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Stress Academy Presents:

Web Series – The Story of Stress

Part 1 – Understanding Stress

Episode 9 – How Do Emotions Form?

 

In the last few videos, we explained how our knowledge and beliefs are formed. We also tried to understand the interrelationship of knowledge, beliefs and stress. In this video, we will explore how emotions form and their role in causing stress.

To understand the relationship between our emotions and stress, let’s look at the example of you seeing a snake from the previous videos. You are taking a walk in the park at dusk along with your friends and suddenly you see a snake at a distance. Obviously, you get alarmed and inform your friends of this dangerous situation ahead. After looking at it, your friends respond that it is just a black curved rope and not a snake. Now you look again carefully and realize that indeed it is not a snake. In the previous video, we concluded that a combination of wrong knowledge and beliefs led you to be fearful in this situation. Here, let’s introduce a bit of a twist in this example. Before your friends conclude that it is not a snake, one of them who believed you initially gets emboldened and tells you calmly that he will take the snake away using a stick before it can hurt anyone. In this case, both of you believed the object to be the snake initially and both of you also believed that the snake can be harmful if it bites. So why did you feel fearful, but your friend was able to counter his fear? Is there something you could have done to avoid being fearful? or do you think your emotions such as fear originated automatically in the brain and therefore you had no choice or freewill to respond differently? Let’s try to find out.

First let’s understand what psychology and neuroscience say about the origin of emotions. The “cognitive appraisal theories” in psychology view emotions as being initiated by our perceptions and beliefs. These insights from the field of psychology clearly reinforce Jain philosophy’s ideas about the role of knowledge and belief in the formation of emotions. 

Neuroscientists have successfully mapped brain regions that are activated during the experience of emotions.  However, they have not been able to unambiguously distinguish between different emotions such as anger, fear and sadness on the basis of brain activity. Neuroscience points to brain structures and processes in the experience of emotions, however, it has not been successful in providing evidence about the origin of different types of emotions.

Now, if brain structures and processes are only factors in forming our emotions, then how can we shape our emotions with changes in our perceptions and beliefs as suggested by psychology theories? In that case, our emotions would depend solely upon our brain state and we would not have any control over our actions. This conclusion would theoretically negate the whole basis of treatment modalities like counseling and psychotherapies in influencing emotional states through changes in beliefs and perceptions. However, counseling and psychotherapies have been proven effective in treating many emotional issues. This makes it difficult to explain the process of experiencing emotions in a unified manner by psychologists and neuroscientists. Along with emotions, we inevitably generate a positive or negative intent to deal with the situation.  Intent is a form of desire that determines how someone wants to respond to the given situation.

According to Jain philosophy, consciousness has the ability to form emotions and intentions which is known as conduct (charitra) attribute.(2) As per Jain philosophy, karmas are in close relationship to consciousness.(2) Karmas are one type of very minute invisible matter particles bound to a living being’s consciousness that play an important role in its brain chemistry, biological changes and circumstances. The preliminary scientific evidence of karma, which relates to bio-photons in living beings,  will be introduced in future videos. These karmas which trigger external situations, biological changes and even brain chemistry, can become instrumental in the formation of emotions when the individual consciousness generates emotions due to its own free will. Therefore, due to free will coupled with their individual brain chemistry, each person is capable of forming distinct emotional responses despite facing similar external situations. Without accepting this idea of free will, no criminal can be justified to be punished because in the absence of free will, we may have to associate every emotion related crime to that person’s brain condition. This shows the freedom that each of us possess! Thus, all of us are the creators of our own stress-free or stressful life. 

Applying this to our previous scenario of seeing the snake, we can now understand that despite having similar knowledge and belief in this situation, your friend was able to form a response to counter fear because he exercised his free will by forming the desire and intention to constructively see through the situation. It is this positive intent that led him to think through a solution to deal with the problem without being fearful. This example demonstrates that in addition to our knowledge, beliefs and emotions, our intent is also a very crucial factor in dealing with stress.

According to Jain philosophy, all worldly living beings experience emotions such as anger (Krodh), ego (Maan), deceit (Maya), greed (Lobh), sorrow (Shok), fear (Bhay), affection (Rati), disaffection (Arati), laughter (Hasya), Disgust (jugupsa) and sex passions (Stri-Purush-Napunsak Ved).(1) Living beings are also capable of experiencing a neutral state (known as Veetragata) of conduct, which is devoid of all emotions. We will discuss more details about this neutral state in future videos.

Based on knowledge disseminated by Jain Tirthankar Mahavir, the great Jain Acharya Kundkund documented the ability of consciousness to form emotions and its relationship with knowledge and beliefs in his treatise Panchastikay Sangrah and Pravachansar around the first century CE. 

Till this point, we have concluded that knowledge, beliefs and emotions originate in the consciousness; which is the separate substance from our physical body or brain. You may be wondering if there is any scientific and verifiable evidence demonstrating consciousness being a separate substance from the body. That’s exactly what we are going to present in the next video.

Feel free to leave your questions in the comments section. Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel.

References:

  1. Acharya Kundkund. Panchastikay Sangrah. India. ~100 C.E. 

English translation and explanation by Vijay K. Jain, inspired by Acharya Vishuddha Sagar.  2020 C.E.

Available at: https://jainelibrary.org/book-detail/?srno=036508

  1. Acharya Kundkund. Pravachansar. India. ~100 C.E.

English translation and explanation by Vijay K. Jain, inspired by Acharya Vishuddha Sagar.  2018 C.E.

Available at: https://jainelibrary.org/book-detail/?srno=034445