How Is The Bhagavad Gita Relevant Today?

Questioner: Bhagavad Gita has been very close to me. So when I was a child, my grandmom, she actually knew Sanskrit and she used to take Gita classes in our native place in Kerala. So I used to attend Gita classes with her when I was 8-9 and after I finished my MBBS, I decided that I have one year to study for my entrance exam and I took up reading Bhagavad Gita every Sunday, almost as you know, ‘Mai ye karunga Bhagvaan, help me study better’ and my grandmom only took me through that again.

So that was the second time I read it. And during the pandemic, I read it a third time. What was very interesting was that every time I read the Bhagavad Gita, I would understand it very differently. It almost felt like it was a completely new book which makes me wonder that the last time I read it, I was 33. I'm now 36. I wonder if every five years I read it for the rest of my life, will it always be a different book?

Acharya Prashant: It will be. And the more it changes and the more speedily it changes, the better. Because you see, it's a very special book where the words have been addressed to the ego with a view to convince itself of its non-existence. Which means that the very purpose of the book is to change the reader.

The very purpose of the discourse is to change the reader.

I pick up the book and I think I am somebody and if I am honest with the reading then the reading will convince me that I am not what I think of myself. That is the first leg.

The second part is the principle that what I read, what I think, what I construe as the reality is a function of who I am. The same words will mean something to you and something else to me.

I mean very basic words. Somebody writes here, okay, this is a goat. This is a goat. And you might think of it as a pet. I might think of it as food, right? Depends on who you are. Depends on who I am.

Same words. Here is a goat. These words mean very different things to you compared to what they do to me. So if you change, the meaning of those words will change. And the very purpose of those words is to change you. So those words exist to change. Change me, change you.

I'm talking about the Gita. Those words exist to change you. And when you change the meaning of any words you read, they'll change. Which means that if the Gita is successful upon you, you will find its meaning evolving. Therefore, I said that I wish that the change happens with a greater speed.

Questioner: That makes sense.

And I'll add one more point which is, it is likely that you will open the Gita at a time when you are maybe going through some conflict, which means that you are more in your ego at that point which means the change would be even more stark, right?

Acharya Prashant: See it's like this. I have some eye condition and I cannot see properly. Somebody gives me a particular tube, some ointment or something or some drops. Given my eye condition, can I read what's there on the label?

Questioner: No.

Acharya Prashant: Or can I read those micro words that are usually there on such tubes and bottles? I can't. But it has been given and for some reason I decide to apply it. I do not know what it really is. Maybe I can read what's there in big and bold. Beyond that nothing.

So I have some idea of what it is and using that idea I apply it. And when I apply it, what happens? My eyesight gets better and then I can see more of what I have just applied. And if I can see more of what I have just applied, I can read the instructions there.

And next time I apply it in an even better way. And if I apply it in an even better way, then I'm able to read the whole thing even better. So I get into a virtuous cycle. You see, we are not talking of the tube. We are talking of the Gita.

Questioner: That's true. But the analogy is perfect because we are talking of seeing.

Acharya Prashant: Seeing.

Questioner: We are talking about seeing. Yes. One thing I really liked about the Gita, the last time I read, it was for the first time, I noticed how the first chapter begins with a conflict. And the stage, the setting of the story is so beautiful that Arjuna is in the middle. And on the one side are all the people who rely on him. The other side is the enemy but they are also his family.

And he's now conflicted, ‘Should he fight, should he not?’ And the rest of the book is about resolving that conflict. Now in this case the conflict seems to be a very big one—'War'. But conflict is something that we go through every day.

Every day. Every minute. Should I call up my friend or not? Should I order Swiggy or not? What? Everything is a conflict. And I had never noticed it before. But it suddenly felt like this is a very practical book. Very practical book that begins with a conflict.

Acharya Prashant: You know chapter one that you mentioned, Shri Krishna doesn't utter a single word.

Questioner: Really? I didn't notice that.

Acharya Prashant: Not a single verse and that's what makes the whole thing so relatable.

Questioner: Chapter two starts with….

Acharya Prashant: Chapter two is Shri Krishna. Even in chapter two, even in chapter two, it's after a few verses that Shri Krishna comes in. So chapter one is us — you and me. Chapter one is there to bring us into the picture.

Everybody is talking. Sanjaya is talking. Duryodhana is talking. Arjuna is talking. Shri Krishna is not talking. Chapter one is about us. That battlefield is our own lives.

