Sexual violence

 One unfortunate subject, which should not have existed,

but right now it’s become a national debate, which is rape.

Because of a certain horrible incident that happened in New Delhi.

The whole country is talking… talking about rape.

So, this needs to be understood that though there may be a sexual stimulus to rape,

it is not about sexuality alone; it’s about the power to possess.

This wanting to possess comes from various things.

One fundamental mistake that societies have done is, somewhere in the minds of the youth…

the male youth in the world, we have put the idea that a female is a… an object, a thing that you can possess.

Either somebody’s father can give you away; if he refuses, you can take it.

It’s still there, isn’t it in the background?

Somewhere very deep in the psychological structure, there is an idea that a woman is a commodity.

A commodity is…

If something doesn’t have a mind of its own, that’s a commodity.

So, this probably in some places, consciously implanted; in many other places, unconsciously implanted,

but it’s deeply implanted in people’s minds.

Without taking this away, just one more law,

- hang the rapist, castrate the rapist is not going to really produce results.

And where does this come from?

They did a very wonderful thing in the ancient Bharat or India

- the Hindu law proclaimed a man cannot go to heaven without his wife.

You must understand the significance of this.

I want you to understand the significance of it, a few thousand years ago.

In many ways today, the playing field has been leveled for man and woman,

not because of any great social evolution but because of technology

- the technological development

which has made a woman being capable of participating in many global activities.

If there was no technology, if it was a question of your physical strength which carried you from place to place,

definitely a woman would be still very home-bound

- not that she shouldn’t be home

- I’m saying being home is one thing, being home-bound is one thing.

Being home is nice; being bound by home is a different thing.

Sadhguru: So, yes, definitely when somebody perpetrates a violent act,

they need to be punished but still if you want a better society not just better laws

- a law or a punishment is only relevant after things have gone wrong

- hanging somebody, doing something else is still not going to fix somebody’s life.

If we want to see that things don’t go wrong, there may be no absolute fix.

But, definitely there is something called as lowering the percentages or heightening the percentages.

When you’re dealing with the larger world, it is only question of lowering the percentages.

Maybe there is never going to be an ideal society where no such thing will happen,

but in striving towards that possibility

- the most important thing is, we need to understand…

Right now the chant that we were doing is just about that.

Still in most minds, a woman means body parts, an accumulation of body parts.

Yes.

A breast, a navel, a curve, long hair, something. That’s why many of you have short hair these days.

(Few Laugh) One part of it, you’ve gotten rid of.

It is still a sum of body parts.

Why is a woman a sum of body parts in someone who is not a woman is

- essentially this is springing

- this is not just with the man, with the woman also, but she doesn’t conclude;

she does not make the same conclusions that a man makes but she is also bound by the same limitations.

Sadhguru: The moment the boundaries of your physicality becomes ultimate boundaries of life

- you do not experience your breath,

you do not experience any transaction that’s happening to keep you alive.

This (Gestures) you think is ultimate boundary.

If this is ultimate boundary

- if I look at this, those who look like just like me, they are enemies we would like to get rid of.

Those who look different,

those who seem to have different kinds of body parts are something that you want to possess.

So essentially, the problem is rooted in investing too much in physicality of life.

If societies or human beings were experiencing their lives little more than their physical boundaries,

these things would simply go down just like that.

Maybe not eliminated but would go down dramatically and considerably to a point

where a few offenders you can deal with them with punishment.

You cannot deal a vast majority of population with punishment.

Suppose ten, fifteen, twenty percent of the people are committing crime in a society

- you cannot punish twenty percent of the population.

If it’s one percent, you can punish them, you can deal with punishment.

If it’s twenty percent, you cannot deal with punishment. It’s not going to help.

You want to hang twenty percent of the population?

That’s going to be worse than rape and that’s not going to help.

So punishment, people think is a deterrent.

To some extent it is maybe; for most people, it is not,

- they will just try to do it more carefully.

Yes?

They will try to take more precautions about it.

Maybe, because they have to take more precautions it may come down a little bit,

but still what’s happening in one’s mind and how it translates into life is a next step.

