Focus on conscious intention not circumstantial emotion
I am grateful to be here with you. And as I mentioned, I will speak on discover your inner power.
This talk will be partially autobiographical and partially analytical. Because in a sense, all of us in our life are searching for power. We all have desires, we have dreams.
And we need power to implement those dreams. If we have to do some research, we may want some funds for that. That is financial power.
If we want to develop some habit, we need some willpower for that. So, in fact, the whole of scientific advancement has been a search for power. Francis Bacon, who is one of the pioneers of empiricism that underlies science.
So, Bacon famously said that knowledge is power. Now, when after Einstein postulated the interchangeability of matter and energy, with his famous E is equal to mc squared, when first time the atom bomb was tried out, it was tried out on the island in the Pacific Ocean. And practically, when the explosion took place, the island disappeared.
It just ended. It was tried in America, it was tried there also. And eventually, of course, it was used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And the idea that, you know, something so microscopic that we can't even see it with our eyes, that can contain so much power as to remove from our sight a huge city. That is one of the most intriguing, at the same time one of the most unnerving discoveries that we have come through to modern science. That there is so much power there within this universe.
And one of my interests since my childhood was astronomy. I used to have my own telescope and look at the stars. So once I was looking at the stars and I was looking and after half an hour, I realised that I didn't remember what I had seen.
At that time it struck me that although my eyes were looking at the stars, I had been caught with the thoughts in my own head. And those thoughts, they had just grabbed my consciousness. And I was not even aware of something that was very interesting for me, the stars in the sky.
So it just passed in my head. Could it be that the stars out there I'm so interested in, could it be that the thoughts inside my head have so much power that they can drag me away from something that interests me? It's quite often that when something bores us, if you're studying and you're not interested in the subject, you're reading a book and after one hour, you find that you're still reading the same page. Sometimes you may see in a movie, you know, a boy and a girl are trying to have a relationship and the girl is trying to show no interest.
She pretends to read a book. And then the boy comes and says, you have held the book upside down. So he's held the book just as an excuse.
She's not seeing only what is there. So the point is that when we are not interested in something or we are interested in something else, then what is in front of our eyes, we don't notice it. So the thoughts inside us are also a big universe in themselves and our capacity, science has enabled us to discover enormous amounts of outer power and we are learning to tap this power more and more.
At the same time, our capacity to discover any power or to tap any power that depends primarily on our capacity to focus our consciousness. To be distracted is to be disempowered. I may have, say, somebody may have the buttons to press by which they can just destroy the enemies who are attacking.
Press one button, a huge bomb will explode over there. If they're distracted by something else, they don't press the button. They won't be able to use that power.
And if the enemy hits in that fraction of a second. So for tapping any power that we have, we need the power of our consciousness. Now consciousness is among the biggest puzzles in science research today.
In the science magazine on its 125th anniversary published an issue which talked about major unanswered questions in science. So the second question in that was where does consciousness come from? The first question was where did the universe come from? The second is where does consciousness come from? So now consciousness is something which every one of us is right now aware of. At the same time, consciousness is something for which we have no scientifically measurable parameters.
We can say whether a person is conscious or unconscious by measuring the brainwaves. But the brainwaves are a symptom of consciousness. They are the result when consciousness is present.
The brainwaves themselves are not conscious. We could very well create an instrument which could produce waves similar to the brainwaves with a similar level of frequency. But that would not have consciousness.
Now consciousness is the fundamental reality. It is because we are conscious that we can do scientific research. It is because we are conscious that we can discuss about the nature of consciousness.
The chairs on which you are sitting, they exist but they don't know that they exist. So consciousness is simply the power of self-awareness and awareness of the things around us. And this consciousness, it is a great mystery because if we consider matter, if we go down from the physical objects that we see to their building blocks, we can go down to atoms, we can go down to subatomic particles, we can go down to quantum waves.
Whatever level we go down, down, down, down, we won't find consciousness anywhere. Consciousness is of a fundamentally different nature. And there is definitely some correlation.
But that correlation is like if I have a clock over here. The clock shows me time. But the clock is not time.
We have a clock here. The clock is not time. If I break the clock, say if I have a deadline, say if I like to just ramble along and speak for a long time and say Navin has told me I have to finish by 7.45. I don't want to finish by 7.45. So I take a stone and hurl it at the clock.
And the clock cracks. And the clock will never show 7.45. I think I can go on speaking now. You know, I can break a clock, but the clock is not time.
Time will keep flowing on. Similarly, consciousness is associated with the body. Consciousness manifests through the brain.
So if the brain is damaged, people's capacity to function is impeded. But consciousness is of a different quality. Now, here I'm not going to go into the scientific technicalities of what consciousness is and what consciousness is not.
Our focus is more pragmatic. Our consciousness, some people may say that, you know, consciousness is nothing. It's simply… Actually, there is no such thing as consciousness.
Because at the material level, we can't explain consciousness. Some people say there's no consciousness. That's what many reductionists try to do.
