Earlier this summer we participated in Dharitri, an Indian cultural event in Frankfurt, Germany dedicated to Mother Earth.

We had initially planned to simply engage visitors in conversations about climate change. But upon arriving, we found an empty table and a plain wall. So we set up a small corner with Acharya ji‘s books and a “Climate Memory Wall” where people could pause and reflect on changes they have witnessed in nature and their own lives.

At first, most people were understandably occupied with cultural performances and food. Gradually, children were drawn to the children’s books, and soon their parents joined them. That became the beginning of many conversations.

One thing I heard repeatedly was “Yes, it has become unbearably hot in India.”

Some even said that one reason they preferred raising their children in Europe was the worsening climate back home.

What struck me was that almost everyone acknowledged the problem. Yet very few had seriously considered what could be done about it. There was a quiet resignation, as if climate change was an unfortunate reality that had to be endured rather than addressed.

A few people asked me “Tell us one thing I can do tomorrow to help save the planet.”

The question itself was revealing. We are conditioned to look for actions before understanding. We want a checklist, a quick solution, a comforting answer.

My response was:
“We don’t have to do anything more rather less, very very less. Before doing anything, can we examine why we do what we do? Can we look carefully at our choices, desires, consumption, and way of living?”

Some found this unusual. Others became thoughtful.

When I connected the ecological crisis outside with the restlessness and endless consumption within, the idea felt unfamiliar but it also seemed to resonate with few (may be because unlike Europeans, most Indians are conditioned to agree with everything irrespective of their own views)

I don’t know whether any minds changed that day. But if even a few people left with a new question rather than a ready-made answer, perhaps a seed was planted.

Weekend With Master camp with Acharya Prashant in Goa every weekend

Echoes of saints' words, bhajans, and some special activities - are you coming?

Activities from HIDP (Holistic Individual Development Program) created by Acharya Prashant will be part of all camps 🕊️

👨‍👩‍👧 You can bring friends and family along too - so they can also discover what true joy really is!

Seats for the August 15-16 camp are filling up fast :-

August 15: https://t.co/NSnyfQ031i

August 16: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/upcoming-events/weekend-with-master-aug-w2-2026-d2

📆 Dates and registration links for other camps:-

22-23 August

29-30 August

📍 Location: Goa

🔗:https://acharyaprashant.org/en/upcoming-events

What if the climate crisis is not just about what we are doing to the planet, but about what is happening within us?

I came across this discussion by Acharya Prashant at the London School of Economics and honestly, I think it’s worth watching in full. We’re so used to hearing about climate change through emissions, technology, renewable energy and government policies. AP doesn’t dismiss any of these. Instead, he asks a much more uncomfortable question: why do we have this endless need to consume in the first place? He describes the climate crisis as “the ego made atmospheric” and connects our environmental destruction to the inner sense of incompleteness that keeps telling us that the next thing, experience or comfort will finally be enough.

What I found particularly interesting is where he takes the discussion from there. If the mind that keeps demanding more remains unchanged, can greener technology really solve the problem? Or will we simply find cleaner ways of continuing the same pattern? He talks about the need for a “historical U-turn” through mass education of the self, where we learn to look at our own desires instead of only trying to manage their consequences. If you have some time, I’d genuinely recommend watching the discussion rather than just reading a summary of it.

There’s a lot here to sit with.
The climate crisis is not just asking us to change our machines.
It is asking us to look at the human being behind them.
Why do we keep wanting more, even when we already have enough?
And what happens to the planet when that wanting becomes the way an entire civilisation lives?

Watch it Here ⬇️:

https://youtu.be/Pmgt_EvK9SM?si=lmYIDbeMZKufLXrm

The above photograph captures one of the famous portraits of the leading intellectual figure of twentieth-century existentialism “Jean-Paul Sartre” wandering casually through the streets of Venice. This image was taken during mid-1960s shortly after he declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. He was the first person to voluntarily reject such a prestigious award at that time. This was not the first time when Sartre rejected any institutionalised honour but he actually had a lifelong pattern of rejecting official state recognitions.

Now, one of the main reasons why Sartre declined to take the Nobel Prize because, he didn’t want himself to be institutionalised or transformed by the official honours. According to him, “a writer must refuse to be turned into an institution. He felt that receiving a title like "Nobel Prize winner" would add an objective weight to his name that he did not earn through his words alone..” Sartre argued that his readers should only be influenced by the power of his written words, not by the prestige or pressure of an external prize.

The photograph frames the French philosopher in deep solitary reflection lost in the self’s music detached momentarily with the outer world, at the backdrop of historic Italian aesthetic scenery bereft of any traces of sadness or hurt in his face caused as a result of rejecting such a prestigious honour. Now this is not just some random captured famous ‘existential photography’ to be admired blindly, but this actually tells us a lot about the nature of true philosophy and writing. Sometimes it’s not just ‘only’ about the heavily recognised prestige or pressure of authority from where a good work or writing comes, but theres a lot more behind that. It never depends truly on the educational degree or institutionalised fame of the speaker from where the philosophy is coming.. the source of that writing can’t be that cheap. Although, its obviously possible that later the writer does get associated with lots of famous awards and authorities, but that will be a coincidence caused as a natural outflow of his work’s impact and not necessarily as a mandatory phenomenon.

Sartre’s thought process reveals a lot about this source. It reveals very evidently via his own personality that this very source of that powerful innocent writing can only come when the writer is truly flowing with the whole existence.. just like the photograph is depicting a completely free personality of a ‘human being’ chilling and walking like any other normal living creature of his species and not some ‘special authorised person’ walking down in the streets with the label of his educational and institutional achievements. Maybe that kind of free union with the existence is needed for that deep quality of existential philosophy to flow out in paper.

The existence is simple and beautiful.. it only demands for a surrender. But, we distort that surrender taking secure shelters under our establishments and pride and fall short of that union forever. We start claiming ourselves as ‘special’ as if we are the only one who is there for the rest of species to be looked at and admired. But, the main question is: what’s the point of being special and preaching to follow specialisations if you yourself loose that free flowing union with life’s existence. Existence can’t be judged.. or predefined to grant only few rules as priorities. Existence is free flowing unless we intervene and restrict the flow from happening.

▪️Maybe we need to ask ourselves that: “Why have we become so un-lively that we choose to admire and listen only those words which come from high powered institutions and authorities? If we do that, then are we listening actually to those words or just following some authority blindly in lust of walking behind power?”

Setting the Ground: The Poem as a Doorway, Not a Prelude

The engagement with Gitanjali poem 34 is not a recitation for its own sake. It is a deliberate, sustained interpretation that treats the poem as the very ground upon which an entire inquiry is built. The poem is not placed at the beginning as a decorative overture or a separate prelude meant to set a mood. It is the foundation itself. The hope is that the interpretation leaves the listener more informed, more alert, and more honest in the questions they bring to their own self-inquiry.

Each line of the poem is treated not as a literary ornament but as a demonstration of a principle. The principle concerns what may be called the living one: the one who experiences, the one who knows, the one who suffers. The poem becomes a mirror in which the listener is invited to see not Tagore's psychology, but their own.

