Ayn Rand

Questioner: In The Fountainhead it is said, “I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom. To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

In the above lines, Ayn Rand has said that freedom is to not expect and depend on the desired outcome.…

Question: Acharya Ji, in breaking the law we think that we come out from our daily routines. Does our society allow us that?

Acharya Prashant Ji: How old are you?

Questioner: Twenty years.

(Acharya Ji is addressing a gathering of young students at one of the premiere educational institutions of…

Jesus stands for the Truth and Truth is omnipresent.

He is present here, and right now, in the hearts of those who love him.

Jesus is not a mere mortal. Jesus is the source of light; the root of all flowers and beauty. In one form, he disappears. In another,…

What is the root cause of unhappiness? Why strength is necessary for liberation? Why ego can not reflect on itself?

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren, and calves give milk three times a day, where mice are the boatmen, and tomcats row the boats, where frogs keep snakes as watchdogs,…

Anybody who believes in astrology cannot be rational. All you have is a set of beliefs—the belief that this thing will happen. There is no logic in it, only fear and insecurity. Science is based on verifiable and falsifiable experiments, whereas astrology is not subject to verification; hence, it is just a story. It's a story that is making big money for a lot of storytellers.

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.

How should one interpret the coming forth of Krishna when righteousness is on decline? Does this statement have any significance at an individual level, or is it said in the social context?

Also, in Christianity it is believed that Jesus will come again on the judgement day. Please help me…

Prarabdha refers to the sum total of (apparent)movements in time and space that have resulted in the (apparent) formation of the jiva – the human being, or any other being.Everything that the being appears to be is prarabdha. And prarabdha is all past.

So,– having 5 fingers is prarabdha…

When does one finish being a student? When the resistance to being a student is finished.

Who is the teacher? The teacher is the most obedient and voluntary of all students. The teacher is not a non-student; the teacher is the first student, the best student, the most voluntary student.…

The world is your playground. So don’t be so particular about moving only within your pre-existing circle. If your cause is worth it, show some courage and move out.

If you have a tender and precious sapling in your palm, would you plant it in a desert? No. You will…

Even when you are identified with being the winner or the loser, still there is something within you which can neither be a winner nor a loser. It is your fundamental nature. It is your fundamental nature that gets hidden when you are obsessed with winning or losing.

The fact…

“I will beat him!”

“I will destroy her!”

“Did you just insult me? Did you?”

Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!

“Did she? Did she not?”

Have some mercy upon yourself. Learn to ignore, please. Bypass the small issues. Learn to ignore the small for the big, would…

A woman is murdered—even that is just a two-inch thing in some newspaper. But if it is a sensational rape case, then the entire country joins in.

Are we really concerned about women? Had we been concerned about women, how is it that the common man of this country is…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”

“Good things I do, bad things happen to me”—this is astounding.

Playing the victim is a favorite pastime of…

There was this king of the demons; his name was Hiranyakashyupa. The king worked really hard. He kept austerities, he forced even God to come down and bless him. So, it would have required a very special effort. But then, what did he want from God? Nothing but the extension…

A strange situation is that a beautiful woman’s life is perhaps more complex than an average-looking woman’s life, because a beautiful looking woman has a lot of men eyeing upon her, and she can get whatever she wants. And what you will get for your beauty, that is the real…

When you are serious about victory, you do not strike at the enemy without being fully prepared. Those who just plunge themselves into battles without having checked their preparedness are the ones who don’t love victory too much. Because this battle is important, and because this battle must be won,…

Man has the capacity to choose, and man must take responsibility of how he is living his life, what he has turned the Earth into.

In fact, I feel impelled to say this: When I was in the process of quitting my corporate career and moving to teaching, I was…

The problem is, the usual feminism always proceeds keeping the man at the center. The woman is saying, “The man is alright, and I want to be like the man.” This is such a low standard to set. Whereas, true feminism would proceed keeping the person that the female is,…

You are so powerful actually that you are scared of yourself.

There are three ‘you’s in that statement. The first two refer to the small self or the ego. The third one refers to the best that you can be, the Great Self, the Truth—classically, the Ātman. And classically…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfilment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity. Teach…

Man wants progress, and progress means an ascension, an elevation. It is as if man wants to be elevated to some high sky. That’s what you say, right? “I am rising up, I am progressing.” What is the intention of this tendency to keep progressing? The intention is to progress…

Just watched this movie, Chichore. It is based on IIT Bombay. In the campus, there is one girl in a batch of forty boys. But the girl’s only contribution in the whole story is that she is extremely beautiful, and all the guys are after her. So, in the…

‘Save the girl child’ campaigns, many of these campaigns say, “If today you kill the girl child, how will you find a bride for your son tomorrow?” So, the girl has no independent worth of her own, right?

