Formation of Foundation || Acharya Prashant (2024)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Tell me how the foundation was formed and what led to it.

00:19I didn't know what to do.

00:25Once my MBA was done, the only thing that I had to do was settle my education loan because

00:34that was an obligation.

00:37You have to do that.

00:40To settle that loan, I knew I had to do a corporate job, the kind that you get from

00:48an IM campus.

00:51And I stepped into it.

00:53I settled my loan as fast as possible.

01:01Along with that, because I had my weekends free, so I was already doing what I could

01:09in the area I relatively had clarity on.

01:15So I picked up books that I especially liked and had read over the past 10-15 years and

01:29figured out how they could be used to deliver leadership concepts, the real meaning of leadership.

01:40So I devised a course and proposed it to a few management institutes and I would teach

01:50on the weekends.

01:54I was seeing that the shape of the world can change only if the human being is changed

02:06from within.

02:07This much I was clearly beginning to see.

02:12So I knew about management campuses.

02:14I had the IIM Ahmedabad brand.

02:18I knew what students want.

02:21I knew what fits in there.

02:25So I could plan a course and take it to the campus and get it floated and my weekends

02:32would be actually more occupied than the weekdays.

02:37I was doing that and gaining exposure, seeing how the human being responds when taken to

02:50his own insides.

02:53When it comes to management education, it's about the markets, it's about the banks, it's

03:02about the supply chain, it's about recruitment and all of those things concern external objects.

03:15There's nothing in that which takes you within.

03:20So it was a new thing on those campuses.

03:28I was seeing, I was teaching and in the process learning and then when my loan was done, I

03:38said I'm done.

03:42So even the three years I was in the corporate sector, I switched thrice.

03:53So one year was my cutoff because I knew I won't be here for long.

04:01So I wanted to see as much as possible before I take off.

04:05Not that anything had been set in stone or decided for final.

04:11But there was that hazy instinct which told me I don't belong here, I'm a misfit.

04:17I have to go.

04:19I couldn't immediately leave because the financial thing was there.

04:24So around the 12-month mark, 10-month mark rather, I would get fidgety and switch.

04:36And having made three switches, I said goodbye and Advait Life Education was founded.

04:46Now I had the experience of the courses behind me, the courses that I had taught on weekends.

04:54So I expanded the scope of those courses.

04:58In fact, diluted them a little so that they could be taken to junior students.

05:06I was teaching post graduates.

05:09Now I took them to B.Tech students.

05:15They were younger in age, especially the first year IITs and the ones in second year.

05:24So an entire syllabus was drawn.

05:30The course was called Holistic Individual Development Program and I took it to as many

05:38engineering campuses as possible.

05:45And the range of campuses was quite fascinating.

05:50One hand I was teaching students from IIT and went to TIS, went to Symbiosis.

06:01There was IMT in Ghaziabad.

06:07On the other hand, there were students from a more average background, remote cities,

06:23interiors of UP, MP.

06:28So the entire spectrum was there.

06:34And HIDP as a course also was a work in progress.

06:40Every semester new activities would be drawn and that was something that I did very individually,

06:50very personally.

06:51It was a solo thing.

06:53All activities were made by me.

06:58And I had a team that would go and deliver the activities there, essentially teach the

07:10concepts using the activity, life concepts.

07:15One question here.

07:16I mean, how did the team formation happen at that stage?

07:19I would hire.

07:21I would hire.

07:22So you knew this is something that you want to take to places?

07:24Yes.

07:25But at the same time, it remained experimental for many long years because we didn't have

07:31a precedent and we didn't belong to any industry.

07:40And it was quite a task, first of all, teaching those activities to my own teachers.

07:48Because I started out in 2008, Advaitha Life Education was founded in 2006-2005 to be precise,

08:07by the end of 2005.

08:10And 2008 was when the activities that I was making, the syllabus that was there to be

08:18taught to the students, the life education syllabus, 2008 was when it took a decisively

08:26spiritual turn.

08:30So I said I'm going all out now.

08:34So I was about to turn 30 then and I said it's time.

08:39Not that I was looking at my age, but coincidence.

08:45So 2006 was when this thing was founded.

08:512008 was when it really showed up its colors.

08:56You're taking me down some place I don't usually go these days.

09:02It's taking me some effort to recall, but it's wonderful.

09:07Yes, so 2006 we started and at that time the activities were more basic in nature.

09:15You remember I said I diluted the content that I was teaching to the MBA campuses?

09:21In 2008, there were two activities that I made and they were like my coming out declaration.

09:36One was called Kabir in Campus, the other was So Said the Sages.

09:43Anybody here who remembers either of those activities?

09:46Kabir in Campus is very famous in our circles.