However, the very act of denying consciousness is an act of affirming consciousness. When I say consciousness doesn't exist, this chair can't say consciousness doesn't exist. Because to say consciousness doesn't exist, you need consciousness.
So the very denial of consciousness is an affirmation of consciousness. So consciousness is a fundamental reality. But our focus is on how to tap it.
So our inner power at one level, I said, is the power of our consciousness. But it is not just the power of our consciousness. Consciousness is something we always have.
Even a person who is distracted, they also have consciousness. But instead of focussing on what they need to focus on, focus on something else. Now, we may have an exam.
In a few days, we want to study. But suddenly, say, a notification pops up on Facebook, on our phone, and we look at it. Look at one notification, another, another, another.
And we find we had one hour for study, and one hour is gone. So during the whole one hour, we were conscious. But the power of our consciousness was distracted.
Our researchers have found that there are often things which we do unconsciously. Unconsciously means that we are not, they are below the threshold of our awareness. And unconscious decisions are often unhealthy decisions.
So, for example, say, somebody decides to diet. No, from today I am going to eat healthy food. And then, say, they are working on the table, and below that there is a drawer.
And in that drawer, on one side is a healthy snack. Maybe it's a salad or fruit. On the other side, there is a fatty snack.
Now, if they are conscious, if they are aware, okay, whenever they get, they start feeling hungry. Whenever they get a snack attack, you know, a desire for a snack attacks them. And they get a snack attack.
At that time, if they are aware, oh, I am hungry. Let me take this healthy food. And they will go towards the fruit and eat the fruit.
But they are busy surfing on the net, talking on the phone, replying to some message. And at that time, the snack attack comes. And even without their awareness, the hand will go to that unhealthy snack.
And then, they will start eating it. And then maybe some friend comes along and says, hey, you had planned not to eat that. Oh, yeah, I had planned not to eat that.
What happened? So, when we are not conscious, what happens is, we do things on autopilot. So, all of us have, just like a machine, just like a computer or a phone, has certain default settings. Like that, we also have certain default settings for our behaviour.
And when we are not conscious of what we are doing, we tend to act according to our default settings. So, if those default settings are not optimal, if those default settings are not the best for us, then even without our conscious contemplation, even against our resolution, we end up doing something which we had decided not to do. And we don't even realise it.
A few months ago, on New Year, I was invited to a talk show in India about New Year resolutions. And there, I quoted a survey how 90% of the resolutions that people make on New Year, the resolutions are not new. They made those same resolutions last year and they stay for some days and after that they just dissolve.
So, what is happening here is that our consciousness, when it functions according to autopilot, according to its default settings, then it sabotages our good intentions. It sabotages our resolutions. So, tapping our inner power, our inner power is not just the power of our consciousness, it is the power of becoming conscious of our consciousness.
Now, what am I thinking right now? Our mind works according to a basic psychological principle. The principle is that whatever gets our attention, gets us. Whatever gets our attention, gets us.
So, nowadays we are in the world of high tech. So, imagine, say, we are surfing on the net and suddenly some pop-up window comes up. The window pops up and it shows some link, some description.
Now, we may decide I want to click on it or I don't want to click on it. If we click on it, we go to that and then maybe another pop-up comes up. Sometimes we are reading one thing, if we are looking at some images on Google Images, along with that there are maybe 20 other related images.
We look at that, we click on that and people can just get lost. Now, imagine if there was some technology which didn't require us to click. If that technology sensed whatever we were looking at.
Say, if I am reading a page and I see a link on the side. Just look at it and automatically that link expands. And that link expands and that page opens up.
And I am reading it and I see another link. As soon as I look at it, that link opens up. Now, if there were some technology by which whatever we looked at, that link started opening up.
Now, we could be endlessly consumed by our computer. Just go on and on and on and on. Actually, our mind is like that.
We may be doing one thing, suddenly a thought pops up. Maybe you can check what is the latest update on Facebook. Go there, look at that.
And as soon as I look at that, I send a message to that person, that friend, not replied till now. Let me check that out. So, as soon as a thought comes in, if we give that thought our attention, then that thought starts growing.
It keeps growing till it consumes our attention. And then when it consumes our attention, then it impels us to action. So, there is a snowball effect of thoughts in our consciousness.
If a snowball is on top of a hill, initially it is as small as a pebble. At that time, if the pebble starts rolling down from the top of the hill, somebody can just kick it with their toes, it will crack apart. But as that snowball keeps coming down, down, down, down, down, it acquires more and more snow around it.
It becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And by the time it comes down, it may become like a giant boulder. And even a fully grown-up human being may be bowled over by that, flattened by that.
What happened? The same snowball just acquired more and more snow. Like that, same way, when the thought first comes in our mind, we are doing one thing, another idea comes in our mind, another thought comes. That time, it's just like a tiny snowball.
Now, the more we give attention to it, as we give attention to it, that attention energises it. Like the snowball keeps becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And as it keeps becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, it imposes more and more force on us.
And just as the snowball that has come down will knock us down, similarly, as the thought keeps growing, growing, growing, growing in our consciousness, it impels us to action. And we just don't realise it. Why did I do that? So we did that because when the thought came, we were not conscious.
