Evils of human mind and its effects on health

Every human being should know early in life (school or college) that we are hurt, get pain, sorrow and disillusionment in everyday life because of some Evils of Human Mind and Health. In terms of psychological feelings or reactions or responses, human expressions of these senses are sexual desire, anger, greed, infatuation (obsession) and hatred. These are also termed as “five evils” in ancient Indian and Greek classical texts. These are all dangerous vices by any standard if they cross a social limit. If you visit any American website, you will find the following terms: Lust or Strong Sexual Desire (Kaam in Sanskrit), Anger (in Sanskrit Krodh), Greed (in Sanskrit Lobh), Infatuation or Obsession or attachment (Moha in Sanskrit), and hatred or abhorrence (Durmati or strong dislike). If we do not control them, we are called “Beast”. So, we must learn to control these evils for maximizing our Happiness along with our lovable members.

Passion of Men

There is a universal proverb that almost all ruling men on Earth since the dawn of history is guided by three possessions: Women- Wine - Wealth, that is, WWW. For women, there is no such universal maxim. Because most of the recorded history of the world is patriarchal. But for either men and women, the extreme motivation which dominated famous persons in history is “craze for power”. It was true before Gautam Buddha, 2500 years ago; it is true today too, everywhere, Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Latin America. Rulers, except some benevolent persons, are always guided by the motive of “power”. So, we are not going to deal with it here. It is the task of historians. Our discourse here is for general masses, students and youth people across the world, particularly the developing world, who are suffering from misuse of technology and consumerism more than those in developed countries.

What are these Evils?

There are five physiological senses in human bodily feeling, which helps enjoy the human the beauties of worldly life. These are sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These senses or feelings are perceived or felt by the human organs- eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin. These sense organs are also the sources of all vices – whether sexual or non-sexual. The recognizing organs associated with each of these senses send information to the brain to help us understand and perceive the world around us.

In terms of psychological feelings or reactions or responses, human expressions of senses are sexual desire, anger, greed, infatuation (obsession) and hatred. These are also termed as “five evils”. These are all dangerous vices by any standard if they cross a tolerable limit. If you visit any American website, you will find the following (the bracketed words are in Sanskrit):

Lust (Kaam), anger (Krodh) and greed (Lobh) are the worst evils. These have done us no good in the end. They disturb the balance of our mind and soul. Lord Krishna concisely enunciates that lust, anger and greed are the three doors leading directly to Hell. Unreasonable craving for sex will destroy the purity of mind, greed will never let you be satisfied, and anger will drive people away from you. The scientific cause is very simple:

Marginal utility from these pleasures are increasingly diminishing but never reaches zero, so they go on driving you away from normal life and work, as the less and less you get, the more and more you crave.

Hence, we should be extremely vigilant to avoid these three doors and stay far away at a safe distance. Enjoy so long as these are under normal limits.

Let us clarify this one by one.

Sexual Desire

First, if you have extremely high and intense sexual desire, you will invite innumerable crises for you- personal, physical, psychological, social, professional, inter-personal and moral. All these problems will eventually affect your entire existence in your social surroundings such that people will try to avoid you. And your attempt at the enjoyment of sex will immerse you in the ocean of crises from which satisfaction will vanish forever. Moreover, indiscriminate and uncontrolled sex drive may wreak havoc as you are likely to be affected by incurable sexually transmitted diseases. Some such dangerous diseases are chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, crabs, trichomoniasis, HPV, HIV and others. Some of these may be cured but others are fatal. In terms of modern medical science, you may be termed as a sexual pervert person or sex maniac. The disease is called “Lust”. Many people suffer from the psychological disorder as a result of such sexual obsession. Not only males, there are many such female maniacs also, although the proportion is much less. In any case, the life of such people becomes miserable in any society for most phases.

Why some persons become extreme “sex maniac”, while others not?

