Science & Spirituality – Why psychiatry can’t replace spirituality

[Talk to Duke University students, Durham, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
these thoughtful questions.
I’m grateful to be of service. So, I’m happy to be here with all of you and I’ll speak on this topic of spirituality in the age of science. We have a phenomenal amount of technological progress in the world today.
Luxuries that were unimaginable even for royalty a few hundred years ago are commonplace today. Air conditioning is one example. And yet, there seems to be something which is causing immense distress to people.
We are immensely comfortable at a physical level and yet we are immensely distressed at the mental level. So, we could say the mind is attacking the body. The World Health Organisation says that mental health is the biggest health challenge of the current century and the global suicide count in the world is one million per year.
That means more than the number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves. More than the number of people who are killed in violence, in murders. Nowadays, we have, in America, there’s a big concern about gunmen shooting in schools and colleges.
But more than the count of all this is the number of people who are killing themselves. So, the mind can attack the body in various ways. It can attack the body by making people get into unhealthy habits, addictions.
But extreme ways the mind attacks, not only attacks the body, but destroys the body. That is when a person is impelled to commit suicide. So now, what exactly is happening over here? As mental health problems are increasing, there is also an attempt to treat it scientifically.
So, the overall flow of my talk will be that there is a problem that is present in spite of technological progress. And science is trying to address that problem also. But the solution or the way the problem is being addressed is actually, in many ways, making things worse.
So, when mental health problems are there, many people go to psychiatrists. So now, since 1960, the first time when the idea of a tranquillizer or antidepressant that came up, this kind of medicine itself was not there before that. And then from that time onwards, till now, 60 years later, now antidepressants and tranquillizers are the biggest sold medicine over the counter.
And the budgets of some of the pharma giants which manufacture antidepressants and mental health medicines, the budgets are bigger than the budgets of several European countries. So, there’s a huge amount of money involved over there. So, while there is an attempt to treat the mental health problems at the level of psychiatric medicine, there are several books written.
This is a science journalist and scientist, James Davis, himself a psychiatrist. He wrote this book called Cracked. Why is psychiatry doing more harm than good? Now, as I move forward, I’ll talk about where psychiatry can help and where it cannot help.
But before we go forward, let’s look at what was the problem. Why would somebody, somebody, a scientist, make this kind of claim that there is some problem with psychiatry? So, in the history of psychiatry, there were several experiments. So, Rosenhan experiment was one, and then the diagnostic reliability experiments were another.
So, what was this Rosenhan experiment? That there was this researcher Rosenhan. He asked several people who were actually themselves doctors to go to mental health care centres, to psychiatrists, and tell them that I am hearing a thud in my head. Periodically I keep hearing thud, thud, thud.
I just keep hearing sounds in my head. And apart from that, they would act perfectly normal. And that was the only lie they told.
And the result was that all these people, they had several dozen of them, they were in different hospitals. All of them were admitted into the psychiatric hospitals. And they were given heavy treatments, heavy drugs.
And as those drugs were extremely heavy, they were themselves doctors, they knew what was happening with these drugs. They tried to tell them, actually, we don’t need these drugs. We are simply doing an experiment.
Now, this made the medical staff treat them as further mad. And the more they tried to oppose, the more intense were the drugs given to them. And the only way they could get out of the mental health care homes was by pretending that they were sick and they were being healed.
And when they came out, and when they told the story of what happened, it created a furor. And Rosenhan was accused of misleading the doctors. And one of the chief doctors said that, if you try this again, we were caught unaware.
Next time, we will be able to catch and we will detect people who are pretending. And one month later, this doctor announced that we caught over 30 people who were hoaxes sent by this doctor. And this doctor said, I didn’t send anyone.
So, this just indicated that the sane people might be deemed as insane and they would be given medicines which would have some serious side effects. In another case, this was the diagnostic reliability experiment which we had done by another set of doctors. They had a set of five patients.
They all described the five symptoms. I am not able to sleep at night. I get heart palpitations.
I get fearsome images in my head. They all described five symptoms, a set of symptoms to five different doctors. And all of them diagnosed these patients separately.
Every one of them was diagnosed with a separate disorder and everyone was prescribed a different medication. And they repeated it several times in different places. But this problem got repeated.
So, now the reason for this is that mental health disorders as they are diagnosed to psychiatry, they don’t have any specific pathogen. There is no germ, there is no microbe that is causing it. So, the level of objectivity which we can get in this diagnosis is much lesser.
And of course, since then psychiatry has tried to systematise itself. They tried to have a diagnostic and statistical manual which would decide if these symptoms are there, then this is the diagnosis. These symptoms are there, this is the diagnosis.
But on what basis is decided? So, for example, now they say that if you have five symptoms associated with depression for over two weeks, then your diagnosis is clinically depressed. Now, why five symptoms? Why not six? Why not two weeks? Why three weeks? This was simply decided based on the discretion of those who wrote the manual. There is another case where they found that in Canada, there were kids, just small kids, just getting into kindergarten, first grade, second grade.
They found that it seemed that ADHD, attention hyperactive disorder, the kids who were born later in the year, the percentage of them having this disorder was much more than those born in the beginning of the year. So, if a kid was born in December, the percentage of that kid having, the probability of that person having ADHD was almost three times more than a kid born in January. And this was almost a linear graph increasing.
And they started wondering what is the month of birth got to do with somebody being diagnosed with ADHD. And then as they did further investigation, they found actually what was called was ADHD was simply that the academic year for the kid they started in January. So, for a kid who was born in January, they would at that age have almost a one year’s advantage over a kid who was born in December.
And because of that, the child would have greater learning capacity. So, a child who had greater learning capacity was able to learn very nicely. A child who couldn’t learn nicely, that child started getting restless.
And he couldn’t understand, couldn’t learn and become restless and he was diagnosed as having ADHD. So, the point here is not to deny that there are mental health problems. We all have, there are, it’s a huge number, but there is a problem with trying to pathologise these problems.
Pathologise means think that every or any emotional or behavioural or psychological problem can be dealt with simply by giving medicines. Why is there a problem with this? Now, what do we understand about consciousness? Now, the idea of being depressed, the idea of having emotions that are negative, having anxiety disorders, in all these, it is our emotions that are going haywire. And when these emotions are going haywire, all this is happening in the realm of consciousness.
So, now what is consciousness? Till we understand this, our attempts to heal the consciousness are often shots in the dark. So, Roger Sperry is a Nobel Laureate neuroscientist and he’s talking about consciousness and he’s given two distinct models. He talks about two, there’s one bottom model and the other is a top-down model.