We allowed that thought to grow, grow, grow, grow, and it became huge. In fact, the consciousness that we have, now that consciousness is never lost in the sense that we are always conscious. But we are not always conscious of that which is important for us, that which we want to be conscious of.
Especially problematic is, say, resentment. Someone says something to us, someone does something to us, and then we feel hurt by that, we feel angered by that. Something goes wrong and then we become resentful.
Why did he do that? Why did she do that? Why did that happen? Now, imagine if someone were driving a car and while driving a car, somehow they hit a pothole. And so, I don't know, in American roads, do you have potholes here? Yeah, okay. In India, in the rainy season, a lot of potholes are there.
So here also, if you hit a pothole, and then now, if we hit a pothole, if that's a regular road we are going along, we may look back at it and say, okay, where did the pothole, we may just pull over or slow down and look back. How did I not notice that pothole? We can look at it and learn from it. Okay, this is here, the future, and let's go this way.
We can learn, if we can look back carefully, we can avoid the pothole. But imagine somebody, they see the pothole, where did that pothole come from? How did I hit that pothole? God, how stupid, how lousy the roads are. How careless I am.
And they keep looking at the back. And they're driving on. If somebody keeps looking back and driving on, that's the recipe for disaster.
We would never do such a thing, such a dangerous thing, keep looking back while driving on. But unfortunately, that is what we are doing when we are succumbing to resentment. Something has happened, something has gone wrong.
There's a difference between learning from the past and living in the past. Learning from the past means, it's like, if I'm driving, I hit a pothole, I pull, maybe slow down, pull over, look at the road, and understand how I missed the pothole, learn from it and move on. But living in the past means that I just keep that same event, whatever they did, whatever happened, we just allow it, we just go on autoplaying in our mind again and again and again.
As it keeps going on and on and on, it just sucks our energy. Now, whereas when we are driving a car, we can stop the car. The difference is, if we consider life to be a journey, we cannot stop life.
Life is going to move on. So if we are consumed by the past, why did she do that? Why did he do that? How did that happen? Or even, why was I so foolish? How might I do such a thing? Whatever it is, if we are consumed by that, that is exactly like we are looking back while driving on. And when we are looking back and driving on, we are going to get into further trouble.
So this way, when we don't tap the power of our consciousness, then we are conscious of things which we needn't be conscious of. And we are not conscious of the things which we should be conscious of. While I am driving, I have to be conscious of what is ahead.
So if I am living, I have to be conscious of what am I to do right now. Not what happened and why it happened. This is a time and place for looking back at the past and learning from the past.
But just letting the past replay again and again and again in the mind, that is not learning from the past, that is living in the past. And that is useless. Not only is it useless, it is dangerous.
And thus we end up wasting a lot of time and energy and getting into further trouble because of what happened in the past. So if our consciousness is not, if we are not tap the power of our consciousness, then whatever opportunities we have to do things, we are unable to do them because our consciousness is elsewhere. So what do we do for this? How do we tap our inner power? We all have our feelings.
Sometimes we feel good about doing something. Sometimes we don't feel good about doing something. And our feelings are important.
At the same time, our feelings are never reliable basis for decision making. Because our feelings are very fickle. Today I have chosen a particular career and I feel this is promising.
I want to study. I want to achieve. And tomorrow I come to the same class.
It's so boring. I made a big mistake. I should have chosen some other career.
Why did I choose this field? So our feelings are fickle. So we have to understand that our feelings are like our mental weather. It's like we have a social weather, the environmental weather, it keeps changing.
It's not that, say, if we don't like cold very much, we like warmth. It's not that, you know, if every day we have to go to office, we start thinking, oh, today it is cold here. I'll not go here.
I'll go to wherever it is warm today. No, the weather may change and if the weather changes, it causes some discomfort for us. But we don't let our intentions be determined by the weather.
We may adapt accordingly, but we don't just change our intentions according to the weather. So just as the external weather keeps changing and yet if we are to achieve something, we have to keep our intentions unchanged. Similarly, our mental weather also keeps changing and ultimately our inner power is the power of conscious intention.
You all have intentions, but when the inner weather changes, so I have my intention, say, I want to study, I want to do this, I want to do that. This is my intention. But then, within us, there is the intention and within us there is also our mental weather.
When the mental weather changes, today I feel, ah, this is great, I want to do it. Tomorrow I feel, I don't want to do it. Now it applies to everything, not only our career, our profession, it applies to our relationships also.
Today my mental weather is good, I feel, you know, I can't live without you. And tomorrow the mental weather says, I can't live with you. It's complete change.
So what is happening over here? Our mental weather will keep changing and we have to recognise that our mental weather, my mental weather is not me. I am my conscious intention. So whatever intention we have to do things, that intention, if we have thought out carefully, deliberated on it and then focused on it, if we identify with the conscious intention, we will be effective.