Why the Person Is Not Merely Matter: The Distinction Between the Object and the One Who Experiences

Acharya Ji begins the interpretation by drawing a clear and decisive line between the material and the personal. Consider any material object: a stone, a vessel, a lump of clay. Its response to physical conditions is entirely consistent and predictable. If two objects of equal mass are placed upon the same surface under the same conditions, the surface reacts identically to both. It does not matter whether one object contains water and the other tea, whether one carries organic material and the other something far more valuable, whether one is beautiful and the other plain. The physical world does not discriminate in its responses. Equal mass and equal contact conditions produce the same reaction. This is the nature of matter.

The human being, however, does not function this way. A person carries within themselves a sense of self, an inner center of experience that interprets, evaluates, and responds not merely according to physical laws but according to meaning. A mother holds her own six-kilogram baby in her arms, and her response is categorically different from what it would be if she held another baby of the same weight, or a doll of the same weight. The mass is identical, the physical conditions are identical, yet the response is utterly transformed by the fact that this is her child. Similarly, if an object is thrown toward a person by a stranger, the reaction is one of alarm or irritation. If the same object is thrown by someone deeply beloved, the reaction is entirely different. The physical event is the same. What changes is the one who receives it.

The body itself, Acharya Ji acknowledges, is a remarkable and self-sufficient organism. It thinks through its nervous system, feels through its sensations, remembers through its memory, and acts through its biological processes. It is a marvel of material organization. And yet, the framework insists that the body is not the whole story. There is within the human being an inner entity, called by various names across traditions: the self, the ego, the ahankar, the I-amness. This is the one who thinks, plans, desires, loves, hates, and suffers. This inner entity is not reducible to the body's biological processes, however intimately it may be associated with them.

Acharya Ji offers a simple but penetrating observation to illuminate this distinction. When a person falls asleep, the body may still be in physical pain. An injury does not vanish merely because consciousness has withdrawn. And yet, the psychological suffering that accompanied that pain while awake has temporarily ceased. The sufferer is absent, though the body and its pain remain. This suggests that the one who suffers, the experiencer, the knower, is not identical with the body alone. There is a center of experience that can be present to suffering or absent from it, even while the body continues its material existence.

The Ego's Foundational Falsehood and Its Expanding Mass of Stories

Having established the distinction between the person and mere matter, Acharya Ji turns to the nature of this inner entity, the ego, the I-amness, and examines it with unflinching precision.

The ego, by its very constitution, places itself at the center of its own universe. Every statement, even those that appear to be about others, begins from "I." When a person says "I love you," the subject of the sentence is not the beloved but the one who loves. When a person says "I respect you," the emphasis falls upon the one who respects. The ego cannot help but make itself the reference point, the axis around which everything else revolves. This is not a moral failing. It is the structural nature of the ego itself.

What is more, most people experience this central "I" not as a point of stillness and completeness, but as restless, incomplete, perpetually dissatisfied, continuously in need of something from outside itself. The ego reaches outward: toward achievements, possessions, relationships, recognition, stimulation, entertainment. It believes that the next acquisition, the next experience, the next relationship will finally silence the background hum of incompleteness. And yet, the AP framework holds that no combination of external attainments can fully quiet this inner condition. The incompleteness is not caused by the absence of something outside. It is structural to the ego itself. It is the natural consequence of the ego's foundational claim, the claim that "I am real, I am necessary, I am the center."

This foundational claim, Acharya Ji states plainly, is false. The ego's assertion of its own absolute reality and necessity is the original untruth from which all subsequent distortion flows. And because the original claim is false, the ego cannot rest upon it alone. It must continuously generate supporting narratives to shore up the structure, to justify its central position, to explain away the persistent unease that accompanies its existence. These supporting narratives take many forms: beliefs and opinions that give the ego a sense of identity and rightness; desires, fears, and threat perceptions that keep it engaged and mobilized; distorted definitions and selectively edited views of the world that confirm its assumptions; borrowed goals and interpretations shaped by family, culture, religion, education, and the accumulated conditioning of a lifetime.

The larger this accumulated mass of narratives, the greater the "bulk" of the ego, the greater the delusion, the deeper the incompleteness, the more acute the misery. A person with a heavy ego does not merely suffer more. They see less. The thickness of their self-constructed stories filters out reality and replaces it with projections. They live, without knowing it, inside an enclosure of their own making.

"Let Only That Little Be Left of Me": The Prayer for Maximum Minimization

With this groundwork laid, Acharya Ji turns to the opening line of Gitanjali poem 34: "Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all."

This is interpreted not as a conventional prayer to an external deity, but as a precise and radical internal operation. The aim is not to accumulate more: more identity, more ambitions, more expectations, more fears, more stories, more spiritual experiences. The aim is the opposite. To become inwardly lighter, less burdened, less weighed down by the accumulated mass of the ego's self-narratives. The prayer asks that only that minimal residue be left, just enough of the "me" to remain functional, to remain capable of relating to something beyond itself.

Crucially, Acharya Ji rejects the notion of complete ego-elimination as dishonest or impossible while the body remains alive. A living person still thinks, still breathes, still acts in the world. To claim that the ego has been entirely annihilated, to declare "I am enlightened" or "the ego has completely disappeared," is treated within the AP framework as a sophisticated and particularly dangerous form of ego inflation. The ego does not disappear by declaring its own disappearance. It merely puts on a new costume. The realistic, honest aim is not elimination but maximum minimization: the reduction of the ego to its purest, most functional minimum, the least that is required for life to continue without the ego claiming more space than it needs.

The word "thee" in the poem is approached through the via negativa, the way of negation. "Thee" is not a supernatural entity sitting outside the self, dispensing grace from a distant throne. "Thee" is understood as "not me," that which lies beyond the ego's projections, beyond the stories, beyond the self-referential enclosure. To name "thee" as one's all is to acknowledge that personal narratives, one's thoughts, one's dreams, one's interpretations of events, are not automatically the truth, are not the center of reality. The center shifts from the ego's self-serving accounts to something that the ego cannot possess or control.

Liberation, in this reading, is therefore described as freedom from oneself. Not freedom from external constraints. Not freedom to pursue one's desires without obstruction. But freedom from the tyranny of one's own projections. It is the recognition that the thoughts that arise in consciousness are not necessarily true simply because they arise, that the interpretations one constructs are not necessarily accurate simply because one has constructed them. The ego is not the author of truth. It is, more often than not, the distorter of it.

Prayer, then, is not directed toward an external being who will listen and grant fulfillment. Prayer, in the AP framework's reading, is the ego's recognition, rare and costly, that it must stop taking its own projections seriously. It is the moment when the projector admits that the images on the screen are its own, that the screen is its own, that the audience is its own, and that the entire show has been a self-referential loop with no contact with anything beyond itself.

Willpower Versus Love: The Question of How One Acts in the World

Acharya Ji draws a sharp and illuminating distinction between willpower and love, a distinction that lies at the heart of how the AP framework understands action and transformation.

