Analyzing Social Media 2 – How social is social media?

I was speaking on the topic today of how social is social media and therein I spoke about how we are all social creatures and as social creatures we have a need to connect with other human beings and social media promises to fulfil this innate human need by connecting us with people from whom we would be normally separated by geographical distances. So the promise that the distances which limit us in our connections, those distances will be transcended, that is a part of the enormous appeal of social media. At the same time, if we consider the way people use social media, often there is an irrationality and compulsivity to their usage.
There have been reports of, say there was a woman, a mother who was driving her car with her two children in the car and while driving the car she tried to answer some Facebook chat messages and the car met with an accident and both her children were killed at that time. So this kind of compulsion is not just among teenagers who have their hormones high, it has also been found among government officials, policemen who were out to be, supposed to be on a raid, they were instead of concentrating, trying to respond on the raid, they are responding to messages on Facebook. So now many companies at the job profile, they restrict social media activity and they monitor it so that people don’t waste too much time on it.
So if we consider that, yes we human beings have a need for bonding with each other, but is that need for bonding so urgent that one should neglect important things for it, even one risk one’s life for it? So the compulsion that social media seems to exert on people who use it, that defies rationality and to understand to some extent what is the cause of this compulsion, we need to look at the basic makeup of us human beings and our core drives. As I said, we human beings are social creatures, but at the same time we are all individuals. So we have two distinct needs.
We have the need for connection and we have the need for space. Sometimes we want to bond with people, interact with them, other times we want to be alone, we want to be given our space and sometimes some people say just leave me alone now. So if we feel that I can think clearly, I can calm down, I want to reason things out, whatever it is, I just want to be alone.
Now there are different psychological types of people, introverts, they need space more than connection. We all human beings need both, but relatively speaking introverts get their strength through space and not so much through connection. So they also may like to interact with people, but after some interaction they feel now I want to be alone for some time.
So they need space more than connection. Conversely, extroverts need connection more than space. Even if say they are travelling alone in a flight, they will want to chit-chat with the neighbour who is sitting on the neighbouring seat and get introduced, talk with them.
An introvert on the other hand would just like to be alone and do whatever they want. So now interestingly, social media promises to fulfil both these needs simultaneously. Now our need for space and our need for connection, both are promised to be fulfilled because at one level when we engage in social media, we are having our space, we are not mixing with people at a physical level.
Sometimes two people may be sitting next to each other, but both of them are on their phones texting some messages to someone, responding somebody’s messages and they are almost as if oblivious to the other person’s even existence. So there is that space, although they are physically together, they are not talking with each other. So they are not connected to each other.
Their need for space is fulfilled. At the same time, because each individual is talking with someone, so the need for connection is also fulfilled. Now these two drives, we try to fulfil both of them simultaneously.
So especially through social media, where we feel that we have our privacy, we have our space, at the same time, we can connect with people. These two drives cannot be fulfilled simultaneously. When we are connecting with someone, we may choose, okay, this person has sent a message, I will not send a message back or I will send after a few hours, I will send after a few days.
That kind of freedom we seem to have and that’s why we may feel that I have my space. But at the same time, the human drive is to want to look good at all times. We want to look good in the eyes of others.
And there is an unwritten dictum in social media that the worst thing that you can do on social media is be asocial. Being asocial means that if people are sending messages to you and you don’t respond, then you are classified as asocial. And being asocial is considered almost like being untouchable.
So there is a fear associated with that. And beyond that fear, there is the human need for transcending human limitations. Now, that is the paradox of the human condition that on one level, we are aware of our limitations and on another level, we want to go beyond those limitations.
There was an existential thinker, Albert Camus, who said that, you know, if I had been a cat among animals, a tree among trees, then I could have lived peacefully because I would not have understood the nature of my existence. So the nature of our existence means that we human beings are innately made in such a way that we long for something more than what our body can provide us. So, for example, with respect to eating, all human beings eat, all living beings eat.
And food, acquiring food is a major necessity, often a major anxiety. But very few human beings suffer from health issues because of overeating the way we human beings do. Now, why is that? Because we human beings, we are souls who have developed consciousness.
And with this developed consciousness, we want more pleasure than what the body can offer us. We want more pleasure than what the body can offer us. Animals are also souls like us, but their consciousness is not so developed.
