u/Akanksha002400

I was recently reading Eckhart Tolle's work and I couldn't help but see it overlap with the modern non-dualistic framework. Despite different vocabulary and tones, one meditative, the other academic, they point to the same core observations:

•The self as the problem, not the victim

Tolle: The internal voice narrating, judging, and comparing isn't neutral; it's a compulsive mechanism that mistakes itself for your identity. He refers to its accumulated emotional residue as the pain-body.

The Non-Dual Framework: Defines the ego simply as a felt sense of identity ("I am this/that") with no intrinsic substance, an inherited error rather than a malicious force.

The Overlap: Both note that the observer or meditator is often just this same false self in disguise, meaning you cannot use thought to think your way past thought.

•Presence vs. "Seeing"

Tolle: Advocates for "presence", stepping out of mental narratives to enter direct, unanalyzed contact with the present moment.

The Non-Dual Framework: Distinguishes between thinking (interpreting and justifying) and "seeing" (direct, unfiltered contact with reality, including monitoring one's own reactions).

The Overlap: Both agree that continuous analysis of patterns changes nothing; only direct presence or observation interrupts the loop.

•The requirement for active engagement

Tolle: Describes surrender and "acceptance" as active, demanding stances rather than passive states.

The Non-Dual Framework: Rejects the shortcut that awareness alone brings change, arguing that it requires a repeated, active choice to prioritize truth over comfort.

The Overlap: Both maintain that observation without follow-through fails to dissolve behavioral patterns.

•The absence of a final destination

Tolle: Views awakening as an ongoing, moment-to-moment process rather than a permanent status upgrade.

The Non-Dual Framework: Suggests that permanent final liberation is logically impossible while living in a body, because any "I" claiming to arrive is the ego itself.

The Overlap: Both frame growth as a continuous direction rather than a fixed finish line, reframing setbacks as part of the process.

•Where They Diverge

Tolle: Uses positive, poetic terms (stillness, Being, spaciousness) to describe what lies beyond the quieted ego.

The Non-Dual Framework: Refuses to describe what remains, arguing that descriptions provide new concepts for the ego to grasp as achievements, focusing instead on identifying what is false.

It feels like two different angles, one accessible, one systematized, triangulating on the same underlying phenomenon. Have others noticed this convergence? Do share your insights from the post!

Bodh Pratyusha Session - 14th August 2025 [Syllabus of the exam (Level Beginner) conducted on 7th August 2026 ]

Tao Te Ching - Chapter 12

Colours blind the eye.

Sounds deafen the ear.

Flavours numb the tongue.

Thoughts cloud the mind.

Desires wither the mind .

The wise one observes the world,

being established in the clarity within.

He allows all things to come and go,

His mind is open as the sky.

✦ ───────────────── ✦

Learnings from the session:

•Experience’s true purpose: not savoring, but the uplift of the experiencer

Eyes are not merely for consuming colors; their ability is to know colors, to see them distinctly, and to extract their truth. Likewise, ears are not only for enjoying sounds; they exist to understand the nature, source, and meaning of sound. The inner faculty (antar-ātmā) is not meant to hoard subjects, sensations, and thoughts; its task is to test their truth and generate insight within the experiencer. The purpose of experience is not momentary pleasure or satisfaction; it serves to slightly melt, break, and loosen the chains of the experiencer.

An experience that leaves you exactly as you were, strengthening your old beliefs and urges, is not an instrument of liberation but another bar of the prison. Life is a continuous sequence of innumerable experiences; each moment contains countless micro-fragments of experience, and understanding them is the direction toward freeing oneself from bondage. In this way, liberation from time is equivalent to liberation from maya, that is, understanding the play of experiences and becoming free from them.

•Distinguishing futile, wasted, and useful experiences

A simple test: if an experience leaves you the same as before, it is a waste of time. If an experience confirms your false beliefs, prejudices, and ego, it is not merely futile but destructive, because it thrusts you into deeper blindness. Choosing people or groups who only affirm your opinions, where dissenting voices are absent, creates an echo chamber; there falsehoods and misunderstandings consolidate.