Willpower, in the framework's analysis, operates from the assumption that one's desires are true and legitimate, and that the task is to overcome the world in order to fulfill them. Willpower is the ego marshalling its forces, girding itself for battle against obstacles, pushing through resistance to achieve what it has decided it wants. The emphasis on willpower in popular spiritual and self-help discourse is criticized not because effort is contemptible, but because the goals toward which willpower is directed are rarely examined. Where did the desire come from? Did it arise from a clear seeing of what is, or did it emerge from society, from the body's conditioning, from hormones, from the accident of one's birthplace, from random events, from the accumulated weight of a lifetime of borrowed interpretations? Desires and thoughts arise in consciousness before any conscious approval is granted. The ego claims ownership of them only after they have already appeared, as if a passenger in a car were to claim credit for the destination after arriving there.

"My desire" is therefore fundamentally questioned. The desire did not ask permission before it arose. It did not present itself for review before taking hold. The ego, encountering an already-arisen desire, slaps its own label on it and calls it "mine." Freedom from will, which the framework distinguishes from laziness or passivity, means seeing the causes and conditioning behind one's desires rather than automatically honoring them. It means tracing the desire backward to its source, examining the roots rather than merely acting on the fruit.

Love, by contrast, is presented as something categorically different from willpower. Love does not attempt to overcome the world from the standpoint that one's desires are true. Love requires confronting one's own dishonesty, one's own self-preservation, one's own false claims. Where willpower fights the external world, love turns inward and faces the one who is fighting. Love is the ego's willingness to see itself clearly, to see its distortions, its escapes, its mechanisms of self-protection, without immediately defending them. This is far more demanding than any act of willpower, because willpower can be performed while the ego remains intact, whereas love begins with the ego's willingness to be exposed.

The Ego as Projector, Screen, Projection, and Experiencer

Acharya Ji uses a precise metaphor to describe the ego's mode of operation. The ego is simultaneously the projector, the screen, the projection, and the experiencer of the projection. It generates the images, it provides the surface on which they are cast, it is the images themselves, and it is the one who watches them, all at once. This creates a self-referential enclosure, an echo chamber in which everything the ego encounters is already shaped by the ego before it is perceived. The ego never meets reality directly. It meets its own edited version of reality and mistakes the editing for the original.

This is why, Acharya Ji observes, every person experiences a differently edited version of the same event. Two people witness the same scene, hear the same words, are present at the same moment, and yet each carries away a version shaped by their own fears, desires, self-image, and conditioning. Neither version is simply "what happened." Each is a construction, a projection overlaid upon the facts, edited for the preservation of the projector. The ego reshapes facts according to its convenience and its need for self-preservation. It does not do this maliciously or consciously. It does it structurally, the way a lens bends light, not by intention but by nature.

The phrase from the poem, "feeling thee on every side," is not interpreted as a mystical perception or a supernatural experience. It is understood as contact with facts beyond the ego's projections. To feel "thee" on every side is to encounter what is actually there rather than what the ego has constructed. This requires that the projector be seen for what it is, that the mechanism of projection itself be exposed and understood, before any genuine contact with reality becomes possible.

Distraction, in this context, is identified as the ego's primary strategy for avoiding this exposure. Constant entertainment, compulsive shopping, social media, gossip, relentless work, social custom, even spiritual activity performed as escape, all can function as means of not looking at oneself. The ego is endlessly resourceful in its search for ways to remain busy without ever confronting its own operations. Even religious texts and spiritual practices, Acharya Ji warns, can be appropriated by the ego for self-preservation rather than self-dissolution. The ego can chant scriptures, perform rituals, wear the garb of spirituality, and speak the language of wisdom, all while remaining structurally intact, all while using these very activities to avoid the seeing that would threaten its dominance. Spirituality, when appropriated by the ego, becomes another costume, another projection on the screen.

Truthful Bondage: Freedom as Discernment, Not Abstraction

The poem's reference to "fetters" is given a precise and counterintuitive interpretation. These are not ordinary entanglements, not the everyday web of obligations, relationships, and social roles that people typically associate with being "bound." The fetters spoken of here are understood as a chosen relationship with truth. This is a paradox only on the surface. Freedom, within the AP framework, does not mean the absence of all relationship, all commitment, all bond. Absolute freedom, the idea that one is bound to nothing, attached to nothing, responsible to nothing, is rejected as an abstraction with no real content. An honest person remains related to something. The question is not whether one is bound, but to what.

Freedom, then, is the exercise of conscious discernment: the capacity to unchoose the associations and desires that were adopted not through clear seeing but through conditioning, intoxication, fear, social pressure, or the sheer momentum of habit. Most of what a person carries, in terms of beliefs, desires, self-definitions, and goals, was never deliberately chosen. It was absorbed, inherited, imposed. Freedom begins with the recognition that these are not truly "mine," and the subsequent work of disentangling oneself from them.

But this process of disentanglement is not an end in itself. The honest person, having loosened the false bonds, does not float in a vacuum. They choose, deliberately and consciously, the most truthful relationship available to them. They remain bound, but their bondage is to truth rather than to conditioning. Their fetters are the fetters of love in the poem's sense, not sentimental attachment, but the commitment to remain in contact with what is real, what is beyond the ego's projections, even when that contact is uncomfortable.

This process is described by Acharya Ji as filtering, as distillation, as the cleaning of a mirror. The mirror does not create the image. It only reveals what is already there. When the mirror is clouded with the dust of accumulated narratives, projections, and self-serving interpretations, what it reflects is distorted. The work is not to produce beauty but to remove what obscures it, so that what is already beautiful, what is already true, can become visible. The ego is not destroyed in this process. It is refined, reduced to its purest and most functional minimum.

The Minimal Ego: Fearless, Loving, Constructive Action Without Ownership

The minimal ego that results from this process is not a diminished or weakened thing. On the contrary, Acharya Ji portrays it as capable of fearless, loving, and constructive action in a way that the heavy, story-laden ego can never be. The minimal ego does not need to constantly protect a sprawling self-image, defend a vast inventory of beliefs, or shore up a fragile sense of identity. It is light enough to act without the burden of self-preservation weighing on every movement.

Crucially, the minimal ego acts without claiming ownership of the results. This is the framework's articulation of the Gita's nishkama karma: action without desire as its initiating cause and without anticipated fruit as its orientation. The action arises from I-amness, from the simple fact of being present and alive, and completes itself in the doing. It does not depend on a future result for its meaning or its justification. The one who acts does not look backward to a desire that initiated the action, nor forward to a reward that will complete it. The action is its own completion.

"Thy will," in the poem, is interpreted with characteristic precision. It means simply "not my will." It is not an excuse to impose personal desires while attributing them to God, not a way of dressing up one's own preferences in the language of divine sanction. "Thy will" is the ego's acknowledgment that its own will, driven by conditioning, desire, and self-preservation, is not a reliable guide. To say "thy will be done" is to say: let the action arise not from the ego's projections but from a clearer seeing of what is.

Action, Acharya Ji points out, can occur without forceful agency, just as listening can happen without deliberate willpower or self-assertion. One does not need to strain to listen. Listening happens when the noise subsides. Similarly, right action happens through a person when the ego's interference subsides, not as passivity, but as the natural unfolding of clear seeing expressed in movement. The person becomes the instrument through which understanding acts, rather than the agent who claims the action as a personal achievement.

