Sexual predators within the family || Acharya Prashant (2022)
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~~~~~
Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 15.01.2022, Rishikesh, India
Context:
~How to get rid of sexual abuse?
~How to deal with mental and sexual abuse of the past?
~How to understand sexuality?
~ How to confront sexual predator?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
~~~~~
Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi, 15.01.2022, Rishikesh, India
Context:
~How to get rid of sexual abuse?
~How to deal with mental and sexual abuse of the past?
~How to understand sexuality?
~ How to confront sexual predator?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Transcript
00:00Pranam Acharya ji. So my first question is that it is a personal question like I had
00:15a very bad childhood trauma. It was related to sexual assault and I am still suffering
00:22from that. That vibes come to me again and again and that person is very close to me
00:30and my family and I am not able to tell that to anyone. Still nobody knows that except
00:36me. So yeah, he is again coming in front of me again and again and I feel that pain every
00:44time I see him or I think about that. So my question is that I have a nephew, my sister
00:51or son, 4 year old. So I am seeing that he is facing the same problem. He is going to
00:58face that. He will have nobody to share his problems with which I faced which led to this
01:04assault. And he is going to face that problem because his parents are same. Not that much
01:12understanding how my parents are. So I just wanted to ask that how to get the strength
01:19to bear this and how to help him and other kids also to not face this problem.
01:34See it is good that in the beginning itself you realize that it is not something limited
01:47or particular to you. You can immediately see that such a thing afflicts many others
01:57and very immediately it is probably going to affect your nephew. Now broaden the scope
02:13of this understanding a little more. It is going to affect millions of other kids and
02:26children and teens and preteens. There are so many who are going to be affected by it.
02:36And once you realize that two things happen. One, your sense of having been personally
02:50assaulted diminishes greatly. You realize it is a phenomena, not a personal event. It
03:01is a general thing, not something specific to you. So that feeling of hurt within diminishes
03:12greatly. Secondly, there arises a solid sense of responsibility. It happened with you, it
03:26is happening with so many others and with your personal experience you realize it should
03:32not happen. Something has to be done about it and because it is not something unique
03:39to you or particular to you, therefore the action has to be general in nature. If the
03:47action has to be general in nature, you need to first of all put your finger on what the
03:51general problem is. The general problem, not the problem in your family or in the family
03:58in the neighborhood or in one particular family in some other city. It's not about unique
04:07instances. It's about the general problem. What is it that makes a human being do such
04:16a thing to another human being? What is it that makes such a thing a possibility in every
04:26second household? We know the numbers, they are very staggering. We also know that the
04:33reported numbers are way below the actual ones. And we also know that progress in science
04:45technology and education is not really leading to any kind of reduction in this tendency
04:56and such happenings. In fact, it is possible that such happenings might actually be increasing
05:04over the years, even as human beings become more prosperous, more educated and more technologically
05:14equipped. So, that is what is happening. On the external front, you realize that we
05:23are more powerful than ever. Human beings today are taller than ever. The average weight
05:34is probably more than it ever was in our history. The prosperity levels are higher than they
05:40ever were. The average lifespan is longer than it ever was. In the developed world,
05:52almost 100% population is literate. Even in India, literacy levels are exceeding 80% now.
06:06And there is so much power that all of us have at our hands. And yet we find that internally
06:17we are exploitative. We are slaves to our animal instincts. We find occasions to exploit
06:32others in all kinds of ways, sexual, economic, emotional. And the moment there is an opportunity,
06:43we jump at it. All we need to have is someone who is vulnerable and we don't let go of the
06:52chance. So, what is really happening? And can these things be looked at in isolation?
07:03Are they not part of a general pattern related to the human consciousness? Look at flesh
07:15consumption for example. The number of animals being butchered every day today for human
07:24consumption now runs into billions. Can you even come to terms with that? Billions of
07:40living beings being butchered to satisfy our taste buds every day. And is it too much
07:49to see how that is a part of the same pattern that leads to exploitation of little human
08:01beings within the family or in the school or at some other place? Isn't the tendency
08:10to exploit just the same? You have a small thing at your home, four-year-old, that small
08:18thing could be your son, your daughter, your nephew, your niece, a small living being,
08:27a small helpless vulnerable living being and you exploit her and you have a small animal.
