Rulers Decide How a Nation Should Think

Human mind is like a computer.
You purchase a new laptop. It comes with an operating system.
After that, what all you want to store in it is up to you.
You can store PDF books, you can store movies, you can store songs.
You can store accounting data.

The video camera, the mic, the keyboard — they are like your sensory organs — eyes, ears, nose.
Data goes in through them.
Out of this, what you want to store is also decided by you.
You may type in a Word document for 1 hour, 20 pages, and may decide that, no, it has not come out well.
Let me not save it. I will try again later.

You can delete whatever you have stored.
You can overwrite your memory space.
All these are possible with the mind also.

You may be a Hollywood action movie fan.
When you turn 40, you suddenly become spiritual.
Delete all those movie files from your computer and start storing bhajans, pravachans.
All these are possible with the mind also.

Now Buddhi — intelligence.
These are programs, software that you have installed.
How to process all the data that is coming in.

You have an antivirus program installed in your PC.
That will stop all dangerous stuff coming into your computer.
This is like your Buddhi.

Another program will set alarms and reminders for you — schedule your day.
Like bringing discipline into your life.
These kinds of things are done by your Buddhi.

Now — today, our problem is that we are all following a common curriculum in the schools.
The people who rule over us decide what we should see and hear.
This is how communities function, society functions, nations function.

So, by the time the child finishes school and college, mostly how the mind functions and how the intelligence functions — these are already decided by the rulers, the policy.

This is more like those mobile phones coming with pre-installed apps.
You will have hardly any memory left to install apps that you want.
You can't delete the pre-installed apps — it is very difficult.
It will give you all kinds of error messages — if you uninstall this app, then other apps will not work.

Only some people who have high-end phones with 64 GB memory, 128 GB, can install apps as they want.
But then they are expensive.
So, only very few get the opportunity to think differently.

Otherwise, mostly, as far as common public is concerned, mass population is concerned,
the mind and intelligence are under the control of the rulers — the system.
So, if the rulers want to see that all the citizens of this nation should only think in this particular way,
it can be implemented easily by changing the curriculum.

After the next 10 or 15 years, the whole nation will think in one way.
We see a little bit of flexibility or rebellion or liberty of thought because such policies were not implemented seriously in the past — ours being a young nation.
But look at how the Chinese think, how the North Koreans think, how the Americans think —
there is a common way of thinking in each nation.

Anyway, let us look at one problem that we are facing.
Our rulers, who implemented the educational policy since our independence,
they took great fancy for science and thought that this is great.
You can't blame them.

What they went through — what was the power of the British then?
Science — guns, railways, ships, scientific system of thought, even scientific management of resources — even military resources.
They thought — oh, this is what we are lacking.
The force behind their power and supremacy is science.
So we brought scientific thinking into everything.

We trained our children to believe only in what can be seen, heard, experienced.
We insisted on proof through experiments and repeatability for everything.
These children are the adults of today — the policy makers of today.

Then came the concept of growth and progress in material terms.
Anything that doesn't grow is slowing down and it will be gone in some time.
These are the concepts that we are taking very seriously now.

Earlier, someone had a job, a livelihood — that was good enough.
You remember the village shops — they would look the same, have the same items even after 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
The shopkeeper sells a limited number of items and makes his living out of it.

Then, for employees came the concept of annual increment.
This was primarily to beat inflation.
Today, we want growth. With every change, the salary should go up 20%, 40%.
If your salary doesn't go up at this speed, then you are good for nothing.

Even organisations, business entities — it is not the turnover or the profit that matters.
It is how much the turnover has increased compared to the previous quarter,
how much the profit has increased compared to the previous quarter — that matters.

You make 20% profit — that is not good enough.
If it is 20% this quarter, it should be 23% in the coming quarter.
This is not going to end.

Don't blame individuals for this, or your boss or organisation for this.
This is the system — that we are implementing through policies, consciously or unconsciously.
This is how our computers are being made.
The way we look at life itself has changed.

We are living life as laid out by these policies — as on date, based on scientific and commercial agenda alone.

Once in a while, it may be good to remember that these are just phenomena which are just decades old.
There was life on earth even before that.
Men have lived lives since crores of years.

Don't believe if someone says that we were barbarians or cannibals.
Other parts of the world — maybe.
At least not in India.

This is amply clear from our scriptures.
I think they lived a much better life in terms of overall quality.

Ramaswamy Sastry and Vighnesh Ghanapaathi