What is the source of fear? || Acharya Prashant (2018)
Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, what is the source of fear?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Before I begin, I’ll like to tell you a small story. I just mentioned all the big animals that went extinct when man first reached Australia from Indonesia; that’s how Australia got colonized. Man reached Indonesia, and then from there, man reached Australia. Do you know how those animals got obliterated? They looked at man and they said, “Oh, a small being.” And that small being killed them all, one by one. Before they could know that this small being was a dangerous one, they were all gone.
Animals rely on conditioned instincts for survival, so if animals have been in touch with man for long, then they get conditioned in an evolutionary way to look at man and quickly run away. But if you meet an animal that evolution has kept distant from you, separate from you for millions of years, then that animal has no time to develop fear.
The same kind of animals did not get extinct in Africa or Asia because there, those animals had come up along with man, and the long evolutionary journey together had told them that man is dangerous. So, it got into their DNA, right into their DNA, that ‘look at man and run away’ . but when man reached Australia, the animals were just not afraid of man. So, what happened? They were killed because they were not afraid. They were seeing that the fellow animal was getting killed and still it was not getting into their bodies that they must run away, so they got killed.
That you know then is the function of fear, that is why man experiences fear. Fear is inbuilt in the body. Fear comes to you because of your evolutionary journey, and fear was needed in order to survive physically, in order to survive physically. But, you also see that evolution is a laggard, evolution does not respond quickly to environmental changes.
If the temperature of the earth increases by 5°C in, let’s say, 50,000 years, then it would be far less threatening. Why? – Because life on earth will get some time. 50,000 years is not a great deal of time, but at least some time life on earth would get to adapt to the temperature increase, and if it could take 50 million years, then nobody would be threatened because everybody would acclimatize nicely. But if the same change happens in a mere 200 years or 500 years, then everybody would be gone because evolution is a very slow learner, its learning is slow, and now I come to the point – its unlearning is equally slow.
So, if evolution has taught you to be afraid of something, it does not unteach you to not be afraid of that thing when the fear is gone. Evolution taught you to be afraid of nights. Even a little kid, freshly born, would be afraid of being lonesome in the night. That’s what evolution has taught you because in the nights, one of your important faculties went useless. Which faculty? – The vision. So, defending yourself for the problem; you could not see properly. So, man then is biologically conditioned to be afraid of the dark. But, evolution has not learned that man now has electricity since the last few hundred years.
Evolution taught you to be afraid, but evolution is not revising its lessons.
So, even though electricity has arrived, man is still afraid of the dark. We saw how the Australian marsupials, etc. disappeared. Why did they disappear? – Because evolution was not teaching them fast enough, it was not getting into their body to be quickly afraid of man. So, one generation was not afraid of man and it got killed, and the next generation was again not afraid of man and got killed, and then the next generation, which was fewer in number, again was not afraid of man and got killed. They were not learning fear and that was the problem. And in our case, we have learned fear and are not unlearning fear, that is the problem. They got killed because they could not learn fear, we are getting killed because we cannot unlearn fear. In both cases, evolutionary laziness is the culprit.
Evolution is such a lazy mover, and you can’t even call it lazy. You see, evolution moves over great time spans, great time spans. You move over a maximum of a hundred years, so obviously you appear faster. In your case, everything gets done and cleaned up in a matter of a maximum of a hundred years. For evolution, a hundred years is nothing. Evolution takes a hundred thousand years, are you getting it?
So, you have learnt fear, that’s what evolution has taught you. Is fear useful anymore? That is the question to be asked, but that question can be asked only when first of all you know who you are. If you are completely one with the whims of the body, then the body is going to follow evolution, and therefore you are also going to be as lazy as evolution. Please understand, whom does the body follow? Body follows evolution, and if you are one with the body, then you will be as lazy and as big a laggard as evolution. You will be afraid of stuff that you should not be afraid of and you’ll have no fear towards stuff that you should be rightfully afraid of. Remember all the extinct species Alok(addressing the questioner). They simply didn’t respond to fear fast enough, and it works both ways, we have seen – you have to learn fear quickly and you also have to unlearn fear quickly.
