Discover Your Inner Power
The first part will be about discover. Second part will be about you. Third will be about inner.
And the fourth will be about power. Discovery is what has dramatically transformed our world, especially in the last few centuries. And how does discovery happen? We can look at one example.
How did Newton discover gravity? Discovery happens when we go beyond visible specifics to invisible universals. That means, Newton saw the fruit falling. Now, before him, many thousands of people had seen fruits falling.
Most of them would have just picked up the fruit, eaten it, and gone their way. Newton didn't just do that. He thought, why did this fruit fall? What made it fall? And in his search for answers, he had to go beyond the visible to the invisible.
Sometimes people say seeing is believing. If you show me something spiritual, show me soul, show me spiritual stuff, then I'll believe in it. But actually, if somebody were truly a follower of seeing is believing, the first thing that they need to do is stop using all technology.
Because all of technology today operates on invisible things, whether it is the emails and the Wi-Fi that we use for communication, or whether it is the principles of mechanical energy, which are based on gravity, which we use for transportation. So seeing is believing, is actually a very primitive level of intelligence. Animals believe what they see.
An animal in a desert may see a mirage. I believe what I see. And that keeps them forever deprived of water.
So the advancement of knowledge that happens, that happens when we look, when we observe the world around us, and we see certain specific details in this world, and then we try to look for universal principles to make sense of those details. And Albert Einstein stated that, all religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. So it's the same search for knowledge that we have.
When it progresses in a particular way, it leads to the advancement of science. When it progresses in another way, it leads to the advancement of spirituality. It can lead to the advancement of art, it can lead to the advancement of religion.
And similarly, it can lead to the advancement of spirituality. Now, science is in today's world, an extremely powerful and transformational force in the outer world. At the same time, science, the very reason for its power is also the reason for its limitation.
Science operates with a principle, at least that is the way mainstream science operates today. And the principle is that it looks for, it looks at the world around us, it observes the world, and it tries to find material explanations for material phenomena. Whatever we observe around it, people try to find out, okay, what could be the reason for this, but science looks primarily in the level of matter.
That means, if somebody has a disease, what science will look for is, okay, what is the germ, or what is the biochemical imbalance, what is the structural deficiency, what is the material cause for this disease, for this disorder, for this deformity. And based on that, it tries to cure them. And this gives tremendous power.
We have been able to achieve in recent centuries many things which our previous generations before that could not even have thought about. Now, when we look at science, it looks at the outer world and tries to find explanations. Now, this very approach leaves out something important.
If we have a fishing net, and that fishing net, say, has holes of, say, 5cm by 5cm. No longer, no matter how long I keep the fishing net in water, I am not going to catch fish that are smaller than 5cm by 5cm in size. The fishing net is designed to catch things that are bigger than that size.
So, science, when it looks for explanation in this world, it looks for material explanations. And by definition, that which is not material is left out. And one important thing that is left out is you.
You means, who are we? That fundamental question of our own identity is something which is beyond the scope of matter-based science to answer. So, you, materialism reduces you to a biochemical illusion. What does this mean, a biochemical illusion? So, I have a sense of identity.
Now, for example, if I ask any of you, do you exist? You would say, what a strange question. Obviously, I exist. Now, this tool also exists, but it does not know that it exists.
We have awareness, we have awareness of the world around us, and we have awareness of our own selves. Now, where does this awareness come from? Researchers have probed into the human brain, and by probing into the brain, they have come up with a lot of understanding of how our emotions correlate with brain phenomena. But this correlation is not causation.
Correlation means that when we have certain emotions, we feel certain changes happen in the brain. But those are not the cause. To give a simple example to illustrate this, there was a famous brain surgeon, Dr. Wilder Penfield, he is considered the father of neurosurgery.
And he tried to probe into the brain to find out where exactly does the sense of I come from. Now, right now, you are observing me, you are hearing what is being spoken. So, there is an I, that is you who is observing, and there is an I who is speaking.
So, where does this sense of I-ness come from? And he probed different parts of the brain, and by probing different parts of the brain, we know that different parts of the brain correlate with different bodily functions. So, for example, the part of the brain which is connected with the motor nervous system, and that part is activated, then the hand rises. So, he mechanically activated that part of the brain.
And when he activated that part of the brain, the hand went up. So, he asked the subject, what happened? He says, my hand went up. He says, did you raise your hand? So, initially, when he had asked the subject to raise the hand, the subject raised the hand.
