
The woman is simpler, more innocent. I would dare to say the woman is simple and innocent just as animals are, because woman, just like animals, is biology-driven. She is emotional, and her emotions do not really arise from understanding, not even from intellect. Her emotions arise from her body, from her biological conditioning, from her hormones.

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.
Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

When you don’t operate from a spiritual center, then you operate from an emotional center. These emotions are causing this climate change. You are so emotional about that next foreign holiday, right? That is carbon intensive. You are so emotional about having a good, nice nest of your own—that is…


Emotions, they can do whatever they want to do. It doesn’t matter how I am feeling. What matters is what I must do.
Ask yourself: Had you not been feeling this way or that way, what would have you done? And you will get a very good answer.

Pay attention to all your thoughts, emotions, actions. Something unknown is waiting there for you. Most people know nothing about themselves.
If you are angry, it tells you that there is something within you that is resisting the world now. Why is it resisting the world? Go into it. Try…

“Why are women so emotional? If we are saying that it is okay for a man to be emotional, there is an implicit assumption that men are not emotional but women are.”
Both are. It’s just that both express their emotionality in different ways. Inner urges, latent tendencies in women…

We all have arguments in favor of our weaknesses, no?
“What do I do? I am just a kid.”
“What do I do? I don’t have the right background.”

Channelize your desire. You must know what you are really hungry for. Your central and primary desire is not sex. Sex may appear overpowering, tempting, but that is really not what you ultimately want. Figure out what you really must have, and then sex will be assigned automatically, inwardly, its…

One feels like worshiping the woman for enduring so much. One feels like worshiping the woman for being so willingly exploited. And one feels like slapping her hard in the face for being so stupid. Her own worst enemy she is.
Talk emotions to her, and she will be pleased.…

Instead of proceeding with a packaged product like meat, why don’t you slaughter the thing yourself? And when you slaughter the animal yourself, why don’t you know it fully even as you slaughter it? After all, even from a perspective of self-interest, if something is going into your body, it…

Before you accept or reject something, before you get wildly drawn to something, or before you just ignore something and move on, pause for five seconds, just five seconds, and ask: What is in it for me? What is the real importance it holds?
Do not be carried away by…

The belief that life is just crumbs and dredges thrown at you—that’s your undoing. You are content with too little.
To avoid facing pain, you have become numb and insensitive towards yourself. Deeper sensitivity results in deeper pain. To avoid facing pain we become insensitive, and when you are insensitive,…

Weakness is such a great strength. The child controls the mother—how? Not through his strength, but through his weakness. Decades and decades of the mother’s life are controlled by the child through the child’s weakness.
If the wife is strong, or if the husband is strong, they would not really…

“You have said that women and men both have emotionality but they express it differently. I have noticed women tend to be more indirect and coy when they talk. Is that again a same trait that is coming out differently?”
It is biological, very biological.

When you are not alright with yourself, then your attitude towards others, the way your energy flows towards others, is called as envy or desire.
If you are envious that somebody has something, then rest assured, you too desire that something. Envy and desire go together. Unless the other has…

The man has seen the emotional side of the mother, so the man knows the woman’s emotionality. But the woman has never seen the sexual side of her father, so the woman really does not know man’s sexuality that much.
Do you get this? The man knows the woman’s emotionality,…

For us, support just means weeping with the weeping one. We totally forget that in most cases the ones who are weeping do not need to weep. The ones who are weeping are needlessly weeping, and if you support their tears, you are supporting their false centers; you are making…

Do not let your inner welfare be conditional. If your inner sense of well-being is dependent on favorable external conditions, then it is a very sorry state to be in, because conditions are never under our control and, I am saying, I will allow myself to feel alright only upon…

Before you accept or reject something, before you get wildly drawn to something, or before you just ignore something and move on, pause for five seconds and ask, “What is in it for me? What is the real importance it holds?”
Do not be carried away by emotions. Do not…

Is lust a thought, or is lust more or less instantaneous? Does lust even give you space to think? In fact, if you could think in the moment of great lust or anger, then you would act better.
Thought has its uses. The emotional ones need to be the thoughtful…

Questioner: How can negative emotions be expressed in a healthy way? Can expressing negative emotions be maladaptive? Does gender have a relation to mental health?
Acharya Prashant: You see, it does not matter whether you call the emotion negative or positive. The first thing to understand is that when you…

Questioner (Q): How can negative emotions be expressed healthily? Can expressing negative emotions like crying be maladaptive? Does gender have a relation to mental health?
Acharya Prashant (AP): It doesn't matter whether you call the emotion negative or positive. The first thing to understand is that when you start calling…

Questioner: Nowadays whenever I feel that I should not do something, I don't do it. I'm not planning much and this includes me not offering prayers to God. Is this okay?
Acharya Prashant: Arun (Questioner), that which we call as a feeling is not really so internal that may deserve…

Questioner (Q): On one hand, I want to spiritually grow towards enlightenment, but at the same time, some side of me wants to have earthly freedom, experiences, like traveling. Even though I know that those things won’t bring me True Joy.
Are earthly pleasures a hindrance to spiritual growth?

