Rise from being full of thoughts to being thoughtful – 4 reflections

[Corporate program at Summit-Works, South Plain Fields, New Jersey, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you all for coming today evening.
And I will speak on the topic of tap the power of thoughts. Don’t be trapped by the power of thoughts. So, I will start with a metaphor.
So, I will start with a metaphor. And I will build on this metaphor using an acronym. And then we will have some discussion based on that.
We are always full of thoughts. But we aren’t always thoughtful. We are always full of thoughts.
Thinking is something which we do incessantly. We cannot stop thinking ever. Even the idea that I should stop thinking is itself a thought.
So, in that sense we are always full of thoughts. However, our thoughts are often like a basement which is filled with a huge pile of books heaped haphazardly. On the other hand, when we are thoughtful, that is like a library in which there are lots of books.
But they are all sorted systematically. So, if we see a basement with huge pile of books, just thinking of sorting all those books, even to find one book which we need, that itself seems such a burden that we may feel exhausted by it. But when we see a library well sorted, that may inspire us.
Yes, I want to read. So, both the disorderly basement and orderly library are full. But one exhausts us, whereas the other energises us.
Similarly, when we are full of thoughts, at that time our mind is so filled with this I thought that thought that that that So many thoughts are running haywire inside it that even without doing anything, we start feeling exhausted. Whereas when we are thoughtful, at that time our mind resembles a library. And then we can analyse clearly and act effectively.
So, to move from being full of thoughts to being thoughtful, that is the journey of inner transformation and inner empowerment. To the extent, we can do this. To that extent, we will be empowered internally to deal with whatever external situations we may be facing.
The Bhagavad Gita begins by depicting how Arjuna was full of thoughts. And this thought, that thought, that thought, all those thoughts burdened him so much that he just quit. He became so overwhelmed that he could no longer fight.
Even before the external confrontation began, internally he had been deflated and defeated. For all of us also, we will face situations when we face some problem externally, but our thoughts make the problem worse and we become incapable of facing it. Arjuna at the start of the Bhagavad Gita puts aside his bow saying, I can’t fight.
Arjuna’s bow represents our determination, our confidence, our enthusiasm, our positive energy to do some constructive activity. At the start of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has put aside his bow saying, I can’t fight. But at the end of the Gita, he has picked up his bow in readiness to do whatever he is called to do, no matter how difficult it may be.
So the narrative of the Bhagavad Gita raises Arjuna from being full of thoughts that were disempowering him to being thoughtful, which led to him being empowered. So how can this happen for us? We all have hundreds of thoughts going on every minute within us. Some thoughts just come and go, some thoughts get a lot of attention and some thoughts consume our attention.
So I’ll talk about this journey from being full of thoughts to being thoughtful in terms of an acronym. That acronym is four E’s, education, experimentation, evaluation and elevation. Education, originally if you look at the Greek or Latin root of the word education, it means educare, it means to bring out that which is within.
We have an enormous amount of educational information available to us in today’s world. At the same time, there seems to be a significant amount of inability to deal with our inner world. Martin Luther King put this presciently almost half a century ago when he said, we have guided missiles and misguided men.
Through our technology, we have learned to control externals very effectively, but the internals remain uncontrolled. In fact, much of the internal remains unknown also. So education refers to understanding what happens in our inner world.
In this context, the education is like a flashlight which we flash inwards to understand what is going on. And for understanding our inner world, the Bhagavad Gita offers us a three level model of the self. It explains that there is the body, mind and soul.
And we are an integrated unit which has all these three dimensions, physical, psychological and spiritual. We can understand this by comparing it with a computer system, wherein there is a hardware, software and user. The hardware is like the body, the software is the mind and the soul is the user.
Even the best phone or the best computer with the latest hardware in it can’t function if the software becomes corrupted. And today we have, by technological progress, we have luxuries available to average middle class people. Such luxuries that were unimaginable even for royalty a few hundred years ago.
Air conditioning, air travel, mobile communication. So externally at the level of the hardware, we have had a significant amount of progress. But at the level of the software, at the level of the mind, it’s almost as if we have had a significant level of regress.
We have mental health problems increasing in alarming proportions. One million people commit suicide every year, which amounts to one suicide every 40 seconds, which amounts to, since we started this talk, 15 people have already committed suicide. This one million figure is more than the number of people who are killed in an average year in murders, terrorist attacks and wars combined together.
It’s more than the number of people who are being killed by others or the number of people who are killing themselves. So this is the destructive power of the mind. Wherein suicide is the extreme example of the mind killing the body.
Yes, there can be various causes for a person to take their life. At the same time, none of these causes are irresistible. There may be others in similar situations who may not become suicidal.
There can be external pushes, but it is internally when the mind gets affected negatively. That’s when the mind destroys the body. Even if there is not suicide, we can have other forms of mental health problems which not destroy, but they drain and disempower.
Depression and anxiety are two major mental health problems in today’s world. And both of them involve a person losing heart and losing energy or losing the capacity to act effectively. This corruption of the inner software is a serious problem.
And to understand this three level model, it is not just education that is enough. In this model, if we consider the software and the hardware and the user as separate from the two, then the Bhagavad Gita explains that our thoughts, they are triggered by the mind. It is like on our computer, sometimes certain things open up as pop-ups.
When they open as pop-ups, we may have nothing to do with them opening up. But when they open up, it’s up to us whether we pay attention to them or we turn them, we close them. So in this context, I’d like to talk about the word thought itself in two different senses.
We may say, I just got a thought. Or we may say, I have given this a lot of thought. Two very different meanings.
I just got a thought means, it’s like an idea, it’s like an event or a stimulus popping up in our inner world. I have given this a lot of thought means that I have analysed it systematically. So combining these two meanings of the word thought, we can say not all our thoughts deserve our thought.
There are so many thoughts which keep coming. And if we start giving our attention to everything that comes up, we will become drained. Going back to the computer example, if we are reading a news article.
Now most news articles, almost all content on the net has click-baits associated with it. Want you to click some other links and go to those other links. So if we are reading a particular article, at that time, all the other links that are there, if we start clicking on each of those links, even if we click on one link, and then we go there and something interesting opens up over there.
But along with that interesting material, some other links are also going to open up. Or say if you are watching a video on YouTube, there is one video that is there, but then there is related content. And one after another after another, if somebody just keeps clicking on the links, they may spend hours and hours without learning anything constructive, without doing anything worthwhile.
So it’s just because a link is there on the computer, on the page which we are browsing, does not mean that we have to focus on it. Now this is relatively easy to understand, because the computer is external to us, and we are looking at the computer, and we know what we are doing. Okay, I am reading this article.
And the other content, that’s not my interest right now. But with respect to the mind, this becomes more difficult. Because the mind is inside us.
And although the mind is different from us, because it is inside us, we identify with it. Just as if you are reading an article, and some other link appears, or pop-up window appears. Because it’s external, we will evaluate it.
But when a thought comes up internally, we tend not to evaluate it. To understand how our mind is different from us, let’s do a simple thought experiment. So wherever you are, you can sit comfortably, and you can close your eyes.
Now with your eyes closed, you can take three deep breaths. Now with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you. Obviously because your eyes are closed, you can’t see what is physically in front of you.
But still there is something like a screen inside you, on which you may see this room, or your home, or your car, or a loud one. Or you may see a series of images coming and going on that screen. Or you might just see a dull haze of colours.
