Why is my house my responsibility, but the street outside is someone else’s?

I clean what I call “mine” and ignore what I call “not mine.”

Perhaps the problem is not cleanliness.

Perhaps it is the ego that keeps drawing boundaries—this is me, this is mine; that is not me, not mine.

But if the same Earth, air and society sustain both, then where does “my responsibility” really end?

Bhagavad Gita Session (Hindi)-9th August 2026

Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 7, Verse 19

Verse:

बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते ।

वासुदेव: सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभ: ॥ 19 ॥

Poetic rendition:

हर इच्छा नई पुकार, दौड़े हम सौ-सौ बार

घात का ये कारोबार, ढूंढ़े नित नया शिकार

झुके नहीं रे अहंकार, भोर को रोके अंधकार

झूठ है तो दुख सर्वत्र, दुर्लभ सच का स्वीकार

Construe:

बहूनाम् = many; जन्मनाम् = births; अन्ते = after; ज्ञानवान् = the Wise One; माम् = Me; प्रपद्यते = is established in; वासुदेवः = Vasudeva is; सर्वम् = everything; इति = knowing that; सः = such a; महात्मा = Wise person (Mahatma); सुदुर्लभः (सु + दुर्लभः) = extremely rare

Translation:

After many births, the Wise One is established in Me, knowing that “Vasudeva alone is everything.” Such a Wise person (Mahatma) is extremely rare.

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Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 7, Verse 20

Verse:

कामैस्तैस्तैर्हृतज्ञाना: प्रपद्यन्तेऽन्यदेवता: ।

तं तं नियममास्थाय प्रकृत्या नियता: स्वया ॥ 20 ॥

Construe:

कामैः = by desires; तैः तैः = various; हृतज्ञानाः = carried away, they lose their wisdom; प्रपद्यन्ते = they turn to; अन्यदेवताः = other deities; तं तं = whatever; नियमम् = discipline; आस्थाय = adopting; प्रकृत्या = Prakriti; नियताः = governed (suits); स्वया = their

Translation:

Carried away by various desires, they lose their wisdom and turn to other deities - adopting whatever discipline suits their Prakriti.

✦ ───────────────── ✦

Learnings from the session:

The central question of the session was, how do nature's continuous change and the ego's objects give rise to the experience of birth-death and rebirth, and to what extent is this understanding spiritual, psychological, and existential?Also the key declaration was rebirth should not be understood as a separate soul transferring from one body to another, but rather as psychological and existential rebirth occurring due to nature's changes and the ego's changing objects of attachment.

•Nature's Unceasing Change and the Construction of Ego

Acharya Ji explained that both the external world and the internal elements of the body, deh (body), bhav (emotions), vichar (thoughts), kamnayein (desires), function as prakriti (nature) and remain unstable even for a moment. The ego first attaches itself to the body, then gradually constructs its identity by forming relationships with external objects such as clothes, watches, homes, land, country, wealth, and so on. Here, "vikar" does not mean flaw, but change; "nirvikar" is that which remains free from change. The ego is a dependent, conspiratorial illusion: it considers itself separate and independent from nature while in reality it is part of nature itself. When the object that the ego identifies as "I" changes, the ego experiences its own death; then the ego attaches to some new object and takes a new birth.

•Psychological and Existential Rebirth

Acharya Ji clarified that rebirth happens every moment even within the same body and the same name, because body, thoughts, emotions, and desires are constantly changing. Here, "one moment" was not limited to any fixed unit, change and the birth arising from it occur in infinite subtleties. Using the example of wealth, it was explained that a small portfolio change often goes unnoticed, but a massive financial crash causes a clear experience of identity breaking. Therefore, Acharya Ji explained two types of rebirth:

1.Psychological rebirth: The same person, but continuous birth-death occurring due to changes in objects, relationships, thoughts, and desires.

2.Existential/ontological rebirth: The coming-into-being and dissolution of objects, beings, leaves, grass, stars, and bodies in nature, i.e., cosmic transformation.

