Excitement is a programmed pattern

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant: We do not just get excited about anything; we get excited only about that which we have taught ourselves to get excited about. So excitement is always a furtherance of the existing patterns. The body is, for example, born sexual. The body is born with the programming that certain things would be titillating, certain organs and zones in the body would be erogenous. You know what would be exciting, similarly if you’ve been conditioned to be a particular way, the way itself decides what you find as exciting.

If you are a Catholic or Brahmin or Muslim or whatever, then is it not already certain what is going to excite you. So excitement is just furtherance of one’s biologically or socially acquired patterns.

Becalming is something very-very different, you cannot know what is going to be-calm you, you can only know what would trouble you. But if you already know what is going to soothe you then you’re not being soothed, you’re just being given a pre-determined relief.

If you’re for example very tensed or nervous, you can pop a pill and that pill can appear to give you relief but then just as you’re biologically programmed to get excited, you’re equally biologically programmed to feel relieved by the action of certain chemicals. That is nothing to do with truth, that is not real peace, it’s just a game of those patterns, patterns getting excited and patterns getting relief as another form of excitement.

Real calmness, real peace is not when the patterns are excited or when the patterns contract a little. Excitement and relief are just pulsation of patterns. Excitement-relief, excitement-relief, the same thing is pulsating.

Real calmness is when the patterns breakdown, the thing that used to throb and pulsate is no more there. The pattern is no more there, the pattern itself is gone now, who is there to get excited, who is there to benefit from relief.

Not only do we know what would excite us, entire market know what would excite us. It’s so very programmed and programmable. Every advertiser knows how you can be brought to feel excited. They know how to make you feel excited about certain thing they want to sell. It’s so…