How Men Actually See Women! Men’s Hidden Thoughts about Women
Questioner: I was doing mechanical engineering, and I was the only girl in my class of 50 boys. I had always studied in a girls’ school, so it was new for me. But then, one of my friends those days told me that men will always do things in their mind if they cannot, let’s say, do it physically.
Acharya Prashant: You mean masturbation. Yeah.
Questioner: No, not that even. I think, for example, if you are their object, then they will rape you in their mind, and so they can, let’s say, create some scenes or whatever. Because there was a lot of gossip, not just around me, but I think around many women in the college. We had less than 10% women in the entire batch. So I think it’s a bit disappointing, right? Because, as you said, it’s primitive and it’s very hard to…”
Acharya Prashant: Again, you’re speaking from the same center. When I started, I said you look hurt, and what is it that’s hurt? The assumption. Now again you’re saying you’re disappointed. Why do you hold assumptions and expectations in the first place? Why? You must be having some interest there, you must be having some stake there. You want to believe that the 60 boys of your batch are all nice people. Why do you want to have that expectation? Maybe you want to pick one of them as a nice one for yourself. Maybe therefore it hurts when you discover that each of them is a beast.
And yes, that is called masturbation in one word. Imagining a rape scene and doing all those. One doesn’t imagine a rape scene for nothing. It is imagined so that one can ejaculate. That’s masturbation.
Why do you expect that all these are nice people? Why? There has to be some stake there, right?
I’m forced to assume that one of them, at least one of them or a few of them, are nice people. I cannot just say that the entire society is rotten, because if I say that, how will I get a partner? If I want to go out with someone, if I want to date someone, if I want to establish to myself that I have a nice fellow, a nice partner for myself, then I have to leave some scope open. All right, out of these, you know, out of the 60, 40 are maybe rotten people, but at least 20 are nice guys. “Hii.”
And even then, when evidence is available, you want to shy away from it. Not a single one in my campus days was not seeing women as objects of desire, not a single one, including this one (pointing towards oneself). But you want to assume, “No, no, he’s a cutie fellow, come my teddy, yeah, sit in my lap.” There you have your own interests, including sexual ones. That’s what. Otherwise, why should there be disappointment? Please think.
You find a python coiling around its prey, are you disappointed? Why are you not disappointed? Because it’s a python, and you have acknowledged that, and you have no stakes there. You don’t have to establish to yourself that the python is the epitome of virtuosity. So when the python kills, you’re not disappointed. But when a fellow who is a candidate to be your boyfriend, when he is found masturbating in the bathroom, then you’re disappointed. “But you are not supposed to do that.” What else is he supposed to do? Why do you think he comes to you? Right now it’s in the bathroom. Tomorrow it will be on your body. That’s all. “But that sounds so crude now.”
That’s it. That’s the jungle. That’s it. Take it. That’s Maya. That’s this Jagat where you are born. That’s how people are. And if somebody says, “No, that’s not the way I am,” then he’s a liar and a hypocrite. That’s how everybody is. Buddhas are one in a billion — you won’t get them in your batch. Exceptions are possible, but you won’t get them around yourself.
If you really love the exceptions, then you’ll have to go out of your circle. But you live in your circle and you want to assume virtue there. “You know, these are the twenty people I know; out of them, ten are very good.” That’s not going to happen, sir. You really have to strive to be someone who is not an animal. And the first step in that strife is addressing your own inner animal. And even if you have addressed it, it will take a long time to discover one in the society, because they are very rare blossoms.
But you want to expect that your family and everybody are good boys. Sir, they are not. No. “My mohalla, my society, they are good people. My batch, my college, my school, my office, my colleagues.” They are not, don’t be disappointed. Just as you’re not disappointed when the python coils around the rabbit and strangulates it, it’s a very violent sight, but you’re not disappointed. Yes, you are moved, but you’re not disappointed. Mind the word — disappointment is with respect to expectations. From the python, you expect nothing else.
The tiger chases the buffalo calf and brings it down, does that disappoint you? No, because that was expected. Similarly, when you have people around yourself, please expect animal behavior all the time, and also from yourself. But because we are self-deceptive people, we do not address our own animal behavior. We don’t want to first of all see that we are animals in the first place. Therefore, we start expecting that others too are not animals. We are animals, others are also animals, that’s how Prakriti operates.
Instead, you glorify certain things as if they have dignity. A war has dignity. No. It's two rams ramming into each other. You know ram? What is a ram? That big sheep with the horns, have you seen them? These are two animals fighting each other. Why do you glorify it so much?
There is a resurgent Aryan movement in Germany now. They are saying, “No, Nazism was about our glory, our self-pride, our self-esteem. We have to resurrect the whole thing.” Why do you want to glorify it? Take it, see it for what it really is. There’s nothing there.
And you glorify your weddings and marriages, why do you glorify them? What else are you going to do after marriage? Come on, please. And you glorify everything that is animalistic instead of naming it for what it truly is. You don’t do that. You give it an aura and a halo and a big name, and you treat it as something divine — festivals, celebrations, parties, nice things. No, there is a dead animal and you have so many vultures there. That’s all. That’s a party. You can call it an orgy.
It looks very bad, right? When there is that carcass and there are vultures and jackals around it — a pathetic sight, you say. And you’re having a so-called non-veg feast, an entire pig is laid on the table, and you’re (pretending to eat).
How is that not the same thing? How are you not a jackal? Come on.
