Mindfulness

[Mindfulness – Yoga Day GEV]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We’ll be talking about be mindful or the mind will make you a fool. So we’ll talk about mindfulness from the yoga perspective and how we can apply it in our lives.
I’ll be talking about four simple principles by which we all can become more mindful in whatever we do. So our world today, we may say, why do we need to be mindful at all? So our world is characterised by an alarming imbalance. And this was mentioned even 50 years ago by Martin Luther King Jr., the pioneer of the civil rights movement in America.
And he said that our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. So we have enormous power to control the outer world.
Right now, just by pressing a few buttons, we all may be in different parts of the country, different parts of the world. We are connected. So this is extraordinary level of outer power we have.
But misguided men, he spoke this code before we had gender neutral language. So it’s misguided human beings in general that he was speaking about. There is something inside us that misguides us.
Something that makes us do things that hurt others and hurt ourselves. So probably the most tragic example of this kind of misguided people is self-destruction. Self-destruction can be in the form of suicide.
Suicide is literally the mind attacking and killing the body. And over a million people commit suicide every year. That means since I started this talk, already two people have committed suicide.
That’s one suicide every 40 seconds. So it’s more than that actually. It’s almost 5-6 people have committed suicide.
So now what he talked about was actually you can say the internet is not there at that time. In today’s world, this misdirection of the mind is even more alarming because it’s not just the imbalance that we have a lot of control over the outer world and little control over the inner world. Rather, there is a systematic propaganda to get our inner world, to get our mind out of our control.
We in today’s world are subjected to these three factors. There is ever-increasing competition among ever-expanding distractions for ever-decreasing attention spans. In the past, if somebody wanted entertainment, they would go watch TV at home.
Maybe TV in India 20-25 or 30 years ago, there was one channel, Doordarshan. They would go and watch a movie, go to a theatre. Now, there is ever-increasing competition among ever-expanding distractions.
So we have not just movies, we have the internet with so many websites and not only so many websites and so many apps and so many forums, but they are all competing with each other. Every new app that comes up, there is Facebook, there is Twitter, there are so many new apps which keep coming up, there is Instagram, there are so many new apps which keep coming up and they all seek and want to capture our attention. And what is happening is, not only are there more factors pulling us from outside, but our own attention spans are decreasing.
So ever-decreasing attention spans. And thus, our mind gets pulled in hundreds of directions. Sometimes our mind is like if we have a computer browser and some people have 35 tabs open and one tab is frozen and from that tab some big noise is coming.
Maybe some alarm noise, some unwanted beeping, some music, whatever. And we don’t even know from which tab it is coming. So we want to stop it, we can’t even stop like that.
So sometimes we just find ourselves in a bad mood and we don’t even know why I’m in a bad mood like this. What exactly happened? So some part of us is annoyed, some part of us is angry, but what is it angry? What’s going on? So getting a sense of our inner world is vital. And that is actually the whole process of yoga.
If we consider the process of yoga, it goes from outward to inward. From yam, niyam, asana, pranayam, it goes inward, inward, as we learn to calm our mind. So there is practically no activity which can provide us greater returns than the activity of learning to manage our mind.
Learning to manage our mind. And there is no activity that can cause greater danger if not done than failing to manage our mind. So we all worry if we invest our money somewhere, whether we’ll get good returns or not, we think a lot about it.
But what about investing some time, some thought, some energy in managing our most important resource? So managing the mind is vital for us. So I said I’ll talk about four simple steps for managing the mind. And these are education, experimentation, evaluation, and elevation.
So what do we mean by education over here? Nowadays education is big business. Millions and billions of dollars are spent by people to try to get the best education. When we want to talk about education in the context of mindful living, it’s somewhat different.
What does that education mean? We are referring to how are we perceived internally. How do we perceive what is inside us? So if we consider our inner world, it’s like a mine. It’s a mine and there’s a lot of stuff over there.
