React Vs. Respond: What Leads You to Slavery
Acharya Prashant: Reaction is something like reflex action. So where do these reflexes come from? Does a little baby have reflexes, yes or no?
Listener: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: So where do these reflexes come from? They come from Mother Nature. They come from the mother's womb. You don't have to be taught reflexes. They exist right in your body.
You bring a finger towards a little baby, just let's say a month old. You bring your little finger gently towards his eyes, and what will he do? Nobody taught the baby to do this. Instinctively, the baby knows that some foreign object is coming towards the eye, so the eyelids have to be shut, right?
Similarly, heat or cold or wetness, the baby knows how to deal with it. At least the baby knows that these are not nice things, so I need to cry. The temperature is 35, not pleasant, so the baby will cry. Or the temperature is 15, again not pleasant. Or the little bed is wet, again it will cry.
How does it know all these things? How does the baby know how, for example, to take feed from the mother's body? The baby knows. You don't have to educate it. These are reflexes.
What do these reflexes exist for? All these things that we just talked of, do they turn the baby into a better human being? Do they? No. Still, they serve a purpose. What's the purpose? The purpose is physical security. Physical security.
Now, the hand that is coming towards the baby might be of a well-meaning relative, and yet the baby might resist it and cry out or turn her face away, because all that is needed for physical security. And Nature, through its very, very long process of evolution, instilled these reflexes within us. They now sit in our DNA, and once upon a time, they had an important function to perform. The function was physical security.
Now what has happened is that over the last 3,000-4,000 years, mankind has progressed remarkably and very speedily. But evolution is a very, very slow process. In the dimension of evolution, 4,000 years mean nothing at all.
So our body and the conditioning embedded in the body has remained just the same as it was 10 lakh years ago. Now, compared to 10 lakh years, how much is 4,000 years? Nothing. But all that which you call your knowledge, your development, your civilization has come in the last 4,000, maximum 6,000 years, not more than that.
But the instincts that you carry in your body, they are millions of years old. Because they are so old, they will take time to change. Not that they cannot change, but they will take time.
So internally, we are still, as we said, that caveman with his cave-like instincts. Our instincts belong to the jungle because all our life, we have lived just in the jungle, right? How old are we? We are millions of years old. And where were we living all this while? In the jungle only. Only recently, very, very recently, have we moved out of the jungle into the village or the city. So our body still belongs to the jungle, and that's where our reflexes come from. You could say our reflexes are very jungly.
That's what reaction is: a wild thing, an uneducated thing, a very animalistic thing, but something very powerful because you don't even need to think about it. It sits in your body.
Let's say your arm touches something hot. Do you have to think whether or not to jerk away? No. You immediately flinch, don't you? Why is that needed? Because Mother Nature said that if you think, thinking will take time, and in that time, your skin, your arm will be damaged. So let me give you something that bypasses thought.
That's what reaction does. It gives you no time to think. It just happens. It's like switching on an electric bulb: instantaneous reaction, right? It's like pouring water over sodium: instantaneous reaction. No time to think. It just happens. Something very chemical, very biological.
That's what reactiveness is. There is no thought, no consciousness involved in this mind. This word, consciousness. Reflex action does not involve consciousness. Reflex action does not involve thought.
Reactiveness does not involve consciousness. It only involves your wild, wild, cave-like instincts.
Are you getting it?
Now those instincts, we said, are useful because they helped the animal survive. We were animals, right? Living in the jungle. We were just like animals, and those instincts have surely been beneficial because they have helped us survive over all these millions of years. So definitely, they have, at least they had, a good use. Are you getting it?
You must ask yourself: do you still need to live by the code of the animal, by the rules and the constitution of the animal, or as evolved human beings, you need to live more by thought and even more by understanding?