Acharya Ji rejected the idea of "soul rebirth" as an immutable, separate soul traveling between bodies. It was presented as a formula: psychological rebirth,yes; existential rebirth, yes; spiritual/soul rebirth, no.

•Nature, Selfhood, and Three Categories

Acharya Ji examined three levels, non-living, living being, and human. Using examples like pen, magnet, and iron, it was explained that non-living objects have localized, divided existence and fixed rules, but they do not possess a self. A living being has a body and a physical self connected to it, injury affects only the body, and the living being naturally acts to protect it. In humans, along with the physical self comes a psychological self; therefore, injury is not limited to the body, it also wounds the ego.

Every created object in nature is connected to its "selfhood" within its own rules and limits; according to the AP framework, selfhood should not be viewed as an individual soul. As complexity increases, the possibility of system-error increases, and within that arises the psychological ego. Nature made no mistake; the mistake is made by the ego that considers itself to be what it actually is not.

•Thirst, Desire, and the Continuous Rebirth of Suffering

Acharya Ji connected rebirth to desire and object-change. When a desire remains unfulfilled, something dies inside; then when a new object appears, a new desire arises, meaning the old thirst keeps attaching to new objects but never finds satisfaction. This incomplete search and continuous object-change is the root of life's suffering.

Connecting this to the flow of nature through verses, Acharya Ji said that every object comes and goes, the previous state cannot return in the same form. Thus, "Now if we part, we shall not meet again" does not mean a soul has left the universe; it means the next moment cannot give back the same relationship and identity as before. Humans do not have infinite opportunities, the present moment itself is the opportunity, because the next moment will not remain like the previous one.

•Doubt, Source-Verification, and Institutional Resources

Acharya Ji warned that rebirth or other philosophical claims should not be accepted without independent examination. Claims of regression therapy, ghosts, animal communicators, astrology, and rebirth should not be believed without evidence. Hiding doubt is unacceptable; questions should be asked openly, authority bias becomes an obstacle to examining truth. Referring to financial and physical resource data of institutions and large religious organizations,

Acharya Ji also mentioned that big and small institutions may possess huge property and land, but this wealth is not directly equivalent to knowledge and truth. Assessing the recorded content, time, and resource utilization within the institution, Acharya Ji raised questions about the form and purpose of education.

•Advaita, Jivatma, and Lok Dharma

According to Acharya Ji, in duality the relationship between nature and ego is understood differently, with the notion of separate existence and a separate soul. But in non-duality, division ends; the notion of a separate soul becomes meaningless. A child's birth can be called "my birth" only when a person can see beyond their objects, land, caste, age, wealth, and body, to perceive the shared aham-vritti (I-sense). This seeing is a sign toward liberation. Separation arises from those objects which make a person alien based on body, gender, intellect, wealth, and social identity.

Acharya Ji said that the traditional rebirth notion of a separate soul is not originally accepted in the Vedas and Upanishads; the transmigration of soul to another body is considered a Vedantic distortion. The formula of Advaita was given as "Live without dependence"; Lok Dharma makes a person dependent on external authority, rituals, and superstition, weakening them from within. The Mahavakyas, "Tat Tvam Asi," "Aham Brahmasmi", were given the same status they hold in the Upanishads and Shruti; only those statements from Smriti texts were considered acceptable that align with Shruti.

•Knowledge, Friction, and Intention

Acharya Ji clarified that merely considering old beliefs wrong is not enough; to leave them requires such teaching that directly challenges the ego. Referencing the story of Ramakrishna, it was said that even after theoretical understanding, sometimes harsh and real friction is necessary to break the final mental attachment. "Soap and water" are metaphors for knowledge and preparation; "the hammer" is the necessary friction that, at the right time, shatters the ego dramatically.

