The machine has a shape — it is the body. The machine has a fuel — it is food, air, and water. The machine has its inner wiring — it is the nervous system. And the machine has its control centre — it is the brain, loaded with the software of conditioning, memory, and habit. From the moment you take birth, this machine starts running scripts — reflexes, instincts, hormonal triggers, pleasure-pain loops. You smile when certain chemicals are released, and you frown when another set of chemicals floods your system. You think it is “you” deciding, but it is merely the machine following its programming. Society is only a secondary programmer. Your parents, teachers, media, culture — they install add-on packages to the software.
Why call it a machine? Because it has no consciousness of its own. It only reacts. Press the right button and it will salivate. Touch the right nerve and it will attack. Whisper the right words and it will melt. It cannot help itself. Even your so-called “personality” is just the sum total of your patterns. The machine is not bad, it’s just limited. It cannot see beyond its design. The root program is much older. It comes from nature, from evolution. It is designed for one thing — survival of the organism, at any cost.
Truth, freedom, love — these are not part of the default code. They don’t help survival; often, they threaten it. The machine cares only for continuation, not for liberation, so it will resist anything that calls you beyond its limits. Yet you care for them because you are not merely the machine; there is something in you that is not wired for survival, something that longs to know, to be free, to love without reason. That is the real you, the witness, calling you.
You cannot destroy the machine — that would mean destroying the body. But you can stop being the machine. The breaking free is an act of identification, not an act of violence against yourself.
Watch how hunger changes your mood, how praise inflates your chest, how rejection makes the heart race. Watch it like a mechanic observing an engine. Do not say “I am angry.” Say, “Anger is arising in the system.” The moment you see it is the machine, you stand apart. See that your likes and dislikes are not sacred. They were installed into you. The machine likes sugar because it gives quick energy. It fears social rejection because in primitive times, it meant death. When you see these patterns as ancient survival code, they lose their sacredness. So, understand its conditioning and how it controls you.
Once you see you are not the machine, the machine can run — eat, walk, talk, earn — but you remain untouched. You act from clarity, not from programming. This is where genuine creativity happens, because now the action is not predictable. Vedanta says: You are not the body, you are not the mind. You are the witness — the seer of the machine. When the seer is established, the machine loses its power to enslave. You do not “win” over it, you simply stop mistaking yourself for it. And in that freedom, there is no need to destroy the machine — it becomes a tool in your hands, instead of you being a tool in its.
Society is only a reflection of a million such machines bumping into each other. You cannot purify the world without purifying your own identification. If you remain the machine, every reform is just the machine repainting itself. Stop fighting the wrong battle for freedom.
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