08:39It could be a hen, a duck, a lamb and you slaughter it to feed your senses. Are these
08:48two events really dimensionally different from each other? They belong to the same level,
08:59they are part of the same pattern and the same problem. Are you getting it? And with
09:11human beings becoming more powerful technologically, economically, the little being at home is
09:23even more staggeringly at the mercy of the grown-ups because it is the grown-ups that
09:31have all the power. The little one does not know technology, the little one has no idea
09:37of his or her rights, the little one is absolutely at the mercy of everybody else and these grown-ups,
09:46they have so much today, they never had so much in history, they can do anything.
09:55Don't you see how human consciousness and the corruption within it is manifesting itself
10:04in a hundred ways and sexual exploitation of vulnerable sections is just one way this
10:15corruption is manifesting itself and that you cannot take care of the problem of childhood
10:25sexual trauma unless you take care of the problem of consciousness itself. Obviously,
10:34we can have more stringent laws, we can educate our populations better and deeper, we can
10:44do a lot of things to try to curb this menace. You could have CCTVs in schools and there
10:55are so many other things you can do, you can start teaching good touch and bad touch even
11:02to three-year-olds, you can do all these things. But even as I speak of it, I am sure you are
11:08sensing that this won't work to a great extent, because to what extent can you monitor the
11:16life of a three-year-old or a six-seven-year-old, it's not humanly possible.
11:27So while all those things surely must be done, laws must be more stringent, the execution
11:37has to be rapid and objective and as much care as is possible must be taken, but we
11:50must also know that this problem does not arise from lax laws, this problem arises from
11:58as we said the corruption of human consciousness. Around eight years back I was talking to college
12:08students like you and I said rapists we all are. If you search for that video or that
12:16article on the net, you will find it, rapists we all are. So it's the same thing. We don't
12:24understand that these things are not about a particular kind of conduct against a particular
12:31individual. The way our civilization is progressing or deteriorating, the way we are being conditioned
12:45or cultured, the problem lies there. We have been told and we are continuously being told
12:55that the purpose of life is pleasure and happiness. If that is the highest that you can have in
13:04life, why must you not be prepared to pay any price for it, tell me please. If your
13:12culture, your conditioning, your education, your media, your family, your school, your
13:17entire environment is telling you that you exist to be happy, then why must you not do
13:25things that make you happy. If the entire world economy is running on the back of forced
13:35consumption, then why must you not internally become a consumer and nothing else. Who am
13:46I? I am a consumer. Whatsoever I can lay my hands on, I'll consume it and consumption
13:53is happiness. Happiness is the purpose of life and consumption is the way to get happiness.
14:04So, I spot a vulnerable four-year-old in my home and I'll go and consume her because that
14:14gives me happiness. The only morality is to be happy. That's what we are being told.
14:23I'm getting it. Of course, of course, of course, I mean, there would be people who will say,
14:28no, no, one has all the right to be happy, but we must also respect the rights of others
14:32and such things. So, do you respect the rights of other living beings when you exploit them
14:41and kill them? Look at the forest cover of the earth, how much of it remains? Look at
14:52all these climate change conferences, look at the charade there, look at how we fool
14:58ourselves. Are we really concerned at all about the very disappearance of species? Biodiversity
15:09is all but gone. So, many species are either extinct or critically endangered. Are we worried
15:19about them? And we choose leaders who choose to be silent on these issues.
15:27So, the common man cares for nothing but his or her consumption and that includes both
15:34men and women. All we want is consumption. Let the planet go to hell. Let all the species disappear.
15:44If entire species can be condemned to be extinct, why will somebody spare your nephew?
15:55We are talking of entire species, they would be gone forever. Your nephew is just one little
16:04person. Why would somebody care for him? When we haven't been taught to care for anything,
16:15when a very very wrong kind of philosophy has been fed into us, when spirituality has
16:21been purposefully kept away from our lives. What else do you expect? Please tell me.
16:34So, there would be a thousand muted sobs at every place, at every corner. A thousand sobs,
16:45but I said all muted ones because we are supposed to be externally happy, because happiness
16:51is the purpose of life. Please be happy. Please be well made up. Please put up a smiling face.
