Kapil Gupta

Advisor to elite performers and author of Atmamun. On truth, the mind, and why there are no prescriptions.

7 topics · 96 distinct points

Suffering & the mind

2021–2025

“Freedom is freedom from the mind. The only reason that any human being is not free is because of his mind. It is the mind which creates his tortures. It is the mind which creates his anxieties. It is the mind which creates his conflicts. It is the mind which creates his rules. All that he is confined by, all that he is imprisoned by, is the mind, not anything else.”

No prescriptions

2021–2025

“Prescriptions are how-tos, hacks, five-step plans, methods, techniques. These are the only currency that exists in the world today, from the domains of the most spiritual and so-called sacred to the domains of the outright materialistic and worldly. It's literally the only thing that exists. There is no such thing as a domain or an expert or a discipline or a teaching or a book or anything that exists anywhere on this planet that is not a prescription, whose philosophy is not founded entirely and solely and exclusively upon prescriptions. Everyone has been conditioned into — everyone has been brainwashed, and the brainwashing is so complete that even the so-called wise men fall for it.”

Desire & self-image

2021–2025

“Rarity moves me, you know? So everything that I do, that's what I mean by how we behave, what our actions are, what our behaviors are, are all a function of what we desire most. And if you desire money most, you will price things accordingly. And you will go out and try to convince, and you will create mass marketing campaigns, and you will — and none of which are wrong. And I really honestly mean that. None of that is wrong. I'm not going to bash someone for their desire, whatever their desire is. 'Since I want to make $5 billion, cuz I really get a kick out of having that much money, and I want to have the—' That's fine. Like, I have no — I'm making the statement that whatever you desire is how you will behave. Whatever you are most driven by and moved by will be what is reflected in what you do. It'll all be colored by that.”

Truth & the seeker

2021–2025

“But that's how all things are created. That's how all things are created. So if that's how all things are created, then the only place to go is truth. If rain is your goal, then the only place to go is to line up with the atmospheric pressure and the moisture and the whatever parameters that make the rain fall. So truth is the only thing that isn't spiritual, and there's no abstractness. Rain isn't spiritual, right? It isn't like holy rain, it's rain. Okay? So that's how all things work. And I realized that, so for me the only path became truth. If I'm on that side, if the more I can learn about how things happen all by themselves, why wouldn't I learn that? Because that's — the outcome's only going to be listening to that. The outcome isn't going to be listening to the people. So why would I listen to those people whom the outcome doesn't listen to? There is nothing spiritual and abstract and philosophical and woo woo about what I just said. This is second grade.”

Mastery & greatness

2021–2025

“One has to understand that when they come into my domain, what they're coming into — they're coming into a very biased place. And my bias is holistically and directly towards ultimateness, truth, world class, reality, the whole thing, the peak of Everest, the ultimate of the ultimate, the ultimate possibility of a human organism. That's where — that's everything I talk about is from there. So I don't have any space or any interest, or I make no room for commoners who seek common things, who seek a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And that's perfectly fine, but that's not what I'm interested in. I don't care about that. And so therefore, could you meditate and get something out of it? Yes, you can. If you meditate, you can get some peace for 20 minutes a day, sure. You commit any crimes? Of course not. You know, that's not a crime. So — but I'm looking at everything from Buddhahood. I'm looking at everything from the ultimate possibility of a human being, both in profession, in skill development, in learning, in life, in internal freedom, everything. The ultimate is the only thing which interests me. I'm not interested in the low and the middle of the road. I'm not interested in dabbling.”

Conditioning and the mind

2021–2024

“Conditioning by living in the world. And by living in, when I say don't live in the world, I'm not saying you should live in a cave, but what I am saying is that if you were to be locked in a room and you had loud speakers on and speakers right next to your ears, you know, like they do in circumstances of, you know, prisoners of war and torture. You know, that you would hear the same things again and again and that would become your way of being, because that's all you know. And that conditioning is a systematic and intense and incessant deviation and removal of oneself from one's natural self. So from the moment that a human being is born, you know, he's born natural and perfect. And from every single day from that moment, every single influence that he has is one more step in a direction that is out to sea. And after some point he has no idea where they are, who they are because they've just become a stooge for the world.”

Need and attachment

2021

“A person needs his spouse to love him, he needs his children to revere and respect him, he needs to be loved by his children, he needs to be told that he's doing a good job, he needs the adoration of his friends, he needs the companionship of various different people, he needs the validation of the world. The needs spread so far and so wide, you know, they span the earth 16 times. How in the world would you begin to prescribe your way out of that? I mean, that's just it's beyond unserious.”