Winning with emotional intelliigence 1 – Personal competence through self management

[Seminar at Microsoft, Seattle, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Good evening, everyone.
Good evening, everyone. Am I audible behind? I thank all of you for coming today evening. I’m grateful to the coordinator at Microsoft to give me an opportunity to share a few thoughts on winning with emotional intelligence.
I’ll start with an incident that actually made me pursue this, one of the incidents that made me pursue this journey of spiritual self-understanding. And then we’ll move on to the topic. So are you operating the slideshow? From where? Here? Okay.
So this is the topic we’re going to speak on today. Personal competence through self-management. And tomorrow we’re speaking on social competence.
So we all have certain talents which we want to tap. And our capacity to tap our talents, what we can get out of ourselves, depends on two things. What is inside us and what is on the pathway between what is inside and what is outside.
What does that mean? About 25 years ago, I was an engineering student in one of the top colleges in India. And I was among, always in my career, I was among the best students. One of my seniors was an outstandingly brilliant student.
And I was like his fan. And all the eight years of his engineering, he was not just the college topper, but the university topper. However, he also was a chain smoker.
And somehow I just couldn’t figure it out. Why was it that this person who would solve the problems of electronics, I was studying electronics and telecommunications engineering at that time, he could figure them out, something which would take me hours, he could figure that out in minutes. So why couldn’t he figure it out that he was ruining his health or at least endangering his health by smoking so much? He got at that time the highest paying job in the history of our college.
And tragically, in six months of his working at that job, he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and passed away. So that made me think, what is there within us which seems to sabotage us? What is it that makes us work against our best interest? So he undoubtedly had brilliant intelligence. The talent was enormous.
But something prevented him from actualizing the talent and living a successful life. So if you want to be competent in whatever we do, there are three aspects to this. There is talent.
And talent is inside us. Achievement is what we want. But what will bring that talent outside and translate it into achievement is temperament.
Temperament is what helps us to face life’s ups and downs with a steady purposefulness and move towards our valued goals. If somebody has talent, that is the ability inside them, but they don’t have temperament, then the result is that they become what are called as wasted talents or lost talents. In the arena of sports, there are many talented players, but the players who become champions are not just the players who have great talent, but also the players who can stay cool.
Say in cricket, for example, there are some teams which are known to be chokers. Very talented, but when the pressure situations come, they just crumble. So they are never able to fulfill their potentials.
So most of the training and education that we get today, it focuses on honing our talents. We learn how to do maths, how to do language, how to do information processing, and this is vital. But we get very little education or training in honing our temperament.
And in fact, the kind of world that we live in today subjects us to more and more stress, and our temperament often is tested much more than our talent. It is during our education, we find that it is our talent that is tested through various exams. Yes, temperament also is tested because we go through life and its various challenges.
But after that, when we launch our career, more often than not, it is the temperament that is tested much more. The talent acts as a starting point for getting us a good opening, even a big break. But after that, a lot depends on our temperament.
So to understand what exactly this temperament is, let’s look at two components of what is there inside us. Whenever we do something, in doing something, we just feel good. So there are non-rational emotional responses that we have.
Say somebody likes music. Then as soon as they hear some music, they feel peace, feel joy. If you try to ask them rationally, why do you feel so peaceful? They may not be able to explain it.
It is not irrational, it is just non-rational. Rationality is not primarily involved in that. This is emotions, just feel good about it.
So there are within us, our topic today is emotional intelligence, our capacity to manage our emotions. So there are two broad kinds of emotions that we can have within us. One we can call as instincts and the other we can call as impulses.
Instincts are what enable us to get things effortlessly right. Some people say who are good at interior design, they come into a room, as soon as they see it, you could move this sofa here, you could move this picture here, you could put this fridge here, and things would look so much better. Somebody else may come and agonize for hours and still they may not be able to get it.
We just have that instinct for interior design. Some people are very good at language. Give them a thought and they will just put it in such attractive words within a few moments.
Somebody else for them, they keep searching for the right word for hours and still they don’t get it. So where we are good, where our instincts are strong, we almost effortlessly get it right. And this broadly relates with our talents.
Along with that, there are certain things which we again do without thinking. So in instincts, we don’t necessarily think. It’s okay, this sentence is like this, move this here, move this here, move this word here, put this adjective, and it’s good.
So we don’t necessarily think about it, we just get it. So we can think and train and improve the instincts, but instincts means we just get it right. Whereas impulses, we just act on the spur of the moment and we get it wrong.
So, say in a sports match, say in cricket, a batsman is batting very well and suddenly in a rush of blood, the batsman hits a rash shot. There’s no need to hit that shot, the batsman hits that and gets out. It’s a rush of blood, impulse.
All of us have certain impulses which work against us. Say, we are working on something and suddenly we feel a little bored. Something within us says, just look at your Facebook, just surf a little bit on the net.
And then we want a break, but what starts off as maybe one minute becomes ten minutes, becomes twenty minutes. And we spend hours not realizing, what am I doing? So our impulses make us do wrong things without even thinking about it. So both these forces are there within us and we can say, I talked about talent and temperament, so our talent correlates with our instincts.
Whatever areas we have talent in, our instincts are sharp in that. Whereas our temperament correlates with our impulses. If our temperament is not strong, then we give in to our impulses very easily.
And when we give in to our impulses, then we sabotage ourselves. So both these actions, in the form of instincts and impulses, they are almost unconscious. We don’t put in conscious thought to analyze what we are doing.
We just do it. So now, where do these instincts and impulses come from? And what can we do to deal with them appropriately? We want to channel our instincts and we want to curb our impulses. Through this, emotional intelligence refers to the capacity to manage our impulses.
So Daniel Goleman is the pioneer of this field of emotional intelligence and he said that the greatest predictor of success is the skill of resisting impulse. People who are able to resist their impulses can become much more successful than those who fail to do this. So let’s do a thought experiment to understand what is happening in our inner world.
