Intelligence means to know which thoughts to contemplate and which to neglect

[Sunday feast class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so I thank all of you for coming here today evening so today I will speak on the topic of using our intelligence to tap the power of our thoughts our thoughts are probably the things that are the closest to us the bhagavad gita is an ancient text of yoga and it describes how our inner world works and there in it explains that most of the distress that we experience in our life, it is not just because of what happens in the world the distress we experience is because of how we interpret what happens in the world for all practical purposes we never interact with the physical world directly we interact with the mental representation of the physical world if I am in a desert and I see a mirage actually at the physical level there is only sand over there but somehow it gets represented in my mind as a body of water and I start running after it so we don’t see the world as it is we see the world as it is interpreted by our mind one of my early interests in school when I was a kid was astronomy so I used to go to the terrace of my house at night and sit with my telescope and look at the various celestial objects so at one time I was eagerly waiting to look for a solar eclipse and days and days I had been planning and waiting and then before the event of the solar eclipse something had happened and I was thinking about it and as the eclipse started I was looking through the telescope and after sometime I realised the eclipse is over and I didn’t see the eclipse because my mind was caught in something else so at that time I started thinking that I am so interested in what goes on out there in the sky but what goes on here inside the head is also very interesting not interesting in the sense of being informative necessarily but interesting in the sense of being captivating that the eclipse is so beautiful or so awaited but something came in my inside and that just revented, dragged my attention away so what actually happens so what goes on inside us and how does it distract us actually the Bhagavad Gita explains that we could understand our inner world by personification personification means that that which is an insentient object we ascribe personal attributes to it so for example we may say the clouds are roaring the clouds are insentient objects they are just pouring water but if there is a thunderstorm we may say the clouds are roaring that’s personification so the Bhagavad Gita says we can personify our mind that is treat the mind like another person and this person can be a friend or an enemy now what do we exactly mean by personifying and before that what do we exactly mean by the mind so to understand this let’s do a quick thought experiment so wherever you are seated you can be comfortable and close your eyes and with me you can take three deep breaths one two three now with your eyes closed look at what you see in front of you because your eyes are closed you can’t see what is physically in front of you but you still see something like an inner screen and on that inner screen we have you may see various images you may see this temple room you may see your home you may see your car you may see your friend you may see some garden or mountain you had seen recently you may see a movie star or a sports star or you may just see a dull abstract pattern of colours but still there is an inner screen and you see something on that inner screen now try to take a step back and look at who is looking at that inner screen you can see the inner screen but who is it that is looking at the inner screen to spot that person take a step back take a step back to spot the inner seer no matter how many times you step back the inner seer steps back with you what you are looking for is what you are looking with and you are the inner seer you are the soul and the inner screen is your mind you can open your eyes now after taking one deep breath thank you so when normally we perceive things there is an outer scene you are looking at me, I am looking at you there is the outer scene there is the inner screen and there is the inner seer when all three come together that is when perception happens however this inner screen doesn’t always act as a window it can sometimes act like a TV screen and it can suddenly start displaying maybe something which we had remembered long time ago something that had happened to us many years ago or many months ago or some future problem that may come in our life various things keep getting displayed on the inner screen and because this inner screen is so close to us we tend to take whatever appears on it very seriously we tend to identify with it now what appears on the inner screen we could say is a mental event it is a stimulus that appears inside we could call that as a thought so a thought is an event that occurs inside us and it appears as an image or a stimulus on the inner screen the word thought can have two distinct meanings one is I had a thought I just got a thought that means some idea some notion popped up in my mind the other is I have given this a lot of thought I say I have given this a lot of thought that means it refers to systematic contemplation on the subject so first the word thought means an event in our inner world just a stimulus that pops up on the inner screen and the second is sustained reflection so why are these two meanings of thought relevant for us because lots of things keep coming on our inner screen and we could say