Human Behavior – Understanding The Needs

Dr KK Aggarwal
Padma Shri and Dr B C Roy National Awardee
President, Heart Care Foundation of India 


Every one behaves according to his or her needs. Every behaviour is justified medically as every action is done according to one’s own psyche, which in turn depends upon the needs. The most primitive needs of a person are that of food, shelter and procreation. Most thefts minor, criminal acts, eve teasing, rapes, etc are done to fulfill these needs. These needs satisfy the “physical body”.

Those people whose physical needs are satisfied are controlled by the mental needs, which can be at the level of mind, intellect or ego. Egoistic needs are focused towards attention, status, and power grabbing. Most political decisions at the state, national or international levels are taken to fulfill these “ego based desires”. The action of George Bush againstIraq in the recent era and that of Hitler in the past are the classical examples.

Those who have conquered the “mental needs” by way of controlling the mind are controlled by the spiritual needs. Everyone with a balanced state of mind needs affection, appreciation, acceptance and inner happiness. Spiritual fulfillments of needs are based on non-violence. There are very few spiritual leaders living in the world today and hence most behaviors today either are at the level of physical fulfillment of desires or at the level of mental fulfillment.


Most crimes are committed and most criminals are trained using these principles. Individuals are chosen from the general public who are either gullible (hypnotizable) or are frustrated because of non-fulfillment of their needs. Frustrated people are first addicted to food, women, wine, drugs or power and then made to enter into criminal activities or brainwashed to such an extent that except for the goal for which they are hypnotized, nothing else exists for them.

It is a well-known scientific fact that in a state of deep mental relaxation the mind becomes suggestive. Hypnotizable people are the ones who can be made to go into mental relaxation with simple mental exercises. When their restful mind is bombarded with suggestions positive or negative, the intended suggestions get stitched to their consciousness and the whole body’s biochemistry changes and acts in a way to fulfill that intent.

To reduce violence in the community, one needs to act to reduce violence in a family or in an individual mind. It is the violence in the collective consciousness of the people, which allows such violence attacks in the community. In a recent survey in one of the electronic media it was found that 80% of the people agreed that for attaining a promotion or getting a seat in medical college, conversion of a person to schedule caste or schedule tribe by changing the religion is justifiable.

According to the Bhagwad Gita, there are three main gateways to health or miseries and they are lust, greed and ego. If they are satisfied, more lust, greed or ego follows. Unsatisfied lust ends up with anger, delusion and miseries; unsatisfied greed leads to attachment and resultant negative actions; and finally, unsatisfied ego leads to violent acts.

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