Whatever specifically that you see, you see it on something like an inner screen. As you’re observing it, try to take a step back and look at who is it that is observing it. I repeat, while looking at the inner screen, try to catch sight of the inner sear of that screen.
Even if you try many times, try to step back and look at that inner sear. What happens is that the inner sear seems to step back with you. What you’re looking for is what you’re looking with.
You are that inner sear. That is the soul. And the inner screen is your mind.
You can take one deep breath and you can open your eyes. Thank you. So here, normally when our perception takes place, the three things, the inner sear, the inner screen and the outer scene, all three have to come in one line.
Right now, you’re looking at me, I’m looking at you. If suddenly a thought pops up in our mind, Hey, did I lock my house when I came out of my house? Oh, I don’t know. There’s a key, there’s somebody there in the house.
Will somebody break in? One thought pops up and then immediately our thoughts start going in that direction. And then what I may be speaking, you may not hear it at all. Basically, physically you are here, but when the mind as a screen goes somewhere else, then we can’t perceive things.
Now, this inner screen, which is the mind, is meant normally to act like a window, wherein we see the outer world. But sometimes instead of acting like a transparent window, it can become like a TV. It can start showing its own images.
So this is what we did just now. I talked about education. Then what we did, the thought experiment was the second part, that is the experimentation.
And through this experimentation, we can understand the need for evaluation. Evaluation means that when this inner screen, is it functioning the way we want it to function or is it functioning in some other way? If we function on a computer, we may be doing a particular activity. But sometimes say we are processing a video file and then we find the computers become very slow.
Now that itself might be a memory intensive activity, but if it becomes extremely slow, then we will look to see, what are the processes active in the background? Is there something which is taking up the RAM of the computer too much? So similarly for us, when we are functioning, our mind is the inner screen. But going back to the starting metaphor of being full of thoughts versus thoughtful, a basement versus a library. When we are full of thoughts, that time on this inner screen, various stimuli are just popping up.
Various links are there. What about this? What about that? And among all these links, what we want to do or what we are meant to do just becomes lost as one small stimulus. Normally when we are reading anything on a computer or a phone, if we want to, if there is some link which is there, which is attractive, which seems interesting, then we need to click on it.
And when we click on it, it will open. Suppose there were some technology, now with virtual reality coming in, it could be possible such a technology may not be very far away. Suppose there is a technology which would notice where our eyes are looking.
And just based on if our eyes go to a particular link, that link opens up. Then we would just be trapped. We are watching one video, we glance at another video, and that video opens up.
And we are watching that one video, for a few moments our attention goes to another video, that also opens up. It just goes on and on and on. Whether that kind of technology is developed digitally or not, internally at the level of psychology, that’s how it works.
On our screen, right now, say for all of you, your screen is acting like a window, and you are hearing what I am saying. But at the same time, there may be other thoughts also going on. Some of you may feel this room is too cold.
Some of you may feel this room is too warm. Some of you may feel that, I have got so many things to do, when will this get over? So, all these are links which are there in the nearby. And, I talked about the two meanings of the word thought.
I got a thought, and I have given this a lot of thought. So, I got a thought, it’s like the link has appeared over there. And I give it a lot of thought, that means, I focus on it.
And as soon as I give my attention to it, it opens up. And once it opens up, it can just take all our attention and all our energy. So, evaluation means that we need to understand and analyse whether a particular thought deserves our thought.
Whether whatever thought is coming up within us, does it deserve our thought? Quite often, we take our thoughts too seriously. What do I mean by take our thoughts too seriously? That just because a thought has come inside our head, we think that we have to think about it. We think we have to give it our attention.
But no, just because a link is there on a page which we are reading, doesn’t mean we have to open that link. This capacity to evaluate our thoughts is increased when we understand the dynamics of our inner world. The Bhagavad Gita, with its philosophical understanding of the three levels of the self, it helps us understand that we are different from the mind.
And therefore, we don’t have to uncritically pay attention to whatever appears in our mind. If you consider the mind to be like a screen, if we understand that I am different from this, then we can evaluate it. So, to explain this, I’ll give two, three examples of what we mean by, what I mean by evaluation.
I talked earlier about the two common mental health problems, depression and anxiety. In terms of this inner screen metaphor, depression happens when our inner screen becomes like a TV and starts displaying or replaying all the bad things that have happened to us in the past. So, the inner screen goes to the past.
Oh, this went wrong. Oh, this person did like this to me. I made a mess of these things.
This, this, this, this. As we keep listing all the things that have gone wrong in our life, as we keep dwelling on them, we keep feeling more and more disheartened. And when we start thinking, this is what has always happened in my life and this is what is going to happen to me in future also, we end up disheartened, we end up depressed.
Of course, sometimes depression can be a clinical condition which may require medical attention. But most often, depression is more a psychological condition than a clinical condition. Conversely, when people become overwhelmed by anxiety, at that time the inner screen becomes like a TV showing all the things that may go wrong in the future.
We start seeing a horror movie. This may go wrong. Oh, I might get some terrible disease.
Oh, I might lose my job. Oh, this might happen, that might happen, that might happen. And as all these things start playing inside us, we start becoming panicky.
We start becoming paralysed. We start becoming, we start hyperventilating. We just become overwhelmed.
Now, it is possible that in future things may go wrong. And we do need to prepare for the future. And we also need to learn from the past.
In that sense, the inner screen going to the past or going to the future is not the problem. The problem is who is in control. When we want to learn from the past, it is we who are in control and we consciously direct our thoughts to the past.
Okay, this happened, I did like this. Actually, if I had done like this, this could have been avoided. When this person spoke like this, if I had spoken like this, matters could have been solved at that point.
Or at least they would not have got aggravated. So, when we consciously are in charge and we take our thoughts backwards, at that time we can go over the past and learn from it. Similarly, when we are calm and in control and then we take our thoughts to the future, then we can plan the future.
Okay, this happens, I can do this. If this happens, I can do this. If this happens, I have to think what all I can do.
Maybe I will consult someone. And that way we feel prepared. So, the mobility of the inner screen, the versatility of the inner screen is just a fact of life.
It is neither good nor bad. But it is when it takes control of us and it directs our whole consciousness, that is when it becomes a problem. Just like if you are reading an article or you are watching a video and some other related video comes which is also interesting.
If you want to learn about a particular subject and something else also comes which is interesting, you can read it. We can read it or watch it. We will learn from it.
But we have to be aware. This is what I plan to do. This is what I intend to do.
So, this capacity for evaluation is developed by our intelligence. This intelligence is not what is measured by our IQ scores. The intelligence that we measure by our IQ scores is basically our information processing ability which is important in its own way.
But here, the intelligence that we are talking about is the discerning ability. The ability to differentiate between our thoughts to understand which are important and which are not that important. Another metaphor for another way of frame analysis for understanding this evaluation.
Say, somebody has been surfing on the net and they have visited a particular site repeatedly. Say, Bollywood.com. So, they have visited Bollywood.com many many times and then they come to a spiritual programme and then they hear about the Bhagavad Gita. And then they say, I want to know more about the Bhagavad Gita.
They go on their browser and they begin to type Bhagavad Gita. And they type B. And what happens? Bollywood.com comes up. Now, they wanted to go to Bhagavad Gita.