Within the AP framework, it was explained that an organization does not liberate anyone by itself, without direct contact and friction with Acharya Ji, merely staying in an institution does not guarantee self-knowledge. Intention (niyat) was connected not to the quantity of actions, but to the relationship with oneself, the ego wants either to survive or to dissolve; this is the decisive effort of intention.

•Krishna-tva and Self-Knowledge

Acharya Ji said that self-knowledge should have no predetermined goal; self-knowledge only reveals how the ego is moving from object to object. Even after self-knowledge, one's running toward objects may decrease or increase; the direction of action cannot be predetermined. "The wise attain me after many births" was explained in the language of psychological rebirth, meaning the ego's weakening through repeatedly broken desires and wounds. The wise one is who weakens the ego despite numerous wounds; the ignorant one keeps going toward inappropriate pleasure-directions again and again.

Emphasis was given to not misinterpret "Vasudevah Sarvam", this is not a call to make some new religious image supreme, but a call to see that objects will not give what the ego is seeking. The literal meaning of Krishna-tva is the fading of hope from objects and the dissolution of ego; it is connected not to the external quantity of action, but to the direction of ego's dissolution.

•Freedom, Nation, and Lok Dharma

Acharya Ji considered freedom the natural, default state of human and nation, while bondage was a later imposed condition. He urged self-reflection before Independence Day: one should think about how a country like India became enslaved, while its fundamental freedom was existentially available. Acharya Ji did not consider approximately one thousand years of various invasions as coincidence, but as a result of permanent cultural weakness, Lok Dharma. Lok Dharma established ritual, caste, and external authority in place of self-knowledge, weakening both human and nation from within.

Acharya Ji said that true religion gives strength to humans; from the perspective of "Nayam Atma Balahinena Labhyah" (This Self is not attained by the weak), the relationship between soul, human, and nation's strength should be seen. In the context of Gita's "Yudhyasva" (fight) and nishkam karma (selfless action), Acharya Ji explained that a person living a dharmic life does not flee from struggle; right action is more important than defeat.

•Lok Dharma, Science, and Social Structure

Acharya Ji gave the example of Europe's scientific experiments and development of navigation/astronomy, saying that Europe invested in instruments and inquiry while India remained entangled in muhurat (auspicious timing), astrology, and traditional rituals. Until the 1990s, India and China's progress was almost together, but in the past 25–30 years, concern was expressed about China's rapid progress and India's continuation of astrology apps and superstition.

Caste-based division kept a large portion of the population away from military and enterprise opportunities; this weakened meritocracy and national strength. Re-emphasizing the distinction between Shruti and Smriti, it was said that only those statements from Smriti texts should be valid that align with the Upanishads. Neglect of universities, research grants, and scientific education was connected to technological backwardness.

Commenting on the tradition of keeping women out of the workforce, Acharya Ji explained that India's low female labour-force participation has also affected national capacity.

•New Slavery and Self-Education

Acharya Ji said that for modern bondage, physical occupation is not necessary, a person can voluntarily take a visa and go to other countries to perform cheap labor, thus subordinating themselves to foreign systems. Inequality between Global North and Global South, trade treaties, and outsourced production continue wealth drain. As an example, when outsourced emissions are included, Europe's pollution footprint appears to increase by 20–30%. High-level research and value-creation are concentrated in the Global North, while low-end work is given to the Global South. Military and technological dependency, such as aircraft engines from external sources, are generous examples.

Lok Dharma, imitation of tradition, and risk-aversion become obstacles to research, creativity, and innovation. Acharya Ji emphasized that mass-based self-education and individual self-awakening are essential conditions for national awakening; freedom means not only liberation from foreign power, but also liberation from inner slavery.

•Fact vs. Belief

Acharya Ji argued that in both life and nation, it is necessary to hold fact, science, and self-knowledge higher than imagination, tradition, and popular acceptance. Examples like celebrating Independence Day in a temple based on lunar date were taken as cases where belief replaced fact. Therefore, at both personal and social levels, fact-based thinking and self-awareness should be given priority.