People from all different places and he's going to Bhishma saying, ‘You know, we need to protect him and he's saying look at that side, they appear mightier than us.’ Apprehensions, greed, attachments, everything is there and Arjuna especially. Very remarkable is the chapter one.

He comes up with two things. One, they are my friends, kith and kin. How do I fight them? They are related to me by blood, so that's physical conditioning. You know even animals have that. They usually don't want to attack their own pack, their own tribe.

The second thing that Arjuna talks of is social conditioning. If this war happens then all the kshatriyas might be killed and then what happens to our women? Probably the women will go to those who do not belong to our caste. And then what will happen?

Arjuna goes on explaining. He says, you know the kids that will be born out of such illicit relationships, they will not be qualified to offer the right rituals to our dead ancestors and then their souls will suffer in various kinds of hells.

All this is religious dogma. Social conditioning. Arjuna has heard of all these things from somewhere. They're not coming from the body.

Questioner: It's all coming back.

Acharya Prashant: First of all, it has come to Arjuna from the society. It is not even arising from the body. You know that there are higher castes and lower castes and that there are souls somewhere in the sky and if you offer the right kind of rituals then those souls are appeased. So that's social conditioning, that's religious dogma. So two kinds of things Arjuna is suffering from right in the first chapter.

One physical conditioning: how do I kill my own brothers out there? That is physical conditioning. The second is social conditioning, higher caste, lower caste and the status of women. You know they are our women. How do we let our women go to the other side and what about the kids that will be born?

All kinds of… That sets the stage for what's going to come now. What's going to come now is a demolition of physical and social conditioning.

I call it freedom from vritti and sanskriti. Vritti as in the physical tendencies, Sanskriti as in the social culture. And that's what Shri Krishna goes on to very successfully deconstruct.

Questioner: That's beautiful.

Acharya Prashant: So that's what the entire Bhagavad Gita is devoted to.

Freedom from the conditioning of the body and the conditioning of the mind. And it's not at too many places that Shri Krishna directly exhorts Arjuna to fight. That happens only rarely.

Gita is about letting Arjuna know who he is. In a very liberal way, Shri Krishna says, "If you realize who you are, then you will know what to do. I do not need to instruct you. I do not need to command you or school you, that's for kids. So Arjuna is not even being motivated, let alone being instructed. He's being illuminated." And that illumination enables him to do what he must.

Questioner: I had this thought that because of that conflict, Arjuna is going through an anxiety attack and there is a phrase that the hair on his skin is standing, his mouth has gone dry. Typical symptoms of an anxiety attack, specifically shivering.

Acharya Prashant: Shivering — can't even stand.

Questioner: Weakness. Limbs are weak. So full of sympathy. His adrenal gland is really active. Cortisol levels have gone up.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Yes.

Questioner: He is now in that state of mind. He's panicking.

And because of that he is catastrophizing. He's only imagining worst case scenarios. He's imagining that he's spiraling and you can see that. So it's almost like you are listing the symptoms of an anxiety attack in chapter one.

And later on what comes in the next chapters like you said is an exercise in how to deal with somebody who's going through an anxiety attack.

Shri Krishna does not immediately say, ‘Hey get over it or...

Acharya Prashant: Just get up and fight.

Questioner: Just do your job, it's not that straightforward so I thought also what a great framework to deal with somebody who's going through a mental health problem.

Acharya Prashant: I mean, see, the way the mind is classically defined is that it is an aggregation of objects and structures around your sense of self. So it's me — the ‘I’ — at the center; you could say the lynchpin.

And me being who I am, I accumulate a lot of stuff around myself like one does in his home. And all that accumulation, that aggregation and those relationships that entire network is the mind.

So any crisis of mind is actually a crisis of the one who accumulated the mind because the mind is just objects and objects in themselves are not conscious or sentient. Objects do not know anything. So it's never the mind that is agitated.

The agitation of the mind is a symptom not the central cause. It's the self that is not restful. And the only thing that makes the self not restful is absence of self-knowledge. So when the self, the ego is not at rest, the mind will be agitated. The ego cannot be seen but the mind can be experienced as the brain and there can be very tangible and physical symptoms.

Nobody has ever seen the ego. But the mind is more tangible and the brain, as we know, the brain is the body. It is very tangible. So we say the mind is agitated just because we cannot see the ego at the center of the agitation.

So if the mind is not the root cause of agitation, if the ego is at the center of agitation, and if this diagnosis can be done then the treatment of mind must begin with the treatment of the ego.

