Why we behave like this? (E O M -11)

We shall see the views expressed by Swami Vijnananand when he guided the young seekers of Manashakti in 1990 on the desired direction of the research needed to find the truth behind the process of evolution. The book in Marathi “Apan ase ka vagato” (Why we behave like this?) gives his message. Here are some excerpts from chapter 4 of this book.

We have fear and anger engraved.

Why  fear and anger are engraved in human mind? How are they related to evolution? basically, why should we have a desire to have this body? In the course of evolution, we came to this stage (human body) after wearing a variety of bodies (starting from amoeba to chimpanzee) in the past. We progressed to the human body by the route of evolution.

Sex is the original emotion. But fear and anger are a part of human nature…Unless they were having a contribution in the evolution, fear and anger would have never come trekking along with the living being. They survived only because they were basically needed…Even rage is a tool of evolution.

How is rage related for the survival of the fittest? The one who was mighty, survived. Nature itself has the rule - might is right. Then to be powerful than others, rage is required. We started to get revolutionized because of fear.

What is evolution? The transformation which took place in the living organisms is evolution. Darwin has stated that the meeting with Nature approval is proved by fight. The minute scripts or the portions of evolution should be understood well. They should be studied in deep.

Desire (according to the nature leads to)  Efforts (with fear/anger which leads to)  Victory or Defeat – this is the way the chain of development takes shape. So-called evolution is depending on human desire.

In that chain, we used fear and anger as protective armors in the beginning. But they become harmful later as other feelings and shades of nature got mixed in.

I will tell you, how anger got associated with evolution. The perspective in evolution being ‘survival of the fittest’, human beings had to struggle for living. This meant that they had to fight. In fear and anger, in both the places a fight - latent and evident- was the only difference...

There is basically a paradox (in life). It is there in laughter and tears, in fear and anger, in functionary and sensory organs, and in the inborn nature and in the one born out of experience… Though all of these are getting integrated, still, if you try to find the root of all this, you will have to go to evolution only. If you try to explore the minutest seed, then as your forms of mind went on playing with matter in the course of evolution, as you went on taking one incarnation after another – you will find the root of that manifestation of your nature, hidden somewhere in evolution. If that would be found in evolution, then the question that you will have in mind is, - has that been proved so far?

 We shall try to establish that link.

As you are all the time surrounded by some emotion, you are using motion at every moment – you either utilize it in the right manner or the wrong one. If utilized properly, then it gives good results in the material form at least. We call that as progress. When it has an ill effect we call that as downfall. But do the effects of this motion linger on in our personality, our body, our mind? You will have a question whether such a process really exists in reality. Then yes, there is indeed such a process.

It has not only happened in the present stage of the evolution but you have accumulated various experiences in your entire journey of evolution. Utilizing these experiences cumulatively, you were born. It is a truth that your nature was carved out of this. At the same time to prove this truth, you have to prove one more truth -- that, such a process exists in your life, it is in your anatomy, and we will have to arrive at it again. This way the thread which leads us to evolution will be woven correctly, joining the contemporary with the past history.

Comments: The process of epigenetics says that the behavior at any moment in the life is the cumulative effect of nature and nurture. The process starts at the stage of conception but even the period of preconception can't be ruled out. S. V. states that the process started from the moment life started on the earth when mind got associated with matter. The desire to associate of course is the property of mind.

Vijay R. Joshi.