So they just learn to live with whatever pleasure the body offers them. So when hunger attacks them, when hunger pangs start afflicting them, immediately they look for some food, they find the food and eat it. And after that, it’s over.
Till the next time the hunger pangs don’t attack them, they will continue doing whatever they are doing. But we human beings, because we seek more pleasure than what the body can offer us, that is why we often tend to eat more than what we need to. And thus we suffer from obesity.
So we human beings have a developed consciousness which longs for things which the body cannot satisfy. With the undeveloped human consciousness, undeveloped consciousness in animal bodies, this dilemma is not there for souls in animal bodies. Similarly, animals mate and then they procreate.
We humans, we mate even when we don’t want to procreate. Because we are looking for more pleasure than what the body can offer us. So basically, at one level, we are limited by the body, but another level, we are strongly, we have a strong longing to go beyond the limitations of the body.
And this paradox between our limitation and our aspiration, the limitation of the body and the aspiration of the soul to go beyond that limitation, this conflict is what is meant to prompt us to seek something higher than the body, to seek spiritual happiness. So we are meant to seek more than sense pleasure, that means to seek some pleasure higher than sense pleasure, recognising that sense pleasure alone can never satisfy what I am looking for. So we are meant to seek more than sense pleasure, but not understanding the spiritual nature of our longing, we end up not seeking more than sense pleasure, we end up seeking more sense pleasure.
So seeking more sense pleasure means that we eat more than necessary, we mate more than necessary, and in this way we try to seek more and more pleasure at the sensual level, at the body level itself. And there is a whole field of arena of thought which has arisen through science and technology and it is called as transhumanism. Transhumanism, just like we have transcendental, the word transcend means to go beyond.
And generally when we use the word transcendental, it refers to going beyond the material level to the spiritual level. However, because of the prevalence of the materialistic worldview, which often justifies itself in the name of science, many people today do not believe in any level of reality other than the material. And therefore, this innate human aspiration for wanting more than what the body can offer, this is directed not spiritually, it is directed technologically.
So transhumanism, it is fascinating, transhumanism, if you Google it or check it on Wikipedia, they say there are certain problems which we human beings face and these problems we want to overcome them. So how do we overcome these problems? The way to overcome them, they say, is by technology. So what are the problems? The problem of old age, the problem of disease, the problem of death, the problem of birth.
Now for them, birth is not the problem in terms of birth into material nature. The birth is a problem in the sense that they do not want unwanted progeny. They want to be able to abort children, abort babies if they don’t want to have them.
But the point is that the same limitations of old age, disease and death, which the Bhagavad Gita tells us, janma-mrtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duḥkha-dauśānudarśanam, Bhagavad Gita says that these are the miseries of material existence which we need to recognise. And what is the solution the Bhagavad Gita offers us, ādhyātma-jñānaṁ tattvaṁ tattva-jñānārtha-darśanam. Krishna says that therefore, one should understand that ādhyātma-jñānaṁ tattvaṁ, I should come to know about spiritual reality because that alone is eternal.
And then I should philosophise tattva-jñānārtha-darśanam. I should philosophise so that I can understand the truth about life. And the process for understanding this is mām jayo vichāre.
māi ca ananya-yogena bhaktir avyabhicāreṇi That practise bhakti without deviation, without interruption, avyabhicāreṇi. māi ca ananya-yogena, Krishna uses a double describer over there, ananya-yogena, without any distraction, bhaktir avyabhicāreṇi, again without any other motivation. So here, Krishna is telling that perceiving the problems of material existence is meant to help us rise to the spiritual level of reality, to practise the process of yoga, ultimately bhakti-yoga, which will raise our consciousness to the spiritual level.
But instead, what today’s society does is that instead of going towards a spiritual world, which is like a paradise, instead of going towards spiritual paradise, a transhumanism aims to take humanity towards a technological paradise. It promises that through technology, we will come up with breakthroughs that will counter the miseries of old age, disease and death. The idea is that we will find out how even old age people can stay very healthy, even when diseases come, we find out cures for them.
And ultimately, the hope is that maybe by some kind of technology, we’ll be able to escape death also. So now what is the relationship of all this with social media? As I said, we human beings want something more than what the body can offer us. And this aspiration for something more than what the body can offer us, this social media seems to promise to fulfil it because we are physically located at one place and we can bond with a particular social circle of people around us.