that the thoughts that come from the inner screen they, when they come because they are so close to us often they are so vivid that we take them very seriously but not everything that appears on that inner screen needs to be taken seriously why not say if we go to some public place now we might get 50, 70, 100 people here now we can’t meet everyone we may want to socialise and meet as many people as possible but if we go to a place where there are 5000 people how many of those people can we meet we have to decide these are the people I want to meet these are the people I want to spend some time with others we may just greet and we may move on so similarly we see lots of thoughts pop up into us depending on how agitated or how calm we are thousands of thoughts pop up within on our inner screen we could say every few minutes every hour in a day thousands upon thousands of thoughts keep popping up on the inner screen and if we start paying attention to everything we will be lost so the Bhagavad Gita says that the thoughts that appear on our screen they need to be processed in 14 chapters 22nd and 23rd verse it says that when these thoughts come up in your consciousness come inside us just observe them do not resent them do not crave for them just observe them and then evaluate them decide which need attention be detached and observe them so basically a thought comes in our mind often we attribute four qualities to the thoughts we think they are true, they are wise they are important and they are urgent we think that they are true say for example I get I find a small swelling on my hand a thought comes in what if this is cancerous what if you have cancer once that thought comes in my mind then I say it might really be cancer I start taking my thought, I think the thought is true, the thought is wise so thought is wise means we think the thoughts know whatever thought do this, don’t do this not only that it’s important, it has to be paid attention to immediately and that it is urgent so because of attributing these four we just by default do it because thoughts come inside us we don’t very critically evaluate the thought say for example after this programme you go out and somebody comes and says I want to talk with you and then they look very serious what do you want to talk and we just go walk away with them and they take us away and they keep talking with us for six hours and we may have a lot of plans but we just get captivated with it sometimes some people are very good storytellers when they start speaking they just magnetise people and they enjoy telling the story and they enjoy an audience they will speak to you for six hours and then at the end if somebody comes and asks who is your new friend oh sorry what is your name so they don’t really make friends they just need an audience just need someone to hear what they are speaking so similarly for us the thoughts that come within us they come and then they start off a story so we could say that our inner world another example it’s like a train station and once I was in Mumbai one of the biggest cities in India and I had to go for an important meeting and I just came to the station and I knew I was very late and the train was about to leave so I just rushed and got into the train in the nick of time and I was breathing heavily because I had somehow got into the train and then I sat down and started planning for the meeting and then half an hour went off and I was looking when is the station coming and then suddenly I realised a station which is very far away from my station that is what is outside then I asked what happened and then I realised that I had got into the wrong train I had come in such a haste I had expected my train to be there on that station but a train going in the opposite direction was there at that time and the train which I was supposed to be there was late so I just went off in the wrong direction so similarly for us we could say inside us there are many trains of thought we take now whichever train we get into it just shoots off and as soon as it shoots off it just takes us into completely different place so for example I will be in a very cheerful mood when I come to the office and then suddenly I see a strange look in my boss’s eyes and when I see that immediately the worried train shoots off the worried train oh why did my boss look at me like that is he planning to fire me if he fires me what will happen, how will I get another job how will I pay for my mortgage if I can’t pay for my mortgage then I will be evicted from my house now it is so difficult to get a good house if I don’t get a good house I will have to stay on the streets oh it is so cold how will I stay on the streets right now I may be feeling cold because of the AC but I am thinking I will be out in the cold so from the I was at one moment very cheerful but just one stimulus that prompted me to get in the train of thought of worry shot off and within a few minutes I might be on the verge of a panic attack the states of mind can change very rapidly because inside us there are many thoughts and thought patterns which are there so to the extent we become observers to the rather than identifiers if we just identify with these then we get carried away by them we don’t we don’t have to identify with the thought we need to identify the thought identify with the thought means there is a worry there is a thought train of worry inside me when I get into it I get worried but instead this is the worry train do I need to get into this? no I don’t need to so the thought may be