On one hand, there is a great danger that if you seek Light, you will seek the wrong kind of light; you will just seek darkness disguised as light. On the other hand, there is the equally dark option of not seeking at all. Between these two possibilities, I prefer the possibility of seeking Light, with all its associated dangers — that is still better than not seeking at all. Isn’t it better to die fighting in the battle than not fight at all?
Acharya Prashant: You are in front of food and you see how your body wants to lunge towards food. And do you know why the body wants to lunge towards food? Especially, let’s say, sweetmeats or high-calorie items? Why? – Because evolution taught it to, because the survival of the
Questioner (Q): Sir I have read that a few teachers have spoken about the consciousness and life after death. So, I am confused that how did they come to know about this. Are these just concepts or anything?
Many of us interrupt, rush to make our point, or change the topic when a conversation comes too close. We call it a lack of patience or discipline. But impatience in a conversation is often fear: when what we hold within is borrowed belief, every question could shatter it. The same confusion makes us take our instincts and feelings as ourselves, though they are only the body’s chemistry. If we looked honestly at what we hold, would a question still feel like an attack?
Many Indian parents keep their children, and especially their daughters, away from sport, even where coaches and facilities exist. The barrier is often not outside but in the parent’s own ideas: poor returns, uncertainty, and fixed notions of what a girl’s life must be. Blaming our own parents does not help either; our life is now our responsibility. Parenting is a decision of the greatest responsibility, and it begins with self-love. Can we love a child if we cannot love ourselves?
Many of us promise our parents high marks, and when the result falls short, the guilt can feel heavier than the exam itself. But no one controls results; they depend on far too many things outside us. What is in our hands is our intent, our effort and our honesty with what we study. The Bhagavad Gita says the same: our right is to action alone, never to its fruit. What if the only promise we made was to study honestly and with love?
Spirituality does not replace the fear of ghosts with belief in God. It asks us to question the mind that creates both fear and belief. Ghosts, gods, and stories can all become projections of imagination. The spiritual path begins by dropping assumptions, investigating “Who am I?” and understanding the source of suffering. With attention, right knowledge, and self-inquiry, fear loses its power and one becomes inwardly free.
Detachment and ambition are not opposites. Both arise from clear insight into what is truly valuable. Detachment means naturally dropping what is seen as false, futile, or harmful, while ambition means pursuing the highest and most meaningful truth with complete intensity. Spiritual surrender is continuous: as understanding deepens, false attachments are repeatedly abandoned, until renunciation becomes natural and almost choiceless.
True freedom begins when we question the beliefs that make us feel trapped. Most of our suffering comes not from circumstances but from unquestioned assumptions, attachments, and imagined obligations. By suspending our beliefs, even briefly, we allow truth to enter, revealing that life always offers choice. Transformation is born from love for truth, the courage to let go, and the willingness to step beyond the boundaries created by the ego.
Search
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.
5
The real problem is that you don’t ‘know’ the problem. Had you really known the problem, the problem would have very quickly faded away. Whenever you come across a problem, do not begin by saying that this is the problem and now I am going to solve it. First of all, drop all your pretensions about your understanding. You do not know anything, so you have to start from an absolute zero. You observe.
13
It is not really happiness that is to be found through self-knowledge. In fact, self-knowledge often is a danger to happiness. Self-knowledge dissolves both happiness and sadness, and you are left with nothing but a naked and silent joy. If you can see yourself clearly, without motivation, then the seeing itself is great fun.
The words of a wise man must be read with wisdom, with empathy. When J. Krishnamurti says, “Become deeply aware,” read it as ‘Unbecoming Unaware.’ There is nothing called becoming aware. ‘Awareness Is.’ Over the innate awareness, there is a cloud of assumed unawareness. You just have to see that there is no fact in your assertion that there exists unawareness. So, you unbecome unaware. You cannot become aware. Awareness is not something that you can achieve or become or reach. It is.
Excerpts from Articles
Stuck Between Job Security and Your Real Passion?
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?
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।
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।
The Truth cannot be objectified as a thing, place, person, or book. So, don't be too quick to accept your own assessments, judgments, likes, dislikes, and experiences. Whatever you're seeing is seen by "you" — the Ego — and you are no absolute. Everything must be available to enquiry, investigation, and questioning — and questioning cannot happen if you declare that you’ve already come to the Truth. Never believe that the journey has ended or that the ego itself is the Truth.
7
'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.
4
When you are not bothered about the other, that is when you are totally compassionate. When you are not trying to change the other, that is when you become an agent of change. Compassion is not about thinking all the time of others. You cannot try to be compassionate.
When you are alright, then the sound of your footsteps is compassion. That is what compassion is.
The ego says that my first priority is to remain, exist, and after that comes everything else. Even the Truth must be subservient to my first priority. So, liberation is alright as long as it is a second of liberation. Peace is alright as long as it is five minutes of peace. But if silence threatens to take over the entire life, if peace starts dominating noise to the extent that the noise might be completely annihilated, then the ego rejects. The ego wants Truth, but only a modicum of Truth. The ego wants peace, but only a sliver of peace.
…
A religious man must be both masculine and feminine
~ J. Krishnamurti
Speaker: You could read it either way that – he must be both feminine and masculine, or he must be neither masculine nor feminine. You know what masculinity stands for in popular parlance, as a psychological state, as…
, where the author talks about freedom from authority as a means to be free of the ego. What does he mean by authority? What does freedom from authority mean? He also says that we should not accept even
…
1
“Love is a state in which there is no ‘me’; love is a state in which there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this good and something else is bad.
Love is none of these contradictory things.
Contradiction does not exist in love.”