A mine is a place where we have to dig. And a lot of dirt has to be removed before we can get to the gold or whatever precious item is there. So one of the key insights that we all need to get sooner or later in our dealing with the mind is this.
Everything inside me is not me. Generally whenever thought or idea comes up from inside, let’s eat this, let’s watch this, let’s touch this, let’s go there, let’s buy this. Nowadays with online shopping available, it’s so easy to buy whatever we want.
But when these desires come up, what happens afterward? Somebody asks, some people buy a hundred things and then they ask, why did you buy this? Somebody else asks them, why did you buy this thing? They themselves don’t know why they bought it. It’s just something inside them spoke to them and they did it. So the key thing the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga texts tell us is that there are factors inside us which are actually not us, which are different from us.
So inside us there are many thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, aspirations, but they don’t exist in harmony. You can’t have a label, this is a good thought, this is a bad thought, this is this. It just stays.
Sometimes we go to a classroom where there is no teacher and all the students are talking and we can’t discern anyone’s voice. And maybe if some student talks much louder than others, then maybe we can hear their voice. But just because some student is talking loudest doesn’t mean that that student is the wisest.
What that student is speaking is the best thing to do. Or even that that student represents the whole class. So inside us there are various voices going on.
So it’s important for us to get a sense of what is happening inside. Without that, it’s like whichever voice speaks the loudest, we listen to it and then we neglect sometimes values that are important for us. We do things that we end up regretting.
So that is the need for mindfulness. So the yoga texts offer us a model of the self. And what is that model? It’s a three-level model.
They say that our body is like the hardware. If you consider a computer system, the mind is like the software. And the soul is the user.
So this is the yogic model of the self. Now what do we mean by this? That there is a three-level existence. Physical, mental and spiritual.
And among these three levels, the mind is in between. Let’s try to understand it from another way. Here if you see it, the body is like the hardware.
The body is what exists outside physically. The mind is the software. And sometimes the mind is also referred to as the lower self.
The lower self is the part of us which sometimes acts against us. And then there is the soul, the higher self. That is like the user.
Now this idea that there are different voices, there are two voices, the lower self and the higher self. This is universal. If any of you know about Star Wars, in Star Wars there is a constant theme.
There is a dark side and there is a bright side or a light side. And sometimes the person who is supposed to be the biggest hero, that person may go on to the dark side. When somebody goes to the dark side, what does it mean? That means their lower self takes control.
So there is the higher self. There is a part of us which is kind, which is noble, which is service-orientated. And there is a part of us which is impulsive, which is rude, which is exploitative.
And now which voice is coming up, we don’t know that. That’s why sometimes, if we know the story of something like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, sometimes it’s like both, the good person Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both of them are inside us. That’s why what happens is, sometimes we are wise and sometimes we are otherwise.
Otherwise, just the opposite of wise. Sometimes, especially when we are giving advice to others, we may speak things which, even we are surprised, what kind of wisdom is coming from? But sometimes when we have to act, we do such things that we feel, what kind of person am I? How do I act so stupidly? So it depends on who is surfacing. Is it the mind that is speaking and the mind is taking control? So it’s like, again making a software metaphor, sometimes there are some programmes which are default programmes.
And we are working on our computer but suddenly some default programme starts and it just takes over the computer. It’s like a virus. And we are just watching and maybe that programme starts a movie or it starts some file, it deletes some things, it does various things.
And although we are there watching the computer, but the computer control is not there with us. Just now, a few days ago, my phone got damaged. And normally if the phone gets damaged, it just stops working.
But this damage was quite graphic. It was suddenly, it seemed the touch screen was getting activated and suddenly some file was getting attached and somebody was being sent a message. I was just observing it.
I was observing that suddenly WhatsApp was opening and the message was going over here and suddenly Skype was opening and then some file was getting attached. Is this a virus or what is it? And I couldn’t even, even if I press the power button, I just couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t close it, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t do anything.