Where do these impulses and instincts come from? Before that, to guide this thought experiment, I would offer a model of the self which is given in the ancient yoga texts of India which has the Bhagavad Gita. It explains that our self is three dimensional. We are not just our body.
Our destiny is not just our biology. We are bigger than our bodies and we are bigger than our brains. So the body, mind and self or consciousness or soul, whatever word we use for it, they are if we compare it to a computer system like the hardware, the software and the user.
So in today’s world, the technological progress that we have is largely like improving the hardware. Phenomenal amount of hardware available for us. But if I want to use a device, no matter how good the hardware is, if the software is corrupted by a virus, the device will not be able to function.
So similarly, we need to check what is there in our mind and then purge it of whatever is unwanted. So to get some understanding of this three level model of the self, let’s do a thought exercise. So you can sit back comfortably on your chairs and close your eyes.
Now you can take three deep breaths. One, let all the air within come out with your breath. Two, now with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you.
Although your eyes are closed and you can’t see what is physically in front of you, but still, there is something like a screen inside you on which you see various things. You may see this room. You may see your home.
You may see a loud one. You may see a mountain, a river. In fact, you may see a train of images going one after another after another on that inner screen.
Or you may just see a dull colorless pattern on the inner screen. But there is something which you see, something which you can call as the inner screen. And on the inner screen, various images keep appearing and disappearing.
While you are looking at that inner screen, try to take a step back and look at the inner seer who is looking at the inner screen. You can see the inner screen, but take a step back and try to look at the seer of that screen. If you step back, you will find that the inner seer steps back with you.
Try once again to step back and try to see who is seeing that screen. No matter how much you step back, the inner seer steps back with you. What you are looking for is what you are looking with.
You are that inner seer. Take three deep breaths. Gradually you can open your eyes.
One, three. Slowly open your eyes. Thank you.
So this inner screen on which various images appear, that is always present. And when we are awake and we are attentive, at that time, the inner screen appears or functions like a window. So there is an outer scene there is an inner screen and there is an inner seer.
And when all three are together, that is when perception happens. So for example, when you are hearing this talk, so you are looking at me, I am part of the outer screen, outer scene. And then this gets represented or depicted on your inner screen.
And you observe, you hear, you analyze. Sometimes however, the inner screen, instead of appearing, functioning like a window, starts functioning like a television set. That means it just shows something else entirely.
And that is when we become absent-minded. So going back to the software model, the hardware, the software and the user. So the inner seer is the user.
The inner screen is the software, the mind. Inner seer is the soul. And the outer screen is the body and the physical world outside.
So for us to function effectively, what appears on the inner screen is vital. If a sports player, if a cricketer is batting in a very important match and the baller is balling, and if the player is concentrating, this is the ball, let me deal with the ball on merit. Then as the ball comes in, the ball is what appears on the inner screen.
And the batsman decides, this is a good ball, I’ll hit it. This is a good ball for hitting. This is not a good ball for hitting.
Let me just play defensively. So when the inner screen accurately reflects what is there in the outer scene, then proper action can be done. But suppose the player thinks, I want to win a round of applause.
So I will try to hit this ball for a sixer. And even if that ball is a ball which cannot be hit for a sixer, swings and in a rash shot gets out. So at that time what happened? On the inner screen, instead of the ball alone appearing, what appeared was the applause that I’ll get, the cheers that I’ll get, if I can hit a great shot.
And that distorted the perception. So to the extent the inner screen reflects accurately what is in the outer scene, to that extent we function properly. And our emotions often cause a distortion on the inner screen.
If the player is nervous, if I don’t hit this ball properly, if I get out, everybody will boo me, what will happen to my career, I’ll be dropped, I’ll be disgraced. And all those emotions start coming in, then that is what appears on the inner screen and then the person can’t function. So basically our emotional intelligence centers on ensuring that the inner screen matches with the outer scene.
Our emotions, especially our unregulated, unwanted emotions, they cause a mismatch between what appears in the outer screen, what is there in the outer scene and what appears on the inner screen. Now this idea of there being an inner seer and an inner screen, is this a conceptual idea or is there some empirical basis for this? Is there any way to scientifically vindicate this model? So I’ll speak from, this is a book by a Nobel laureate, Dr. Wilder Penfield. He’s considered Canada’s biggest neurosurgeon.
Last year when I went to Toronto University, I spoke there. So they have a section in honor of Dr. Penfield. He’s considered one of Canada’s biggest scientists.
So for 40 years, he researched on the brain and on consciousness to try to understand the correlation between the two. And he wrote his findings in many books, the most significant of which was called the mystery of the mind. And there he describes an experiment.
He had a subject raise his hand. And now scientists know that different areas of the body and different bodily functions correlate with different areas of the brain. So he is observing the brain with different probes and he found that when he raised the hand, the corresponding area of the brain was activated.
And he asked the subject, what happened? He said, I raised my hand. He asked the subject to put his hand down. What happened? He said, I put my hand down.
And the corresponding area of the brain got deactivated. Now, using external probes, Penfield activated that area of the brain. And then he asked the subject, what happened? He said, my hand went up.
Did you raise your hand? I didn’t. You did. He deactivated that part of the brain.
What happened? He said, my hand fell down. Did you put your hand down? I didn’t. You did.
The implications of this simple experiment are profound. To understand this, let’s consider a computer system with a printer attached to it. And a printer has a hand which moves when you press the print button on the keyboard of the computer.
So the area of the brain concerned with the functioning of the hand, that is like the print button. Now, in this second case, it was Dr. Penfield who came and pressed the print button. It was he who activated that particular part of the brain.
And then the hand went up and down. In the first case, who was it that activated it? In the second case, this conscious agent said that you did it, I didn’t do it. And in the first case, he said, I did it.
