Shri Patanjali

The debate around nudity and movements like “Free the Nipple” miss a deeper issue: true freedom is not about clothing, but freedom from psychological conditioning and body-based identity. Clothes themselves neither oppress nor liberate. A truly free society is one where the body becomes ordinary and irrelevant, not a source of obsession, shame, validation, or social control.

You look at Iran, at revolutions, and ask: can systems really bring freedom? Revolutions keep replacing one system with another, yet the chaos remains. The real question is rarely asked: what within us creates these systems? Real freedom is not political or social; it is inward. Without inner change, every revolution only rotates power, never resolves suffering.

If you do not understand spirituality, you will fail even in economics. Look at how common people live their daily lives. Do we inquire into what we are doing? We do things because others are doing the same things. Out of ignorance, you act; and out of greed, you keep acting. Economics does not address the problem of ignorance. Economics also does not address the problem of greed. It is the Upanishads and the Gita that address these problems.

Often, in the name of financial pressure, what we are really kneeling down to is something else. But because that something else is not nice enough to be named, what we quote is financial pressure. Nothing is ever forced in a tangible way. The way is kept gentle in appearance. But there is something else at work inwardly. What is that thing? That is what you have to uncover. You have to be honest towards yourself, very honest.

“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?

The tiger chases the buffalo calf and brings it down. Does that disappoint you? No, because that was expected. Similarly, expect animal behavior all the time from everyone around you, including yourself. Everything we do comes from the jungle, so don’t be disappointed. Disappointment always arises from expectations. You really have to strive to be someone who is not an animal. And the first step in that striving is to address your own inner animal.

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.

We teach our kids to write applications: “Humbly I beg to submit that today I have an ache in my tooth.” “Humbly I beg to submit!” If you are stating a fact, if the toothache is real, why the hell are you groveling? If that is the Truth, why are you begging? Drool, drool, drool. That’s become our culture. If your philosophy tells you to submit and surrender to several masters, you will never be a truthful person, because in Truth there is no authority but the Truth.

Manifestation is simply an expression of your desire. You desire something, and then you imagine your desire has been fulfilled. What does the common man desire? ‘Give me more money.’ What will the politician desire? ‘Finish off democracy and give me power for life.’ We have very stinking desires. Do we ever desire anything that is really good for everybody? The question remains: Was that thing worth it? You gave it so much time, so much respect, did it deserve that?

The other must exist in your life, and vice versa, only for the sake of internal elevation, to make you into a better person. Don't you see the impact the other one is having on your life? Seeing is the key. What does seeing mean? Seeing implies understanding. See and ask yourself: What is the impact upon me? And if you see that, you'll just push it aside. It will be spontaneous. You won't even require to think, because now you have seen.

The money you pay for something must be commensurate with its practical utility, but how do you know something is worth its price? For example, does jewellery really have any utility that you pay so much for just a piece of metal? The average Indian household spends much more on the girl’s dowry than on her education. And poor farmers in India are often pushed to suicide because they spend a lot on weddings and funerals by borrowing at exorbitant rates. This is what happens when you are not deeply spiritual: you can be easily conditioned to earn from the wrong source and spend at the wrong place.

This in itself is a philosophical question. This is why you should study philosophy, because you already have this question. Philosophy is your affection for the Truth, your leaning towards the Truth. Don’t you want to know the Truth? How many of you are happy with lies? Nobody. So, it is this love for Truth that we all innately have; that’s called philosophy.

Drop the center of confusion, come to the center of clarity. Drop what the masses practice, come to the direct route of self-realization. That’s what it means.

In the rule books of the courts, there are offenses of a thousand kinds, but when it comes to life, there is just one offense, ‘Did you live by the Truth or did you betray it?’ Remember that chap called Bhagat Singh and his associates. The courts declared they were guilty, and they were still joyful because they were absolutely not guilty in front of life. Live rightly, and then don’t apologize. That’s it.