And nowadays with modern phones, you cannot even take the battery out. So I just desperately, because all kinds of messages were going to everyone, I just had to force the power button repeatedly and finally it switched off. So that was basically a malfunction.
So it may be my device, but if there is a glitch in the software, if there’s a glitch in the functioning, so if a virus comes up, if something gets corrupted, it’s my software. So sometimes in our lives it happens that we become observers and we become not just passive but sometimes horrified observers. What am I doing? Sometimes we know I shouldn’t get, I shouldn’t yell, I shouldn’t speak things like this.
But we end up speaking. So what is happening is this mind, which is like the software, it is going out of control. It is going out of control.
So to first of all understand that everything inside me is not me. That is the beginning of mindfulness. So I said we’ll talk about four things.
The first is that education. So once we have the education, now let’s do a simple thought experimentation. So there are many different people who have different models of what the mind is.
But is there any way to actually understand it? How do we know this is for real? Is there something called a mind and beyond that is there something called a soul? So we could go into scientific analysis of the nature of consciousness and where it exists and how it comes from. It’s a different subject. We’re focussing more on the application aspect today.
So let’s look at a simple thought experiment. So I request all of you to wherever you are, you sit comfortably and take three deep breaths. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
Two, three. Now with your eyes closed, look ahead. Because your eyes are closed, you cannot see whatever is in front of you.
But that doesn’t mean that you see nothing. There is some kind of screen inside you. And on that screen, you may see various things.
You may see your phone or laptop where you have been watching this programme. You may see your room. You may see a loud one.
You may see some favourite object of yours. You may see various images coming and going. Or you may see just a dull haze of colours over there.
Whatever it is that you see, you see it on a screen inside you. Now while you are observing that screen, try to take a step back and catch sight of who it is that is observing that screen. Who it is that is observing that screen.
I repeat, take a step back. There is a screen inside and somebody is observing that screen. Try to take a step back and catch sight of whoever is observing that screen.
No matter how many times you step back, the seer steps back with you. What you are looking for is what you are looking with. What you are looking for is what you are looking with.
So no matter how many steps you take back, you can’t actually see the seer. So that seer is you, the soul. And the screen on which you are seeing various things, that is your mind.
Take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes. Thank you. So here, I’ll repeat this once again.
The outer scene, which is the physical reality that’s outside, the inner screen is the mind. And the seer is the soul. So normally when perception happens, the outer scene, the inner screen and the seer, all three come in one line.
So the mind is focused on the outer world. And when that happens, that is when we perceive things. So we don’t pursue things directly.
We pursue the image of those things on our mind. And when we are asleep, when we are dreaming, there is no outer physical reality, but on the mind, on the inner screen, some images may be coming and going. That’s how we see dreams.
So basically, our functioning happens that for us, the mind is an important link between us and the physical reality. And if the mind is elsewhere, that means if a person is absent-minded, what does that mean? The mind is always there, but it’s somewhere else. The mind has gone somewhere else.
So sometimes we’re talking with someone and we can see their eyes glazing. When the eyes start glazing, it indicates that Earth to you, Earth to you. Which planet did you go to just now? Come back, come back.
So we say like that. Why? Because if the mind goes somewhere else, the person may be there, the body might be there, but there is no perception that happens. Now why is this important to understand? This thought experiment, these three levels of being, if we understand, then we can better make sense of what goes on inside us and how we can gain control of it.
The Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga texts repeat, like Patanjali Yoga Sutra, they repeatedly talk about the point that we have to calm our mind. We have to regulate the directions of our mind. Yoga’s chitta vritti nirodha, as the Yoga Sutra says that.
Chitta vritti, the movements of the mind, we want to calm down. We need to regulate it. So the Gita also says that this mind’s inner screen, it can be our friend, or it can be our enemy.