But because they have visited Bollywood.com many times so now as soon as the starting trigger B comes up the autocomplete will come up as Bollywood.com. Now, when Bollywood.com comes up they have to have that discerning. This is not what I want to visit. Just because Bollywood.com has come up as autocomplete doesn’t mean that they have to visit it.
So, similarly for us, in our mind based on the kind of actions that we have done in the past certain impressions get stored. There is a threefold process here. There is an action.
That action becomes stored as an impression. And that impression comes up as a proposition. Action, impression, proposition.
So, to illustrate this, say this is the home. This is a hostel or a residential place where two people are staying. And this is their workplace.
And along the path, along the road, there is a bar. Now, one of them has never drunk and has no interest in drinking. The other has drunk many times and is almost like alcoholic.
Now, when both of them pass by the bar for the person who has never drunk, you may not even notice the bar being there. But for the person who has drunk repeatedly, what will happen? It’s automatically, yeah. The auto-complete will come.
Let’s drink. Let’s drink. Just the side of the bar, let’s go and take a drink.
Oh, no, no, no, I have a lot of work to do. No, actually if you take a drink, you’ll be able to work better. The way the mind can come up with these thoughts, we don’t know.
But here, why is that proposition coming in one person and not in the other person? That’s because of the past actions. So our actions lead to impressions and the impressions lead to propositions. For all of us, depending on the different kind of actions that we may have performed in the past, certain impressions are stored.
And when those impressions lead to certain propositions, that time we have to evaluate. Is this what I want to do? So just because a particular thought comes up within us, earlier I said one meaning of the word thought is an event that happens inside us. I got a thought.
So for us, based on the kind of impressions that have been stored within us, certain propositions will come very forcefully. Say, if in the past we have been around authority figures who used to throw their weight around by yelling, by getting angry, by exploding. And we may have internalised that, that that is the way to get things done.
And whenever anybody doesn’t do things the way we want them to do, we become angry. And we start yelling and we start hurting people by our inconsiderate words. I was at a place in Australia where I was doing some counselling over there and several people in that community told me that the community leader was very short tempered and it hurt and alienated so many people.
So when I talked with him and I explained this to him, the first thing he said is, if people would do what I tell them to do, I wouldn’t have to yell at them. Now in this case what has happened, yes, we all have responsibilities, we do have to get things done. But rather than taking responsibility for the anger, what is he doing? He is just saying that because this stimulus comes, this response comes from me.
Because they don’t do what I am telling them to do, so I am yelling at them. Now there might be other ways of persuading people, of explaining the importance of things to people. Yelling may not be the only response.
But the internal capacity to evaluate has gone off so much that we associate this stimulus with this response. Because they don’t do what I am telling them to do, I yell at them. However, that stimulus doesn’t have to trigger this response.
Sometimes you might just decide if somebody is not doing this work, maybe they are not the best person to do this work. Maybe they can do some other work and we can delegate to someone else. There are various other responses possible when a person is not doing the work.
This yelling may not be the solution. It is rarely the solution actually. So basically, this is like the stimulus, somebody not doing what we want them to do, what we have told them to do.
That stimulus is like the bee coming on the browser window. And the response, yelling, is like the autocomplete Bollywood.com. So now, just because bee has come, that doesn’t mean Bollywood.com has to come. From bee, Bhagavad Gita.com also can come.
But when we are unable to evaluate, we equate a particular stimulus with, we assume that the particular stimulus is the justification for a particular response. Or rather the stimulus and response get tied together for us. In fact, free will is actually the distance between stimulus and response.
Between stimulus and response exists our capacity for free will. The greater the distance between the two, the greater is the free will. So for a non-alcoholic, they pass by the bar.
They see the bar, the stimulus is there, but there is no response. So here, combining these three different metaphors, of alcoholic, of the stimulus-response distance, and the proposition. What happens is that the more we indulge in a particular activity, or the more we habitually do a particular kind of behaviour, the stronger becomes the impression within us.
And that impression comes as such a forceful proposition, that we don’t even notice that it is actually a proposition which we can choose or not choose. We just act on it. And when this happens, when the distance between the stimulus and the response becomes so tiny as to be almost non-existent, that is when compulsion or addiction comes up.
Addiction is not just necessarily to substances like alcohol or drugs. The word addiction has a clinical meaning. But there may be people who are addicted to video games, just playing, playing, playing, playing.
Somebody might have a compulsive reaction of anger, as I said earlier. So to the extent we can evaluate, this is the stimulus, but is this response necessary? I might be prompted, this is the response that comes up as a natural pushing within me, as a natural proposition within me. But I don’t have to choose that.
How can we not choose that? That brings us to the last part of this four-point discussion. I talked about education, experimentation, evaluation. And the last is elevation.
Elevation means, I talked about this inner seer, inner screen and outer scene. I talked about these in a horizontal sense. But we could envision them in a vertical.
Ourself could be like a three-level building. There’s a physical reality, mental reality and spiritual reality. So to the extent we understand that I am a spiritual being, that I am different from whatever is happening in the outer world, and I am different from whatever is popping up in my inner world.
I exist at a higher level of reality. To the extent we understand this, to that extent we can see these physical and mental events with perspective. What do I mean by this? Say, if there is a storm, if there is a flood in a particular area, and if we are on the land, we will be panicky.
If along with the flood there is a storm, even if we are flying in a small plane like a helicopter, the helicopter might also experience turbulence. But if we are in a satellite, way above the earth, we will see the flood, we will see the storm, but we will not be affected. Because we are at a higher level.
We will be concerned about what is happening, but we won’t be disturbed by it. Because we won’t feel personally immediately threatened. So this elevation of our consciousness amidst the floods and the storms that may happen at the physical level or the mental level, this elevation to being in a satellite, that is the essence of spiritual growth.
Spirituality is meant to help us raise our consciousness above our situations and above our emotions. Both are real, but we are not defined by these two things. We are different from, we exist at a level higher than these two.
And to the extent we can rise to the spiritual level, to that extent we can observe our emotions, we can observe our situations and we can respond maturely to them. How do we elevate our consciousness? In different traditions, there are different processes for this. The kirtan that we did at the beginning of this talk, this is also a process for spiritual elevation.
At one level, just by this musical singing, we might feel peaceful, which is good. But it can offer us much more than peace. It can actually raise our consciousness upwards to the spiritual level.
And once the consciousness has risen to the spiritual level, at that point we become calm, we can evaluate and we can act appropriately. So I’ll conclude with two metaphors again and one story. In cricket, when the match is going on, there is at the centre of affairs, the umpire.
Now in English, there are two words which are often used interchangeably, but they have different connotations. One is uninterested and the other is disinterested. Disinterested means one who has no vested interests.
One who is impartial. Uninterested means one who has no interest at all. One who doesn’t care for things at all.
So suppose the cricket match is going on and the players appeal, how’s that? And they all turn to the umpire. And the umpire says, I was not watching the match. What were you doing there? You meant to watch the match.
If you don’t want to watch the match, then don’t be an umpire. So the umpire can’t be uninterested. The umpire has to be disinterested.
Similarly for us, when we understand that we are souls, then we see our position to be like the umpire. We are not the players in the team. We are neither in the fielding team nor in the batting team.
But we are different from both. And in a disinterested way, we have to observe both and we have to evaluate. So the process of spiritual growth helps us become situated in that role of the umpire.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna uses the word, udāsīna vadāsīnam, be situated as if detached. So when we become a detached observer of our emotions and our situations, then some emotion may say, just hit back and use that person like this, put them in their place, just hit back at them. Other person may say, just neglect it, just overlook it.