From the brain’s perspective, the function was essentially the same. That part of the brain was activated and the hand got activated. So, the activation of the brain alone did not create the sense of agency that I am the agent who is acting.
So to find out whether that sense of agency was created by some other area of the brain, Penfield repeated this experiment while activating other parts of the brain. And when different parts of the brain were activated, suddenly the subject might remember some food item that they had eaten 30 years ago. Or they might remember some smell in a garden where they had gone two decades ago.
Or they might suddenly remember a phone call they had made with someone not of any consequence at all, but suddenly it comes up. So, activation of different areas of the brain activated different memories. But, in all those memories, the self was the observer.
Yes, I am seeing this, I am feeling this, I am tasting this, I am smelling this. But, no part of the brain, when activated, gave the self, gave the person the feeling that I am the doer. So, based on this and similar experiments, Dr. Penfield concluded that the brain is like a computer.
But it is programmed by something outside of itself. Charles Sherrington is another Nobel laureate. And he also came to a similar conclusion.
He said that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral, beyond the brain. So, the brain is a part of the physical apparatus which we use for functioning in the world. It is, going back to the computer metaphor, like the central processing unit.
But, we, the conscious agents, are beyond it all. So, now, self-awareness, as I said, self-awareness means, we understand that I am the inner seer, there is an inner screen, and there is an outer scene. So, how do we apply this concept of self-awareness with respect to emotional intelligence? It means two things.
To increase the distance between us and our emotions. And, our emotions and our actions. That means that, when something starts appearing on my inner screen, say, I am attending a seminar, where I want to focus and hear what is going on.
But suddenly, maybe some image appears on my inner screen. What is happening at my home? What is this person doing? What is that person doing? And then, as soon as that image appears, we get carried away. And then, maybe they are doing like this, they are doing like that, they are doing like that.
Or, this person was supposed to call me. Are they alright? Are they not alright? Have they reached home safely? And then, if we get carried away by the thought, first is, the emotion which appears on the inner screen, we identify with that. And then second, that emotion causes some action.
Say, we were to be attending the seminar, but suddenly, our hand goes to our phone. And look at the phone. Is there any message from someone? So, basically, we get distracted.
So, if we want to become more aware, self-aware and more effective, we have to distance ourselves from our emotions. And we have to distance our emotions from our actions. Let’s see how this could be done.
So, with respect to distancing ourselves from our emotions, the key is to identify the emotion and not identify with the emotion. So, for example, if it happens that, say, somebody has dealt unfairly with us. You know, in our office, we did some work, but somebody else has taken the credit.
Something is flashed on the screen. Life stinks. People are rotten.
Everybody treats me like a doormat. This is the story of my life. I do all the hard work and others take the credit.
My destiny is rotten. Now, when this chain of thought starts flowing in our mind, it will leave us disheartened. It will leave us depressed.
So, if, as soon as this chain of thought starts coming in, we identify. This is self-pity speaking. So, we can’t be so proactive as to identify every single thought.
It takes a lot of time for that. But our own mind has certain typical thought patterns. So, if you could just identify that, that’s self-pity speaking.
That’s pessimism speaking. That’s anger speaking. So, instead of identifying with the emotion, we identify the emotion.
Still, the fact outside remains that, okay, somebody else has taken the credit for what I have done. But when I go into the zone of self-pity, I cannot respond effectively. In fact, I disempower myself from responding effectively.
So, say, somebody is wanting to, like my friend was there, who was a chain smoker. He is studying, and inner screen appears. I want to smoke.
Now, person is studying peacefully. There’s no need actually. It’s not the person is going to die if they don’t smoke.
I want to smoke. Yes, I’ll smoke. But they identify.
This is my smoking addiction speaking. This is my smoking habit speaking. As soon as we identify that, we can, that identification itself distances ourselves from it.
If we don’t identify ourselves, identify with that emotion, if we don’t identify that emotion, then we identify with that emotion. We start thinking, this is my emotion. And then, we end up doing what we had decided not to do.
As a British playwright, Mark Twain said, giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it over a hundred times. So, we decide to give it up.
But then, whenever it flashes on the inner screen, at that time, we identify it. Yes, I want to do it. Why should I not do it? And in that way, we act on it.
So, if we can identify that emotion, then we will be better equipped to respond to it constructively. Of course, identifying that emotion is itself not enough. It is, we have to choose our action.
Say, as I said, there is the spiritual, the mental and the physical. So, we are talking about distancing between the spiritual and the mental. This emotion has come within me.
This thought has come within me. I identify with that thought. So, the next step would be that between the mental and the physical, we create a distance.
Distancing emotions from actions. So, for this, we need to focus on our core intention, not on our circumstantial emotion. There are many emotions which come within us because of the circumstance.
So, to illustrate this, it is very helpful to personify our inner world to understand it better. Say, if we come out of our office and we have to go for a meeting at some other place. We come out of our cabin, our cubicle and we are going towards a meeting.
And say, there is some colleague who has been very nasty to us, who has been unpleasant and we don’t want anything to do with them right now. And we see them over there. Now, if we see them, there will be a negative reaction.
Now, we may feel, I want to confront them and I want to give them a peace of my mind. But, if we start doing that, all that will happen is, we will get carried away. Physically, we will spend a lot of time or emotionally, we will be spent.
And even if we get to our meeting, we will not be at our best in that meeting. So, if we see that unwanted person is there, if we just notice that person and just walk on. Okay, just, okay, acknowledge.
Notice that, acknowledge that person is present, but move on. If we start engaging with that person, we will get trapped. Because, once we start talking, we will try to, how you did something was so bad, and they will say, no, it was not bad, it was your mistake.
And the argument will get consumers. In the inner world, we can’t not think of something. That means, say, if this mic is here, and I touch the mic, and I get an electric shock, so I drop it.