So this is an experiment to gain sense of the fact that there is something inside us different from us. Inside us is a screen that is different from us. So now we come to the third step, that is evaluation.
So what do we mean by evaluation over here? We got an understanding that there are multiple layers of our being and we got an experiential sense of that. Now after getting that experiential sense, how do we bring it to function in our life? So that’s where we need to evaluate when thoughts come in. So now the inner screen plays a dual role.
It is sometimes a window and sometimes a movie screen. I was a few years ago in California and I was visiting a friend and this friend had a house with a big window and through that window you could see the beautiful hills and the forest and the skyline of California. So we were looking at the scenery and we were chatting with each other and then suddenly as I was watching through the window I saw a giant ape appear in the distance.
On that hill and that ape literally it was like the kind you would see in the Planet of the Apes. Huge! And suddenly it seemed to be flying from the hill it just came charging, charging, charging. It came right near the window and it raised its fists to slam the glass window and come inside.
As I was observing it, first I was surprised then I became concerned and then I became alarmed. It was so close. Was it going to come and attack us? And then I looked at my friend and he was grinning.
He was having some fun at my expense. I looked at him again and I saw there was some kind of a remote in his hand. And I looked at him and then he clicked the remote.
And as soon as he clicked the remote the ape disappeared. What happened? So, he told me that actually that window he had designed it in such a way that that window could double as a TV screen. And just to have fun with his visitors he had actually made an animated video clip wherein whatever was the backdrop that you saw through the window with that same backdrop he had put that ape.
So, initially when we were chatting that window was actually functioning like a window. Basically glass was functioning like a window. But while we were chatting he just clicked a button and the window changed to a movie screen.
And when it changed to a movie screen I didn’t know that at all. And suddenly I saw that ape and I thought it was real. So, I got alarmed.
So, when he told me this we had a good laugh but afterward I was thinking this is very much the way our mind works. During our daily functioning we need our mind to be like a window. And that’s how it normally functions.
Say, we are driving a car through crowded traffic. The mind is like a window. This person is coming from here, this person is over here.
Maybe I can squeeze in and go ahead from here. Though the space is too less, I cannot go from here. So, we are functioning.
But sometimes while the mind is functioning like a window showing us things of the outer world suddenly, sometimes it just becomes a movie screen. And when it becomes a movie screen it starts showing us something from the past something from the future this person did like this, that person did like that and that happened and they say we are driving, we are caught in the traffic and we are sitting and waiting suddenly we remember that person insulted me on that day. And suddenly our mind starts getting filled with revenge fantasies.
Next time I do this next time I do this this is what I am going to speak I will speak this and a whole revenge fantasy movie is going on. And suddenly we may find that we are breathing heavily we are sweating, our whole muscles are contracted and we are in a bad mood and suddenly the person asks, what happened? Are you ok? Are we ok? Well, physically we are ok but what has happened is the mind started showing us a movie and if we don’t know like my friend he knew that the window had become a movie screen and that’s why he was not disturbed he was laughing at me but I didn’t know and I was disturbed so for all of us it is important that we be able to discern is the mind functioning a window showing me objective facts about the world or is the mind functioning like a movie screen showing me either something completely disconnected from the world or the mind may take one small thing from the world and just blow up things just create a movie from there so if we see someone we don’t like then what happens is as soon as we see them immediately what they did and why we didn’t like them and what all has happened in the past that movie starts playing inside us and then just their sight may anger them may anger us so this mind we have to be able to evaluate is this functioning like a window or is it functioning like a movie screen and that is critical to mindfulness so another example to illustrate this so this is the user this is the hardware, this is the body this is the soul the software is the mind and this is the body so what happens is from the body, the physical part of us there is an image that comes on the mind the person might be sometimes the movie can be about someone else sometimes the movie can be about ourselves also we might get a distorted picture of ourselves we may think oh I am too short, I am too tall I am too thin, I am too fat I am too dark, I am too fair whatever