We read books, watch talks and follow advice, and somewhere along the way we begin to wonder how much of what we think is really ours. The subject we chose, the way we dress, even our spiritual beliefs seem borrowed from someone. Yet perhaps nothing was ever ours to begin with. Every word comes from somewhere, and what we examine closely enough stops being borrowed. What changes when wisdom moves from the palm of our hand into the heart?
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[From a session in Greater Noida, 2025]
Questioner: Namaste, Acharya Ji. I’m a student from IIT Hyderabad, and I had the privilege of attending the in-person session during your visit to our campus. And I have been listening to you for a few months, and it felt really encouraging for me to really connect with you in your presence and personally have a session with you.
Whatever we do is because the people around us, they have opinions about us, and they form a perception about something: that this is right and this is wrong. And that’s how we just think, based on others’ opinions. Like how people will tell you to visit a temple and do this thing, wake up at this time if you want to do this puja and this sadhana. We do this. And when we are children, we actually feel like this is what we actually want, and we act according to that, right? But as we grow up, we get influenced by the people a lot.
So for me, it feels like over the last nine, ten years, I have gradually lost touch with my inner self, and connecting with myself doesn’t feel like it is becoming easy. Like, how I feel is not actually what I was supposed to do. This is what people think: “Okay, this is how your hair should look,” or, “This is how you should be dressing up,” and, “This is how you should speak with others.” And I do understand that what I’m doing is actually influenced by external sources. It’s not actually what I want to do. Like, even if I say I want to be an engineer, and I’m pursuing this, sometimes, within me, I just feel like this is not actually what I want to do. Like, I took science because I got good marks, and people around me told me, “Okay, science is a good subject if you are really intelligent.” I didn’t want to be a dumb student, so I took science. So I feel like whatever I’m doing right now, it’s just because of the influence of others, and I’m very well aware of it. But still, it feels very challenging for me: how to identify and how to distinguish? So how should I know that this is the path I’m choosing, and it’s not influenced by others?