But it’s happening in your mind means when there’s an opportunity, it will happen in reality.

Right now, it seems there are over five hundred rape video games, very popular.

The video games go like this… this very popular video game goes like this

- a mother with two daughters is in a railway station and the video game is about how to rape the mother.

If you successfully do it, you’ll get one of the daughters.

This is a video game commercially being sold; bought in millions;

secretly people playing these games in their homes or offices or wherever on their computers.

We are nurturing a sick world and we expect it to not to happen in the railway station.

It will happen.

This time, it’s happened in a bus and this time, it happened in the capital city so it’s big news.

Whole country and the media is on.

Fine, attention was needed for this, but if it happened in somewhere…

some local place, in some village, in some little town,

it would be just one more statistic or it does not even become a statistic because nobody reports such things.

So, the important thing is, this is not about rape; this is about what kind of human beings are we raising.

Commerce has taken precedence over humanity.

Commerce is not about serving humanity; humanity is serving commerce

- it doesn’t matter what you can sell; as long you can sell it, you’re doing great and you have to scale up.

So, there is a lot of looking at that humanity has to do.

One particular case of rape has brought the consciousness of the nation to a certain brink.

Using this, it’s time that we look at the essentials of life.

Whether the crime or violence or forceful acts are committed against a woman or a man or a child,

it’s the same thing.

It’s not… One is not different from the other.

If we approve one forceful act, the other one will naturally evolve out of it.

This must start from the home situation.

If you can force feed your child, you can be forcefully sexed also tomorrow.

I want you to understand this, this is how it starts.

If you think you can force feed your child

- force is okay as long as you get to do what you want to do, then everything else follows.

These are the offsprings of that.

We don’t want to attend or destroy the root; we just want to prune the surface because right now it hurts us

- that is not a solution.

It is disheartening to see on the national news channel, the discussion is – “Should we castrate them or not?”

So, today if you castrate a rapist, tomorrow you cut off the hands of a thief,

cut off the head of somebody else, who uses his brain

- there is… there is no limit to this. This is not the solution.

Whatever sympathies you may have for the person who suffered, the victim,

we must look for more profound solutions, more well-thought out solutions, not simply reacting

- reacting to one violence with another violence is not going to breed a right kind of society.

Now is this in one society? It is not.

It is just that in some societies, the law enforcement may be little better.

Don’t think people are better. No.

Law enforcement is little better so it’s little more contained in certain societies,

little less contained in other societies.

One way - yes, protection by law enforcement is needed.

No question about that but still, a transformation,

where law enforcement can be limited to a small percentage of criminals is the society we want to live in.

We don’t want a big segment of population being curtailed by law enforcement alone.

If there is no policeman, they will do something else

- is a dangerous situation to live in.

The statistics say that ninety-six percent of the rapes happen within the home.

Law enforcement never ever gets involved in this.

Ninety-six percent of the rapes happen within the four walls of the house.

So it never goes to the law.

So this cannot be contained by law.

Maybe the super-violent rape like what happened in Delhi could be controlled to some extent

by law enforcement but not the other things.

The fundamental thing is that you want to possess, humiliate, and subjugate another human being.

This is happening because of a certain level of inadequacy,

a certain level of incompleteness within you that only by possessing something, you will feel little better.

Whether to fulfill this possession, you go shopping or you go raping

- it’s the same thing.

Something is inadequate; you want to fulfill this by getting something.

This will find all kinds of ugly expressions.

Some of them you may think is harmless, but if you do this today and fulfill yourself,

- tomorrow, you would like to step it up to something else and something else and something else.

It will not stop at one thing.

So the solution is not in just containing it.

The solution is in transformation of the individual human being,

and nobody is willing to invest any time or life to make this happen.

Everybody wants an instant solution

- go on the street, protest for two days and world will change.

World will not change.

If world has to change, first thing is willing to invest time for my own transformation.

Only if you are willing to invest time for your transformation,

you are willing to invest time for other people’s transformation,

because you understand the value of what it is.

If you are not willing to invest time upon your own transformation,

where is the question of doing anything for anybody’s transformation?