and then that is also what will people think about me what will this happen what will that happen so what to speak of our conception of the world our own conception about ourselves may get distorted by the mind so now that is why mindfulness is about becoming aware this is what the mind is showing so here you will see in one sense through thoughts we can actually through thoughts we can project ourselves ok I am different from the mind I am observing it I remember about maybe 30-35 years ago 30 years ago roughly before even I was introduced to spiritual life I was in college and I was doing an experiment in my engineering laboratory and suddenly a friend told me hey there is wildlife on your body and the first word that came out of my mouth was don’t hurt it I looked around and there is some small kind of insect on my shirt so I gently put my finger there and I got it on my finger and I went to the corner and put it in the windowsill and he looked at me and he appreciated my soft heartedness or whatever just two days later he had done something and I was so angry with him and I just we were some distance and I got so angry and I said I will kill you obviously it was figurative but I said that and raised my fist and charged toward him and as I charged toward him his mouth fell open and he looked at me with wide eyes and when I look at and he looked at me with my wide eyes with his wide eyes suddenly I remembered the incident two days ago and it was like I felt I am observing myself from above here I am seeing it from below but here the image is from below so I was observing myself from above what’s this? the other day you were not ready to hurt even an ant and now what are you doing? you are about to hit your own friend who is this person? who is this stranger? this is not you and just as the thought came immediately my hand just fell by my side and I just stopped and that was the time I started wondering what is going on inside us so what happens is for us if we can perceive ok this is the mind speaking at that time I didn’t have that clear understanding this is the mind, I understood something within me is wrong but there are times when we act completely out of character and if we become a little more mindful we will catch ourselves acting out of character before we do that action so that’s evaluation this is the screen showing so this is what the screen is showing but the person is like this so now how do we evaluate for that there is an important concept to understand now we use the word thought in two senses so I just got a thought when we use the word thought in that sense what do you mean some idea popped up in my mind so that thought refers to a mental pop up it comes within us and then somebody might say I have given this a lot of thought so that means I have given this attention, I have given this careful contemplation I have thought about it carefully so we use the word thought in two different senses so why is this relevant so if we consider going back to the earlier metaphor there is an inner seer and there is an inner screen so not every thought deserves our thought not everything that pops up in our mind it needs to be paid attention to that is mindfulness that is evaluation evaluation is ok, say if I am working on my computer and suddenly I get a notification a notification pops up your friend has updated their whatsapp profile or updated their facebook, new photo on facebook and I am doing some important work at that time ok, that pop up has come I just neglected that pop up goes down and it disappears just because something has popped up that doesn’t mean it deserves my attention so evaluation means we understand ok, when a thought has come up it’s not necessarily my thought it is just a pop up on the screen of the mind and when the pop up has come up so I talked earlier how the mind is like a window and it can become like a movie so how does the window change to a movie it changes through a pop up a pop up comes up and if we are not very conscious, when the pop up comes up we pay attention, we click it, the pop up takes over the screen and then the movie starts now all this happens inside our mind so that’s why we don’t realise it I was giving a talk on science and spirituality in a university in America and after that they took me to their AI robotics lab to show and they had some technology, it was fascinating as well as alarming so what are the technology it’s coming up in the mainstream also, now that actually when say if we are watching a youtube video, now when we finish even while we are watching a youtube video there are others, if it’s not full screen there are other videos nearby and then we see them, should I, would I want to watch this, do I want to watch this, do I want to watch this, then we click a physical link, we click the link and if we click it then that video opens up but what this technology is doing is that say if we are watching something on a screen normally we think of the screen as simply a passive object where something is being displayed and we are watching it, but the screen is not just that the screen is much more so through the camera they will have software by which they will see which area of the screen our eyes are focused on, so if I am watching a youtube video and my eyes stay