Acharya Prashant clarifies that the sense of a continuous, static self is not an illusion but a stubborn insistence. While there is an unchanging Truth, the ego's fundamental insistence is to falsely claim, "I am That." This is not an observation or a deduction, but a particular stubbornness. The ego finds itself in a difficult position. To have an existence, it must cling to Prakriti, the ever-changing material world, by identifying with its various objects and experiences. The ego always says, "I am P," where P is something in Prakriti. Simultaneously, the ego wants to be the unchanging Truth. This contradiction leads to the self-deception that "the stuff is changing, but I am not." For example, when one says, "I changed my shirt," it implies that the "I" is a constant entity separate from the changing shirt. Acharya Prashant states this is a lie; with the change of the shirt, the ego itself has also changed. Spiritual teaching, such as stating "the ego is a choice," is not a description of a current fact for most people, who live choiceless, dead lives. Instead, it is a teaching meant to invoke the potential for choice. When sages say, "You are the Atman (the Self)," they are not describing a present reality but pointing to a potentiality. These sessions are described not as lectures but as workshops for active transformation, where the choice is created in the present moment. Addressing a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, Acharya Prashant explains that sensations like heat, cold, pain, and pleasure arise from the contact of the senses with the material world. These experiences are not absolute but are relative to one's physical and mental constitution. What is painful for one being, like a human drowning, is pleasurable for another, like a fish in water, due to their different physical and mental compositions. The core lesson is to see the non-existence of the "I" that one identifies with, realizing that you are not the experiencer of these transient states.