It is one kind of misfortune to not have money at all. The next kind of misfortune is to have a lot of money rotting in your bank account. Why must it be there in your bank account? You are so impoverished, you couldn't find a right place where you can spend your money. Money is meant to be spent. Spend it at the right places. Go enroll in a hobby class. Get a tennis coach. All that is expensive. Spend your money. If you won't, then you will end up just buying whatever your friends buy.

The worldly philosophy says, “Even if you lead a corrupt life, at the last moment you utter ‘Ram, Ram’, and you are redeemed.” I say just the opposite. Even if you have lived a life of wisdom, you can still lose it in your last breath. Even your wisdom requires a supporting and nourishing ecosystem. You can never afford to be complacent.

The Bhagavad Gita, in essence, is a struggle of mukti (liberation) against sanskriti (culture). Shri Krishna urges Arjun to discard misogyny and cultural superstitions; the only thing that matters is mukti — liberation. Culture and traditions are time-bound; they hold meaning only when they point towards Truth — timeless, Sanatan. Have great traditions, and always be careful that your traditions are pointing towards the Truth. Only then do the traditions have life.

The wish remains unfulfilled because that which we want by extending our dead life cannot be had through extension. It can be had only through termination of the dead life. So our ways are stupid. That which must be terminated is rather extended by us. We need to give death to death. This dead life needs to be brought to death, and then you will give death to a dead life, death to death, which is good. Instead we keep trying to prolong the dead life. And if you are prolonging a dead life, you are only prolonging the death that you are living.

This evening in Delhi, a new book steps into the world—Truth Without Apology by Acharya Prashant. The launch takes place amidst seekers, readers, and companions of his work. In times when words are often polished to please and truths are dressed in comforting disguises, Truth Without Apology arrives like an uninvited storm—direct, raw, and uncompromising.

Life comes to us in an unending number of ways and you never know what's going to happen next. We are starved of something that really penetrates the surface. So, it is the intensity that this book brings — arrow-like depth, striking like lightning, immediately, so you don't have a chance to escape away from it. Like a Zen koan: very brief, very effective, and does its work in a snap. You could open just any chapter from anywhere and find it as if it was written just for you.

Stray dogs need garbage, and with waste reducing, their populations in urban areas are bound to decline. Not just humans, even dogs suffer — crushed by vehicles, beaten up, falling ill, etc. They can either be integrated into our homes with care and responsibility or face extinction from our streets. It is heartwarming to see humans supporting one species, but why doesn’t our heart bleed for the crowds of animals we are slaughtering every day, making many of them extinct forever? Climate change is the biggest threat and is responsible for the maximum misery to animals.

In Zen, the student asks a question to the master, and the reply brings sudden enlightenment. It means something had long cluttered the mind, and in one deft stroke, like a genius, the master cuts the relationship between the ego and its belief. What Vedanta does through persuasive argument, the koan does through an abrupt shock.

The Truth is not a complicated puzzle. Everything is laid open, right in front of you. So, if it is not happening even now, then it is just because of your own mischief. We give preference to the trivial and miss out on the important. We drift from one thing to another, with no thing meaning anything to us. You are not missing the secret; you are missing the obvious.

When words arise from an honest observation of life, then those words are called "divine."

We have images of peace. When you look at the image of Shri Krishna rushing towards Bhishma to attack him personally, going beyond his brief as a charioteer, you don’t think that this is peace. You feel as if Shri Krishna is being violent. The expression of peace often looks very much like violence. Truth, Peace, Love, Freedom — these must never be searched in ‘actions’. Peace and Truth are no different. Peace is about the right action.

The distinction between spiritual life and worldly life is a false distinction. Spirituality is not morality or a set of commandments. It is never instructive. You do not need great formulations or special practices. Spirituality is basic honesty. Just see and acknowledge what is going on, and then the right action follows. Nothing else is needed.