But through technology, we are told, we are given the opportunity to bond with people who may be physically far away from us and the limitations that are created by distance, we can transcend them. Now that is fine. And to the extent we all have our loved ones, we all have our friends who may be at distant places and to be able to phone them, to be able to mail them, to be able to easily communicate with them, that is something which can warm our heart.
We don’t have to, in today’s world, we don’t have to wait for a week or a month to have snail mail from somebody coming from America to correspond with somebody in India. So this is deep. So for people who are already related to each other, to help them come together more easily through technology, that is fine.
But as I said that when we fall for the lure of technology, I think that that can take us beyond human limitations. So what happens is that in social media, at one level, we feel I have my space, but at the same time, I have my connection. So every relationship brings with it a certain amount of commitment.
If I’m going to be a friend with someone, if I’m going to act in a particular relationship, then I have to respond to that person. I have to interact with that person. If that person talks with me, I’m expected to talk back to them, continue the conversation.
So what happens is that if through social media, if we are truly meeting people who are like-minded, with whom we would love to be friends, and just because of distance, we are not able to be friends, but now we are able to be friends, that is fine. So as I said, so in two cases, where we meet people, where we already know people, we are emotionally close to them, but we are physically distanced from them, then through technology, we can connect with them and we can transcend the physical distance. Or otherwise, we may find through technology, we are able to connect with some like-minded people, whom we did not know earlier, and then that kind of exact like-minded people, they might not be there in our immediate social circle.
So we are able to connect with them. And then also we can have a fulfilling relationship with them. But apart from these two situations, there could be another situation where the connections through social media become ways for escaping from the commitments in real life relationships.
So for example, I have people around me with whom I cannot get along, or I do not want to interact with them. So by being busy on social media, what I am doing is, I am escaping from my immediate situation. Now, yes, sometimes there are some relationships may not be working out, and we may want somebody else with whom who can understand us.
And then we can better, when somebody gives us a sympathetic ear, somebody understands us, then we may feel a little more calm. And then we can again reconnect with people around us, with whom we are having some difficulties. That is fine.
But when habitually, the mentality becomes trying to avoid commitments, trying to avoid the responsibility that comes with connections. So when one connection is established as a way to escape from another connection, that means social media becomes the way by which people can rationalise being asocial in their immediate surroundings. So it may happen that say, we are talking with someone.
And then while we are talking with them, they are not talking with us, they are looking at their phone and they are responding to messages. And then although they are physically with us, they are not actually with us. So sometimes when we are talking with someone and that person’s phone comes, some phone comes, now they look at the phone and say, no, I will not pick up the phone.
Now when they say that, yes, it is good the conversation is going on. But often this may be spoken in a way as if, you know, they are being very charitable to us by refusing the interruption of the phone. Actually, the phone has come, I should be taking that.
But I am giving you so much importance. I am so kind to you that I won’t pick up that phone. Now this may not be the mentality.
But the point which I am making is that there is much at work at the psychological level, which we may not be aware of. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita tells about how the mind can act as our enemy. He tells that, So he says that we need to elevate ourselves with the mind and not degrade ourselves with the mind.
The mind can be our friend and the mind can be our enemy also. This is 6.5 in the Gita. Now, if the mind wants to act in inimical ways, if the mind is not controlled and it is acting in a way hostile for us, then it can do so very easily by taking the alibi, by taking the rationalisation of social media.
So we all need to put other people first at some time or other during our relationships. And when social media becomes the way by which we neglect our commitments to others, then social media, although the name is social media, it doesn’t make us social, it makes us asocial. It actually makes us more distant.
It makes us more alienated from our immediate vicinity. And then we may say, no, although I am alienated from my immediate vicinity, I am connected with other people. That also is a question, how truly, how authentically are we connected with those people? So the point of all this analysis is not to condemn social media.
Now, we all can use it if we need to, but we just have to be aware of the underlying way in which the mind is functioning. So if we are using it with conscious intention to connect with people whom we know or whom we want to know, and we want to have a proper connection with them, that is fine. But if we are using it, we are using it to just evade the commitments that comes from connections, then the promise of trying to have, of having both space and connection simultaneously, that is a false promise.
