QA with Boston-Seattle devotees

[Online QA from Seattle for Boston devotees]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Are there any questions? Prabhu, are you able to hear Prabhu? Yeah, clearly, clearly.
No problem. Okay, thank you. I think as a devotee here, I would like to say that just like a small child for the time of birth, the child goes through so many varieties of surroundings and environment and feels like completely different.
Having been subjected to so many varieties of data, the child gets to learn about the environment and learn some kind of the world around herself or others. So similarly, when a machine is also subjected to enough amount of data and have a system which is built around more progressive learning, so when a sophisticated machine goes through the process like you are learning, the machine can also come to the point of having that level of sophistication that the child develops. So would you like to comment on this? Okay.
The question is just as a child can learn a phenomenal amount of things by gradual growth and we see that machines today have an extraordinary capacity for processing information, so in future it may well be possible that machines may be able to develop the features of life and consciousness. Is that the question? Okay, yes. Certainly, the kind of features that machines have developed, they are remarkable.
In fact, what to speak of developing features similar to humans in terms of number processing or calculating or even recollecting, many machines have now exceeded human capacity. So, if we are considering mechanical processing of information, machines have already exceeded humans. The key question is not whether machines can do what humans can do in terms of information processing.
The key question is what does the information mean? So, this is called in philosophy as the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness means, I’ll give a simple experiment, a simple example. About 15 to 20 years ago, was the first time that a computer defeated a reigning world champion, world chess champion.
Garry Kasparov was defeated by a computer named Deep Blue and that came all over the world newspapers and they showed the picture of Kasparov holding his hand to be defeated by a machine. He was devastated. The makers of Deep Blue were delighted.
Out of the computer that they had made. But what was Deep Blue’s reaction? Deep Blue itself had no reaction. Deep Blue had gone through all the processes of making the right moves and leading to a checkmate but it had no experiences at all.
If we know about the history of the development of devices, now we have very sophisticated computers which can do incredible amount of number crunching. But they all started, the essential principle is the same as the principle of an abacus. An abacus is a device which is used in primitive times to calculate.
So basically no matter how sophisticated a computer may be, ultimately it does nothing except changing the states in certain memory areas from 0 to 1. Now it changes those states so fast at such an incredible level of precision that phenomenal amount of work can be done by it in terms of information processing. But the point is in many ways the digital circuitry of a computer and the neural circuitry of the brain, in content they are different but in effect they are the same. The neural circuitry of the brain does some processing of information, the digital circuitry of a computer does some processing of information.
And the digital circuitry of the brain, sorry the digital circuitry of the machine can do almost all the processing that in terms of information processing that the neural circuitry can do and can do it better. So the digital circuitry despite doing it all, it has no emotions, it has no consciousness, it has no experience. So the question comes up, why do we have consciousness? Why do we have experience? Why if life were all about information processing, then a computer can do all kinds of information processing without any consciousness? Why do we need to have consciousness at all? So the more technology advances, the more the devices become more and more precise and phenomenal at information processing, the difference between information processing and the meaning of that information, what it means to us.
Now Deep Blue went through all the motions of a chess game, but it did not experience any emotions. We go through the moves of a chess game, but we experience. What we experience is, we experience excitement, we experience elation if we win, we experience exasperation if we lose, we experience puzzlement if we are not able to come up with some right move.
So it is not just the mechanical processing of the data, it is the experience of that processing, that is the question. So when we talk about artificial intelligence systems being developed by computers, yes computers can do more and more and they will keep doing more and more. But the point is that what they are doing more is processing information.
There is no question even asked over there about how or why there is an experience of the emotions and who is the experiencer, what is the need for that experiencer to be present, where is the experiencer present. So experience is a fundamental reality for all of us, but where does the experience happen, why does the experience happen? So experience is as different from information processing as time is from the hands of a clock. The hands of a clock, they are correlated with time.
If a student is giving an exam and a student finds time is running out, so student may pick up a stone and throw it at clock in the exam room, the clock will break. If the clock breaks, that does not mean time breaks down. There is definitely some correlation between time and the clock, but the clock is simply a means to measure and display time.
