Can I Be Rational and Spiritual IIM Bangalore Chaitanya Charan das

Before starting, I would like to thank IIM Bangalore administration, our director, DGP Jayaprasad, CEO sir, and Professor Arjun to help us organise this wonderful event. And now I would like to hand over to Risha to introduce our guest. Good evening everyone.

It is our pleasure to welcome Chaitanya sir and Guruji to IIM Bangalore for today's lecture. As a highly respected author, speaker, and spiritual guide, your insights on harmonising spirituality and rationality promise to be both thought-provoking and enlightening. Your ability to bridge ancient wisdom with modern challenges has inspired audiences worldwide from elite universities to leading global corporations.

We look forward to this talk on the topic Can I be Spiritual and Rational? and the rich discussion it will spark among our audience. Over to you Guruji. Now, let us try to utter the monosyllable OM and we'll try to draw out the U part, the central part of the OM and as we try to focus on the sound let that sound develop within you, let it come within you and spread throughout you.

This is the way we try to bring ourselves in harmony with the universe. Take two deep breaths and see if you can draw a long OM. Take two more deep breaths and one small breath.

One last time. Take two deep breaths. Let's try to still our mind and perceive the stillness within the universe amid all the things that are within us and outside us.

OM Thank you. You can open your eyes now if you like. So I'll be using this as a whiteboard to write and draw certain things and explain.

I'm grateful to be here with all of you today and I'll speak initially three points about can we be spiritual and rational? And then we will have question answers from you as well as from our MC. So I'll offer a sip of wisdom. A sip is here in this context.

Three points, S-I-P. And so let's begin with what is spirituality? Spirituality is essentially something that different people have different ways of understanding. A topic is can we be spiritual and rational? So if somebody asks you what is spirituality? What would your answer be? Would you like to share? I was in New Zealand and I asked a similar question, what is spirituality? So all the students said, spirituality is something which I like and something which I like not to define.

Okay, so we understand the spirit and then we do certain practises, the rituals. Okay, that's a very clear and concise explanation. Thank you.

Anyone else? Yes. Okay, the difference spirituality helps us understand between good point, there are superficial, we could even call them as superstitions and what are the other word used? Actual or? Yeah, those which are actual, beneficial, transformational, whatever we could say. Thank you.

Anything else? Yes, spiritual is journey of you could say of self-exploration and then it is also not just the self but also world also because say, spirituality helps us to look at our life in a different way. Yes. It gives us a different vision of looking at reality.

Maybe there it is getting disconnected. Anyone else? Yes, please. Yeah, it is largely connected with our inner world.

So, there could be the soul, there could be God. So, it is? It's saying you're connected. Thank you.

Sir? So, it's like something abstract, but eventually it has some real world help. Real world benefit is there. Yes, that is very much true.

Spirituality is to build on this point. Spirituality has two distinct aspects which we will discuss soon. Philosophical or ontological aspect that is about the nature of reality.

What actually exists? But there is a functional aspect. Or we could say practical aspect. So, for most people this is their primary concern.

That I was in sales force about two months ago in San Jose and they have in their main office there, they have a whole mindfulness meditation floor and they encourage it. Now, they have found that more their employees practise some mindfulness, do some meditation, do some mantra chanting, they find that their employees are less stressed, they are more collected and from the company's perspective their health insurance bill is lesser. So, it's at a functional level, people have found that meditation seems to help.

That it calms a person, it helps a person become more relaxed. So, there is a philosophical aspect of what is out there, what is the nature of reality. But there is a functional aspect.

At a functional level, there is a lot of research done in meditation, mindfulness, mantra chanting and it does seem to have a congenial effect on our brain cells as seen through neural imaging. So, it's a functional aspect, something which helps us. Now, what exactly is it that is helping us? That's something which is left open to interpretation.

That's why this boy said, spirituality is something I like and I like not to define. So, thank you. Now, we received many questions when we planned this session.

So, I would like to first contrast and then show, talk about the similarities between science and spirituality. Science is the study of matter. We look at physical reality and try to understand the phenomena behind it.

Spirituality is the study of what matters. It is the study of what matters. So, what this means is that when we look at spirituality, say for example people say that spirituality helps me to calm down.

Essentially, through some practise, through some process, they are shifting their awareness to something deeper, something more enduring. And that helps one to calm. If we consider the Bhagavad Gita, it's considered to be a spiritual book.

It's philosophical. It's also seen as a devotional book. But it is eminently a spiritual book.

And the question over there which Arjuna has is, what matters? I have to fight this war. Is a kingdom worth fighting against my own relatives? So, what is it that really matters in life? So, spirituality is in that sense not anti-material. It is not that you have to go against matter or material things, which is a common idea that spirituality means you renounce the world.

No. Spirituality is about we being able to understand what really matters in life. And to the extent we understand what matters.