09:49So Said the Sages from the Upanishad.

09:53Wonderful.

09:54So think and think of the response from my team of teachers.

10:05When I brought those Upanishadic verses to them and said they have to be delivered to

10:09B.Tech students.

10:16It was quite a task, but it was fascinating and that point onwards every single activity

10:24that I made was deeply spiritual and that meant inviting a lot of problems deliberately

10:39because an MBA student or a B.Tech student or MC or any of these professional courses.

10:48In India, professional courses basically means B.Tech, MBA, MC and these things.

10:52We were not going to medical campuses, that's all.

10:56Otherwise all kinds of courses we are covering, architecture that too.

11:04So the student does not come to do his B.Tech so that he turns spiritual.

11:14Now when this content is delivered in the classroom, then there is resistance.

11:21Yes, if one receives it with patience for a while, let's say two months, then there

11:32is appreciation of the light it is bringing and the change it is causing.

11:39But initially there is resistance.

11:40So there would be resistance from my own team because they found teaching the general stuff

11:48much easier.

11:52This required a change in dimension.

11:56Of course.

11:58There would be resistance from my own team.

12:01There would be resistance from the students, from the parents of the students, from the

12:09college management and from the faculty members in the college because this was so alien to

12:23the entire ecosystem that it became unacceptable.

12:31At the same time, there was the rigor and professionalism and sincerity that I was bringing

12:37to those campuses.

12:40So they couldn't dismiss me offhand.

12:46So they would remain grumpy, uneasy but couldn't call it off, at least not immediately.

13:03But the entire process would remain challenging at all points.

13:09Students would say, is this going to give us a better career?

13:16Teachers would ask, is this going to lead to a betterment in their academic results?

13:22They were looking for that instant result.

13:25They were looking for what everybody looks for.

13:29Better marks in exams, better placements or something that could be quoted as a CV point.

13:41So to the prospective employer you could say, I have done this particular course.

13:46Now they didn't know how to present it, what to make of it, where to use it, though if

13:52they would remain in the process within a semester, the effect, the benefits were perceptible.

14:02But you know how an 18 year old or a 21 year old is.

14:06To expect patience lasting three months is too much.

14:13So again I said, it's my baby and I am taking the challenges upon myself.

14:21I cannot just send out my people to deliver the content if they cannot properly do it.

14:29Now I couldn't be present at several locations in the same movement.

14:35So the teaching team continued doing what they were doing.

14:39At the peak we were dealing with some 50 campuses all at once where the course had

14:48been floated and the peak enrollment in any given semester was more than 15,000.

14:58That was around 2010-11.

15:01That was when my effort reached its zenith.

15:06And the teaching team was 80-100 members and they were traveling all the time and going

15:13to the places as visiting members and delivering the content.

15:19And it was not yielding what it should.

15:26It was an unmovable, immovable object that had probably historically not been very frequently

15:36challenged that I had decided to take on and every 15 minutes my phone would ring about

15:55something that was amiss somewhere.

16:00One particular class at some place, some city, some state, the call is coming from Punjab.

16:10One particular college in Ludhiana, the students have decided to boycott.

16:15So even as you are thinking what to make of that, somebody calls you up and says one faculty

16:23member has finally given up and she's saying it's beyond me and I'm not even going to come

16:32to the office and resign.

16:34I'm feeling quite ashamed about giving up.

16:39So can you just tell Prashant sir I won't be coming anymore.

16:45So that thing has opened up and all kinds of things.

16:53At some place the chairman or the owner himself cannot understand what is being taught, can't

17:02make head or tail of the syllabus.

17:05So he has asked the project manager from our side in his college for a meeting and in that

17:11meeting the fellow first expressed disillusionment and then when he was explained the whole thing

17:23and couldn't still grasp it, he became aggressive and this was routine happening on a daily basis.

17:34So I said fine, I'll get into it myself.

17:38I can't keep sitting in the office when the real delivery is happening at various places

17:45in North India.

17:49So I allotted every single day of the week, of the month, of the academic calendar, maybe

18:02you can help me with something that I'm missing.

18:04It was a long period of over a decade and I don't frequently recall it.

18:11So I might be missing some crucial points in the timeline.

18:19So I said I'll address the students personally and almost every day.

18:26There were two large gatherings every day, one in the morning slot and the other in the afternoon slot.

18:36So the gatherings would comprise of 100 to 400 students depending on the attendance and

18:44the morning slot would be 10 to 12 or 9 to 12, 2 to 3 hours, that was the duration of

18:50the interaction.

18:51The interaction was called Samvad.

18:53Then there would be an hour's break and then 2 to 5 or 2 to 4 would be my second slot and

19:00I would combine various batches into one and assemble them all in the Institute auditorium.