17:01You are not supposed to look unhappy, irrespective of whether you have been brutalized, exploited,
17:09irrespective of whether you have been subject to the grossest kind of abuse. Even if you
17:17are depressed, your depression has to be a fascinating glamorous story worth selling.
17:25Yeah, so as you had covered it and my follow-up question was that only as you talk about veganism
17:32and you converted me to vegan. I was also non-vegetarian before I met you. It had been
17:39one year since I started watching your videos and now I've turned vegan so hard and I'm
17:45trying to convert other people also. But as you also said that we don't care about others.
17:53So, I also read news far away that a nine-month-old girl was raped. So, I was just astonished
18:02like how can somebody do that? A nine-month-old baby, she would be so cute and so lovable.
18:09So, we don't even understand the feelings of humans. How would we be understanding the
18:14feelings of animals? So, it is really difficult for me to make people understand that okay
18:20animals also have some feelings. They don't even understand our feelings. So, that was
18:25also my one question. It goes hand in hand. If you look at YouTube or other forms of social
18:35media, you will find thousands of very popular videos relating to recipes coming from tender
18:49lamb or tender goat. So, you take a kid that's what two months, four months, six months old
19:02and its flesh is supposed to be especially luscious and tender and you want to sever it.
19:14Now, do you see how it is not impossible for us to rape a nine-month-old girl? Do you see this?
19:22Flesh is flesh. Flesh is flesh. We don't realize that. We think that it is possible to operate
19:30in fragments. We think that it is possible to be cruel towards a three-month-old lamb
19:38and be compassionate towards a nine-month-old girl. No, it is not possible because the human
19:44psyche does not work like that. Once cruel, always cruel. Cruel towards one person, cruel
19:52towards entire humanity and cruel towards yourself. If you are being taught exploitation
20:03and cunningness in one dimension of your life, you will exercise that in all areas, all dimensions
20:12of your life. If you are corrupt in office, you will be corrupt even at home, even though
20:18you may not want to admit it or you may not want to be consciously corrupt, but you will
20:22find that you are corrupt anyway, irrespective of what you think about it.
20:27So, that's the fundamental problem and if that is the fundamental problem, we also know
20:34the fundamental solution. We'll have to be made human. We are born animals and the way
20:44to be human is to be educated in a spiritual way. I very well know that sounds very old
20:56fashion to you young people, but there is no other way. You require wisdom literature,
21:03you require Vedanta, you require Upanishads, else we'll be a people of these thousand muted
21:13sobs. We are already that. It has to have a bearing on the way our economy is, our social
21:28structures are, our education is, our politics is. All of this is just devoid of any spiritual
21:37base. If your economics is not founded on spirituality, it will be an economics that
21:49will involve selling of not goods or materials, but trade in human beings themselves. You'll
22:02be able to, you'll be ready to sell anything for your greed and for your happiness. You'll
22:13be prepared to sell others off and you'll be prepared to auction your own life.
22:23I also wanted to say that I'm a very emotional type of person. So, before one year, I didn't
22:39know this all that much. I had left some kind of knowledge, but I was eating eggs type of
22:46thing, vegetarian. But then I was not exposed to these cruelties and all these. But when I came
22:54in contact with you, then I started watching and I also watched some videos, very cruel to that
23:00slaughterhouses and all. And then now whenever I see anyone eating even egg, because my family
23:07members are all non-vegetarian and they even try to force me to eat, but I don't. But then I lose
23:15my strength after seeing, I start crying and then they mock on me. So, I wanted to ask that, I know
23:21you are also very sensitive person, I've seen many of your videos. So, how to strengthen yourself
23:27when you're exposed to these kinds of things, you're always seeing this all going on to the world.
23:33So, how to strengthen myself? Every act of cruelty and ignorance that you see should tell you how
23:42urgent your task is and how quickly time is running out. The more you are exposed to such
23:53happenings, the deeper should be your inner sense of urgency. Work harder and be more ferocious
24:04in your battle. Don't hold anything back. What are you saving yourself for? Time is running out.
24:17So, when I am exposed to things that involve cruelty, exploitation, ignorance, it hardens
24:29my resolve, it quickens me up, makes me work harder.
24:47Thank you so much. Thank you.