Ten years, one thesis: how Prasad's PhD became Guna

Some research changes a field. Most of it goes onto a shelf. A PhD takes years of someone’s life, is read by a committee and a few colleagues, and then it waits.

Dr. Prasad Akolkar’s thesis could have gone the same way. He is an Ayurvedic physician and a dear friend of ten years. In 2019 he finished his PhD at the University of Mumbai’s Department of Sanskrit, on how Charaka, Sushruta and Vagbhata describe the human mind, read in the original Sanskrit. They saw every mind as three strands, the gunas, woven differently in each of us, and they described sixteen kinds of mind.

For most of our friendship we kept coming back to one question. How does this reach the people it was written about?

Today it does. Guna is built on his PhD research, as a test anyone can take, and it goes live on Dhanvantari Jayanti, the day of the physician of the gods.

Translating, not simplifying

The first job was language. Sattva, rajas and tamas are precise words, but they mean little to most people holding a phone. So Guna calls them clarity, drive and steadiness, and keeps the Sanskrit right beside them for anyone who wants to go deeper.

The questions needed the same care. A research questionnaire can ask “Do you always speak the truth?”. Someone answering alone needs a moment they can picture: “When the truth is awkward, I still tell it, even if a small lie would be easier.” Every question became a moment like that. Prasad read all eighty, changed six, and signed off on them.

In a clinic, some things are held by the doctor sitting across the table. A product has nobody sitting there. So the questions that touched on hopelessness moved into a separate well-being check. It is never scored or stored, and an “Often” answer brings up where to get help.

The doctor’s eye

What I will remember most is how Prasad reviewed. A product team checks whether the page works. He checked whether it was true to the texts.

• The report suggested a warm drink to settle an Asura mind. He said it should be a cold one.
• Three of the sixteen drawings were not right. Kubera needed his gold coins. One mind needed a dance mudra and a veena. Another needed a vulture.
• On anger he drew a line I would never have found. A Sarpa knows why they are enraged, and a Preta does not justify theirs.
• When two gunas come out nearly level, his reading of the texts is that the mind still belongs to the highest, and the second only colours it. We had built something cleverer for those cases. We took it out and followed him.

No test catches any of this. It comes from years of reading these texts, and from years of using this kind of assessment with his patients.

What a friendship builds

I have built many products, and this one felt different, because the most important part was not mine. What I had to do was carry his work across, from Sanskrit and a thesis into something a person can open in a few minutes, without losing what made it true.

Guna belongs to Anantayu, and the research is Prasad’s. I am glad I got to build it with him.

Guna is for understanding yourself and building better habits. It is not a medical diagnosis. You can find your guna at myguna.com in about seven minutes.