Confusion

The world is a habit, but drugs are a worse habit. The one who is finding refuge in drugs is fed up of the usual stuff of consciousness, that is certain, but he is taking a very wasteful route. It’s like feeling cold in Delhi in the month of December… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Confused world, a chaotic world, a world that makes no sense. And it’s not that the world is confused or chaotic or nonsensical. It is obviously the looker, the seer of the world who is not able to comprehend it with any clarity.

Lack of clarity is a… read_more

Acharya Prashant: The four yugas in the Vedic tradition have been Satyug, Treta, Dvapara, and Kaliyug. Now, what do they represent? Do they represent the passage of time? Do they represent something historical? We have been led to believe that way, right? We believe that time is something external that… read_more

Questioner: So, the thing is, we have already decided to go on a path of whatever we want to achieve, and I am sure of it that okay, I like this, I am interested in it, and suddenly due to some of the other reasons, I feel am I on… read_more

Acharya Prashant: You must never be afraid of questioning others. More importantly, you must never be afraid of questioning yourself. The second part is tougher. It is easy to question others, relatively easy at least. Questioning oneself hurts the ego, but that’s what one must practice.

Question yourself: “What am… read_more

Questioner: You have said that individual liberation is not possible: that either we go together, or nobody can go. So, we have to help others to cross over. But I can’t help even the people close to me; they are caught up in routine work or indulge in entertainment; no… read_more

Question: If a student has to select a stream after class twelfth and he is interested in both medical and engineering, how does he select the stream without thinking about the future?

Speaker: See, the problem is that we make our choices by looking at the future. We make our… read_more

Listener : Why is there confusion in the mind?

Speaker : What is confusion? Confusion is conflict. Confusion is the presence of many options and your inability to know. Confused, there are so many things and they are tangled together, they are fused together. That’s what confusion is.

We said… read_more

Question: Can this happen that ‘I don’t know and I don’t even want to know, and that there will always be something more to know’? Can this happen that a person thinks that ‘I am so peaceful that I don’t even want to know’?

Shri Prashant: You see, these are… read_more

Question: Sir, as you said right now that when I am really here, then there is no opportunity for restlessness. But when I am really here, a restlessness, an inner thirst, is there. And this thirst is unbearable.

Shri Prashant: No, you call that restlessness. It is never there on… read_more

Question: What is absent mindedness?Answer: Absent mindedness is mind being anywhere. Whenever you are occupied with anything, it is absent mindedness. Any act of focus, concentration, having ‘something’ as important in mind, becoming a subject,all these are acts of absent-mindedness. Mind busy with any object is absent-mindedness.

Mind busy… read_more

You are fantasizing: “When I meet that man, such and such great things will happen. And now we are having coffee, and now we are watching the movie, and the movie is wonderful”—and the entire three-hour movie you are visualizing.

What is at the basis of this entire fantasy? That… read_more

Your action has to be one with the Truth. Let wisdom guide your action. That’s Yoga of Wisdom. What is the other kind of action? Prescribed action.

Each of us, in each moment, has to make this choice. Where is your action going to come from? Is it going to… read_more

Strength is your nature. If you have managed to remain so weak, so fragile, so brittle for so long, it is only because you have been defending your weaknesses. You have been arguing in favor of your weaknesses; you have been reasoning out your weaknesses. You have simply not been… read_more

There are people who indeed say that, “No, everything is fine with us.” They are not lying. It’s just that their fineness is superficial.Yes, there is fineness in your life, but that fineness is just this deep: scratch the surface and the fineness will evaporate. A little tragedy hits you… read_more

Questioner (Q): We encounter these nodes in the path of our lives where we have to make decisions. The majority of us have a lot of duties associated with our life, and these duties also come with some demands associated with how we must act. For example, right now I… read_more

Question: If one lives in stories, the stories that are conversations with oneself, how does one get out of them?

Acharya Prashant Ji: Check! Check!

All your stories are about objects in the universe. Your stories have no fresh elements at all. All the actors, all the players, all the … read_more

A certain word falls upon your ears and there is an instant reaction, is there not? Your entire body can get heated up. One word falling on your ears can raise your temperature by two degrees within two minutes. Is it not a chemical reaction?

This body is a bunch… read_more

I’ll tell you what the rape of the mind is. When the mind has nonsensical purposes, that is rape of the mind. When things like stuff that happened in the childhood or teenage attracts you and dominates you, then the mind is being raped. Forgive me the clichéd expression, but… read_more

Were our bodies to reflect accurately and honestly the state of our minds, none of us would have been able to walk firmly even for a distance of ten meters. Our legs would have shown up as cut, wounded, bruised, fractured the way, exactly the way our mind is.

Unfortunately,… read_more

Even in those situations that we call as utterly woeful, utterly hopeless, if we just do that which we are capable of doing, would there be space and opportunity and time to despair? If you do what you must, where is the time to suffer?

In fact, the more impossibly… read_more

Gynaecology is psychology. Where else does the whole thing come from? And it’s not as if I am talking exclusively of women; with the men it’s just the same.

This entire body is just genitals expressing themselves in various forms. One part of genitals you call as genitals; the other… read_more

As long as you are living a socially adjusted and internally compromised life, as long as you are living resigned to your limitations, even your agony is limited. There won’t be much even in your sadness. You will cry for a while and then the moment somebody shows you some… read_more

Questioner: Sir, it is told to us that options create confusion in one’s life. But wherever we go, whatever we want to do, we have to search for options. Why?