But the clock, but the time itself is a different concept. So like that, the brain or a computer, they are tools for information processing. But who is the processor of that information? Who is the experiencer of the processed emotions? So to give another example of this, say right now, say somebody sends me a chit, and that chit says, you are a fool.
Now if I consider you are a fool, this is simply patterns of black ink on white paper. They are simply, now the paper itself does not feel angry, paper does not feel sarcastic, paper does not feel critical. It is simply patterns of ink on the on the paper.
Now instead of giving, nowadays we have digital age, now that same message can come on say YouTube live to me, you are a fool. Now when that is coming on a computer, the computer is conveying that message, but the computer does not experience anything. Now take this thing forward, actually that letters, you are a fool, I read them, the data goes through my eyes, through my optic nerves, through the optic area of the brain, and a particular correlation of neurochemical states in the various brain cells have, which say hypothetically speaking, which correlate with the information over here, you are a fool.
So that registers in my brain, in terms of a particular brain cells in the brain getting changed. But that also is basically a pattern of chemicals. Here we had a pattern of ink, and there was a pattern of chemicals.
But who is it that is experiencing that pattern of chemicals? What does that mean to me? Who is it that it means something to? Just as the paper does not experience any emotion, when an abusive message or a critical message comes through it. Similarly, the brain itself is also another medium, much more subtle, much, much more sophisticated, which is simply a conveyor of information. But who is the experiencer of the information? So they are two qualitatively different things, that what machines can do and what machines will do is, they will process information with phenomenal precision and speed, and they will do it often better than what humans can do.
But we are not talking about processing of information, we are talking about the experiencing of information. That is something which requires a non-material experiencer. So the more machines advance, the more actually the distance between information processing and experiencing, that becomes more and more apparent.
And that is why the premise is wrong. Now, it is Blaise Pascal, he said, that suppose a person has lived always in dark, and then that person suddenly comes to a room where there is light. And then the person asks, oh, how did this darkness produce light? Now, from that person’s experience perspective, that there was darkness and now there is light.
So where did light come from darkness? But the reality is, light did not come from darkness. That actually darkness is the absence of light. So what happens when we go from, when we start from machines instead of from humans, we start from machines, and more and more machines are being developed.
We are starting from information processing and getting impressed by the capacity for information processing. But actually, we cannot even appreciate the processing of information unless there is consciousness. So consciousness does not come from the processing of matter, or even impressive processing of matter.
It is consciousness that is the fundamental reality that enables us to perceive that this processing of information is impressive. So consciousness is a fundamental reality, it is an irreducible reality. And it is not replicated by no matter how phenomenal information processing is there.
Does it answer your question? Thank you. Are there any other questions? Yes, please. We have questions here also on Facebook live, on YouTube live.
I can answer them also, but we would prefer to give first reference to the questions over there if there are any. Yes, please. What is the best way to apply these ideas in order to solve the issues that are facing communities? What is the way to idea or to apply these issues to the, to these ideas to issues facing humanity today? I mean, can you repeat the question? I mean, ideas of consciousness in order to listen to communities.
You know, every community is facing certain issues that require careful reflection, introspection and the application of spiritual knowledge. So, I believe that is what we are looking for today. Okay, yeah.
So, how can we apply the ideas of consciousness to societies which are facing real issues today? Every society faces practical challenges. Yes, definitely. The, we all in the UNESCO charter, for example, it is said that war begins in the minds of people.
And therefore, peace also has to begin in the minds of people. So, today we have a lot of conflicts in the world. And quite often the conflicts result because of, beyond the specific factors that are there, the fundamental cause is a materialistic consciousness, where we all think that possessing more and more material things, controlling them, enjoying them, that is the way to happiness.
So, when there is spiritual consciousness, then we find non-material enrichment. We find satisfaction within. So, for example, consider the ecological crisis that is facing the world today.
So, there are many different causes for it, specifically. But fundamentally, it is, major cause is that the indiscriminate exploitation of nature that has been done by humans because of the desire to control and enjoy. So, for example, researchers have found out, E.O. Wilson is a prominent biologist, he found that every species in this world contributes to the ecology, ecological balance.