Some other voice may say, maybe I need to do something for this. Maybe I need to register a complaint with someone or maybe confront that person and talk with them in a proper way. So all these voices are coming in.
If we just understand that we are meant to be the umpire, we are not the player over here, then we can evaluate. Because we are not one of the players. We are the observer of the play.
We are the umpire of the play. The umpire also has a lot of power. The umpire’s decisions determine the direction of the play.
So situating ourselves in the role of the umpire doesn’t mean that we become passive. It just means we become situated in a way that is for our best interests. That is for our higher purpose.
The second metaphor for this, for understanding this idea of elevation, is that when we are not caught in the heat of things, at that time we can perceive things more clearly. So just as many times when we look back at events, only if I had not done that, only if I had not spoken like that, only if I had checked myself at that time. There is a saying that words spoken in haste are regretted at leisure.
So we just get angry and feel I want to give this person a piece of my mind. Actually what happens is by that when we give others a piece of our mind, we end up losing our peace of mind. At that time we may feel some relief.
But afterwards, by giving others a piece of our mind, we will end up losing our own peace of mind. So at that time, just as time, at that moment we felt like doing something, but time creates a distance. And the distance gives us some perspective.
So similarly, internally, if we could elevate ourselves, just as time creates a distance, we can create a distance between our emotions by our spiritual practises. So the spiritual practises are not just some cultural practises or some religious practises. They can be done in that mode, but they can serve a far greater purpose.
When we practise meditation, when we study wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita, when we internalise their message, then that internalisation raises our consciousness. And with that raised consciousness, we can act appropriately because we get a distance. So in the last several years, I have been coming to America from India and I go to various universities, companies, give talks.
For the first time when I came, I went to university and I gave a talk on regulating our mental diet. And after that, one American boy came and talked with me and he said, just before this talk, I was contemplating suicide. He said he had been in a relationship with a girl and she had broken up with him.
So he said, I was wandering gloomily in the campus. He had seen a poster of the programme and something within him said, let’s go for that programme. I said, now after I come for the programme, he said, I understood that it is not I who want to commit suicide, it is my mind which is prompting me.
Commit suicide, commit suicide. So I told him, I have spoken many times that spiritual knowledge can be life-saving, but in your case, it has been literally life-saving. So I told him, this is a precious insight that you have got.
You need to cherish it. I encouraged him to read the Bhagavad Gita. There is a local Bhakti Yoga club that went on in the college.
I encouraged him to connect with that. I also write on the Bhagavad Gita daily on a website called GitaDaily.com 300 words, small meditation, the practical application of the Gita. So I encouraged him to visit that.
He subscribed for it. And then every year, once or twice whenever I come to America and go to that university, I would go and he would come for the programme and then we would talk. So last year when he had come, when he came for a programme, he told me that he had been in a similar situation.
He had again been in a steady relationship, but somehow the girl had broken up with him and she had texted him a message and she said that, I don’t want to talk with you. I’m going to block you. Don’t try to contact me.
So he is just a daze. He came to his room, closed the door, closed the windows, pulled down the drapes, turned off the lights and as he had been practising Bhakti Yoga, he had liked music from the beginning. So he used to play a violin.
So he picked up a violin and he started singing Hare Krishna. And he told me he sang continuously for six hours. Just this complete darkness externally, there was no distraction at all.
He lost himself in the singing. And he said, as I lost myself in the singing, I found myself. Actually, he said that what could I be? I felt as if I was being bathed in a sublime light.
I felt I was being embraced by a divine presence. He felt as if in losing himself, he was finding something about himself, which was deeply secure, which is indestructible. He says what was, I mean, a depressing experience became one of the most enriching experiences of his life.
And he by that recovered from that whole situation. Not only recovered, but actually became stronger because all that he had talked about, the spiritual aside, he experienced the capacity of it to give strength, to give solace. So in this case, what happened to him? If you go back to the example of the software, so when he got that message, the prompting came.
Okay, this is terrible. Commit suicide. So he went into the room, he locked everything up.
He locked the door up, but another prompting also came up. Because he had practised spirituality, because he had sung, he had chanted, he had practised bhakti yoga, so a spiritual prompting also came up. Chant instead.
And when this prompting came up, fortunately for him, he listened to that. And when he listened to that, that paved the way to light for him amidst the darkness. Similarly for us, at present, there will be different impressions within us.
And at one level, those impressions will keep giving us certain propositions. But if we learn to evaluate, then we can say no to those propositions. And instead, we can create healthier habits for ourselves.
One healthy habit is just the habit of incorporating a regular spiritual practise in our daily routines. Studying the Gita, practising mantra meditation. Such practises will also create impressions within us.
And when these impressions become strong by regular practise, then whenever anything, any unwanted stimuli comes in our environment, and that unwanted stimuli gives a proposition, there will be an alternative proposition available for us. A healthier proposition. And with that healthier proposition available, we can say no to the unhealthy proposition.
In general, saying no to anyone is not easy. If somebody invites us for a programme, say, today evening please come for this programme. I may say, we may not want to go, but at that moment we may not think of some reason why I can’t go.
And we may even reluctantly go for the programme. But, if we already have some other engagement, actually my schedule is not open right now, maybe in future I can come, I have to go somewhere else. Similarly for us, if we try to say no to those propositions that come up within us, it will be very difficult.
But, if we focus on saying yes to a healthier proposition, then that no will become much easier. And that healthier alternative is what is opened by our spiritual practise. The more we practise spirituality, the more we start understanding the dynamics of the inner world.
Not only understand the dynamics, but we create positive impressions within us, which lead to positive propositions. And then saying no to the negative propositions becomes easier. As long as we keep saying no to the negative propositions, we stay trapped by the power of the mind.
But, once we start getting positive propositions, once we start creating positive impressions by positive actions right now, then we start tapping the power of the mind. And then the mind works as our friend in fulfilling our life’s important purposes. And then our inner world will become our aid in facing our outer problems.
It will not become an obstacle. And thus, from being full of thoughts, we can become thoughtful. So, I’ll summarise.
I spoke today on the topic of tap the power of the mind. Don’t be trapped by the power of the mind. Started by, we are always full of thoughts, but we aren’t always thoughtful.
So, our consciousness is often like a basement filled with books, heaped haphazardly. And just seeing it and thinking where to find a particular book, that may drain us. So, that’s like being full of thoughts.
That’s how Arjuna was at the beginning of the Gita and he became disheartened, incapable of fighting. Being thoughtful means our consciousness is like a library with all the books sorted systematically. Seeing it stimulates us.
Yes, I want to read this book. I’ll go here and find it. So, for us, we want to make our inner world to be thoughtful.
And for that, the journey from being full of thoughts to being thoughtful, I talked about four E’s. What are the first? Education. Thank you.
So, I talked about how we have so much knowledge about the outer world, but while there is progress externally, there seems to be regress internally, because so many people are having mental health problems. And that education about the inner world is provided by wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita. It offers a three-level vision of the self, body, mind and soul, which is like the hardware, software and user.
And just as the software may give some auto-completes, which we have to choose whether to accept or not. Similarly, the mind gives us certain propositions. Thought can refer to an event inside our inner world.
I got a thought. And thought can also refer to our systematically giving attention to something. I have given this a lot of thought.
