If the word ‘Yog’ comes to be synonymous with physical exercise, then it’s a joke. When you look at the mass of people, what is it that you find more unhealthy — the body or the mind? It is the mind that is extremely unhealthy. And all of that is because the mind is in ‘Viyog’ — the mind is separated from something that it desperately wants. So, Yog has to be an inquiry into who we are, and what it is that we really want.
Yoga is action without attachment. Yoga is to refuse everything that keeps you little and limited. To live without a reason, to love without a cause, to act without greed and desire, that is Yoga. Total purposelessness is Yoga. Yoga is freedom from all whys.
Now success and failure cannot really matter because neither can they inflate you nor diminish you. Why won’t they inflate you? “Because I am already alright. Now, what can the fruit of my action give me? I require no fruit.” Ah, wonderful word: I
Questioner (Q): How to have the faith, strength and trust to let go of my identities and dissolve into the One? How to avoid being carried away by the fragmented identities in the middle of my everyday activities?
Questioner (Q): I was thinking about today's generation of youth in comparison to the Upanishadic Nachiketa. Nachiketa, where he is being offered all the great materials, sensual pleasures and as you said rightly while negating them he says ‘I'll get to them later but this is what I really want.’…
Questioner (Q): The yogi sings with a one-pointed mind, but I worship with a hidden desire and a hidden self-interest. Is my devotion wrong? What is one-pointed devotion?
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.
Vedanta reveals that freedom is impossible as long as the ego seeks to preserve itself. Meditation may bring temporary calm, but real transformation begins only when the false sense of individuality dissolves. Whether through devotion or knowledge, every genuine spiritual path culminates in the complete dissolution of the seeker into Truth. Liberation is not the experience of Truth by an individual—it is the end of the individual who wants to experience Truth.
The mind is not an independent entity but a structure built and maintained by the ego through thoughts, memories, beliefs, and experiences. Most spiritual practices fail when they become distractions from examining the ego itself. Experiences, emotions, and preferences are often conditioned and unreliable. Real inquiry begins with observing the experiencer, admitting facts without distortion, and applying the same rigor to inner life that science applies to the external world.
The one who is religion-less. A real Hindu does not have any religion. To go beyond all religions is to be a Hindu. There are religions that are on one plane, and then there is Sanatan Dharma, which is another dimension — the eternal religiousness. Liberation from religion is religiousness. Sanatan Dharma is awakened intelligence.
Acharya Prashant: You will see that I'm repeatedly stressing on Shri Krishna as the demolisher, on Shri Krishna as someone who not only does not accept our prevalent definitions of right-wrong, true and false, humility, authority, right action, non-violence but, in fact, unabashedly and actively demolishes them. It is one…
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.
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.
Excerpts from Articles
Climate Change: The Solution Is a Choice
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?
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.
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.
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.
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।
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।
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…
Questioner: Sir, when you were growing up, is there any special memory, or any time you realized and had this aspiration to become, or go on the spiritual path? Is there something interesting related to your life, from your childhood, that you want us to know?
Acharya Prashant: First of…
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Acharya Prashant: Arjun has been taught that respecting elders is a virtue. Arjun has been taught that non-violence is a virtue. Arjun, has also been taught that defending your territory is a virtue. Now, these two things clash with each other. If he must defend his territory, then he must…
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श्रुतिविप्रतिपन्ना ते यदा स्थास्यति निश्चला।
समाधावचला बुद्धिस्तदा योगमवाप्स्यसि।।
śhruti-vipratipannā te yadā sthāsyati niśhchalā
samādhāv-achalā buddhis tadā Yogam avāpsyasi
When your mind, now perplexed by what you have heard, stands firm and steady, then you will have attained Yoga or Self-Realization.
~ Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 53)
Acharya Prashant: We…
require
no fruit.
“That doesn’t mean…
Acharya Prashant (AP):
You will have to allow something big to take
…
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‘Likes and dislikes’ and whenever it is said that likes and dislikes are hindrance or that what you like and dislike is your conditioning, the easy and immediate conclusion is drop the…
Acharya Prashant (AP): It’s not about right or wrong; it’s about settling down with a little when a lot is available. When…
A modern woman calls herself liberated, yet lives anxious — anxious about age, desirability, marriage, motherhood. Acharya Prashant exposes this anxiety as proof that feminism never touched the real wound: centuries of conditioning that reduced women to bodies for pleasure and reproduction. External equality isn't enough. True freedom demands she reject the entire inheritance of tradition and simply become human — not woman, not wife, not mother by decree, but free.