So, then he told, put your hand down. He put the hand down, that part of the brain became deactivated. And afterwards, he, using electrodes, activated that part of the brain.
When he activated that part of the brain, what happened is the hand went up. Did you raise your hand? He said, no, I didn't raise my hand. You raised it.
He deactivated that part of the brain, the hand went down. What happened? My hand went down. Did you put your hand down? No, I didn't.
You did. So, what this means is that the part of the brain which is corresponding with the hand activation, that is, say, like the print command in our computer. So, the print command is pressed, the printer's print hand will start moving.
But if it's my computer, in the first case, I press the print hand. In some other case, someone else comes and presses the print hand. So, Dr. Penfield asked this question that in the first case when the experiment was being done, I was the person who was activating that part of the brain.
No, sorry, in the second case, he was activating the part of the brain. In the first case, who was activating? So, he concluded after 40 years of research that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. Consciousness comes from something outside the brain.
And to give another example to illustrate this, suppose there is a famous brain surgeon and that person, people have brain disorders and sometimes that brain surgeon treats them very well and he comes back home and his wife is upset with him. So, will he tell her, let me do a brain scan to find out why you are upset? She will tell him, you go and scan where you lost your brain. So, we can surely gain some knowledge about the brain phenomena through our probes, but they do not explain our full personality.
Just like, say, if we smile. Now, our smiling is the result of our inner happiness. If we are happy internally, we smile externally.
But the smiling can also be caused by some physical stimulus. Sometimes some small children, if their relatives want to play with them, they may come and tickle their belly. Now, if somebody comes and tickles the belly of a child, the child will start laughing like that.
Now, is that laughter happiness? There is the sound that correlates with happiness. There is the facial gesture that conveys happiness. But is the laughter that is produced by tickling, is that happiness? If that were really happiness, we all want to be happy in life.
So, we all could get our own perpetual tickling machines. And we could be forever tickling ourselves and be forever happy. It does not work like that.
So, now, certainly, by the tickling sensation, the facial expression of smile may come up. And that might lead to a little feeling better. But that is not the same as when we are internally happy.
And because of that, a smile comes on our face or a laugh comes in our face. So, similarly, to some extent, if a person is feeling depressed, now we can give some chemicals, some antidepressants, and the depression may go down. It will change to some extent, just as a person is always very gloomy, slouching.
Come on, cheer up, man. Smile, be jolly. By saying like that, by just changing one's physical posture, changing one's expression, we may feel a little better.
But suppose, but that alone is not happiness. So, just as our physical disposition can change our emotion to some extent, this physical tickling can produce laughter. But that itself is not the same as happiness.
Similarly, changing the brain chemicals may change our emotion slightly. But the emotions themselves originate from somewhere else. They don't come only from the brain.
And a further implication, so our sense of I-ness, if we are just a result of our brain chemicals, then there is no such thing as I. Because there is no one part of the brain where the sensation, all the information coming into the brain is integrated at one point, and there is one locus who says, okay, I am observing, I am thinking, I am acting. The whole sense of I-ness becomes a biochemical illusion produced by the brain cells somehow. Now, neuroscience with all its advances can't explain where this sense of I-ness comes from.
And more importantly, the consequence of saying that the sense of I-ness is simply a biochemical illusion, the consequence of that is that all moral and legal accountability becomes meaningless. Einstein himself was very conflicted by this implication of scientism. Science is a very important body of knowledge.
Scientism, in contrast, is the belief system that makes science omniscient, that claims that all knowledge can be acquired only by science, and whatever is not known through science is actually not knowledge at all. So now Einstein, as we know, he was a Jew and he had to leave from Europe, from Germany, because of the persecution of the Nazis. And what the Nazis did, killing millions of Jews and millions of other people also during the Holocaust, cold-blooded atrocious murder, very few parallels like that are seen in modern history.
Now, the problem is Einstein himself recognised that if he accepted the materialistic worldview, that there is nothing to our being beyond our body or in our brain, then we basically become just like machines who are programmed by our brains. So why did the Nazis murder so many people? Because that was their programming. Now, if we are simply machines who are programmed by our brains, then there is no meaning to saying something is right and something is wrong.
That was the way they were wired and they acted like that. Somebody else was programmed in another way and they acted in another way. Suppose I go to someone and I slap them in the face.
I tell them, why did you slap me? They ask, why did you slap me? They say, my programming told me to do that. What would they say? They slap me back and say, my programming told me to do that. So we all, we may disagree about the specifics of morality.