Now, people may seem, people who become asocial in real life because of having a lot to, because of being always on social media, they have no friends in, they do not have so much good friends in social, real life. And on the other hand, when they are connecting with social media, they there also have a lot of friends, but they are just nominal friends. So we all need, some of us may have a lot of people whom we know superficially, and some of us may not have that much of people whom we know, but we all need some deep connections.
And superficiality in connections is what results when we become indiscriminate in our use of social media. So especially for people who are in social media today, often they get their sense of self-worth based on say, how many, how many friends they have on Facebook, or how many people saw their tweet, or they put a photo on Instagram, how many people liked their photo, how many people viewed their photo, how many people shared their photo. Now, all this is a very superficial level of, superficial level for gaining one’s self-worth.
So here, people feel that I am doing, I am someone, I am someone worthwhile, if enough people like what I am doing, if enough people follow what I am doing. And if enough people are not doing that, then where is my self-worth? Then I start feeling insecure. So ultimately, it is at the level of the mind that we live much more than at the level of the body.
And what effect our interaction with technology is having at the level of our mind, that is something which we have to be aware ourselves. Otherwise, there may be subtle ways in which the mind will be working to jeopardise our interests, to endanger us and we will not even realise it. Ultimately, as I said that, when I said that the human body, that we souls in human bodies long for more than what the body can offer us.
Now, this paradoxical situation is ultimately meant to connect us with Krishna. Because we as souls, through the body, at the level of bodily consciousness, we can connect with some people and those connections can be fulfilling. They can be sometimes frustrating, they can be sometimes fulfilling.
But ultimately, our developed human consciousness is meant to enable us to connect with Krishna. And for connection with Krishna, what we primarily need is spiritual media, not social media. Spiritual media is the mediums by which our consciousness gets channelled to the spiritual level.
So it is, say, the holy name, the study of scriptures, the worship of the deities, the association with devotees, association of devotees. Now, all this are means by which our consciousness gets elevated to the spiritual level. And to the extent we are connecting with Krishna, to that extent, we will be fulfilled in our life.
To the extent we are not connected with Krishna, to that extent, no matter what we do, we will feel insecure, we will feel empty. We will feel a void within us. And if social media becomes our way to avoid the void within, we experience a void within ourselves and we try to avoid the void through social media.
Social media will not be able to remove that emptiness. Because ultimately, there is a God-shaped hole in the human heart. And that God-shaped hole in the human heart can be filled only by God, not by anyone else.
So, to the extent we connect with Krishna, to that extent, we will experience contentment. To that extent, we will experience enrichment. And to the extent we are disconnected with Krishna, to that extent, we will fall prey to various things that will promise us the thing which only Krishna can deliver us.
So, social media, if it can be an aid in our spiritual media, if social media helps us to connect with Krishna better, connect with those who are connecting with Krishna and through those connections, we are connecting with Krishna, then it can actually make our, not only fulfil our social needs, but ultimately, it will fulfil our spiritual need. We have a social need for connection and we have a spiritual need for connection. Our social need for connection, it connects us horizontally with people around us.
Our spiritual need for connection connects us with Krishna, impels us to connect with Krishna. And both are needs for us, just as we are souls in a particular body. So, there is the soul’s need and there is the body’s need.
As long as we have the body, we cannot neglect the body’s needs. But at the same time, just fulfilling the body’s need alone is not enough. So, like that, we have, just as we are souls in a particular body, we are souls also in a particular society.
So, just as there are bodily needs which need to be addressed, similarly, there are social needs that need to be addressed. But just as the bodily needs, the physical needs are not a substitute for the spiritual needs. Similarly, social needs are not a substitute for the spiritual needs.
Just like we need to eat food. So, what we do is, we spiritualise the food by offering it to Krishna. We take Krishna Prasad.
Similarly, when we are striving to move closer to Krishna, we need a connection with people around us. So, the people around us we connect with, we try to connect as much as possible with devotees. So, just as we spiritualise our physical need for food, similarly, we try to spiritualise our social need for connection with people.
And the underlying common thread is addressing our fundamental need. We are souls and our fundamental need is to connect with Krishna as souls. So, that spiritual need is what we need to fulfil.