Now, after that I can decide, I am not going to touch this mic. So, if I decide I am not going to touch this mic, at a physical level, I can execute my decision to not do something, by not doing it. But at a mental level, we cannot not think of something.
Because, when I decide I will not think of that thing, I have already thought of that thing. Psychologists talk about something like, say, the pink monkey thought experiment. Say, I tell you, for the next 30 seconds, please don’t think of a pink monkey.
And your whole life you may not have thought of a pink monkey, but at that time you will say, oh, pink monkey. I am not supposed to think of it. But what is a pink monkey like? Okay.
So, when we decide I will not think of something, what happens is, we have already thought about it. So, in the mental, at the level of the thoughts, we can’t not think of something. But, if there is some unwanted thought that is there, then what we can do is, we can direct our attention elsewhere.
To the extent we direct our attention elsewhere, to that extent that thought will become weak. Thoughts pop up within us. So, when thoughts pop up, they are like, say, pop-up pop-ups on our computer screen.
So, if we are reading a particular page, there may be various links over there. And, not only various links, some of the links might be more insistent also. There might be pop-up windows that come up.
Now, if we click on that, then it will fill the whole screen. But, if we continue reading what we are reading, that link will be there, that pop-up will be there, but it can’t take us away. So, what is required is, if I just keep looking at it, should I click this link? In the inner world also, when we are doing a particular action, if we consider inner screen, there is what we intended to do.
Okay, I came out of my cubicle to go to meet this person. So, that intention is there on our screen. Oh, this unwanted person is here.
That’s another link that has come over there. So, when these links appear, we can’t not think of something. In fact, our mind is such a sophisticated computer that imagine if there were some screen which could detect where our eyes were.
And if that computer detected that our eyes are on a particular link, that link automatically opens up. If it started happening like that, we would just be endlessly distracted. We are reading one news and our eye goes to another news item.
Suddenly, it opens up. We are watching one video and we look at another suggested video and that opens up, and that opens up. You just get endlessly distracted.
So, like that in our inner world, when we pay attention to anything, it grows. And we can’t not think of something. So, we need to rather focus on our core intention.
So, if we have decided, this is what I want to do. Say, if I am attending an important meeting or attending a seminar, I want to understand what is going on over here. So, I want to learn over here.
Then something pops up on our inner screen. A link comes up. A pop-up comes up.
We look at it and then continue. Say, I will not think of this. If I start resenting, why does this pop-up come? Why is this link here? Resenting the emotion is also engaging with that emotion.
That will also cause that emotion to grow. At least, it will cause our distraction to grow. So, the best way is to be disengaged.
Now, being disengaged, this is, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is talked about as being a detached observer. So, udaseenavad. Be detached.
I will give one example to illustrate this. Suppose, a cricket match is going on. In that, there is an umpire.
In English, there are two words, disinterested and uninterested. Disinterested means, one who has no vested interests. One who is impartial.
Uninterested means, one who has no interest at all. The person doesn’t care. In a cricket match, the umpire needs to be disinterested, not uninterested.
So, the players appeal. How’s that? The umpire says, I was not watching the match. What were you doing there? What are you there for? So, the umpire has to be watching the match.
At the same time, the umpire cannot be partial to any particularity. Every time the players appeal, out, out, out. No.
The umpire has to evaluate the appeal based on merit. And that way, the umpire has to be disinterested, but not uninterested. Similarly for us, various emotions will pop up within us.
And we need to become like an umpire of our emotions. So, umpire of our emotions means that it’s not that every emotion that pops up is bad. It’s not that every emotion that pops up is good.
How does the umpire evaluate? Based on the rules of cricket. Based on the purpose of playing the game. Similarly, if we have a strong core intention within us, then, we can evaluate.
Is this emotion favorable? Is this emotion unfavorable? I talked earlier about our instincts. When we are doing something according to our instincts, we feel good. Say, we have a good language instinct when we are reconstructing a sentence.
This has come out well. Feel good. That emotion is favorable.
But, if we are writing something. See, the nature of the mind is, even when we are doing something which we like to do, still, the moods of the mind, the temperament means, we don’t like to do it. One of my main engagements is as a writer.
I love to write. But there are times when I get a writer’s block. And a writer has said, writing is extremely easy.
All you have to do is sit in front of a computer screen and glare at it till drops of blood appear on your forehead. So, sometimes, even when we like to do something, we don’t feel like doing it. So, if my main value is that, okay, in general, I like to write.
But right now, I am not feeling like writing. Then, I neglect that emotion. I just perceive here.
And I perceive where that block is there that goes off. So, when we become the observer of our emotions, then we will be able to evaluate them. So, spirituality helps us in two ways.
It gives us knowledge of the levels of inner world. If we study spiritual wisdom texts, that there is an inner screen and there is an inner seer beyond that screen. Once we understand these dynamics, then we at least know what is going on.
And then, beyond that, spirituality offers us practices like meditation. Meditation is not just about regulating our breathing or sitting in a particular posture. It is about raising our consciousness to the unchanging spiritual level.
When we do that, then, it enables us to distance ourselves. I said earlier, distancing ourselves from our emotions and our emotions from our actions. So, that we are able to do when we are situated at the spiritual level.
If I understand that I am the inner observer, and this is what is happening. So, practices like meditation enable us to elevate ourselves to the spiritual level. And thus, when we are situated at the spiritual level, this application of distancing ourselves internally from our emotions and our emotions from our actions can be done more effectively.
And in this way, we started talking about our temperament and refining our temperament. Our ability to tap our ability is increased by our spirituality. Why? Because spirituality helps us to develop a sounder temperament.
It helps us to understand what is happening in our inner world and to check and counter the unwanted emotions whenever they start sabotaging us. And to the extent we help ourselves by growing spiritually, to that extent, we will also be able to translate our talent into achievement. I will summarize, then we can have a few questions if there are any.