To that extent we can align ourselves with it. So, now at one level we live in a world where things matter. And science has substantially improved the quality of the things that we have.

Now, if you want to go from one place to another, we don't have to walk. We have planes and we have cars. And if you want to communicate, you want to scream at people.

We can just talk on telephones. We have radically improved the things that we have. And that has led to a significant amount of comfort in our lives.

Comfort and convenience. At the same time when science started the promise or the hope was that as the things around us would improve, as the comforts would improve, that would make us happier. However, that has unfortunately not happened.

There are enormous upsurges in mental health problems all over. And the situation today is that people are comfortable but they are also at the level of the mind. Distressed, unhappy, miserable.

So, we can say today people are they are it's a combination. At the level of the body comfortable, at the level of the mind distressed, afflicted. So, we are comfortably miserable.

This is a paradox that the things have improved in our life but that has not made us happy. So, for example things do matter. But more and more people are realising the things matter but the thoughts inside us they matter much more.

Now, somebody might be eating a delicious food item but if just before they came to eat that food somebody insulted them their thoughts are filled with anger and confusion and bitterness and vengefulness then they might be eating a sandesh and it will taste like chalk for them. So, it will just not taste. So, the things outside us matter but the thoughts inside us matter even more.

So, that's why now even in the parts of the world which are being more and more progressive there is an increasing openness and appreciation for spirituality. Because science can improve our outer world. It is spirituality that can improve our inner world.

So, things outside, thoughts inside and both need to be improved. So, spirituality is the study of what matters. So, we could say the outer world, the inner world both matter.

It's not that the outer world doesn't need to be improved. Definitely needs to be improved. But the inner world also needs to be improved.

And that will determine the state of our being much more than the state of our outer world. So, now the question comes up, what exactly is this inner world and how does it really matter? What happens? So, for that I'll draw from the Bhagavad Gita. It offers us a model of the self.

So, there are three levels of the self. There's the, we are having a physical side to our being that's our body. We have mental side to our being that's our mind.

And beyond that we have a spiritual side that's the soul. And all these three together comprise the self. This could be like a computer system where the body is like the hardware, the mind is the software and the soul is the user.

So, we have improved the hardware enormously but the software has unfortunately not improved. In fact, it seems to have corrupted. And that's why we are having such a breakdown.

I was a couple of years ago in London where there's a big conference on mental health especially with respect to suicide. And the United Nations person was speaking at that. He said that suicide is a tragic social health phenomenon.

One million people kill themselves every year. Now, when COVID was there we brought the whole economy down. We had a lockdown.

And such a huge toll happens every year and what do we do about it? So, basically what is happening is when there is ultimately suicide it is the mind that is killing the body. There could be very specific causes and I am not oversimplifying suicide at all but I am just talking in terms of not the cause but the mechanism where the mind becomes the enemy of the body and the mind causes the body not just to malfunction or dysfunction but to be destroyed. So, the thoughts inside us do matter.

So, there is in our inner world not just the body not just the mind but also a spiritual side where we observe our mind. So, what does that mean? Let's do a simple thought experiment for this. I would like you to relax wherever you are and take three deep breaths, close your eyes and then we will try to do a guided meditation over here.

So, take a deep breath once again once more. Now with your eyes closed with your deep breathing going on try to look straight ahead of you and because your eyes are closed you can't see anything in front of you that is outside but still there is some kind of screen inside you and on that screen you may see a replica of this room, you may see an image of a loud one, you may see your home, you may see your phone, you may see a flurry of images coming and going, you may see a dull haze of colours, you may see just one image statically there but whatever it is that you see on that inner screen it is you and the screen as two things over there. Now while you are looking at that screen try to take a step back so that you can catch sight of the person who is looking at that screen.

I repeat there is an inner screen and there is an inner seer of that screen so as you are looking at the screen try to step back and catch sight of that inner seer try once again you will notice a paradox every time you step back that seer steps back with you what you are looking for is what you are looking with so that inner screen inside you is your mind and that inner seer is you the spiritual essence of who you are take a deep breath and gradually open your eyes. Thank you. So here essentially there are these understanding that there are these two levels or layers to our inner world is a game changer in managing our thoughts so if you go back to software example the mind is like the software and what the inner screen that we see is like the screen on which various things keep popping up but we can choose what to click and what to cancel so we are not our mind we are the observers of our mind and our mind is a part of us but it is not us we have worked very hard through science to improve the things that to improve material things but our thoughts seem to have gone haywire so I said I will talk about three points what was the acronym I was going to speak on? So S was spirituality spirituality is the study of what matters now what matters is a huge subject I was focussing on one aspect of it that our thoughts matter more than the things outside.