So, a simple example to illustrate this, suppose we are observing a house from outside and then there is a garage and in that garage there is a car and then as you observe, the car starts moving and the car starts moving and it comes out on the road and it goes straight off. Now, we may decide what made this car move? I could go up and I could say that, oh, the car moved because the wheels started moving. Why were the wheels moving? Oh, because the axle exerted energy on the wheels and that’s why it happened.
Why did that happen? You go back, back, back in the mechanical chain, oh, there was a, the engine that was ignited, started off. There’s a spark in the ignition, the engine started off. What made that start off? Go up, up, okay.
There was a key that was in the vertical position that moved to the horizontal position. So, why did the car start off? That was because the key moved from the vertical to the horizontal position. Now, that is a valid explanation.
It is a correct explanation. But another explanation could be, the owner of the car wanted to go out for a ride. Now, both the two explanations are not contradictory, but the two explanations come from different perspectives.
So, when we look at the motion of a car, we could go from a bottom-up approach. We look from the wheels upwards and we come to the key or we go down from a top-down approach. There’s an owner, there’s a conscious agent who wanted to drive and he moved the key from the vertical to the horizontal position, he or she, and then the car started moving.
So, most of the explanations that we get in, most of the assumptions on which psychiatry works is the bottom-up approach. And now the bottom-up approach has its validity, but it also has its limitation. So, William James is considered one of the fathers of psychology and he proposed this idea, which subsequent science has vindicated in many ways.
That he said that the brain is not the originator of consciousness, it is the transmitter of consciousness. So, if I have a ray of light falling on a prism and that comes out from the prism. So, if the prism is damaged, the prism gets cracked, then the light coming from it will also get distorted.
So, now one of the main reasons why it is thought that consciousness originates from the brain is that when certain areas of the brain are damaged, the corresponding bodily functions do not take place. So, if there’s a particular area of the brain, maybe we’re not going to move our hands or legs or whatever. So, now this could be because consciousness originates from there, it could also be because consciousness is transmitted from there.
So, if consciousness were transmitted through the particular area of the brain which controls the motor nervous system, then also what would happen is that we would not be able to function if that particular area of the brain is damaged. So, now psychiatry assumes that brain, as it functions today, it assumes that the brain is the source of consciousness and by changing the chemicals in the brain, we can change not only the state of the brain but also the feelings of the person. There are several researches done by different scientists which indicate that consciousness is not reducible to the brain.
One of the most well-known experiments is what was done by Dr. Wilder Penfield, which is written in his book, The Mystery of the Mind. There he talks about how he had a subject and he told the subject, raise your hand. The subject raised the hand, he found the corresponding area of the brain was activated.
He told the subject, lower the hand and the corresponding area of the brain got deactivated. Then he used external probes to activate that part of the brain and the hand went up. He asked the subject, what happened? He said, my hand went up.
He deactivated that part of the brain. What happened? His hand fell down. Then he asked the question, had you raised the hand? No, I didn’t.
You did. Did you lower the hand? No, I didn’t. You did.
Now, Penfield raises this question that this experiment raises the question, who was the agent who said, I raised the hand in the first case and who denied raising the hand in the second case? To understand this implication, let’s consider there’s a print button over here and there’s a printer over here. Now, I press the print button and the printer hand starts moving. That’s the first case.
The corresponding area of the brain is like the print button. When that is activated, the hand starts going up and down. In the second case, who pressed the print button? Because the owner, the agent is saying, I didn’t do it.
That area of the brain is like the print button. Penfield came and pressed it in the second case. But in the first case, who did it? So, no matter whichever other area of the brain he activated while repeating this experiment, no area of the brain when activated gave the subject the feeling that I am the agent.
I am the person who is doing something. So, based on this, Penfield concluded that the brain is like a computer, but it is programmed from something by something outside of itself. So, John Eccles, another Nobel Laureate neuroscientist, he said that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral.
It exists outside the brain. So, why is it important to recognise that there might be some dimension to consciousness beyond the brain? Because when we try to fiddle with the brain by giving chemicals that change brain states, what happens by that? So, this is a reductionistic model of consciousness, that consciousness can be reduced down to brain chemicals and brain states. So, the result of this is that the deadening of sentience.
So, there is a case of a person, he was happily married to a woman for almost 45 years, and then she died suddenly. And he was under great grief. So, his grief went on for more than two weeks.
He was taken to a doctor and the doctor gave a medicine for grief. Grief is also considered to be a pathological condition. Now, grief is just a natural human response to loss.
But what happened by that? He just lost all capacity to feel pain. Even if on the news he would see some ghastly murder, some deadly brutal scene, he saw a car hit a dog and the dog died on the spot, he felt no pain. So, what happened was, was this actually healing the pain? Was this actually healing the grief? Or was it deadening his capacity to experience any emotion, including grief? So, now conversely, there are antidepressants, which make people feel good.
They are feeling bad, they feel good. But how do they actually work? They work by changing the state of the brain. Now, what does it mean changing the state of the brain? Actually, if we consider the bottom-up approach to consciousness, we could say that what is happiness? Happiness is laughter.
If somebody is laughing, then they’re happy. Now, sometimes if there is a small child in the family, relatives come to meet that child, relatives come to meet the family and they want to have some fun with that child. So, they may start tickling the belly of that child.
And when the belly of the child is tickled, the child may start laughing. Now, when the child is laughing like that, is that child happy? Is the response of laughter produced by tickling, is that happiness? If that were happiness, and all of us want to be happy, then all of us could have our own personal perpetual tickling machine. We could tickle ourselves for the rest of our life and be happy.
Now, we understand that tickling may produce the reaction, it’s a physical sensation, which produces a physical reaction of laughter. But happiness is something much deeper. Similarly, there may be certain brain chemicals, certain medicines which may take, and those inserted in the brain may alter our brain state by which we temporarily feel better.
But the just as smile or laughter is the result of happiness, it is not the cause of happiness. When I am happy, I naturally smile and laugh. But if I got some, if somebody is very gloomy, and we get a machine which you place on the mouth, and it twists the facial muscles, so that a nice big smile on the face.
Now, would that be happiness? No. So, similarly, just as the changing of the facial muscles so that it simulates smile or laugh, that is not happiness. Similarly, changing the brain states, so that it corresponds with what seems like a happy state, that is not really happiness.
