u/vini-within

On July 3, a special dialogue was held between Acharya Ji and Mimi Bekhechi, President of the world's largest animal rights organisation, the PETA Foundation. The discussion, held at PETA's London office, was attended in-person by a large audience and it explored the deep relationship between animal rights, climate change, and human consciousness.

The event formed an important part of Acharya Ji's historic UK tour, through which he is taking the wisdom of Indian philosophy and Vedanta to globally renowned platforms, including the Cambridge Union, the University of Oxford, the House of Lords in the UK Parliament, the London School of Economics, and London Climate Action Week.

During the dialogue, Acharya Ji said that compassion is not something that needs to be taught; it is the natural state of a human being. What is required is not the teaching of compassion, but the recognition and removal of violence. He explained that the root cause of violence against animals is the human ego, social conditioning, and humanity's own inner insecurity.

He added that unless we understand our own ego and inner violence, neither animal exploitation nor the environmental crisis will come to an end, nor will genuine compassion emerge in society. Acharya Ji further emphasised that the courage to reject violence- even when it is endorsed by history, tradition, and society- is the true essence of spirituality.

🎥 The full video of this dialogue will be shared with you soon.

📍 Uttarakhand

In a recent video, a reporter was chasing a top official from a social media company, trying to ask one uncomfortable question:

Why is the platform allowing ads related to child sexual abuse?

The executive avoided the question.

Companies absolutely deserve to be held accountable. No one should profit from something so harmful.

But rather an important question to ask:

Why is there a market for such content in the first place?

Every market exists because there is demand. If such content is being promoted, it is because there are consumers. So the real question is not just, "Why is the company doing this?" It is also, "What is there within us that wants to consume such things?"

Acharya Ji often says that unless we understand ourselves (the ego) and the emptiness that keeps making us seek fulfillment outside ourselves, this demand will continue, and someone will always be ready to supply it.

The same applies to the executive. He may be chasing profits, promotions, or shareholder value. But underneath it all is the same ego, always seeking more success, more recognition, and more power.

Yes, these platforms must be questioned. But if we stop there, we are only treating the symptoms.

Real change begins when we question ourselves. Change the consumer, and the market changes. As Acharya Ji often reminds us, the ego has to be understood. Unless we address that, we will keep fighting the symptoms while the root cause remains untouched.

"Behind each desire you will find only one desire: the desire to be free." – Acharya Prashant

Acharya Prashant cuts through the usual tech optimism and tech panic to ask something far more uncomfortable. He hands us a mirror and asks us to look closely. We have built machines that can think faster than us, navigate better than us, and even decide for us. Yet inside, we are still the same creatures who, only fifty thousand years ago, were eating leaves and chasing small animals with crude tools. That raw, impulsive mind now holds intercontinental missiles and artificial intelligence. We have outsourced our memory to search engines, our direction to GPS, and now our very thinking to algorithms. We have not become wiser or more grounded. We have simply become more powerful. And that power, without inner maturity, is turning against us. We see it in the climate collapsing, in species vanishing, in oceans poisoning. We see it in our own shrinking attention spans and our inability to sit still or think deeply. We are heirs to a fortune we never earned, surrounded by comforts that emperors once envied, yet inwardly we are shrinking. The external dazzle blinds us to the internal emptiness. And that is the great deception of our age.

So what is the way out? Acharya Prashant does not ask us to throw away our phones or reject progress. That would be foolish and impractical. What he asks is far harder. He asks us to grow up on the inside, to match our outer power with inner clarity. We must reclaim our capacity to choose, to discern, to pause. That ability, which he calls Vivek, cannot be downloaded or outsourced. No machine can love for us, understand for us, or live life on our behalf. If we stop exercising our own judgment, we become like stones, moved by whatever force pushes us next. Technology reflects who we are. If we are confused, biased, or restless, our machines will amplify that. If we are clear and conscious, technology becomes a loyal servant. The choice has always been ours. We can either hand over our freedom and become passive consumers of our own creations, or we can step up, do the inner work, and deserve the inheritance we have received. Without that elevation, we are no different from the stone. With it, technology becomes not our master, but our means of genuine liberation.

What do you think? Are we truly growing on the inside or just getting better at hiding our emptiness behind brighter screens? Have you ever caught yourself outsourcing a simple decision to an algorithm without even realising it? And most importantly, if inner growth cannot be automated, what are we actually doing every day to deserve the power we now hold in our hands? Drop your thoughts below. ⬇️⬇️

(Article originally published in The Sunday
Guardian on 2 Nov 2025.)