When we avoid central problems like job, money, relationships, or our real inner issues, we only waste time. The right experience is the one in which a person presents their belief honestly and opens it to challenge, dialogue, and opposing viewpoints. Experience must be used not to protect the self but to test, challenge, and discover the truth of one’s stories. Often the mind invents subtle rationalizations to distance itself from a person or situation that could break the ego; that is misuse of experience.

•Proper use of the senses and crow versus swan

When insight arises, the nature of enjoyment changes, enjoyment becomes wisdom-like, because blind attachment is absent. Acharya Ji’s crow-and-swan analogy shows that human nature is essentially swan-like, but through social conditioning and practice it becomes crow-like. Family, society, education, media, and customary religion repeatedly fix a person into a false identity. Transforming from a crow back to a swan is difficult because once truth is seen, old bonds, habits, and social roles come under question.

Therefore life’s aim should be to choose experiences that expose the inner crow and provoke the question: am I truly what I believe myself to be? Weekends, travel, or entertainment should not become means of stupor or intoxication; choose activities that open the eyes, shock the complacency, and return you lighter and clearer. Openness to subjects should be for testing and discerning, not for consumption; experiments without discrimination are not spiritual freedom but folly.

•Leaving narrow circles and using community well

Unwarranted prohibitions, social narrowness, and the habit of living only among similar people cut one off from new experiences, knowledge, and debates. Travel, exposure to nontraditional life-forms, and dialogue with different societies can be uncomfortable to the ego, but they are necessary for spiritual and biological expansion. Using marriage, community, or social identity merely to find one’s reflection keeps a person away from opposing perspectives and new life-connections.

Preserving the ego is adharma; remaining trapped in the familiar nest is not dharma.

The community’s true purpose should be to write and share one’s understanding after the session, relate it to life, and learn from others’ experiences. Acharya Ji explicitly said participants should not copy his words; they must write what they understood and how it connects to their life. Arguments made to keep distance from the community should themselves be examined; if a center is wrong, the reasoning that comes from leaving it is not automatically correct.

•Open sky, svadharma, and freedom from subjects

The arising of subjects is natural; but letting them lodge and build a home in the mind is ego-born. Freedom from a subject is not by suppressing it or fleeing from it, but by facing it openly, asking, who are you, what can you give, and how will you remove my incompleteness? When a subject is understood, attachment loosens by itself; knowing is the beginning of letting go. The wise mind remains like the open sky: subjects come, are examined, and go. The conventional person shuts both doors, preventing new experiences from entering and not allowing old beliefs to leave, and thus the mind does not stay alive but becomes stagnant and decays.

As the saying goes, “like a wandering ascetic, let life flow”; what stagnates begins to rot. True-sadhus are not identified by settled, entrenched beliefs but by their openness to new circumstances, new questions, and new subjects. Svadharma means knowing oneself; following others’ heard teachings (par-dharma) is living by secondhand stories, and par-dharma is terrifying because it lacks one’s own testing and insight. Testing with intelligence and discretion is necessary; taking risks without judgment is not wisdom but foolishness.

•The final test of a good experience: the breaking of ego

One should not judge an experience as “good” merely because it brought pleasure, peace, convenience, or entertainment. A good experience is one that reveals something new, loosens old likes and dislikes, removes illusions, and transforms the person from within. Before calling food, marriage, travel, a person, music, film, or place “very good,” examine whether it gave insight or simply satisfied an old craving. A person who only sweetens your beliefs and does not challenge you can be poisonous for the ego.

A true relationship is one in which the other asks questions, shows a mirror, takes the risk of telling truth, and strikes at inner stagnation. Colors can blind the eyes, sounds can deafen the ears, and ideas can confuse the mind, if they are used only to reinforce the ego. If after an experience a person returns more entrenched than before, that experience is not good but a loss of life and time.

My key takeaway from the session is that an experience should not be judged as good just because it brings peace or pleasure. A truly good experience is one that reveals illusions, shatters inner stagnation, and helps dismantle the ego. Do share your insights from the session.