for say more than 3 seconds or 5 seconds or 10 seconds on the next view, the timing can be set, then that video will open up automatically and not just a video, a link also ok, I think please don’t make notations over here on the screen so what happens is that when it pops if it takes, catches our attention even if we say we are reading one article and there is some other related article over there, if we just pay attention for 10 seconds, that link will automatically open up so they are saying we want to make life easy for the reader, they don’t even have to physically press a finger to click links, just look at something for 10 seconds, it will pop up I was thinking how entangling this would be, you just look and it just pops up but then I was thinking that’s how it happens in our mind, in our mind there are no physical links so right now you are hearing this class while you are hearing this class, suddenly a thought might come up ok, did I lock the door of my house properly did I turn off the gas, something some pop ups might be important we have to pay attention to it, but sometimes something completely irrelevant we are just hearing something and suddenly you know, from nowhere, 10 years ago somebody might have spoken some harsh words to us and that pops up how dare this person speak like this is that relevant, is it important it’s 10 years ago, so when the pop up comes up, if we pay attention to it, it gains power it grows, so that’s why not every thought that’s a mental pop up, deserves our thought, that is our attention so many thoughts will come in and evaluation means decide which thoughts to pay attention to and Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that be aware of the mind that there are many thoughts will come in lobha pravitrarambha many many thoughts will keep coming in but don’t get caught in them this is another metaphor to understand this point of evaluation so in the Bhagavad Gita the word is used udasinavat udasinavat is as if detached so now that udasinavat can be translated in English in different ways detached doesn’t really convey much it just think that do I have to renounce the world what does detachment mean there are two words, disinterested and uninterested what is the difference see disinterested is to have no vested interests to be impartial, to be objective uninterested is to not care at all to not care at all so when thoughts come inside us we can’t be completely uncaring if the thoughts are inside us but if we don’t get emotionally caught in those thoughts, is this important right now let me evaluate it so we could have an example of a cricket match now in a cricket match, there is the umpire now should the umpire be disinterested or uninterested if say the bowler bowls and the ball goes and hits the legs and all the players appeal how’s that, it’s LBW, they are appealing for that and the cricket umpire says I was not watching the match you are not watching the match what are you here for then you are supposed to watch the match but just because the players appeal loudly and the umpire says out every time the players appeal loudly, out that’s not the umpire’s job the umpire’s job is not to respond to the volume of the appeal it is to respond to the merit of the appeal the umpire has to actually look carefully so like that we need to become inner umpires inner umpires all these thoughts will come and evaluate them based on merit, Krishna said so be disinterested, not uninterested what is going on inside us, we have to observe it but be disinterested so like an umpire, so when a thought comes let’s make a phone call to this person ok, I am studying right now, do I need to do this right now not really you can do it later also, nothing that urgent ok, let’s focus so focussing means when the pop-up comes up, we evaluate it based on merit, that’s how we will be able to focus so now we may say, isn’t all this very complex how do we even realise what thoughts are coming and which thoughts are going where yeah, it’s complex but what we can start with is with especially disruptive thoughts say if we have planned for the next one hour for the next 40 minutes, I am going to attend this talk, and suddenly if a thought comes in and says, ok let’s do that do I need to do this right now so having a plan, having a purpose makes us more aware when something disrupts the purpose so the greater the structure in our life, the more quickly we notice the rupture that the mind is causing if I don’t have any plan of what to do then the mind will have a lot of plans of what I should do and we will be completely captivated, we will not even realise when we are getting controlled by the mind so if we are aware, ok this is what I want to do and suddenly I just don’t feel like doing it I feel like doing something else, what’s happening that’s when we can become aware, that’s how we can become aware, so now we may say evaluation sometimes I know I shouldn’t be doing this, sometimes I want to read, I want to exercise, I want to meditate I want to do so many things but I just don’t feel like doing it, something inside me resists, so the problem is not evaluation the problem is execution so then what do we do at that time for that is the last part, so that is elevation Elevation means we need to recognise that we actually