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Prem Rawat:
Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all doing well, safe and well.
So, today I get to answer some questions—and the first one is from Carme Montlleo. The question is, “You started talking about the authentic nature of the human being. You interrupted the explanation”—I probably got carried away and got into something else. “Since then, the longing in my heart remains to know what you would tell us. Would you tell us about it?”
So, the authentic nature of the human being—it’s a very interesting question because, you know, we come across so much of what we consider, what we would consider “the nature” to be—mean, selfish, anger, you know, and all these things that taint what, how you see a human being.
But what if all that was to be removed and the only thing that remained was truly what the nature of a human being is? Now, am I talking in terms of “hypothetical” or “realistic?”
So, what is the possibility here; let’s first understand that. Well, yes, there is anger—but then there is the opposite of anger. And does that reside in a human being? Compassion, love, understanding—and the answer to that is “yes, that resides in a human being too.” And then, so what about fear? Well, the opposite of that also resides in the human being—which is courage.
And seeing—when you see a baby, a child that is uncontaminated, that hasn’t learnt all these other behaviors, then that child is very much focused and very much in that beautiful space of wanting to be happy, of wanting to be content. And it only cries out when something isn’t right. And when something is right, the child stops.
When the child wants to explore, when they come to that age where they will be exploring, they explore. And they show their delight in a tremendous amount of energy that they have to expend to try to grab something, to try to hold onto something. But yet, a joy in having accomplished it.
So, to me, when we start to look at those traits that naturally would be—then the behavior, you know, the nature, the authentic nature of a human being would very much be those things.
That a human being would strive, every moment that the human being could, to be fulfilled, to be in that simple place. To see, to admire everything. Because when you admire something, it gives you something in return.
When you sit down on a beach and you watch those waves rhythmically coming, going, coming, going.... the sets of them, too, and then it’s kind of taking a break and then the next set comes. And then the dance of the sandpipers, that as they just come along, run with the wave, the timing of everything that exists....
And every time I get an opportunity to see this, I find it extremely hypnotic. Because it’s like, “Wow, everything understands everything else’s timing and yields to it.” So then, this would be the human nature, yielding to what it cannot conquer. What it doesn’t want to conquer, it yields, gives, lets it be—and it’s fine.
You see the huge waves coming—especially in Northern California, huge sets of these waves come—and they’re unimpeded; they’ve been traveling unimpeded and they slam across these sheer cliffs. And you’re flying, you know, sometimes, two, three hundred feet high—and those waves want to touch you.
And it’s like, wow, this incredible force—one unrelenting, very, very much so—and the water, the force of the water. And both just having a tussle. Eventually, the water will win. And we can see that in many places. But till it’s there, it is there.
So, the authentic nature of a human being would be kindness, would be the search for joy. For a human being to recognize the beauty and the timing of everything else and yield to that which it cannot change. To know when to bend, and yet, know when to stay stiff—just like a tree.
It is there. But it also knows that when the wind starts to blow, it must yield to that wind if it is to stay there, if it wants to be there.
And this becomes an art; this becomes a real art in all of nature—in all of nature. Nothing overpowers anything.
You know, it goes back, this whole idea of conservation goes back—and even at the time of Mahabharat, where Arjun has a dream and all the creatures of the jungle come to say, “Listen, you’re too good of a, you know, a hunter and you’re wiping us out—please leave. Go somewhere else.”
And this whole idea that “Yeah, human beings could wipe something out....” That’s not in our nature; that wouldn’t benefit us. What would benefit us is to take care of those things and make sure that those things keep on perpetuating.
So, basically, the authentic nature of a human being would be, one, very natural, full of kindness, full of understanding. And full of helping all that that could use the help—and yielding to that that doesn’t need any help.
So I hope, (I have tried to put it as briefly as I can), I hope that helps. That that’s the way I see the nature of a human being. Yes, I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, not acknowledging the bad nature of the human being; that’s there too. But what I am doing is, while I acknowledge the bad nature, I also acknowledge the good nature of a human being. And that is there.
And that needs to be accepted and that is the one that needs to be perpetuated, not the bad one. We know how to perpetuate the bad one. We’re masters at it. We’ve been doing it for so many years, we’ve actually become very, very efficient and very, very good at taking the bad and perpetuating the bad. And we sometimes forget about the good.
And how is that good brought forth? It’s really simple, you know—but how do you bring something good out in a child? Let that child participate with you in the process of discovery, rather than sitting there and trying to tell the child what it is that they should or should not be doing. Let them come up with the solutions; let them come up with the answers.
If you give them enough trust—it takes a little time—but once they understand that you do trust them, that their input is valuable, then they come up with valuable input for you, for themselves, a clearer understanding. So I hope—I hope that helps you.
Another question from Kala in New Zealand—and this is, “How do I stay in the present in my day-to-day activities? Is it something I have to work at or does it come naturally?” Well, here is the beauty of it.
If you would have made living consciously—and exercised it a long time ago, it would be coming to you naturally. But instead, what we have worked on—and maybe, maybe our world is such that we don’t have a choice—but what we have actually worked on is to live unconsciously. And what comes as second nature is to live unconsciously.
If we want to live consciously, then we have to make it our second nature by practice, practice, practice, practice, and practice. It took us a long time, years and years of practice, of exercising unconsciousness. It’s going to take some practice to live life consciously.
But obviously, to live life consciously there is a reward. And, you know, this is what it means. It’s not like.... Every, every day, I think everybody has this target thing of, it’s like, “I want to hit that level; I want to hit that threshold.”
But there are certain things in life that don’t have that threshold. You practice living consciously every day of your life, little, by little, by little and by little. You accept the success and you accept the failure. That is living consciously. It’s not just about all success and no failure; it is about accepting both success and failure. And then that conscious living makes sense.