If we identify with the mental weather, we will be distracted, we will be ineffective. Just like, if I am working on a computer, I am reading something, so I came with the computer to read, maybe to do some research, to find something on the internet, to read it. I came with that intention.
That is my intention. At the same time, whichever side I go, often there are 20 other links, some ads are there, some other things are there. They are like the mental weather.
Now, if we have come to read one particular thing, we have to remember, this is what I came for. And if we perceive that, we will be able to read that and do whatever we, learn whatever we need to learn. So, the art of tapping the inner power is the art of learning the difference between our intentions, our conscious intentions and our circumstantial emotions.
Our conscious, purposeful intention. This is what I had decided to do in my life. And, our circumstantial emotions.
And, spiritual wisdom, spiritual practises, they ultimately are meant to enable us to hone in on our conscious intention and to put aside our circumstantial emotions. The whole process of meditation is actually meant to focus on this unchanging core intention. And the circumstantial emotions will come and go.
We don't focus on that. There are various forms of meditation. Their ultimate purpose is this, to shift the consciousness from the changing to the unchanging.
Among various forms of meditation, one of the most potent is mantra meditation. Mantra is a spiritual sound. It is similar to an affirmation.
When we do some affirmation, you know, things will be okay. Let me not worry. Whatever affirmation you make, you know, I am going to be calm today.
I am not going to let this person get me worked up. Whatever it is, whatever the affirmation I make. Now, when we are doing an affirmation, what are we doing? We are trying to focus on the conscious intention.
Now, we may make our own affirmations and we may affirm them repeatedly. And the affirmations do help. They focus our consciousness on that affirmation.
The circumstantial emotions that come, we don't get caught by them. We don't misidentify with them. We don't let ourselves be misled by them.
But mantra is like a spiritual affirmation. When we chant the mantra, we are, by the chanting of the mantras, returning to our roots. We are reminding ourselves of who we essentially are and what our purpose is.
And just by the repeated utterance of mantras, by these spiritual affirmations, we come back. We come back to our core intention. And then, the circumstantial emotions that are there, they will no longer distract us.
And the process of spirituality, which involves studying spiritual books, which involves coming for spiritual programmes, which comes for doing some kind of spiritual meditation or spiritual affirmation, all of it is not something abstract. It is something very tangible. Tangible in terms of our inner world.
So, scientists have made many remarkable discoveries, which has transformed the world around us. However, the discovery of our inner power is something which we alone have to do for ourselves. And nobody else can tap your inner power for you.
Nobody else can tap my inner power for me. Ultimately, we are individuals. And we, each of us, individually have to embark on this spiritual journey, wherein we learn to tap the power of our conscious intention.
Now, conscious intention has phenomenal power. If we can just focus on a particular thing and relentlessly pursue it, we can do things which you would have otherwise thought as difficult or even as impossible. Just as sunrays, when they are concentrated, you know, if we have a magnifying glass or a concentrating paper, we concentrate that.
If you have a lens through which you concentrate sunrays, sunrays can burn paper because they are concentrated. Otherwise, sun creates general warmth, but it can't create a burning temperature. If we tap the power of our inner conscious, tap our inner power of conscious intention, then whatever it is we need to do, we can enhance our capacity to do it.
We all have different abilities in our life. And we often do a lot to hone our abilities. Somebody has musical talent, they may go to some courses to learn music.
Somebody has, say, athletic talent, they may have a coach and they may do workouts to improve it. So we all work to hone our abilities. And that's important.
Spirituality enables us, spirituality increases our ability to tap our ability. Whatever abilities we have, we will not be able to tap them if we are not conscious, if we are not attentive. If a sports player, say if a baseball player is batting, and when the ball comes, suddenly a fan shouts somewhere and the player gets distracted and the ball just whizzes by, then maybe a very talented hitter of the ball, they will miss it completely because consciousness is not there.
Sometimes in sports, some players, they are very temperamental. When pressure comes, they choke and then they just can't perform. They have ability, but because there is no internal stability, they are not able to focus on the intention, they will get caught by the emotions.
Oh, such a big match, such an important hit. By that, they end up missing. So for any ability that we have, the ability to tap the ability is based on the capacity of our conscious intention.
So by spirituality, we enhance our ability to tap our ability. So I'll summarise. I spoke today about discovering our inner power and I started by talking about how science has discovered remarkable amounts of power, even something as tiny as an atom.
There's so much power that can destroy an entire visible city or even an island. So by tapping power, we can do lots of things and just as science gives us access to many powers to which we did not have access to earlier, spirituality gives us access to the most fundamental power by which we can access all other powers. That is the power of our consciousness.
A person or soldier on a war field may have a powerful weapon because he can just destroy the attacking enemy, but if that soldier gets distracted by something and they don't press the button, then before they can destroy it, enemy may destroy them. So to be distracted is to be disempowered. Our consciousness is our fundamental power which enables us to tap all other external powers and this consciousness is a scientific mystery.
It's a scientific reality in the sense that without the reality of consciousness, no science will be possible. But scientifically what it is, it's a mystery. Actually even for those who deny consciousness doesn't exist, to say that they need consciousness.