Intelligence does not lie in letting the body do what it must do, intelligence does not lie in letting Prakṛti do what it wants to do. That might be true for an animal; that is not true for human beings. When a rabbit runs away from, let’s say, a jackal, that is an intelligent action in the rabbit’s domain, because the rabbit’s intelligence is bound to be limited to Prakṛti. The rabbit has no ‘Ātman’ available to itself. For the rabbit, the best option is to just follow its conditioned impulses. Even that though might lead to its extinction like the Australian marsupials.
So, the rabbit knows that it must run away the moment it sees an alien being, which means that even if I’m trying to help a squirrel, it will run away from Acharya Prashant. But that’s the best that the rabbit or squirrel can do and that’s what they often do. Even when I’m trying to help, they want to run away. So, that kind of thing suits an animal the most. Actually, it does not always help even an animal, right? Think of what would happen to that squirrel if she had managed to actually run away from me thinking that I’m a fearsome object. So, no intelligence lies in living as per Prakṛti ; in fact, if you’re responding to fear as per Prakṛti , then you are just an unintelligent animal.
What is intelligence? Intelligence is to see and see very quickly, not in a lazy way like evolution; see very very quickly, see very very instantaneously that it is nothing but the body at play. But, that you cannot just see when you are at the scene of the gunpoint robbery as you have mentioned. If it is not your way of life, then it won’t happen even when you are at the site of a heist or a murder or something. You have to look at yourself responding in a physical way, throughout the day and then when fear arrests you, you’ll be able to see that too. And if you’re not seeing it throughout the day, then you’ll not be able to see it even when there’s a dire situation.
You are in front of food and you see how your body wants to lunge towards food. And do you know why the body wants to lunge towards food? Especially, let’s say, sweetmeats or high calorie items? Why? – Because evolution taught it to, because the survival of the body is dependent greatly on the brain and the brain consumes 10-25% of the body’s energy. The body wants to have just energy and energy comes from calories, not proteins or vitamins. Even today when are you declared dead? – When the brain is dead. So, the body wants to preserve the brain the most and the brain requires a lot of energy. Even when you’re sitting idle, but thinking, then a lot of calories are being burnt. The brain wants calories and calories.
Just as a survival trick, the body is attracted towards high calorie food and it says, “Just gulp it down in one go.”
There is another reason – whenever high calorie food was available, let’s say, you come to a mango tree and there are four mangoes, if you don’t take them down immediately, they won’t be available. You cannot store them, there were no fridges and also there was a lot of competition. The monkey was your nearest competitor. Four mangoes, your tribe, the other tribe and so many monkeys, so what did he want to do? Eat as quickly and as many as possible. Now they are in, now nobody can take them away. So, the body learnt to accumulate fat.
You know, the body does not accumulate anything else too much. If you take in a lot of vitamins, they will be excreted out. The body does not learn to store them; the body uses them rightly, but cannot store them beyond a point. Similarly, minerals, salts—the body cannot store them beyond a point, they are flushed out; but fats, the body says, “More, more and more” and stores them till you become 200 kilograms. And when you become 200 kilograms, the body says, “Give me more of them.”
That is an evolutionary thing, you must see it happen.
You must see it happen right in the instant when you are attracted towards the scent of saturated fat, right then, “Oh, this is not me, this is the old orangutan.
This is not me, it’s him. And evolution is so lazy that it is not helping me unlearn what the orangutan had learnt. And if I don’t unlearn, then what will happen to me? I’ll go down the path of Australian marsupial. He remained wedded to evolution and was finished off. If I too remain wedded to evolution, then I too will be finished off.” What is it to remain wedded to evolution? To remain wedded to the…?
Questioner (Q): Body
Acharya Prashant (AP): Because the body is— evolution. To remain wedded to the body is to remain wedded to the lazy and lousy teachings of evolution. Those teachings are past their expiry date. They are not useful anymore, not at all useful; but we are still living by those teachings. Now you will have an alternate definition of religion. Religion is to not to live by the teachings of evolution, that is religion.