Now, there is a validity to it. If somebody is always gloomy, and dull, and morose and pessimistic, come on, cheer up, smile. You tell them, okay, be confident, have a good smile, you’ll feel better.
Now, yes, this does help us to feel better. But for how long? Now, if I am sitting on this, say, seat, and there are nails on the seat, and the nails are hurting me, and you tell me, come on, cheer up, smile. How long is that going to help me? Actually, there is an external act which we may do, and even doing that act may help to some extent.
But if there is an internal problem, then that also has to be addressed. So, when we have distress, when we have anxiety, when we have depression, when we have grief, these are emotions which are arising from inside. And just trying to address them at the level of the brain, that does not lead to a lasting solution.
And that is why when people take antidepressants, the result is that often they have to keep taking more and more and more and more. Now, all this is to not minimise or deny that there are many diseases where psychiatric treatment is required. Sometimes the brain gets structurally damaged, sometimes there is serious chemical imbalance in the brain, and at that time, psychiatric treatment can be a big blessing.
Some people just behave like insane as long as they do not take the medicine. They take the medicine, they become calm. So, there is definitely a role and a necessity for taking psychiatric medicines.
But the pathologising of normal human emotions is what becomes a serious problem. Why? Because those emotions are originating from somewhere higher. Now, what is this idea of somewhere higher? Let us do a simple thought experiment to understand this point.
So, wherever you are sitting, you can be relaxed and you can close your eyes. So, please close your eyes and along with me, you can take three deep breaths. One, let all the air from your body go out.
Take in as much air as you can. One, two, three. Now, with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you.
As the eyes are closed, you can’t see what is outside in front of you. But you will see as if an inner screen on which different images may come and go. You may see some objects from this room, you may see a room in your own home, you may see a friend, a loved one, you may see a car, you may see the sky, you may see various images coming and going on that inner screen or you may see just a dull colourless haze of varying intensity and shades on that inner screen.
But irrespective of what you see specifically on that inner screen, there is an inner screen and there is you who is the seer of that inner screen. There are you. So, now as you are looking at the inner screen, try to take a step backwards and look at who is looking at that inner screen.
Try to take a step backwards and instead of looking at the inner screen, try to take a look at who is looking at that inner screen. Try it once again. Take a step backwards and try to look at who is looking at that inner screen.
No matter how many steps you take back, the inner seer steps back with you. You can’t see the seer because you are the seer. You who are the seer are a spiritual being.
The inner screen is the mind. What you are looking for is what you are looking with. You can take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes.
So this thought experiment can be understood through another example. The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text and it offers a three level model of the self. The model is the body, mind and the soul which is the source of consciousness.
This is like the hardware, the software and the user. So the mind is like the inner screen. Imagine a big high security building in which there is a monitor which is at the security room and there are different doors at that building and each of the doors has a CCTV camera, closed circuit TV camera.
And the inputs from those doors are coming on this big monitor. So that big monitor is like the mind and the cameras are like our senses. So now we consider this model particularly.
It’s interesting that in neuroscience there is something which is called as the binding problem or the integration problem. What that means is that suppose we see a parrot flying over here and we hear the parrot singing. Now actually when the parrot moves from here there are four different perceptions that are happening.
There is the shape, there is the colour, there is the motion and there is the sound. Now if you analyse the brain into its functions, there are different areas of the brain which process sound, which process shape, which process colour, which process motion. And yet we experience it as an integrated image.
There is no one area of the brain which is connected with all other areas of the brain which can take in all the inputs and integrate it. So where that integration of various inputs coming into the brain happens, that is a mystery. Now why is this integration significant? Sometimes you may on YouTube see some homemade videos or some videos which are not very well shot.
So there is a mock fight going on. So they recorded the video first and then they record the audio separately and they integrate it into two. The audio and video are not integrated properly.
Then say the mock fight and one boxer is punching the other boxer. And before the punch lands on the other person, the other person falls down. And after the person falls down, then there is a sound of the punch hitting the jaw.
So what happens, sound and video are not integrated together. Now that doesn’t happen to us. We see all the inputs coming from the senses integrated together.
So the mind is the integrator of the inputs coming from the senses. And then we the user, we the soul are the processor. So now when psychiatry pathologises ordinary human distresses, what is happening? It is like we are trying to fix the hardware when there is a problem in the software.
There can be problems in the hardware and when there are problems in the hardware, we do need hardware fixes. But if my computer is corrupted by a virus and I just, maybe let me change my keyboard. Keys are not typing properly.
Or the image is not coming properly in the monitor. Let me change the monitor. No, actually a software problem will require a software fix.
A hardware problem will require a hardware fix. So because of the reductionistic model of the self, which is prevalent in mainstream science today, all the problems we try to reduce down to the hardware problems. So what do I mean by a software problem? I said the mind is the integrator and the presenter of inputs coming from outside.
It’s meant to be like that. But in the mind, if you consider this like a big monitor on which you have five different windows. It’s a big one.
Sometimes on a big screen you can have multiple windows open. So there’s the eye window, there is the ear window, there is the nose window, there is the skin window, there is the tongue window. So right now you are hearing what I’m speaking.
So the eye window and the ear window are prominently what are open. But say suddenly from behind, the smell of some delicious food comes up. Then what happens? The nose window zooms out.
Hey, what is this? What food is this? When will I get it? Will there be a second helping? So the mind starts going off. So not only does that image zoom up, but after the image zooms up, it’s not just an image, it starts off a movie over there. And then our thoughts go off in different directions.
So when this is happening, this is more of a, this is a response, not so much of a sensory stimuli coming in. One sensory stimuli is there, but after that there is the imagination of the mind. So basically for us to function effectively, the right window needs to zoom up.
And inside the software, the mind is itself the software which integrates and presents. So for all of us, depending on what our particular interests are, what our particular attachments are, certain images will zoom up. So if somebody is an alcoholic, as soon as they go to a party, eyes will go, is there any alcohol over here? If somebody is extremely tired, they go to a room, they say, okay, where can I sleep? So for us, on our disposition, depending on our inclination, certain images zoom up.
And basically when there is mental health problems, what is happening? The wrong images or the unwanted images are zooming up. So for example, when there is anxiety related disorders, then normally we should be perceiving the reality out there and responding to that. However, we generally don’t respond to the physical reality out there.
We respond to the mental perception of the physical reality. So if I’m in a desert and I see a mirage, actually there’s only sand over there. But the perception within me is that there is a mirage.
There is water over there and I’ll chase after it. So we don’t actually contact physical reality. We contact only the mental representation of the physical reality and we respond to them.
