Saint Sahjobai

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.

Women cannot be truly liberated through education, income, or legal rights alone if they remain psychologically identified with socially conditioned ideas of “womanhood.” While external barriers may fall, inner bondage persists through inherited identities, roles, and expectations. Real freedom begins not by rejecting the body, but by seeing oneself primarily as a conscious human being rather than a gendered identity, because lasting liberation starts at the root of self-identification.

Women are often valued not only for their abilities but also for their appearance, desirability, and conformity to social expectations. This conditioning begins early and is reinforced through family, workplaces, media, and culture. As a result, many forms of discrimination continue not only because they are imposed from outside but also because they are accepted and normalized from within. Real freedom begins when a woman refuses to define herself through roles, approval, or standards created to keep her dependent on external validation.

Women's oppression survives not only through external control but also through the internal acceptance of identities imposed by society. Freedom cannot be permanently granted from outside; it must arise from an individual's own sense of dignity, agency, and responsibility. While laws, institutions, and support systems matter, lasting liberation begins when people stop defining themselves through inherited limitations and choose to assert their own consciousness, freedom, and self-worth.

Curiosity and honest questioning do not oppose love; they deepen understanding. Blind obedience creates dullness, while genuine inquiry keeps the mind alive and engaged. True questioning is not self-defense but a sincere search for clarity. Most people remain psychologically hypnotized by fear, entertainment, and ego, yet a small conscious voice within always seeks truth. Real change begins when one chooses love and self-realization over fear and self-preservation.

Is loneliness really the absence of people, or the crowd of images and ideas inside us telling us that we “need someone” to feel complete? Two incomplete people cannot create wholeness together. Relationships are beautiful, but only when they do not become substitutes for inner completeness. Relate to the world, connect deeply, but never use another person to fill your inner hollowness.

Todays educated and financially independent woman says, “I am free,” yet still feels deeply confined within. Why? Because external freedom alone does not dissolve inner conditioning. The old idea of “womanness” still sits at the center of identity. Real liberation begins when one stops seeing oneself merely as a gendered body and starts living as human consciousness first.

It’s far easier to sit on a greatly decorated stage and talk about the virtues of Rudrākṣa, and what kind of water to drink, and why copper is useful; and all kinds of pseudo-scientific nonsense. But to really speak upon a Kabir or an Ashtavakra requires a tremendous understanding which does not come to everybody. If you are a spiritual teacher and you are saying you have not read any scripture, that raises questions on your love for the Truth.

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…

Questioner: All the forms of multimedia, the film industry and advertisements, have presented images of both sexes that are very often unrealistic and debatable. The very quality of femininity has been portrayed in the film industry, ironically, as victimizing them, merely pretty faces, and sidekicks. Why do you think women…

Women do not need sympathy, reservation, or compensation; they need awakening. Victimhood may offer temporary advantage, but it slowly erodes dignity and strength. Education that stops at jobs and numbers fails both men and women. Unless education addresses the inner fear, insecurity, and ignorance that sustain oppression, no policy can truly empower the girl child.

You can tell someone, “Kid, this is the path of destruction. Leave it!” But you cannot forcefully pick the kid up and take her away. You know something is not right for the other person, and yet you can’t help her from doing it. You can’t give up, you can’t get angry, and you can’t stop what is happening. Great powerlessness. That’s how a Teacher feels.

That’s what the entire spiritual process is about, collecting the airfare. So that you can rise up, otherwise, you stay crawling on the highway. Life is not so that you just remain a crawler, a creeper. Life is so that you can take off.

The point always to be proven and maintained is that the woman is weak and fragile, because that is exactly what patriarchy always sought to prove: “She can’t work.” Coming from a man it will appear harsh, but being a human being much like a woman, what I can broadly say is that I will not trade away my freedom for the sake of avoiding physical inconvenience. Even if favors are offered to you for free, refuse. There are no free lunches.

If the woman really understands herself and therefore her choices, why would there be a need to be affected by others? But we bother. That happens because we have borrowed our sense of self from history, tradition, and society. When dependence is glorified, be it physical, financial, emotional, or psychological, it definitely coexists with bondage. If you feel bulldozed or forced, there is only one reason: you’re not walking on your own legs. Go out and earn. No price is too big for freedom.

“That brother is such a rascal. He roams all over the city and does this and does that. But this one is such a nice girl. She follows all the parental instructions, does her homework properly, gets good grades in school, and the brother is a rascal.” But the brother will end up in Silicon Valley, and the sister will end up in the kitchen. Don't be a good girl with your mother sitting next to you. That's the advice I'm offering.