This is moral, this is immoral. We may disagree about what constitutes morality and what constitutes immorality. But we all intuitively accept that there is something that is right and something that is wrong.
And this whole sense and the idea is that we should do the right thing and we should not do the wrong thing. And saying that we should do the right thing and we should not do the wrong thing implies that we have the capacity to choose. But if we are simply biochem, if our sense of I-ness is simply a biochemical illusion, then our notion of our having free will is also an illusion.
And if the free will is an illusion, then all moral and legal accountability becomes meaningless. So the implications are quite devastating if we take materialism to its logical conclusion. Nothing could be considered wrong and any kind of crime, any kind of murder, that is the way they are programmed.
We would have, the result of this would be what? We would all be considered programmed machines. But actually, we are not programmed machines. We are the possessors of programmable machines.
Programmable. Our body is programmable, but we are something different from the body. Now, what is it that is there which makes us different from the body? If we were just programmed machines, now actually no one operates based on this principle.
There are atheists and there are anti-theists. Now, atheists are those who do not believe in God. Anti-theists are those who are active missionaries against God.
So, they are very aggressively, they canvas for atheism. And now there are atheists. Now, atheism logically is based on this idea of materialism, which implies that we do not have any free will.
And yet, atheists write books in which they say that if you read this book, then you will give up your illusory belief in God and you will become an atheist like us, you will become an enlightened atheist like us. Now, interestingly, the implication of this book is that we should use our free will to accept their worldview, which says that we have no free will. So, we use our free will to accept their worldview that we have no free will.
This is self-contradictory. It is like suppose I say that I cannot speak one word of English. To say that I have to speak seven words of English.
It is self-contradictory. So, nobody actually lives in this way where we consider that we have no free will. All of us work according to this function, according to this understanding that we do have free will.
And we do want to be happy in our life. Actually, if we just go on with materialism to its logical conclusion, all our emotions become simply just chemical secretions in our brain. So, when a mother looks at her baby, she feels a flood of affection in her heart.
And she should say, oh, I love my baby. No, she should say, oh, when I see my baby, serotonin increases in my brain. Now, who can live like that? No one can live like that.
So, here, I would like to differentiate between science and scientism. Science is a valid body for acquiring knowledge. And it gives us knowledge within a particular framework.
Scientism is a school of thought. It is a belief system which extrapolates science beyond its valid limits. So, for example, say I had to go from here to Brisbane to meet a friend.
And I was going by car and I had a map. And whenever I use that map, the map gave me very good results. So, okay, it says go straight, then you'll come to a bridge and go across the bridge, then turn right, then you will come across a river, go across the river, then you'll come to a crossroad, turn left.
Every single direction that is given in that map, I find that it is correct. And it takes me closer and closer and closer. And as the directions in the map work, my faith in that map increases.
And then eventually, I reach Brisbane, and I knock on my friend's door. And I open the friend's door. And oh, welcome, he says.
And then I look at my map. He says, I tell him, you are not there in this map. Therefore, you don't exist.
Now, if someone said that, your brain doesn't exist. I'm not supposed to be present in the map. The map is very valuable.
In that particular situation, the map may even be indispensable. But the map is not omniscient. The map does not give me knowledge about everything.
Similarly, science offers us a map of the world. And this map is very powerful for living in today's world. In many ways, this map is indispensable.
At the same time, the map gives a partial picture of reality. The map does not give an exhaustive description of reality. So, if you want to understand who the I is, who in our topic, who the you is, for that, we need to look beyond the map which is offered to us by material science.
We look further for about how we need to go beyond this. We look at inner. So, discover your inner power.
So, now we look towards the inner. We know that, whoever this I is, that I is somewhere inside. So, what is there in our inner world? The inner world is often terra incognita.
It is something which is a land of deep mystery. But although it is a land of mystery, it can also be a land of great trouble. So, Martin Luther King said that, our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Now, guided missiles indicates the triumph of the power of science.
Through scientific knowledge, we can precisely direct weapons, missiles, to targets which are thousands, millions of miles away. So, we have tremendous capacity to guide missiles. But what about ourselves? The capacity to guide ourselves is decreasing.
And we see this in two broad phenomena. One is the enormous increase in anxiety. That anxiety is, for us, most of us, we see that our anxieties are caused not just by outer problems.
Our anxieties are often caused by our own internal turbulences. And even when people are relatively comfortable in their lives, still they are anxious. And what causes this anxiety? In the developing countries, there are a lot of external problems because of which people have anxiety.
