Acharya Prashant addresses a question regarding the apparent contradiction between the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita's concept of ego liberation and the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. He clarifies that these two do not contradict each other. He explains that existentialists, including Sartre, posited that the nature of a human being is such that even if one wants to suppress or disown consciousness, one will not succeed. This is encapsulated in Sartre's statement, "Man is condemned to be free." To illustrate this, Acharya Prashant contrasts a human being with an object like a chair. A chair's form and purpose are determined by someone else; it exists for the sake of others and has no volition over its condition. In contrast, human beings are born without a predetermined purpose. This is the core of existentialism: "existence precedes essence." A person first exists and then has the freedom and responsibility to discover their own essence or purpose. No one from the outside can supply this essence. This leads to related philosophies like nihilism, which posits life is for nothing, and absurdism, which finds it impossible to reconcile a purposeful human being with a purposeless universe. The concept of "existential angst" arises from this condition. It is the conflict between one's inner nature, which is to be free and not follow any external dictum, and the external world—society, family, education, and economic systems—which constantly tries to impose its patterns and lessons. This angst is the feeling that something within is not prepared to take lessons from anywhere, yet the world is hell-bent on doling them out. Acharya Prashant notes that the European philosophers were not attuned to Vedantic philosophy, which declares from the outset that liberation (Mukti) is one's inherent nature (Swabhav). He concludes that all spirituality begins from the point of suffering, and the central question is not about theories but a personal inquiry: "Am I alright?"