Acharya Prashant: The question, rather this statement has to be clearly understood.

‘Options create confusion.’

What it means is that… read_more

Question: I want to know why the world is at the moment so harsh?

Acharya Prashant: There is nothing that one group, one community or one person experiences that the other has never experienced or is not experiencing even to the slightest degree. Fundamentally we are all one. As human… read_more

Look at the stats released by the Durex company; it manufactures condoms. In the Valentine’s Day week, sales of condoms spike by twenty to thirty percent. And then there are the stats available from the medical organizations: March is the peak month for termination of pregnancy.

So, love is not… read_more

Questioner (Q): I have discovered that being a little altruistic, a little selfless makes me feel that I am elevating my consciousness. That is what works for me. But one problem associated with this is the problem of the violation of boundaries. So, suppose I want to help a person… read_more

We are brilliant artists—makeup artists. We are adept in calling false happiness as happiness. We pretend to be happy when we are not even happy, and all of us know fully well what I am talking of. Go to your social media pages and you will see what we are… read_more

Question: Acharya Ji, if Liberation is the ultimate destiny, why don’t we get it naturally?

Acharya Prashant Ji: Liberation is Freedom, right? Liberation is Freedom. So you are free to not to be free. You are already Liberated.

It is because you are Liberated, that you can choose to remain… read_more

Questioner (Q): In spite of being fully aware of the consequences, why do people engage in self-harming behavior? Why do people stay in toxic marriages, relationships, friendships, get into addictions, do substance abuse, or get into other miscellaneous self-harming activities?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, nobody engages in self-harm knowing fully… read_more

You want the other person to be nice. We are such idiots. We want the other person to be nice. And if the other person is not nice, we feel there is no love. We do not understand anything. We are prepared to give up our life probably when somebody… read_more

Pain is due and legitimate. You will have pain. Now live through it like a man.

What is suffering? Suffering comes only when you start espousing the flawed concept that life must be pain-free. When you start feeding that concept, when you start nourishing and identifying with that concept that… read_more

You might be twenty-five today; where is the one who was twenty yesterday? Isn’t he gone? How can you stop the other from departing when you couldn’t prevent even your own old self from departing?

Remember your old self, the one that was there at the age of five, ten,… read_more

All powerlessness is just a pretense. Even in your feeblest moment, you are still powerful enough to exercise choice, and you must always hold this very close to your heart.

The world can take anything, everything away from you, but nothing and nobody ever can take away from you your… read_more

In fact, if there is one unpardonable crime, it is bad parenting. You are not even killing someone; you are disfiguring someone and sentencing him to live an entire life. How does that sound? It is like chopping off somebody’s limbs but ensuring that he lives—and he lives an entire… read_more

Questioner (Q): When we were studying for IIT, we used to think that everything would be sorted after getting into IIT or BITS. But it didn’t happen. Can such a thing actually happen at some point in life? Can I come to a point in my life where I can… read_more

Question 1: Acharya Ji, you often say, “If you want it, pay the price.” And on the other side, you also say, “If you are the doer, it cannot happen.” These two statements cause confusion and put me into trap.

Please guide.

Acharya Prashant Ji: The doer is characterised by… read_more

I am saying this as a friend of the woman. I am asking her, why is the male sight or the male gaze so important to you? If you want attention from people, if you want respect from people, why can’t it be for higher reasons? Why do you want… read_more

Questioner: How did sages like Ashtavakra and Adi Shankara attain wisdom at such an early age of fourteen or eight? You have said in many of your videos that unbearable pain coming from falseness is the starting point of the journey towards the Truth. How can someone have this kind… read_more

Questioner (Q): Sir, I have read that karma means action, what one thinks consciously and subconsciously, what one does. Our future action depends on the karma of the past and the present. But there is a thing in circulation these days that says that karma is actually a boomerang: if… read_more

Desire defeats all the petty evils. Desire is the great evil that defeats all the petty evils. For the sake of desire, you can shake hands with your worst enemy. Don’t you see that happening every day in politics? In national politics, in geopolitics, everywhere.

You know what ended the… read_more

Questioner (Q): It has been a long time that I have been listening to you and I have been engaged with a lot of words and everything. And so many words and so many misunderstandings have come and gone but still, the restlessness remains; but still, the will to consume… read_more

Questioner (Q): After an initial period of spiritual awakening and consequent exploration, I radically transformed many areas of my life, including leaving a secure European life to live and work in rural communities in India. The sense of calling, satisfaction and peace were very strong. But for the first time… read_more

Acharya Prashant Ji: So, the demigods and the demons, vigorous and adventerous as they were, thought of adding to their bounties. And got together, uncharacteristically, for a joint exploration mission. Together they churned the great sea using the great mountain as the churner and the great python as the rope.… read_more

Questioner: Sometimes when I listen to you, or when I read verses from the scriptures, there is a certain centeredness within me. What is that, and how can I remain centered? Please explain how to remain in peace and in the Loved One.

Acharya Prashant: You say that you get… read_more

There are many who say, “You know, eating flesh is alright.” If eating flesh is alright, why is it not all right to eat human flesh? A line is drawn between the human being and the animal. You say, “No, the human being cannot be eaten because he is highly… read_more