Now I is intelligence ok it's gone I think maybe I am moving it that's why it's happening now intelligence can have many different aspects to it, we could talk about the I, intelligence quotient but in a spiritual sense intelligence is the capacity to see beyond the things that glitter to the things that matter so when a person is intelligent there are hundreds of things that assault our senses that occupy our minds in fact we live in what is called an attention economy everybody is competing for our attention so what is it that I should be giving my attention to? the things that glitter and the things that matter so spirituality is a study of what matters intelligence is the capacity to shift our focus from what glitters to what matters so generally speaking there are many things that glitter to us based on our particular desires, our particular conceptions and of course the propaganda around us so for example your students things that glitter could be I want to go to a party, I want to enjoy, I want to do this I want to do that some amount of fun is required in life but if we get caught in that now you are one of the most elite colleges in the world you have still great opportunity to have a great life and to make great contributions that's what matters much more so to be able to shift from what glitters to what matters that is the essence of intelligence and spirituality has two components to it spirituality is like science in some ways science has two components there is theory and there is experiment so theory theory gives us postulations about the nature of physical reality when Newton saw the apple fall or some people say felt the apple fall whichever way it was he came up with a theory of gravity so theory is one part of it the postulation about the nature of reality and then there is experiment experiment is ok an apple fell here would another object fall would it fall in Paris, would it fall in Melbourne would it fall in New York so that's what is explored that's experiment, so like that spirituality has two aspects to it, there is philosophy and there is practise now philosophy is what is meant to give us postulates about the nature of reality what is the nature of reality so in one sense I already gave one postulate the model of the self from the Bhagavad Gita that there are three levels to our being so this is a philosophical proposition so if we are to know what matters, how do we know it we have to have a philosophical aspect and then we have to have some kind of experiment so the intelligence is meant to analyse and understand the philosophy in life now one purpose of philosophy many people say ok science has some practical value even if you learn something technical skill you learn language that has some practical value what is the value of philosophy well philosophy helps us to make sense of things that don't make sense that is the essential purpose of philosophy there are many things in life which at first glance just don't make any sense but philosophy offers us postulates by which you can make sense of things that don't make sense and we could go into various aspects of philosophy but right now intelligence is what helps us to move from the things that glitter to the things that matter and philosophy it comes from the original philosophy it is a love of truth a seeker of truth so the philosophical aspect of spirituality gives us a conception a world view by which we can be guided toward understanding what matters we will come back to this later but at this point that is the second part nowadays we have our intelligence very well developed with every generation the IQ level seems to be increasing, the video games that kids play now are many times more complicated than what were the games 10 years ago, 20 years ago 30 years ago so at one level IQ is increasing but the attention span seems to be decreasing and while we have a greater capacity to process complexity our capacity to focus seems to have eroded and it presents a paradox but the intelligence in terms of understanding what really matters that may not be that much there I saw a cartoon recently a man is telling his friend that yesterday my broadband internet went down so I spent some time with my family they seem to be like nice people so it's as if we don't even know what kind of people they are because of say so much perversion of social media we might be more aware of what is going on in Chile than what is going on in our own children's life we might be more aware of what is going on in Serbia than what is happening in our spouse's life we might be more aware of what is happening in Nigeria than what is happening in our neighbour's life so we have become quite disconnected what really matters we are going away from that it is not that there is no intelligence certainly the development of social media requires a lot of intelligence using social media requires a certain level of intelligence but through that process are we losing track of what matters so intelligence is meant to help us focus on that and I said that last P in the acronym P is purification now the purification has a religious connotation but I am using it more in the functional aspect of spirituality purification essentially leads to an alignment with between what matters and what we feel matters when there is an alignment between these two that is the essential state of purity so for example if somebody has an impurity say in the traditions across the world greed is considered impurity so if there is greed then what matters a person needs to have good health good relationships, good trustworthy friends but what matters and what we feel matters a greedy person thinks money is the only thing that matters money is important in life no doubt at the same time money is what we live with not what we live for money is like fuel in a car we don't have fuel, we absolutely need fuel but if a neighbour comes running out of their home and says where are you going he says I am going to fuel my car ok where will you go after that I will go to the next gas station and fuel my car ok but where are you going say I am going to fuel my car no fuel is what we drive with not for so if money becomes the most important thing in somebody's life then they may ruin their relationships they may end up in a huge house that offers them a lot of space to be lonely and unhappy so this is a distortion of values greed can distort a person's values lust can distort a person's values instead of seeking a deep meaningful relationship a person might just seek superficial pleasures that end up making the person feel lonely and maybe even guilty. I know I am using others to scratch an itch and I know others are using me to scratch an itch so when there is impurity then what we feel matters goes far away from what matters this is especially seen in anger when there is anger taking over us a relationship that has been built in 15 years can be destroyed in 15 minutes of angry outbursts at that time anger makes us believe proving that I am right and putting you in your place. That's the most important thing it may not at all be the most important thing.