I spoke today about how we can develop self-competence through self-awareness. Competence through self-awareness. So, I spoke about how we are normally having something within us that works against us.
The student who was a topper or the chain smoker. So, we have, what we will get out of us depends on not just what is inside us, the talent, but also what stands between what is inside and outside, that is temperament. Talent plus temperament leads to achievement.
Our education and training focuses on the talent. But our temperament, we don’t learn much about how to improve that. So, what is the temperament? So, we talked about our emotional maturity or emotional stability.
So, what causes us to feel good or feel bad? There are instincts which help us to get things effortlessly right. And there are impulses which make us get things thoughtlessly wrong. So, our instincts need to be channeled and our impulses need to be curbed.
To understand where these instincts and impulses come from, we talk about three level model of the self. The body, mind and the soul, which is like the hardware, software and the user. We did a thought experiment about how there is an inner screen and there is an inner seer, which we can’t see.
So, the inner screen is the mind and the inner seer is the soul. And often, our temperament, when the temperament is weak, then the outer scene and the inner screen don’t match. And that’s why we are not able to function effectively.
So, the mismatch between the outer screen and the inner scene is the corruption of the inner software. And I discussed about Dr. Penfield’s experiment, the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. To understand that this model of the self also has some scientific pointers towards it.
And then, how does all this understanding translate into practical application, self-awareness applied means two steps. First is we distance ourselves from our emotions and then we distance our emotions from our actions. That means when the emotion comes up, I don’t identify with the emotion, I identify the emotion.
Rather than feeling sorry for myself when somebody steals my credit, say this is self-pity speaking. And then, our emotions, we can’t not think of what is there in the inner world. Like the pink monkey experiment, what we need to focus on is think of something else.
An unwanted visitor is there, rather than thinking about them or engaging in any way with them, just focus on our core intention. So, we need to become like umpires who are disinterested but not uninterested. We objectively evaluate the emotions within us and on merit respond to them.
And this can be done, this distancing within can be done through spiritual knowledge which helps us to understand various levels of existence within us, the outer scene, the inner seer and the inner screen and meditation which gives us more and more realization that we are the inner seers. So, when we become firmly situated in the understanding that we are the inner seers, then our temperament will become mature and our ability to tap our ability will be enhanced by our spirituality. Thank you very much.
So, are there any questions or comments? Class, you mentioned about instincts and impulses, where do we place intuition? Because it appears that intuition is not wrong or right and also it provokes us in a very thoughtful direction of sometimes. So, it seems it’s coming from somewhere else. Okay, good question.
So, where does intuition come from? Do we place it in instincts or impulses or something else? Ultimately, there is something happening within us and we give some names to that. So, the meanings of words are not stored statically in dictionaries. They are dynamically determined by usage.
So, the same meaning can work in different things. I was in England, I gave a program in a college and the person who organized the program, they had some good question-answer session. And after the question-answer session, he just came to me and says, you killed it! I said, what? What did I kill? Was I sitting on some insect and I killed it or what? So, you killed it is actually a compliment which comes from a hunting metaphor.
You shot it and you killed it. So, now the word kill has a different meaning in a different context. So, similarly, if we get caught in semantics, we will get into an endless technical discussion.
But suffice it to say that there are forces within us which misdirect us by making us act thoughtlessly. And there are forces within us which prompt us towards deeper reflection and wiser action. So, I want to say that intuitions fall in the positive category.
We can use different words for it. I had a gut feeling. That’s also in the positive category.
Now, in advance, it’s very difficult to know which feeling is coming from where. But what we can look at is, where is this feeling taking me? So, where is this feeling, where is this thought, where is this idea taking me? If I act on it, what is going to happen? So, if we focus on the consequence rather than the name, then we will be better situated. And gradually, as we become more introspective, then we will be able to identify that also.
So, instincts, in general, point to some higher intelligence. We could call that intuition. We could even use the word inspiration.
I would say that there is a subtle difference between these. Instincts are something which you are habitually good at. Some people are language.
Every time they get some paper in front of them, they can reconstruct it very well. What we are regularly good at, that’s instinct. Inspiration refers to some sudden, magnificent insight that just comes to us.
Most of the breakthroughs in science, most of the great works of art, they are products of inspiration. So, in that sense, inspiration is not something which we can regularly possess or say that we possess also. It just comes to us sometimes.
So, intuition is also something similar to inspiration. But intuition is more in terms of a sense of life guidance rather than a breakthrough insight or some new flash of understanding. This is what you should do.
We could also have another word we use as conscience. That’s also a voice from within. This is good.
Do this. This is not good. Don’t do this.
So, let’s not get into words. The point is that we want to be attentive and respond positively to the voice that is guiding us towards a wise course of action. And we want to restrain the voice that is misleading us.
Are there any other questions? Thank you again for the wonderful class. So, you mentioned about how self-belief kind of needs to be… Our attitude towards self-belief should be kind of disinterested. That we are not getting too caught up with living ourselves.
But at the same time, in answer to the last question of yours, you mentioned how we improve upon our introspection and get better. So, I’m just trying to think how do we… I understand that we should not worry ourselves and get… I get your question. But at the same time, how do we… Respond to it.
Right, I get your question. So, even if we identify this as self-pity, but what do we do next? We have to do some course of action to improve ourselves or improve the situation. Yes.
The emotions that we feel can either point us to the way or they can block us along the way. But the emotions and the way are two different things. So, to the extent we understand the difference, to that extent we can work constructively.
I can understand this is self-pity speaking. If I get carried away with it, then I may just get depressed, I may even get into clinical depression, I may become suicidal. So, it can lead to a whole negative chain of actions.
In tomorrow’s session, I’m going to talk about social awareness. We’ll talk about interrelationship with each other. So, if we understand that this is the situation, this is what I had done, but this is what has happened.
