What does the mind actually want?

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

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, what does the mind actually want?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Man’s mind with its great search for freedom and an equally great determination to never be free — so you are trying all kinds of spiritual tricks with the ostensible objective of meeting peace or freedom or bliss or Truth. And you are parallelly ensuring that the methods are designed to fail as if one wants to deceive nobody but himself. As if one is determined to keep telling himself that he is sincere, and one is equally determined to never attain his sincere goal.

One does know what to say of man. Is he a seeker, or is he a stubborn cheat? By the looks of it, there are seekers everywhere. Somebody is seeking through money, somebody is seeking through pleasures of various kinds, somebody is seeking through prestige, somebody through knowledge, and somebody through divine chanting or yogic asanas and there are others who are seeking through politics, through wars, and through various means and methods.

At the same time, the moment you pay attention to it, it is obvious that none of it is ever going to help. It is not as if there is a deficiency in the method. It is almost as if the method is designed not to succeed. As if we are working…