
Questioner: Should one start early to achieve or excel in life?
Acharya Prashant: You don’t need to agree with me. You only need to understand what is being said. Agreement and disagreement come out from your conditioning, I am not looking for that. I am asking for your intelligence, so…


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.


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…

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 say that you go to your workplace for a purpose, the purpose is never work, or is it? The purpose is the salary cheque. In fact, if work could be bypassed and you could straight away reach the salary cheque, then who would want to work? Now, why…

Giving birth is not for kids. Law just says that there is a legal age—eighteen, twenty-one and such things. First of all, giving birth requires that there has to be mental maturity. Unfortunately, 99% of the world’s population is not at all mentally mature enough to be parents. The funny…

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…


There is really no pleasure deeper than not getting disturbed when the entire world is conspiring to disturb you. This deepest pleasure is called joy.
Everybody, the entire game of situations, seems hell-bent on freaking you out, on just destroying your peace, and you are looking at it with indifference;…

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.
When you…

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…

If the mind is a diseased organ, then why do you trust it so much? If it is a diseased organ, then whatever you see through it, why can’t you just reject it? Why do you trust this unfaithful servant so much? If I have a machine that continuously gives…

“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…

I’ll tell you what the rape of the mind is. When the mind has nonsensical purposes, that is rape of the mind. When things like stuff that happened in the childhood or teenage attracts you and dominates you, then the mind is being raped. Forgive me the clichéd expression, but…

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.”
“What do I do? I am just twenty years old.”
“What do I do? Nobody helps me.”
“What do I do?…

Money is nothing on its own. Money cannot bring you peace. But established in peace, money and material and the world can be perfectly dealt with. Now you neither need to renounce money nor do you get attached to money, because your real need is peace not money. Now you…

Even if you want a deeper pleasure, you will have to go deeper into the mind, and going deeper into the mind is what the spiritual process is all about.
If the fellow is a lover of the good things of life, let’s say a complete hedonist, then encourage him…

If a bad thought is persevering in your mind, continuing in your mind, then it means that you are just calling it a bad thought. Deeply you are supporting it; deeply you think that it is a good thought. We call them bad. We actually do not consider them bad.…

“He who, setting aside the scriptures, acts under the impulse of his own desire, he attains not to perfection nor happiness nor the gold supreme.”
Who is an āsura? An āsura is one who keeps the scriptures aside, detests them, ignores them, even derides them, and says, “What I…

Everything that you are doing every day, every hour is an invitation to cancer. But don’t worry—you will have savings! In your last six months, you will duly transfer all your savings to the hospital, the fruit of your hard work all your life, and you will feel vindicated. You…

Man’s hunger is not so much in the stomach; it resides in his mind. And no fruit is enough when it comes to the mind.
So, man has been destroying everything he can touch, and climate change is the most recent, the most devastating, and probably the most final symptom…

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.…

People talk of being expressive as a great virtue, right? They say, “But I want to express myself!” What do you have to express? The gutter says, “I want to express myself”—so that we die of stink?
But the gutters of the world are the ones most eager to express…

I have nothing against marriage. I have a lot to do with the mind of man. The mind that rushes towards security, the mind that wants to possess and hold captive another living being, I want to talk of that mind.
Marriage will decide the kind of work that you…

Who told you that rape is merely a sexual activity? Anything that you look at just as a body, as a material to be consumed, is rape. A mind that cannot love will only rape. And we all rape. Look at the way people spread dirt around. Is that not…

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…

Revenge is a mistake built upon another mistake. The first mistake was, “He took it from me—my peace, my pride, my respectability.” That was the first mistake to think that way. And the second mistake is, “I can get peace back by snatching it away from him.”
Revenge is: thinking…

You have all the right to make a choice. But if you make a choice and don’t do justice to it, then that is very bad. In fact, correction of choices happens only when you have first of all fully tried out what you are doing. Unless you dedicate yourself…

If you are occupied in something really worthwhile, would you really care for things like pain? Even an ordinary sportsperson would tell you that when you are pursuing something even as normal as victory in a match, pain ceases to be a big botheration. Unless it becomes crippling; then you…

The mind is not evil; it is just stupid. You cannot put somebody to the sword just for stupidity. And how will you kill the mind? Does the mind stand independent of you? Does it?
The mind is your shadow. If you change, the mind will change. And that is…

Distinctions are a burden on the mind. If A is different from B, then one has to remember both A and B.
It is wonderful when A to Z are all one; then you can just remember A and forget everything else.
And if A to Z all are nothing,…

What is it that blocks creativity? A cluttered mind, an obsessed mind, a worried mind, a mind too particular about results. Just as creativity is uncertain, similarly are the results of creativity. And if you are someone who bothers too much about results, then you cannot be creative.
You would…

Every time you walk past a meat shop or come across a menu containing a lot of flesh, let that harden your resolve. No point throwing that menu on the waiter’s face. The waiter is a puny fellow. He didn’t even write the menu; he has nothing to do with…

Whatever has come to the mind has come with a promise. What is the promise? The promise is: I will give you peace.
The mind feels inadequate. The mind feels incomplete. Whosoever promises it completion, the mind latches on to it. It could be a thought, it could be a…

Yes, we are animals. We are animals, and animals can get extremely violent if they discover their mates being stolen away.
There was one board I once read. It said, “How to be cautious of dogs?” It particularly warned against disturbing dogs on two or three occasions. One, when they…

In habit, there is no decision-making involved, right? You just do it. So, habit is not the problem. The problem is that we are habituated to the wrong things. Habits should be where there is really only one right decision possible. In all those matters be fully habituated.
In fact,…

Loneliness and aloneness are not so much about the other; they are about the relationship you have with yourself. If you have been living a life that your best self, that your internal honesty cannot approve of, then you will be very lonely. Your relationship with yourself would be fraught…

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…

Your mind keeps racing—you find that a problem? Next time your mind runs away from the office, you too run away. Don’t say, “Oh, this fickle mind, it can’t rest; it is not spiritual enough!” Great that it is not spiritual enough; great that it is not tolerating rubbish.
Why…

Were our bodies to reflect accurately and honestly the state of our minds, none of us would have been able to walk firmly even for a distance of ten meters. Our legs would have shown up as cut, wounded, bruised, fractured the way, exactly the way our mind is.
Unfortunately,…

The mind is a dislocated child. The mind is a wanderer looking for its home.
There are only two kinds of inputs that can come to this lost and wandering child. The first kind of input is the one that takes it back to its home. The second kind of…

If you are not feeling right, don’t push yourself into believing that everything is alright. Your nature is total security and total relaxation. Any iota of doubt proves that you are not centered. Entertain it. Don’t dismiss it. Your doubts are not without a purpose. The agitation of the mind…

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,…

Our relationship with the world is one of affixation, attachment, clinging, and at the root of that false relationship with the world lies a false conception of oneself. Because we perceive ourselves as limited, therefore we must cling to the world. Because the question ‘Who am I?’ has been answered…

Man is not really starving in the stomach. Man is starving in the mind. In fact, man is the only species that is overweight and obese and still thinking about food.
You need money for mental aggrandizement. You need money to feel secure internally. You don’t need money merely to…

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…