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…