So, for example, if the grass gets burned out, then the herbivores will suffer. If the herbivores die out, then the carnivores will suffer. But he found as one species, if it becomes extinct, nobody else will face any problems.
Any guesses which is that species? Yeah, it’s a human species. So, if the humans became extinct or for that matter, humans were made extinct. Now, nobody would face any problems in the ecology, no other species.
In fact, most ecological problems will be solved. So, this is not a particularly flattering revelation about the contribution of humanity, which is considered to be probably the most evolved species. Normally, if in a class, we had a very intelligent student, we would expect that student’s contribution to be constructive, not destructive.
Then why is it that humanity’s contribution in the ecology is destructive, not constructive? It is because we humans are ultimately meant to contribute at the spiritual level. We are meant to grow in spiritual realisation. We are meant to grow towards spiritual happiness.
When instead of seeking and finding spiritual happiness, we seek more and more material pleasure, we live disharmoniously, we exploit nature. So, nature has allocated a certain level of pleasure at the material level and all living beings are satisfied with that level of pleasure. So, we get some pleasure through food and all living beings eat and they are satisfied with that food.
But we humans want more pleasure than what the body naturally provides. And that longing for more pleasure is meant to be fulfilled at the spiritual level, when we connect with the supreme consciousness and therein we relish higher happiness. But when we don’t do that, then we seek more and more pleasure at the bodily level.
Say for example, eating. Now today, according to WHO statistics, there are 80 million people, sorry there are 800 million people who are starving and there are 1 billion people who are obese. So, more the number of people who are suffering because of having inadequate food are the number of people who are suffering because of having excessive food.
So, the problem here is that we are seeking pleasure at the material level which is actually found at the spiritual level. So, if we learn to find spiritual enrichment, then this indiscriminate excessive exploitation of nature would substantially decrease and thus the ecological crisis could be addressed at its root. Same way, if you consider the economic meltdown that America experienced about 10 years ago, the cause of that ultimately was greed.
So, if greed could be curbed, then the problems caused such as corruption, scandals, all those would decrease. And greed is caused when we think that material things will make us happy and therefore, we by hook or crook, we try to get material things. But if we find spiritual fulfilment and that requires the raising of consciousness.
So, whichever problem we are facing, we will be able to more effectively solve that problem if our consciousness is more spiritually evolved. If our consciousness is materialistic, then we will cause more and more conflicts and no matter how much we try, we will not be able to find solutions. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
So, what the world needs for dealing with its various specific problems is first and foremost, a raising of consciousness. Once that raising of consciousness is done, we will ourselves have the clarity, the intelligence and the practical self-mastery needed to take the steps for solving those problems. Does that answer the question? That does help to answer the question.
So, I just want to be clear that I have answered somewhat correctly. Solve the problems that we are facing with the spiritual introspection and the development of spirituality. So, my question is, how does spiritual introspection lead to dismantling the power systems that are hostile to manifesting these kind of logically deduced truisms of a spirituality like the importance of the ecology? There are power systems in place that are hostile to even people who have these kind of intentions.
So, again, I’ll repeat the question. In which way does seeking inner spirituality lead to dismantling the oppressive power structure that is limiting us realising these spiritual truisms? That is an important question. So, how does growing spiritually, how can it help it dismantle, how can that help dismantle the power systems, the power structures that control society and that also prevent people from growing spiritually? Valid question.
I’d say there are two parts to it. You know, there is cancer in the society, cancer in the human body. Cancer basically is normal growth gone awry.
Normal growth in the body is harmonious. Different parts of the body all grow in a proportionate way. But when there is cancer, one part of the body grows disproportionate and then it erodes and destroys other parts of the system.
Now, often if cancer is to be cured, one aspect of it is that whichever are the dangerous cells, they have to be irradiated or removed surgically or whatever. They have to be stopped and destroyed. Another aspect equally important is that the healthy growth has to begin.
Healthy growth, when one healthy cell starts growing in a proportionate way, that leads to the healing of the body. So, similarly, when we talk about power structures that are in place, they are like cancer. So, the cancerous cells that are there, they just grow disproportionately and they control the rest of the body.