But the ego to be treated, first of all, the disease has to be known or the condition has to be known at least. The condition of ego is one of lack of self-knowledge. That is the very definition of ego. Not even the condition. The ego is the self that does not know itself.

So because the ego does not know itself, it is sick. It's a cultivated sickness. It's a fake sickness. Actually, the ego is not really sick. It's a sickness that it has just superimposed upon itself.

Questioner: It's the ego is struggling with lack of unity with…

Acharya Prashant: See it's like this. I think of myself as a bird. And now I'm anxious that I cannot fly. The thing is you are not a bird at all. The moment you realize that, the anxiety is gone. So lack of self-knowledge can lead to all kinds of anxieties. If I take myself to be what I am not, I'll expect myself to do things that I can't.

Questioner: And in today's world of social media, our identity has never been more fluid.

Acharya Prashant: More fluid.

Questioner: You see somebody with a fancy car, you suddenly assume the identity of someone with a fancy car and now not having a fancy car gives us sadness.

Acharya Prashant: And the problem with this fluidity is that it is an imposed fluidity born out of helplessness of the one it is being imposed on. What does this fluidity mean? It basically means that you can come and affect my identity in one way.

Now you leave and somebody else comes and my identity becomes dependent on that one. This is the fluidity we are talking of. It's a state of helplessness. I'm not in charge of who I am. Anybody comes and starts determining my sense of self,

Questioner: My state of mind.

Acharya Prashant: My state of mind. Why? Because I do not know who I am. If I do not know, let's say my own name and you come and address me as AB, then I'll be AB for a while. Then that one comes and calls me CD. I became a CD again for a while. So that's fluid identity. Fluid identity.

And it's a state of great slavery, helplessness and powerlessness just because I do not know who I am. But if I know that my name is something, why can you come and address me the way you want. I won't even mind. It will be a nice joke. He too can address me the way he pleases and I won't even mind and there will be no crisis within.

Arjuna does not know himself. He's a victim to both these conditionings — the social one and the physical one, as we all are. So, I advise my students, first of all, to see that you are Arjuna because the Gita was instructed to Arjuna.

Only Arjuna can be a rightful recipient of Gita. If you are not Arjuna, the Gita will not help you.

First of all, you should see that you are the victim of multiple identities and all kinds of conditionings just as Arjuna is and then step by step, verse by verse, there will be some resolution as you said.

So, that's the reason the Gita is so useful and also became so commonplace because the very setting is of familiarity unlike the Upanishads where the entire setting is idyllic and far removed from the usual householders’ life. The setting of the Bhagavad Gita is extremely relatable.

Everybody can relate to the Bhagavad Gita. The Upanishads and the Gita carry exactly the same message. They form part of the core of Vedanta. But still the Upanishad are not as famous, not as relatable but they…

Questioner: Carry the same message.

Acharya Prashant: They carry the same message. In fact, the Bhagavad Gita is called the very essence of Upanishads.

Questioner: Understood.

Acharya Prashant: And Vedanta is supposed to be having three legs — just to explain it. Not legs exactly, not stambh exactly, but the audience would understand it this way. That's called Prasthaantrayi.

Prasthaantrayi — the three pillars you could say. One of the pillars is Upanishads and one of the pillars is the Bhagavad Gita and then the third one is the Brahma Sutras. So the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita — they belong to the same bracket of scriptures, much the same yet Gita is far more famous than the Upanishads.

Questioner: Because of the packaging.

Acharya Prashant: Because of the packaging and the relatability quotient. There is feeling, there is emotion, there is drama, there is bloodshed and there is history. It is a part of the Mahabharat and the Mahabharat has so much that fascinates us. So the Gita became far more famous.

Questioner: Which is better scripting over.

Acharya Prashant: Much better scripting as well. Yes.

Questioner: One analogy that I observed and I don't know if this is true or not is that the entire story is written from the perspective of a blind king being told what is happening with somebody with second vision.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Questioner: I wondered if there is a metaphorical explanation to this which is that it is not easy to look inside our own conflict.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Yes.

Questioner: Was I reading too much into….

Acharya Prashant: No. No. Everything there has layered meanings. And the more we get unlayered, the more the layers upon the core meaning also just get removed, and the core is uncovered. So you could very well say that the blindness of Dhritarashtra is metaphorical and indicative of a deeper inability to see.