A recent scientific study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology reveals something deeply unsettling: pet goldfish released into the wild are turning delicate aquatic ecosystems into lifeless deserts. These seemingly innocent creatures, once "freed" by humans with good intentions, balloon to the size of a football in natural waters, reproduce at explosive rates, and then spend decades ravaging their new homes. Here is the striking detail: through a process called bioturbation, they violently churn up sediment from the bottom while searching for food. Clear water turns murky, sunlight cannot penetrate, aquatic plants perish without photosynthesis, and the fish compound the damage by devouring pond snails, zooplankton, and the eggs of native species. The result is a cloudy, barren aquatic desert where life once thrived.

Now here is the question that demands attention. We are busy scientifically studying this goldfish's destruction, but does the ego ever turn its gaze inward? These fish unknowingly destroy a pond, yet the ego, fully aware, calculating, and relentless, is ravaging the entire ecosystem of Earth. We nurture the dangerous illusion that technology alone will save the environment, like someone trying to clean muddy water while ignoring the goldfish, our blind consumption drive, that constantly stirs the sediment. We analyze, we measure, we publish papers, but where is the genuine intention to examine the inner core of consumption that drives this madness? Unless that examination happens, the data is clear: we are accelerating toward a sixth mass extinction, and no gadget will save us.

👉***🏼A point to ponder: if we cannot even stop a tiny goldfish from destroying its pond, what makes us think we can outsmart our own ego before it finishes destroying the Earth? Share your reflections in the comments below***.

Source: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70259

Original Post: Vidya Avidya, AP Mirror

📍Uttarakhand, India

During Acharya Prashant's recent session at LSE in London, someone from the audience asked about animals having consciousness and plants not having it, and how that gives us the authority to consume plants.

His answer went somewhere unexpected.

It is like the wind blowing and the grass growing. You are not really responsible for that consumption. But if you hacked down a jungle, turned it into an orchard, ate the fruits, and called yourself non violent, vegetarian, vegan, religious, you are very violent.

If the body naturally eats a plant, that is not violence. But if the ego clears land, grows food of its choice, and consumes it, even fruit becomes violence because the ego is behind it.

Our bodies are constantly killing organisms through white blood cells and mucus. But that is not violence either. That is an existential imperative outside the ego. Only the ego is capable of violence.

This completely shifts how we understand ahimsa. ➡️ What part of this hit you the hardest?

In conversation with LSE Professor Jonathan Birch, Acharya Prashant offers a striking perspective. That extra 0.5 percent DNA we pride ourselves on? He says it is not evolution. It is a cancerous growth. And as long as "I matter" remains at the centre of our morality, we will keep finding ways to justify consuming the vulnerable. No law, no regulation can fix that.

He brings it down to something we all recognise. That instinct to put our own above everything else. "I'll slaughter the lamb for my kid because my kid matters." And why does my kid matter? Because I matter. Makes you think, doesn't it? How often do we do this without even realising?

Would honestly love to know what you all make of this.

Yesterday was Sant Kabir Das Jayanti. Made a small attempt to sing for Kabir Sahab on his day. 🙏
Just a heartfelt offering, with nothing but gratitude for the depth and wisdom in his words.

Today is Sant Kabir Jayanti. We remember a man who questioned every identity, every ritual, and every borrowed truth.

The strange irony is that Kabir Sahab, who spent his life dissolving labels, became a label himself.
Maybe the real way to honour Kabir Sahab is not by remembering his birth date, but by allowing his words to question the way we see ourselves.

➡️So my question for you today is: What part of Kabir Sahab’s message feels most relevant to the world we live in today?

A quiet corner of Hyde Park. ☕️

Acharya ji, pen in hand, lost in thought.. probably rewriting the world in his head.

No camera crew. No stage. Just the man, a notebook, and London's best greenery.

Makes you wonder..💭 what's he cooking this time?

A new book? A poem? A fresh perspective on something we’ve all been missing?

Let's play a game. Drop your best guess for the title of his next book in the comments.

Most creative ones win a virtual high five. 🙌

Kurukshetra never ended. It only shifted from the outer battlefield to the inner one.

Don’t you feel it? Nothing has really changed. The faces, names and situations keep changing, but the script remains the same. The same struggle between what is real and what is merely the ego’s desperate attempt to protect its image, desires and identity. The battlefield that was once outside is now within every thought, every choice, every moment of resistance.

The war is still being fought. The question is not who the enemy is outside, but which side are you strengthening within yourself. Are you standing with truth, or with the patterns that keep you trapped? The battlefield is still here. The question remains the same: where do you stand?

Original Post and Artwork By: Amit Kumar