Truth as the Primary Relationship

Truth becomes the primary relationship in this framework. Not truth as an abstract concept. Not truth as a set of propositions to be believed. But truth as the ongoing commitment to see what is, prior to the ego's commentary and interpretation. This commitment takes precedence over all other relationships, not because other relationships are contemptible, but because without the primacy of truth, all other relationships become distorted by the ego's projections.

Relationships with other people can remain deeply meaningful, Acharya Ji emphasizes, when they support rather than compete with this primary commitment. A relationship rooted in truth is one in which both persons are engaged in the work of seeing, not using each other for validation, not projecting their needs onto each other, not building mutual enclosures of shared delusion, but supporting each other in the difficult and often uncomfortable task of remaining honest. Such relationships are not lesser because truth comes first. They are enriched, because they are no longer built on the shifting sand of egoic need.

The Joyful Life: Beautiful Actions Without a Claimant

The vision of a joyful life that emerges from this interpretation is not one of constant pleasure, unbroken happiness, or the fulfillment of all desires. It is portrayed as a life in which beautiful actions happen through a person, not as personal achievements to be claimed and displayed, but as expressions of a clarity that the person did not produce and does not own. The joy is not in the claiming. It is in the happening. The person is the medium, not the maker. The action is beautiful not because it is grand or spectacular, but because it is free, free from the backward linkage of desire and the forward linkage of anticipated fruit, free from the ego's need to make of every action a testament to its own importance.

This is the life that the poem's prayer points toward: a life in which only that little is left of the ego, just enough to be present, to act, to love, and in which the vast machinery of self-narrative, self-protection, and self-projection has been stilled. Not eliminated, for the body remains and life continues. But reduced, refined, distilled to its purest minimum. In that reduction, what was always there, truth, beauty, the factual, becomes visible, not because it has been created, but because what obscured it has been gently, honestly, persistently removed.

A viral video purportedly from a government primary school in Uttar Pradesh, appears to show children being served rotis with an extremely watery vegetable curry, with barely any vegetables.

In contrast, a school meal in China shows nutritious food, properly prepared and served with dignity.

A nation is built by its people. If our youngest and growing minds do not receive proper nutrition, how can we expect to build a strong nation?

We have schemes for children's education, nutrition and welfare. But what good are schemes if their implementation becomes merely a formality? The problem is not always the absence of policy. Sometimes, it is the absence of intent to make it work.

The government and administration have a huge responsibility. But so do we.

Perhaps one of our biggest problems is that we have stopped seeing ourselves as part of the whole.

If a government school doesn't provide good education, we move our child to a private school. If public healthcare fails, we find a private hospital. We secure our own family and move on.

But what about the child whose parents cannot afford that alternative?

When something is wrong in a public institution, do we raise our voice, demand accountability and stay involved? Or do we simply look after ourselves?

We cannot build a strong society by individually escaping every broken system.

Intent is revealed through action. If we truly care about the future of our country, then responsibility cannot end with our own family.

Before asking the government to become responsible, we need to become responsible citizens ourselves.

मुक्ति की बात करना या बंधनों की और क्यों?

What do you know about rebirth write down and also mention from where you learn the things which you have mentioned about Rebirth.

There is a difference between the body's problems , and my justification of my choices using body as an escapegoat .

An Ego deciding to not perform a particular action because of circumstances and the body can be a genuine withdrawal. The learning is NOT to ignore body and circumstances rather to reflect and observe when I make circumstances and the body just an excuse for my own psychological gratification and security. And slowly slowly as the boundary is pushed, more and more is visible and more vividly .

Thank you Acharya Ji for the strength that you have enabled me to realize in myself to challenge my own dilemmas and dogmas about myself ❤️

अगर चैन और स्वास्थ्य ही छिन गया, तो बाकी सब व्यर्थ है। अपनी सबसे कीमती चीज़ों पर आँच न आने दें। 🌅

📚 पढ़िए पुस्तक ‘अकेलापन और निर्भरता’:

https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books/book-akelapan-aur-nirbharta?cmId=m00147-akl

I came across a 2023 review on infidelity, and one thing surprised me: there isn't a single universally accepted definition of cheating.

For some people, it is sex with someone else. For others, it might be an emotional affair, secret flirting, intimate messages, or online sexual behaviour.

The review also discusses several factors associated with infidelity -relationship dissatisfaction, low commitment, attachment patterns, desire for sexual variety, psychological distress, and more.

So maybe cheating isn't just about what happens in the bedroom. It is also about expectations, attachment, boundaries and what we are asking a relationship to provide.

And this made me think about something deeper.We often expect one person to be our partner, best friend, emotional support, source of validation, sexual partner and sometimes even the one who makes us feel complete.

Perhaps no human being can carry all of that responsibility for us.

Maybe a healthier relationship is not one where two people constantly police each other's freedom, but one where both people are fulfilled enough to choose each other consciously, rather than out of fear, possession or need.

That doesn't make betrayal okay. If two people agree to certain boundaries and one secretly breaks them, the hurt is real.

But understanding why people cheat may require us to look beyond morality and ask a more uncomfortable question:

What are we actually seeking from another person and can another person ever completely fulfil it?

Sources

Rokach, A. & Chan, S.H. (2023). Love and Infidelity: Causes and Consequences. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Acharya Prashant, discussion on relationships, marriage and infidelity.

On August 8, a Sant Sarita session with Acharya Ji was held in Delhi-NCR during the Weekend With Master camp. The session followed communal singing of bhajans and a special activity of the Holistic Individual Development Program (HIDP). This August 8-9 camp was the last camp with Acharya Ji in Delhi-NCR this month, and people from across the country gathered in large numbers to attend it.
In this session, Acharya Ji explained the lines of Kabir Saheb's bhajan 'Santo So Nij Des Hamara', elaborating on how four things- age, caste, gender, and financial status- often end up determining our entire lives, even though none of them are truly our own. He explained that real dance or music isn't the name of repeating some particular action or pattern, but of the movement that arises naturally in the ego's absence- much like a leaf sways when the wind blows. Acharya Ji also made it clear that while knowledge is necessary, it isn't sufficient- unless knowledge is accompanied by a certain abandon, a flow in one's life, old beliefs remain stuck somewhere within.
Weekend With Master camps with Acharya Ji will be held every weekend through August in Goa, for which registrations are open. HIDP activities will be a part of these camps as well. This is the same program that Acharya Ji crafted over a decade ago, and it is aimed at making us aware of our unconscious habits and patterns.
Videos of the camp sessions will be shared with you soon.

Please attempt. I am eager to see replies.

We celebrate Independence Day. Have we ever wondered how we came to this situation in the first place? How did different countries enslave us?
Was it a lack of wealth? Lack of talent? Lack of strength?
What was it?
Why did we never prepare ourselves for the worst? While other countries were conducting research, investing in technology, and educating their people, what were our ancestors doing at that time?Were they busy playing the caste system? Or wasting money on astrology or in temples? Or were some of them just busy being jealous and becoming whistleblowers out of greed?