This session reminded us about the wholeness of prakriti and the continuous rebirth of the same old "vritti" in different forms and how the ego meddles in between by creating a separation being a part of the nature itself.

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!

Your fears don't disappear by waiting.

They disappear by being challenged.🔥

📖 Read On Woman and take the first step:

https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books/on-women?cmId=m00147-ow

I recently watched a video of a senior public official behaving aggressively with a citizen. It made me wonder: if someone studies ethics, law, the Constitution, and undergoes years of training, yet still fails to exercise self-restraint, what exactly has education achieved?

Is our education system producing degrees, or developing human beings?

We spend years collecting information, opinions, and identities, believing that knowledge alone will transform us. But the real question is: has anything within us actually changed?

This talk reminds us that truth is not something to be memorized or borrowed from books, teachers, or traditions. It has to be discovered through honest self-observation. As long as we remain trapped in our fears, desires, and conditioning, even the greatest philosophy becomes another decoration for the ego.

Real spirituality begins where imitation ends. It asks us to question not only society, but also the beliefs we are most attached to. The purpose of wisdom is not to make us feel intellectually superior it is to make us inwardly free.

A meaningful life is not built by accumulating answers, but by having the courage to face uncomfortable questions. Transformation happens when knowledge stops living in the mind and starts shaping the way we see, act, and relate to the world.

Here's a thought experiment Acharya Prashant uses while unpacking this line, and it's uncomfortable in the best way: picture society as a mad house. Not metaphorically insane actually, structurally mad, in that it's man-made, collectively agreed upon, and enforces its own version of "normal" as mandatory. If you don't go along with the madness, you pay a price for your sanity.

Most "rebellion" never leaves the mad house

Here's the twist: the people inside a mad house do rebel. They get agitated, they refuse to comply, they push back against whoever's in charge that day. Told to line up, they refuse to line up. It looks like defiance. It feels like freedom. But notice what's actually happening — they're still fully inside the mad house, still playing by its terms, just taking the opposite position within the same game. Refusing the queue doesn't get you out of the building. It just makes you the mad house's loudest inmate.

That's the trap: most of what we call rebellion the reflexive contrarianism, the reactive anger, the "I'll do the opposite of what I'm told" energy is not actually outside the system it's protesting. It's dependent on that system for its very identity. Take away the rule, and the "rebel" has nothing left to push against.

So what would real rebellion look like?

This is where Camus's line does its work: the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so completely free yourself that your very existence not your protest, not your slogan, just the fact of how you live is already the rebellion. You're not fighting the mad house's rules anymore. You've simply stopped needing its permission, its approval, or even its opposition to know who you are. That's a different order of freedom than "I refuse to comply." It's "I am no longer available to be defined by this at all."

The one person in the mad house who isn't rebelling

Here's the part of the talk that actually lands the hardest. Picture one person in that mad house who, despite all the pressure and all the noise, simply isn't mad. He's not fighting anyone. He's not forming a cult, not tearing his clothes, not queueing or refusing to queue. He's just sitting quietly in a corner, unbothered.

Ask yourself: who's the real rebel in that room? It's him precisely because he isn't rebelling. He has nothing left to rebel against, because his sanity itself already is the rebellion. The moment he joins the shouting match, even to prove he's different from the others, he's just another inmate.

Why complaining while staying put is hypocrisy, not rebellion

There's a sharp line in the talk about this: people who live somewhere foul and just keep complaining about the foulness aren't actually rebelling they're being hypocritical. You can't simultaneously depend on staying inside a place and posture as its opponent. If the mess genuinely bothered you, you'd stop being party to it. Real rebellion isn't protesting the foulness from inside it forever. It's simply refusing to be foul yourself, even while physically still standing in the middle of it. You can be inside the mad house without the mad house being inside you.

