Questioner (Q): One of the things I found really relevant post-Covid is a lot of violent crimes that have happened. I am speaking about the United States, where we had a classroom of school students that were shot. A gunman came in and killed many people, including kids.
There are a lot of crimes that are happening post-Covid, whether it is celebrities, for example, we saw a music artist being murdered in India. It becomes difficult to make sense of a human being coming to such mindsets which in Indian Sanskrit terms we refer to as asuri , or rakshasi (demonic) mindsets. How does one make sense of all this?
Acharya Prashant (Q): See, these are just tales of the times. These are tell-tale signs of the age we are in. These are beautiful weapons, no? So sophisticated, so alluring. Once you have them in your hand, you feel like using them. And there are these video games that are simulating those weapons to a fault.
You play that game, and an exact replica of an AK-47 is there. The sound when it is loaded. The sound when it is fired. These are exact simulations. And you are doing that all the time. Six hours a day you are playing that game, just firing that weapon. And you are in a society, like the United States, where weapons are so readily available over the counter. What then stops you from trying out the real experience of firing at people?
Obviously, not everyone would do that. But even if one in five hundred turns into a maniac, the damage is just too much to bear, is it not? Given the oppressive nature of circumstances, and the abundant availability of weapons, one in five hundred is very likely. In fact, it is surprising how we are not seeing more dastardly crimes of that kind.
We have had a recent case in India, in Lucknow, similar to the one you have mentioned, except that thankfully the casualty count is much lower. A sixteen-year-old shot dead his mother, kept her corpse bolted in a room, and partied for two full days. And why did he shoot her? Because she was scolding him and preventing him from playing ‘Pubg’. So, he said, 'Pubg over everything else.' So, she was dead, the door was bolted, and he partied. It was on the third day, when the stink became too much to hide, that he called up his father, who was posted in another city and narrated a cock and bull story that, 'Some fellow came in and shot dead my mother. Papa, see what has happened…' Then the police came in, and took no time, in knowing the reality. But that's what is happening, you see.
We forget that what we are essentially people of the jungle. We just do not know who we are and that's why Vedant is so relevant. We do not realize that except for our sharp intellect, everything about us is just animalistic. Our tendencies belong squarely to the jungle. We want to have fun, we want to have good food. We want to have pleasure at any cost. Morality is just an external imposition upon us, for the sake of territory, power, food and lust. We will stoop to any kind of degradation.
We think we are special, just because we belong to a particular species, we are unique. No, we are not. We share so much with the apes and the chimpanzees. All our tendencies are coming from there. And it is to those tendencies that we have gifted the AK-47, or the AN-94, as is the case nowadays. Think of the violent animal who knows nothing but self-gratification, with his paw on the nuclear trigger—that’s who we are. The entire nuclear arsenal at our disposal, and internally the jungle tendencies as our master. Think of the human predicament. Spiritual education is the answer.
Q: So, just continuing on that, one thing that comes to mind is, how impressionable we really are. And how our scriptures speak about our impressions, whether they are vasanas , or whether they lead us to our karmas in our past, in our future, and in our present lives that we face. When we see it in our children how terrible things happen at such a young age, it might be that we are at an era in human history, where the problems a common man is facing are very similar to what a child is facing. Whether it is shootings and mass killings, or climate change, these are pressing issues which the children are experiencing, as well as adults.
My question is: how a youngster, both within himself and outwardly, can overcome such drastic events that can be very impressionable at such a young age. When I say ‘drastic,’ I mean in a negative way. We see young people going for therapy for these very reasons.—'In my past, I was abused, or this and this happened and therefore, I am realizing what happens to me today is a result of that.'
These things are undoubtedly going to affect these children where the parents are saying that 'This is not the same child I was playing with outside, just two days ago'. So, how does one overcome such situations in their life that can have an impact on mental health?
AP: See, the mind is eager to soak impressions. The mind is like a sponge, it wants to take in something. And that's the very nature of the mind—to take in something because the mind is in a constant state of discontentment. So, its impressionability will remain. One cannot wish it away. What is of importance is, subjecting the mind to the right impressions. Give it the right dose of the right thing. Otherwise, it will absorb random stuff from all places, mostly obnoxious places.
The mind needs education, first of all. The mind needs to have the right knowledge. Because it is in its concepts that the mind suffers, therefore, the mind needs to be subjected to the right concepts. The mind needs some philosophical training and I am not talking of something too heavy to be practical. I am talking of the barest necessity that the mind has, the child has. Give it the right stuff to think about. Expose it to the genesis of thought itself,—'where does thought come from? Where do ideas and instincts and feelings come from?’—and that's when the mind won't be so eager to absorb any random thing from anywhere.
See, it’s like this. If you do not give the kid the right and nutritious food to the kid at home, then you cannot complain that the kid goes out and keeps eating unhealthy, fast food from here and there. Because you are failing your role in quenching the child's appetite, that's the reason the child, in his vulnerability, is just accepting whatever he gets. It's a child's helplessness.
And if, as you said very interestingly, the problems the kid faces and the adult face, have converged to a large extent, in this last century, it tells us insightfully of what is happening. What is happening is that we are not growing up. And that is the reason we continue to face challenges that kids face. Adults should definitely face problems. Adults should definitely face challenges, but those should be adult challenges. Life is an unending series of problems and joy lies in responding fearlessly and wisely to those problems. But the problems must also grow up as you do.
If at age thirty-five, you are facing the same problems that you did at age fifteen, then this is a serious problem. When you look at people, are their problems really growing up? When the fellow was fifteen and writing his high school exams, he was worried about the numbers he would get. Now, this fellow is forty-five, and a CFO somewhere, or a CMO somewhere, and he is still worried about the numbers he would get on a profit and loss statement. He was competitive and jealous at that time, he is competitive, jealous and insecure even at forty-five. He didn't know what was worth doing at fifteen, he doesn't know what is worth doing at forty-five. He measured his self-worth against numbers then, he does the same thing now. Do we grow up?
He was a slave to his bodily instincts then, he is equally a slave even today. He could not survive without being associated with another body then, other bodies are equally important, or more important to him today. What has changed? Nothing has changed.
True growth cannot come just with age or experience. One requires a special education. The education that we have today can give us a lot of knowledge, but not inner growth. You will have seventy-year-olds, with the instinct of five-year-olds. You have the richest people in the world, actually, just inwardly being bloated kids. You look at their actions, you look at their faces, you look at their eyes, you look at their intentions, and you will see a five-year-old. And that is very dangerous, because a five-year-old does not have tremendous worldly resources at his disposal.
A five-year-old cannot make rockets that fly to other planets. But at forty-five you can do that, and you can even have ICBMs (Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles) at your command. Do you see how dangerously placed we are? We are kids with tremendous power to wreak havoc. Lot of resources, a lot of technology, and very little wisdom.