This person has taken the credit for what I did. And at that time, I can think, okay, what is it that I can do in this situation? In general, when the mind starts carrying us away with some emotion, it may be self-pity, it may be anger, it may be fear, it may be worry. At that time, two questions which we ask ourselves can get us back into the present.
First question is, what exactly is the problem? What happens is, our mind takes that particular problem as a stimulus for telling a whole story about what has happened in the past and it also projects the story about what will happen in the future. And today’s problem can be dealt with today. Today’s problem is always manageable today.
But when on top of today’s problems, yesterday’s problems and tomorrow’s problems get piled up, it becomes unbearable. If I have to carry a 20 kg weight, I’m able to carry it. But if somebody piles 100 kg, 5 bags of 20 kg on each other, I’ll just get crushed.
So similarly for us, what exactly is the problem right now? This question if we ask ourselves and then try to consciously verbalize an answer, that will pull our attention back to the present. And then the second question would be, that what can I do about this right now? So, maybe I can write a letter, maybe I can compile the evidence of why I had done this, this, this, this, whatever. So if we do these two things, then we will be, I’ll be talking about acronym fear tomorrow, where I’ll talk about, these are the first four steps, first two steps in that.
Focus and engage. Focus on what is the exact problem right now and engage. What can I do about it right now? So in this way we bring ourselves back to the present, then we can discuss, find a constructive course of action.
And then later on, when we are in a calmer frame of mind, when the wound caused by this event has relatively been healed, then at that time we can also introspect more deeply and see is there something in our overall conduct or overall way of functioning which sets us up for this kind of emotion or this kind of situation. Can we be proactive in future to avoid this kind of situation or avoid this kind of emotion? That kind of self-observation and learning cannot happen when the emotion is dominating us. So when the emotion is dominating us, first we come back to the present and deal with it.
And when we have done something practical to deal with that, then we may do some meditation or do something to calm ourselves down. When we are in a calmer frame of mind, then we can look at the past, we can look at the future. The story that the mind is telling us, we don’t have to silence it entirely.
We can hear it. But we want to hear it at a time when we can evaluate it. If we hear it when we are passive and we are disheartened, then we get carried away with the story.
So when the mind tells a story, it gives a particular spin to it. So just like say, if a person is a complainant, then, he did this and he did that and he did that. Now the complainant is going to tell the story.
But the judge is not going to get carried away with the story. He has to evaluate, okay, this happened, but what about this? So we want to evaluate the story. And for that we have to distance ourselves from it.
So when we are calmer, that time we can actually evaluate what the mind is saying. And then we can take steps to prepare ourselves better for the future also. Does this answer your question? One quick question.
So most of the emotions that you enunciated were like negative emotions. If you put this in the context of a positive emotion, for example, say a sense of achievement, if we distance ourselves from a positive emotion like a sense of achievement, that would take away from the feeling of joy, that would take away from the feeling of happiness. How would you do that? Should we distance ourselves even from positive emotions like, say, which come from achievement, then we would lose the joy, we would lose the happiness.
Distancing ourselves does not mean denying it. There are goals which we want to achieve and there are values which we want to live according to. A goal is a destination.
A value is a direction. You cannot ever say that, okay, I want to be a committed person. I cannot say now I have become committed.
Every day is a new day when I have to exercise commitment. So commitment is like a direction. Say if I am in a relationship and then I decide to formalize that relationship, you know, I get engaged, I decide to get married, that is like a destination within that.
So when we talk about goals or achievements, they are more like specific destinations. And they are significant landmarks and when we cross them, we can celebrate. It’s not that we have to distance ourselves and not experience that emotion.
But we don’t want to again get totally carried away by that. In the sense that, this is not that I have achieved the whole world and there is nothing more to do in my life. That, okay, this is the direction in which I want to go and by going in that direction, I have crossed a significant landmark.
So I’ll celebrate that. The goals, if we become too obsessed with them, there are two ways that can affect us negatively. One is, if we don’t achieve it, I feel my whole effort was wasted.
If we achieve it, there is an elation, but what next after that? After I achieve a goal, then there is a sense of anticlimax. What do you do next? What next after this? Unless I set up some other goal. So goals themselves can be pointers to the direction in which we want to go.
But if goals become our purpose in life, so if my purpose is, say, I want to become a good writer. And as a part of becoming a good writer, I’ll write this many articles every month or I’ll publish a book every year or whatever. Now if I achieve it, I’ll celebrate that.
But I have to keep moving forwards. So if we focus on goals, then there will be dejection if we don’t achieve it. There will be temporary elation when we achieve it, but after that there will be anticlimax.
When I was studying for my, when I was studying and doing my engineering, at that time I had a plan to come to America. So I gave my GRE exam in my third year. So that time it was out of 2400.
So I got 2350 out of 2400. I was the first in the whole state of Maharashtra. I was the first in the history of my college.
And till that time I had always been among the toppers, but I had never been the topper. I joined first, second, third, but I was never the first. And here I was way, way above everyone else.
The second student was 2250. So I was elated. But after that elation, somehow three of my close friends forgot to congratulate me.
Maybe they thought everybody knew that it’s an occasion for celebration. So when the first time it happened, I just felt annoyed. Second time I was irritated.
Third time I was almost enraged. How could they forget this? At that time, it’s almost like I had an out-of-body experience, not literally, but I started seeing myself from above. I felt, I thought that becoming a topper is going to make me happy.
But here, what has happened? Actually I have become more dependent for my happiness on others. And earlier I could just normally interact with people, but now I’m so dependent that they congratulate me. And if they don’t feel, they don’t do that, I’m feeling so much more agitated.
