Hazrat Muhammad

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.

True love is not a biological instinct, emotional attachment, or social conditioning. Biology and science explain the body's drives, but they cannot explain the self that seeks freedom. Love is the inner restlessness to move from ignorance and bondage toward truth and liberation. Religion is not rituals or inherited beliefs but this personal journey of understanding. Freedom—not possession or conformity—is the essence of both love and religion.

Truth cannot be forced upon anyone, but neither should falsehood be entertained. Genuine love is not about preserving relationships at any cost; it is about helping oneself and others break free from illusion, even if that means risking the relationship itself. Spiritual growth begins by questioning conditioning, examining falsehood without bias, and choosing authenticity over comfort. Real relationships are built on the courage to seek freedom, not convenience.

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.

The Bhagavad Gita is not a separate spiritual path or an escape from everyday life - it is a mirror that reveals the truth of your present life. Real spirituality begins with self-observation, not rituals or temporary practices. Lasting transformation comes when work, relationships, career, and personal growth become one integrated life driven by awareness, love, and freedom rather than ego, fear, money, or social pressure.

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.

Love is not a special emotion reserved for selected people or relationships but a way of relating free from self-interest, possession, and psychological dependence. Most relationships become transactions driven by insecurity, where the ego seeks completion through ownership and exchange. Genuine companionship arises without the urge to control or claim another, allowing affection to exist naturally, freely, and without conditions or expectations.

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.

A society that loses its sense of sacredness begins to see every person and profession as merely transactional. When truth is replaced by the pursuit of happiness and consumption, trust erodes and cynicism becomes the norm. Doctors, teachers, and institutions are no longer respected but viewed with suspicion. The deeper crisis is not medical or social but philosophical: without self-understanding, people become consumers first and human beings second. True respect can return only when truth, integrity, and inner education become more important than personal gain.

Modern relationships often create more insecurity, not less, because people are conditioned to seek completion, validation, and identity through another person. Social institutions, media, culture, and tradition continuously reinforce the idea that fulfillment lies in romantic attachment. As a result, relationships become driven by dependence rather than love. Real companionship becomes possible only when one is inwardly at peace and not using another person to fill an inner void.

Love is not attraction, possession, dependency, or a transaction driven by personal gain. As long as relationships arise from insecurity, ownership, or the desire for psychological completion, they remain centered on the ego. Love is simple, natural, and free of self-interest, flowing without preference or exclusion. The ego seeks security, continuity, and suffering because they preserve its identity, while freedom and joy threaten its existence. A meaningful life begins when one stops repeating old patterns, accepts uncertainty, and chooses freedom over the comfort of familiar cages.

Climate change, population policies, and social conflicts often arise from a common source: narrow love. People, communities, and nations justify actions that benefit their own group while overlooking broader consequences for humanity and the planet. True care is not exclusive or identity-based; it is expansive and inclusive. Even motherhood, patriotism, and family concern can become limiting when reduced to narrow self-interest rather than guided by wisdom, freedom, and universal responsibility.

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.

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…

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.

Mojud – The man with the inexplicable life

There was once a man named Mojud. He lived in a town where he had obtained a post as a small official, and it seemed likely that he would end his days as inspector of weights and measures.

One day when he…

Question: Dear Sir, a few questions:

Why am I so attracted to the personality and mannerisms of all my teachers, often curious about their lives than the truth of their teachings? When I read Jiddu Krishnamurti(JK), am I conditioned by him? Is JK’s method really ‘via negativa’ all the time?…

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…

Love has to be seen as the need of the mind, the attraction of the mind towards Peace, towards rest. All attraction is there only with a desire; the hope is of fulfilment. So when the mind says ‘love’, along with love it has a picture of love. How do you know that somebody loves you? Only if he behaves according to set patterns. When real love comes to us, we close our gates to it. Love is not with a particular man or woman; Love is the natural state of the mind.

The kinds of meanings that we associate with love are actually quite demeaning. It’s not your own self-interest that you think of in love. Love is not an emotion; love primarily is a spiritual understanding. Saint Valentine would not be quite pleased with the meanings we have associated with his name and his day. The saints laid down their lives so that our faulty definition of love could be corrected, and that is probably the best use this day can be put to: correcting the definition of Love.