If you do not know the value of what it is experientially, you will never invest.

You see this every day - maybe you don’t, I do everyday.

Well you have also seen

morning you get up, you want to do your yoga,

but everyday there’s something more important to do than yoga.

Yes?

Look back in your life. What great things have you done which are so important?

There will be nothing great.

But when you want to do your morning meditation, you will see there is something more important to do.

This means, you do not hold human transformation as a very crucial thing.

You think it’s an entertainment.

You think it’s a side thing to do.

It’s not the side thing to do.

It is the main thing to do; transformation is the main thing to do.

If we do not transform individual people, you just have to do with a world full of criminals.

Some will commit, some will not commit.

Some will do it on the video game.

Some will have the courage to do it on the street.

Closet rapist or street rapist, not very different, isn't it?

Maybe for the victim, it’s different but for the world that we live in, it’s not different.

You’re still living with such people, isn’t it?

So if this has to change, we need to understand that individual transformation is the most crucial thing.

If we are not willing to invest on that, we just have to do with what we have and worse will come

- not that it’ll not come, worse will come.

Every time there is no law in a certain place, every time a war happens.

What happens there?

Apart from the killing, what happens there is worse than the killing, almost everywhere.

So, these are all the same people that you live with.

These are your sons and husbands, and brothers.

They are so nice but if nobody is watching them, they are something else.

Transformation means just this

- that who you are is not determined by other people’s opinions or other people’s presence.

You are like this

- whether somebody is there or somebody is not there, this is the way you are

- this is transformation.

If this..

In this direction humanity does not make an investment,

in this direction if every parent does not invest upon their children

to transform them into a more inclusive human being...

Inclusion just means this

- technically, to bring it down to a very technical level

- inclusion, don’t teach it in the name of love, embracing the world, this and that; inclusion just means this

- that who you are is not limited to the absolute boundary of your physicality.

It is little more.

If it’s little more, the very way you walk on this planet, the very way you breathe upon this planet,

the very way you exist in this planet will be different, simply because...

your idea of who you are is beyond the boundaries of your physicality.

If this one thing happens to the human being, suddenly he’s different in every possible way.

So investing… investing in a spiritual possibility,

a possibility beyond one’s physicality is the only ultimate answer there is but,

if you want long-term benefits, it’s a long term investment.

Short term - shoot the guy, hang the guy.

- well, you will breed another ten tomorrow and don’t think these rapists or whoever,

some horrible creatures who landed from somewhere.

Everybody has these drives but many have cultivated a certain level of discretion,

where they will not allow their hormones, their urges, and their longings to go beyond a certain point.

This… Cultivating this discretion, some people naturally have it to a certain level.

Some people have a little less of it.

Culturally, in terms of home situation, in terms of schools.

- if this discretion is not brought about, that a individual person is able to employ his discretion

- it doesn’t matter how hungry you are, how much you’re longing, you’re able to stop yourself at a point.

If this discretion is not taught to every individual, if this is not cultivated

- one drop of alcohol, they’ll become animals.

This is what’s happening.

Very nice people, one drop of alcohol, they’re becoming like animals because their discretion is taken away.

They were always animals, controlled but once you remove the stopper, it goes away.

So this is one way, but the more important way is to evolve this human being to a place where he is a being

- he is not driven by his body alone.

Body is just one aspect of him.

If you close your eyes, your body should disappear; all the needs of your body should disappear.

It does to some extent for everybody

- to what extent is a question of how much have you invested.

If you invest enough, if you close your eyes, this body and the ways of this body do not apply to you anymore.

This needs to happen more than ever now.

Because humanity is on a certain threshold.

We can either fall this way or that way.

We are in numbers like never before.

We are packed on the planet closer than ever before.

If you’re going to really sit close up with everybody upon this planet,

it’s very important that people next to you don’t stink, isn't it?

No?

Yes or no?

If each one of you (Laughs) were living in your own forest, desert or mountain,

we didn’t care how they smelled.

So we’re living very close up.

World is getting more and more populated.

So it’s very important that people who sit next to you are clean and well behaved, isn't it?