Preserving the relationship will be far more important but anger distorts our perceptions what we feel matters goes far away from what matters and thus we end up ruining relationships, breaking hearts and sentencing ourselves to loneliness and self-loathing maybe so these are examples of impurities and purification is what enables us to align not just in terms of intellectual understanding but actual attraction. What we feel matters and what matters becomes more and more harmonised. When this happens the person doesn't have to constantly discipline themselves to do the right thing because they are attracted to doing the right thing and this is a state where actually a person becomes empowered empowered because the inner battle decreases substantially see often we, for most of us there is a constant battle between our values and our desires there is what I want and there is what I want to want what I want ok I want to eat, I want to watch TV I want to enjoy.

What I want to want I want to be fit I want to be a productive individual I want to do something meaningful in the world so there is a constant battle between our desires and values but when we are purified this battle decreases and then all our energy can be focused on what we wish to do what is important for us so practise now when I said I am talking about practise practise is meant to bring about purification spirituality has two different aspects philosophy is meant to equip our intelligence and practise is meant to bring about purification practises can be of many different kinds meditation could be a practise praying could be a practise worshipping in a temple could be a practise going to some holy place could be a practise there are many different practises available but practises are meant to bring about purification now when these practises are systematised and structured they often become a religion and within a religion there are rituals now the nature of life and nature of people the nature of the mind we can say is such that our tendency goes from the internals towards the externals so even when the practises that are given within a particular religious tradition for the purpose of self transformation for the purpose of aligning what matters with what we think matters those practises may also be done for external purposes and when that happens then those rituals start becoming blind they start becoming pointless they start becoming meaningless so in the Gita itself in the 16th chapter this possibility is cautioned against that one chants mantras centred on the divine not so that one can connect with the divine but so that one can show to the world how pious I am, how good I am how virtuous I am and nowadays coming to temples is becoming cool so we have a temple in Juhu in Mumbai which is very close to Bollywood and many Bollywood celebrities especially Janmashtami they come to the temple for darshan now those who come that's wonderful but how many of them come to actually have darshan and how many of them come and then they put their on their insta and people say oh you are such a nice person you go to temple also so how many of them coming to have darshan and how many of them are coming to give darshan I am not criticising anyone particularly but it is a possibility so when things become ritualistic at that time rituals they become a social cosmetic like we wear cosmetics so that we can look better so like that people start doing rituals just so that they can look better in others eyes and if the rituals don't make you look better then what is the point of doing the rituals then they become just pointless burdens they become dead weight and then they are discarded so the purpose I will conclude with one last point about rituals nowadays the word rituals has acquired a negative connotation especially when we use the word ritualistic which is mechanical done just for the sake of doing it but there is repetition and repetition can be in two different senses there is rituals and there are routines now routines for example we have to do our laundry we have to do our dishes we may have to clean our room there are certain routines that we have to do on a regular basis when we are doing routines the point of it is to just get the thing done so routines don't necessarily require much attention now we could be doing our dishes while talking with someone on phone maybe while watching TV while reading some audio book we could do routines in a way the point is to get the things done but in rituals actually the point is exactly the opposite the point of the rituals is not just to get the thing done say for example if I take 3 deep breaths well that's not deep breathing that's kapalbhati that's not the point here rituals the point of the rituals is to get the experience the point of the ritual is to slow ourselves down to calm our consciousness and to get the experience so rituals when they are done as spiritual practises we connect ourselves with a spiritual reality with the core of ourselves with the divine who exists inside us and when that happens then the calming uplifting effect starts coming so rituals if they are done properly one of you started by saying that spiritual so when we do our spirituality properly rituals are done not just as routines for all of us I said that there is the outer world and there is the inner world so for most of us the outer world is big and the inner world is small the inner world we really don't pay much attention to the inner world but when we start practising spirituality what happens by that is the outer world becomes smaller and the inner world becomes bigger and even if there are ups and downs in the outer world I can't control how people behave but I can control how I respond so at this level we are reactive we are just impulsive we just give in to lower impulses at this level the inner world has become bigger for us even if somebody provokes us we won't be reactive we will be reflective we will reflect and then we will respond wisely so the test of spirituality there could be many tests of spiritual growth but one of the tests is how much do the ups and downs of the outer world affect us that if we are stabler and steadier and we face ups and downs that is a fair indicator that we are internally connected with something bigger with something deeper so that's how spirituality improves our inner world science can improve the outer world spirituality can improve our inner world so I will summarise the three points I discussed so I talked about SIP as an acronym to give a rational explanation of spirituality so S was what? spirituality itself so spirituality is the study of what matters as contrasted with science which is the study of matter and there we discussed about how thoughts for example matter more than things and we want to improve things but we also want to improve thoughts much more and then after discussing we discussed about I was intelligence so intelligence is what enables us to move from the things that glitter to the move to things that matter so once we understand what matters at a philosophical level then we can move towards it and then there is purification purification is where we become attracted to what matters instead of what glitters so essentially science has these two limbs theory and experiment spirituality has two limbs that is philosophy which nourishes our intelligence and then there is practise which brings about purification so purification essentially means that our desires start aligning with our values and the way we know that we are spiritually growing is that we will be less affected by life's ups and downs whereas the world was very big and everything that happens in the world shakes us up previously but when we grow spiritually the world becomes smaller and our inner world becomes bigger and thus life's ups and downs can be faced with greater maturity so spirituality in this way is internally empowering ourselves to face life's external challenges Thank you very much Thank you Guruji for sharing your insights and experiences as we explore the intersection of being spiritual and rational more we have received some questions from the students and faculty members in our audiences today so maybe I will take 2-3 of those questions and then we can move to the audience for the Q&A now so the first question is about doubt and spirituality which is very common when it comes to a topic specially like spirituality so could you share your thoughts on the role of doubt in our spiritual journey and whether doubt serves as a obstacle or a catalyst in our journey of spirituality. Very important question See doubt is there is a sacred text in the broad Vedic canon called the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Bhagavata Purana and there it describes that doubt is the first characteristic of intelligence It's only an intelligent person can doubt that if a person has no intelligence they will just believe whatever is fed to them and that's why for example across the world even in the most liberal countries we don't allow advertisements directed towards small kids, small children so their critical thinking is not yet developed of course whether adults critical thinking has developed is open to question but still the point is doubt is an important faculty and it's a sign of intelligence. In fact this whole idea of intelligence being enabled capable of taking us to the things that glitter things that matter it is only when there is some doubt about the things that glitter it's only when somebody will think at that time is there something more over there is there something beyond the glittering things of this world is there something more of value so doubt in that sense is the foundational beginning of the spiritual journey doubt that the visible world that I see that glitters before me that there may be more to reality than this but this is not all of it so you could say doubt is foundational without doubt there can be no spirituality.