Real Love is a very pure thing. It is pure and it purifies. If you really love her, forget about the families, you won’t even bother whether she loves you, because Love does not demand anything in return. Forget about marriage or anything else. You love, you know love, and that is all, sufficient. Love unconditionally, and then a way will emerge. Unconditional Love is very, very intelligent, and knows no fear. It knows where the solution is, it will find a solution.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You really think the world is being run by an authority outside of yourself? No. We are the ones running this world, and we have made a mess of it. But we don’t want to own the responsibility, so we bring somebody else in between. And that somebody else, poor God, cannot even come and argue for Himself, defend Himself, and claim innocence and say, “No, no, no, no. I have not brought the world to such a pathetic position. You have done it.”

That’s the purpose of life, no? To know your real destiny beyond your physical limitations and social conditioning. Most people do not know that such a dangerous thing is surreptitiously happening to them. I have found that we are quite big on media and social media now, so comments flow in their hundreds. And women actually have a self-righteous position when they say that we are not supposed to work and you better not expect that from us. Equally, men are conditioned about the roles they are supposed to play in life at home, in society, and how they are supposed to feel about themselves.

I have desires and you are the means to fulfill those desires. That’s why I come to you and I say I’m a loving person. This is not love. Most of that which we call love is actually just self-interest. A lot of our comforts, conveniences and identities depend on the other; therefore, we want to hold the other. Real love is possible only when you know that the other cannot bring anything to you. You relate to the other to share, not to gain.

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.

Adam and Eve are people with a body and choice. ‘Garden of Eden’ is the state of bliss that one enjoys as long as one keeps making the right choice. ‘Tree of Knowledge’ is the intellect that has an ego as its root. ‘Bitten Fruit’ is taking sustenance from intellect rather than God. Jesus is that man who is not quite a man because he is left with no choices, he is the highest potentiality of Adam and Eve.

“I love my job as long as I'm paid for it.” Can you work without being paid? If yes, then probably there is some beginning of love. There are ten things we all like, and all liking or disliking is conditional, and the mark of love is that it survives all conditions. If you come to something that is dearer to you than life itself, then you know what love is. Love is dangerous, because it would mean you have come to something that's more precious to you than life itself.

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.

For most of us, work is a random accident. You’re born a girl, so you’ll become a housewife. Born a girl, how will you be an astronaut or a swimmer? Is any self-awareness needed? Do not let your choice of work be dictated by social norms or established channels. When work arises as an expression of your deepest clarity, only then can there be love.

Just see what their presence does to you. Are they really able to remove fear from your mind, or are they putting you in greater fear? Do not know them by their forms, medallions, or all the respect that society gives them. Know them by one criterion only — "Have they liberated you, or have they put you in greater bondage?"

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.

When you do not like human beings, you must also remember that they do carry the potential to be lovable. Not just the potential to be loved, but the potential to be lovable. Beyond likable, lovable. So, along with not liking humanity, also comes the responsibility to maybe help them become lovable, to whatever extent one can.

To say, “I am such a devotee that I will reach freedom through my efforts. And I will not stop till I am liberated,” might sound like a statement of commitment, devotion, and deep mystical thirst — but it is actually just arrogance. Rumi has done the fullest that the human mind can do, and has left no stone unturned. And after doing what he could do, he simply raised his hands and surrendered. This is the utmost that this mortal form can do.

The Gita is not made precious by the fact that Arjun won. No, Arjun may win, or Arjun may lose. The real thing lies in having the Truth represented by Shri Krishna at the heart. When you are fighting the right war, then you have won even before the war has begun. That does not mean that you will no longer fight. You will still fight, and you will fight for the sake of external victory. But inwardly, you are victorious even before shooting the first arrow.

We say, “Oh yes, this thing is right, and it must be done, but…” If the thing is right and it must be done, from where has this split arrived? There is no need to split the action from the result of the action. Right action is its own fruit. Now you can rebel. If rebellion is the right thing to do, why bother about the result of rebelling?

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.

The object of love is so big, so total, so filling, so occupying that it leaves no space for the subject to hide and survive. The task is so damn big that it can’t be done if you protect yourself. If you protect yourself, it won’t happen. Love involves a lot of bloodshed and demolition. And there are fireworks. Great structures collapse. Formidable enemies have to be defeated. All that is love.

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.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Jayant has initiated, and he is saying that he used to lead a mechanical life that starts the story, and then he got into spirituality, now he wants to be in love always but that does not always seem possible. Right?

Love is neither molecular nor even…

Opinions are opinions. There is nothing called ‘my opinion.’ All opinions are alien, foreign to you. They are always others. Even if they happen to be present in your mind, they are still others. It is just that you are so brain-identified that when an opinion is present in your brain, you start thinking that it is your opinion. And from where did that opinion come to your brain? It came either from biology or from society. How is the opinion yours then?

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.

Religion is the way that brings the lost mind back to its center, its home. That is religion.