So, not all our thoughts deserve our thought. So, this education with the experimentation was, we saw how the inner screen and the inner seer are different. We can see the inner screen, but not the inner seer, because we, the soul, are the inner seer.
And the inner screen is our mind. And this inner screen can sometimes just go off into the past or into the future. When it starts showing a tragedy movie of all the bad things that have happened in the past, we end with depression.
When it starts showing a horror movie of all the things that may go wrong in future, we end up with anxiety. So, that brings us to the E was evaluation. So, with our intelligence, whenever a thought comes up, we can evaluate.
Is this inner screen acting like a window showing me what is ahead? Or if it is acting like a TV, is it acting with me in control? You can go to the past and learn from the past. But when we are in control of our thoughts, we can go to the future and learn from the future or prepare for the future. But again, when we are in control.
So, for this evaluation, we discussed various metaphors. One was of the autocomplete in a browser. B will be coming as Bollywood even when we are on Bhagavad Gita.
And these autocompletes come because of past actions, past choices for us. So, like alcoholic and non-alcoholic. The stimulus, when a particular stimulus comes up, a particular response appears within us.
But we can say no to that response when it comes up internally. So, the distance between stimulus and response is where our free will acts. And by recognising that’s because somebody is not doing what I’m telling them to.
Doesn’t mean I have to yell at them. So, we recognise that that might be my default response, but that doesn’t have to be the only response that I choose. So, the more we can identify the patterns in which the mind acts, then we can evaluate its propositions and choose whether we want to accept them or not.
And to be able to evaluate these propositions, we need, last point was, elevation. So, if our thoughts are like a flood coming on the ground or a storm coming in the air, and if we are either on the ground or in the air, we’ll be swept away. But when we are in this spacecraft high above, then the storm or flood of thoughts won’t sweep us away.
So, our spiritual practise helps us understand that we exist above our situations and above our emotions. So, we can be like an umpire in a cricket game where we are meant to be disinterested, not uninterested. We are not the players, but we are going to evaluate the appeal of the player, whatever the players are appealing.
And for this, when we practise spirituality, our consciousness rises upwards. And that spiritual practise creates healthy impressions, which gives healthy propositions. And I concluded by talking about the story of the boy who was suicidal.
But by hearing the Bhagavad Gita, he identified, so he evaluated. This is not I speaking, this is my mind speaking. And eventually, he elevated himself so that although he had faced a similar situation, but by experiencing spirituality instead of getting depressed and suicidal, he became spiritual.
So, what was the enriching, what was the depressing experience became an enriching experience. So, when we internalise our own spiritual practises and create healthy impressions, then rather than trying to evaluate and say no to the unwanted propositions, we evaluate and instead of saying no to the unwanted propositions, we focus on saying yes to the positive propositions and thus we move forward constructively in our life. Thank you very much.
Any questions or comments? Thank you. Any specific part you found informative? Yes, thank you. Thank you.
I have also recorded it, so it will come on my Facebook page also later. Yes, please. So, from clinical aspects of Hinduism as opposed to psychological issues, is this something you can help understand so that someone is depressed, how do you explain to them it should not be too clinical, they should also look at perhaps it is psychological? Yes, I understand, yes.
That’s true. So, how do we differentiate between say clinical depression that needs medical attention and psychological depression which may need to be simply behaviourally corrected? That also requires a psychologist. Yes, that also requires a psychologist.
Yes, broadly speaking, if there is a clearly documented chemical imbalance in the brain or there is some structural damage to the brain because of which normal functioning is not possible, then it definitely needs medical attention. But in general, the world of mental health care, although there is a huge effort to treat it medically, it is actually very vague. I am not intending to disrespect psychologists or especially psychiatrists over here because psychologists often do therapy through words.
Psychiatrists serve the medicines. But the fact is psychiatry is not as scientifically soundly based as other forms of medication. If somebody has got malaria or tuberculosis, we can actually tangibly identify the pathogens.
These are the germs that have caused this. If somebody has got depression, there is no germ causing it. So, there are psychiatrists themselves and science authors who have written books expressing concern that we are pathologising normal human behaviour and we cannot find chemical solutions to human problems.
There is a proposal now that grief should be treated as a pathological condition that needs to be treated medically. If somebody has a loss in their life, they lose a child, a parent, a spouse, a sibling, that is going to lead to the person being disheartened. That person is going to not be normal for some time.
And that is just natural. There are three psychiatrists who say that if after 15 days a person doesn’t recover from grief, then they need to be treated. Now, who decided 15 days and on what basis? This is quite subjective.
There is a book called Crackler, Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, written by a science journalist. And he gives a comparative graph over there of people who have depression. And broadly there are four ways in which they can be treated.
One is through medication. The second is through psychotherapy, talk therapy. The third is through placebos.
They are not given medicines, but they are given sugar pills, but they are told as if they are given medicines. And the fourth is time. And actually if you see the difference between the four is negligible.
That means if 21% of people, the healing percentage is 21% with medication, it’s like 19 or 20% with psychotherapy. It’s 18% with placebo. And it’s 17 or 16% with time.
So in general, the temptation in today’s world is to externalise our problems and seek some external solution to the problems. So if I consider my depression pathological, then I can just say I just have to find the right medicine. And this medicine is not working.
But overall, the best way in a behavioural sense to deal with depression is to do something for someone else. That means what happens when we are depressed, we start thinking, I have this problem, this went wrong in my life, that went wrong in my life, that went wrong in my life. And in depression, the self or rather self-obsession becomes like a black hole that just consumes the consciousness of the person.
So there have been some experiments done or case studies done where depressed people were taken to disaster-hit areas, say droughts or floods. And simple things like just taking some food package to someone and giving it to them. And when they saw that actually I can make a difference in someone’s life, then people get out of themselves and start doing something for someone else.
Then that helps a lot. One of my friends in Canada is a psychotherapist. And he said for many years I was doing individual psychotherapy.
Now I started a group psychotherapy. I told him that why would anyone? It’s difficult enough to tell our all our problems to one person. But why would somebody tell it to a group of people? He said that no, we have codes of confidentiality.
And because everybody tells their problems, nobody wants to be exposed. So people don’t reveal. But the advantage is that when people start hearing everyone else’s problems, they start realising my problems are not that big.
Actually few things make us as unhappy as our belief that we alone are unhappy. We think I am suffering and everyone else is enjoying. But when we start hearing, others also have so many problems.
Then we start understanding my problem is not that big. So basically this is where relationships come in very important. To the extent we are isolated, to the extent our relationships are superficial, utilitarian, just transactional.
I do this, you do this. To that extent when the mind starts speaking something to us, this is like this, this is like this, like this. We don’t have any alternative to the mind’s voice.
The mind is like a voice inside our head, it’s speaking. This is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong. When we have close relationships, when we have committed relationships, especially if we have a spiritual relationship with a mentor or somebody whom we can trust, then the mind is speaking something.
Most of the times we evaluate everyone through the mind. That means if somebody starts speaking very nicely to us, then immediately our mind says, what does this person want from me? Why are they speaking so nicely to me? They want to flatter me and then they want to exploit me afterwards. It may be like that, but it may not be like that also.
So normally we evaluate everyone through our mind. But if there is someone whom we can trust, whom we are well connected with, then the mind is here, we are here, they are here. When they speak, we learn to evaluate the mind through them.