Like that, there are power structures today. We just choke everything, choke whatever is not according to their agenda. That is a sad reality.
At the same time, we all are individuals and we have finite amount of influence and control. So, imagine that suddenly we are in a room and it grows dark. Suddenly the power goes off.
It is completely dark. We may yell or we may wail or we may complain or we may curse for a few seconds. But then immediately after that, we will reach for our flashlight.
Maybe most of our cell phones have flashlights. We will reach for the flashlight, turn it on and then that flashlight, it does not replace the room lights. But the flashlight shows us our step forwards.
We can see one step ahead, one step ahead. And if there are 50 people in the room, all of them turn on their flashlights. The room can become significantly illumined.
So, similarly, there is darkness in society today. But all of us can have our own flashlights. Now, we all are small, but we all can be small, but significant agents of change.
If we illumine our own consciousness with spiritual knowledge, then we become like flashlights. So, just like if everybody is screaming or cursing or ranting, and one person turns on the flashlight, others think, oh, I can also turn on my flashlight, I can also turn on my flashlight. So, like that, if one person becomes spiritual, that one person’s spirituality radiates on to others.
And as it radiates, it inspires others, they also become spiritual. Just as the number of people coming together, when they illumine, when they use the flashlight, the room becomes substantially illuminated. Like that, the change has to begin at the grassroots level.
Now, if we look at the big power structures that are there, and then we feel powerless, what can I do against them? And if we compare our situation individually against those power structures, yes, we may seem very powerless. But at the same time, we have the capacity in our situation to illumine ourselves spiritually. Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, he would say that there is no use of crying for world peace unless there is awakening of divine consciousness in the individual.
So, all of us are individuals and all of us can spiritualise our consciousness. And if we spiritualise our consciousness, then that can inspire others. And actually speaking, you know, we are not alone.
The whole understanding of spirituality is that we are not isolated lumps of matter just orbiting around in space. We are parts of a whole. And when we are part of a whole, when we become spiritually conscious, we become agents for a power greater than ours.
Then the compassion of the supreme consciousness that radiates through us, that empowers us. And we can also become agents for bringing about transformation, which we might ourselves not conceive that we can do. So, rather than cursing the darkness, we can focus on lighting our own flashlights.
We try to become spiritually conscious ourselves and we will set off a positive chain reaction. How it will happen specifically, we may not know right now. But instead of cursing the darkness, we turn on our flashlight and we will see that we can become agents for bringing small but significant positive changes.
Okay, thank you for your question. Are there any other questions? Yes, please. I am a spiritual person, but I am not a religious person.
Yes. I don’t want to attach themselves, but to say that I do believe in God, I don’t want to attach myself under some religion. Yeah, it’s a good question.
Understand, as you were saying, there is also a religion aspect of spirituality. So, you might not understand that. Yes, I got your question.
Yes, the question is that some people who say that I am spiritual, but I am not religious. So, how do we help such people come to a proper understanding? So, this is a whole, is a very large group of people who call themselves as SBNR. SBNR is spiritual, but not religious.
So, they identify themselves like that for a specific reason. What has happened in today’s world is that in many places, religion has been the vertex of conflicts. Now, actually, if we look at it specifically, it is not religion that has caused the conflict, this is people’s own desires for power and prestige and position, and they have used religion as a means.
But still, the perception is that religion makes people narrow minded. And people say, I don’t want to become narrow minded. I don’t want to become intolerant.
I don’t want to become a cause of bigotry or hatred. So, religion is associated with all these things, narrow mindedness, fanaticism, violence. On the other hand, spirituality, that word is associated with an openness to experience, openness to various experiences in life, something non-material, people are ready to experience that and eager to experience that.
So, in today’s usage, the word religion is often associated with narrow mindedness, and spirituality is associated with open mindedness. And that’s why people feel, I want to be spiritual, but not religious. So, the sentiment is perfectly understandable.
Nobody should be narrow minded and dogmatic and imposing their own ideas on others. There are some religions which say, you know, ours is the only way. If you are not following us, you are going to go to hell.