And when these mental representations go off, say for example, if somebody has anxiety related disorders, then it’s not, anxiety is not actually necessarily a disorder. Anxiety is just a normal human condition because we all live in a world of uncertainty and uncertainty causes anxiety. If I have to catch a flight and I don’t know whether I’m going to reach on time or not for the flight, I’ll have anxiety.
But there is anxiety which is normal in the sense that there’s uncertainty, I don’t know what will happen. But there’s anxiety which starts becoming perpetual. So when it becomes perpetual, what happens is, on the inner screen, on the mind, instead of the image of what is happening right now coming in front of me, images of the future start coming.
This may go wrong, this may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong. So I get a small swelling on my hand. God, what if this is cancerous? And what if it is advanced cancer? What if I have only few months to live? Oh, I’m going to die soon and I will get panicky completely.
Now what is happening over here? There is a physical stimulus but from that physical stimulus, the mind has gone on to a horror movie in the future. So this is not so much a hardware problem, it is more of a software problem. Software problem means that the mind is zooming up with unwanted images.
Similarly, the two major mental health problems that people face, the two broad categories are anxiety and depression. Depression occurs when we go into the past and keep reliving the bad things that have happened in the past. And that, oh, this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong, and again and again we think this is what is going to go wrong again and again in the future.
So, when such a situation comes up in our life, when the inner screen is giving unwanted images, at that time we need more to grow up spiritually than to try to find some chemicals to deal with the problems. So, as I said, if there is actual structural damage to the brain, if there is actual chemical imbalance in the brain, then that is fine and we may need some psychiatric medicines. But if there is, the issues are more emotional or behavioural in terms of overreactions to normal human distresses.
So, we all go through grief, but somebody is going through grief excessively. It is not that there is a chemical indeficiency in their pain, it is just that they are unable to process that emotion, process that situation. So, now how does spirituality help us in this? Spiritual wisdom helps us understand that we are bigger than our situations and we are bigger than our emotions.
Sometimes the situation can just seem overwhelming and the situation seems overwhelming, there is practically nothing I can do. So, the nature of the mind is that the more we dwell on a problem, the bigger it seems to be there. The more I dwell on it, oh you know, this person is treating me like this, this person is neglecting me, this person is rejecting me, this person is hurting me.
The more I think about that, what happens? The more I feel rejected, unloved, unwanted, uncared. Okay, that person may be treating me like that, but sometimes when we are not getting along well with some person, we say I am not going to talk with you. I am not going to spend any time with you.
Now, we say physically I will not spend any time with you, but our mind we are giving so much time to that person. Why I do like that, next time I do like this, I will do like this, I will do like that, I will do like that. So, basically this is life determines our problems, but our mind determines the size of those problems.
Life determines the problems which we face. We all have bad things happening in our life, but our mind determines the size of the problems. How much we obsess over it, with what attitude we go on the problem, that determines how big the problem is going to be.
So, if I make a particular situation as the defining situation of my life, or say I am feeling depression right now because this went wrong, that went wrong, that went wrong, and I start thinking depression is my defining emotion, I am a depressed person. We fix that label on ourselves. Then it becomes a serious problem.
So, the spiritual understanding is, spiritual knowledge gives us the understanding that we are bigger than our situations, we are bigger than our emotions. In life, it is a long journey. The materialistic worldview tells us that life is like a 100 metre marathon, either it is a sprint, sorry, 100 metre sprint, either you win or you lose.
But spiritual knowledge helps us understand that life is like a 100 kilometre marathon. Even if you fall back in one lap, it does not matter. You can always catch up later.
You get long-term perspective. And with that long-term perspective, we can distance ourselves, rather raise ourselves above our emotions and above our situations. And that can help to better respond to life’s difficulties.
So, we can process them, process the problems of life better by growing up spiritually, by not getting carried away by emotions, but by raising ourselves above the emotions, observing the emotions and then processing them. So, well, mantra, mantra is one way to spiritualise our consciousness. Yoga is basically not just about physical postures.
The physical postures are meant to help us raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. So, mantra is like a, is one means by which we can strengthen ourselves internally. So, what do you mean strengthen ourselves internally? That on the inner screen, various images are going to come up.
So, if we have strength, okay, no, I do not want to think about this. I will think about something else. So, those images will pop up.
So, if we are studying for exam and suddenly some notification comes up on Facebook, okay, not now, we minimise it, move forward. That requires willpower. Similarly, in our inner world, emotions will pop up.
Oh, you know, this was, this went wrong, this happened, that happened, this may go wrong, that may go wrong. So, if we have a strength, okay, this has come, but I do not need to pay attention to it right now. Let it be there, neglect it and focus on this.
So, this capacity to choose which image to maximise in our internal, inner screen and which to minimise, that intelligence, that strength comes by spiritual growth. So, it empowers us to, first of all, distance from the emotions that arise in us and then to process them appropriately. So, I will conclude with one incident, one experience which I had.
When I first came to America a few years ago, I was speaking at a university and I was speaking on regulating our mental diet, just a vegetarian society. And I spoke about how we are careful about eating what we take into our body, but very careful about what we take into our mind also, because the mind just reflects what we have put on it. So, after that programme, one boy came to me and he told me that just before this programme, he had been contemplating suicide.
He had been in a relationship and that girl had suddenly broken up with him and he was refusing to talk with him at all. He was very depressed. So, as he was just gloomily wandering along the campus, at that time he saw a poster of this programme which I was doing.
So, something within him said, just go for this programme. And then he came for the programme. He said, now I’m understanding that it’s not I who want to commit suicide.
It is that this mind, this idea is popping up in my mind. Come on, commit suicide, commit suicide. I said, yes, if you understand this difference between you and what is happening in your mind, then you will stay safe.
So, I told him, encouraged him to study the Bhagavad Gita. I have a website called Gita Daily where I write every day 300 word meditation on the practical application of the Gita. So, I encouraged him to visit that and to read about the Gita regularly.
So, he started doing that. So, every year when I come to India, America once or twice, when I go to that university, I meet him and talk with him. So, he is becoming slowly spiritual.
So, last year when I had come, he met me again and he told me that he went through a similar situation again. He had been in a steady relationship and suddenly that girl broke up with him. So, he said when he got that news, he got that message on his phone, he just went straight to his room.
He closed the door, shut the windows, pulled down the curtains, turned off the lights and then he picked up, he loved music. So, he picked up his violin and he started singing Hare Krishna. He said, I was singing continuously for six hours and those six hours that I was singing, I felt myself bathing in some kind of spiritual light.
