Christianity

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bullying hurts deeply only when it is allowed to define one's inner identity. External abuse may wound the body, but lasting psychological wounds require inner participation. While OCD, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and other mental health conditions deserve proper treatment through psychiatry, lasting freedom demands self-knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

If I do not know what I want, what can be sold to me? Anything. How do you know you need anything you aspire for? No, no, that need is artificial. And not knowing yourself, you are blissfully unaware that the need is an implanted thing. Remember, the seller is not selling you just his goods. He’s also selling you the need to buy his goods.

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.

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.

“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.

As a doctor, can we limit our responsibility to the one particular body or to the set of few bodies that come to us for treatment? Or is the patient actually a representative of an entire society, an entire ecosystem? Can I really be a good doctor of the lungs, if I support a society that pollutes the environment in the name of development? So, if I'm a doctor, then health is my responsibility in the holistic sense, not just one patient.

It’s not going to be right when the patient starts playing the doctor. We need to grow up; and having a kid, in that sense, is an opportunity. You want to be of some use to the kid, then grow up with the kid.

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.

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?"

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.

You need to earn the right to even utter ‘Shri Ram’. If, for 364 days, you have really lived up to Shri Ram, only then must you celebrate the festival of Ramness. For 364 days, your life had nothing to do with Shri Ram, and on the 365th day, you join the noisy bandwagon. Shri Ram, who stands for that which can neither be bought nor sold, his festival has been turned into an orgy of sales and discounts. Live your life just as Shri Ram lived his life, and then you will have the right to celebrate Diwali.

If you know no philosophy and you are just celebrating Holi, Diwali, or Eid, or Christmas, that's dumb. Very dumb. And you call that as your great culture. No, I will have to sacrifice goats. Bloodshed is the name of religion. What kind of religion? No crackers are needed, even if that kills the air. What is this? AQI of 1,400. But I don't bother. I'm a religious man. What are you celebrating?

A suicide is a sad event because it prevents us from realizing our possibility and potential — there was an opportunity to live, learn, grow, realize, and be liberated, but it was wasted. But how many of us actually manage to realize our potential even if we live to 80 years? Hardly anybody. For our species, the extent of aliveness is proportional to the freedom and height of our consciousness. So ask yourself honestly: How close am I to the best I could have been?

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 soul is a myth. Even god is a myth. Spirituality has nothing to do with soul or gods; these are mental concepts. The mind itself is a myth. The experiencer himself is bodily, the experiencer and the body are one — how can there be an out-of-body experience? The reality is that you experience your own existence, and that is called the ego. The ego is an accumulation of influences, impressions and when those are cleared away, what you have is the freedom of the ego, and that is called the Truth.

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.

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…

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.