Acharya Prashant: That's why the rājasika mind is better than the tāmsika mind. The rājasika says, “I’m not alright. I need to do something to become better. I feel inferior. I feel incomplete. I need to rise. I need to achieve.” That’s the rājasika mind. The rājasika mind at least…

So many books and gurus have created a very wonderful image of the enlightened one, and it is a totally unrealistic image. There is no scripture worth the name which gives any image of enlightenment. The realised one lives a very ordinary life, simply in the ‘facts.’ There is no spiritual or religious duty as such to become enlightened. No, not at all. You can be shamelessly unenlightened, and that is enlightenment.

Do not consume that which will poison you, even if it appears attractive. Now that is spirituality.

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…

Explore Books on Lord Shiv by Acharya Prashant, revealing deep Vedantic insights into Shiv’s true essence, symbols, and spiritual wisdom beyond misconceptions.

All forms of gods and goddesses have emerged from man's mind — they are our own projections. Even if you show a god in the form of an animal, the animal will still be anthropomorphic, very closely related to human beings. So, this proves that we are worshipping our own form. Therefore, if any form does not remind you of a Truth beyond the form, then the form has not succeeded on you. This is why the highest spiritual philosophies have always said that the Truth is formless.

Shakti represents everything in motion, everything that can be experienced, everything in space-time. We move in search of a final destination. That point is symbolically represented by Shiva. Those who are inclined towards having the right kind of movement worship Shakti. Those who have fallen in love with the destination itself, worship Shiva. The fact is that the two are inseparable.

To the one who believes in ghosts (Bhūta-Piśāca) — for him, they exist. When you are asleep and are engaged in some nightmare, you feel it actually exists. Bhūta-Piśāca Nikata Nahiṁ Āve, Mahāvīra Jab Nāma Sunāve: Mahavira Hanuman, devoted to Shri Ram, is to be taken as the representative of Truth. If you can be close to the representative of the Truth, you will get rid of all nonsensical and horrifying imaginations.

It was Guru Nanak who said, "You may try as hard as you can, but you will never get to know the mind of the liberated one." That's from the Adi Granth. You keep trying. You keep speculating. And the ego has a serious urge to know what is going on in the mind of the Buddha. But you'll never know what's there in the mind of the Buddha. Being who you are, how will you know the mind of the Buddha?

Practice means incremental improvement, daily improvement, moment-to-moment improvement. That's what we started this session with. Step by step you have to move — even towards the absolute. No one step can take you to the absolute. Not even a million steps can take you to the absolute. But still, there is no way except the million steps.

You have to be dismissive of any talk of the afterlife. Only then the Gita will make sense to you. Those who have a battle at hand, those who are living in matters of the moment, those who are engaging deeply with the world as it is right now — present to them — they are the ones who will find the Gita useful, indispensable rather.

What you call as God is a concept; Truth is not a concept. Therefore, you can have stories about God, various religions, and their miscellaneous beliefs. But you can have no story at all about Truth because it is that which is invariable. Time cannot change it, and it doesn't vary from person to person. Irrespective of your subjective state, it remains as it is. Truth just turns you silent.

Our culture has turned attachment into value, very proximate to love. However, attachment is poison and has nothing to do with love. We don’t feel ashamed admitting that we are attached, as if something beautiful is happening. If you are with the wrong one, and not even prepared to see that you are with the wrong one — that’s attachment. And you can never be attached to the Right One; there is only dissolution.

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.

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.

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…

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.

The Gita has nothing to do with sāttvikatā. Even sāttvikatā is to be rejected as destiny, while even rājasikatā is to be embraced if it serves as a means to freedom. Everything and anything is fine if it is usable in the context of liberation. Even sattva can become an object of consumption — don’t we see learned people whose knowledge becomes their identity? The Gita is about getting rid of all traps — be it sattva, rajas, tamas, or anything.

Sex, whether premarital or postmarital, depends on the people who are engaging in it. Even in postmarital sex, there can be a lot of violence. Equally, there can be a very bad kind of sexual encounter before marriage. The word marital does not matter. If two people are not meeting in actual love, then it doesn't matter whether the thing is postmarital or premarital — it is simply abominable. If you love someone, give them wings, light, and self-knowledge. Liberation is the foremost indicator of love.