Someone comes and says something unpleasant to you. Do you need to just immediately, unthinkingly explode, as most of us do? Or can you tell yourself, "I'm not an animal. I can wait. I can be patient. Let me at least think over it." And if I think deeply, the thought will sublimate into understanding. Even if I can't go to that depth of thought, let me at least try to think. Let me at least postpone the reaction, because the reaction belongs to the jungle, to the animal, to the caveman.
Am I jungly? In the jungle, we didn't have haircuts to begin with, and there was no social media. We weren't brushing our teeth either. No one was wearing specs. No one wore clothes in the first place. When you have dropped all that, think of all that happens in the jungle. Someone is just pouncing upon someone else and tearing the body apart and eating the flesh. When you have dropped all that, why can't you drop your reactiveness? Are you getting it?
And particularly women, you see, because the biological role of women has a lot to do with the body, right? The woman carries the baby for nine months and then also raises the baby for several years. Therefore, Mother Nature made her even more reactive. Now, that was all okay in the cave times. That is not okay today.
Do you want to live as a body coming from the jungle, or do you want to live as a free consciousness? Answer this, please. And if you want to live as a free consciousness, then stop being emotionally reactive. That's the worst thing girls can do to themselves, living from their emotional center.
But you know, the force of emotion is so strong that when it rises, it feels like just the right thing. That's the problem. You can resist something if, at first of all, it appears bad. If something appears bad, then you will even begin to resist it. But when emotion arises, it does not even appear bad. It appears just the right thing to happen, and you feel like supporting it. And the more you support it, the more you will remain enslaved.
The animal. You know, what do you call an animal in Hindi, in Sanskrit? Pashu. That which is in pash. Pash means slavery. That which is in pash is* pashu.* If you live by the code of the animal, you will live the life of a slave.
The more reactive and the more emotional you are, the more easily you will be enslaved, because emotion is like a button, and everybody knows where your buttons are.
Anybody can come and press that button and get the desired output from you.
Suppose I want to make you angry, and I know that if I utter a particular word to you, you get angry. Now it is so easy for me to control you, is it not? If I want to upset you, I just have to utter that word. You have become a machine, and I know the trigger.
Equally, let's say I want to make you happy. I want to please you, and that is something very frequently used, especially with women. I want to please you. I know what pleases you. I can come and say, "Oh, you're looking gorgeous." The button has been…, and immediately you'll be prepared to do me a favor.
It's not so simplistic, but you get the drift, right? If I know what pleases you, I can enslave you. If I know what displeases you, I can again enslave you. And that is the great danger in being emotionally reactive. You are predictable, and if you are predictable, you are controllable. Do you get this?
Don't you see how even little kids try to fool their mothers? "Mama, the food is great today. Mama, can I have 500 rupees?" Now, the father had refused even 100 rupees, but this rascal manages to squeeze 500 from the mother. "Mama, the food is great," and the mama says, "Okay, you take 500."
Those who have known what womanhood means have had tremendous respect for women. The topmost Hindi author, Premchand, he used to say that when men evolve beyond a point, it's then that they acquire some feminine qualities. Otherwise, men remain inferior to women. And therefore, it is an even bigger tragedy that such a fine creature, the woman, such a fine specimen of evolution, has lived a life of continuous deprivation and slavery just because she has been too emotional and too reactive, ready to shed tears at the drop of a hat.
Why must you weep so often? Not that tears are a problem. I too weep quite frequently, and it's, it's, it's, there's nothing problematic in that. But there has to be some discretion. You must know where those tears are coming from. No?
Remember, if there is an animal sitting in the woman, there is a bigger animal sitting in the man. And that animal is bloodthirsty and bigger, and he'll eat you up. He'll tear you apart. And that's what he has been doing for centuries.
If you remain an animal, the male, remember, is a bigger and more powerful animal. The only way you can beat the male animal is by not remaining an animal. Become a human being. And a human being is not characterized by her reactiveness or emotionality. The mark of a human being is consciousness, understanding, depth, freedom of thought. Animals are supposed to react. Human beings are supposed to understand and then respond. That's the difference between reaction and response.
Response involves understanding.