So, in the developing countries, if you turn on a power switch, you cannot be sure whether the power will turn on or not. If you turn on the internet connection, you cannot be sure whether the internet will turn on or not. But that sort of problems are not there in the developed world.
And yet, so although the external uncertainty is less in the developed world as compared to the developing world, still the internal anxiety is more. So, anxiety indicates a lack of order in our inner world. It indicates disorder.
Chintama parimeyam ca pralayantam upashyatah. Kamopabhogaparama etavat iti nishchitah. In the Bhagavad Gita, which is an ancient yoga text from India, it is described that unrestricted materialism, when we accept a materialistic worldview, that causes anxiety.
So, the enormous increase in anxiety that is there in today's world has led many psychologists to say that today the world is facing an anxiety epidemic. An anxiety epidemic. The World Health Organisation has said that for the current century and possibly for the current millennia, mental health problems are going to be the biggest problems in the world.
So, mental health problems happen in many different ways. Many kind of anxiety disorders might be there. And these can have very specific causes.
But an underlying cause is an incapacity to control our inner world. We lack the power to even understand what is there in the inner world or to speak of controlling it. And a second result of this inner darkness is self-destruction.
Self-destruction primarily through addictions. Addictions by which we may waste our time, our money, our mental peace, our health, our relationships, and ultimately even our lives. So, when we get addicted to something, we just can't live without that object.
Although, we don't really need that object to live. It is the conception in the mind which makes us feel that no, I must have this. And addiction propels millions of people on the path of self-destruction.
And the most sobering and tragic manifestation of self-destruction is suicide. According to WHO, 1 million people commit suicide every year. Now, 1 million means that since we started, that means almost 40 people commit suicide every hour.
So, according to WHO statistics, this implies that this figure of 1 million is of course, only the reported suicides. There are many people who commit suicides which never gets reported. And this figure of 1 million is much more than the total number of deaths by crimes, by murders and in wars all combined together.
That means more than the number of people who are being killed by others is the number of people who are killing themselves. So, now there is increasing worry about terrorism in the world. And everywhere there is so much effort made to counter the threat of terrorists.
But far more than the number of people who are being killed by any such terrorist attacks and the number of people who are killing themselves. And this indicates a serious lacking in our knowledge of our inner world. Practically no other animal, we humans are practically the only species that commits suicide.
No dog says, I am so depressed, let me jump off the 10-storey building and let me commit suicide. Why is it that we who are supposed to be the most intelligent among all the species on the planet, why is it we act in the most self-destructive way? So, we truly have an age where we have guided missiles and misguided men. So, now what is there in our inner world? For this, the Bhagavad Gita explains with a model of the self that is three-dimensional.
So, our self has three levels of existence, there is the physical, there is the mental, and there is the spiritual. Or we could say the body, the mind, and the soul. So, the body, if you use a familiar example from digital technology, from computer technology, the body is like the hardware, the mind is like the software, and the soul is like the user.
So, most of the problems that are there in the inner world, they are because the software has been hijacked. Sometimes software gets corrupted by say, some malware or some virus. At that time, the hardware may be perfectly functional, I may have a brand new computer, but if it's corrupted by viruses, I cannot use it at all.
So, like that, people may be young, intelligent, healthy, but at the level of the mind, they are weakened by the virus of negativity, by the virus of depression, by the virus of inferiority complex, then they may become incapable of doing anything. So, just as we take care of our bodies, we take care of our body by appropriate food, by appropriate exercise. Similarly, we need to take care of ourselves at the level of the mind.
So, we are, the Bhagavad Gita explains, at our core spiritual wings. So, when Dr. Welder says that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral, that means that, say the soul, the soul is here, from the soul, the consciousness comes out into the mind, and from the mind, it comes out into the body, and from the body, it gets projected to the outer world. Say, to give a simple example to illustrate this.
Now, say a cricket tournament is going on, so suppose a cricket tournament is going on in India, and somebody in Australia wants to watch the match. So, we are sitting here, and say there's a TV in front of us, and through the TV, we can see our consciousness goes through the TV to the cricket ground in India, say, where the T20 World Cup is going on. So, now here, there is a place where the action is happening, and we are distinct from that place, but there is a mechanism by which our consciousness gets connected with that place.