So the denial of consciousness is also an affirmation of consciousness. And we discussed about how do we tap the power of consciousness out of our unconscious decisions are often unhealthy decisions. If I'm not conscious of what I'm eating, I'll end up eating something unhealthy which I had resolved not to eat.
So why is that? Just as our device has some default settings, so like that, our mind also has some default settings and those default settings are often unhealthy. So if we are not conscious, then we function by those default settings and we either underutilise ourselves or we abuse ourselves, we hurt ourselves. So one example of how the default setting can hurt us the mind and autopilot can hurt us is through resentment.
A person is driving and they hit a pothole, they can look back to understand how I can avoid the pothole in future. But if they keep glaring back at the pothole, they will meet with an accident. Similarly, when we are going on the journey of life, sometimes things go wrong, people hurt us.
But if we are not careful, our mind goes into auto-replay loop. Why did he do that? Why? That resentment consumes energy. It's like we are looking back while moving forwards.
Instead of learning from the past, we end up living in the past and we miss the present opportunity and we make problems worse for us. So how do we tap our consciousness? Actually for that, we need to know that there is inside us much that is not really us. It's like whatever gets our attention gets us.
So there are often circumstantial stimuli that just pop up in our head. Like while working on a computer, certainly a pop-up window might come up. If I click on it, I just follow it up and I might just get one after another get distracted.
So like that in our mind, thoughts pop up. Just because something has popped up inside us, that does not mean it is mine or it is important for me. Whatever gets our attention gets us.
And therefore we have to be careful about what gets our attention. So just as the environmental weather keeps changing, our mental weather also keeps changing. If we let a thought or a feeling consume our consciousness, there might snowball effect that which could have been neglected very easily that overwhelms us.
And then we are forced to do things which we have decided not to do. So by dropping the power of our consciousness means we learn to differentiate between our conscious intention and our circumstantial emotions and focus on the conscious intention. So meditation as well as specifically mantra meditation which is like a spiritual affirmation that helps us to focus on our intention and put aside the circumstantial emotions.
And when we are able to do that, then whatever abilities we have, if we don't have the right temperament, if we are not able to stay calm, focused, then we won't be able to use our abilities. So our ability to tap our ability is enhanced by our spirituality. By tapping the power of conscious intention, each one of us can bring out the best within us and develop ourselves to the fullest potential and fulfil our destiny.
Thank you very much. Applause We will open the floor for the questions. I have a question.
You said that our mind has a default setting. Is it the mind has default setting or brain has default setting? Because mind is a responsive factor. Concentration and energy comes from the brain.
Okay. Okay, so… You only have one mic? Yeah, I will repeat the question. So does the default setting come from the mind or from the brain? See, it's good to clarify terminology first of all.
If we consider our inner world, we can compare it to a software or computer system. In a computer system, there is the hardware, there is the software and there is the user. So the Bhagavad Gita, which is an ancient yoga text, offers us a three-level model of the self in which there is the body, there is the mind and there is the soul.
The soul is like the user, the mind is like the software and the body is like the hardware. So now the brain is a part of the physical body and it could be like the CPU of a computer, the central processing unit. And now the mind is like the software.
So the settings, the default settings, say if I start typing N on my browser and immediately it completes the NY times. Now if I have visited NY times repeatedly, it will automatically complete that. That default setting, where is it coming from? It is coming from the software.
Even if I change my computer, as soon as I log in with my Gmail ID, my preferences get transferred over there. The default settings are stored in the software. Like that the mind is like the software within us.
Now the discerning factor, the soul is the source of consciousness. In western philosophy, so in this particular model, the word mind is used to refer to the intermediary between the body and the soul. In western philosophy, the word mind is often used generically to refer to anything non-physical.
That's why we have the idea of mind-matter duality. So that is, the words also have different meanings in different contexts. So yes, there is something beyond matter, but what the Gita explains is that there is also two levels over there.
So there is a mind and there is a soul. So within this terminology, or within this analytical framework, the mind refers to the intermediary between the soul and the body, and that is where the default settings are stored. So when we practise meditation, when we use the power of conscious intention, then we are reprogramming the mind.
And as the reprogramming of the mind happens, then our consciousness by default may also go in healthy directions instead of unhealthy directions. Does that answer your question? In that sense, I was thinking of mind as a dispersive factor to the soul. Yes, that's true.
It is a mind that is a dispersive factor. Yes, and it may disperse in different directions. I have a few questions.
First of all, you have a background in engineering. What prompted you to switch from that to the way you are doing it now? So with my background in engineering, what prompted me to shift from engineering to becoming a spiritual monk? I could say that two things. First is, I was frustrated by success.
And second was, I was frustrated by failure. I'll explain both. See, India is a very education-centred country.
A lot of pressure to perform and be an academic achiever. So since my childhood, I had a dream. I wanted to be the number one in my class.
And I was always among the top. I was first, second, third. I was joined first.
I was never the first. So I wanted to be first. And then I gave my GRE during my engineering days to come to America.