I felt myself basking in a soft presence. That period which would have been a very depressing period of my life, it was a very enriching period. I could feel the presence of some divinity and that’s how he felt that my spiritual conviction increased through that experience.
So, rather than getting depressed and getting suicidal, what happened was his spirituality helped him to process that emotion of rejection in a far more healthy way. Similarly, all of us, we may go through various negative emotions in life but if we grow spiritually, then we will be able to cultivate more healthy responses to the negative situations of life and the negative emotions that come in our mind. So, spiritual growth is a powerful way by which we can deal with the negativities of the mind and no matter how much science and technology advance, they can provide us some facilities, they can provide us some comforts and they are good but they alone cannot substitute for our inner growth.
They cannot take the place of our maturation internally to a better process our emotions. So, science can make things better but spirituality can make minds better. Spirituality can transform us internally and make our mind healthier and better and that’s why no matter how much science advances, we do need spirituality.
In fact, the more science advances, we could say the more we need spirituality because through the scientific advancement and through the technological advancement, the amount of distractions that the mind gets exposed to are much more than earlier and more and more pop-ups come up on the inner screen and we need spiritual growth to be able to process all the various stimuli that are coming in our mind and respond in a healthy way to them. So, I’ll summarise. I spoke about why we need spirituality in age of science, talked about how primarily the area of mental health.
While luxuries have become commonplace which were unavailable even to royalty in the past, but we have mental health problems far more than before. More people are killing themselves than are being killed by others. Mental health problems are the biggest health challenge of the current century.
So, what is the way science is offering us to deal with mental health problems? That is primarily through pathologising them and offering psychiatric medicines. I talked about two problematic studies. One is that healthy people just by one fib, hearing a thud in the head, they were diagnosed as insane and the same subject was diagnosed with the same symptoms were diagnosed differently at different times.
A simple behavioural problem, children being unable to manage their studies were diagnosed as having ADHD. So, this pathologising of normal human challenges that is happening because of a reductionistic view of consciousness. I talked about why is the car moving? Because its wheels are moving, because the key moved from vertical to horizontal.
That’s the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach is the car is moving because there is a driver who wanted to go for a ride. Both are true, which we need to use where has to be carefully understood.
So, current mainstream science reduces all of reality down to matter and it considers our consciousness also to be a result of brain phenomena. Now, the brain is the transmitter of consciousness, not the originator. Talked about Dr. Pinder Ben Smith’s experiment of raising the hand and lowering the hand, which indicated that the source of consciousness is extracerebral.
And to understand this, that consciousness exists beyond the brain, we did this thought experiment where there is the outer world that we see, there is the inner screen, which is the mind, and there is the inner seer, that is the soul. So, this can also be understood as the self-soul is like the user, the mind is like the software and the body is like the hardware. So, the mind is meant to be the integrator and presenter of images coming from the outer world so that we can respond to them.
But when this integration and presentation software malfunctions, then unwanted images zoom up. So, in anxiety-related disorders, all negative images about the future zoom up. In depression, negative images of the past zoom up.
And this is because of the corruption of the software of the mind. So, just as a device that has software problems, just fixing the hardware alone may not deal with that issue. Similarly, fixing the brain or changing the processing or changing the chemicals in the brain, that will not deal with software issues, with the issues of mental growth and mental processing at the mental level.
So, taking some chemicals that alter the brain states can make us feel better. But that is simply like tickling may make us feel better or just smiling may make us feel better. That does not address the underlying issues.
So, happiness is much deeper than what can be provided by tickling. So, smiling or laughter is a result of happiness. It is not the cause of happiness.
So, I concluded by talking about how spiritual wisdom helps us understand that we are beyond our situations and beyond our emotions. So, by distancing ourselves from them, knowing that we are secure in our spirituality, we can evaluate our emotions and our situations more maturely and respond to them healthily. So, mantra is a spiritual sound vibration that raises our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And this elevates our consciousness, gives us strength to evaluate and respond to whatever images pop up on our inner screen. I discussed the binding problem in consciousness, which indicates that the greater of various inputs coming in has to be somewhere beyond the brain, that is the mind. So, if we grow spiritually, then whatever unhealthy emotions come into us because of life’s unfortunate events, we will be able to respond to them more healthily.
Just as this was suicidal earlier, became spiritual and a similar situation came up, he turned towards spirituality and became enriched rather than becoming depressed. Thank you very much. So, are there any questions or comments? Yeah, please.
So, if you feel impatient about our spiritual progress, are you impatient about spiritual progress itself or what? Yeah. Okay. So, if you feel impatient about our spiritual progress and get depressed because of that, see, we may sometimes practise spiritual life, but we may have a material conception of spiritual life, even a material conception of spiritual growth.
What does that mean? That in material life, success is usually seen as a destination. I want to climb up that mountain. If I get to that mountain, I’m successful.
If I fail in getting to that mountain, I’m a failure. So, in material life, you usually think of success as a destination. In spiritual life, success is more a direction than a destination.
It’s a process of what? We are souls who are parts of the whole. Krishna is known by different names. His name is known by the name Krishna in the Bhakti tradition.
So, now, it’s a relationship of love between us and and there is no such thing as an end to a relationship. I formed a relationship. That’s good.
But the relationship is an ongoing process. So, when we learn to see our spiritual growth more as a direction than a destination, then we can set. Okay.
I would like to do this. I would like to get over this. I would like to do this, whatever it is, what we can set.
Now, measuring our growth in terms of the direction rather than destination doesn’t mean that we give up the destination. But we learn to savour the journey also. So, actually, say there are two kids who are going for the first time to Disneyland.
Now, one of them is just so eager. When will I get to Disneyland? When I’ll get to Disneyland? And all along the journey, the kid is just looking at the watch, looking at the window. Are we there? Are we there? Are we there? And other kid decides, okay, I’m going along this road for the first time.
Let me enjoy the ride also. He looks around, takes in the scenery, sees the mountains, sees the rivers, sees the new buildings. Now, suppose along the way, the car breaks down and they don’t get to Disneyland.
Now, the first child will still have enjoyed the ride. The second child will have enjoyed the ride. The first child would have been just miserable.
So, for us, if we consider spiritual growth, it is not that only on achieving certain targets, we can experience inner contentment or inner joy. Even along the journey, if we don’t get too hooked, this is what I want to do. No, there is a higher plan for our life and even our progress will be happening according to higher plan.
