As a teacher, I have noticed strange behavior from students. Whenever students are given a problem to find individual solutions; they will often find the best possible solution collectively. Everyone will copy and paste that solution and each student will present it to the teacher as their individual solutions. Some of them will make minor modifications to justify their stance in favor of individual solutions, but some are so dumb that they will copy word for word, even the commas are not changed. Because of this, the whole purpose of the exercise is defeated. Instead of individual and innovative solutions, you get the same or similar solution with small variations.

More puzzling is the behavior of students when they are expected to reach a mutually agreed collective decision. When this type of homework is given, there is total chaos in the class. Everyone is seen putting an individual point of view without taking into account the points of view of others. And most of the time, the whole class doesn’t come up with a mutually agreed-upon solution, again defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

This teacher’s dilemma must have been faced by other teachers as well. And this behavior is not just limited to the classroom. Everywhere, you will find that people have two different types of behaviors: one ‘individual’ and the other ‘collective’.

This comes from two sets of consciousness in our minds. On an individual level, we are innovative, analytical, and have random thoughts. But this is a private matter that we do not want to share with others. Therefore, we tend to hide these thoughts and often present a safe collective decision with minor changes as an individual solution to the problem. But when it comes to a collective decision, our thought process is for a safe, time-tested, and simple solution that can be treated as a precedence for later similar scenarios.

This hypocrisy or maintaining double standards (one for ourselves and one for others) is a predominant social evil from a spiritual perspective, since there is a belief that the journey of life is an individual journey, not a collective or group journey. . From a social perspective, this approach is suitable for living a healthy, happy and safe life in a relationship society by any individual who has a unique pattern of thought.

Yog (a) and many other spiritual practices are designed to cure this bad situation. If you follow these in ‘letter and spirit’, you start to have only one behavior and your life becomes simple. Once that state is reached, you are ready for NIRVA (N) or final liberation from worldly affairs.