Questioner: When the second chapter starts, that's where we get into or we start getting into the meat of the matter of the conversation. Now the way the advice goes through the different yogas — Karma Yoga and the Sannyas Yoga; why is it arranged in that specific order? Why is it Karma Yoga first then Sannyas Yoga?

Acharya Prashant: The arrangement is not really original. The arrangement came later. The division of chapters in this particular way and particularly the naming of the chapters — that came later. So there, we need not read too much into why one particular chapter is named in one particular way. But what I find interesting there is that the war lasted 18 days. And there are 18 chapters.

Questioner: That is true. So was it one per day?

Acharya Prashant: Just, you know, cute little things to keep us engaged. And pointers and reminders that there is still something more to it.

Questioner: More to it.

Acharya Prashant: But one must not read too much into these things, otherwise one will miss the central message.

Questioner: I want to talk about the three main Yogas in the Bhagavad Gita. So let's talk about Karma Yoga first— to put it in a nutshell, what I've understood is that action takes precedence over everything else. But is that the right interpretation?

Acharya Prashant: See as we were saying Gita comes from the legacy of the Upanishads. In fact, you know, very strictly speaking, the Upanishads are placed higher than the Gita. The Upanishads form part of what is called the shruti literature, revealed literature, literature without an author, literature without a human author, apaurusheya literature.

So, Upanishads come from there. Gita forms part of Smriti literature, where the scripture is the product of an author— a human author, it's a human creation. So the Gita forms part of Mahabharat and Mahabharat is attributed to Vedas.

So very, very strictly speaking because the Upanishads are Shruti and Gita is Smriti, the Upanishads are in some sense above the Bhagavad Gita, though that is not practically how it is accepted and it is also not useful to put it this way.

But it's important to see that it's the message of the Upanishads that will reverberate through all the chapters of the Gita. It has to.

The Upanishads are Gyaan. What is gyaan? Gyaan not in the sense of knowing about the world and this and that. Atma-gyaan. Self-knowledge. So the core message of Gita too is self-knowledge. Arjuna, please understand, who you are.

So what is Karma Yoga then? Focus not on the Karma but on the 'Karta', the doer. Know who you are. If you focus too much on the action you will be deluded. Look at the actor. If the actor is right you need not think about the action. The action will fall in place on its own. That's Karma Yoga.

I like to put it this way. Chapter 2 comes before Chapter 3. Chapter 3 is Karma Yoga, Chapter 2 is Gyaan Yoga.

So the best thing was served to Arjuna, first of all,.....

Questioner: Gyaan Yoga.

Acharya Prashant: That's the Gyaan Yoga. But Arjuna was still reticent, you know, Krishna I have my doubts. In fact at points he is kind of accusing Shri Krishna of misleading him. That's the extent you know attachment and delusion can delude you. So after — Gyaan yog which is Sankhya Yoga then there is Karma, Sannyas and all the things that you know follow.

So Karma, whenever Shri Krishna says Karma — it's 'Nishkam'. Whenever Shri Krishna says Gyaan, it's 'Atman'. So Karma yoga is actually 'Nishkam Karma Yoga': means action that is not coming from a desirous self.

Action that is not coming from a desirous actor. And if you do not know the actor, the actor will remain desirous because we are born incomplete. Where there is incompletion, there is desire. Desire to be complete.

If I do not know myself I will remain incomplete and therefore, all my actions will be full of desire. Therefore the only way karma can be Nishkam is through Atma-Gyaan. You cannot have Nishkam Karma without Atma-Gyaan.

Otherwise, your Nishkam Karma will be very superficial. On the surface you might feel you are acting without desire but there will be some lingering desire within that you might even not know of because you don't know yourself.

Questioner: And that desire is not something that can be fulfilled by just achieving the next target.

Acharya Prashant: No. No. It never gets fulfilled.

Questioner: It never gets fulfilled.

Acharya Prashant: It never gets fulfilled. It can get fulfillment only through getting negated.

Questioner: So today, in my heart there are desires. There are things that I want to achieve in medicine, in social media or whatever. Now I cannot say that I will let go of these desires after I have achieved say, one million on YouTube. There is nothing like that.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, no. Nishkam Karma is not about not having desires. Nishkam Karma, I repeat, is about not having desires coming from a point of incompletion. It's about the actor, not about the action. It's about the desirous one, not about the desire. You can have desires.

Questioner: I can have desires.

Acharya Prashant: You can have desires but your core must be desireless. Then your desire will not be for your personal self. Then your desire will actually be auspicious for the entire world. Nishkam Karma is not about not having desire.