Anyway, if I achieve something, how long are people going to congratulate? Congratulate once it’s over after that. So, it’s not that people should not congratulate or we should not accept the congratulations. But the goals, even if we achieve them, they have a euphoric high, they bring, but after that there’s a letdown.
So, we can focus more on the values that we want to live according to, rather than the goals we want to achieve. And yes, living according to values also means setting some goals. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, some goals may just not be achieved.
But if you have lived according to a value, then we have made progress and eventually we will achieve some goals. So, we can celebrate success, but we don’t get carried away by that success. We see this as a landmark in our journey to live a value-centered life.
Please have a seat. So, there is some part of our brain which is said to be more emotional, more rational. This idea is widely propagated, left brain is more logical or right brain is more emotional or whatever.
Now, there are many neuroscientists who challenge this idea. They say the brain cannot be divided so simplistically. But, broadly we can say that in all of us, there is an emotional side and there is a rational side.
And in some of us, the emotional side may be more. Some of us, the rational side may be more. And this is just the way we are.
We can’t fight with that. By the same time, we don’t have to necessarily act that way alone. Just like, if we have a particular vehicle.
Some vehicles, I have a car which is like a power beast. Just move a little bit, zoom, it moves forward. So, I know that this is the feature of my car.
If I have another car which doesn’t have that feature, then for it to pick up speed, it will take more time. So, we know the nature of the vehicle and then sometimes if I have to go fast in a car which doesn’t have that power steering, then I will have to press the gas for a longer time. If I am in a car which has that power steering, then I have to be careful and I don’t go too fast.
Otherwise, I will cross the speed limit. So, basically, first step is just becoming aware. Okay, I have a tendency to be too emotional in situations like these, these, these.
Once we identify our nature, basically, we are the inner seer. And there is the inner screen and there is the outer scene. So, what we can do is, we can understand when all the inner screen reflects something which is undesirable.
So, when do I, say, become too emotional? When I become too angry, too judgmental, too pessimistic, too worried. So, when does this happen on the inner screen? And sometimes this may just happen because of past recollections. More often it happens also because of some external stimulation.
Something happens on the outer screen, in the outer world, and that makes me worried, that makes me angry. So, if I can understand these are the situations in which this happens, then I can be prepared. If I am going on a road and I suddenly hit a pothole, I get jarred by it.
The first time I am jarred, but second time if I am going on that road, I am prepared. There is a pothole over here, let me veer off, or let me go slowly. So, similarly, if we understand which are the situations in which we get provoked, then we are prepared for it.
So, okay, this is the situation and I have to be cautious. Sometimes, say, after long days, hard work, we are exhausted, at that time, somebody starts making a very, starts having a very emotionally draining or demanding discussion. If we do it at that time, we just explore.
Okay, not now, let’s talk about this tomorrow. So, we need to be prepared to understand when our emotions get the better of us. Then after that, the third step is, we all need to create a pause button for ourselves.
There is stop, there is play. When the emotions come, stop is very difficult. If I am feeling angry, I say, I shouldn’t feel angry.
That’s almost impossible. But we can try to develop a stop button, not a stop button, a pause button. Okay, I am feeling angry right now, but I want to, I don’t want to lash out at this person.
So, what can I do? We can, we plan that I will take a few deep breaths, or, I will be talking tomorrow a little bit about mantra meditation. We can chant some mantras. We can remember some wisdom quotes.
So, we have to find out some way in which we can pause ourselves. And when we pause ourselves, or we can just decide, the issue is flaring up, I will not, I will not make a judgment on this for, say, a finite period of time. And then after that, once we have pressed the pause button, the emotional pressure, which was there, we have not removed it, but at least we have distanced the emotions from our actions.
Yes, I am feeling angry right now, but I am not going to act on it right now. Let me wait. So, if we find out which pause button will work for us, and keep access to that pause button readily, say, if I find that, if I just remember the danger of anger, some quotes on anger.
Okay. When I start getting angry, maybe I keep those quotes in my phone and read it. Or if I have some mantras which I chant, some deep breathing I do, some prayers which I recite, whatever.
We have to find out what works for us, and use that. And eventually when we are calmer, then we deal with that situation. So, basically, identifying our own nature, identifying the situation in which we, our emotions start getting the better of us, and identifying what pause button works for us.
By these three things, we can learn to better channel our emotions. Do we have time? Okay, yeah, last question. Thanks for the presentation.
I like the theory of meditation, but I am wondering if really we have to divide it into sections where there is a screen, as you said, and of course there is the whole happening, but the observer part. In the sense, like, from, as you quoted, scientists like Penfield, and there is recent work, or old work, like from Golubkin, Pauli, Anil Sethi, Sam Harris, all these people who have shown these default mode networks in the brain, which are actually all activated to further activate a small part of the brain to move your hand. So, you are moving your hand, you do a careful analogy, and your hand is moving, and you activate it, and again the hand moves.
But eventually, it’s the whole brain which is doing it anyway. So, there is no actual observer or seeker. But still, we are feeling emotions.
Emotions are happening, and that’s the whole default mode network. Can you still make this whole theory work with the latest advancements, like, you know, neuroscience, where the brain is activating different modules, which are called modular sections, and it’s just getting… Yeah, I understand. That’s okay, right.
Yeah, so now, this idea of the inner seer or the inner screen, is this model viable with the latest developments in neuroscience, which talks about how the brain has modules which start functioning, and they make us think or feel or act in particular ways? Yeah, there has been phenomenal advancement in neuroscience, especially in the last, say, 30-40 years. And this advancement has been largely in terms of correlating human experiences with brain phenomena. But correlation is not causation.
Correlation is not causation. Correlation means, when A happens, B happens. But that doesn’t necessarily mean A causes B. A could be a cause of B, but A may not be a cause of B also.
So, I’ll give you an example. So, it’s found that people who say, service their cars regularly, their cars last for a longer time. So, we could say this proves that servicing cars helps you to increase the longevity of the cars.