Being a sex addict is in your genes. Scientists have found that people with a certain genetic make-up have a much stronger sex drive than others. The new research centers on a gene called D4, which is involved in the brain's reaction to the pleasure chemical dopamine Tests on animals have suggested this gene may influence sex drive and arousal. A team from Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University in Israel tested the DNA of 148 male and female students to find variations in the gene. The students were also asked to complete a questionnaire to assess their sex drive. It included questions such as whether they felt aroused when they saw a steamy scene in a film, how often they made love and the frequency that they thought about sex. It emerged that generally, men thought about sex more often than women, however, overall both genders experience similar levels of arousal. People with one particular variation of the D4 gene - around 30 percent of those studied - had a stronger sex drive than the others. Professor Richard Ebstein of Hebrew University said the study is the first to identify a specific gene variation linked to sex drive. He said the findings may also help explain why some people are sex addicts. Prof. Ebstein said past studies have shown the chemical produced by the D4 gene is linked to addictive behavior such as gambling. However, he added that D4 would not entirely account for sex addiction, as other genes and social factors may also play a part. Prof. Ebstein hopes his study will open up new ways to tackle and treat sexual problems. If you come to know this addiction in early student life, you may choose various combinations of Yoga so that you may be eventually cured. Sex addiction may not cause you immediate death but can make your life fully disturbed. And a disturbed mind can cause insanity, mental disorder, personality disorder, schizophrenia, craziness, delusions, depression and derangement.

Second, among the five human evils, “anger” is perhaps the worst one after sexual desire

If you are not able to control your “anger”, it can be fatal at any moment. Because it may cause heart attack, or cerebral attack, or disturb your mental peace very frequently. This damages the balance of your bodily organs, workability and concentration power.

Why we become angry easily?

There are many reasons and many complex conditionalities, which we have to confront in our surroundings every day, at home and outside. Let us clarify. At home, you can very often become angry, because your parents may not always support your activities. Most parents everywhere want their children to obey some moral principles during student life, and those are not bad for you. They fear that you may be driven away by bad habits, bad friends, bad surroundings. Your parents are not always wrong. They know, in schools and colleges, young students spoil their life by seeing bad things in mobile phones. But you think, all these are normal, because you are also entrapped in this generation. You may not be correct. The best students, everywhere, are very conscious that the future is determined by the present student life. So, you always become angry or irritated by your parents, who want good for you. This destabilizes your mind. This creates an allergy inside you towards parents and good teachers. And that allergy eats away your positive energy and concentration. If such incidences reach the stage of the quarrel with parents, you may become extremely antagonistic towards your parents. As a result, you may take a drastic steps against life. That is fatal. Indian media is full of such stories every day. The same result may follow if your teachers penalize you for your misconduct. So, in any situation, you have to be tolerant, cool, and learn life’s lessons from the seniors who have seen life in its entirety and are more experienced. Experience can not be compensated by sheer intelligence or youthfulness.

In another situation, in all developing countries, societies at large are devoid of any law and order. There is chaos everywhere. Whenever you go, wherever you go- school, college, shopping, relative’s home- you have to face many hazards by hooligans, local criminals, goons, unruly mobs. If you become angry, these unsocial elements will not forgive you even if you are right. So, you have to learn the survival strategy to remain calm and quiet all day long. Otherwise, you may land up in Police Station, which is guided by local leaders, who will always support the goons. So, it is always best suggested to avoid such unwanted events by any means. “Tolerance” can only save your positive energy for productive works. Otherwise, you will suffer mental trauma from which it is difficult to recover. It is not your fault. But you are suffering because the society at large is uncivilized, unhealthy, not liveable.

Third, we also suffer a lot from the 3^rd vice, “greed” (Lobh in Sanskrit). What is greed?

In brief, it is an intense and selfish desire for craving something beyond your means or capacity, especially wealth, power, dress, house, food and other mundane goods. Greed, or avarice, is an inordinate or insatiable longing for personal material gain. As a secular psychological concept, greed is an unwarranted desire to acquire or possess more than what you deserve and require. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching the roof of satisfaction. Excessive greed makes you blind and inactivates your logical rational senses of what is right, what is wrong, what is your legitimate limit. Your natural sense of proportions is swept away such that you forget your impersonality. You begin to think egoistically that because you desire, so you must have this or that. You ought to ask the question of whether you have legitimate rights or not. If this process continues for long, you become a victim of your own delusion from excessive greed. Greed, Krishna says, arises from the basic human nature of active obsessive passion. It’s natural. It’s energy. Without this energy, all living species will cease to exist. However, like all energies, we can use greed positively or negatively. That’s unto you. So, you have to learn to control yourself, learn to ask yourself whether you deserve or entitled.