exist, so earlier I talked about these three things as outer screen, inner, outer scene, inner screen and inner seer that is horizontal for the sake of perception however in existence it’s vertical it’s vertical means that I that our situations are at the physical level, above them as a mind with the emotions therein and above them is the soul, the essence of who we are and we exist at that spiritual level so theoretically we may get some idea that I am a soul maybe I am a spiritual being, I am consciousness I am soul but we need practical experience we need realisation of that and that comes through spiritual practises, that comes through meditation that comes through prayer, that comes through mantra chanting, that raises our consciousness upwards a few years ago I was in America and one of my friends was on a writing retreat in Florida no, in Texas so at that time a big storm had come and he was living alone in one house his friend’s house his friend’s house which was empty and he wanted to completely focus on writing so he was just staying in that house in one room and another attached place where there was a bath there was a kitchen and other things other amenities so one morning he woke up and he looked through the window and first he looked up and he saw there was no power there was no internet on the phone and he looked through the window and he saw all around there was water it slept heavily but it slept deeply and he noticed there had been a heavy storm and all the roads around were covered with water and as he saw the heavy rains coming, he looked through the window and he saw that the water was rising, rising, rising and he soon realised that the water level was going to rise it was going to force itself through the windows and force itself through the doors and it was going to flood the room and he didn’t know that place was a little isolated he wanted such a place like a cabin in a little remote part of the town where he was staying and he didn’t know anyone, the phone was not working what to do, he couldn’t even call 911 he started panicking what do I do, where do I go and as he was looking around suddenly he noticed oh there was one door which he had not noticed he thought maybe this is a closet door or something like that he had just come there a couple of days ago and he had been busy in writing so then he just tried to open the door and he saw there is a way to a there is a small narrow stairs over there and it led to the attic the attic was not very big but it was there, so he quickly ran up the attic and he ran up and he waited there and so the water rose the entire first level was flooded, it was covered but because he was above he was safe he was safe and then he was there for several hours like that and finally some rescue boats came and then he called out to them and he was saved so if he is telling me that if he hadn’t discovered that attic, he would have probably drowned and died so for all of us sometimes a flood comes like that sometimes situations become overwhelming sometimes the emotions that arise from the situations become overwhelming so we all need to find that attic where we can rise above and that knowledge of the attic and the pathway to go up the stairways to go up that attic, that is the essential purpose of spirituality spiritual knowledge gives us that there is an attic up there, there is a higher level of reality and the practises they help us rise to that higher level of reality so above the mind’s waves, if you consider the mind the waves are coming the yogi, rises the yogi the yogi is who? Yoga is connection the soul connected with the whole that is the yogi so we all can rise up like this and when we rise up, now there are different forms of yoga bhakti yoga is the form of yoga where the connection is not just with some point of concentration, the connection is with the person who reciprocates with us, a person who loves us, who cares for us who wants the best for us and if we seek to rise up, in this case this friend himself climbed up to the attic, so here a helicopter has come to pick somebody up from below, then they throw a rope and this person has to climb up the rope but if they throw a rope and they pull him up it’s much easier, so bhakti yoga talks about a divine, that all attractive divine is known in the Bhagavad Gita is Krishna, the all attractive being so he is a living loving person who cares for us who wants the best for us, who wants to elevate our consciousness so when we practise yoga, the yoga of love the yoga of bhakti, then we connect with the divine and this is one of the most easiest and most effective ways of raising our consciousness upward and when we raise our consciousness upward, then what happens? we can’t control the situations that are going to come in our life, life determines our problems, but it is we who determine their size if we identify with our mind we get carried away by the movie that is going on in the mind, a small problem can seem catastrophic but if you can say, this is just a pop-up on the mind I don’t need to play this movie if we understand that, then we can keep the problem in perspective and when we keep the problem in perspective then each one of us has enormous god-given potential it is our mind which when uncontrolled, it keeps