And at that time, I was around 2,400. I got 2,350. So I was not just the first in my college.
I was the first in the history of my college. I was first in the whole state of Maharashtra, which is like 10 million people. So I thought now all my dreams have come true.
I have become an achiever. I was elated. But it's only for some time.
I realised just looking at their score sheet doesn't give much pleasure. It's only when people come and congratulate you that you feel happy. And then two, three of my friends, they just forgot to congratulate me.
No, man, life's on their part. Everybody knows about this. We all know about it.
So what's there to congratulate? And it happened for the third time. So it was almost like I had an out-of-body experience. I watched my… I thought I was watching myself from above.
And I felt, you know, this achievement has not made me happy. Rather, I have become more dependent for my happiness on others. Earlier, I could just meet my friends and talk with them.
Now, when I meet them, I'm expecting, when will they congratulate me? And if they don't congratulate me, I'm unhappy, I'm agitated. So I thought tomorrow I may give another exam. I may again score well.
I may achieve many things in my life, but it will always be that I depend on something external for my happiness. So I felt, is there some other source of happiness which is not dependent on externals? And that is how I started exploring spirituality. So that's how I was frustrated by success.
I felt that success was not really fulfilling. The other was, I was very interested, or I had a lot of faith in the power of knowledge, especially the power of education. So I was also interested in some social work.
And while I was in college, just near our college, there were some slums where poor children would stay. And I would go there and offer some free tuitions to those children. So I found that many of these children were from dysfunctional families.
The fathers were alcoholics. And often there was domestic violence in their houses. So I was a part of a social welfare organisation.
And I felt that, we felt that our offering education to these children did not really help them much if their families are so disturbed. So we started getting into de-addiction campaigns. So we adopted a village, and one of my friends would regularly go to that village.
And we got that whole village to, all the villages to give up alcohol. Small village, but it is considered a big victory. And then, one day my friend came back and he looked shattered.
I asked him, what happened? He said that he had gone to this village, and the previous weekend there had been the local elections. And one of the candidates, in order to get elected, had brought three truckloads of free alcohol for all the villagers. And not only the fathers, even the children had drunk.
Then, at that time, it struck me, that by providing knowledge, by providing education, we are opening doors for people. We are opening options for people. But do people really have the power to choose those options? Something within them seems to be sabotaging them.
So when I was in my college, there was one student, he was a consistent university topper. First, we had four years of engineering, eight semesters. In all eight semesters, he was the first in the university.
And he got the highest paying job in the history of our college at that time. So he was like a hero for all students. So when I went and met him, I found that he was a chain smoker.
And he said, unless I smoke, I can't study. And I felt, oh, you are so intelligent. Can't you understand that smoking is hurting you? It's going to kill you.
And he said, at one end of a cigarette is fire, at the other end is a fool. So I just… So then he got this big paying job. Unfortunately, after three, four months, while he was in that job, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
And within a few months, he died. He had advanced lung cancer. So then it struck me that actually, the slum, we could say that the parents, the fathers of those kids living in slums, they were not so well educated.
But here was a highly educated guy. So education also did not provide the power to make healthy choices. So then I started exploring, you know, what is it that empowers us? Education can open choices for people.
But what is it that will empower people to make those choices? That's when both these things happened more or less in parallel. And then I started exploring spirituality. So since my childhood, I had a… I was very short tempered.
So I started doing meditation. And within a matter of weeks, just a couple of weeks, my temper just disappeared. I was separate.
One of my friends was just sliding into alcoholism. And he started practising this, practising the spiritual wisdom of the Gita. And he just gave it up.
So that time I started feeling that this is a way by which people do become empowered. So after I finished my engineering, I worked in a multinational software company for some time. But then I felt that there are many people who can write software programmes.
But how many people have the interest or the inspiration to study and share spiritual knowledge? So I felt that I could contribute to society better this way. So that's how for the last two decades, I've been trying to study and share spiritual wisdom. That's great.
And my other question is, it's kind of something that I'm struggling with, is like anxiety. Because for seven years, I'm trying to do things that I used to be doing. And I'm getting better, but there's still sometimes when I go back to being anxious about things.
So what's the best way to control one's own anxiety to conquer all your fears? So if we feel fearful of some things, how can we conquer all our fears? See, we can never conquer all our fears. Fear is not the problem. Fearfulness is the problem.
Fear is a natural and healthy response to danger. If I look out of a 10-story building and I peer down, we feel some fear. That fear is good because it protects us from danger.
So fear itself is not the problem. So if there is danger and I feel fear, that is healthy, it protects me. The problem can come in two situations.
One is that instead of, okay, there was a danger, I was peering down over there, I was fearful, I had a fear. But even after I move away from there, still I keep having fear. So when the danger is not there, at that time also fear remains.
That is not fear, that is fearfulness. So fearfulness is the problem. So to some extent, none of us know what tomorrow is going to bring.
So some anxiety about the future is natural. At the same time, the mind often takes one stimulus. This went wrong.
