An IIT - IIM education must widen your choices, not limit them || Acharya Prashant, with youth(2018)

Questioner (An engineering student): Acharya Ji, what made you inclined towards Spirituality, after education from premier institutions like IIT-D and IIM-A?

Acharya Prashant (AP): A couple of decades ago, I was on that side where you all are sitting now, in another engineering college, IIT-Delhi. We too used to take a lot of things lightly. We too would fool around in lot of sessions, tutorials, lab sessions. But we also knew what is not trivial, not casual.

Once in a while, such a thing happens, and then we should be awake to the happening.

We will be together.

So, one of the members of your organizing committee, immediately asked this question, when he met me. His question was: “After IIT, after IIM, after Civil Services, and after a few years of successful corporate life, why this?”

I said, “Let me first look at the anatomy of your question.” Your question pre-supposes, assumes, a couple of things. The first is: Education gives you a few specific directions to move in. And that is why you are surprised, even shocked, that someone is breaching those directions, violating those directions.