19:08So if 6 teachers are teaching 6 batches, that amounts to 360 students, 60 is the usual batch strength.

19:15So I would say fine, bring all 360 here together, let me address them and I would take their

19:23open-ended questions.

19:26Now that you are exposed to these wisdom activities, the HIDP, the holistic individual development

19:31program, life education, tell me what you are learning from it and what is it that you

19:37aren't satisfied with?

19:40What is it that you feel resistant against?

19:44The students would come up with their questions.

19:49Many of the students were not just dissatisfied.

19:58They would be, if I may say, militantly unhappy.

20:05I have faced Lugnaring as well because the activity can totally confound you.

20:13You are trying to take Vedanta and Upanishads to an 18-year-old, 20-year-old and all that

20:19he wants is a fat check, a high-paying job and he just cannot understand why for 2 hours

20:30he has to face this kind of ordeal.

20:34The usual session, the classroom session would last 2 hours whereas their regular engineering

20:40class would spend only 1 hour.

20:43So that too would be point of friction.

20:48So they would come up and the questions would be quite pointed, even scathing and I would

20:56answer them from a podium like this.

20:58Imagine this is a house full of youngsters and they are throwing darts.

21:13They could fire missiles if they could.

21:22And the responsibility was on me to explain things and by the end of my interaction, I

21:32needed to ensure that they understand.

21:38In some sense, they are converted now, a dissatisfied lot has now been converted into

21:45recipients of wisdom that even after I leave their campus, they would still be listening

21:53to my teachers because I would visit one particular campus once a month or something.

22:02There were just so many campuses, I quoted at peak we were handling 50 campuses.

22:09So by rotation, I couldn't visit one particular batch too frequently.

22:15So when I met them, it used to be a special event.

22:18I have come and I have to ensure that I put the house in order before I leave and those

22:26interactions were recorded.

22:30Those interactions were recorded.

22:33So on YouTube, what you find today as videos from 2011 to 2015 are all mostly my interactions

22:46in college campuses.

22:54Today if you watch those videos, it feels like a spiritual sermon.

23:01It was anything but that.

23:07It was a boxing match.

23:10It was no holds barred wrestling.

23:16Nobody could say anything, shoot anything and you couldn't say well off limits.

23:31It was war.

23:34It was war in which you had to prevail every single time.

23:38If you wanted to continue bringing wisdom to the students, you had to prevail every

23:44single time because one single event of loss of face would have meant discontinuation of

23:52the program in that campus and that discontinuation was something everybody wanted.

24:00Students, their parents, the faculty members, the management, probably my own teachers.

24:10So my entire mission was put on the line many times every single day.

24:25It's like your baby being on the ventilator for many long years.

24:30Anything could happen any day, any hour.

24:36You had to succeed all the time.

24:42Your success rate has to be 100%.

24:47So that gave my entire effort a very earthly flavor.

25:02You cannot speak to students and give them metaphysical crap.

25:14You have to have solutions for their everyday problems.

25:19If you want to convince them that wisdom literature is good for them, then prove it.

25:27So I had to actually prove it.

25:28I had to actually deliver continuously.

25:32So I said that gave my entire effort a very earthly outlook, which means I couldn't talk

25:43other worldly stuff to them and that has remained with me to this date.

25:50I cannot talk to you about the heavens and the gods, but I can talk to you about what

25:55plagues us today right here in our lives intimately.

26:00The students taught that to me.

26:06I cannot tell them I am taking you to Samadhi.

26:13But if they say that they are anxious, I must have something for their anxiety.

26:20So anxiety matters, not Samadhi.

26:26Just that it was needless to tell them that freedom from anxiety itself is Samadhi.

26:32That you need not tell them.

26:34So I learned the language that works with the worldly man.

26:44That happened between 2008 and 2015.

26:49It was war.

26:50It was an all-out war and war in which you couldn't afford to lose even a single battle

26:59on any single front and very humbly I would like to say that I don't remember any particular

27:08interaction where what I was representing had to lose.

27:17I don't remember any particular recording that we would need to decide not to publish

27:31because it involved no value or a defeat or a loss of face, nothing.

27:47Every single thing that was recorded there would be then put on a public platform for

27:58the entire world to watch.

28:02It was a very deliberate decision not to hide anything and that decision was taken to enforce

28:16that kind of discipline where even a single loss is not acceptable.

28:24So if a question comes your way and you don't know what to do with it, publish that.

28:32Publish that so that you ensure that such a thing doesn't happen again.

28:37So that your own attention remains deeper.

28:43So that your own learning, your own reading intensify, magnify and deepen.