Shri Krishna does not use prescriptive language. "No, do not desire. Just go and fight." "No, not that way." So we said, it's not about the action, it is about the actor. It is not about the desire, it is about the desirous entity. So it is about the desirous entity. Nishkam Karma means the one who used to have desires has now known himself.

And after you have known yourself, all the evil within is dropped, disappears, vaporizes. The only evil within is lack of self-knowledge.

Once I know myself I'm clear about who I am. It's not as mundane as I'm making it sound to be.

But once you have known yourself — there is a thing called one knowing yourself — there is no end to it, but for the purpose of this conversation, I'm putting it in simplistic terms. So once there is that what could I call it, ‘purity within’ or ‘clarity within’ then in some sense, you are entitled to desire, you're not even entitled to desire. You are obligated to desire. You're not even obligated to desire. You are free of all obligations now. Go ahead and just play.

Questioner: For instance, if my identity is an F1 car driver and through my identity, I will desire to win the race because that is my identity.

But you're saying that I can do that as long as my core self is detached?

Acharya Prashant: The entire wisdom literature is absolutely silent on what you can do, what you cannot do. It's totally silent on that. It's not prescriptive. It's not an instruction manual.

Questioner: I feel we are at the crux of something here because if you crack this...

Acharya Prashant: Yes. So, it's not about whether you can want that, whether you can achieve that, whether you should do this, whether you should do that, is that allowed in your religion? No, no, no. We don't do these things. We are Jews, we are Christians, we are Buddhists or Hindus. No, no. That's not the way of wisdom.

What you do, what you wear, what you eat, how you marry, whether you marry, we are not going to get into that. That's not the way of wisdom. We want to look at who we are. We want to look at who we are. And after that whatever happens is auspicious. Fine. Who am I to tell you how to live?

But yes, if you are struggling I would probably come to you and throw some light on the way. You know, you are struggling, you are stumbling, you are falling, you have hurt your knees. I would say friend here is a torch, there is some light but you have to use your own eyes and whether you want to use the torch is again your discretion. I'm not going to impose it on you. You have to do it yourself. So, all wisdom literature is about enabling you to see. See what? First of all who you are.

And what does that mean? Because if you repeat that phrase too often, it becomes very cliched and 'who I am', 'who I am' appears so mysterious. One gets lost in it.

It's not about seeing 'who I am.' It's about seeing 'who I am not' and yet have become. I'm not this and yet I have become this.

Questioner: Many times you find yourself in situations where you almost feel like you're acting.

Acharya Prashant: You're acting because you have been trained to act.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: You have been conditioned to act.

Questioner: Aise Situation mei ye karna hota hai.

Acharya Prashant: Ye karna hota hai. You know, now that the fellow has arrived, you're supposed to smile and greet. Now the fellow says, "Oh, I lost my job." You're supposed to offer some kind of commiseration, correct?

So, I'm not that but something happened in the process of my journey through life and I just got indoctrinated, conditioned to do that.

So Gyaan is about freedom from what you are not and yet have been forced to become. It is freedom from becoming. Becoming that came to you in the past and becoming that pulls you to the future. What does future mean to us? Becoming, right? I want to become such a thing in the future and all this becoming associated with the future is actually a residue of the past.

Questioner: Pushing you.

Acharya Prashant: You cannot have desires for the future devoid of experiences of the past.

Questioner: If you remove everything that has happened to you in the past one minute ago, what will you do?

Acharya Prashant: There is no desire for the future then. You cannot have dreams and aspirations, then. So we remain entangled in all that and the net result is suffering.

So wisdom then, with the way Shri Krishna is imparting it to Arjuna, is about seeing what Arjuna is not. Arjuna, why are you behaving this way? You know where your action is coming from?Arjuna can you see where your action is coming from? Therefore, there is a tremendous lot of Negativa that the Gita deals in.

Niraashi Nirmamo Bhav. Yudhyasv Vigat Jwar

So you look at the construction of the very word. Niraashi Bhav —'drop hope.' Drop ownership, the sense of possession. Nirmam Bhav. You see how the very word is constructed.

Questioner: Hope is towards the future. Ownership is from the past.

Acharya Prashant: Drop these things. Drop these things.

In fact, the entire repository of words that you find in the Gita, they themselves tell you what Shri Krishna is attempting. He's saying just drop it. Just drop it. Just drop it. And if you do not drop that then you will drop the Gandiv. So pick up the Gandiv and drop the nonsense.