Having said that once one begins on the spiritual journey it's an exploration of what is invisible so as I said we make the practise gradually gives us experience so modern science is experimental spirituality is experiential the experience of higher reality experience of the transformation within us that's what spirituality is about now while we are going on this journey there is a role for faith and a role for doubt so faith is like the accelerator if you are in a car and doubt is like the brake now if somebody is driving in a car with only the accelerator that's dangerous so that's like if a person has only faith without any critical thinking capacity then that faith degenerates towards blind faith and the person often goes, the car goes on a destructive drive. You see across the world religion has been weaponised by self-serving corrupt people to incite common people towards violence so the people who do not have critical capacity for thinking who do not doubt they just buy into whatever their teachers are telling them and then that takes the car of their own religious life on a destructive track a self-destructive track or even a world destructive track so faith and doubt are like two parts of a car's driving mechanism so only faith without doubt that is not healthy. In the Vedic tradition there is Shraddha talked about but the beginning of the spiritual journey is Jigyansa it's not faith but it's enquiry.

Athato Brahma Jigyansa and that virtue of Jigyansa is seen throughout the Gita is a call contains the importance of faith but Gita also has Arjuna asking logical questions and Krishna giving logical answers so now we go to the other side that if there is only doubt and there is no faith it's like trying to drive a car with only the brakes we will get nowhere, we will only waste fuel so if there is only doubt and no faith then a person gets nowhere now we can start doubting everything including our own existence, the existence of people around us, the existence of the world, the existence of meaning in life and that leads to cynicism so you could put two extremes there is only faith without doubt that leads to extremism religious extremism on the other hand if there is only doubt without faith that leads to cynicism now scepticism is good but cynicism isn't cynicism is where we just deconstruct everything so that nothing has any meaning so what we need is faith and doubt they both exist simultaneously in a constant dialogue with each other this does not make sense to me this has made sense to me this far so maybe let me take one step forward so here in faith you could differentiate between two categories of faith I already said blind faith and there is rational or reasonable faith reasonable faith has two characteristics to it it is sensible and it is verifiable so when I go to a doctor and I say I have stomach pain at that time the doctor tells me ok take this pill ok what will happen in three days you will feel better what is the problem there is too much gas in your stomach ok that makes sense and I can try it out after three days do I become better if I don't then either I go to the same doctor to check or I go to some other doctor so now when we are taking a pill we are actually having faith when the covid was there we took vaccines it was an act of faith but so faith can be sensible and that means sensible means it makes sense to my intelligence verifiable means I see the desired effect happen similarly faith and spirituality can also be sensible and verifiable in that sense it will be rational that was really insightful thank you there is another question which is I think a lot of us can relate to this question here which is if my significant doesn't approve of my spirituality in that case what should I do do we reconcile the conflicting parts or do we even have to make a choice in that situation see in the Bhagavad Gita 12.15 Krishna says the characteristic of a spiritually evolved person is यस्मान नो द्विज़ते लोको लोकान नो द्विज़ते चेहा he says one who doesn't disturb others and one who is not disturbed by others now normally speaking for what happens in our interactions especially in a close relationship I do see something which disturbs the other person and that's what naturally happens but it's interesting here Bhagavad Gita is talking about a spiritually evolved person should be able to function in a way that is undisturbing and undisturbed so how does this happen essentially in any relationship if you see there are maybe a dozen interactions a dozen major things over which we interact so now there may be some things which are non-negotiable for me now this is what I want to do, this is what I am going to do this is important for me and there are some things which are non-negotiable for the other person so now in between things are negotiable so if we are in a relationship with someone who does not approve of our spirituality if they accept that my spirituality is non-negotiable for me I am not going to impose it on you I am not going to guilt you into practising my spirituality but this is non-negotiable for me and they respect that the other person will say I am not interested in this and that is non-negotiable for me that's fine there is one thing, everybody has been given free will and that is not given by the country, that is not given by the government that is given by God that's intrinsic to each one of us so no one has a right to impose spirituality on anyone else we can share our spiritual experiences our wisdom and if they are inspired they can take it up so as long as the other person is not imposing their non-spirituality on us and we are not imposing our spirituality on others then our spirituality can be one part of our life and that can be due priority to that say okay I want to wake up everyday and do some meditation I want to go for some spiritual programmes another person may not come but they don't interfere, they don't stop that then we can, our spirituality does not have to interfere with that relationship who knows with time our spirituality may make us a better human