Everything that we do is coming from the jungle, it is animalistic. Don’t be disappointed. If you hold expectations from this world, you’ll be hurt. Also, if you hold expectations from the world, you will miss the Krishnas and the Buddhas, because you’ll be looking for them in your familiar places, and they’re not to be found there. You’ll be looking for them in the familiar way, thinking of them as familiar sights displaying familiar behaviors, and you’ll miss them totally.
Whatever you do, if it can be mapped against something that the animals do, you should know who you are.
There is this tiger reserve in Rajasthan, this is today’s news. In order to raise the tiger population, they almost domesticated the tigers, and the population did rise. But in the process of domesticating, the tigers became used to being fed rather than hunting. They became pets rather than hunters. Their population did rise, it multiplied.
Now those tigers are killing the same people that fed them, because they are not hunters anymore. They cannot run after their usual game, the deer and other faster animals. The tigers can’t run after them. In fact, one person who has been killed yesterday is an officer who was in charge of taking care of these animals, and he was dragged away by some tiger, tigress actually — Kankati was her name. That tigress actually dragged him away in full sight of some fifty people on a busy road. And this man was actually the one who raised her, fed her — and she came and she took him away.
This is not ingratitude. Don’t be disappointed. This is the animal. Even if you do so much for an animal, all that the animal cares for is flesh. Don’t be disappointed.
Now you see why war and women go together? Because they both come from the same center within the man, the primitive center of animal behavior. It’s just that we don’t want to accept we are animals, so we glorify. We glorify our animal behavior and give it very respectable names. There is nothing respectable about all these things that we do. There is hardly anything respectable about anything that we do.
And if our actions, our institutions, our contracts, if they are respectable, then so is the behavior of the dog on the street. Why do you kick him away? Why do you use dogs as a slur? You do everything that the dog does, just in a more intellectual and organized manner.
And intellect again is not consciousness. Intellect is very much material. Intellect is a very dead thing. An intellectual is not necessarily a conscious person. No, it’s very easy to be intellectual. Sometimes you don’t even choose it, your cells, your heredity, your brain structure is such that you will be an intellectual. It’s not to your credit; it just happened to you. Being an intellectual is something that happened to you, just as being a carnivore is something that happens to a tiger.
Consciousness is not something that can happen to you. It is something that you beseech with love and dedication and self-observation.
Are you getting it?
And therefore, mind you, there can be no intellectual solution to war, because war itself is in some sense intellectual. War, in fact, can be justified by intellectual means. War and intellect come from the same animalistic center within man.
Some of the biggest intellectuals have been warmongers. They use their intellect in the service of war. Don’t have too much respect for intellectuals, they don’t count for much. IQ and all is a very cheap thing. It’s almost like the color of your eyes or skin. What have you done?
You are carried away by propaganda, aren’t you? You see all these things draped in virtue, carrying holy colors, and you start thinking as if some great game is being played on — as if something dignified, respectable, commendable is happening, as if you must offer your venerations to the event. You’re just swept away.
And then you get a rude shock. You find the diplomat’s daughter being served rape threats, and you say, “How can this happen?” But that’s what the whole thing is anyway about.
Take pride only in consciousness. There is nothing else ever to be proud of. Take pride in your commitment to freedom and truth. And if somebody comes and says he’s proud of something else, he is stupid and violent and dangerous. Remember — the violent instinct that is exhibited in the form of rape also gets exhibited in the form of all other kinds of aggression. So if somebody comes to you glorifying and justifying aggression of any kind, mind you, he’s operating from the same center that manifests rape also. There’s nothing else to be proud of, mind you. Please. There’s nothing else that is venerable or honorable except freedom and truth.
And India has been a little distinct from the rest of the world, because India is one of the few countries — probably the only country — that chose to have truth as the basis of its nationhood. India, as a nation, is respectable only because this nation, the Indian nation, is committed to truth. That’s what you find in your scriptures. That is also what you find in your Constitution.
If tomorrow, assume somehow, the entire population of India is gone, some strange weapon, some strange weapon is there that leaves all the infrastructure intact, and only the people are vaporized, and then some other people come and occupy the Indian land, and those people are bloodthirsty, ignorant, insolent — would India still be called great?
India is great because, in the air, in the Constitution, in the culture, there is still some remnant of devotion to the truth. The day that devotion to the truth is totally obliterated, India will no longer be great.
Let there be no doubt about that. Greatness is not something that you just get in inheritance; greatness is something that you work for, something you earn.
Tomorrow, if some other people occupy India, they change the Constitution, they say, “We exist just to invade other lands and take away their women and take away their property, that’s what we exist for.” Would you still call India great? No.
The only greatness lies in remembering the eternal principles of Vedānta —Truth and Freedom, Satya and Mukti. So, if a person resonates with those principles, they are not principles really, but for the purpose of this, let me call them principles. So, if a person resonates with those principles, then that person becomes great. That person has become great because he’s now aligned with greatness.
India, the nation, is great because it is aligned with greatness. India, the nation, is great only as long as it is aligned with greatness. Are you getting it?
So, in the context of the war, if you really want to make India great, first of all discover where true greatness lies, and strive to align yourself, and the people around you, systems, institutions around you, with that greatness. Only that will keep India great, not all kinds of xenophobia and jingoism and warmongering and other kinds of stupidities, the kind that you saw on national TV, on various channels.
Questioner: Thank you, Acharya Ji.