This is what my mind is saying, but this is what this person is saying. Maybe what my mind is saying is not necessarily right. So in general, it is best not to assume that the depression requires clinical attention.
Because another problem with that is not only that it may not treat in a significant way, but it creates dependence. Then somebody may need to be lifelong on that medication. And many of these medicines often have other side effects.
So it’s best if a person can be encouraged to come out of themselves. How they can come out, that has to be intelligently found out. So basically, if this is a circle of interest of the person, then if we can find out something within the circle of interest which will stimulate them.
So in this case of this boy, he liked music. That was a liking which he had even before he became spiritual. And at that time when he was depressed, if he had tried to read the Bhagavad Gita or tried to understand some philosophy, that might not have worked for him.
But because music was already a circle of interest, in the circle of spirituality also there is a part of music. So where the intersection of the two lay, that is where he could connect. So if we can find out for somebody who is depressed, spirituality is not just about meditation.
It’s an entire culture in which art, music, dance, drama, decoration, so many things can be incorporated. So if somehow we find out within the circle of their interest and the circle of spiritual healing, where that can intersect. And they may feel stimulated to start doing that.
That will help them to come out of the depression. You had a question? No, I just wanted to say, instead of saying no to something, you should say yes to something that’s better. I think that’s something I could follow.
Thank you. Actually saying yes is vital. In the respect of the thought world, we just can’t say no.
Why? Because if I decide, say I’m speaking in a class and I touch this mic and I find there is some electric current going in this. I may decide I’m not going to touch this mic because it will give me a shock. So we can do that at a physical level.
I’ll decide I’ll not touch something. But at the mental level, we can’t decide not to think of something. Because if I decide I’m not going to think of this, I’ve already thought of it.
Psychologists talk about something like the pink monkey experiment. That is, for the next 30 seconds, please don’t think of a pink monkey. You can think of whatever you want, but just don’t think of a pink monkey.
And your 30 years of life, you may not have ever thought of a pink monkey. But in those 30 seconds, oh pink monkey, how does it look? I never thought. So as soon as we decide I won’t think of something, thought is a subtle energy.
And it’s like that subtle energy has already reached that object when we’re saying no. So we have to have something positive in our life. And it is that positive which will help to replace the negative.
Thoughts can’t be driven out even when they are unwanted. But thoughts can be crowded out. So if you catch a thought, get out, it won’t work.
But if we fill our consciousness with some more positive thoughts, then that unwanted thought will get crowded out. Thank you. You had? Okay, yeah.
So do all propositions need to be evaluated? Or can something be ignored? Ignoring is also an evaluation, isn’t it? It means we just understand that this doesn’t need my attention. So actually all the time we are doing that. So right now when you are hearing this talk, there might be, say, some other background noise.
I’m speaking right now, my computer fans may be making a noise. I’m aware of that noise, but I don’t pay attention to it. Right now maybe some of us may be having a little back pain.
We’re sitting for a long time, our legs may be needing us to be stretched. So we notice that sensation, but we don’t pay attention to it. So when some sensation or some stimulus is just mild, and it is not disturbing us so much, then ignoring it is relatively easy.
Again, it’s easy because we are focussing on something else. So ignoring is also requiring an evaluation. But it is an evaluation that does not require much constant thought, much conscious thought.
This is not important, put it aside. But sometimes some stimuli come in very forcefully. It’s just like if you’ve been sitting for a long time, and maybe our leg starts, we need a stretch.
So sometimes the pain is mild, it’s bearable. Sometimes it becomes very unbearable. Then you might just have to get up or stretch something.
So it depends on the strength of the stimulus. The stronger the impression, the more forceful the proposition. When the proposition is mild, you can just ignore it very easily.
And that is also based on an implicit evaluation, you could say. But when it is a very strong proposition, at that time the evaluation needs to be done more consciously. Does that answer your question? Okay, now, anyone else? Yes, please.
One question, the last thing about what you spoke, different levels, first level, and also something to elevate ourselves. So my question is, don’t we need some kind of a realisation to get elevated? Even though scripturally we can get to that, oh, we need to elevate ourselves, we do our start now, but it’s not like an automatic switch button that we will be elevating ourselves. It’s like realisation, right? Okay, yeah.
So is elevation something which we do ourselves, or does it require some realisations to come from some higher source by which we will get elevated? It works both ways. We have to put in our endeavour, and by our endeavour also, we can raise our consciousness. Now, of course, we could put it in two ways.
One is that when we want to rise up, we could take a staircase, and we climb up step by step by step up. But this elevator, we get in the elevator, and there is a whole mechanism of power, which we just activate by pressing a button. And then that elevator takes us up.
So there are moments in our spiritual journey when we will feel ourselves being elevated by a power beyond ours. Suddenly some insight will just come in, some epiphany will come in, and things will become clear. This is not the way I want to be.
This is not what I want to be. This is how I want to be. So at that time, in those moments of inner clarity, we feel ourselves lifted without even much effort on our part.
So that means, that happens by a higher power. And we do want that higher grace, but we can’t depend only on that grace. It’s like if we want to get to the top of a building, if the elevator is working, we take the elevator.
If the elevator stops working, is not working, then we take our steps and keep moving onwards. So our daily spiritual practise is like taking the steps up. And there are moments when just lucidity comes within.
Those are like the moments when the elevator is taking us up. So we have to keep moving up, whether it is by the steps or by the elevator. And whereas the steps and the elevator are two distinct things.
In a normal staircase and elevator, two different things. We could say in our spiritual journey, both are integrated. So we take a few steps and then we find we are pulled up quite a bit more.
So another metaphor which we could use for this is somebody has fallen at the bottom of a well and then somebody from above offers a rope. They hold on to the rope and one way is that we not only hold on to the rope, but we climb up ourselves using the rope. The other is somebody else lifts us out of the rope.
Either way, we want to get out. So if we are being lifted up, we’ll come out much faster. But if you’re not being lifted up, we have to keep climbing.
And it could be that we are also climbing up and somebody is lifting us up also. So in our case, it is that we are holding on to the rope, that is by committing to our spiritual practise, by that we indicate that we want to be elevated, we want to be lifted out of the well. And then we are the finite consciousness, there is the infinite consciousness.
So the infinite, by the infinite grace, also lifts us up. But we can’t say that because I’m not being lifted up, so I’m going to stay where I am. We have to do our part.
And by doing our part, we will make incremental progress. But there will be times when there will be quantum progress also. So we long for that, but we don’t bank on that alone.
It says that if you wait for inspiration, then we are not seekers, we are waiters. We have to be seekers. If inspiration comes, that’s wonderful.
If it doesn’t come, we still keep moving on. In general, the difference between inspiration and dedication. In inspiration, the emotion precedes the action.
Whereas in dedication, the action precedes the emotion. When we have inspired, just feel like doing it. I want to do this.
There are moments when we feel inspired. I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this. And our emotion helps us at that time.
So the emotion precedes the action. We feel like doing it, we feel driven to do it. But there are times when inspiration may desert us.
So at that time, we need dedication. That means, even if the emotion is not there, the action precedes the emotion. One of my main services is writing.
So I have read about other writers. So there’s a Nobel laureate writer. He was asked, do you write every day, or do you write only when you’re inspired? So he said, I write only when I’m inspired.
And I make sure that I’m inspired every morning at 10 o’clock. That means there has to be a certain level of commitment, certain level of dedication. Do you have a question? So now, when we come to a point that we want to actually evaluate and actually go to a position of elevating ourselves, of seeking a search perspective, can we want that response to be really different? For instance, say for example, for myself.