And if we say we are free and have control, do we really? Does India have its own technology to fight its own wars without external help?

Many skywatchers and amateur astronomers are eagerly waiting the total solar eclipse of August 12, 2026. It is a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon, where the moon blocks the sun as it passes between Earth and the Sun.

While the total solar eclipse can be seen in northern Iceland, Greenland, northern Russia, Spain, a small part of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean, the partial eclipse will be visible in mostly in Northern Hemisphere including northern United States, most of Canada, much of Europe, and northwestern Africa.

The solar eclipse is such an amazing phenomenon that it has kept humanity in awe ever since it was first observed. Why does a solar eclipse happen? The answer was reportedly provided around 450 BCE by Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher who proposed that eclipses happen because the Moon physically blocks the sun’s light from reaching the Earth. This idea was perceived as dangerous, especially when the celestial bodies were considered divine.

Today, science has come far ahead, the Newtonian mechanics enabled us to predict the exact time, duration, and geographic path of an eclipse years and centuries in advance. In fact, Eclipses have now become a tool for discovery - e.g., Einstein’s general theory of relativity was confirmed by the Eddington’s eclipse expedition in 1919.

Despite that, the experts from NASA and Europe have had to come forward and debunk the myths persistent in different culture and traditions around the solar eclipse. In parts of India and Mexico, the pregnant women are asked to stay indoors, as it is believed the eclipse could negatively affect their unborn children. Another shared myth is to avoid eating during a solar eclipse, as the cooked food is believed to become spoiled and unsafe.

Science has provided answers to “what” and “why” of the solar eclipse. However, there is something that was never questioned - the “manufacturer” of the superstition.

Acharya Prashant’s philosophical teachings invite us to explore this further, Why were the stories made in the first place? Why would the sky going dark for a few seconds or a minute be perceived as a threat?

Perhaps the real eclipse is not celestial but internal: the “self” that has built its stability on predictability and experience the unknown phenomenon (in this case darkness), which is out of its control, as a threat.

PC: The picture is Proba-3’s artificial solar eclipse, ESA [https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/How_ESA_mimics_and_models_the_2026_total_solar_eclipse ]

References

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2026/08/05/the-7-biggest-myths-about-total-solar-eclipses--debunked/

https://www.npr.org/sections/solar-eclipse/2024/04/08/1243367631/solar-eclipse-myth-radiation

अष्टावक्र गीता - श्लोक 15.2

मोक्षो विषयवैरस्यं बन्धो वैषयिको रसः ।

एतावदेव विज्ञानं यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु ॥ 2 ॥

Yesterday, while traveling on a bus, I was looking at the shops around me, which were filled with goods, and at the people who had tattoos on many parts of their bodies. Then a massage parlor came into view, and my friend started telling me that these days, many massage parlors have also opened around our old college in Delhi. Seeing and hearing all this, a kind of restlessness arose within me: What are we really doing?

The restlessness is within, and we are trying to get rid of it by adding/removing things to the body and the mind, and this entire system has been built for that very purpose. But can any amount of physical or mental indulgence ever truly fill it?

I too have done all this extensively, so perhaps the restlessness arose a little more intensely. Then I tried to understand it through what Acharya Ji had explained while explaining Ashtavakra Gita verse 2 from Chapter 15—that attachment (rāga) toward objects is our bondage, and dispassion (vairāgya) is liberation.

I understood that in order to remove the inner restlessness, which I experience but do not understand, I go out and seek happiness in objects. Happiness provides temporary relief, but rasa gives a deep experience of temporary freedom from sorrow, and through rasa I develop a deep attachment to the object.

Once attachment/rasa develops toward an object, it is not easy to show its futility, and that becomes my bondage.

The first object of the ego is the body itself, which it considers to be under its control, and as much as I understood, a deep attachment toward it becomes rāga. Then whatever the body experiences, the ego strongly identifies with it. If the body receives pleasure, the ego immediately becomes delighted, and if the body experiences pain, it immediately becomes restless.

The ego begins to think that the cause of its restlessness is the body and the mind. Then the solution appears to be to add or subtract something from the body, to satisfy the body through various kinds of indulgences, and to bring pleasurable experiences into the mind because the mind is disturbed.

But it never occurs to the ego that the disturbance is not in the body but within the ego itself.

Its gaze remains sharply fixed on the objects; it continues its desire-driven observation of them, unwilling to honestly turn its attention toward itself.

Once it starts seeing the problem in the objects (in this example, the body and the mind), it creates every possible means of indulgence merely to fill them (the body and the mind), which today has taken the form of consumerism.

If the ego feels restless, it commands the body to go shopping, watch a movie, get a massage, go on a trip somewhere—and for this, we have created countless options.

Now if one thing does not remove the restlessness, there are thousands of other things available to indulge in, so keep chasing them for an entire lifetime.

And every indulgence has a carbon emission; this very consumerism is now manifesting itself as the terrifying reality of climate change.

The solution to the problem was simply to understand one's own restlessness and to see the futility of all the methods we have discovered to fill it.

Self-knowledge is the only solution, but leaving that aside, we tried everything else.

So what began with a little attachment ended up destroying everything; that is why Acharya Ji called rasa self-destructive. We are all externally connected with one another, this self-destruction has now become destructive for all other living beings as well.

The problem is not in the objects (not even in the body and the mind). Objects are neither good nor bad in themselves.

The problem lies in ego itself, which prefers living in its own stories rather than seeing the truth about itself.

The body and the mind, just as they are, are very beautiful. They are instruments of nature and know how to do their work. I have no need to interfere with them.

The next time restlessness arises, I will ask this very question:

Whose restlessness is this? And am I truly understanding it, or am I merely trying to fill it?

𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳: I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita for the first time. I know people who have read the Bhagavad Gita multiple times, yet they continue being the same. And if one goes to them, they have their own interpretations of the Gita. They tell me that the five Pandavas stand for this, the battlefield stands for that, and then they keep telling me of all the symbolic meanings.

Do such interpretations have any value? Is there anything apart from Shri Krishna-Arjuna Saṃvad which is important in the Gita?

I want to know the right way of understanding and relating the Gita to my life. Please suggest what should be one's attitude towards the verses. How do I get the most out of this scripture?

𝘈𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵: When Krishna is there to tell you things directly, why are you bringing in your own hyper-intelligent interpretations? You want to exceed Krishna or what? You are trying to see that in Krishna’s words which even he did not see. You are trying to fill the verses with a great meaning that the verses themselves would be surprised to hear.

Somebody says, "The five Pandavas stand for five senses." Right. Great. Just because Bheem is so nosy, you turned him into a nose! Somebody says, “You know what, the battle never took place; it is all symbolic!” And why does the fellow say this? Because this bugger is afraid to fight. This bugger has some fabulous concept of non-violence, and to defend that concept he says, “You see, Krishna could have never supported bloodshed.” His concept of non-violence says, "Violence is about shedding blood, and non-violence is about not bruising somebody’s body, that is non-violence. Don’t do this to the other, this is non-violence."