Questioner: Because when you think about motivation — why are we doing anything — we are most likely being either pushed by something in our past or pulled by something in our future. I am doing this hoping that something will come in the future or I'm doing this because right now, I have committed to something else.

Acharya Prashant: There is not even an 'or' in between. You know as you stand, as you stand, there is the past that you think is behind you. And the future is but a mirror. What you look at as the future is nothing but a reflection of your past. Here I am and there is a mirror there and what I see in the mirror is stuff that is actually behind me.

So, so, so there are no new dreams actually. What we are dreaming of is actually just the stuff of the past repackaged.

Questioner: Or things that you can see other people do.

Acharya Prashant: Things that you have seen other people do. Again from the past. Again in the past.

Questioner: Yes. Because what can you dream of in the future that has not happened.

Acharya Prashant: Can you think of anything that has not been in your experience so far?

Questioner: No.

Acharya Prashant: Even imagination is dependent on the repository of experiences.

Questioner: So all hope and optimism is just projected past.

Acharya Prashant: Projected past and that's what the Gita is attempting to rid Arjuna of.

Questioner: In psychology and even in neuroscience when it comes to motivation, there are these terms called external motivation and internal motivation.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Yes.

Questioner: So all external motivation is motivation influenced by things that have happened around us to us and internal motivation is one that comes from within. There is a lot of discussion whether — is there an internal motivation? Isn't everything external motivation?

Acharya Prashant: In the world of Gita, first of all, the external and the internal motivations become one. Secondly, both become redundant.

Shri Krishna is not motivating Arjuna. Shri Krishna is illuminating Arjuna. In fact, the very core of Gita is motiveless action.

Questioner: They'll put all motivational speakers out of business.

Acharya Prashant: Oh, they hate me. What do I do? 'Nishkam Karma' is a motiveless action. What do I do? You are trying to motivate. Shri Krishna is saying motivation is nonsense. What do I do?

Questioner: Knowledge leads to action. The Gyaan Yoga leads to Karma Yoga. After that is renunciation.

Acharya Prashant: Actually, no, it's not even that. Knowledge does not lead to action. Knowledge makes action superfluous. In knowledge, you cease to bother about action. It's not that if you have the right knowledge, then you will do the right action. No, no, no. That's not the framework. Once you know who you are, you need not keep an eye on yourself.

Questioner: Because action still assumes will.

Acharya Prashant: Now there is no will. There is just a certain, certain very peaceful completion and after that you can allow yourself to just play and flow.

That's Advait Vedanta. Go play.

Questioner: So if you gain the knowledge that you are water, you will flow. If you gain the knowledge that you are a rock then you will..

Acharya Prashant: And if you understand you are nobody, then there is no need to have prescriptive checks on yourself. Why else would you want to determine your action in advance? Why would you want to plan your action in advance?

Only when first of all you have a model of things. To be free of ignorance is to be free of all models. Now you can act freely. Now you can act in ways that even you have not thought of. Now this kind of freedom as you hear of it. Does it not terrify you?

Questioner: It's scary.

Acharya Prashant: It's scary that quantum of freedom, that immensity of freedom where even you do not know what you're going to do next, it's horrible. And that's the reason why the real thing could never become massy. That's why India, in spite of, being the mother of these things, Indians could never partake the benefit, at least not the bulk of Indians.

Questioner: Because even when we talk of this freedom, we are talking of freedom from self because what we identify as self is that person who is acting. We still associate freedom with freedom of choice.

Acharya Prashant: Freedom of choice.

Questioner: And here you're saying that once you have that level of knowledge there is no need for choice, there is no choice.

Acharya Prashant: Because there is no chooser.

Questioner: There is no chooser. There is nobody to choose. So in a way that is death.

Acharya Prashant: That is death. Wonderfully put. And that death is something that wisdom literature sings so beautifully and and so just tugs at your heartstrings. If you hear the saints singing of death, that inner death, he's saying,

जिस मरनै से जग डरै, मेरो मन आनंद। कब मरिहूँ कब भेटिहो, पूरण परमानंद॥

~ कबीर साहब

Jis Marni Se Jag Darai, Mero Man Anand. Kab Marihun kab Bhetiun, Pooran Parmanand.

You know, the world is afraid of death and that's what gives me joy. I want to die. And of course, he's not talking of physical death. He's talking of the inner death, the Mahamrityu that must come to you before the body falls apart.

Questioner: Ego death.