Deserved a full screen view, that’s why it’s horizontal

Source: From the author’s ‘Letter to his Father’
Meaning: Total freedom brings no map to follow at all.

We usually look at beauty as something pleasing to the senses, a striking painting, or an aesthetic quality we cling to. But if we examine it closely through the lens of Acharya Prashant's teachings, true beauty has nothing to do with objects or sensory attraction. As he puts it: "Beauty is when the ego is absent."

Normally, when we look at the world, the ego is front and center, constantly measuring everything through the lens of desire, utility, and self-concern. This psychological noise creates a barrier between us and reality. Real beauty is not an addition of some charming quality; it is the cessation of this very ego. When the restless self-referential mind drops its filters and ulterior motives, the division between the observer and the observed vanishes. What remains in that utter simplicity and innocence is not an imaginative projection, but Truth itself which is nothing but true beauty as it is said "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" .

Here’s the recipe: https://www.asweetalternative.com/blog/vegan-mint-chocolates

From misty hills and coffee plantations to ancient caves and scenic peaks, Wayanad is the kind of place that makes you slow down and take it all in. If you love nature, this corner of Kerala deserves a spot on your travel list.

🎥 Credit: wild_lenz

For a long time i was just collecting theories and knowledge, but a knowledge without action is just another illusion of mind.

Every now and then for some reason i still get into the rabit hole of knowledge seeking, then i have to consciously put a break and just practice.

Found this post on IG, this acted as a break for me today, hope this helps someone else as well.

Its a long journey keep practicing 🌻

Photo by RDNE Stock project via Pexels. Used under the Pexels License.

Can Rumi’s idea of losing the self coexist with modern ideas of individuality?

In Book VI of Rumi’s Masnavi, Reynold A. Nicholson translates the passage:

“You have suffered much agony, but you are (still) in the veil,
because dying (to self) was the fundamental principle,
and you have not fulfilled it.”

Coming to the question: Can Rumi’s idea of losing the self coexist with modern ideas about individuality?

We often imagine how our lives would change if the self disappeared, if we became completely liberated or enlightened. Then, from within that same imagination, we ask whether individuality would still exist after the self is gone.

My answer is that the question is pointless.

It's like you are walking through a dark room; you are stumbling, slipping, and falling. And while the light is still out, you are wondering how you would walk if the light were turned on. As long as the room remains dark, you cannot truly know.

You will only know how you walk in the light once the light is on. You already know how to walk. All you need is a light to be on.

So just focus on dissolving the self and stop wasting time thinking about what a selfless you would look like.

One of most beautiful photo I captured during Annapurna Base Camp Trek in Nepal.

Recipe:

Makes 12:
* 2 ½ cups gluten free all-purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp baking powder
* ½ tsp salt
* 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
* 1 + 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
* ½ cup organic sugar
* 2 Tbsp ground flax
* 6 Tbsp filtered water
* 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
* 1 cup vegan semisweet chocolate chips
* 12 vegan + gluten free graham cracker squares
* 12 vegan free chocolate squares
* 12 vegan marshmallows

1. In a mixing bowl, add flour, baking soda and powder, and salt. Whisk together then set aside.

2. In a separate mixing bowl, add oil and both sugars. Whisk together.

3. In a small bowl, add ground flax and water. Mix to combine and let sit 1-2 minutes.

4. Add to whisked oil and sugar along with vanilla extract. Combine.

5. Add flour mixture and, using a silicone spatula, mix to combine until a cookie dough forms.

6. Add chocolate chips then fold in to incorporate. Cover and chill for 10 minutes.

7. Preheat oven to 350F.

8. Parchment line two baking trays. Place six graham cracker squares on each tray. Place chocolate then marshmallow on top of crackers.

9. Remove dough and, working one at a time, scoop dough with an ice cream scoop and place on top of marshmallow.

10. Press dough around until it covers everything then slightly flatten. Repeat process until all are done.

11. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and let cool until warm then serve.

Hey everyone! Here’s an interesting question featured in the Gita exam on the Acharya Prashant App. It blends environmental science with logical reasoning.

Take a close look at the question and options in the image above, and drop your answer in the comments.