Since I’m a nurse, I don’t know a different kind of response. How would I actually get a different kind of response? For the stimulation, I’m always responding in a certain way. I want to change that response.
Because I’m not being exposed to it. I don’t have any other profession of how to deal with that. So if we have a particular way of responding, and that we have imbibed from, say, during our childhood by seeing others, if we want to change it also, we don’t have any knowledge of any alternative response.
So what do we do at that time? Yeah, it’s a challenge. That’s why we need, say, people who are more spiritually minded than us. Their association, their example, we see.
This person is so provoked, but still that person is responding so calmly. He’s already angry. So it’s possible to be calm in that situation also.
Our mind may dismiss and say, because this person is so spiritually advanced, that’s why they can do it. I can’t do it. That’s okay.
But the point is, we need people who we can observe and get inspiration from. And they can provide for us an example or a model of how there can be a healthier response. And that’s one thing.
So association is important. And that’s why if we associate with spiritually minded people, that helps us to get the inspiration as well as the direction of where we can change. Along with that, self-observation also helps.
That means that if we understand that this kind of response is not working for me, it’s working against me, then we as conscious beings have the capacity for imagination. You can use the word imagination in a negative sense, just fantasising. But imagination can also be used in a positive sense, like a creative visualisation.
This is not what I want to be. This is how I want to be. This is what I want to become like.
So if we can visualise, this visualisation also requires some external model, but even by our own self-understanding, we can observe. And this is not what I want to become like. I can visualise myself being a different person.
The journey to that may be a long journey, but I can progress in that direction. At least I can visualise in that direction. And generally, if we have even one person other than us who believes in us, that is extremely helpful.
We consider, say, cricket as sports. Almost all cricket players who become champions, they’ve had some mentors who believed in their potential and that inspired them to persevere. So we need someone outside of us who has faith in us and in whom we have enough faith to confide.
This is what I planned to do, but I ended up acting like that. So when we have somebody like that, the mind is offering us some narrative. This is how you are and this is how you’re going to be.
But somebody who tells us that you can become a different person. You can function a more healthy. And then we act accordingly.
If you’re not able to act also, we just tell it to them. And we’re telling it to them, then they encourage us. Oh, you could do like this, you should do like this.
And that way, we can create a new path for ourselves. If we don’t have at present any friend or anyone like that, then even verbalising our thoughts helps. Writing our thoughts in a journal, that helps us to distance ourselves from our thoughts.
So if there are certain situations where we tend to sabotage ourselves, we act in a way that works against our best interests. Then we, after that incident gets over, instead of just beating ourselves up, why did I do that? We can write it down. In this situation, this is how I acted.
And just by writing things down, as long as thoughts are inside our head, they just congest us. But when thoughts get expressed in words and they get written outside, that creates a distance. That creates some relief internally.
And then we can evaluate. And once we evaluate, okay, this is what I’m feeling like. But maybe I can do like this also.
Because I travel a lot, I correspond with people by emails quite a bit or by messages. So there are times when people just do certain things which enrage me. Since my childhood, I had anger issues.
So to some extent, they have come under control. But still the anger does come up at times. So when I get angry with someone, I made a policy.
When I get angry, I write down, if the anger is especially strong, I write down all my anger in a meal. But for 24 hours, I won’t press the send button. And I find that in those 24 hours, sometimes the other person writes something and clarifies, and I was thinking something entirely different.
Or even they understand and they apologise. Or even if that doesn’t happen, in 24 hours when I look back at it again, I’m being too judgemental here. Or this, this is a reasonable point.
I don’t have to phrase it so harshly. So when I just change that, edit it, soften it, nuance it, then I find that it helps in resolving the issue. Now, if I don’t write that email, that anger will burn inside me.
But if I write and send that email, that anger will cause burning somewhere else. But in between if we keep. So, in generalising this principle, what we can say is that, we generally think of our emotions as being dealt in two broad ways.
One is expressing or repressing. That means when a stimulus has come up, either I resist the stimulus and suppress it, or I just give in to the stimulus and respond whatever way I am conditioned to. But apart from expressing and repressing, a third option can be processing.
And we can find out what is the best way for us to process. So as I said, talking with someone, having someone to talk with, that can help us to process. And through that processing also, a new path may emerge.
Because when we are doing the processing, at that time, as we analyse the possibilities, this, this, this, at that time, a pattern emerges, a path emerges. This is how I can act. So just because we have a particular way of functioning, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the way we have to function.
And even if we have somebody who is a model for us, still their situation is different. So in our life, we have to find our way to act in our situations. So that’s why having a means to process our emotions, either by talking with someone or just getting them out in a written form and then evaluating that, that can help us to find our way ahead.
Okay. Thank you. Okay.
So, yes. How much time do we have? We have about five. Okay.
We won’t go that long for sure. But yes, maybe one or two questions. Yes, please.
Okay. Yeah. So, if we, when we are depressed, we give something to someone, we do something for someone, that might help us to deal with the depression, but are we feeding the ego by that? Not necessarily.
The word ego can have a negative connotation or it can just have a functional designation. Ego can refer to arrogance or conceit or self-centredness. I think I am so great and everybody else is useless.
But basically ego can just refer also to a centre of awareness. Sometimes in philosophical circles, there’s a difference between ego and false ego. So false ego means imagining that we are something which we are not.
It’s megalomania. I’m thinking I’m this big, big person. But ego means that I am.
At a functional sense, we are a centre of awareness. We are a conscious agent who chooses and acts. So we all need a sense of self-worth.
We all need a sense that we can make a difference. Without that basic sense of self-worth, we will not be able to function at all. We are, each one of us, very tiny.
We are infinitesimal. But although we are infinitesimal, that doesn’t mean that we count for nothing. Our actions, our choices, they count at least for our future and they count for the future of people around us.
So it’s when we see that we can make a difference, then that gives us a sense of purpose, a sense of energy. And because we live in such a competitive society where we are often defined in terms of comparison with others. So many people, they often oscillate between between grandiosity and depression.
Grandiosity, I am such a great person. I was reading a book about why there are mental health problems especially among Ivy League students. In India we can have IITs.
I was just a few months ago in IIT Kharagpur and there one of the leading professors, he had come to meet me and said that we need some kind of counselling or some kind of wisdom to encourage our students to seek alternatives to suicide when they have problems. They found in IIT Mumbai that so many people, so many young people committing suicide that they became alarmed and the management decided to invest, do something about it. And they found all the students were committing suicide in one typical way.
They would have these electric fans, they would turn on the fan and they would have a rope hanging from it and they would put that rope around their neck and then they would turn on the fan button. So, when they started doing so, the management met and they decided on an emergency basis to replace all the fans with air conditioners. Now, that can deal with the, that can deal with the specific way in which people are committing suicide but that is not dealing with the mentality.
The point which I am making here is, so, this book, my social observer, he says, he interviewed many Ivy League students. So, they said that, one of the students, he said that half of the time, I would feel so great thinking of how I am better than everyone else. And half of the time, I would feel depressed thinking how everyone else is better than me.
So, basically, if we define, because we are in a competitive world, naturally we will be compared with others. But, that can be a social comparison. That doesn’t have to be a self-defining comparison.
Failure in life is a practical problem. It is not an existential problem. Practical problem is, okay, I tried to do this, it didn’t work.