Now, that may be true, but it may also be that people who service their cars, they also drive the car more responsibly. They also maintain the car well, not just apart from servicing. And that’s how their cars stay longer.
So, A correlates with B does not necessarily mean A causes B. So, similarly, with respect to our brain functions and brain phenomena, there is now significant development in understanding, say, which emotion correlates with which brain area, which sensation correlates with which brain area, but is correlation causation? On the 125th anniversary of the Science magazine, they published 125 questions that science hasn’t yet answered. The first question was where does the universe come from? The second question was where does consciousness come from? So, I have written a book on demystifying reincarnation, where I talk about it elaborately, but suffice it to say that the neurological phenomena, they correlate with conscious experience. They are not the conscious experience.
To explain this, I’ll just have to get a little technical. Say, I send you a note, and you read it. You say in that note, it’s written, you are a fool.
You see that, you get angry. Why there is, how dare this person is calling me a fool? Now, actually what has happened? There is a white paper, and there are some black patterns of ink on it. Now, the black patterns of ink, they themselves don’t contain any emotion.
Otherwise, the paper would be burning with anger. The paper, whatever is the pattern of ink on that paper, that has to be interpreted by some observer. And it is the observer who feels that emotion.
That emotion is definitely, we could say, connected with whatever is happening on the paper. Whatever is written on the paper. But the two are not the same.
The observer has to be separated. Similarly, when we say that certain brain areas are correlated with the emotion of anger. What exactly is happening in the brain? Ultimately, no matter how sophisticated the brain’s functioning is, it’s ultimately biochemicals that are there.
And there are just electrical signals pulsating through the brain. The synapses happen between the brain cells, neurons, and the brain. That leads to certain electrical signals going a particular way or a particular different way.
So when we have habits, that means the synapses are formed very strongly and our thoughts and emotions go in a particular direction very forcefully. So, for example, if a person is alcoholic, and as soon as they see alcohol, then the desire for alcohol becomes very strong because the brain synapses connected with consumption of alcohol are very strongly tied together. However, ultimately, what is happening in the brain? The brain is basically containing a pattern of electrochemical signals.
So we could say, the brain in a sense is the replica of the paper. So on the paper, there are ink patterns. In the brain, there are electrochemical patterns.
There are signals, basically electrical signals going up and down. But they themselves are not conscious. They themselves, the similar electrical signals can go through a computer, can go through a television.
There is no consciousness over there. There is some higher observer who interprets those neurochemical signals and thereby experiences some emotion. So the brain, no matter how elaborately we analyze it, all that we can come to know is which part of the brain is activated.
But there is a first-person experience of emotions. This is called in consciousness studies as the hard problem of consciousness. The soft problem of consciousness is how there is correlation between different areas of the brain or different modalities of brain functioning and different conscious experiences.
But what are those conscious experiences themselves? They are fundamentally different because the brain just contains biochemicals. And moving of electrical signals does not itself comprise emotion. Who is the experiencer of the emotion? Say I see a rose.
Now when I see a rose, it is certain areas of the brain may get activated by which I get a sensation of seeing a rose. But who is actually experiencing that? Now we may say there is no experiencer. But the fact is that we do respond consciously.
This is the emotion that is coming and this is how I am responding to it. There are many well documented experiments which talk about how we humans we are at one level products of our brain functioning but we are also distinct from that. Einstein was himself very troubled.
Of course at that time neuroscience had not advanced that much. But the idea was prevalent at that time also that basically we are biological machines. Robots are digital machines.
We are biological machines. He said that if we are simply biological machines that would mean that we have no free will. There cannot be any sense of responsibility.
So he was a Jew who was persecuted by the Nazis and he said that the Nazis can’t be held responsible because their brain was wired in a particular way. And that’s how they acted in that way. So that would mean there would be no sense of morality, no ethics, no accountability.
All systems of justice would collapse. If we were simply our brain then the brain is basically biochemicals. It does not have free will.
If I say take this jar and drop it. I won’t drop it. But if I drop it, it does not have a free will whether to fall or not.
It is fall down. But we human beings can choose how we act. Einstein said that gravity explains the falling of objects but gravity can’t explain people’s falling in love.
So there is a categorical difference between the brain phenomena and the electrochemical signals that are associated with the brain phenomena and the conscious experience. First of all it’s in terms of quality. Brain chemicals are just basically signals.
They are like patterns of electrochemical just as patterns of ink on a paper. They themselves don’t embody any conscious experience. And secondly if we were that then there would be no free will.
There would be no accountability. And our whole system of society would collapse. So we all experience that we consciously choose certain courses of action.
If A goes and slaps B why did you slap me? My brain chemicals told me to slap you. And B will say my brain chemicals told me to slap you. All society will collapse.
So there is Arvind Schrodinger who made the famous Schrodinger’s equation. He said famously that there are that science helps us to put our experiences in a remarkably consistent way. Why does this object fall down? What speed will it fall down? But he says when it comes to emotions pain and pleasure, when it comes to joy and sorrow, when it comes to right and wrong for these science itself has no answers.
The answers that science attempts to give are so trivial, so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. Einstein said we can talk about the scientific foundation of ethics. We cannot talk about the ethical foundations of science.
We can talk about the ethical foundation of science. Is science being used ethically? We can’t talk about the scientific foundation of ethics. Ethics is something which guides us how to act properly.
So there is, neuroscience included has its valid jurisdiction. But when it goes beyond its jurisdiction and makes claims which are not actually based on the data, that is not science that is scientism. And scientism is basically scientific imperialism.
Science enroaching on areas where it does not have any valid jurisdiction. So our personality itself, our conscious experience is something which is distinct from the brain phenomena. It is correlated no doubt.
But there is a significant amount of difference between the two. Thank you very much. Thank you Chaitanya sir.