We do our best and during that process also, if we learn to focus on the good, we can see that there are many ways in which our spiritual growth has changed for the better. There are many ways in which we are experiencing greater contentment, greater purity, greater clarity than before. So, if we learn to see spiritual growth as a direction and we are moving in that direction constantly and we have covered a significant distance, but if you see how far I have to go, if I define my spiritual growth only in terms of having reached a particular destination, then I may feel I am very far away.
But if you just focus on, yes, if I keep moving along, just keep moving along, trying to do what I can in a mood of devotion, I am growing. And even now, we can experience a spiritual connection and to the extent we experience a spiritual connection, to that extent there will be satisfaction in that. So, we don’t have to necessarily think that unless I get to a particular destination, I am not going spiritually.
Even if we have certain conditionings which we are not able to overcome, but that is okay. Some conditionings may take a long time to overcome. Even with the conditionings also we can still connect with spiritual reality with Krishna and we can experience some spiritual satisfaction even with that.
If we don’t fixate on particular goals in spiritual life and just focus on following the process and try to connect with Krishna, we will experience contentment even now. Any other comments or questions? Can one cure psychological conditions through spirituality alone? I wouldn’t put psychiatry or psychology as a competitor to spirituality. The point of this whole talk is that, that we cannot replace spirituality with psychiatry.
But that doesn’t mean that we are saying that psychiatry should be replaced with spirituality. So, psychiatry and psychology are also two different things. Psychiatry is where more medicines are prescribed.
Psychology is where more stock therapy. You sit on the psychologist’s couch or lie down and pour out your heart and they hear and they discuss. So, that is more, so we could say psychiatry tries to process, deal with mental health issues at the physical level.
Psychology tries to deal with mental health issues at the mental level. Spirituality deals with them by raising us above the mental level to the spiritual level. So, it is not that this spirituality will make other things redundant.
There are situations when psychiatry may be required. There are situations when psychology may also be required. But what the concern here is that, if psychiatry is made into a replacement for spirituality, then that pathologising of normal human problems is a serious problem.
We don’t have to make, we don’t have to make the claim at all that spirituality alone can solve all psychological or psychiatric problems. There are the specialisations and there are committed professionals in specialisations and there are times when their assistance is also needed. That’s perfectly fine.
The important thing is that we don’t have a distorted world view of the self where we reduce the person to just their brain states or brain chemicals. Yes. So, when we are focussing on mantra meditation, what should we do? Okay.
So, the mind is like the inner screen and we are chanting the mantra. What should be there on the inner screen at that time? Basically, the mantra is the way our consciousness rises upwards. So, we could say that if this, I give the example of the inner screen and the inner seer, that’s you could say it’s a horizontal example.
So, there is an outer scene. So, you are looking at me, I am looking at you and there is an inner screen, there is an inner seer. So, normally we function that the inner screen acts like a window so that what is outside is seen and then we can respond to it properly.
And in this way, we can respond to physical reality immediately. The mantra is a spiritual sound. So, in that sense, it’s a self.
The same level the seer is there, that’s where the mantra is. But presently, we vibrate it at a physical level. So, what we are trying to do is that when we let this physically vibrated sound appear on our inner screen, then that awakens our spiritual awareness, that activates our awareness.
To give another example for this, say there is a child who is watching a horror movie. Child is sitting comfortably at home, but while sitting comfortably at home, the child starts watching a horror movie. Now, the mother is right next to the child, but if the mother touches the child, the child screams in horror, the same monster is coming and touching me now.
So, now as the child is watching the horror movie, the mother is right next to the child, the child is sick, but the consciousness of the child is projected into that horror movie. So, what the mother does is, she changes the film that is going on the TV and she puts there the image of she and her child having gone for a picnic. And child starts seeing the loving mother and saying, what is this? This looks nice.
As compared to the horror movie that was going on, this is such a loving person. I think I know this person. The child is so scared that we’re not able to process also.
But as the child starts feeling calmer and calmer, oh, this is my mother. And then as the child becomes calmer and calmer, and then the mother touches, oh, you’re here, you’re safe. So, similarly for us, right now, our consciousness is caught at the physical level.
Now, we are spiritual beings and inside all of us is a representation of divinity that is there, that’s like our mother next to us. But we are so caught at the physical level of reality that we don’t perceive the divine presence right next to us. So, what happens is, on the inner screen, we try to invoke the image of divinity.
In the inner screen, by chanting the mantra externally, on the inner screen, we get spiritual sound vibration and get spiritual stimulus over there. And as the spiritual stimulus comes up, we start feeling peaceful, peaceful. Then we start, spiritual sensibility starts getting awakened.
And once that spiritual sensibility starts getting awakened, then we will perceive ourselves to be spiritual. In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 20, it was said in the Bhagavad Gita that at that time when the mind becomes peaceful, then we start perceiving the self and we start delighting in the self. So, during the chanting of the mantra, we basically try to get the sound of the mantra on our inner screen.
But the sound itself is spiritual. The more we let that sound appear on the inner screen, the more it will spiritualise our consciousness. So, how does karma figure into this calculation or this reasoning of how we process our events, process what happens in our life? The word karma has many different meanings.
Here, generally what we refer to is the reaction to our karma. So, the kind of actions that I have done in the past, they are going to give me some reactions. Sometimes bad things just happen to us, although we have not done anything bad.
That is just a reaction to something bad which we have done in the past. Now, just as bad things may happen, just like I said, spiritual knowledge tells us that we are bigger than our situations and bigger than our emotions. So, by karma, sometimes bad situations may come in our life.
And when these bad situations come in our life, one bad thing happens and the mind may just take off from there. We are planning to go for an outing, a picnic, and then suddenly just before that, the previous night, we fall sick with the flu. And the next day, we are burning with resentment.
And the flu, it just makes us weak, it makes us sleepy. But the resentment, why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? That hurts us more than the flu. So, many times, bad things happen to us, but the resentment of that bad thing hurts us more than the bad thing also.
So, by the bad karma, by some karma, some bad thing may happen to us. But how that bad thing will hurt us will depend on how our mind processes it. So, if at that time, okay, this has happened, I accept it, let me do something, let me just calm myself down, let me see what I can do in this situation.
Maybe I can read some book, I can hear some talks, I can hear some spiritual music, and then I’ll feel calmer, I’ll feel better. So, the external event, bad events may happen by karma, but its impact on me will be much lesser. Secondly, it may also happen that by bad karma, some unwanted images start coming on my inner screen.
