Can we be spiritual and rational? | IIM Bangalore |

Jai Krishna It is a pleasure to welcome Chaitanya Charan 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 you try to focus on the sound let that sound envelope your being let it come within you and spread throughout you this is the way we try to bring ourselves in harmony with the universe you can take two deep breaths and then you can draw a long OM OM OM OM OM OM OM Deep breaths one small breath OM OM OM one last time take a deep breath 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 OM OM OM OM OM Thank you you can open your eyes now if you like So I’ll be using this as a white board 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 SIP and so let’s begin with what is spirituality.
The 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? You would like to share? I was in yeah I was in New Zealand and I asked a similar question what is spirituality.
So all the food says 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 is the other word use actual or yeah those which are actual beneficial transformational whatever we could say. Thank you. Anything else? Yes spiritual is journey of it’s because 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 that could be the soul that could be God. So it is it’s saying here connected. Thank you.
So it’s like something abstract but eventually it has some real world help real world benefit is there. Yes that is very much to spirituality is to build on this point the spirituality has two distinct aspects we will discuss soon is 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 the primary concern that I was in Salesforce 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 a 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 and it calms the 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’s a functional aspect.
At a functional level there’s 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 if you 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 for people at people. We can just talk on telephones.
Now 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, 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.
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 the 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. Since there are three levels of the self, we are having a physical side to our being, that’s our body.
We have a 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 was a big conference on mental health, especially with respect to suicide and the United Nations person was speaking at that conference. He said that suicide is a tragic social health phenomenon.
One million people kill themselves every year. When COVID was there, we brought the whole economy down. We had a lockdown.
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. The mind becomes, 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’ll 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. Now because your eyes are closed, you can’t see anything in front of you that is outside you, 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.
Once again, you’ll 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. So you can 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 the 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’ll talk about three points.
What was the acronym I was going to speak on? SAFE. Thank you. 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 and our thoughts matter more than the things outside.
Now I is intelligence. Okay, it’s gone. Okay.
I think maybe I’m moving it, that’s why it’s happening. Now intelligence can have many different aspects to it. You 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’s 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. Now the things that glitter could be, okay, I want to go to party, I want to enjoy, I want to do this, I want to do that.
Yeah, there’s 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 gives us postulations about the nature of physical reality.
When Newton saw the apple fall or some people say fell the apple fall, whichever way it was, he came up with a theory of gravity. So the theory is one part of it, the postulation about the nature of reality. And then there is experiment.
Experiment is, okay, 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. 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, people say, okay, 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 worldview by which we can be guided toward understanding what matters. We’ll come back to this later. But at this point, that’s 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, the 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 pervasion 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 Niger 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.
When we are using social media, it 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, last P is in the acronym, the P is purification.
Now what the purification has a religious connotation, but I am using it more in the functional aspect of spirituality. Purification essentially leads to an alignment 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, a person needs to have 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. If 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.
Okay, after that where will you go? After that, I will go to the next gas station and fuel my car. Okay, 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.
So greed can distort a person’s values. Lust can distort a person’s values. Instead of seeking a deep, meaningful relationship, a person might 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 may be far more important. But anger, it 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 do 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, okay, 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 this, I am talking about practise.
Practise is meant to bring about purification. I said spirituality has two different aspects. There is a philosophy is meant to equip our intelligence and practise is meant to bring about purification.
Our 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, we feel 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’re 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? Now I’m not criticising anyone particularly, but it is a possibility. So when things become ritualistic, at that time rituals, they become a social cosmetic.
If we were cosmetic so that we can look better. So like that people start doing rituals just so that they can look better in other’s 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’ll 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 are 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, hearing 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 three deep breaths. Well, that’s not deep breathing, that’s Kapalbhati.
That’s not the point. So here, routine, 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 the 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 sometimes our lower impulses.
At this level, when the inner world has become bigger for us, even somebody provokes us, no, we won’t be reactive. We will be reflective. We will reflect and then we’ll 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. If we are stabler and steadier and we face ups and downs, then that is a fair indicator that we are internally connected with something bigger, with something deeper. And so that’s how spirituality improves our inner world.
Science can improve the outer world. Spirituality can improve our inner world. So I’ll summarise the three points I discussed.
So I talked about the 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 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. The 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’ll take two, three of those questions and then we can move to the audience for the Q&A round.