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.
Time shortage is often not real but a result of misplaced priorities. Social media and trivial activities consume the limited time that could be used for reading, sports, creativity, and self-development. Time flows toward what we value most. Therefore, honestly tracking where our time goes is essential, because our time profile reveals our true priorities, mindset, personality, and the direction of our life.
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.
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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.
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The Bhagavad Gita is often accused of supporting caste and misogyny through selective quotations that ignore context, grammar, and the text's central teachings. A closer reading shows that its emphasis is on inner qualities, conscious action, and spiritual equality rather than birth-based hierarchy or gender discrimination. Misinterpretations arise when isolated verses are detached from their broader meaning, while the Gita consistently points toward self-knowledge, freedom from ego, and the universal possibility of liberation for every human being.
Kabir Saheb's message questions the very act of searching for fulfilment outside oneself. Whether through religion, relationships, success, possessions, or identity, people keep assuming that what is missing lies somewhere else. The problem is not the destination but the belief that fulfilment exists at a distance. Real freedom begins when the search turns inward, recognising that the seeker and the sought were never truly separate.
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Human beings are born into uncertainty, surrounded by beliefs, identities, and social conditioning that offer ready-made answers to fundamental questions. Real spirituality begins not with accepting collective or personal beliefs, but with honestly examining one’s own suffering, fears, and false identities. The journey is not toward comforting ideas, but toward self-inquiry, where truth is discovered through questioning, observation, and the gradual rejection of illusion.
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.
The climate crisis is not merely an external environmental problem but a reflection of inner human greed, desire, and psychological disorder. Drawing from the Gita’s idea of yagya as desireless action, it says real ecological healing requires inner transformation. Outer pollution, exploitation, and destruction mirror the ego’s inner confusion, making personal consciousness and planetary health deeply inseparable.
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.
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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.
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Listener: (Reading a quote of Acharya Prashant from a quote-calendar)
What lies beyond mind?More mind.What is more mind?What and lies and mind.Questions, perceptions on the concept of the mind.
Acharya Prashant: Any question about beyondness would be a useless question because the question itself is coming…
Questioner (Q):
Why do we forget?
Acharya Prashant (AP): The question is, "Why do we forget? Why forgetting is a property of the mind?"
Do not ask, "Why do we forget?" Just remember that we forget. Because when you forget then you don’t ask this question that, "Why do we…
What do you call as ‘bipolar disorder’? Is this disorder fundamentally not present in everybody? Mind lives in dualities; that is what you call as the ‘poles’. Sitting on one pole you feel attracted to the other. There is always a need to change and become something else. Won’t it be great to firstly understand the mind itself–its urges, its actions? There has to be determination to go into the route of the swings, desires and urges, to be free and well. And it is quite possible that the right medication need not be a pill.
Superficiality offers pleasures. Superficiality offers cheap salvation. Therefore, it is easy to be attracted to superficiality. On the other hand, true spirituality challenges you to pay a heavy price. So, you see, all this knowledge has existed since antiquity. Yet there are people who do not want to read the Gita.
For most people, India is just a bit of land, a boundary on the global map, a political entity. These are not things you can fall in love with. To love, there must be something sacred, something worth worshipping. The identity of India, the root of the Indian nation is essentially spiritual. India has been a nation because of its Vedantic foundation.
If you are religious, then shouldn’t you be truly religious? Religion is about a total commitment to the Truth. You’ll have to recognize that the objective of religion is not to attain heaven, not to please a holy figure, but to come to your own inner Truth. All good books exist to awaken your consciousness. When it comes to you and the Truth, do you want somebody in between? And wherever you spot fakeness, falseness, hollowness or ignorance, drop it.
There is a search within the human being, always for the greatest, the absolute, and that is what differentiates humans from animals. India was fertile, and there was abundance. You had ample leisure, and in that leisure there was space for intellectual inquiry. The sages and the seers would talk to each other purposelessly. And from that purposeless discussion, from silent observation of life for hours, days, months, and years, came those insights that you today recognize as Indian philosophy.
