Acharya Prashant addresses a teacher's concern regarding their ego's role in student interactions, explaining that the very definition of 'usefulness' or 'success' in a session is often a projection of the teacher's own mental concepts and life values. He points out that if a teacher values money, they will impulsively prioritize a student's job interview over their own class, demonstrating that our actions are driven by personal assumptions rather than the student's actual needs. He emphasizes that one can only truly benefit a student by forgetting about themselves and their preconceived notions of what is 'useful'. He further explains that the mind uses 'shrewd escapes' to avoid looking at its own falseness by focusing on others or trivial problems. He uses the analogy of a dictator creating lookalikes to describe how the ego creates 'dummy problems'—such as minor habits or petty grievances—to be identified and 'solved.' By shooting down these insignificant dummies, the individual feels a false sense of spiritual progress or achievement while the central, 'rotten' core of the ego remains hidden and protected. This cycle of creating and solving trivial problems provides a false sense of meaning and prevents one from addressing the actual source of suffering. Ultimately, Acharya Prashant identifies the 'problem of problems' as the 'I'—the person or identity one considers oneself to be. He describes the game of Maya as a win-win situation where the individual feels happy for solving minor challenges, while Maya remains successful because the core identity remains untouched. He urges the listener to stop being occupied with rubbish and instead touch their innermost suffering and the central mystery of the ego, rather than seeking relief through surface-level trivia or the pride of overcoming self-created obstacles.
