that dubious identity, ‘outer is inner,’ that is the moment you start shivering and panicking. We decide our triggers, they don’t just happen.

What is the 'Will of God'?

12 min

God wills that you be godly in your freedom. Because godliness, by definition, cannot be imposed. ‘God’ is patiently waiting for you to be godly. He’ll just keep showing you the mirror in some way or the other. He will keep sending you help—sometimes in the form of a situation, a book, or sometimes in the form of a person. God is nothing but your ultimate potential.

Why Lack of Clarity Complicates Life?

What is clarity? To be immediately certain. Certain of what? That which is certain, that which is unchangeable. Obviously, without knowing the airline schedule, you cannot be immediately certain of that. And why must and why cannot you be immediately certain of things like train schedules? Because they keep fluctuating anyway. Therefore, clarity is not being cocksure about things that are anyway volatile and changeable. Clarity is about being certain of that which ‘is’, that which is unchangeable. Therefore, clarity has a direct relation with faith; you cannot be clear without having faith in the heart.

Why Does One Desire Liberation while the Other does not?

Why Can't I Leave My Comfort Zone?

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

The body will not allow you to do things where your physical sustenance gets threatened. 'What will happen to this body?’ is the fear. The one who can go without food and sleep in the streets under the open sky can never be enslaved. Have the guts to sleep in the fields, and learn to go without comforts—then the world cannot dominate you!

To Understand the Mind, Observe Without Concluding

17 min

Just know that this is what is there in the mind. And that is the appropriate mental activity. The mind is the machine, well tuned, nicely designed for both analysis and observation. Use it for observation. You use it only for analysis and comparisons. Use it for observation. And if the observation is honest, then the object of observation will drop.

What Is Creativity?

4 min

Creativity is the action of a fresh and free mind. With a fresh mind, whatever you do is creative. We have equated creativity with brilliance and dynamism, whereas it can be very ordinary. It’s like love—where something totally new comes from nowhere, where one is not overly concerned about results, and where one is not caught in mundane distractions. It's an expression of freedom and fearlessness.

Does Self-Help Really Help?

Self-help doesn't help. Its approach is, “I am sad as my desires are not fulfilled, so the way to help myself is to fulfill desires.” They never realize their lives are driven by biological, social, and cultural forces outside of themselves. Spirituality offers the only real solution: “Before helping the self, one must know what the self really is."

Wisdom Through Songs

27 min

AIR host (AIR): A very good morning to all our listeners tuned in! And a warm welcome to the brunch time show this Saturday morning with your friend Kiran! And this morning we have a very, very enlightened guest with us who is going to be sharing his views and… read_more

What Is Yoga According to the Bhagavad Gita?

28 min

Shri Krishna is saying, “As long as you are the actor, please forget Yoga. Yoga is not for you.” Yoga is freedom from the false actor. The Yogi is the one who has realized that Yoga cannot be attained through any method. A yogi is healthy and alright with himself.

How to be in a Peaceful State of Mind?

Peace is your destiny, everybody's destiny but that destiny is a timeless destiny. You do not reach there after ten years, you are there right now. And because you are there right now, hence this drama of not being there can continue endlessly.

Does Following Myself Lead to Freedom?

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.

How to Control the Mind?

13 min

Mind control is not about suppressing the mind; it is about supporting it to take the right route and reach the right destination. The mind does not really need control; it needs peace. But the mind is a little foolish. If the mind were not foolish, why would it leave its peaceful state, which is its natural state?

Relax and Let the Mind Observe Naturally

When you are relaxed, then there is no need to observe. Observation is not a need. It cannot happen because you are telling yourself to observe. It cannot happen out of some purpose. When you are internally relaxed, then a subtle observation is automatically happening.

Dealing with a chronic medical condition

10 min

Questioner: I am a research scholar. I am in my fourth year of PhD, and it is kind of my second inning. Earlier I was a teacher, I was teaching at a university, but I’ve left that and I have started my PhD.

I’ve been suffering from a condition for… read_more

Vedanta: The Bridge Between Philosophy and Spirituality

Why do we need to talk of the purpose of life? Because we don’t feel alright as we are and where we are. Because we don’t feel alright where we are, therefore we need to be somewhere else. Because we don’t feel good about the way our self-concept and our self-image is, therefore there is a need for change, right?

What’s True Thanksgiving About?

“I thank the Lord for all that he has given me.” This is a totally nonsensical prayer. You should thank for what he has not given you. "Thanks for not giving me disease." It's very easy to miss that you do not have a disease. Truth is so easy to miss because it is an absence. Truth is always ‘not’ something. It is the absences that you must be thankful for.

Fighting your Weakness is more Important than Fighting the Enemy

3 min

Acharya Prashant: A fly comes and sits on my arm here (pointing towards the arm), I reject it, I discard it – Is the game over? Is she not ever going to return? Why? Because I discarded the fly and not my arm, so irrespective of how strong your resistance… read_more

The Key to Progress || Neem Candies

A lot of progress, even in the material sense, happens only by inviting pain. That which we call as discipline, even in the loose sense, is nothing but an invitation to pain. Is there discipline without pain? You have to get up at some point in the morning—doesn’t that involve… read_more

‘I want’ versus ‘I must’

Questioner: Is it possible to live without a target in life? I set a target for myself so that I have something to strive for, so that I have a sense of direction, but the thought of not achieving this target also brings sorrow and fear. So how can a… read_more

The Robot's ego

Wise Men Don’t Make Such Mistakes || AP Neem Candies

Questioner: Sir, I want to ask, Robot doesn’t have ego. So, now what is the intersection between the urge towards freedom and your ego?

Acharya Prashant: You could say, the robot does have an ego planted into it by its designer. Therefore, the ego of the robot is totally in… read_more