Acharya Prashant: The ego death. And that's the purpose of life.

Questioner: There is a term that is used in psychedelic literature called ego dissolution.

And all psychedelic effects are measured on a scale of five parameters. So there is one called oceanic boundlessness. There is one called ego dissolution. There are four-five others. And ego dissolution is when you feel your ego is dissolving.

Acharya Prashant: Who is there to feel?

Questioner: That's the question mark?

Acharya Prashant: All that is maya. To feel that you are not. Who is the one feeling? It's like saying, ‘I am silent,’ then who is speaking? Who is there to utter that you are silent?

Questioner: Which reminds me of this conflict which is there in monotheistic religions about going to heaven. How will you go to heaven?

Acharya Prashant: See, that's a question that religious people so often fail to ask. Who? Who is going to heaven? Who? Who? To whom? Who, who is? All those questions? They don't ask.

Questioner: Tell me about Bhakti.

Acharya Prashant: Love. Love.

Questioner: Is it the same as Surrender?

Acharya Prashant: Surrender to whom and by whom?

I see, I am not what I must be. If I am to live in peace or fulfillment or joy — whatever word we choose — so I surrender this suboptimal self. That's surrender. To what? To my greatest potential. You could call it the complete being, total being, absolute being, or equally you could call it non-being. Non-being, so that's love, that's bhakti.

Questioner: You're not surrendering to an external entity.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, never.

Questioner: So when people stand in front of a photo or an idol or a book or anything and they surrender to that entity, is there a difference?

Acharya Prashant: See there is a choice, then. The only problem is that it becomes infeasible surrender. Becomes infeasible when you are surrendering to somebody outside of you. Why? Because now there is a choice. You chose to surrender to that. You did not choose to surrender to this.

So the one making the choice is keeping himself intact. So how is surrender complete?

Partial surrender will happen and partial surrender is no good. Therefore any kind of surrender to any external entity will never be complete. It will not deliver the goods.

Questioner: I would push back here saying maybe it's not equally good but does it come with some….

Acharya Prashant: There are some benefits. There are some. It can be a preparatory thing. It can be a provisional thing.

Questioner: Yes. Because the benefits of prayer and even partial surrender to the brain is still noticeable.

Acharya Prashant: But you have to understand that unless you graduate just at the right time, you run the risk of rotting..

Questioner: In that state of partial….

Acharya Prashant: In that state of partial surrender and that partiality can become addictive. You know, it's a very comfortable spot that you have acquired for yourself where the ego gets the pleasure of being called a surrendered ego. It also gets the pleasures that come with all the things that you do. There obviously are some mental benefits to that.

And then you don't want to move from that state. You think of that state as the final one. So, there's a great problem there. So, it's something okay to begin with, but very soon you must graduate ahead of it.

Questioner: So, any proclaimed enlightened soul, who is still in public talking about how they are enlightened, is it fair to raise a question mark on their enlightenment?

Acharya Prashant: There is no need to even raise a question mark. A question mark is when there is uncertainty. It is certain that they are fooling themselves. So there is no question.

Questioner: Because anyone who has truly reached that…

Acharya Prashant: It does not exist anymore. To reach there is to disappear. Now who's there? We can never claim the credit. Now who's there to make the declaration I am enlightened? As long as you are, you cannot be enlightened.

It's like saying I am dead. I come and say I am dead. Sir if you are dead who is talking? So, by the very act of declaring one's enlightenment, one has actually certified that he's not.

Questioner: They are not.

Okay. Practical Bhagavad Gita — for a 25-year-old student or young working professional in India, they've never explored it before. How would they start? What should they do? Do they need to read it?

Acharya Prashant: Yeah. Obviously.

Questioner: They do need to read it.

Acharya Prashant: Obviously, the reading has to be there. I mean it's a book. So you have to read it.

One must stay with the verses for long. Very very long. One should not be lazy with the interpretations because it's a famous scripture. There are just too many commentaries. One should first of all try to get into a personal relationship with the speaker, the author, whatever creator — 'Shri Krishna.'

First thing that there should be no need, no primary need for an intermediary. An intermediary should be called in only when there is a genuine obstacle.

You know, I cannot proceed any further, or this part is something I just cannot get any clarity on, or I have some clarity with this, yet I think there is something more to it. Only then you should call for assistance; otherwise, it should be an intimate thing between you and Shri Krishna. Which also means that if you pick up a book you should not be too eager to jump on to the elaboration, the Bhashya, the commentary.