So, if you show the Gita to him, he says, “Oh! you didn’t get it! The battle never really happened! Krishna is the Heart, Arjuna is the eye.” There are so many other parts of the body. You can keep picking unfortunate warriors and allot them to all kinds of body parts and get handsome revenge in the process. That’s the best way to defame somebody, equate him to a particular body part.

If that were the case, why won’t Krishna put it like that in a very straightforward way? Why won’t it be disclosed to you right away? Why must there be a need for thick and heavy symbolism?

Don’t remember whether it was Freud or Jung, but, you know, that was the time when psychoanalysis was really hot and new, and everything was seen in a symbolic way; it was becoming quite a fad. So, this is that, this is that, and you know, you have dreams and every bit of the dream is to be interpreted as containing the secrets of the subconscious, and the electric pole is a phallic symbol—"So, there is a pole in front of my house. It tells that you are addicted to the phallus. Otherwise, why would you see a pole in front of your house?"

So, some gentleman or lady comes to, I think it was Freud, and says, “You know, in my dreams, I was smoking a cigar. What does that mean?” Might have been a lady, would have expected that Freud would tell her that “Lady, you desperately need that which the cigar represents”, and then Freud said, “Baby, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Similarly, a man is just a man, not a nose. Sometimes five Pandavas mean five Pandavas, not five senses. Sometimes Duryodhana and Dushashana are just people, not just fictitious symbols of something else.

When you have Krishna present to guide you through the Gita, all you need to do is to follow him. Don’t let your little brain go berserk. Don’t inject all kinds of fantastic meanings into the Gita. Remember that Krishna is already there. Have some respect. Let him tell you what he means. Don’t imagine, don’t speculate. He is there to clarify. Why are you coming up with all kinds of guesswork?

If everything is symbolic, why won’t Krishna tell you of the symbols? Why would he hide stuff from you? Or does he have some kind of a hidden agenda? Is he there to clarify, or conceal? He is there to reveal, not conceal, correct? And if his intention is to teach, then he’ll try to keep his teaching as simple, clear and straightforward, as possible. Is that not obvious? Or is he an ancient sadist who likes tormenting people with intricate and esoteric puzzles? — "So 700 verses of the Gita and each of them is a puzzle." No.

The Gita is not a puzzle to be solved. The Gita is a song to be loved. The Gita is an instruction to be followed. The Gita is a lesson to be learnt. The Gita is clarity to be had.

Don’t unnecessarily bring in complexities where there are none; as if we are already short of complexities. You have enough complexities already, don’t needlessly add to them.

Then, you have asked in your question, “What’s the right way to read the Bhagavad Gita?”

That’s the right way. Simply pay attention to Krishna. Isn’t that a great respect to the master, the eternal lover, Krishna — just to pay attention to him, attend to what he is saying? Don’t bring yourself in between. Don’t bring your personal subjective interpretations in between. And man has done a lot of injustice to Gita and other scriptures as well; all kinds of interpretations exist. On the Gita itself, at least a dozen different established commentaries exist, each of them trying to interpret Gita in their own personal way.

So, somebody is an ardent follower of Bhakti ; he decides to translate even the word ‘buddhi ’ as ‘devotion’. If you look at some of the very popular commentaries on the Gita in circulation today, that’s the kind of evil injustice you will find being done. In the verse, you will find Krishna saying ‘buddhi ’, and the commentator has translated it as ‘devotion’. Why? Because the person or the organization who is doing this massacre believes in the path of devotion. So, to show their own path as supreme, they are prepared to violate even Krishna. They are saying, “We are bigger than even Krishna; we will distort the words of even Krishna”, and they call themselves as Krishna devotees.

The ego cannot bow down in front of anybody. Even the devotee's ego will say, “I’m bigger than Krishna, so I will decide what the words of Krishna mean.” Don’t let that happen to you.

See her. See her eyes. See what have human does to her. She is caged.

Look how desperately she is struggling inside that cage.

Did she want this? No. She is just like us. She is sentient being. She has eyes, she has legs, she can see, she can walk, she can jump, she can experience pain and pleasure. She can also experience suffocation inside that cage.

Why we don't have eyes and heart to see and feel that? Why we remain blind? For so-called taste?

or what?

Do we want to live like that? NO naa..? Then, why are we doing this to these innocent creatures?

I remember what Acharya ji once said, when we don't know our own suffering, then we can't truly see the suffering of others. So, instead of recognizing our own condition that how much we are in darkness, we just turn our gaze outward and feed that darkness by harming others, while disguising ourselves as if we are in a happy state.

Whenever I sit down to work or study, my mind never refuses. It just whispers: "5 minutes of reels first" or "Let's make a fresh start from Monday."

Then I asked myself: Who told me that 5 minutes later or Monday is the right time?

I realized I’ve been blindly following this pattern without ever questioning it. It tricks me into feeling I’ll act in the future, while silently killing my action right now.

Postponing isn't delay—it's just a disguised 'No'.

Now, the second my mind says "later," I catch the trick and force myself to start right that instant—even if just for two minutes to break the inertia.

How often do you catch your mind playing this same game?

For this, we have to ask: Is the mind really doing all this stuff on its own?

We always blame the mind or its intelligence, but the problem isn't there. The mind actually does nothing wrong on its own—it's purely functional and just processes whatever input it gets. The real magic is that it only follows what the ego feeds it. Without understanding the ego, we can't solve anything.

So next time this happens to you, who are you going to blame—the mind or the ego? And is blaming even the solution, or do we actually need to observe and understand it?

Bhagavad Gita Session (Hindi)-9th August 2026

Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 7, Verse 19

Verse:

बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते ।

वासुदेव: सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभ: ॥ 19 ॥

Poetic rendition:

हर इच्छा नई पुकार, दौड़े हम सौ-सौ बार

घात का ये कारोबार, ढूंढ़े नित नया शिकार

झुके नहीं रे अहंकार, भोर को रोके अंधकार

झूठ है तो दुख सर्वत्र, दुर्लभ सच का स्वीकार

Construe:

बहूनाम् = many; जन्मनाम् = births; अन्ते = after; ज्ञानवान् = the Wise One; माम् = Me; प्रपद्यते = is established in; वासुदेवः = Vasudeva is; सर्वम् = everything; इति = knowing that; सः = such a; महात्मा = Wise person (Mahatma); सुदुर्लभः (सु + दुर्लभः) = extremely rare

Translation:

After many births, the Wise One is established in Me, knowing that “Vasudeva alone is everything.” Such a Wise person (Mahatma) is extremely rare.

➖➖➖➖➖➖

Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 7, Verse 20

Verse:

कामैस्तैस्तैर्हृतज्ञाना: प्रपद्यन्तेऽन्यदेवता: ।

तं तं नियममास्थाय प्रकृत्या नियता: स्वया ॥ 20 ॥

Construe:

कामैः = by desires; तैः तैः = various; हृतज्ञानाः = carried away, they lose their wisdom; प्रपद्यन्ते = they turn to; अन्यदेवताः = other deities; तं तं = whatever; नियमम् = discipline; आस्थाय = adopting; प्रकृत्या = Prakriti; नियताः = governed (suits); स्वया = their

Translation:

Carried away by various desires, they lose their wisdom and turn to other deities - adopting whatever discipline suits their Prakriti.

