This video documents a spiritual camp at Kedarnath, highlighting the arduous trek undertaken by the participants. The journey is described as a thrilling experience that tests the limits of the body and mind, providing a reality check. Acharya Prashant is quoted as summarizing the entire exercise with the line: "Mind is the pilgrim, the Self is the holy place, and the Guru is the one who facilitates the pilgrimage." A question is posed to Acharya Prashant regarding the nature of choice. The questioner asks who it is that makes the choice to pursue the ultimate truth, especially when it seems to go against the ego's tendencies, and whether this chooser is the ego itself. Acharya Prashant explains that it is not a part of you but your very core that makes the right choice. Choices made by the parts are always partial. The one who makes choices is the one who believes he has the power to choose, the one who sees many options and alternatives. This chooser is the one you live, eat, and breathe asāthe one you refer to as 'I'. This 'I' is a creature of thoughts, evaluation, criteria, effort, achievement, and profit and loss. In any spiritual discourse, it is this 'I' that is being addressed, counseled, tempted, and awakened. As long as you see choices, it is imperative to make the choice that will progressively unburden you of the need to keep making choices. This choice must be in the direction of an unknowable, choiceless compulsion. Suffering comes to the sufferer, and suffering itself is a choice. To suffer, you must be present as the 'I'. Once you realize that your choice is not really yours but a deep inner compulsion or an inevitability, you cease to suffer. When the 'I' gives up its right to choose in favor of this unfathomable compulsion, it becomes free from the need to suffer.