For example, if somebody is an alcoholic, say, this is the home of a person, this is the home that two people are staying here, and this is their office, or this is their college. And along the way, there is a bar. So, one person is alcoholic, the other is not alcoholic.
And when the alcoholic starts going by, as soon as they walk by the bar, I want to drink, I know I should not, maybe I should drink, no, I should not drink. This whole tug of war goes on. And sometimes they may reach the class also, oh, I have just taken one drink, you know, it’s been so nice.
Their mind stays locked in that bar, practically speaking. So, what has happened? The past actions are producing the reaction at the mental level. For the non-alcoholic who is not drunk, there is no temptation to drink also, there is no agitation of the mind.
So, sometimes by the way we have acted in the past, by our past karma, some reactions may come at the mental level, where at the mental level, unwanted feelings, unwanted desires, unwanted ideas just start popping up too much. Now, we have to see that this is also a reaction to karma. Just because something is inside me, that does not mean it is me.
Sometimes we just feel very irritable. Sometimes we just feel so bored with everything. Sometimes we just feel so depressed about everything.
These are just emotions that are coming on inner screen. So, they also can be a result of past karma. So, if you just tolerate them, this is coming, this will stay here for some time, it will go.
So, if we can distance from our situations and our emotions, then the karma action will cause some suffering, but our response to it will not aggravate the suffering. We like to say, this is there and I have to endure it, but I do not have to identify with it, I do not have to act on it. It is something that becomes easier when we become more self-aware.
One way to understand that we are different from our emotions is, or rather not necessarily different from our emotions, that we are not whatever emotion pops up in our mind. We can realise this when we are trying to do something which we know is important for us, but we do not feel like doing it. So, I have to study, I have got an exam tomorrow.
Now, I have the intention to study, that is what I want to do, but there is something within me saying, come on, let us look at a YouTube video, let us read some news, let us watch some movie. Now, when this sort of duality starts happening within us, that is the time when we understand, okay, this is inside me, but it is not me. So, sometimes we just, when something unwanted comes up inside us, we just either try to fight to get rid of it or we just fall for it.
Oh, I am feeling so bored. So, I just start persevering and doing what I am trying to do. How can I get rid of the boredom? Okay, I start watching some entertainment and then one thing becomes second.
I find that I spend six hours in entertainment for a boredom which would have just lasted for 5-10 minutes. So, if we just give in to the depression, that is a problem. If you try to fight it off also, it is a problem because whatever is there in the inner screen, we cannot get rid of it.
Thoughts are like mist. If there is mist around us, if I try to fight the mist, what do I do to fight the mist? Do I take a sword and fight the mist? When a thought is there inside us, we cannot get rid of it. If it is there, it is there.
If I try to say, I will get this thought out of my consciousness, how will I get it out? The only way, unwanted thoughts, unwanted desires, unwanted emotions, they cannot be driven out. They can only be crowded out. It is only when we get more constructive into our consciousness that they will go out.
If either I fall for it or fight against it, in both ways, actually I thwart myself. So, what we have to do is, okay, this is there, it is there for some time. I don’t want it here, but it is there.
We don’t pay attention to it. It is like say, if you have got an old car which you want to sell, but there is no buyer available. And the agent has said, you will get the buyer only after 3 months.
And 3 months, it is going to be in the garage. Now, I can decide, stupid car, it is taking so much space in my garage. So, I take an iron bar and smash the car.
What is the use of that? On the other hand, it is not working. So, I keep driving in that very car and then I start beating myself, why this car is so terrible? It looks so terrible, it functions so terrible. Why do I have to drive in this car? No, we could just keep that car aside and rent another car, buy another car or whatever.
That car can be there. We don’t have to we don’t have to resent its presence. We don’t have to act on its presence.
Just allow it to be there. If we focus on something else, if we use some other mode of transportation, once our need of transportation is served, that car’s presence will not affect us so much. Similarly, by past karma, sometimes some unwanted emotions will come within us.
They are just there. So, there is an unwanted car in our garage. Now, rather than trying to get rid of them or to act on them, we just continue with our life.
Let it be there. It is there. And as we focus on something constructive in our life and as the constructive activity is filling our consciousness, that will recede into the background.
So, karma may cause bad situations or bad emotions to come within us. But if you are practising spirituality, if you are focused on acting spiritually in our life, then that purpose will prevent that karmic reaction from creating disproportionate distress in our life. Thank you very much.
So, maybe all of you can just speak one point which you liked and then we can conclude. May be some reflection of something which you would like to carry home. Yeah.
It makes it very practical to understand today’s technological world. Yeah. So, you are a neuroscientist.
Because I’m also studying psychology specifically related to mental illnesses. So, I’m really grappling with, just in my life in general, aside from this talk during the past probably year or so, the role of psychology and psychiatry versus spirituality and things like this hand-raising, like what that means. But I found it really interesting to think of healing your biology and then healing like through psychiatry is like healing through biology, I guess.
And then psychology is more for the mind and that spirituality is taking a step beyond that and then it’s letting you see your life as something bigger. And I think that’s a really beautiful way to look at it. Yeah, that’s good.
Thank you. Very good point. Chris, you’d like to say something? The metaphor with the top down.
Yeah. Both are valid, but we have to see what is more constructive for our purpose at that time, which approach we need to use. Thank you.
I think that’s a very good example. You could take that same bad experience but actually transform it into a spiritual and kind of enlivening experience that is really nice. Yeah, it’s true.
Actually, I was studying, I gave several seminars on fear. The top 10 fears of people in the 20th century, 19th century, as far as we know, 18th century. In the 21st century, there are two new fears which have been added.
One is the fear of terrorists and the second is fear of rejection. Because relationships are so unstable and insecure, it’s a big fear. And if you have spiritual growth, then it helps us to face relational ups and downs much better.
I really like the last point that you said that when you have thoughts in your mind, you cannot actually directly fight with it. We just try to fill our mind with positive thoughts and then that just fades away. Yeah.
I’m actually thinking that practically, just in day to day life, when we have a thought, we know that we don’t want to go there, but still we try to fight it. Like, oh, why am I thinking that? I should not be thinking that. The mind naturally tends to fight those thoughts.
We just need to, at that time, just focus on something positive and just say, I’m not just let go of it now. I’m not going to think of it. Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, some softwares in a computer, they are like distant. It’s like some pop-up comes up and you can’t find a cross anywhere. So, you just have to drag it aside, let it be there and move on with life.