And there are some extremist versions of these religions, they say that, not only are you going to go to hell, we will help you get there faster. So, because of this, naturally, thoughtful people feel alienated. So, we have to see that actually, religion and spirituality are related as health and medicine are related.
Health is a state, which a person who is sick wants to get to the healthy state. Now, for getting to the healthy state, there may be different forms of medicine. There may be say, allopathic medicine, which is mainstream in today’s world, there may be Ayurvedic medicine, there may be naturopathy, there may be Chinese medicine, there may be Native American medicines.
Now, if these medicines, medicine systems, whatever they are, if they lead people to health, that is good. Now, health is an objective state. A person is not coughing, their temperature is normal, their body parameters are good, that indicates they are healthy.
Now, people can be cured by allopathy, people can be cured by Ayurveda, people can be cured by naturopathy. There are many ways in which people can be cured. The point is that people have come to healthy state.
So, religion is meant to be like the curative process and spirituality is like the healthy state. Somebody who says, I want to be spiritual but not religious, in effect, if that means that they simply reject all religions and don’t practise anything themselves, then they are like saying, I want to be healthy but I don’t want to take any medicine. Well, medicine is the way to become healthy.
Now, what should not happen is, imagine there is, there is Ayurvedic doctor and there is allopathic doctor and they start fighting with each other and they start pulling a patient from the allopathic hospital to Ayurvedic hospital or Ayurvedic hospital to allopathic hospital and then the whole purpose is defeated. The purpose is to cure people. So, unfortunately, in today’s world, people forget the purpose of religion, the purpose of religion is to develop selfless love, selfless love for God and love for all living beings in relationship with God.
But when that purpose is forgotten, then people start thinking my religion and your religion, which religion is better? And I try to prove my religion is better than your religion and then it leads to conflict. Now, there are statements in certain religions which say that this is the only way. Now, we have to understand the purpose of those statements.
Just like if a patient goes to a doctor and the doctor tells him to take this medicine and the patient says, no, I went to this doctor and this doctor said this and I went to that doctor and he said that and I went to that doctor and she said this. Now, the doctor will say, just forget all that you have heard, just take my medicine, you will get cured. When the doctor is saying, just forget everything, take my medicine, that does not mean that the doctor is saying all other doctors are bogus.
The doctor is simply saying that at this stage, you just take this medicine, you will get cured. So, these kinds of statements are meant to create a focus. They are not meant to reject every other system of medicine.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, some religions, they become narrow-minded and they claim to have privileged exclusive monopoly to God, to higher consciousness, to higher reality and that sort of narrow-mindedness alienates people. So, Srila Prabhupada, when he met Christians and Christians asked him, what do you think about Jesus? He said, Jesus is our Guru. He gave up his life for the service of God.
One who has so much selfless love, that person is actually saintly, that person is worshipable. So, he saw the same goal of rising to spiritual consciousness. So, when people say that we want to be spiritual but not religious, what we can explain to them is that, yes, we should be open-minded, we should not be narrow-minded.
At the same time, spiritual is also a state that is to be achieved. It is not that we can simply, we may be open to exploring spiritual aspects of life and that we may call as spiritual. That’s fine.
But spiritual is also a state of consciousness that we can experience constantly. Spiritual need not be just some occasional experiences that we have, when we see a sunlight or when we go to some beautiful place or when we go to some holy place. Yes, at that time, we may have some spiritual stirrings of our soul.
But by the process of, if we follow a process for raising our consciousness, then spiritual can become the steady state of our consciousness. And for that to happen, that is like, for a person to become healthy, they have to take medicine. So, we have to follow a process for raising to spiritual consciousness.
So, the process for raising to religious consciousness, the process for raising to spiritual consciousness, that is what we call as religion. So, religion does not have to be narrow-minded. If religion we see simply as a process for individual transformation, from selfishness to selflessness, from materialism to spirituality, then we can be spiritual and we can be religious.
We can be open-minded and still we can be focused. We can be open-minded, yes, there may be different ways by which one can become elevated towards higher consciousness. But I am following this process and by following this process, I will get myself elevated.
