Where do our fears originate – are they just conceptions?

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, is it that our emotions just happen as distress, fear? Are they something which we get from the outer world or are they an object of reality that exists? Both again, as I said, I was answering the same question.
Both are there. Just like if, as I said, if I am sitting on this chair and there is a nail under me, now there is real pain over there. It’s not that I am imagining the pain.
Now, I could say where did the nail come from? But for practical purposes, the pain is real. So, there is real disease. There is real distress.
If I have got a fracture, a slip and fall, if I break my hand, can I say, actually, this is just in my mind. There is a real thing. This fracture is there.
So, there are real problems out there in the world. And there are real bad things which happen to us. To say that everything is just a social construct.
Now, in that particular instance, somebody might go to jungle and nothing happen to them. But can we make that as absolute truth? And anybody can go to jungle and nothing will happen to them? There is, as I said, when we talk about problems, there are real problems and there are imagined problems. Or there is a real problem and there is our imagination about the problem.
So, we need to separate the two. And that separation is different from rejection of the whole idea that there is a problem. Say, I have got a swelling on my hand.
And I start thinking, what if this is tumorous? What if this tumor is in advanced stage? What if it is a cancer that is incurable? What if I am going to die in one month? All that I have right now is a small swelling and I am thinking, what if I die in one month? So now, there is a real problem. Okay, I have got a swelling in my hand. But all that I am thinking of afterwards is imagination.
So now, from where this imagination happened, that can have various sources. Maybe we had people around us who used to worry a lot. And from them we got worried.
Or maybe we watched too many horror movies and from there we started worrying. Or, as I said, we all, this life is not our beginning. As souls, we have gone through many lifetimes.
Sometimes we are born with certain mentalities. So that may be from our previous lives. Certain settings are there within us.
Whatever it is. The point is that there is a problem and the mind perceives the problem in a particular way. To say that the problem is not there itself is an illusion.
But to think that whatever the mind is perceiving, that is a reality, that is also an illusion. So we need to separate the physical, actual component of the problem from the mind’s exaggeration of the problem. And that separation is what spirituality is all about.
So by spiritual understanding, by intellectual analysis, we can separate. And we can if somebody’s mind is imagining a particular way, we can check from where that imagination is coming. And we can value it, whether that is valid or that is unvalued.
Many people can have unwarranted fears. And all of us, based on our particular situations, can have particular fears. And we need to deal with them.
But there is reality. It is not that the Bhagavad Gita is talking about shukha-dukha and that’s how the conceptions of happiness and distress have come. Happiness and distress are real experiences.
So there are things which can cause real distress to us. And we can’t deny that. At the same time, we don’t have to magnify them.
And that is the process of spiritual education.