Rebel against the game, not the players

This reframes what most of us actually do when we think we're rebelling: we're not against the game at all we're against losing it. We want to beat the players, outshine them, prove them wrong. But if we were winning, we'd have no complaints. That's not rebellion against the system; that's just wanting a better seat inside it. Real rebellion means becoming indifferent to whether you win or lose the game at all not fighting the players, but no longer being invested in the game itself.

Why real rebellion looks almost like conformity

This is the most counterintuitive turn: real rebellion isn't loud, isn't about standing out, isn't about being ahead of or different from anyone else. It doesn't perform. From the outside it can look like quiet, ordinary conformity because it's no longer trying to prove anything to the crowd. It's closer to an absence than an action: not becoming someone new, just no longer being what you were.

Rebellion as a free fall

The talk ends with an image worth sitting with: rebellion is compared to a free fall. The moment you grab onto anything for security an identity, a role, an ideology, even "being a rebel" as your new identity you've caught a branch mid-fall. You've stopped falling freely. Real freedom doesn't give you anything to hold onto, including itself.

Worth sitting with

Where in your life is your "rebellion" actually just the flip side of compliance — still needing the very system you think you're resisting, still playing to win the same game?

As Acharya Prashant puts it: "rebellion is a free fall." The moment you grab something to hold onto an identity, a role, even "being a rebel" you've caught a branch mid-fall and stopped falling freely.

(This reflection is based on a talk by Acharya Prashant on Camus — if this resonates, the full talk is worth hearing directly:

https://youtu.be/jL3Ue42hpq8

Every time someone announces a pregnancy, the room fills with congratulations. Nobody stops to ask the only question that actually matters: does the planet have room for one more?

We are already past eight billion. Projections put us near eleven billion by mid-century. And yet the loudest voices in tech and politics — Elon Musk among them — keep warning us about population decline, as if shrinking numbers were the crisis and not the one thing that might save us. Ask yourself who benefits from a growing population. Not the planet. Not the poor. It's whoever needs more consumers to sell to, more workers to exploit, more taxpayers to fund the machine. Capital needs bodies. The Earth doesn't.

The real math nobody wants to do~

Climate catastrophe and biodiversity collapse aren't separate crises with separate causes — they're the same equation: population × per-capita consumption. Give a country India's population and America's consumption habits, and you don't get progress, you get civilizational suicide. We're not there yet globally, but we're accelerating toward it, and pretending the problem is only about emissions or only about lifestyle while ignoring sheer numbers is intellectual cowardice.

Population and women's liberation are the same fight~

Here's the part that gets skipped in most population debates: birth rates are not a technical problem to be solved with better contraceptive access. They're a mirror of how free women actually are. Wherever women are educated, have real choices about their bodies and their time, and aren't reduced to their reproductive function — population growth slows on its own. Every society with runaway population growth is, without exception, a society failing its women. So when you hear people frame population decline as a tragedy, understand what they're really mourning: fewer women trapped in the role of baby-producing machinery.

Declining population isn't a threat — it's a correction~

We've been sold the idea that a shrinking population spells economic doom. But maintaining today's numbers isn't some natural right — it's a choice we don't need to keep making. The future doesn't belong to whoever has the most people. It belongs to whoever has the most awareness. One person who is genuinely awake outweighs a hundred who are sleepwalking through consumption. So maybe the applause shouldn't go to the family with the newest baby. Maybe it should go to the person choosing books over baby showers.

The uncomfortable bottom line~

Bringing a child into the world is not a purely private decision — it's the addition of one more consumer, one more carbon footprint, one more claim on resources that are already stretched past their limit. Somewhere along the way we decided procreation was the default meaning of a life, especially a woman's life. It isn't. Consciousness is. Liberation is. And no, this isn't anti-life — it's the opposite. It's asking us to value the quality of consciousness on this planet over the sheer quantity of bodies on it.

We didn't get into this crisis by having too few humans. We won't get out of it by having more.

(Views inspired by Acharya Prashant's writings on population, consumption, and climate — worth reading in full if this resonates or infuriates you.)