So, the whole spiritual but not religious, that kind of phenomena has come because of religious narrow-mindedness, which has alienated many people. But if we can present religion philosophically, logically, as a means for self-transformation, then these people who want to be spiritual, they will also be willing to follow a process for deepening their spirituality. In that way, they can be both spiritual and religious also.
Does it answer your question? Yes, sir. Thank you. Sorry, I can’t hear you.
Sure, I have a couple of questions here. I will take them online. If you want, you can be there.
Otherwise, I will take this couple of questions. You can decide. So, this question is science has discovered a lot of things through its research into the galaxies.
So, what does spirituality have to say about what we have found through our space research? Answer, firstly, the universe itself is a very complex thing. And when we talk about spiritual texts like the Bhagavad Gita or the Bhagavatam, they approach the universe from a very different perspective. So, that is why, when we talk about particular things being found, knowledge, often in science, is actually theory-specific.
So, science has a particular way of looking at the world. And based on looking through that way, it can find many things. So, for example, I will give three examples to illustrate this one by one fast.
If we have white chalk, and we have black coal, and we reduce both of it to powder, and we mix it together, we will have grey powder. But if you look at that under a microscope, we will not see any grey powder. We will see black granules and we will see white granules.
Now, what is it really? Is it grey particles or is it white and black granules? It is actually both. It depends on the scale of observation. So, based on the scale of observation, different people, the same thing may be perceived differently.
Similarly, the yoga texts, which are the Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavatam, they perceive the world from a different scale of observation. And modern science perceives the world from a different scale of observation. So, therefore, naturally, what is perceived is going to be different.
And that things can be perceived differently based on different scales of observation. That is actually even within true, even within science. Today, there are two main theories in science, that is physics.
Within physics, there is quantum physics and there is relativity. Now, both of them perceive the same world in very different ways. According to quantum physics, we simply, all that exists is waves.
According to relativity, there are particles that exist. Now, relativity and quantum physics are not reconcilable. Researchers have been trying for several decades to bring them together.
But since the time of Einstein, the reconciliation has not happened. These are two different models of reality. And they are not reconcilable.
Steven Weinberg said that we have made great progress in the last few decades. But the more we have progressed, the further we are away from the solution. So, basically, science also has two models of reality.
And both these models, they work in different situations. So, which model is real? It is not that one is real and other is false. Both are models, both are functional.
So, and scientists, they use whichever model works for their particular theoretical or practical purposes. So, reality, what it is, is very complex. Science offers us models of reality.
And those models are very useful as functional tools. But they do not tell us actually what the reality is. So, just as within science, there can be multiple models.
So, similarly, based on a particular theoretical perspective. So, spirituality also offers us a different perspective. So, one last example to conclude this point.
Suppose a person is playing a game of billiards. Then, if we had a camera just above the billiards board, all that we would see is a stick hitting a ball. And a stick hits a ball, that hits another, that causes another ball to move, another ball to move, another ball to move.
And one ball goes into the hole. Now, the movement of the ball, of the set all the balls and the going of a ball into a hole, that can be explained in terms of the laws of physics. It is a correct explanation.
So, what made the ball fall into the hole? Oh, it was because this stick hit this ball at this angle with this velocity, this momentum, that is why the ball went into the hole. That is the correct explanation. But is it a complete explanation? No.
If we expanded the frame of the camera, we would see that that stick was held by an expert billiards player. And because that billiards player hit the ball, that is why the ball went into the hole. So, similarly, science has a particular frame of reference, where it looks at reality from the perspective of the interaction of forces, forces, interaction of forces acting on matter.
And it is a correct explanation. But is it a complete explanation? No. From another expanded perspective, we may see that there are conscious beings who are operating the laws of physics.
So, both these explanations, the ball went into the hole by the laws of physics, the ball went into the hole because of an expert billiards player. These two explanations are complementary, they are not contradictory. So, therefore, the vision of the galaxies and the space that we get from science, from a functional perspective, it is fine.
The scriptures offer us a different vision of the cosmos, that is from a different scale of perception. And these two do not have to be contradictory, they can be complementary. So, therefore, science within its particular model, it can advance and it can come up with significant insights into knowledge, and they are all perfectly fine.