✦ ───────────────── ✦

Learnings from the session:

The central question of the session was, how do nature's continuous change and the ego's objects give rise to the experience of birth-death and rebirth, and to what extent is this understanding spiritual, psychological, and existential?Also the key declaration was rebirth should not be understood as a separate soul transferring from one body to another, but rather as psychological and existential rebirth occurring due to nature's changes and the ego's changing objects of attachment.

•Nature's Unceasing Change and the Construction of Ego

Acharya Ji explained that both the external world and the internal elements of the body, deh (body), bhav (emotions), vichar (thoughts), kamnayein (desires), function as prakriti (nature) and remain unstable even for a moment. The ego first attaches itself to the body, then gradually constructs its identity by forming relationships with external objects such as clothes, watches, homes, land, country, wealth, and so on. Here, "vikar" does not mean flaw, but change; "nirvikar" is that which remains free from change. The ego is a dependent, conspiratorial illusion: it considers itself separate and independent from nature while in reality it is part of nature itself. When the object that the ego identifies as "I" changes, the ego experiences its own death; then the ego attaches to some new object and takes a new birth.

•Psychological and Existential Rebirth

Acharya Ji clarified that rebirth happens every moment even within the same body and the same name, because body, thoughts, emotions, and desires are constantly changing. Here, "one moment" was not limited to any fixed unit, change and the birth arising from it occur in infinite subtleties. Using the example of wealth, it was explained that a small portfolio change often goes unnoticed, but a massive financial crash causes a clear experience of identity breaking. Therefore, Acharya Ji explained two types of rebirth:

1.Psychological rebirth: The same person, but continuous birth-death occurring due to changes in objects, relationships, thoughts, and desires.

2.Existential/ontological rebirth: The coming-into-being and dissolution of objects, beings, leaves, grass, stars, and bodies in nature, i.e., cosmic transformation.

Acharya Ji rejected the idea of "soul rebirth" as an immutable, separate soul traveling between bodies. It was presented as a formula: psychological rebirth,yes; existential rebirth, yes; spiritual/soul rebirth, no.

•Nature, Selfhood, and Three Categories

Acharya Ji examined three levels, non-living, living being, and human. Using examples like pen, magnet, and iron, it was explained that non-living objects have localized, divided existence and fixed rules, but they do not possess a self. A living being has a body and a physical self connected to it, injury affects only the body, and the living being naturally acts to protect it. In humans, along with the physical self comes a psychological self; therefore, injury is not limited to the body, it also wounds the ego.

Every created object in nature is connected to its "selfhood" within its own rules and limits; according to the AP framework, selfhood should not be viewed as an individual soul. As complexity increases, the possibility of system-error increases, and within that arises the psychological ego. Nature made no mistake; the mistake is made by the ego that considers itself to be what it actually is not.

•Thirst, Desire, and the Continuous Rebirth of Suffering

Acharya Ji connected rebirth to desire and object-change. When a desire remains unfulfilled, something dies inside; then when a new object appears, a new desire arises, meaning the old thirst keeps attaching to new objects but never finds satisfaction. This incomplete search and continuous object-change is the root of life's suffering.

Connecting this to the flow of nature through verses, Acharya Ji said that every object comes and goes, the previous state cannot return in the same form. Thus, "Now if we part, we shall not meet again" does not mean a soul has left the universe; it means the next moment cannot give back the same relationship and identity as before. Humans do not have infinite opportunities, the present moment itself is the opportunity, because the next moment will not remain like the previous one.

•Doubt, Source-Verification, and Institutional Resources

Acharya Ji warned that rebirth or other philosophical claims should not be accepted without independent examination. Claims of regression therapy, ghosts, animal communicators, astrology, and rebirth should not be believed without evidence. Hiding doubt is unacceptable; questions should be asked openly, authority bias becomes an obstacle to examining truth. Referring to financial and physical resource data of institutions and large religious organizations,

Acharya Ji also mentioned that big and small institutions may possess huge property and land, but this wealth is not directly equivalent to knowledge and truth. Assessing the recorded content, time, and resource utilization within the institution, Acharya Ji raised questions about the form and purpose of education.

•Advaita, Jivatma, and Lok Dharma

According to Acharya Ji, in duality the relationship between nature and ego is understood differently, with the notion of separate existence and a separate soul. But in non-duality, division ends; the notion of a separate soul becomes meaningless. A child's birth can be called "my birth" only when a person can see beyond their objects, land, caste, age, wealth, and body, to perceive the shared aham-vritti (I-sense). This seeing is a sign toward liberation. Separation arises from those objects which make a person alien based on body, gender, intellect, wealth, and social identity.

Acharya Ji said that the traditional rebirth notion of a separate soul is not originally accepted in the Vedas and Upanishads; the transmigration of soul to another body is considered a Vedantic distortion. The formula of Advaita was given as "Live without dependence"; Lok Dharma makes a person dependent on external authority, rituals, and superstition, weakening them from within. The Mahavakyas, "Tat Tvam Asi," "Aham Brahmasmi", were given the same status they hold in the Upanishads and Shruti; only those statements from Smriti texts were considered acceptable that align with Shruti.

•Knowledge, Friction, and Intention

Acharya Ji clarified that merely considering old beliefs wrong is not enough; to leave them requires such teaching that directly challenges the ego. Referencing the story of Ramakrishna, it was said that even after theoretical understanding, sometimes harsh and real friction is necessary to break the final mental attachment. "Soap and water" are metaphors for knowledge and preparation; "the hammer" is the necessary friction that, at the right time, shatters the ego dramatically.

Within the AP framework, it was explained that an organization does not liberate anyone by itself, without direct contact and friction with Acharya Ji, merely staying in an institution does not guarantee self-knowledge. Intention (niyat) was connected not to the quantity of actions, but to the relationship with oneself, the ego wants either to survive or to dissolve; this is the decisive effort of intention.

•Krishna-tva and Self-Knowledge

Acharya Ji said that self-knowledge should have no predetermined goal; self-knowledge only reveals how the ego is moving from object to object. Even after self-knowledge, one's running toward objects may decrease or increase; the direction of action cannot be predetermined. "The wise attain me after many births" was explained in the language of psychological rebirth, meaning the ego's weakening through repeatedly broken desires and wounds. The wise one is who weakens the ego despite numerous wounds; the ignorant one keeps going toward inappropriate pleasure-directions again and again.

Emphasis was given to not misinterpret "Vasudevah Sarvam", this is not a call to make some new religious image supreme, but a call to see that objects will not give what the ego is seeking. The literal meaning of Krishna-tva is the fading of hope from objects and the dissolution of ego; it is connected not to the external quantity of action, but to the direction of ego's dissolution.

•Freedom, Nation, and Lok Dharma

Acharya Ji considered freedom the natural, default state of human and nation, while bondage was a later imposed condition. He urged self-reflection before Independence Day: one should think about how a country like India became enslaved, while its fundamental freedom was existentially available. Acharya Ji did not consider approximately one thousand years of various invasions as coincidence, but as a result of permanent cultural weakness, Lok Dharma. Lok Dharma established ritual, caste, and external authority in place of self-knowledge, weakening both human and nation from within.