28:54So we decided to publish everything and that is also the reason why a lot of technically

29:05very suboptimal videos are there on the foundation's channel even today.

29:12Videos from that period because we said we aren't putting anything in junk.

29:19If it has been recorded, it will be published.

29:23Initially it was published so that the particular campuses could watch it.

29:30Then within a few months we realized that since the activity being conducted is the

29:34same across campuses.

29:38So if we publish it then all our students are watching it.

29:43The student base was 10,000 plus, the alumni base was 1 lakh plus.

29:50Some of them were watching it and then within a year we realized that even the general public

29:56is watching it and we were publishing everything and having realized that people are watching

30:03it, I could see that the time is coming.

30:08I could see that the thing can no longer remain confined to particular campuses.

30:21That I have to reach out to the masses in general.

30:32Also as I have said twice, there were constraints while operating in the campus.

30:43You have to carry the limitations of the institute timetable and many other things.

30:56There were so many mediators.

31:00I was the one trying to teach, the students were being taught and in between were my own

31:07faculty members, the institution with its entire chain of command starting from the

31:15chairman, the director, the dean, the HOD, the senior faculty, the junior faculty and

31:22anybody could play any kind of negative role and try to even veto the process.

31:31I needed to remove the intermediaries and so 2015 and Prashant Adwai Foundation was founded.

31:46We said we aren't dealing with campuses anymore, here I am and I'll be floating my programs

31:58on my own platform.

32:00Come to me.

32:03So being with institutions afforded you their infrastructure.

32:10You could use their auditoriums.

32:13So many things were, now we are on our own but we somehow managed.

32:23No captive audience was guaranteed anymore.

32:27You couldn't say, this is a batch of 60 students and they'll have to listen to me.

32:31Now people were enrolling out of their own free will and it was like again starting from scratch.

32:45A new beginning and quite an interesting beginning.

32:57The initial members of the foundation, a lot of them were students of the HIDP.

33:04So those who had done the HIDP in their campuses, after graduating they joined the foundation.

33:14In fact, the entire lot came from there, 2015 those who joined us, 2015-16 those who joined

33:22us with a couple of exceptions, all of them from the campuses where we taught.

33:31So there was a certain intimacy and a lot of things were already clear to them.

33:38So we could do things that are difficult to do in a usual kind of professional organization.

33:48For example, my young team didn't find it odd to distribute books on roads.

33:59So more than half of our activity comprised of putting up stalls of books, books that

34:14were products of the interactions we had in the discussions on HIDP.

34:25So books came from there, those same recordings were transcribed and made into books.

34:34And then those books were distributed and the proceeds from there were used to run the

34:42foundation financially.

34:47And now I could devote myself more completely to wisdom camps and online courses.

35:02The first camp had happened in 2010.

35:10So it was about taking my core group of faculty members and a few bright students to the Himalayas.

35:22And there we would sit and go through advanced readings because the syllabus that was being

35:29delivered in the campuses, you remember, it was diluted one, it wasn't everybody's

35:36cup of tea.

35:37That reminds me of this.

35:49So there were certain quite receptive and bright students who would be hungry for more.

35:59They were my delight.

36:00It was actually those students that kept the whole thing fed at the level of inspiration.

36:15Otherwise it was all quite very soul-sapping.

36:22Nobody wants you.

36:28But I had my good kids, not too many of them, but yes, they were a decent lot.

36:40So they would want more.

36:43And when these camps are organized, there would be some 15-20 faculty members, almost

36:49an equal number of students.

36:53And there were several destinations in the hills we would go to, quite often by the side

36:59of the Ganga.

37:00It was allowed then.

37:01Now you can't camp by the river side.

37:05Back in 2012-2013, it was possible.

37:13So the camps were already happening and they were delightful, wonderful.

37:18I wish I could go back to them.

37:22Those camps intensified once we decided that we are going public.

37:30So 2016 onwards, the camps became a monthly fixture.

37:38In fact, not just monthly.

37:40Firstly, they became bi-monthly, then weekly.

37:47So there was a period between 2016 and 2019 when I would be traveling every week to a

37:55new city, to a different city, to conduct a camp there.

38:02I was on the road or on the rails or flying all the time.

38:11Before I could come back and look at the business here, it was time to fly to the next city.

38:22And because the interaction was continuous.

38:31I was speaking for two hours, four hours, every single day.

38:37A lot of literature was generated from there and it's still being generated at an even

38:48higher rate and from that came all these books.

38:56And even today we are publishing at the rate of two new titles every month.

39:01Every month.

39:03So a few of them have gone on to become bestsellers.

39:15A few others remain more sedate and yes, that's a very incomplete sketch of how the whole

39:29thing has been.

39:34I would require help to fill in the blanks.

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