there over there but it can’t affect us unless we focus on it unless we go into it the train won’t move till we get into it similarly it is our thoughts that it is our so thought can refer to just a stimulus on our inner screen but when we get into it when we think about it that’s when it gets emerged it becomes bigger the nature of problems in life is that we all are going to have problems but this world itself is a place of problems there is next week we are having Narasimha Chaturdashi so Prahlad is a great saint and he says in one of his prayers to the lord that how distress is unavoidable in this world yasmat priya priyaviyoga sanyoga jana shokagrina sakala yo nishudaya manaham dukhaushadam tadapi dukkhamadadhyaham bumandramamivadame tamadasyayogam so he says that in our life there is the palatable there is some things which are pleasant and some things which are unpleasant priya and apriya and we want to unite with the desirable and we want to avoid the undesirable but unfortunately life does the opposite the life unites us with the undesirable and separates us from the desirable we like a friend very much and somehow that friend gets transferred somewhere else we think in this team I don’t want to work with this person and that person becomes our partner so things happen in such a way that we get the unwanted undesirable and the desirable goes away and this causes distress shokagrina now when this distress happens you see when anything bad happens in our life the bad event is out there it has happened ok this person is a difficult person and I have to work with this person or say I wanted to go out for outing and I have fallen sick I got flu just the previous night it’s a bad event that has happened but how bad how badly it will affect us depends on how much we dwell on it say if I fall sick if I get flu now having a flu is not a very painful condition it is I feel weak I feel sleepy, maybe I feel dizzy so I lie in bed but inside me there is a constant replay going on why did this happen why did this happen all my friends are enjoying in the outing I am here languishing in the bed and that hurts us much more than the flu so resentment of reality often hurts much more than reality I have to work with some difficult person I have to deal with some I have to deal with the situation but when we keep dwelling on it that’s what hurts us much much more I correspond with a lot of people on email I am a writer and I connect with people in different parts of the world so last year when I was in America one person from India had written a mail to me that infuriated me and I was giving a talk in Washington D.C. and after that talk many people would come to talk with me after the class and after having spoken in public for 20-25 years we get some ability to discern some people ask questions to gain knowledge and some people ask questions to show knowledge so sometimes the question they ask will go on for 10-15 minutes so then if that is happening we start seeing that then we just politely try to end the conversation and move on to some other people who are more interested so as I was trying to disentangle myself from a conversation that was going nowhere it just struck me that see here I am not ready to spend more time than necessary with this person but there that person is in India and I am giving so much of my mental time to that person now why did you do like that? why did you do like that? sometimes when we quarrel with someone we say I won’t talk with you now we say I won’t talk with you but our mind keeps talking with that person how dare you do this? how dare you do that? and actually we give that person lot of time and at least if we talk talk calmly there is some chance of clarification but when our mind is just hurling curses at that person what do we get by it? nothing it’s just that we become more and more agitated so the point I am making here is that the bad things happen that’s just the nature of life sometimes the undesirable happens and the desirable doesn’t happen but when this happens it is how much is it replayed on the mind that determines how much it will hurt us the problem that is there is definitely there but our mind can magnify the problem manifold this is where the capacity to drain our mind becomes vital today today’s world has phenomenal scientific and technological progress by which we have gained large amount of control over the outer world just by pressing a few buttons we can talk with anyone in any part of the world unfortunately however despite so much technological progress there seems to be increased psychological distress people are more and more tense people need more and more mental health medicines more and more people are suffering from anxiety depression and what exactly why exactly is this happening specific causes can be many but if you go back to the starting point what I said the mind is like a inner screen and it is meant to act like a window to the outer world but it can also act like a tv where it takes us to the past to the future in various directions so now with technology providing us so many inputs from so many sources we have news we have movies we have sports we have so many social media by which we can connect with so many people so basically the mind acts less and less like a window to the world around us world in front of us and it gets so many stimuli that makes the mind act more and more like a tv oh it goes over here it goes over there and this distraction it disempowers us from functioning effectively to be distracted is to be disempowered