being may make us a better partner and seeing the change in us the other person may become inspired really what is this spiritual stuff that you are doing earlier you were so you were complaining so much, now you are so much calmer so often in spirituality what happens conflicts happen among various religious traditions because people are too busy proving that I am better than you my god is bigger than your god my religion is better than your religion but actually the focus should be on improving not on proving so if we are improving ourselves our actions will speak louder than our words don't tell, there is a common saying in new age spirituality don't tell me what you believe show me how you behave so who knows our spirituality may rub off on our partner without ours having to impose it on them thank you for that so now switching from our personal lives to more professional selves workplaces these days often prioritise rational thinking or emotional thinking over spirituality so do you think how can spirituality play a role in an environment like that and it may seem that it is less relevant in such situation but it might be the most relevant thing to have in that situation so what should be our approach spirituality if we see in the past when say people were fighting wars or whatever physical strength, brute strength was more important as we have evolved intelligence has become more important so IQ is prioritised now as we are further developing our self-understanding IQ alone is not enough, EQ is also important so now gradually another concept called SQ is also coming up spiritual quotient now the idea is that we are spiritual beings we have a rational side inside us, we have an emotional side, the Gita refers to this as Buddhi which refers to our rational side and Mana the mind which refers to our emotional side so now we need to be able to utilise both of them so the more we are situated in our spirituality the more we will be able to leverage both our rational side and our emotional side so we could say spirituality is the resource that enables us to better utilise all our other resources when we are spiritually grounded we will have a greater emotional intelligence, we will have a greater rational intelligence and we will be able to function better in all walks of our life Thank you so much Guruji we now open floor for audience's question if anyone has anything, any question they want to ask one question is that we have daily life, we are students here you know practise we are not so much involved in the spiritual world and we are bit disconnected towards the same in our rituals now how do we kind of interpret this into our routine what difference can we see in our routine lives should we be engaging in practise more of spirituality or less spirituality so I talk about spirituality as having these two aspects philosophy and practise so this is a phase when you are studying and learning so one aspect which you could study and learn about is philosophy so study wisdom text like the Bhagavad Gita nowadays things are available in audio books, in podcasts so try to spend some time hearing this even if you spend say 15 minutes in a day let me read some wisdom text now you will find that over a period of time the amount of wisdom that you will get will be a lot and then with respect to say meditation, mantra chanting we did something chanting of Om in our tradition we chant Hare Krishna mantra so we do some meditation we start with 5 minutes, we start with 10 minutes so the idea is that consistency will bring about a greater result than just quantity we want to change the programming of our mind our mind gravitates towards the things that glitter, meditation helps us to experience the things that matter and how they help us actually feel better so incremental steps start with 5 minutes 5 minutes of some reading of wisdom text 5 minutes of some meditation practise and see what benefits come, it's an experiential science we feel the benefit, we move forward . . Ok, good question see when we use the word connect it's a it's a bit of a misnomer over there it's a the connection between these three is primarily through consciousness that it is from the soul it is the chetana that comes out if this is the soul, the light source and the beam of light coming from it is consciousness so from the atma comes chetana and it is the chetana that links the mind, the body together I'll come to your point about breath but let's start at fundamental level that say for example when we are absent minded so normally when perception occurs how does it occur? when all three are in one line so right now you are sitting there, I am sitting here you are looking at me, I am looking at you and then your mind is focused, so what I am speaking is coming to you and you are evaluating, does it make sense? so normally when all three are aligned then perception occurs properly but when we are absent minded, basically what happens is the soul is in one place the mind is in another place, the body is in another place so then maybe a part of our consciousness comes here maybe a majority of the consciousness goes in the mind and that's when we are absent minded so it is not like a physical connection the soul itself is not physical, even the mind is not physical so if you consider the software metaphor the software is stored you could say or loaded in a particular drive, in a particular folder but the whole idea of a folder itself is more conceptual than physical because physically there is a device but if I open my computer's drive I won't see E drive and F drive and so folders over there, even if I see in a microscope so all this is subtle so the connection primarily is through consciousness and the consciousness is well connected, well aligned the body, mind and soul come together in one harmony now having said that, your point is well taken about the role of the mind sorry of the role of breath when the mind is going here, there and everywhere one of the easiest ways to calm the mind is to focus on breathing that when we try to focus on our breathing