And when we keep that foremost, then how specifically to balance our other needs, our physical needs or our social needs, that intelligence we will get. Krishna says in 10.10 in the Bhagavad Gita, I will give you the intelligence how to connect, how to come to me. So, now, the intelligence to come to Krishna.
Now, what does it mean? Actually, just as if we are on a journey and we are going to meet some friend, we are driving by car and that friend is, I will tell you how to come to me. Now, what does telling me how to come to me essentially mean? It means what road to follow. And when we are following a road, often forks come.
Okay, should I take left or should I take right? Where should I go? And then that friend guides us, you take this road. And again after some time, another fork will come. Okay, should I take left or should I take right? And if they keep guiding us right, then we will reach our destination.
So, when Krishna says, I will give you the intelligence by which to come to me, that essentially means Krishna will give us the intelligence to make wise choices. Because our life is shaped by primarily our choices. So, the intelligence to make right choices will be given by Krishna to whom? To those who are those who are affectionately trying to serve him, Krishna will give them the intelligence.
So, if we keep Krishna first in our practise of spiritual life, and with keeping Krishna first, we ensure that we harmonise everything else accordingly. If we keep Krishna first and try to connect with Krishna, whether it is through directly devotional activities, whether it is through devotional activities channelled through social media, channelled through other forms of technology, if our priority is to connect with Krishna, then how to use social media, how much to use social media, this is something which each of us will have to decide individually, based on our situation, based on our disposition, based on our vocation, based on our particular impurity, what kind of service we are doing, what kind of profession we are doing, that is something which will vary, just as we all have to decide how much I should eat. There is no standardisation, that is, eat only this much or eat this much.
Some people have a low appetite, some people have a high appetite. Now, the important thing is not how much we eat, the important thing is what we are able to do or not able to do after we eat. If somebody eats so much and then they just have to sleep for hours, they just become lethargic for hours, then that is eating too much.
And somebody eats too less, very little, and then they are mostly thinking of food, craving out of hunger, that is also not of MHU. So, we ourselves learn how much I need to eat, so that I can function effectively. So, similarly, based on our service, based on our situation, based on our inclination, now how much we interact with social media, so that we can be overall spiritually, emotionally, socially healthy.
We are spiritually healthy means we are well connected with Krishna. Emotionally healthy means that we are well connected with people around us. We are balanced in our emotions.
We are not driven by irrational drives. It is not that, as I said, some people become addicted and say while driving, they are compulsively responding to some messages. They wake up at midnight and they check there, oh, what is the Facebook update? So, we are not emotionally, we are not just being taken for a ride, tossed here and there by our emotions.
Our emotions are calm. Of course, all of us will face turbulences in our life. And at that times, those times, sometimes our emotions may become turbulent.
But overall, our emotions are balanced. And socially, we have healthy, meaningful connections, whether it be with people immediately around us or people away from us physically. But the connections are not just superficial.
And the connections are not means to escape from the commitments required in other connections, but rather those connections are themselves meaningful, committed and fulfilling. So, this guidance, this is the, just as in the Isha Upanishad, we talk about the quota. Take your quota and do not take more than that.
So, what is our quota for using technology? What is the quota that is the best for us for using social media? That is something which each one of us has to decide. And that deciding is, the principle is, I gave a series of three talks last year when I, this year when I was in Denver, on how to understand our, what is our quota. So, the basic principle I talked about is this example of appetite.
That whenever we are taking food, how much food should we eat? We need to eat enough food or add the quantity of food so much that food does not become a competitor to Krishna. So, food can become a competitor to Krishna in two ways. One is if I eat too little, then because the body needs food, so I feel deprived and I am chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, but my mind is saying food, food, food, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, food, food, food, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, food, food, food.
So, at that time, the food has become a competitor to Krishna because we have given too little. On the other hand, if somebody eats too much and becomes too attached to food, then most of the time, even if they have had a meal, they are thinking of, oh, what will be there for the next meal? Where can I get this item? Where can I get this item? Maybe I can get it right now if I go here. So, again, the craving for food has become too much.
So, either way, if we eat too little or eat too much, then food becomes a competitor to Krishna. So, the quota, the balance level means that food does not become a competitor to Krishna. The balance level is that food becomes a resource that we use so that we can move onwards towards Krishna.