If somebody is trying to achieve this, you know, the “printer” thing, printing a picture saying, “Yeah, okay, you know, one day you will be perfect.” No, you understand that you are perfect. And it is not some definition of perfectness that has been painted by somebody else that makes you perfect.
What makes you perfect is, with your shortcomings and with your fundamental desire to want to do good, to want to be happy, to want to be in peace, this is what makes you complete; this is what makes you perfect—with your imperfection. Not without your imperfection, but with your imperfection. And so, I hope that that helps, because that’s just how it is in my experience.
Another one from Ana Rosales, “How to keep the peace within us if we are seeing how a few benefit from the destruction of others—we are the united ones that are destroyed.”
Well, that’s an interesting question—because it is true. A system has been created in which few have the power over many. This did not happen overnight; this happened slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly—we let people be empowered; we gave them that empowerment.
We gave officials that power. Then they used that power to want to get reelected again, so whoever could get them, could help them get reelected—a little more powerful than them, see?
So, there are those ones who are powerful because they are in the government; then there are those who are more powerful than them—and they help those people who want to come into power and they help those who want to be more powerful.
And so, all of a sudden, it’s just like a race—and in that, you know, you have all these contestants who will be dropped out. And the only ones remaining at the very end are the ones that can help each other out. The rest of the population, forget it; they get dropped.
But—why not look at it, “How did it get to be that way?” Very easy. How did it get to be that way? Because we relinquished—we relinquished that power that we had and we gave it to them.
We said, “Run with it. I don’t want to be bothered; I want to have my little life—I am too busy. I’m too busy, you know, taking care of my little family, taking care of my little situation; I don’t want to be bothered with it—so you run with it; you go with it; you do whatever you want to do with it.” Well, all that backfires. And when it backfires, you see what happens. Here is the world.
There are—you know, there are shows—and they show people; they become hoarders; they hoard. They just collect; they collect, collect, and it gets to be to the point where you can’t even walk into their house, because it’s just, they have collected so much junk and never got rid of it, just collected it and collected and collected and collected and collected.
Well, this is what some of the people do, except they do it with money; they hoard it. Every time there is graft, there is bribery, what is that bribery doing? That is taking money from a poor person’s purse, (mouth), and giving it to somebody who doesn’t need it, who doesn’t even probably appreciate it.
So, what we see in this world.... You know, you cannot—I mean, especially now, if you look around in your city and you see clear blue skies and you see everything wonderful.... And next time, when things kind of go back to being normal, (if they ever do), and the sky is full of pollution, don’t blame God for it. Okay, it’s our doing. It’s absolutely our doing.
You think that the earth produces too little food? No, the earth produces more than enough food to feed every person on the face of this earth. If anybody goes hungry, you know whose fault it is? It is our fault. I’m—and mind you, I’m saying “our.” It is not their fault or their fault or their fault; it is our fault.
So, yes, what you’re talking about is absolutely accurate. And we allowed this to happen. We allowed this to happen.
So, next time an opportunity raises itself, brings itself forward, think about it; think twice. How do we relinquish this? We sit down like idiots in front of a television—and consuming everything.... And I call them “brain diggers.” So, they’re brain diggers; they dig into your brain every single day—and they try to tell you, “This is this way; this is this way; this is this way; this is this way.”
A long time ago there used to be one channel—and it was a channel that was used by news agencies and they were just transmitting over it—and there were no comments. And you just saw the drama, whatever the drama was. And it was the most boring thing you could watch.
The next thing you know, you’re watching the same footage; it has been edited; it has been changed; it has been polished; it’s been editorialized....
You know, every morning they sit down and they actually decide what’s, what they consider to be news and what they don’t consider to be news. If it has an element of tragedy, that will get you. So all of a sudden, you’re sitting there and what are you being bombarded by—tragedy, tragedy, tragedy, tragedy.
Somebody actually sent me a link to somebody who has started a channel on YouTube or somewhere, where it’s just all positive news. Well, positive news or negative news—I mean, you know, there are going to be tragedies. (That’s because we make them.)
So you want true, honest opinion; you want to know the truth—and you look to a television and you say, “That’s the truth.” Well, that’s a sad day. You’re not going to get truth out of the tube. You’re not going to get truth on some piece of paper that you are holding in front of you. It’s been highly polished; it’s been highly opinionized.
And more opinion there is and more digging there is and more, you know, taking the screws and doing things with it—makes for a better story, makes for better listening, makes for better watching.
And face it, you know, all that that is there is there to make money. That is their first criteria. And they do; they make money.
So, you know, again, it just really comes down to that the world that we live in, if you don’t like something about it, it’s not like it was handed to you. We have created that situation; we have created that situation. So, I hope that helps. (I don’t know how), but, yeah, and I’m just telling you how I see it, so....
Here is one from Shubham, India, from Delhi, “Sometimes due to this lockdown, I get irritated and furious in small things. How should I manage it?”
I wonder if you get irritated when there wasn’t a lockdown—because I have a sneaky suspicion that this irritation has been going on for a long time—now you’re noticing it more, that you’re in the lockdown because you’re in the same situation again and again and again.
And managing irritation—you can be irritated. And this is living consciously; this is what that’s all about—yes, you can be very irritated. And there are things that can irritate you. Except, what you have to ask yourself is, “Do you, do you want to be irritated?”
So if the things are irritating you, the things are in control, not you. You are not in control; the things are in control. If you don’t want to be irritated, then you will have to be in control, not the things. So, you’re going to have to take control of your life. And that’s what it’s going to take—take control of your life.
So, I hope you all will be safe, be healthy, be well—and most importantly, be. Thank you.
