Acharya Prashant explains that what people commonly refer to as feelings are not truly internal or deserving of being followed. He suggests that if one is dictated by the ebb and flow of emotions and instincts, then those feelings have become their God. If prayers are secondary to feelings, one is merely praying to their own petty self. Feelings are often an imported madness, a result of conditioning from genes, environment, food, and social influences. This mass of feelings is incoherent and fickle, lacking any real oneness or centrality. It is a mistake to be identified with the one who feels, as feelings disappear in sleep or change with moods and external news. He advises that the moment feelings surge in the mind or body, one must pay close attention and not yield. While the initial reaction might be automatic and beyond conscious control, once it is detected, one should not add conscious energy to this unconscious uprising. Feelings often come with a deceptive upsurge of energy that makes a person feel powerful or in control, but this energy eventually consumes the individual. A wise person does not live by feelings. In states of deep love or meditation, the feeler itself dissolves, and the experience is not a feeling but something far more beautiful. Regarding the relationship between Shri Krishna and Arjuna, Acharya Prashant points out that the help provided in the Bhagavad Gita did not arise from mere feelings. To understand the helper and the helped, one must look at the nature of the help itself. He concludes that when one lives by the heart, love, and beauty, the need for formal prayer diminishes because life itself becomes a prayer. True love and beauty are not emotions or intuitions; they are states where the separate self disappears into something immense.