Similarly, social media, it is just as food represents one material resource, social media represents another technological resource which we need, which is an integral part of living in today’s world. So, how much of social media interaction one should have, one should not have? That social media should not become a competitor to Krishna. Sometimes if somebody has been very active on social media earlier, or they have a friend circle which is very active on social media, and if they suddenly decide to cut off, then they feel so deprived, they feel as if they have lost a part of their identity.
And that causes so much distress that it consumes their mind. Now, it is not necessary that we have to cut off like that, we have to alienate ourselves like that. On the other extreme is that if we are so consumed with it that in the middle of the night we wake up and check, while driving we are checking, in the middle of japa we are checking, so then that is also where it is becoming a competitor to Krishna.
So, each of us, if we put Krishna first, if we practise bhakti steadily, then we will get the intelligence of how to use social media in a way that it becomes a tool for our growth towards Krishna, it becomes a tool for our growing in our relationships, it is a tool for us to grow in our service, to grow in our contributions, and it doesn’t become a distraction from any of these. That balanced state we can attain by keeping Krishna first and then using the intelligence that we get by that focused consciousness, by that purified intelligence to interact with other things in the world, including social media. So, I will summarise.
I spoke today about how social is social media. So, we human beings, our need for social connections is promised to be fulfilled by social media in a way that seems to take us beyond the normal human limitation. We sometimes need privacy, we need space, sometimes we need connection.
And at different times, we may need each of these and different people, introverts or extroverts, may need one of these more than the other. In social media, we get the illusory promise that we can have both space and connection together. Now, somebody whom we don’t like, if they are around us, our family members, our colleagues, our friends, we can just be plugging on our, clicking buttons on our phones, we can have our space and we also can have connection with someone who is somewhere else.
But this often leads to, when people get involved in social media, there is an irrational compulsion, where people sometimes risk their sanity, risk their life, instead of trying to respond to Facebook messages when they are driving. So, this compulsiveness comes in the use of social media, it originates from the misdirection of our existential longing. We human beings, because we have a consciousness more developed than animals, so animals just live satisfied with whatever their body offers them.
They are not blissful, but they are not craving for more than what the body offers them. But we human beings, with the developed consciousness, want more than what the body offers. That’s why we eat more than what is necessary for the body.
We mate more than what is necessary for bodily drives, for procreation. And we, in the same way, we want more connections than what the body can offer us. So this, the soul’s longing for more than what the body can offer us, is meant to take us to the transcendental level, to the spiritual level.
But through technology, through the ideology of transhumanism, we are promised that the limitations of the body, such as old age, disease, death, and the limitedness of the connections that we can have, because we are physically located in one place, all such limitations can be transcended by technology. But this promise is illusory, because ultimately every relationship requires some commitment, some putting the other person first. And when social media becomes a means to avoid the inconveniences of putting others first in our relationship, then social media actually ends up making us asocial.
Because we become alienated from the people around us, and we are only superficially connected with people through social media. And further, when we become compulsively hooked to social media, our sense of self-worth starts coming from how many people like us, how many people follow us, how many people share whatever we have posted. And then that becomes a very flimsy foundation for our self-worth.
So it causes a lot of insecurity and anxiety. Ultimately, our soul’s longing for more than what the body can offer us is fulfilled only by Krishna. And connecting with Krishna requires spiritual media, which is essentially the Navaviddha Bhakti, the practises of devotional service, the ninefold processes.
So it is they which will actually fulfil our need for enduring connection. And just as we have physical needs, which we need to fulfil, because we are souls in particular bodies, but the physical needs have to be fulfilled in such a way that they are spiritualised, they assist us in our spiritual quest. We take food, but we take prasad.
So like that, we have social needs, and those social needs also need to be fulfilled, but we try to fulfil them in a way that they can be spiritualised, that they assist us in our spiritual growth towards Krishna. So if we put Krishna first, then Krishna promises that He will give us the intelligence, He will give us the clarity of consciousness, by which we can make decisions wisely. This is a friend who guides us which road, which turn to take when we are facing a crossroads.
So similarly, Krishna guides us whenever we have to make decisions, how much to engage in something. That decision Krishna guides us, and thus how much to say engage in social media, that is something which we learn when we have clear consciousness. So just as we may have our quota for how much food we eat, how much money we earn.