Should I do this again or should I do something else? It’s a practical issue. But when it becomes an existential problem, that means, because of that failure, I start thinking that I am worth nothing. Failure, instead of seeing that as an event in our life, we let it become the defining event of our life.
It may be failure in an exam, failure in a project, failure in a job, failure in a relationship. These can happen in our life and they will affect us, but they don’t have to define us. So, to deal with all these negativities that will come upon us, we need a sense of self-worth that is not dependent on these things.
And having that sense of self-worth is actually essential for our psychological health. Ego will come when we are too defined by our externals. So, if I can do something for someone, then I am a very good person.
If I can’t do anything for someone, what is the value of my life? Yes, it may be in a functional sense like that, but in an essential sense, I am an individual, I am a part of the divine, there is a spark of the divine within me and I have value and significance to my existence independent of what contributions I am making right now. But if you make contributions, that helps us see that, take that conception simply from a thought to a reality. So, if we contribute and we focus so much on this makes me better than others, then that’s when it feeds the ego.
But if this just helps me to understand that I too can contribute, then that doesn’t have to feed the ego. So, it’s how we perceive that. Whether it is feeding our sense of self-worth, whether it is nourishing our sense of self-worth, or whether it is inflating our sense of superiority over others.
So, only when it inflates our sense of superiority, that’s when it feeds the ego. But when it just nourishes our sense of self-worth, then that is positive. Yeah, identifying our strengths and trying to help people.
Yes, right. Thank you. Is it only when only I can do this, is that feeding the ego? Not necessarily.
Because at one level, all of us are unique. And we could say that we are all unique for a purpose. So, what you can bring to the world, exactly that no one can break.
Each of us are meant to make a contribution in life. So, feeling that we are special or feeling that we are unique, that is also not necessarily feeding the ego. It becomes feeding the ego.
So, there is a difference between thinking that I am special or unique, and thinking that I am better than others. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a significant difference. So, it’s just like an orchestra is there.
Each person in the orchestra is contributing music in a distinct way. And if that person is not there, then the orchestra will not be that good. But that doesn’t mean that that person alone is all that matters.
So, we don’t want to think that we are indispensable, in the sense that that feeds our ego. But if we see that there is a higher plan to life, then we see that for each one of us, there is a place and purpose in the world. And it is not that we have to create that space for ourselves.
It’s just that we have to find that space. It’s already there. There is space for us.
There is an area in which we are meant to contribute. And we just be who we are meant to be. So, it’s whether we are centred on proving our superiority over others, or we are driven simply by contributing what we are meant to contribute, on doing justice to the gifts that we have been given, on helping others with whatever abilities we have.
So, it’s not that we don’t consider others. But when others become the basis of our self-definition, that means sometimes people feel good when they feel that they are better than others. And people feel bad when they feel that they are lesser than others.
But, as I said, at a functional level, this comparison can’t be avoided. Since we are in a competitive world. But at a personal, definitional level, we just understand that, yes, this person is doing their role.
I am doing my role. And let me just be the best that I can be. So, we see it that whatever gifts we have been given, we put it in this way that whatever we are is God’s gift to us.
And whatever we become, what we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. So, what we are is actually a gift.
We all have certain gifts, some talents. And we see that the Divine has given those to us. And in using these, what we become is what we bring to the world, is the gift that we offer to the world.
Somebody else may be also offering something similar. Somebody else may be offering something better. Somebody else may be offering something lesser.
That’s okay. That’s between them and the Divine. It’s for us to be the best that we can be.
So, if we see this as our possessions which make us proud, then that can be negative. So, even our sense of speciality or our sense of uniqueness, if we see that as with a mentality of entitlement, this is what I am, then that can make us proud. But if you see that as a gift, which we are meant to utilise and contribute, then acknowledging our specialness doesn’t necessarily have to lead to pride.
It can actually just lead to a greater sense of purpose. Okay. Thank you.
Yes, one last question. I’ll take one question and we’ll stop. Okay, last question.
A problem goes on without me and things like that. People might have that thought. So, that might be the cause some people go and commit suicide.
And what would be a person like who is observing outside that some person has those kind of thoughts and how should they deal with it and how to tell them their worth and things like that? Okay, if somebody is becoming depressed or suicidal because they feel that they are dispensable, they don’t count at all, now can somebody who is outside, somebody who is observing them, help them? Yes. I think just being available for people, if somebody can feel that we can non-judgementally understand them, then people are ready to open up. Actually, the biggest burden is the burden of a mask.
Sometimes we think if I’m carrying a heavy bag that will burden me. Yes, it can. But a mask wherein out of fear of judgement by others, we have to conceal and deny what we are, our struggles, our fears, our problems, then that keeps becoming worse and worse and worse.
So, the mask which is worn out of fear, of course to some extent we all have lower desires and we discipline them, which is what is required in civilised society. But certain issues are troubling us and we have nowhere to share that. Then that becomes a burden.
So, if somehow we can give people the faith that we are not going to judge them, then they can open. And once they open, then we can direct their thoughts in a particular way, we can suggest certain things. But as long as people live in denial, then everything is fine.
Now, sometimes people are not saying they are fine. They say, I’m depressed and they make a big show that I’m depressed. But even then, actually, they are in denial of the possibility that they can come out of depression.
That means they just accepted that this is how I am. And they think if I try to change and if I’m not able to change, then people will judge me, people will condemn me. So, just let me stop trying it.
Basically, people need a sense of connection with others. So, there are some areas in which people feel safe to open. Say, if we are alone in our house and we happen to be living in a locality where there is a lot of crime, someone knocks on the door, we won’t immediately open the door.
We will see maybe through our peephole or the security window who is there. Or maybe open the door slightly, keep a chain over there, and then knock who is there. So, like that, often people through their words, they open their heart a little bit.
So, if we can, if at that time, we act in a non-judgemental, helpful way, then they will open their hearts further. And especially if we can connect them with some spiritual wisdom, some spiritual practise, during that connection that we have established, then even if we are not there, that spirituality will be there with them. So, that means we try to help establish a personal connection with them first and then we try to give a spiritual connection to them.
So, it’s how specifically to do it If somebody is very seriously depressed, then it’s best that they may need to seek some help from somebody who is strained. And they are not ready to take that help, then we can try to become the medium in between. But we cannot ourselves become too caught in somebody else’s world.
When we are trying to help others, we can’t help people unless they want to be helped. The door to personal change can be opened only from inside. So, unless they want, at least some spark of change is there.
Otherwise, we will be beating our head. And unfortunately, it will hurt us only. So, if you want to help others, it’s like concluding this example that sometimes a person is driving a car.
They get into the car, but the car doesn’t start. I think it happens more in India than here. If the car is not starting, then the driver asks for help.
And then a dozen people come and start pushing the car from behind. They push the car from inside, push the car from outside, the person from inside is also steering the car, turning it on, and then together they get the car too. Now, suppose there are people from outside pushing the car, and the person from inside is pressing the brake.
Then people outside will say, why should I keep pushing? Or if the person from inside has gone to sleep on the wheels. So, then pushing will be a waste of time. So, like that, sometimes people are just not in a position to be helped.
And in trying to help them, we may get agitated and we may get depressed. So, we have to be careful that we protect our own health we don’t get too emotionally entangled in other people’s issues. And then, when they are ready to be helped, we are there to help.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.