If we go by the government propaganda, even if she is to…

As a young woman, you must be open to going out, experiencing, seeing what the world is all about. Won’t you want to explore it—the rivers, the mountains, the people? Yes, you needed somebody’s hand to walk, but it doesn’t quite look nice now. Test your legs. And how will…

There is a kind of entrepreneurship that says, start the company, see which sectors are hot and booming, and when you reach a certain stage after n rounds of funding, sell it off and add a few more zeroes to your personal bank balance. That’s one kind of entrepreneurship. It…

Be the user of the car, not the doll in the car. Learn to be on the driver’s seat, not on the rear seat, or the seat next to the driver. Learn to hold the steering. Get out of your nest, and don’t be some damn particular about your sexuality…

Several people dislike their few glimpses of joy. They hold themselves accountable, they hold themselves guilty for having tasted even a few drops of joy, because joy is not a socially sanctioned kind of happiness. Joy is deep, disruptive, rebellious. It takes you far away from everything into yourself. It…

Keep fighting. Keep fighting till your victory, and keep fighting in your defeat. The second part is more important. Keep fighting even when you have been beaten down. Keep fighting even when yours looks like a hopeless cause, a lost battle. Don’t just start wallowing in self-pity and self-abuse. “Oh!…

Cooking, cooking, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, washing, washing, washing—is this what you are born for? Three kids are there, somebody needs footwear, somebody needs underwear—that is all there is to your life? Footwear for the younger one, underwear for the elder one, thermal wear for the husband—is this what you…

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.…

Luck means that you are getting something unexpected and big, right? That’s what you call as being lucky.

Keep working hard. Do not wait for luck. You can force luck. You can tell him, “I am working so hard that you will have to come to me.”

Force luck. Don’t…

You never take out a candlelight vigil on India Gate when a little girl is being badly conditioned by media, by society, by the school, by all the websites, by all the influences upon her. Have you ever seen a candlelight vigil against all the corrupting forces on the little…

You are actually so powerful that you are scared of yourself. The ego doesn’t want to give up. That’s what the scare is all about, because betterment of the ego is nothing but the reduction of the ego. Who wants to reduce?

We all want to accumulate. We all want…

A woman is not allowed to work after marriage—nobody cares. It doesn’t make headlines at all.

A woman has unsafe work environment—doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make headlines.

A woman dies during childbirth—who bothers?

Public spaces are not women-friendly—who bothers?

Women themselves are getting conditioned to look at themselves as mere…

Don’t give in to emotional traps. The man says, “Darling why do you have to work? You stay at home; I will work. You take care of the bed and the eggs and the babies and your mother-in-law; I will bring in the booty.”

As long as the woman keeps…

Remember, it is not situations that defeat you. Situations are just situations. A situation by definition is something outside of you, whereas defeat is something inside of you.

Situations can at worst be adverse, correct? And a situation is always external. The sense of defeat is an internal thing; that…

There is this new bunch of spiritual hoodlums who come up and say, “Be yourself. Accept yourself as you are.” And who are you? Somebody fundamentally dangerous to yourself. We said the ego is its own bleeding wound, and you are being told, “Be yourself, remain the wound. Remain the…

जो आदमी साहस के साथ अपने लिए एक सही लक्ष्य, सही काम, सही अभियान खोज लेता है, वो आदमी फिर बहुत मुश्किल से रुकता है। रुकेगा भी तो, पल-दो-पल को रुकेगा, हफ्ते-दो-हफ्ते को रुकेगा, महीने-दो-महीने को रुकेगा। वो कमर कस कर फिर आगे बढ़ जाएगा। हो सकता है वो आगे…

Ask yourself this one question: The way I am living, is it reducing my inner darkness? This question, only this question, determines whether you are living rightly.

It doesn’t matter how well fed you are, how well clothed you are, how well monied you are, how reputed, how respectable you…

The ego is nothing but the meanings and significances you attach to the world. You attach all that to the world because of a flawed notion of yourself. You look at stuff, and that stuff starts having value or meaning principally because you think you lack that value or meaning…

The ego does not live for the Truth; it lives for its own survival. And to live for one’s survival makes any sense only in the presence of challenges to survival. If there are no challenges to survival, whose survival are you protecting and living for?

Therefore, if you are…

One thing I have always advised those who are on the verge of choosing a career, or even those who are deep into their careers: Let there be no dissonance between who you are and what you do.

Your work is who you are. Do not say that you work…

Ignorance starts from the body itself.Even in a well-educated and spiritually liberated woman, the desire for a kid would probably be relatively larger compared to that in a man.What we want to talk of is whether the compulsive desire to keep the kid and the family at the center of…

Unfortunately, this is the way most people look at the future: not with an intent to become better or improve, but with the intent to remain exactly as they are. That’s why future is such a big issue.

Then there is the other kind of mind. It says, “Obviously, I…

The woman is the more oppressed of the two. Once the revolution begins, obviously man too will be liberated. But just as woman gives birth to the man, woman will also need to give birth to the freedom of man. Man will not be able to give birth to his…