They are in their domain from a particular perspective, and scripture offers a knowledge from another perspective. So, there is one last question which we will finish. So, when we are practising, if you want to leave, you can carry on.
Yeah, if you want to carry on. Sure, fine. Sure.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So, one last question.
Often we make aims in our spiritual life, or we make aims in general, and we start off, but we are not able to sustain those aims, sustain our pursuit of those goals. So, what should we do? Actually, it is a common problem we all face. And when we make a resolution, that resolution is often started with inspiration.
Now, when there is inspiration, inspiration means emotion comes first, action comes later. I feel inspired to do this. That means I have the emotion which makes me want to do this.
But inspiration is different from dedication. Dedication means even if the emotion is not present, the action must come. That is dedication, because that is also discipline.
So, when we start off our resolution, we have the inspiration. The emotion makes us feel I want to change and that is why we do it. But over a period of time, the emotion goes down.
We do not feel like doing it anymore. And then the action stops. So, for sustaining that self-transformation which we are trying to do, self-improvement that we are trying to do, we need to have a motivation more sustainable than our emotion.
Emotion will be, as in inspiration will sometimes be there, sometimes it will not be there. And a more sustainable motivation is our intelligence. That is why what we need to do is when we start off something, okay, this is what I am going to do.
We need to have our intelligence strong. Now, we need to write down our reasons. Okay, why am I doing this? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, as many reasons as we can think.
And write it down elaborately. So, the fuel for self-transformation may come through emotion when we have inspiration. But when that fuel runs out, it is like if I had started off an aeroplane, it takes off.
But to reach to the destination, the aeroplane needs to have adequate fuel. So, the emotion will be a fuel that is enough for takeoff. But it will not be enough for us to go through all the journey.
So, to go through the full journey, we need fuel from an alternative source. And that is our intellectual conviction. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, evam buddhe param buddhva samsthabhyatmanam atmana jahichatrum mahabaho kamarupam durasadam.
He says if you want to transform ourselves, conquer our inner selfish desires, we need buddhi, we need intelligence, evam buddhe. So, with intelligence, we can pursue, we can persevere. That means when I understand this is important.
Not doing this is going to harm me. Doing this is going to help me enormously. And not just a simple sentiment like that, but we have objective reasons quantifying that.
Then even when the emotion goes down, still the intelligence will fuel us on. And also, just the intelligence alone is not enough. Along with the intelligence, we need a process.
Just like, say, if my stomach is upset, then to heal my stomach, just my willpower is not enough. I need a process. I need to go to a doctor.
I need to take treatment. My stomach is upset and I just say, by my willpower, I’ll cure myself. My willpower is important.
But my willpower should be to follow the medical process. To follow the doctor’s prescription of diet and medicine. When we do that, then we can be cured.
Similarly, the process for curing ourselves, the best process is the process of bhakti yoga. So, if we find within the process of bhakti yoga, something which we can commit ourselves to. Every day, I will do this one thing in a diligent way.
It can be chanting the holy names, studying scripture, it can be hearing some philosophy. Start with one thing in a very serious committed way. That will act as a curative thing for us.
So, that means there is emotion, there is intelligence, and then there is spirituality. So, spirituality is the process. Sometimes the emotion will help us to move on the process.
Sometimes the intelligence will help us to move on the process. But the process for inner transformation is not just a resolution. There has to be purification that happens.
Purification happens through contact with all pure reality, that is Krishna. When we connect with him, we become purified. So, the more we focus on connecting with Krishna, the more we focus on practising bhakti yoga, whatever it is that we want to change, whatever it is that we want to improve, that we will find it becoming easier and easier and easier, because we will get higher strength from within.
We will get inner contentment, which will enable us to resist whatever drives we have that sabotage our efforts for self-improvement. And thus, the journey that we start off through with inspiration, we continue it with intellectual conviction, but the main process of moving onwards is the process of bhakti yoga. We connect with Krishna, then we will find self-transformation, self-improvement.
Through the process of bhakti, much much more easier to implement.