and slow our breathing so because breathing is something which we constantly do, our breath is constantly with us, when we focus on that, then that focus itself causes the mind to slow down that is the way to calm the mind. So rather than saying specifically that the breath connects the mind and the body rather the breath is a very powerful tool for us to get a handle on the mind which is otherwise at the level of thoughts, I may try to control my thoughts I don't think about this, don't think about that, it's very difficult to do that but through breathing we can do that essentially we could put this three in a hierarchical level the soul is here, the mind is here and the mind is intermediate and the body is here now sometimes stormy emotions, desires come in the mind and when that happens our mind just gets swept away so if that is happening at that time there are only two ways there is a storm and we just can't stop the storm so the only two ways to deal with the storm is to get out of the mind we get out of the mind by either going down to the body or going up to the soul so when we go down to the body that means we focus on doing something physical consciously, attentively and then although the mind is disturbed, if our focus is on something physical then the disturbance of the mind doesn't disturb us so much that's what happens through breathing somebody may have insulted me somebody may have betrayed me I am immensely agitated my mind is agitated, I am agitated means agitation is there in my mind but if I start breathing beat me then the agitation may still be there in the mind but you can say I am not in the mind I have got my attention I in terms of my attention, my focus has come to the level of the body so there are times when we may notice if somebody has practised meditation for some time or has had some higher spiritual experiences it's almost like once I had a severe fracture and I was rushed to the hospital so when I was rushed to the hospital I was chanting Bhagavad Gita verses and as I was chanting those verses I could in one sense feel the pain in the leg where it was fractured and yet I was not feeling the pain it's almost like I was observing someone else and so there was the pain but it was not having a direct impact I was concerned, I was going to the hospital but I was not disturbed, I was not afflicted by it so what happens is similarly at the level of the mind we know the mind is agitated but we are not in the mind we are separate from the mind and we don't feel that agitated so the other way to do it is also to rise to the level of the soul if somebody has done some sufficient spiritual practises then they become aware I am a spiritual being, this is the mind it is disturbed but I am different from the mind so in that sense access to the mind can be got through the breath Thank you Desires are often fleeting desires come and go motivation is meant to be steadier today I feel like you know today I want to become an engineer, tomorrow I want to become a doctor day after tomorrow I want to become a cricketer, those are desires but motivation is something which lasts for a longer time or it is meant to last for a longer time and in some ways desires can be the enemy of motivation because when we are caught in too many desires then we cannot have motivation steadily for any one thing now having said that you can also say that motivation is a strong desire, strong steady sustained desire that is motivation so in one sense this is steadier but desires another way to look at it is often desires are superficial superficial means oh I saw someone eating this I saw someone on TV this person is a celebrity they have gone in that role I want to go there but motivation it is deeper the Gita explains that if you want to find steady motivation we look at two things in our life it's called as guna and karma that each one of us has a psychophysical nature so guna when we have the quality for doing something what feels good to us now feels good not in the sense of drinking alcohol and feeling good but when I am doing something I feel good, some people like music when they are hearing music, they are learning music they are performing through music it feels good, that is the guna and karma is what we are good at so many people may like music many people may themselves practise some music but they may not be that good at music to be performers to make a profession out of it, it could just be a hobby for them if we can find some area where there is an intersection between these two, what feels good for me and what is good for me then that could be the area where we can find our life long passion so if we move in that direction, the motivation will be very steady and that's how those who work in this area the original idea of varna later on it became the caste system which became quite discriminatory but the original idea of varna was based on guna and karma that each person has their natural aptitude and their natural ability and if their role in society their profession could be aligned according to aptitude and ability then they would be satisfied and they could contribute in an optimum way Do you have the freedom to ask this question? Do you have the freedom to ask this question? It's an important question but I will try to give some broad principles there are you could say there are two extreme philosophies one is the philosophy of daivavad daivavad is everything is destined and nothing is in our hands so daiva or destiny alone what matters now the other is the philosophy of karmavad that our karma alone matters that we alone determine our destiny we work hard and we will succeed now the problem with daivavad you could say much of eastern thought not just Indian thought even Chinese thought to some extent became gravitating towards daivavad and daivavad can lead to passivity oh you know everything is destined what can we do about it, it doesn't really help so whatever I do won't make any difference so what is the point of doing anything now karmavad on the other hand leads to anxiety why? because if