So similarly, we have to decide how much is the quota of social media, of technological interaction that I need to have. So the criteria for determining the quota is that the material thing doesn’t become a competitor to Krishna. If I eat too little, then the need for food distracts me from Krishna.
If I eat too much, then the attachment for food and the craving for food again distracts me from Krishna. Similarly, depending on our position, our disposition, our situation, how much social media functionality we need to have. If it’s far less, we will feel deprived.
If it is far too much, again we will feel disconnected. We will just be overwhelmed, insecure and disconnected. So that balance we can find when we prioritise connecting with Krishna.
So the spiritual media is what is going to give us lasting satisfaction, real security, real satisfaction. And then with this, when we are well connected in the spiritual media that connects us with Krishna, then how much to use social media, that dadami buddhi yogam tam. Krishna will give us the intelligence to do that.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions? Shall we stop here? There are no questions.
Oh, okay. So if I understand the question right, you’re saying that, say, sleeping is a need of the body and drinking water is the need of the body. But we drink water when we need, but sleeping we consider in the mode of ignorance.
So what is the difference between these two bodily needs? Is that the question? Yeah. So actually, it is not that sleeping is in the mode of ignorance or rather sleeping itself is not bad. Krishna says clearly in the Bhagavad Gita, one who sleeps too little or sleeps too much, such a person cannot be a yogi.
So sleeping is simply a bodily need. And Krishna actually speaks this in 6.16-17 in the Bhagavad Gita, which is speaking for people who have renounced the world, who have gone to the jungle. 6.11, he has told about the yogis going out in the jungle.
And he’s telling even for them that actually if they sleep too little or eat too little, they cannot be yogis. So why is that? Because the body is a machine given to us by Krishna. Yantra rudhani mayaya.
And that machine has to be taken care of. So taking care of the bodily machine is also our service to Krishna. But when taking care of the bodily machine becomes an end in itself or becomes an end so that we can further pander to bodily pleasures, further indulge in bodily pleasures, then that is when it becomes a problem.
But when we see the body as a functional tool for serving Krishna and then we do whatever it takes to take care of the body, then that is the way we are respecting the gift that Krishna has given to us and we are taking due care of the gift. Ashila Prabhupada himself was very spiritually advanced. Who can be more in Krishna consciousness than Ashila Prabhupada? And yet Ashila Prabhupada did do the needful to take care of his body.
Every day practically he would go for a morning walk. Every day he would take a massage and he would spend a substantial amount of time taking that massage. And usually he did not mix his massage with say meeting people.
He would usually prefer to be alone just with the person who was massaging him at that time. And he would be completely relaxed. He would sleep very less but still he took care of the body whatever was necessary.
So similarly, we do not have to feel guilty about taking care of the needs of the body. The body has functional needs and we take care of it and then we move on towards Krishna. The important thing is that we do not get so obsessed with taking care of the body’s needs that we become distracted from Krishna because of that.
So as long as our purpose of the life is to serve Krishna and we have a particular vehicle which has a particular set of needs, which is of a particular nature, then we have to provide what it takes, what it needs. When Prabhupada was there on the planet, most of his disciples were very young and Prabhupada wrote in that letter, if you don’t take care of your health now, you will not be able to serve Krishna in the future even if you are very enthusiastic to do so. So enthusiasm alone will not take us beyond bodily disease or bodily dysfunction.
And I met many such Prabhupada disciples in America while I was there. They did extraordinary service when they were young but they also advised that you should take care of your body now. Otherwise it becomes very difficult to serve Krishna later.
So now they said that if we had taken a little more care of our body, we could have done so much more service. But now because they neglected the body in their youth, the body has got some serious issues which their service gets limited. So of course we have to be always careful that we don’t go to the other extreme of pandering to the body too much.
So basically if we have the purpose of serving Krishna clear and we try to serve him as much as we can, then overall it becomes clear. Prabhupada says in the Nectar of Introduction that if we come to the mode of goodness then how to advance further, it will be revealed from within. So if we just try to overall live a regulated life, especially do our sadhana properly, that will bring us to the mode of goodness and then how much to take care of the body, how to take care of the body, that will be done automatically.