physically I may have strong energy to lift heavy weights and with that energy I can lift the weight but most of us we don’t have to do a lot of physical work we have to do intellectual work at our jobs, at our relationships think, analyse how to speak but our capacity to focus gets eroded when the mind starts acting like a tv and that’s why we can’t function effectively so and the more and more this starts acting like a tv and showing negative images the more our agitation and distress happens the two main mental health problems that people face in today’s world are depression and anxiety in terms of this inner screen depression happens when the inner screen becomes a tv which starts replaying all the bad things that have happened to us in the past this person did like this this person did like that this person did like that and anxiety happens when the inner screen acts like a tv which shows us the future this may go wrong, that may go wrong that may go wrong, that may go wrong that may go wrong she has become panicky so one of my friends is a mental health counsellor so he is available on the suicide intervention lines so he told me that he got a case where a girl attempted suicide and the reason for that was she called her boyfriend and the boyfriend didn’t pick up the call just because of that she thought, the thought train started off he didn’t pick up the call, that means he doesn’t love me maybe he is with someone else maybe he rejected me this relationship will work out maybe in future others will also reject me I will be alone throughout my life oh I will be so miserable everybody around me will be happy I will be miserable, what is the use of living like this let me end my life somebody not picking up a phone is a small thing but the thought train starts off of anxiety it can lead to suicide means the mind kills the body the mind can hurt us when there is anxiety or depression but suicide means the mind kills the body so this learning to manage what appears on our screen especially what we focus is vital for our well being and spiritual growth helps us to do this so intelligence is intelligence can have many different meanings one simple meaning of intelligence is to see things in their proper perspective Srila Prabhupada who is the author of the Bhagavad Gita as it is a classic commentary of the Bhagavad Gita he defines intelligence this way intelligence means to see things in their proper perspective that means to understand what is more important what is less important and on the inner screen many many images will appear many thoughts will pop up but if our intelligence is sharp then we will be able to process which thought to give attention to and which thought to neglect so intelligence means knowing which thought to contemplate and which thought to neglect suppose say we have come for an important meeting with somebody who is important for us and at that time some sales person comes and starts talking with us, please buy this product, buy this product now we don’t want to buy that product and anyway that can be done later but if at that time we start giving our time to that person then our important meeting with this VIP will be lost so similarly we need to recognise what is important and that capacity is what the intelligence provides so intelligence here doesn’t refer to simply the IQ score IQ is measured through the various tests and that refers to information processing capacity in terms of numbers and facts and figures and memory, all that is important but that is only one aspect of intelligence the essence of intelligence is not just processing information the essence of intelligence is knowing which information is worth processing know what is worth doing and what is to be neglected and this intelligence is what is nourished by spirituality spiritual knowledge helps us to understand first of all the inner dynamics that there is an inner screen and many thoughts many images come up on that inner screen and I need to be careful to select what is important so the more we study wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita the more we understand the dynamics of the inner world the more our intelligence becomes stronger and strength of intelligence is not so much in terms of muscular strength but it is in terms of swiftness, sharpness, alertness that when some thought comes up, the sharper our intelligence, the faster we evaluate. Do I need to pay attention to this? No, if not we focus on what is important first of all with our intelligence we come to know what is truly important otherwise we just get carried away by this and that and everything else so the Bhagavad Gita explains that we, the inner seer is the soul and the soul is an eternal part of the whole the whole is the infinite consciousness known in different traditions by different names we know by the name Krishna now to the extent we connect with Krishna through devotion to that extent we learn to become calmer and more objective in evaluating what is happening on the inner screen I will conclude with two metaphors first is, say a child is sitting and watching a horror movie initially they start watching the horror movie for enjoyment but as the movie starts becoming more and more horrifying and the child is identifying with that more they are identifying, more trembling, shrieking sweating now the mother is right next to the child but the child is not even aware that the mother is there but if somehow the child reaches out and catches the hand of the mother and the mother catches the hand oh my mother is here