How to control the mind?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Nobody has ever really said that the mind needs to be controlled or can be controlled. It is only the controlled freaks who talk in this language. The very constitution of the mind is objects and objects by definition are changing all the time. So, what do you mean by controlling the mind? The only thing that can be done is accompany the mind like a lover, wherever it goes, be with it. There is a beautiful line:

Yatra yatra mano yati, tatra tatra samadhyah

Wherever the mind goes, there is my Samadhi. It does not say that I have to bring the mind back to myself. Let the mind go wherever it wants to go. I will be along with it. I will not desert it. I repeat — not like an instructor, a policeman, or a warden, but like a lover. Not even like what you call a witness traditionally in spirituality but simply like a lover. Let the mind go wherever it wants to go. It wants to think, all right, it has all the freedom to think. It wants to imagine, it wants to hope, it wants to be afraid; let it do whatever it wants to do. But be with the mind.

Instead, morality and other kinds of influences and conditioning have taught us to suppress the mind. We have been told that certain things are good and…