There is the verse. See what you can make of it. When Shri Krishna was speaking to Arjuna there was nobody in between serving as a middleman. It's not as if Shri Krishna was speaking to some guru and the guru was then elaborating it to Arjuna. There was a direct communication.

Questioner: Arjuna had to struggle to understand just like the reader will struggle to understand.

Acharya Prashant: Struggle to understand. You should avoid partisan interpretations. And has to be a love affair. I mean you cannot look at it like a textbook.

You have to carry it wherever you go. You have to read one verse many times. Then you go back and forth. You return to a particular verse. You play with them.

One of the memories that I have from my childhood, 'I am sleeping. I've fallen asleep with the Gita on my chest.’ And it's open and some of the pages, they either get dogeared or a little and then in the morning, I get a bit of a scolding, ‘What have you done to the Gita.’

In fact, I hardly ever followed any prescriptive way. It was a love affair between me and Gita between me and Shri Krishna where I actually didn't want a middleman. I actually got slapped once. I was having my dinner with the book open by my side, so a little bit of dal fell on it — and that's something that you don't allow in a Hindu family.

Questioner: Where is the reverence?

Acharya Prashant: There is reverence. First of all, you're not supposed to read it when you're eating. And I was doing that, and then, to make something — some food item fall on the pages of the Bhagavad Gita, that's just not permissible.

I'm not advising that but that just came to my mind. What I'm trying to highlight is that there was a very genuine relationship. Try to get to the essence of what I'm saying. Like kids carrying their dolls wherever they go, sometimes they do that.

Questioner: So it should be friendly learning.

Acharya Prashant: It was friendly learning and I was grappling, wrestling, doing all kinds of things with it.

Questioner: Arguing.

Acharya Prashant: Arguing, not accepting it easily. Not I have argued endlessly with Shri Krishna. Not that I have given in easily. No, no way. And that was not again the case with only this book. There were so many other books that I have grappled with.

Questioner: You know there is this thing in salesmen where there's a book called 'Never Split the Difference.'

So they talk about negotiation tactics and one of the lessons is that if you're selling something to somebody and if they say, 'Yes', that makes you a bad salesman.

Their first response should be 'No', because that means they've heard you. People will say 'Yes' just to get out of a difficult conversation. Yes. Yes, I'll buy. But if you can elicit a 'No', that means you actually have their attention, and then you have to convince them.

So I like that you argued because that means it hit. (pointing to the heart.)

Acharya Prashant: You see, how can there be surrender without struggle.

Questioner: Without struggle. Exactly. You're giving up the most precious thing in your life.

Acharya Prashant: All that I have is me. You want to have me. The totality of my existence. And I'll just give in without a fight. No way.

Questioner: It's not real giving in. Correct. Where is the violence? I think that makes a lot of sense.

(Laughter.)

Over the next one or two years I'll read it again now, after this conversation.

Acharya Prashant: Wonderful.

Questioner: And I'll be talking about this and I'll be bringing in wisdom that I've gained from this. What I would eventually like to do is to bring more of a scientific lens to what the verses have said because there's a lot of biology. There's a lot of what is happening in your body. It talks of senses. It talks about levels of senses. It talks about levels of pleasure.

And maybe 50-100 years ago, the pleasure networks were not described in neuroscience but now they are. So now, when there is a verse on pleasure, I can compare with pleasure networks in the brain and understand, ‘Oh! Is this what it was meant for.’

Acharya Prashant: In fact, I would like to possibly contribute with all the instances where Shri Krishna is referring to something that corresponds to neuroscience. He talks of, for example, Nirmal Indriya.

So he distinguishes even between sense and sense. He says there is one kind of sense and then there is another kind of sense. Now, what does that mean in the terms of whatever happens in the neurons is better obviously understood by you and 'Man' — the mind, the relationship of the mind to the brain. The Gita goes into all that in length.

Questioner: It was very fascinating for me the last time but I have since become more engrossed in it. There's an open invitation here that we can do that at a deeper level.

Acharya Prashant: Definitely. Definitely. My pleasure. I do that all the time. That's my life. One verse, every single verse- we spend hours and hours on it. And these books that you see in fact don't even contain all the verses, this is not even 10% of the work.

In spite of whatever I might have done, there is so much more that still needs to be done. So, I would be happy. It would be an honor.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation.

Acharya Prashant: Most welcome, most welcome. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Questioner: Thank you, it has been a learning opportunity.

Acharya Prashant: Thank you.

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