India was a superpower in all possible terms and yet those lowly little Britons came here and colonized us. Is it possible? There is something fishy in the story. We don't want to go back and really read and figure out what really happened. We believe in this narrative: we were great, we were ‘Vishwaguru’. How can the land of the Gita be ever defeated? It was due to internal reasons that we got defeated and enslaved. And those reasons are still very much present today. Which means the fault is entirely our own.
You see, the democratic system is a great one, but there are some problems associated with it. The leader comes from the masses, and the masses, by themselves, are never really attracted to wisdom. Have you ever found a voter asking his leader, “How many Upanishads have you read?” before casting a vote. The leaders know very well what they can ignore. They just want to know what your religion is, and what your caste is. That is why wisdom always comes last.
There is no revolution possible without the Gita. That’s the reason why even those who are not remembered particularly for their spiritual inclination, people like Subhash Chandra Bose, even they founded their core on Gita. What kind of revolution can you do if it’s the body that’s always at the top of your mind? You require a Gita to tell you that this body is perishable and would anyway go. Gita only teaches you, "Endure and fight."
This has always been a hugely profit-making sector of all economies, just that it has always been a small sector controlled by the priestly class. Now the attempt is to make this sector really big and on an organized scale, because the profits are very tempting, and there is no quality control. There can be no external auditor. All kinds of objections, audits, and scrutinies are ruled out. Getting it? So it’s a very tempting sector.
Guilt says, “I am better than how and what I did.” Right? There need not be any imagination in this. Far better than guilt is the realization of one’s actual state. And once you realize where your choices and decisions have brought you, there is a certain sublimation. That honest realization does not shout too loudly, but it has great power. For that power to arise, you first have to acknowledge where you really are.
Shri Krishna is saying: the mind is conditioned to move towards objects and perceive only their surface, periphery, or form. Develop the practice of penetrating further. Let Truth be your practice. The moment you would look at something, and you are in no position not to look at things being embodied, you would look at things. Nobody said that you have to practice lust. Lust just comes. You might be a total fool, an utter retard, and still you will find yourself getting sexually excited once you reach a particular age. Did you need some practice? No, you didn’t. It just happened. But if you are to understand lust, if you are to cross over, if you are to be a master of your body, then it will require a lot of practice, and that will necessarily and obviously tell you about your predicament.
“Immersing myself in deep meditation.” What do you mean by meditation? And who is being immersed? Please tell me, beyond a trick of words, what is this? But you’ll never ask these questions, because some Baba-ji totally dominated your faculty to question with his get-up and demeanour. Real spirituality is not about something that sounds elevated or respectable. Whenever you are bombarded with high-sounding fluff, learn to ask this question; what exactly does that mean?
I am being told to work hard, but not for myself. I am being told to slog for something I don’t really care for. This is the situation of each one of us: no purpose and high pressure. The very system is designed to rob you of having any innate, heartfelt purpose of your own. Pressure alone is not the problem. The very nature of a great purpose is that it brings pressure, but such pressure now is life-saving, even life-giving, because you love what you want to achieve.
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.
This breath-in, breath-out, stomach-in, tummy-out; this is not meditation. Even animals do not need training in breathing, and we are being taught how to breathe. What’s going on? You know, you should breathe mindfully. Why? Is there anything wrong with your breath? Meditation is nothing but an observation of the naked inner fact. That is meditation. To stand naked and honest in front of what is, that is meditation.
If somebody is a great cricketer, I am all right admiring him irrespective of his nationality; that’s fine. But the question is: why is such adulation and such expenditure reserved only for people outside your own country? Indian soccer is totally starved of funds, but the same fans will not spend this money, not even a fraction of this money. Are we really poor, or are we just poorly directed? We don’t know the right direction to move in because we don’t know the right center to have.
So much so that, even today, India’s literacy rate is just 77%, and China has almost cent per cent literacy. That’s a huge difference. From where will you get innovation if your kids are not well-educated? And even if they are educated, they are just moving towards the service sector rather than the line of innovation. How will you lead the world? Just having democracy will not take you anywhere if those casting their vote are not educated enough.