Maybe I didn't do so well in one exam or maybe one teacher is upset with me, doesn't give me a good grade or whatever. It takes one stimulus and immediately starts a horror movie. Starts a horror movie inside us, this will go wrong, that will go wrong, that will go wrong, that will go wrong.
And in this inner horror movie, we are not the spectators, we are the victims. So that's how from fear, we move to fearfulness. So now what we need to do is separate the two.
Whenever I feel fear, look at what is the source of the fear. Get out of the head. Get out of the head means that instead of letting just the thoughts go out in the head, we can verbalise or we can write down.
What exactly am I feeling afraid of? Write down, just we verbalise it, give a form to our fears. Give a form means, give verbal form to our fears you know, their spectral like nature, their phantom like nature disappears. It becomes concrete.
Okay, this is the problem. And then we will recognise, okay, if this happens, I can do one, two, three, I can do this, this, this. But then I can also think, you know, how likely is this to happen? And we can evaluate.
Many of our fears, many of the things we worry about, they really, most of them don't materialise. So we, if we just give a verbal form, then we can evaluate whether it is a possibility or it is a probability. You know, if we see possibility, right now this roof can cave in and we can die.
But that is extremely unlikely. We can't let our lives be dominated by all kinds of dystopian possibilities. But if something is a probability, say, if my shoe heel has come off and is slippery, my falling down, slipping and falling is a probability.
Then I have to take, maybe I have to walk more cautiously or I have to get the heel repaired, whatever. So once we get them out in a verbal form and evaluate, then we can actually note down, we can take tangible steps either to deal with it or to neglect it. So that is with respect to our specific fears.
And if we find a similar kind of fear is troubling us again and again, then what we could do is, if we do this exercise, we write it down. Okay, if we have a fear that, you know, my friends will reject me and I'll be alone, then we can write down, how will I deal with it? You know, okay, it's not that everybody is going to reject me, whatever, one friend may leave me, other friends are there. Whatever it is, we write it down and keep that readily accessible to us.
Whenever the fear starts attacking us, we look at that. We read it, that will calm us down. So this is with respect to specifically addressing the fear.
Generically, again, what we are doing here is, same thing. We are focussing on the conscious intention and separating it from the circumstantial emotion. Generically, spiritual practise, understanding spiritual knowledge and practising meditation, this by itself shifts our focus and that will be like strengthening our inner muscles.
And when our inner muscles, you know, physical muscles, we can lift weights. With our inner muscles, we can lift our intention above our emotions. So this is my intention and this emotion, this fear is there.
I'll not let it consume me. So by meditation, by such practise, actually, by spiritual practise, we will be able to, substantially our fears will automatically go down. And specific fears remain, we can address them using our intelligence.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, I know. Thank you. I've been meditating for the past seven years and it's helped me a lot, like, every day for at least an hour.
But there's still, like, dealing with some residual anxiety, but that kind of helps. So thank you, Dr. Chitra. Thank you.
I just have one more question. I think you answered it. I think I want to mention regarding consciousness.
We'll come back to you. The higher spiritual, the chant, it helps a lot. Yeah.
Thank you. Yes. Do you think that consciousness somehow hinders creativity? Because, like you were saying, Okay, good question.
It's something interesting. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Can consciousness impede creativity? Sometimes you say something pops up and that might be interesting and we may learn from it also. Yes.
There are two different points being discussed over here. One is that we have a conscious intention to do something and we are distracted from that by some stray thoughts or stray ideas. And the other is also the possibility that what is serendipity, accidental discovery of good things.
Serendipity is also a possibility. We are doing one thing and another idea pops up. That's a good idea.
So that is possible. Now, again here, what is required is the capacity to differentiate. Not every pop-up that comes in the computer is going to be of something inspiring, something interesting, something worth learning.
Much of it, we just waste our time. So, it's not that everything is good, nor is it that everything that pops up is bad. We need to have the capacity to differentiate.
Differentiate means something we may just say no, something we may say later, something we say no, I'll do it now. So, one of the ways I contribute is through writing. And while I'm writing, as a writer, I always keep getting ideas.
So now, I can't just say that every stray thought is bad. Say for example, when I was giving an answer to this question, I thought of one point I could write an article on. I can't stop this talk and say I'll note this down and then I'll come back and start it again.
So, we have to have our own mechanisms by which we can catch these ideas without being caught by them. Sometimes we are doing something important and we can't immediately do that. Sometimes we may not be doing anything important and we can immediately develop that idea.
But if you are not able to do that, then at that time, you just maybe have some way by which you recollect things or note it down somewhere, record it on a phone and keep it. But don't let it distract us from something important. So, from the inner world, sometimes good ideas pop up, sometimes not so good ideas pop up.
So, we need to have some amount of capacity to discern. And what we are talking about right now in this class is even if we get a good idea, to develop that idea, we will need to focus on it. What happens is, if I don't develop that idea, while I'm developing that idea, another idea comes up.
Another idea comes up, another idea comes up. As an author, I meet hundreds of people who say, you know, one day I want to write a book. And out of those hundreds, thousands of people, very few actually get down to writing a book.