So the first question is about doubt and spirituality, which is very common when it comes to a topic especially like spirituality. So could you share your thoughts on the role of doubt in our spiritual journey and whether doubt serves as an obstacle or a catalyst in our journey? It’s a 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’ll 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 has 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, being capable of taking us from the things that glitter, things that matter, it is only when there is some doubt about the things that glitter, that’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 track. 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, just this buy into whatever their teachers are telling them. And then that takes the car of their own religious life on a destructive track, their 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 Jijnansa.
It’s not faith, but it’s enquiry. Athato Brahma Jijnansa. And that virtue of Jijnansa 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 will 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 bricks. 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 me 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 in 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, okay, take this pill. Okay, what will happen? In three days, you will feel better. What is the problem? Oh, there is too much gas in your stomach.
Okay, 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 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 it can, so faith can be sensible and that means sensible means it makes sense to my intelligence.
Verifiable means I see the desired effect happening. Similarly, spiritual 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 other doesn’t approve of my spirituality, in that case, what should I do? Do we reconcile the conflicting paths or do we even have to make a choice in that situation? See, in the Bhagavad Gita, in 12.15, Krishna says, the characteristic of a spiritually evolved person is, yasmana no dvijate loko, lokana no dvijate chaya.
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, other person does not disturb me. 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 dozen interactions, but there are major things over which you interact with each other. 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 the things are negotiable. So, if we are in 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.
When I say to the other person, I say I am not interested in this and that is non-negotiable for me, that’s fine. See, 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 we give priority to that. Say, okay, I want to wake up every day 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 the spiritual stuff that you are doing? Earlier you were so, you are 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, then our actions will speak louder than our words. Don’t tell, there is this 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 situations, 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 the floor for audience’s questions.
If anyone has anything, any question they want to ask. Guruji, your question is that we have daily life, we have students here. You know, like this we are not so much involved in the spiritual world and we have to disconnect with the spiritual world.
So, how do we kind of infiltrate this into our routine? What difference can this make in our routine lives? So, as we are interacting, we look at this more of spirituality now, you know, let’s do it like this. 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 of Om. In our tradition, we chant the 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 mantra, some meditation practise and see what benefits come. It’s experiential science. If you feel the benefit, we move forward.
Okay, good question. See, when we use the word connect, it’s a bit of a misnomer over there. 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 breadth, but let’s start at a 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 an 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 a way to calm the mind.
So, rather than saying specifically that the breath connects the mind and the body, it is 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 these 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, 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 as if 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. Desires are often fleeting. Desires come and go.
Motivation is meant to be steadier. Today I feel like, maybe 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 could also say that motivation is a strong desire, a 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 are going 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 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 lifelong passion. So, if we move in that direction, the motivation will be very steady.
And that’s how those, so, 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 free will to ask this question? Yeah, it’s an important question. In fact, but I’ll try to give some broad principles.
There are, you could say there are two extreme philosophies. One is the philosophy of daivavada. Daivavada is everything is destined and nothing is in our hands.
So, daiva or destiny alone what matters. Now, the other is the philosophy of karmavada. That our karma alone matters.
That we alone determine our destiny. We work hard and we’ll succeed. Now, the problem with daivavada, you could say much of eastern thought, not just Indian thought, even Chinese thought to some extent, became gravitating toward daivavada.
And daivavada 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, karmavada, 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 karmavada.
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, we don’t get, 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 we 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 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. But 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 fallow. 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 a hundred hours of practise.
So, both of them are moving the fingers on the piano. What? One person’s sound and the other person’s sound will be very different, isn’t it? The first person, one person will say, please perform more. Others 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, I mean, 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, you said 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, the same person grows up, becomes a successful person, then their kshetra might become much bigger. And as they grow older, when they 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, they look like a big bag. We may say, okay, let me get someone to help, I’ll pick up the bag.
Because the bag looks too heavy. So, with our intelligence, we can assess it. But then we say, okay, let me try it out.
I mean, it’s a huge bag, but it’s 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’m 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 with 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. Now, I can attack the forehand, attack the backhand, 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.
I think now we’ll present you with a token of thanks. Once again, I would like to thank you, Gurjeet, for such an insightful talk. Now, I would like to request Professor Manish Minimala, PGP Chairperson, to please come on the stage and felicitate our students.