Irrespective of her station in life, it has been drilled deeply into the Indian woman that her life is foremost about the husband, kids, bed, and meals. But how can this be the primary reason for a conscious human being's existence? We use decorated phrases like “Queen of the House”, but the moment the "queen" gets some money, all her queenly tasks are dumped onto somebody else. So, we are just deceiving ourselves. Give yourself the courage to question things and not accept them blindly — it will give you a blossomed personality and a great life.

Remember, if you want men to look at just your body, they would actually always be looking down at you. But if people, men or women, look at you because of your qualities, they would always be looking up to you.

Truth enlightens, so it is attractive. Maya enthrals, so it is sometimes even more attractive. Where to go — that is the battle.

DANCE NAKED

Dance, Lalla, with nothing on

But air: Sing, Lalla,

wearing the sky.

Look at this glowing day! What clothes

Could be so beautiful or

more sacred?

~Lal Ded

Acharya Prashant- what does it mean to dance with nothing on?

L1- No causes.

AP- What does it mean to…

If you have not been benefitting from the Guru, either you are too full of yourself or you are not really devoted and putting in the right efforts. Ashtavakra puts it very simply: Even if Brahma, Vishnu, or Shiva are your teachers, yet if you cannot get rid of yourself, you will not benefit. Only somebody who has seen the total failure of his ways is so determined to get rid of suffering that he can sacrifice anything, anybody — only such a person, such a mind, can be helped by the Guru.

The moment you utter the word ‘Guru,’ the image of a sober, realized master sitting and teaching his students comes to your mind, but Guru is a continuity, taking different forms at different times. The Guru can appear in front of you even as a competitor, or somebody with whom you have a conflict, or even as a tempting person of the opposite gender. Do not try to predict his ways; the ways of divinity are unfathomable. In fact, if you ever come across a Guru in a very planned way, then rest assured — that Guru is not a Guru.

Millions of working women are continuously carrying the guilt of neglecting an important duty in the household. This is emanating from centuries-old conditioning. In the jungle, it often did happen that, especially during long periods of pregnancy, the woman couldn't really gather for herself, so the man became the provider. But where is the jungle today? Why are we still behaving as if we are still in the jungle? There is no disadvantage that the woman has today, so there is no need for her to feel that her primary commitment is at home.

Freedom is not an ideal. Freedom does not mean conforming to certain notions. Freedom does not mean that you have to be a superwoman — the kind of things that they show in the movies: "See, look, this is the modern, liberated, progressive woman. And this is what she does. She's a super boss. She's a super mom. She's a super wife. She looks fit and sexy. She is everything all at once." Freedom does not mean conforming to these things. Freedom is about knowing what is not me.

Please — in the world of the guru, in the dimension of the guru, in the eyes of the guru, there are no walls or houses or doors at all. So he cannot throw you out. But in the world of the student, doors and houses and separations and barriers and walls do exist. So the student can ensure that there is a separation between him and the teacher.

Gita can be brought to anybody, and Arjunas are not always available. Sometimes, Duryodhanas have to be turned into Arjunas. It’s just that it’s relatively easier with an Arjuna. As long as somebody has even the faintest remnant of consciousness left, Gita can be brought to that person — but it will be tough. Nobody really deserves the Gita. You can only be grateful to the Gita if it comes to you.

We say, “It was just sheer grace that the Buddha encountered sights of the old man, the sick man, the destitute, and was transformed.” But — was the Buddha the only one who encountered such sights? Grace is available to everybody; it was only the Buddha who decided that it’s time to take action. Grace is that which comes to you unconditionally, but people reject grace. Even grace respects your choice.

Liquor consumption or flesh consumption or other kinds of unwise gratifications of the body, merely increase the obstacles that one faces. So, therefore, those kinds of things must not be practiced — even if it is observed that a realized man is practicing them.

If you start living your life founded on emotions, you won't go very far. You would go only in the direction of your bodily constitution. That's where your biological life wants to take you. And the places where your biological life intends to take you are not very glorious or dignified places. Do not let those things happen to you.

Women are physically a bit weaker, and men could coerce them using sheer muscle power. But those days are behind us, because now we have institutions, the law, and the police — systems that do not listen to muscles. There is something in you that agrees to the demands being made by the patriarchal system — question that. What is it in you that surrenders — and that thing is called greed and fear. So that's what you need to fight against — your greed and fear.

You are born with a feeling of loneliness and dependency. Even if you live till 126, you will find that loneliness still haunts you. The real way to fight this is to go to the scriptures. Once you develop the taste of being with Shri Krishna or a Mahavira, you will forget loneliness and dependency. And to make space for them, you have to evict all the nonsense that is sitting in your mind.