I believe that everything is in my control that I am the maker of my destiny that I am the master of my destiny then if things are not working out then I may end up taking too much responsibility on myself and in one sense the western world is largely driven by this idea of karmavad and it has led to a phenomenal level of material progress but it has led to a significant level of mental regress so what happens is we may all experience some loss in our lives say we may apply for an interview, we don't get the interview we try for some internship whatever it is, we all experience losses so we could interpret this loss in different ways I have lost that's fairly objective I am lost I had put all my eggs in this basket, I don't know what to do now where to go that is far more disorienting but the worst could be I am a loser and if you take that this is toxic take that interpretation this can put people into chronic depression it can even make them suicidal so loss is something which you all have to face in life and sometimes it may be because of some mistakes we have made, sometimes it may just be circumstances I know a couple of friends they got they opened a, this is in America they opened a small business, medium business just before the pandemic started they got the land, they invested the money and the lockdown came they failed that's just beyond their control blaming themselves for them is just being unfair to themselves so both of these are unhealthy extremes to think that everything is in my control everything is determined by my actions and to think that nothing is determined by my actions so the actual teaching is that there are three broad factors there is karma and there is daiva that together leads to follow so whenever we get some results it is you could say our present actions and our past actions, now destiny is nothing but our past actions that gives us certain results that we get so even from this life's experiment perspective if two people pick up a piano and start playing it now one is playing it for the first time and the other has put in 100 hours of practise so both of them are moving the fingers on the piano one person's sound and the other person's sound will be very different the first person one person will say please perform more and the other person will say no more please so why? the present action is the same but there has been past action and the result that is coming is a combination of present action and past action so once we understand the idea of atma, the soul the soul is different from the body, the soul lives beyond the body so we all have a baggage of karma that we bring from our past lives and that determines our daiva so karma and daiva both play a part it's like we operate within certain parameters say like most of us here, all of us are Indians even if you go to America and you want to become an American you can get American citizenship but our skin is not going to become American so we will remain Indians there are certain things which you can't change but yeah there are some aspects of the western ethos, punctuality, cleanliness and certain things we might adopt and that could make us a better person that could make India better so there are certain things which we cannot change in our life but within that we have capacity to change things and what we can change and what we can't change, that can also change that means certain roles in our life, say if we are children and we don't control in which family we are born we can't control what kind of parents we have so we could say during childhood the kshetra the Upanishads use the word kshetra, that is our area of control or influence that is small so that same person grows up, becomes a successful person then their kshetra might become much bigger and as they grow older with their retire their kshetra again decreases so what is in our control changes at different times and there is always scope for free will but there is always the presence of destiny so both of them are in a dynamic dance of interplay and the way to determine what is in my control and what is beyond my control is by intelligence and experience we can't determine in advance, say it's like if some guest comes to our house and they have a heavy bag or they have a big bag we may say ok let me get someone to help and pick up the bag because the bag looks too heavy so with our intelligence we can assess but then we say ok let me try it out it's a huge bag but largely empty we can lift it up so we use our intelligence to make an initial assessment can I make a difference over here do I have any power to control things over here and then we use our experience so what is my present kshetra I will learn through intelligence and experience say for example in this class when I was speaking my kshetra was much bigger I was choosing what points to speak I was choosing which point to follow which what point but now when I am answering questions my kshetra is lesser the subject is going to be determined by you when you ask questions and then I have to answer to the best of my knowledge according to whatever question you have asked so in that sense life is like a tennis match sometimes we are serving sometimes we are returning when we are serving we have much more initiative and control I can attack the forehand attack the body of the opposing player so when we are returning wherever the ball has come I have to get the ball back into play so now there are tennis champions who became champions primarily by being great returners so returning is also no small skill that means working within the limits that destiny puts us even if those limits are small somebody can work within that that can also help them grow towards greatness thank you I would again like to thank you for sharing your wisdom with us on this complex but yet very meaningful topic now I will present you with a token of thanks once again I would like to thank you Guruji for such an insightful talk I would like to request Prof. Manish to please come on the stage and felicitate our students I bow to you Guruji.