Most people live only by the teachings of one guru and the guru’s name is ‘Prakṛti’ , evolution. The religious man is one who has a different teacher. “I will not do what evolution has taught me, let me do something else.” You’ll also know why man is particularly wedded to thought. Man’s brain is very large; man’s brain is very very large compared to his body, what else will the brain do? If you have a large stomach, what will it do?
Questioner (Q): Eat
Acharya Prashant (AP): It will eat more. If you have a large brain, what will it do?
Questioner (Q): Think
Acharya Prashant (AP): So, thinking too is just a lesson that evolution has given you. Intelligence, therefore, is not about thinking more. And let it break the hearts of all the intellectuals. The more you think, the more you are proving yourself like the Australian marsupial, soon you’ll be extinct. You are just doing what evolution has taught you, evolution has given you a big brain and you’re always thinking.
Now, let me test you – Can you stop thinking? If you can’t stop thinking, then you are a prisoner of thinking. Just as a fat man cannot stop eating, you cannot stop…?
Questioner (Q): Thinking
Acharya Prashant (AP): So, both are doing what their bodies are commanding them to do. He is driven by his stomach, this one is driven by his brain. Both are driven by the body. Intelligence lies in seeing this game of the body happen continuously. And if you can see that, then even in the moment of the robbery or other dangers, you’ll be able to differentiate between lousy action, as dictated by evolution, and right action, as dictated by intelligence.
You see, had you been still a jungle dweller, then it would have been alright to be driven by the body. Evolution was very very right and evolution was a very commendable teacher till the time you were living in the jungle because everything that evolution has taught you has helped you survive the jungle. Evolution has been a great friend; the only problem is – you have moved ahead too fast. You have moved ahead of evolution just too fast; just too fast and you have come too far. And evolution is moving at its own snail pace.
Don’t you see how far you have come? Compare yourself to a chimpanzee; now, you are a man and a chimpanzee is a chimpanzee, but your basic instincts are still that of the…?
Questioner (Q): Chimpanzee
Acharya Prashant (AP): Now how will there be a fit? You are reading Krishnamurti, the chimpanzee is chewing at those juicy leaves; but if your basic instincts are just like those of the chimpanzee, then you’ll be thinking of chewing the paper while reading Krishnamurti because all that the chimpanzee is evolutionarily trained to do is chew. So, even when you’re reading Krishnamurti, you’ll want to chew the paper. Have you not seen that happen with kids 3 or 4 years old when they start going to school? Some of them chew their books because that’s what young chimps are supposed to do – chew, chew it throughout the day. So, unfortunately for you, you have moved ahead, you have shot ahead of evolution with great speed.
Evolution is now standing there(indicating with hands). But, you are not prepared to give up the lessons that evolution taught you.
Most of that which human beings do today is still driven by man’s evolutionary instincts. Sex, greed, fear, attachment – all of these are evolutionary traits.
If you can see how you and the monkey are exactly the same as far as sex, fear, lust and attachment are concerned, you’ll probably not want to show down the monkey. The monkey is at least right in its place. Monkeys need all those things to survive. The monkey needs attachment, the monkey needs fear; and therefore all that is right if the monkey exhibits it. But, you do not need all those things and you’re still carrying them, so you are the real monkey.
The monkey needs to be afraid of the night, so if the monkey is afraid of the night, it is good for him. Man does not need to be afraid of the night, but man is still afraid of the night because the monkey within the man exists and is too slow to go away. You know how slow he is? Evolution causes changes at a very feeble pace, it takes millions of years. Are you prepared to wait millions of years? And millions of years will be needed only if your progress is stopped in its tracks where it is today.
The difference between your intellectual position and your evolutionary position is increasing day by day. So, technology is giving you great stuff, but you are responding to it in a chimpanzee way. So, here you have these cameras, wonderful things, but what do you do with this? What do you do with this technology? You do all the monkey stuff with this technology. What’s worse? A lot of this technology is created by nothing but the monkey instinct. Please understand this. Intellect is giving you this technology, right? So, what is obvious is that the monkey within is only doing monkey things with the technology, but what’s worse is that a lot of that technology is arising only from the monkeyness.