sabotaging us, it keeps working against us if we could learn to manage our mind then all our potential would come out, we’ll be able to harness it better and who knows, see when we are fighting against, when we are being sabotaged from within even then, all of us are doing various things in our life, we are trying to meet our responsibilities we are trying to achieve our goals but if we could pull ourselves together if we could learn to manage our mind if we become more mindful, how much more good we could do and discovering that discovering how much good we can do if we can stop our mind from bringing out our best that discovery can be our life’s greatest adventure life’s greatest adventure doesn’t have to be bungee jumping doesn’t have to have some adventure sport go to some hill station people think that will make my life adventurous yeah, that may but the real adventure is not suddenly going away from the normal course of our life the real adventure is the normal course of our life, how can I make it into an adventure and that will happen when we learn to bring out our best, we all have this sense that I can do much better than what I am doing right now I can be much better than what I am right now how much better can I do how much better can I become if we learn to manage our mind there is lot much better lot more we can do and how much more, discovering that is the adventure that yoga invites us to the Bhagavad Gita concludes with Arjuna raising his hand with the bow appraised, confident in his power, in his purpose to fight so yoga is also meant for that purpose for us when we learn to manage our mind then we also become confident whatever fights we have to face whatever challenges we have to face, whatever battles we have to fight in life, we can face them all confidently when we have learned to manage the opponent within us when we have learned to manage our mind that’s what makes our life the greatest adventure so I will summarise I spoke today about four main points that I started by why do we need to be mindful two reasons, one is we have a lot of outer power but our inner power has gone down, guided missiles misguided mind, not just that unfortunately the outer power of technology is actually being used to manipulate our inner power or to exploit our lack of inner power our mind is being captivated, ever increasing competition among ever expanding distractions for ever decreasing attention spans so there is nothing as important as learning to manage our inner world so for that we did four things, first was education everything inside me is not me, there are three levels of reality, the physical, mental and spiritual and the mind with it’s many ideas, thoughts, desires all of them are not me speaking, now what is this speaking, might be good, might be bad but that requires evaluation then we did the thought experiment to understand how this is not just a model, it’s something which we can all intuit so there is the inner screen which is the mind and we are the inner seers we are the consciousness we are the soul, and then that was the experimentation third was evaluation so evaluation I talked about four points, first is that not every thought deserves our thought when a pop-up comes up on the inner screen we don’t have to click that pop-up and that the second metaphor was that that it’s a movie screen it’s a window which can change to a movie screen at any time so we need to be aware if I click this pop-up, a movie may start so I will not click this so be observant and the third point when that connection was that we need to it’s like the cricket match, be disinterested, not uninterested, so be like an umpire whenever a thought comes up, any idea comes up, we need to carefully observe evaluate that based on merit, not that everything that the mind says is bad and we have to say no to it but neither is everything right, good and we have to say yes to it, and to be able to do this, how do we discern it? Have structure in our life as much as possible then whenever something starts causing a rupture, we’ll notice it, oh this is the mind causing and the last part was elevation sometimes we know the mind is causing a disruption in my life but we are not able to stop it for that we need to raise above the mind, the mind can bring stormy waves and we are powerless, we’ll get swept away if we are at the same level but it can rise to a higher level, it’s like my friend discovered the attic and he was saved from the waves so we all can rise to a higher level of reality through meditation, prayer, mantra chanting it can situate us in spiritual level and yoga is actually meant to take us to spiritual level and bhakti yoga accelerates this process by telling us that what we meditate on is not just a point that we concentrate and then we try to rise up to that, rather it’s a person who reciprocates, who can lift us up and once we have risen to this higher level then our problems may still be there, we can’t control the problems coming in our life but we determine the size of those problems, we don’t let those pop-ups grow up too much and then lastly if we could manage our mind, we could prevent our mind from obstructing and sabotaging us then how much good we can do discovering that can be our life’s greatest adventure Thank you very much