Conditioned before birth || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: Is it true that our experiences shape our intelligence since childhood?
Speaker: Experiences don’t shape intelligence. Experiences shape the brain.
Listener 1: So, are we born equal?
Speaker: Conditioning is of two types. In terms of social conditioning, yes we all are born equal. That is called Tabula Rasa, a clean slate. But in terms of physical conditioning, we are not born equal. Even before we are born, we are physically conditioned. Don’t you see that our eye colors are different, heights are different, gender is different? All that has happened even before your birth. So we aren’t all born equal. Yes in a social way we are born equal in the sense that none of us have been given religion before birth. None of us have given name or nationality before birth. In that sense we have born equal, the society has not conditioned us but time has already conditioned us. Don’t you ever ask why do we have only one nose? This is the product of conditioning. It is the product of time, evolution. So physically we are conditioned, already conditioned.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