So, some of our thoughts are like that. So, those problems and situations have their own shape and size, but the mind has favour on them, especially when people are dealing with anxiety, then you’re, you know, you’re lamenting over the past, you know, you’re in depression, you’re thinking, why did I do this? Why did I do that? Why did such thing happen to me? So, the mind has this ability to actually do that. And the way we treat that is through the concept that we are allowed to focus on ourselves and realise, which is that we are larger than these problems and that we are larger than these circumstances and that we are larger than, as you said, we have a long journey of life.
There are many more things to do. It’s that before, actually, I’d like to point before, with more meaning, because before coming to this talk, I used to talk to my friends who were, you know, who were getting depressed and saddened because they failed in their examinations. And one of the points that we used to talk about is, come on, you know, you have a four-year journey.
What is one subject going to do to you? You know, you just clear it the next time. And then eventually, you know, perhaps you’ll find another. So, looking at it from a longer term perspective, looking at it from a broader perspective, obviously helps us in weeding out these little problems that come in.
See, the mind, the mind tends to catastrophise problems, but the intelligence can contextualise problems. You know, okay, one thing is the end of my life now. My life is over.
That’s what the mind has to say. But contextualise, you know, if I look back at my life, there are so many situations when I felt my life was over now. But over a period of time, I was able to deal with it.
So, if you just, you can distance yourself from it, then you can say, yes, this is a problem and I have to deal with it. But if I look back at my life five years ago, 10 years ago, I can think of some problem which I felt, my God, it’s going to destroy my life. And almost every year, look back, there’s some problem at that time.
But we have lived through those years. We can contextualise those problems that way. Okay, in this situation, this has come.
And this is a product of this context. It will be there for some time and it will go. So, if we contextualise it, then we can, don’t have to get carried away by it.
It is the way how we are. And spirituality is to put things in proper perspective. That’s true.
Thank you. Oh, yeah. So, you know, if we say we should not act on our emotions, but don’t we ourselves have emotions? We are spiritual people.
Yes. What I was talking about is not that we not act on our emotions, but rather we process our emotions and then decide how to respond to them. And said that there are for us certain things which are circumstantial situations and circumstantial emotions that come because of the situations.
And then we have purpose. And the emotions related with that are important for us. So, we want to choose those emotions that lift us up spiritually.
And you want to avoid those emotions that pull us down. So, emotions are themselves not the problem. It’s our uncritical embracing of the emotion that is the problem.
So, by spiritual growth, the emotions that, first two things happen by spiritual growth. First is that our intelligence by which we can evaluate which emotion is healthy and which emotion is unhealthy. We can discern that.
Otherwise, whatever emotion comes in, we get carried away by that. All emotions are not unhealthy, certainly not. Emotions are actually the ornaments of life.
If there were no emotions, we would just be like robots. And that would not be in any way a palatable life. So, emotions are not bad, but there are short term emotions which can overwhelm us.
There are emotions which arise from circumstances which are not really important for us. So, the capacity to discern which emotion is more important, which emotion is less important, that first of all comes through a spiritual growth. And secondly, so in spiritual growth, there is, you could say, intelligence and there is transcendence.
Intelligence enables us to analyse the emotions and decide which I want to focus on. And as we rise to transcendence, as we become spiritual more and more, then the unhealthy emotions themselves start becoming lesser in their intensity and the healthier emotions start becoming stronger. And when that happens, then the inner battle goes down substantially.
And instead of that inner struggle, there is greater inner power. So, at the spiritual level, it is the power of love that animates us. And that is extremely, the power of pure spiritual love is extremely powerful.
And that is, that is like a powerful river which can overcome all obstacles, just go straight to the ocean. So, like that those who are spiritually very pure and purposeful, they can actually overcome great obstacles and persevere in their path. So, emotions are not bad, but it is our uncritical embrace that of the emotions that, of whichever emotion that pops up within, that is the problem.
So, when we learn to first of all select the emotion or analyse the emotions, and then as we nourish the healthier emotions, then actually we experience greater and greater happiness. But I guess things like seeing, well, first of all, becoming the observer and accepting what is there. But it can be really hard to do.
So, but it seems like acceptance is like a really big part of that, of being able to step back and become an observer. You know, I guess it is probably, yeah, not necessarily, I understand what you are saying. So, acceptance is, how is it that by stepping back we do the acceptance or by accepting we step back, if you ask.
I think it is, if you see the Bhagavad Gita, there is an example of how many rivers flow into the ocean, but the ocean is not disturbed. So, that is an example of, say, emotions, desires coming in, we do not grudge them, we do not block them, but they do not overwhelm us. Now, imagine if instead of the ocean there is a puddle over there, and if a river comes into the puddle, there will be devastation, there will be flooding, and everything will get disrupted.
So, it is, if our consciousness is like a puddle, then if any negative emotion comes in, it will be very difficult to resist it. It is when our consciousness is like an ocean, then when river-like emotions come in, river-like desires come in, we will be able to take them in without getting affected. So, the whole process of spiritual growth, now what do we mean, it means to make our consciousness from a puddle to an ocean.
Now, what determines the size of our consciousness? That is determined by the size of the object that the consciousness is focused on. If the consciousness is focused on small things, if, say, my consciousness is focused on wealth, I just want money, money, money, money, and if something happens which threatens my financial security, that can completely devastate me. If somebody’s consciousness is focused on some sports, I was in India, there’s one boy, India is a cricket mad country, so there’s one boy who told me that India lost a very important match, and he says, after that three nights I could not sleep.
No, I told him, those players were playing the match, they slept. So, what happened was that consciousness got locked over there. So, if our consciousness, the content of our consciousness, the object of the consciousness focus is small, then that causes the shrinking of our consciousness to the level of puddle.
But the process of bhakti, especially, is meant to focus our consciousness on a supremely big reality. The more we become attached and devoted to Krishna, the more he becomes a living and enduring presence in our consciousness, the more our consciousness expands to become like an ocean. And then, when these emotions come up, there is so much strength and security and satisfaction that is there inside, that it is not difficult to just tolerate acceptance without fighting with it.
So, yes, stepping back is required, but it’s not just stepping back, that will become a draining process. How long can I keep stepping back? Ultimately, we need to be filled with something higher. So, we use our intelligence to step back from unwanted emotions, but then we use our devotion, use our spirituality to fill our heart with Krishna’s presence.
And that’s what ultimately helps us to tolerate the rivers that come in without getting affected. So, thank you very much for your participation and attention. Thank you.