So when Krishna talks about sleep as being the mode of ignorance, he is especially talking about over sleeping. So sleeping is a bodily necessity and although that we can say that activity is in the mode of ignorance, if we are doing, if we are sleeping so that we can rest, so that we can serve Krishna better, then that sleep is, the activity may be in ignorance but the intention is in transcendence. The intention is to serve Krishna.
But if we are sleeping so that we can escape from the problems of life, if we are sleeping because we are lazy and then we oversleep, then that is what will increase the mode of ignorance in us. So rather than just taking, rather than just thinking that sleep is in the mode of ignorance, we can see that what is it that enables, what is the balance that enables us to steadily move towards transcendence and then that way we can, you do what is needed for the body and then the body will do, body will help us do what is needed for Krishna. Does that answer your question? Thank you, Mataji.
So shall we stop here? Okay, one last question. So how do we balance between completely shunning social media or getting too anxious about posting on social media? See life, when we talk about balance, balance is rarely static. Balance itself is dynamic.
That means, say if somebody is riding a cycle, then the normal balance state of the cycle is vertical state. But if that person is taking a right turn, then the vertical state won’t be the balance state. Person has to tilt towards the right and after they have taken the right turn, if they still stay tilted towards the right, then they will end up going in a circle.
They will not move on. So after tilting towards the right, again they have to become vertical and then if they again later have a left turn, then again tilt towards the left. So for a cycle, the balance state is the state that enables the cycle to move towards the destination.
So normally it will be vertical, but sometimes it may be left tilted, sometimes it may be right tilted. So like that in life, balance is not a static formula. It is often a dynamic decision.
So that means that say if we are in a situation where a lot is happening in our life, say if we have gone on a pilgrimage to Mayapur, Vrindavan, and we are going to holy places, we are on yatra, and at that time say we would like to share what is happening with our friends, with others, and then we are posting. Some special occasion is there in our life and that time we are posting, that’s fine. But other times when say we are more focused on say if you want to study scripture, you want to go deep into scripture study and immersion, and that time also we get distracted.
So then that may be undesirable. So basically, when we are making decisions, it is very difficult to decide at that time because when we are in the thick of action, we are usually in the mode of passion. And in the mode of passion, it is difficult to arrive at sound decisions.
So we may just do whatever makes best sense to us at that time. But after that, we can have some time for reflection when we are in the mode of goodness. And then we can say, okay, I did this, this, this at this time.
Did it really help me? Or was it a distraction? So when we look back, when we have such time for reflection, when we are in the mode of goodness, then we can evaluate the decisions which we made in the heat of the moment, or when we were in the thick of action, and then we can decide, okay, this decision was sound, this decision was not sound. And generally, if we just leave the whole decision to be taken at the thick of the action, it’s going to be, we will be driven by our impulses. So if we have some broad guidelines, say I decide in a day, this much time I want to spend on social media or in a week, I want to spend this much time.
Now, it doesn’t have to be like a rigid principle, dot to the minute. Sometimes it might be a little more, sometimes a little less as per the situation. But if we have some overall sense of, overall sense of proportion, Prabhupada writes in the 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, that intelligence means to see things in their proper perspective.
That means to see, okay, this is more important, this is less important. And in that way, we have the proper perspective. And this proper perspective usually comes in the mode of goodness.
So therefore, when we are in a mode of, when we are calm, in a mode of goodness, in a reflective mode, at that time, we decide an overall sense of proportion for which activities we are going to give how much time. And based on that, that plan which we have made, we can overall act. And sometimes, if certain situations demand that we do more or do less, we go along with that, whatever makes, whatever makes sense at that time.
And later on, again, we evaluate. Okay, now I did this, when we are in goodness, if we evaluate, then we will be able to adjust, okay, this was not the best thing, this was a good thing that I did. So rather than expecting that we should have some rigid formula for balancing our life, we need to know that balancing itself means dynamic decision making.
And if we have in a mode of goodness, acquired an overall sense of proportion and direction in our life, then we will be able to better make decisions when we are in the thick of action. And if we give time for retrospection, for looking back, then we will also be able to learn from the decisions that we made in thick of action. And then we can decide whether this decision was the best or whether we should do something different in future.
Thank you very much. So we will stop here. Thank you very much.
Shri Prabhupada King. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna.