Ramkrishna Paramhans

Question: Acharya ji, what is meant by ‘woman’ when Shri Ramakrishna says, “Souls enmeshed in worldliness cannot resist the temptation of ‘woman and gold’ and direct their minds to God, even though these things bring upon them a thousand humiliations.”

Acharya Prashant: It is not possible to go through this… read_more

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, please explain what Shri Ramakrishna meant by the following:

“One day a Marwari gentleman went to Sri Ramakrishna and asked him for permission to present him with some thousands of rupees. But the master had nothing but a stern refusal for this well-meant offer. He said,… read_more

From The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna:

“A learned ignorance is the end of philosophy and the beginning of religion”

~Sir William Hamilton

(Scottish Philosopher)

Acharya Prashant: What is Philosophy? Though Philosophy means the search for Truth, but it ends up becoming just more and more concepts about Truth. With Philosophy,… read_more

Questioner: Acharya Ji, please explain what Shri Ramakrishna meant by:

“Once a Marwari gentleman, approached Ramakrishna and said, “How is it, Sir, that I do not see God, although I have renounced everything?”

The Master: Well, haven’t you seen leather jars for keeping oil? If one of them is emptied … read_more

“Do your duties in the world and also fix your mind on the Lotus feet of the Lord”

“You are like ‘Elder, the pumpkin cutter’. You are neither a man of the world nor a devotee of God”

~The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Acharya Prashant: We are referring to a… read_more

Questioner: Acharya Ji, which direction to take in life?

Acharya Prashant: What is it, that matters to you?

The direction in which you must go is determined by where you will feel the pain.

And if you feel no pain, no discomfort, why must you go in any direction?

You … read_more

Fulfillment is what you want, don’t you? There won’t be any fulfillment until you break your inner bondages. And the most central, critical, and primary bondage is body-identification.

Use everything that your birth, your body, and Prakriti (physical nature) have given you. Use all of that for the sake of… read_more

What is the punishment of having a wrong goal? What is the punishment? You will suffer. And if you keep having one wrong goal after the other, your suffering will keep compounding, so you will be forced to give up your false goals.

And if you are not forced to… read_more

Questioner: Due to my conditioning and fear, mind tries to perceive some ‘thing’ to surrender to. This stops me from actually surrendering. With this conflict, how to understand if there is any movement towards the centre, or is it all at the periphery?

Acharya Prashant: The inner and the outer… read_more

We all know Swami Vivekananda. But have you heard about 'Shri Alasinga Perumal'?

Probably not. But if Alasinga Ji had not been there, Swami Vivekananda would never have been able to give that historic speech in Chicago, due to which he brought fame to Vedanta and Hinduism throughout the world.… read_more

“The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.” -Khalil Gibran, ‘Sand and Foam’

Question: Once during a discourse on the Bible, you too have said, “The more you know the Truth, the more you want to know; such is … read_more

Acharya Prashant: What does guilt say? Let’s first of all look at it. Guilt says, “I am better than how and what I did”, right? Guilt says, “I am better than my actions”, or “I am better than my thoughts. I am better than the account I gave of myself… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Love is the fire that melts down the bondage that is you. Knowledge is merely the light in which you can see your bondages. Even if you are able to look at your chains in the light of knowledge, that does not rid you of the chains. In… read_more

Acharya Prashant: The very urge for liberation, when it doesn’t find an outlet, becomes the urge to consume. Do you see this? Where does the tendency to consume so much come from? It comes from the misidentified and thwarted urge toward liberation. If you will not provide liberation to a… read_more

Questioner: I want everything that I do to be perfect. Because of this, I end up procrastinating a lot of things and focus only on the minor ones that I can do almost perfectly and feel satisfied about. I am not happy about this tendency. How should I get out… read_more

Questioner: Namaskar Acharya ji! I am reading a book called “Freedom from the Known”, where the author, Jiddu Krishnamurthi, talks about removing authority to be free from the ego. What does he mean by authority? Can we take anything to be the authority and then say, “I’m not going to… read_more

Questioner: Is there some scientific context to spirituality? Because, at the end of the day, as you said, ‘Religion forms a boundary, an outer shell, within which spirituality remains.’ Because this has to be something that stops you from doing something wrong or something that is fundamentally upsetting. So, how… read_more

Questioner: (Reads out the following)

If you love, love openly

Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.

Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her.

One … read_more

Questioner: Who can best answer the basic questions related to human existence or reasons for survival, our life, our emotions, and our death? Can science with its metanarratives answer these questions, or will the Upanishads answer them?

Acharya Prashant: Science does not even look into these questions. Science is considered,… read_more

Questioner: Acharyaji, my question is that the greed of getting more and more pleasure is increasing with time, and finally I’m finding myself getting stuck in the vicious circle of getting more and more pleasure. Sir, what are the ways that you could suggest to me to get out of… read_more

Questioner: Sir, it is pretty evident that I exist and you exist, but you have also stated that the ego does not exist. So, when someone calls you Acharya Prashant and you reply, isn’t that an identification that reflects an ego?

Acharya Prashant: It is a thing that is useful… read_more

Questioner: I’ll start by introducing myself. I’m a second-year graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. So, in my daily life, my habits that I think have morphed into compulsion with time, and it disturbs me when people don’t do the same as I do. Like for example, I have… read_more

Questioner 1: In my experience, what’s happening is that I really like reading scriptures, so I’ve been reading them for quite some time. But with time, what I’ve observed is that earlier there used to be a freshness and it would stay with me. There was a sense of excitement… read_more

Questioner: Pranam sir, I am Ram Surendra Singh, a research scholar from the Mathematics Department. Sir, we all are dealing with physical matter here but if we see a periodic table, all the elements in there, and if someone knows how to play with those elements they can all create… read_more

Acharya Prashant: A mind free of stories about itself, is a humble mind. The story could say everything. The story does not always say, “I am the king of the world.” Often the story says, “I am the most wretched person on this earth.” Nevertheless, irrespective of its content, a… read_more

Acharya Prashant: If there is a problem in physics, mathematics, or engineering in front of you and somebody offers you a particular solution, do you just go to the last step and accept the conclusion? Is that scientific or rational? Do we do that? No, we don’t do that. What… read_more

Questioner: Namaskar Acharya Ji. You talked of Mukti. So, I would like to know, is it a Mukti from life and birth? I mean, more, If you can elaborate?

Acharya Prashant: Mukti from internal compulsions. The goal of life can be talked of as Mukti which is Liberation, which is… read_more

Questioner: My question is that I heard that there are two cosmic energies, these two Cosmic energies will take out all the sufferings of the people, which are from treta yuga of Lord Sri Ram and Lakshman get received the cosmic energies from Sage Vishwamitra, those are called some bala… read_more

Questioner: Namaskar Acharya ji. Acharya ji, I have been listening to you for quite some time now, and one thing that I have noticed is that whenever you speak on any topic, you always speak in the light of Advait Vedant. One thing also on which you have spoken a… read_more

Questioner: Sir, what is clarity?

Acharya Prashant: Clarity is two things together: One, it is the absence of readymade concepts based on which one lives, one reacts, one sees the world, and parallelly, simultaneously, on the other hand, it is the ability to respond greatly. So, on the one hand,… read_more

Questioner: Why think so much about decisions? Shouldn’t our decisions be spontaneous? I like to decide in a free flow.

Acharya Prashant: So the questioner is stressing on the spontaneity of decisions. He says that he likes to decide in a flow. It's a good thing, your intention is good.… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Pleasing oneself is not at all an example of self-love; if at all, it is an example of lack of self-knowledge. You cannot have self-love without self-knowledge; it is a great misconception that must be cleared very very thoroughly, very very finely. Making yourself happy is not at… read_more

Questioner: I was in a relationship with a person from the last eight years. Last three years while being with me, he was also seeing and dating other women. I have always been honest and loyal to him. After knowing that he is so mean, so dishonest, why am I… read_more

Questioner: Acharya ji, today I realized that without love in my heart, I cannot find joy in my life, however wonderful my external situations are. Just listening to, and singing a Kabir bhajan brings me so much joy, love, and tears, I really want to know this Love, and what… read_more

Questioner: Sir, I am Saurabh Kumar from Rajdhani College, Delhi University. My question is that there is one or two days ago, there was Ram Navami. Some people were going and cheering Ram, Ram at the mosque and figuring out some flags at the mosque. And they are looking like… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Hell is a place where you get a lot of sympathy, consolation, condolence, and commiseration. You're told that we agree that you are in a miserable state. Your neighbor comes to you, puts his hand on your shoulder, and with a grave face tells you that you are… read_more

Acharya Prashant: If I am incomplete, then sitting where I am, what would be the quality of my actions, thoughts, and imagination? They, too, would be of an incomplete nature.

So, incompleteness is projecting more incompleteness for itself and then trying with all its might to reach more incompleteness. How… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Whatever you are doing, there has to be honesty in that. What is important is that you do not say one thing and do another thing. If you look at the great scientific discoveries or inventions, the scientist or the explorer would be busy in his chosen area… read_more

Acharya Prashant: We anyway live in attitudes, try to have a carefree attitude. Try to have an attitude of reasonless security, try to have an attitude in which you don't get daunted easily, you don't start shivering easily.

The world might be stamping its feet in front of you, angrily,… read_more