Fourth, we all suffer from another invisible dangerous complex vice, which is called “Infatuation”, or “Obsession”, or “attachment” (Moha in Sanskrit).

Most of us suffer from such a deadly vice, but almost none of us can recognize it in the conscious mind.

Why? Because it acts as a slow poison which is difficult to identify and segregate from our good senses. Let us give examples. Being a boy, if you have encountered a beautiful girl in school, or college, or elsewhere, you may be stuck by the image of that girl in your subconscious mind without even caring whether she likes you or not. You don’t even understand that it is not a commodity you may buy from the market. Day in, day out, your mind is obsessed with it. You can not concentrate in your study, you can not do your daily duties properly, you always remain absence minded, obsessive. But the fallacy is that the girl may belong to a different world, she may have her own priorities in education, family virtues, music and many other things to fulfill. That is, you are obsessed with something, which is not only illegal but also not at your control. Senses rule over the body, the mind rules over the senses. Intellect rules the mind and the inner being rules the intellect. In the Mahabharata, Krishna told Arjuna, know that you rule the senses, mind and intellect. That is self-control. A happy and productive person must learn self-control. Center them in the Self to overcome the hungry enemy of greed and infatuation. Do your work, but never be attached. All vices follow from attachment. Mind it: nothing is at your absolute control, except work. You came to this world beyond your control, and leave not at your will. We are here only for a very limited period. Vedic scriptures link our breath and its energy prana (life) to all desires. The very fact that we breathe is because of our desire to live. When that desire ceases at the cellular level. the outgoing breath does not return. Desire when clouded by passion turns obsessive into anger and greed. It’s then no longer creative but destructive of oneself and others. Desire can also be self-less. Creative desire is almost always selfless. Musicians, dancers, writers, scientists and artists create for the joy of creation. The trees bear flowers and fruits, not for themselves. Trees release Oxygen not for themselves but for the animal kingdom. And men destruct trees, which in the end will prove fatally self-destructive. This is the best example of creative selfless Nature. Krishna tells Arjuna to control his mind and senses to retain his wisdom, unclouded by greed and obsession.

Fifth, the final vice in human beings is “hatred”, “abhorrence”, “antipathy”. Why we hate?

Because, we cannot accept everything for granted, because we dislike something, because we think we are the men of highest wisdom. But your reaction may not always be correct unless you are gifted with the highest wisdom. If you hate an individual for her/his decision, that is not your righteous decision. Because, you may not like the decision of the concerned person, and you may be true that her/his decision is not desirable. But you can not hate the concerned person. That type of person will continue to effect biased decisions everywhere. There are many wicked but efficient people everywhere in our society. Hatred will make you weak, and create inside you an allergy towards the person and similar such persons. So, your task would be to uproot the cause of hatred from your mind. And that has to be done with a calm and quiet mind. Hatred alone does not help you. At best, you can take yourself away from such unwanted persons, if you can. You cannot alone change the mind of such evil persons from society. You will always face such persons in school, college, university, office and in society.

In another situation, you may not like a game, which many people may follow. Here also, hating the game will not help you. At best, you have the right not to take part in such a game. In still another case, you may not like a color, which many people like. Here also, the color of your dislike will continue to rule the surroundings. So, you have to exert your right to choose another color. You may not like light music, which is popular at the mass level. You are helpless if you hate the music, or musician, or the masses. You have your own choice of adhering to classical music. You have the right not to like prostitutes, but prostitution is the oldest profession of earning by selling bodily services to some. So, you cannot stop such an age-old institution prevalent everywhere by simple hatred. At best, you can avoid both prostitutes and prostitution. The Police, the politicians all know this illegal informal trade everywhere. But they do not take any step to eradicate it. Therefore, hatred, or too strong likes and dislikes eat away your positive energy.