immediately a child will start feeling calm will start feeling calm so similarly for us if we connect with Krishna, who is our supreme parent that, whatever may be appearing on the inner screen this is going wrong, that is going wrong, that is going wrong, this may happen that may happen, but if you just connect with Krishna that will calm us down we may not even understand why it is calming us down when we right now before this we are chanting the mantra, we chant the Hare Krishna mantra so this Hare Krishna mantra is a time-honoured sound vibration which connects our consciousness with Krishna, so chanting this mantra is like stretching our hand to catch the hand of our mother to catch the hand of Krishna just doing this it doesn’t stop what is being displayed on the screen that may still go on but we don’t identify it as real if that’s happening out there I am here, I am safe and then after that we can evaluate so both ways the Bhagavad Gita offers us firstly the intelligence by which we can evaluate what is coming on the screen and secondly it offers us access to a reality beyond what is there on the screen and that access calms us down and that can also help us to process whatever is happening in the outer world so the process of bhakti is what enables us to connect with Krishna the second metaphor I will use comes from the Bhagavad Gita in one of its most vivid verses drawn from nature it says that just as rivers flow into an ocean but they don’t disrupt the ocean they come into the ocean and the ocean just absorbs them nothing happens to it similarly for those who are spiritually minded those who are spiritual various thoughts, desires, emotions may come into them like a river coming in but they will not affect the spiritually advanced person the key here is that what is the river the rivers are coming into an ocean instead of the ocean if there were a small puddle over there or even a small pond and a river came into it what would happen? it would overflow and things would be devastated everything would be wrecked around it so similarly for us if our consciousness is like an ocean if we are internally fully fulfilled if we are internally connected with the one who is in an oceanic reality who is the ocean of peace and joy that is Krishna if he is present within our hearts if we are focused on him then whatever stimuli come in they will be like rivers, they won’t agitate us much we will be able to deal with them but if we are attached to the small small things of this world then whatever it is we are attached to our consciousness gets concentrated on that and we could say our consciousness becomes like a puddle around that object I come from India which is a cricket mad country so each country has its own sports mania so few months ago there was a India Pakistan cricket match in the finals of a world cup of a champions trophy and India was expected to win but India lost very badly so after that one boy came to me and he said last three days I have not been able to sleep he said how could India lose this match like this so I said the players went to sleep, why are you not able to sleep so what has happened over here, the match happened in England, he was in India but his consciousness had become like a small puddle and in that the river of India losing that match flew in and everything got disrupted so whatever we are attached to our consciousness gets shaped by that and quite often in today’s world there are so many distractions coming from so many sources, some stimulus comes up and we start dwelling on it and we get attached to it so to become peaceful, to be able to evaluate and process our inner world effectively we need to not just develop our intelligence, not just connect with Krishna but actually elevate our attachments the smaller the things that we are attached to, the greater will be our agitation when something goes wrong now if we are attached very much to one particular person we all need relationships, we all need connections but there can be emotional dependency in relationships if we become too dependent on someone and then that person just looks at us disapprovingly that will give us a heart attack because we become too dependent on that person yes we want to have relationships but the Bhagavad Gita tells us our primary relationship is with Krishna if we connect with him through the process of bhakti we make him our primary attachment, that is spiritual attachment whereas most other attachments agitate us, the attachment to Krishna stabilises us because he is the supreme unchanging reality he is always there with us in our own hearts as aspect of the divine who accompanies us always so by the process of bhakti which involves chanting the holy name, which involves coming to spiritual programmes like this which involves studying the Bhagavad Gita by all this the more we make our attachment directed towards Krishna the more our consciousness will expand from a puddle to an ocean and as it expands to an ocean the more we will be able to have the rivers of various stimuli coming into that ocean but without disturbing us the more we will be able to process life’s difficulties with intelligence and grace we will know that even if this has happened, that has happened Krishna is still in charge and he will bring good out of the bad and that will help us to face life’s difficulties without our mind aggravating those difficulties rather we will be able to calm ourselves down and deal with those difficulties with greater effectiveness, with greater constructiveness and ultimately the attachment