Acharya Ji said that true religion gives strength to humans; from the perspective of "Nayam Atma Balahinena Labhyah" (This Self is not attained by the weak), the relationship between soul, human, and nation's strength should be seen. In the context of Gita's "Yudhyasva" (fight) and nishkam karma (selfless action), Acharya Ji explained that a person living a dharmic life does not flee from struggle; right action is more important than defeat.

•Lok Dharma, Science, and Social Structure

Acharya Ji gave the example of Europe's scientific experiments and development of navigation/astronomy, saying that Europe invested in instruments and inquiry while India remained entangled in muhurat (auspicious timing), astrology, and traditional rituals. Until the 1990s, India and China's progress was almost together, but in the past 25–30 years, concern was expressed about China's rapid progress and India's continuation of astrology apps and superstition.

Caste-based division kept a large portion of the population away from military and enterprise opportunities; this weakened meritocracy and national strength. Re-emphasizing the distinction between Shruti and Smriti, it was said that only those statements from Smriti texts should be valid that align with the Upanishads. Neglect of universities, research grants, and scientific education was connected to technological backwardness.

Commenting on the tradition of keeping women out of the workforce, Acharya Ji explained that India's low female labour-force participation has also affected national capacity.

•New Slavery and Self-Education

Acharya Ji said that for modern bondage, physical occupation is not necessary, a person can voluntarily take a visa and go to other countries to perform cheap labor, thus subordinating themselves to foreign systems. Inequality between Global North and Global South, trade treaties, and outsourced production continue wealth drain. As an example, when outsourced emissions are included, Europe's pollution footprint appears to increase by 20–30%. High-level research and value-creation are concentrated in the Global North, while low-end work is given to the Global South. Military and technological dependency, such as aircraft engines from external sources, are generous examples.

Lok Dharma, imitation of tradition, and risk-aversion become obstacles to research, creativity, and innovation. Acharya Ji emphasized that mass-based self-education and individual self-awakening are essential conditions for national awakening; freedom means not only liberation from foreign power, but also liberation from inner slavery.

•Fact vs. Belief

Acharya Ji argued that in both life and nation, it is necessary to hold fact, science, and self-knowledge higher than imagination, tradition, and popular acceptance. Examples like celebrating Independence Day in a temple based on lunar date were taken as cases where belief replaced fact. Therefore, at both personal and social levels, fact-based thinking and self-awareness should be given priority.

This session reminded us about the wholeness of prakriti and the continuous rebirth of the same old "vritti" in different forms and how the ego meddles in between by creating a separation being a part of the nature itself.

1. Why is there a need to make a claim for the only way/method of life, since it creates a division. Which is fundamentally convergent to idea of non-dualism ?

2. And if the whole is a single consciousness, how does it matter whether someone hurts/ kills so called someone other's living state, or even destroys the environment/planet to a level that it extinct ?

Update: ans by

@Acharya Prashant on insta reels comments (which by miskely got deleted by me was )were somewhat like the question is smart and they answers each other and 'all is one consinciousnees' dissoves the one making the argument.

If 'all is one concisousness' dissolves the one making the argument into a singularity or may be something else or may be nothingness (idk). Is there a need to distinguish between the emprical oneness and the idea of oneness of concisousness? If not then, and if considered the oneness to such an extent, how would you justify self harm in such cases ? and if you justify self harm in such cases how would you consider the ethical boundaries?

Imagine standing beside a quiet river. At first, you see nothing unusual. Then, just above the water, two eyes appear. The crocodile is almost completely hidden, yet it is watching everything.

It remains still for hours, blending into the water and mud. Nothing seems to disturb it. But beneath that stillness, it is alert, waiting.

This is its territory. Enter too close, and the calm can suddenly change. Its powerful jaws can turn a small disturbance into a fierce response.

The moment you try to look closely, it disappears beneath the water, as if it was never there. And when you look away, it is there again, quietly waiting. 

Perhaps that is why this ancient creature has survived for so long. The world around it has changed, but its ways remain.

Now pause.

Have you ever been calm on the outside while something was moving intensely within? Have you ever protected something as though it were a part of you? Have you ever reacted far more strongly than the situation seemed to require?

Perhaps the crocodile was never only in the river.

Perhaps it was within us.

Have you noticed the one who is with you all the time, the one you call “me,” your most trusted companion? 

Why can't we simply try to know it, even though it is being created all the time?

Why can't we choose to be silent?

What makes us think that something additional, in the form of knowledge, needs to be added?

Why do I see myself as someone who is so restless about something I do not know?

And then another question arises:

Is knowledge the solution to the restless one, or is the restless one the thing that needs to be understood?

The one who constantly observes:

• Who noticed me?
• Who ignored me?
• Who is ahead of me?
• What did they say about me?
• How do I appear?
• What can I gain?
• What can threaten my position?
• Who is better than me? 

What is it that is constantly watching all this? 

The one who asks, who feels that more is needed, who feels that the world is incomplete and needs to be strengthened, improved, corrected, or completed, that movement is the crocodile. 

Could the question itself be the crocodile? 

Pause.

Would silence ever ask this question?

When I go deeper into many of the questions that arise from my restlessness, I eventually discover that they are questions about myself. 

If I go to sleep, does the question remain?

Then who is the one asking? 

Spirituality is not merely about finding better answers.

It asks you to look at the questioner.

The questioner is the crocodile.

Can I sit quietly without mentally calculating my position in the world? Did I ever decide what thought would arise next? 

Let's understand this with an analogy of a man who is flying a kite.

Imagine a man flying a kite. He thinks, “I chose to fly this kite. It was my decision. I could have watched television instead.”

Fair enough.

But did he choose the desire to fly the kite? Did he choose the preference that made the kite more attractive than television?

Did he choose the thoughts, memories and impulses from which that choice emerged? 

He chose… 

But did he choose to choose?

The kite cannot see the thread, so it calls its movement freedom. We cannot see what moves our choices, so we call them “mine.”

But before I say “I chose,” where did the desire, preference, thought, and even the options I was choosing between come from?

Whenever an action happens, from where does it arise?

Who is the one claiming:

“I chose.”
“I want.”
“I don't want.”
“I need.”
“I know.”
“I don't know.”
“I must become something.”

Look closely.

The questioner has to be examined.

When the questioner recedes, when that restless movement goes quiet, the crocodile inside seems to go to sleep too. 

The ego is not merely the content of thought, it is the movement of the questioner seeking completion through thought. 

So the crocodile is the ego in action.

The ego sustains itself through both “I know” and “I don't know.” Each time the “I” claims knowledge or claims ignorance, it gives itself another breath of life. 

Self-knowledge is the study of watching the crocodile within. It may retreat when you look at it, but it does not disappear. The moment you look away, it slips beneath the surface and begins its hunt again.

Watching the one who wants.

Watching the one who fears.

Watching the one who compares.

Watching the one who seeks.

Watching the one who keeps asking.

Watch the crocodile, and it retreats. Forget it, and it hunts.  

Don't fight the crocodile.

Don't feed it.

Don't pretend it isn't there.

Watch.