~…
Speaker: To understand sorrow, one must understand time, and to understand time is to understand thought.What is ego?We usually say the ego is “I am this”…
Can you honestly, seriously, bring yourself to find out whether you are free from authority? It needs tremendous enquiry into yourself, great awareness.
From that clarity comes a totally different kind of action, an action that is not fragmentary, that is not divided politically or religiously – it is a…
1
Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, pranam. Is there any difference between being immersed and being alert? What we see in nature is that the animals are very much alert of their surroundings from moment to moment. What does J Krishnamurti mean when he says that great alertness is needed to remain…
Acharya Ji, J.Krishnamurti says, “In a right relationship, you come to know yourself.” Please explain.
Acharya Prashant: The question is, Krishnamurti says, “In the right relationship, you come to know yourself.” So, how does one know himself?
That which you have quoted, is in itself the solution. He is…
they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Questioner: Acharya Ji, JK says, “Explanations blind you, they prevent you from actually seeing ‘what is’.” But I require explanations all the time from the Guru.
Please throw some light on this.
Acharya Prashant: The problem…
How will it be possible?
Acharya Prashant: A man is driving his car in a drunk state. In an absolutely drunk state and the car is moving about in a very disorderly way. There are two rear seats. Will one seat know that…
Speaker:
Society is not one thing; society is the very substance of the conditioned mind. And it’s very deceptive.
(Here, ‘I’ is used for the conditioned mind)
‘I’ belong…
Acharya Prashant (AP):
Beautiful quotation.
Because naming comes with a total bundle of association, references, memories, past, prejudices. Having named something, having tagged or labeled something, you are…
1
Question: Acharya Ji, what does J. Krishnamurti mean when he says, “To understand what is, is more important than to create and follow ideals.”
Acharya Prashant: Actually, the first part of that sentence, is the absolute, the second part is the actionable. Understanding what is, is not really a task.…
Acharya Prashant (AP): It’s just a concept.
It’s just that there are…
1
A young athlete says she knows she should not be attached to winning, yet she is, because her coach, family and country are invested in it. Wanting to win on the court is fine; that is what a contest is for. But we never know who the next opponent will be, and the one opponent always present is ourselves. She also fears that starting at 14 was too late. The past is fixed, so what is left is to play the cards we are dealt. Where does our real contest lie?
1
We often defend a bad choice by pointing to a worse one: stay dishonest or starve, keep the wrong grip or stop playing. But the real trouble is not the option we picked. It is the option we never let ourselves see. Action does not need greed or attachment to find its energy. The third way begins by rejecting both false choices, without knowing what comes next. Which of our everyday choices are really false dilemmas?
5
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.
2
We often call something “help” or “love” while secretly expecting something in return. When that return does not come, we feel hurt, revealing that the relationship was a trade, not genuine help. The ego, being unfulfilled, cannot truly love or share. Likewise, desperation to be loved makes us controllable. Real love emerges when we stop seeking validation, work on ourselves, and become so inwardly fulfilled that we no longer need to be loved.
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।
2
We often believe we are living freely, while our desires, dreams, beliefs, and choices are shaped by physical, social, cultural, religious, and psychological scripts. These scripts offer comfort and security, making us reluctant to examine our bondage. Freedom does not begin by imagining what lies beyond the script, but by deeply observing the cage we already live in, without fear, desire, or attachment.
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.
A true relationship is not built on need, possession, or emotional dependence, but on a shared commitment to Truth and inner growth. A worthy companion reflects your reality like a mirror rather than performing a role to please you. Real love is effortless, rooted in one's nature, not expectations. When your highest commitment is to excellence and Truth, relationships become a natural outcome—not the purpose of life itself.
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.
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.
Innovation is born from research, creativity, critical thinking, scientific temper, and original thinking—not imitation or appearances. A society that values honest inquiry over validation creates genuine progress. India's future depends on nurturing a culture that encourages questioning, respects originality, and pursues truth with intellectual honesty instead of settling for superficial success and empty displays.
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.
Society has a role in practical matters, but it should never decide love, marriage, happiness, or the purpose of life. Real freedom begins when personal choices are guided by understanding instead of social pressure. While social norms help maintain order, they become harmful when they dictate relationships, career, or inner values. True happiness and love arise from freedom, not conformity, making every love story meaningful only when it is authentically one's own.
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.
Real change begins not by changing the world alone but by understanding the one trying to change it. Laws, technology, policies, and scientific progress have value, yet they cannot solve problems rooted in human consciousness and endless desire. Truth remains the same across cultures and disciplines, requiring only a change in language, not in essence. Lasting solutions emerge through honesty, self-inquiry, and inner transformation, because no external system can replace a change in the human mind.
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.
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.
Sixty million followers do not necessarily indicate a transformation in consciousness. Large numbers may reflect persistent outreach rather than deep commitment. Truth is often avoided not through opposition but through indifference, convenience, and self-deception. Real change requires sustained effort, inner honesty, testing one's understanding, and the courage to face uncomfortable truths instead of seeking comfort, validation, or easy inspiration.
Operating from the highest inner point means living with honesty rather than self-created illusions. The ego becomes “higher” not through mystical growth but by dropping false self-images and testing its claims against reality. When honesty weakens, lower motives take control, creating inner conflict and disorder. Real growth lies in continuously questioning oneself, facing uncomfortable truths, and preventing the ego from being driven by comforting but deceptive beliefs.
Inner freedom becomes impossible when identity is borrowed from family, friends, or social expectations. Fear, guilt, and pressure arise because people allow others to define their worth and choices. Relationships become healthy only when they support growth rather than control it. Real autonomy comes from self-understanding, continuous inner inquiry, and the courage to act from clarity rather than conformity. When there is inner certainty, labels, criticism, and social judgment lose their power.
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.