So, the issue of fear has to be rightly understood. Physical survival is necessary, but the kind of fears that we experience won’t even help us survive physically. The snake is inside its little box or cage, you know, zoo, and you are still shivering; how is that helping your survival? Is that? A little baby snake 8 inches long is surrounded by 30 people and they are killing it, how is that helping your survival?
Jealousy, for example, is very much something that evolution taught you and you needed it, especially jealousy in gender relations, the man-woman stuff. It was needed; it was a survival tool when man was a chimp. You go to chimpanzees, they have jealousy. In fact, you visit animals, and whatsoever it is that you find common between yourself and animals is the stuff that you should be very cautious of. Man must observe animals and whatever you see the animal exhibiting is something that you should be very cautious of. Animals have a lot of jealousy. Jealousy is a survival tool.
Animals have a lot of attachment, animals compete, animals are violent, animals even deceive each other. All these are survival tools. Animals monopolize areas, animals have escape and defense mechanisms. All these are needed for physical survival. My question to you Alok(questioner) is – Do you need these things really for your survival, even physical survival? I’m not talking of inner survival; even for your physical survival, do you really need all these things? If you don’t need all these things, why are you harboring them, nurturing them? Why?
The chimpanzee needs these things, let the chimpanzee have them; you don’t need these things, throw them away! As far as evading a physical danger is concerned, I don’t know whether the evolutionary tricks that you learnt in the jungle will help you in today’s metropolitan USA. In the jungle one evolutionary trick is sufficient – See danger, run away. In the jungle, what is the evolutionary trick that you have learnt? See danger, avoid danger. Will this trick help you in uptown America? You run away and you are mowed down by a car. You are running away from the robber, and what happens to you? You are mowed down by a car. That was a good trick in the jungle, not anymore. Why do you want to deploy that trick even today?
So, evolutionary tricks are useless as far as mental peace is concerned and I’m asserting that they are useless even in terms of ensuring physical survival. Your physical survival will not be facilitated by your conditioned bodily behavior. In fact, your conditioned evolutionary behavior is causing you heart disease. Where is all the cholesterol coming from? Your conditioned evolutionary behavior is not giving you even physical safety.
There is nothing called ‘fearlessness’. You must have intelligent fear. If you have no fear, then you’ll meet the fate of the Australian marsupials; and if you have misplaced fear, then you’ll be afraid for no reason. You must have intelligent fear. Now, what is intelligent fear?
Intelligent fear is when a Kabir Sahab tells you to be afraid of losing the one thing that cannot be lost, and yet man loses it again and again.
That is the rightful fear, be afraid of that; that’s a good fear to have. (repeats) In other cases, use the intellect. Why use hormones where you can use your brain? Somebody is standing in front of you with a pointed pistol, what should you use – hormones or brain? Or should you start dancing in fear?
Now that the brain and intellect have brought you to America, America is a product of intellect, is it not? Now that the intellect has brought you to America, let intellect tell you how to defend yourself in America. Hormones will not tell you. Or do you want to survive in America by using the survival tools of the chimpanzee? Hello? Do you want to survive in America using the survival tools of the chimpanzee? That won’t help you. So, at least use intellect when it comes to physical survival. There, fear is not needed, what is needed? – Intellect. And fear impedes even intellect.
There is a biological reason – when there is a rush of hormones in the body, fear-related hormones in the body, fear-related chemicals in the body, then the kind of impulses that are needed for the intellect to operate, they cannot operate. So, when fear is there, then your intellect will get subdued, and there is a purely biological, chemical reason for that.
So, instead of biological fear, have intellect; and after that, I’m saying, “See who you are.” And there is one intelligent fear that you must have. That is the only rightful fear. The answer to biological fear is intellect. Biological fear is not valid. Use the brain to get out of the situation, don’t use your hormones.
Be afraid of that which you are really losing. All other things are anyway not worth keeping a record of.