Questioner: Sir, how to control our emotions?
Acharya Prashant: So, Shantanu is talking about controlling emotions. Let’s say Shantanu is driving his car. Do you drive your car in a controlled way or in an uncontrolled way? Obviously in a controlled way. Now, what is all control about? You are…

Acharya Prashant (AP): He is asking, “Is being moody good or not?”
But what are these moods? Do you know what these moods are? You take water in a saucer, in a saucer, a plate, and the water is lying still but if you keep the saucer under this fan,…

Acharya Prashant: Emotional outbursts to settled living.
What do you see in the topic itself? “Emotional outbursts to settled living.” What is happening here?
What is happening here is that the mind is desiring the movement from one place to another place. From place A to place B; emotional outbursts

Questioner (Q): I have been following some of the pages on social media, and there is one topic that is quite “in” these days—which says, ‘no emotion is a mistake’. But I have heard you in the past, and you have said that emotions are intensified thoughts. So won’t that…

Questioner: Is getting devoid of all emotions a part of feeling contented?
Acharya Prashant: Can you do that?
Why must we give importance to hypothetical questions? Can you really get rid of all emotions? And if you do, would that person be the same as this one? And if not,…

Question: Sir, when we lose a loved one in the form of a body, what happens actually is that the love remains intact but we lose that loved one in that physical form – the body. Please guide.
Acharya Prashant: There would anyway be so many thoughts, live in them.…

Question: How can we control our emotions?
Speaker: How can you control something that you do not quite understand? Our friend here is controlling the operations of this camera. How is he able to control the operations? Because he understands the functioning, he knows what leads to what, he knows…

Question: Sir, you said our actions define who we are. But our actions also keep changing from time to time.
A person may be sleeping in this session and be very active in the next. So, can it be said that the definition of who we are keeps changing?

Acharya Prashant: Vineet says, if mind is brain plus intelligence, which of these is in present moment, and he has used a word reaction.
Vineet, we will have to understand the difference between ‘reaction’ and ‘response’, right?
Ammonia and chlorine react with each other because they are configured to

Questioning pseudo-science and superstition is the first step toward genuine freedom. Beliefs such as *Vastu, Kundli,* and *Muhurat* should not be accepted merely because they have been followed traditionally. Fear and attachment to privileges often prevent people from questioning authority. A truth-seeker must be willing to challenge age, status, and authority. Human progress has come through curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, and reason—not through blind obedience.







Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column

Love would have helped you fly. And now you have captivated love within four walls. As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful. As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful. The point is not really marriage. The point is wisdom. https://dev-main8.vedant.life/en/articles/marriage-and-love-1_0ff5cad

Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.

Now, mind is movement, right? Why does the mind move at all? The mind wants to reach somewhere. Where does the mind want to reach? Is that place within the mind? The mind wants to reach somewhere. Every thought, every action, every motivation, every emotion rides on a desire, is




If you are someone who cannot take care of herself, how will you be sure that your presence, your company is not becoming an influence of sickness on the other person?
Be very, very alert about cohabitation. Just don’t start living with anybody. Be very, very conscious of your personal…

If you take yourself as primarily physical, then beauty too for you would be something just physical. You will look at the woman most capable of successfully reproducing. That’s the prakritik definition of beauty.
The first thing that comes to mind is flowers. What are flowers? Flowers are the reproductive…
“What do I do? Nobody helps me.”
“What do I do?…
Love is not a mental or physical need. Love is not for the faint-hearted. Love is not for those who fear the loss of relationships, reputation, possessions or life. Love is not for those who are afraid of family, society, or uncertainty. Love is not for those who seek sanction from tradition or culture.
Questioner: Greetings, Acharya Ji. My question is that wherever I look on social media platforms, whether it is YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter, when I read the comment sections under the content posted there, I repeatedly see an allegation being made against the Foundation and against you, that you too are…
I had to unlearn a lot of things, and I am grateful to all the sources—the books, the people and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I am grateful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn.
A lot of unlearning is needed. I often say you…
I had to unlearn a lot of things, and I am grateful to all the sources—the books, the people and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I am grateful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn.
A lot of unlearning is needed. I often say you…