The way Prakriti has made the two genders, and the way we are conditioned by society, girls have turned out to be more emotional and more reactive. And that’s a serious handicap they face in life. Many women take their emotionality as their strength, whereas it is not. It is something very untamed that arises from the body. One ought to understand it and stay at a safe distance from it.

Shri Ram is the source of all excellence—Kabir Sahab’s excellence, the excellence of an astronaut, the excellence of a deep-sea diver, the excellence of a professional, etc. If you don’t have excellence in what you do, it is because you have been disloyal to Ram. Without Ram, you can’t do anything nicely.

Your target should be to accomplish the most extraordinary task in your life. The one at the bottom should also aim for the highest one. It is illogical to say that being at home means washing clothes. You have a washing machine for that! Why don't you leave it and wash them manually? All the technologies are available because you can allot your time to all those things that are much more important so that you are able to complete the task of the highest order.

In the jungle, the woman existed only to breed — not to be an artist, scientist, explorer, or thinker. Internally, women still live in this bondage today, driven by these primal instincts, seeking security and protection, even if they appear externally empowered. And internal bondage is far worse than external. This is where wisdom literature becomes her true rescue—when she knows herself, she can use her body for liberation.

The woman is not beautiful; the man is not beautiful either. Truth and compassion are beautiful. The compassionate one stands head and shoulders above the gorgeous woman or the handsome man. And this is possible only when love and appreciation for the right, gender-independent values are fostered in both the man and the woman.

The question should be which one is relevant to you? What will you do by enquiring about Shri Krishna’s grace? That’s Shri Krishna’s prerogative, right? Shri Krishna will take care of his grace if he has to offer grace. Whatever he has to do, we do not know what grace is. We do not know who Shri Krishna is. How does it concern us to go into matters of his grace? What is it that’s in your control? Your own preparation, your own willingness. So, you take care of that.

If you are well-educated, use your education for your empowerment, and that power will give you the leverage to live life on your own terms. Else, anybody—everybody—they'll ride roughshod over you. And you will internalize it. One resists only to the point there is a point in resisting. And after that point, what do you do? You succumb. You start pretending as if you are in the situation by choice. Because you know very well there is no point resisting anymore. You flip sides. Let that not happen to you.

You have to know what you are doing. Once you know what you are doing, then the knowledge itself is the motivator. Whereas, if things are happening in a very unconscious way, you will not know why you should exert yourself at all. If you are somebody who frequently needs to be motivated by an external source, then you should ask yourself, “Do I really know what I am doing?”

You cannot worship something with the intent of obtaining favors—that's exploitation. Worshiping a cow while asking for milk is not worship. Worship is when you do not use any dairy product and yet respect the cow. The common man sees everything as an object for consumption. True nature worship is desireless—not based on consumption, with no one left to desire.

All motivation and ambition are rooted in a sense of unworthiness, inferiority, and incompleteness. Motivation is external, meaning an outside force is acting upon you, making you react. If motivation can come from outside, it can also disappear when the outside factor disappears. That’s no way of living a conscious life. However, when you start from a point of completeness, you perform all your actions out of love and joy, and the result becomes irrelevant.

The word for a Guru does not really exist in the English language. So, they have borrowed Guru itself, Guru. But they have borrowed the word Guru and rather misunderstood it and misapplied it. So, anybody who seems to be an expert at anything, can be justifiably called a Guru in the English language. Now that's not the proper usage in spirituality or in Sanskrit.

Questioner:* I am Darshan, and my question is very simple yet complicated. So why do we not work? So even after knowing that if we work, we will get something that we are looking for. So, to take an example, I had the opportunity to interact with a lot…

Questioner (Q): My question is regarding abortion. Broadly, there are two schools of thought regarding abortion. The first one is, because it is the woman’s body, she is the one who gets to decide whether to abort or deliver the child. The second school of thought says that the woman…

Be compassionate towards yourself, and have faith that freedom is possible and that life can be enjoyed really. Life need not be a melancholy song; it can be a symphony of ecstasy. That faith has to be there.

Do not surrender so easily to the forces of littleness. They will…

And then there are those who actually really practically want liberation. Those who really and practically want liberation, find out the means to be liberated. The Guru is the means. Nanak sahab says, “Now that you know so much about God, the absolute, you must also know how the absolute is to be reached.”

Acharya Prashant: You have said, “What kind of change our education system needs to have so that our coming generations live together in peace and fulfillment?” Live together with each other, right? You haven’t said they live together with animals. The trees, the rivers, the rabbits, and the lions. That…