Freedom is success for the one in bondage || IIM Ahmedabad (2020)

Questioner (Q): Recently you had a talk at IIT Delhi, and now you are here at IIM Ahmedabad, and both of these universities are your alma mater. Today, your batchmates would be at various corporate positions, but you have taken an unconventional path of becoming a spiritual teacher. So, how do you look at your batchmates, and whom would you see as the most successful? More importantly, how would you define and evaluate success?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, success, obviously, is subjective; it depends on who you are. Do we see that? When you say that one has to succeed, the underlying assumption is that one is currently not successful. When you say that you want to succeed, what you are saying is: you want to reach somewhere, and the point where you want to reach is not the point you are currently at.

And that is a fair assumption, because all of us are indeed restless; we are restless and that proves that we are not where we must be. We are all desirous; we want to become something else or the other. This desire to become is in itself a strong indicator that our current state, our current configuration is not ideal, not final; something needs to change, something needs to improve within.

So, we are all restless but we are all restless in our personal and unique ways. At a general level, we could sum up the situation of every sentient being in one word: consciousness is restlessness. If you are conscious, you are restless. And if you are not restless, then you don’t need to succeed; you are already successful. Your restlessness is your demand for success.

But our restlessness comes to us in very, very personal and very unique ways. Therefore, success has to be different for each one of us. It is like saying that each one of us is in bondage, but you might be held by the right arm, and he might be held by the left arm; he might be pinned to a wall, and he might be held to the floor in some other way.