Why? Because getting an idea is good. But getting an idea is just the first part. All the sweat, the toil, all that comes for translating that idea into a reality.
And again, there also, the mind can distract. So, we need to catch the ideas, which are good, but at the same time, we can't let the ideas keep distracting us from where we want to go. So, consciousness doesn't distract us from creativity.
Consciousness enables us to tap creativity. If I'm conscious, then if a good idea comes up, I'll be aware of it also. Take the same example another way.
Now, if I'm reading something and there are two windows that pop up. Now, one is something very interesting, another is something just distracting. If I get caught by the distracting, I'll miss the interesting.
Sometimes in our mind, some anxiety is going on and some idea also pops up, but we just don't notice it. So, even to tap a creative idea, to notice a creative idea, to note a creative idea, we need consciousness. And then to develop that idea into a reality, there also we need consciousness.
So, conscious awareness and conscious intention always helps us. But that doesn't mean… So, we shouldn't think that being consciously intentional doesn't mean we shut off all other reality. It just means we are aware of the primary reality the most and secondary things, we can tap on them as appropriate.
Does that answer your question? Yeah? Yes, please. What would you say is the root of procrastination and how to solve it? What is the root of procrastination and how can we solve it? The root is the mind's tendency to choose the path of least resistance. We all have a tendency within us, like that's one of our default settings.
Whatever creates the least trouble, we do that. When I learned writing and I used to submit articles in newspapers, so one of my writing teachers told me that you should assume that the editor is as lazy as you are. What that means is that if you don't proofread your article well, if you are lazy to proofread an article, the editor will also be lazy to proofread and the editor will choose some other article, which they don't have to proofread.
So, I'm giving this example to say that it's a universal tendency that we choose the path of least resistance. And because of this, when we have resolved to do something important, but we don't feel like doing it, it involves some difficulty, then another alternative comes up, which feels easier at that time. So, we choose the path of least resistance.
So, procrastination is not so much about what we are putting off, it is more about what is our perception of what we are putting off. Why do I keep putting off things? I will not keep putting off things. That sort of resolution is good, but that will not help much.
What we need to do is change our perception. That means, yes, there may be some resistance in this, but it's important. Often, the fulfilling lies at the bottom of the demanding.
The fulfilling lies at the bottom of the demanding. The Bhagavad Gita, again, the ancient Yogas text, it says that actually that which tastes like poison in the beginning will taste like nectar in the end. That means, the very thing which we are putting off, it is demanding now, but behind the demanding, behind the demand, fulfilment resides.
So, if we can shift our vision from that initial poison, that is so difficult, to the eventual nectar that is going to come. You know, if I do this, it is so good. If I decide every day I am going to read some good literature, just 15 minutes I will read every day.
Now, if I say, oh, I am so tired, today I won't do it, maybe tomorrow I will do it. But if you think, if every day I read 15 minutes, that means this 200-page book, I can read 5 pages in just 80 days, less than 3 months, I will have read this full book. If we think of that long-term goal, basically we need to shift our vision from the initial poison to the eventual nectar.
And once we do that, then we will get the impetus to move on. So, how we do that? Again, what I told earlier, we are writing down, why is this important for me? How is this going to fulfil me? And before we start off something which we tend to put off, quickly read that, that will give us some impetus. Another thing that helps a lot is having some other friends who are doing it.
Our desires are not just linear, they are also triangular. What that means is, that we don't just desire to do things based on whether they are attractive or not. Say, last year when I had come here, at that time there was this new video game, Pokemon Go, which was a craze.
Everybody was just clicking and trying to catch this Pokemon going all over the place. Now, initially, when this video game came, well, it was not such a big craze. There are so many video games, one more new one has come.
But once people started playing it, and then one person will see another person playing. What are you doing? I am playing Pokemon. He is just completely lost in it.
I also want to try. What is so special about it? So, the game is here, I am here. By seeing it, I may not get so attracted to it.
But if I see someone else is attracted to it, what is so special about it? I started doing it. And then the friend says, come on, we have to go here, somewhere. No, later.
I will keep doing it. So what has happened? Our desire was triangular. Not just by looking at that game, but by looking at someone playing that game.
Similarly, many times, there are certain objects in which the desire is triggered linearly. We see something good to eat, immediately we feel I want to eat it. The desire is simply linear.
But especially things which are fulfilling in the long run. Often, the desire is not triggered just by seeing those. So, when the desire is not triggered linearly, we may have to trigger it triangularly.
That means if somebody else, if you have a friend who also makes a similar resolution, and they also want to do this, and we decide we'll do it together, then what happens? Sometimes we may not feel like doing it, but they are doing it. Hey, I'll do it now. He is doing it, she is doing it, I'll do it.
And if they don't feel like doing it, they see us, we'll do it. So that way, by using our intelligence to see beyond the demanding to the fulfilling, and by tapping the triangularity of desires, we can overcome procrastination. It's called induced desire.
Induced desire, yeah. Thank you. Does this answer your question? Thank you very much.