to Krishna will take us to his eternal abode where there is life and love eternal where all our longing for lasting peace and joy is permanently and perfectly fulfilled so I will summarise what I spoke today I spoke on the topic of tapping the power of our thoughts with our intelligence so understanding how our inner world works I started with the example of that how the Bhagavad Gita personifies the mind so what exactly is the mind, we did the thought experiment that we can see an inner screen but we can’t see the seer of the inner screen, the inner screen is the mind and the inner seer is the soul so for normal perception the inner screen needs to act like a window which shows us what is happening outside but on the screen of the mind many different thoughts pop up and because they appear inside us we identify with them instead of identifying them and we get carried away so I talked about another metaphor of a train station and there are many thought trains which are waiting inside the train station as soon as we hop into a train it shoots off if we get into a wrong train we might get agitated and go far away from what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go so we don’t respond to the outer reality we respond to the inner representation of the outer reality like the sand is out there but inside we see a mirage so even when problems happen in our life we respond not to the problem but to the mental representation of the problem and that’s why say if I get a flu I just get resent resenting that then that resentment of reality hurts me more than the reality because the thoughts come inside us we tend to think that they are wise they are true they are important and they are urgent and because of that we just get carried away like we are going somewhere and somebody comes and takes us 6 hours away from us the thoughts within us they are expert storytellers they will completely captivate us and will not even realise what we are doing so when the inner screen starts becoming like a TV that shows all the wrong things that have happened in the past we get depression when the inner screen becomes a TV that shows all the things that may go wrong in future we get anxiety how do we protect ourselves through technology we have lot of progress and comfort but unfortunately technology has given us access to so many things in the outer world that that increases the chances of the inner screen acting like a movie and that’s why we get more and more distracted to be distracted is to be disempowered can’t focus so I talk about three things measures for better managing our inner screen first is intelligence we just understand that everything that appears inside me is not me thought can be just an event that happens in the inner world and thought can also refer to something that we give lot of contemplation to so every thought doesn’t deserve thought every thought doesn’t need to be thought about in a very deep way so this understanding of intelligence means to see things in their proper perspective which thoughts to contemplate and which to neglect so studying scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita equips our intelligence to become sharper and not get carried away by random thoughts popping up on our inner screen second I talk about is the divine connection like a child watching a horror movie just touches the mother and feels calm similarly if we connect with Krishna through the process of bhakti, through the chanting of his holy names through prayers, through devotional remembrance then even if the inner screen is showing all kinds of unwanted things we will be calm because this is real Krishna is there with me and thirdly talked about how our what appears prominently on the inner screen that is determined by our attachments so took the metaphor of the river coming into an ocean so if instead of sorry river is coming into an ocean so if instead of that there is a pond or a puddle, the rivers will devastate it so if our consciousness is attached to an oceanic object that is supreme reality then the stimuli coming into our consciousness won’t trouble us but if our consciousness is attached to small petty objects then our consciousness like a puddle or a pond it will get completely disrupted so like a cricket match being lost somewhere and a person becomes spending sleepless nights or somebody just emotionally dependent on someone else then one phone call not being responded to making somebody suicidal so we need relationships but we, our defining relationship has to be a relationship with Krishna then when we by the process of bhakti yoga make him our primary attachment then our consciousness becomes oceanic and then whatever ups and downs happen in life which will inevitably happen we will get the undesirable and not get the desirable but we won’t aggravate that by our minds misrepresentations of the reality rather by the mind functioning objectively with our inner calmness and clarity we will be able to respond effectively to situations and go through our life journey as peacefully as possible and ultimately attain the destination that is beyond the distress of this world thank you very much Hare Krishna so does anyone have any questions? any questions? so thank you very much Shri Prabhupada ki Gaurapati Vendati by Gaurapriya Mahamandiri so we can all stand for the kirtan and for whosoever wants to ask you can just bring them over and stand next to those benches over there so the next half hour we’ll have kirtan and after that a little bit more kirtan and then we’ll have the peace