With IIT Delhi: The animal inside us — what to do with it?

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

Questioner (Q): Earlier you were talking of our current systems being a whitewashed extension of what already exists in the jungle. My question is, if the animal nature is so innate, natural and core to the human experience, then does one need to embrace it and perhaps enhance it in one’s everyday life? Or should one tame it, harness it, and mold it in a way that makes us a human and different from animals?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Lovely question. You see, this is really the only spiritual question possible: what to do with Prakṛti (physical nature)? That which you are calling as one’s innate nature, classically we just call it Prakṛti. Prakṛti exists both outside us in the form of the jungle we referred to, and it exists in our person as well. This body and all its systems, they too are prakṛtik, right?

Now, that’s the question — what to do with it? You can’t live without it, and you can’t live with it as it is. So, who are you? That’s classically called as the Puruṣa. Puruṣa refers to consciousness. And what is everything that you can experience, perceive, think of, talk of, mandate? That is called as Prakṛti. Whatever you can lay your hands on, whatever your eyes can look at, that is called as Prakṛti…