Similarly, the Bhagavad Gita in 13th chapter, 22nd verse says, पुरुष्यः प्रकृति स्थोही, भुंक्ते प्रकृति जान्गुणान्, कारणं गुण संगोस्य, सद असद योणि जन्मसु। The Bhagavad Gita says that the soul gets caught in matter. Our consciousness is spiritual, just as we will be sitting here, but if we get caught in a cricket match that is happening in India, then depending on whether our favourite team is winning or losing, we may have a whole gamut of emotions, from elation to devastation. They all happen, although nothing is happening to us right now, but because our consciousness is caught, that's why we experience all this.
So similarly, we as souls are distinct from the body, but through the mind, which is the interfacing mechanism like the TV between the cricket fan and the ground, so like that the mind is the interfacing mechanism between us souls and the world around us. And based on what is the kind of programme that is running in the mind, we are different from the programme, but the mind has certain scripts within it. And based on whatever scripts are running over there, we tend to think, feel and act accordingly.
And spiritual growth centres on identifying our programmes and changing our programmes. Spiritual growth means we first of all understand that I am not the programme. Just like suppose we are say surfing on the net, and suppose you want to know something about Indonesia, but in the past, you have been searching for something about India.
Now when you type IND, Google auto completes it as say India. But now you want to look for Indonesia. So we just type IND and it completes India and then you may just search in India.
But then if you're careful, I don't want to search for India, I want to search for Indonesia. Then even if it types India, we delete that and we type Indonesia and we can search after that. So just as if in a computer, there are default settings.
And if you're not careful, we might just whatever the default setting come up in the computer, we simply act accordingly. Certain site opens up and we start reading that site and then something else pops up and something else pops up and we have soon find that hours of our time has gone away. And we didn't do what we intended to do.
So just as the computer's default settings may sometimes take us in directions which may not want to go. Similarly, in our mind, there are certain programmes, there are certain default settings, and they often make us go in directions which we may not want to go. And our growth depends not just on the talents that we acquire, on the degrees that we get, on the pay cheques that we get, all these are good.
But our growth will depend largely on how we are able to make our programmes in harmony with our values. There are certain scripts that are running inside us. Now, if they are in disharmony with our values, then we will be wanting to do one thing and we will be pulled towards doing something else.
And we will not be able to be effective in our lives. That brings us to the last part about power. So alone, we are powerfully powerless.
What do we mean by powerfully powerless? We are as souls, we are superior to the body, just like I have a computer. Now, the computer is very powerful. But at the same time, I need to know how to use the computer.
With the computer, if I know how to use the computer, I can do a lot of things. But if I get so caught in the computer, suppose sometimes some people start watching horror movies. And when they watch horror movies, they get so caught in the horror movie, shivering, trembling, screaming, crying.
And now actually, they're getting so horrified, they don't have to watch that movie. But if they get so consumed by that, that they forget that actually I am different from the movie and whenever I want, I can switch off the movie. If you just forget that completely, then you're lost inside that.
So like that, if we misidentify with our mind and our body, when the problems come in our life, we get so caught in the problems that we don't understand that I am different. And I have capacity to deal with the problems. So just as the computer is a very powerful device, but if we get caught in the computer without staying in control, we become powerfully powerless.
Powerfully powerless means I have a powerful tool, but that powerful tool rather than enhancing my power, it actually makes me powerless. So if I have a very good internet connection, but I just get caught up in surfing some sites which I don't want to surf, then one click I go to this site and I go to next site, then I go to third site, then I go to fourth site. Sometimes, you know, if we have a very powerful computer, we may have 50 browser tabs open.
And there are 50 channels of wasting time for us, open for us. So we become powerfully powerless. Now, we become powerful by connecting with the supreme power within us.
And what is the supreme power within us? That we are consciousness or rather consciousness is the characteristic of the soul. Just like if there's this light bulb, from the bulb, light comes out and spreads in the room. So like that we are souls and from us as souls, consciousness is the energy that comes out from the soul.
In the Bhagavad Gita, I said that just as the sun illuminates the space, similarly, the soul illuminates the body with consciousness. Now, this soul is a part of the supreme whole. The soul is a part of the supreme whole.
And when the soul is harmonised with the whole, then it becomes multiply powerful. And yoga connects us with our inner power. Yoga is not just about some physical postures.
Physical postures can help us to improve our health, improve our figure, but they are just the first step in the process of yoga. And yoga, in its essence, is a means to connect with that inner power. So our consciousness is, say, going back to the TV example, say somebody's watching a horror movie.
A small baby is there. She is caught in watching the horror movie, crying, frightened, screaming. But her mother is sitting right next to her.
Her mother is sitting right next to her, but she's forgotten that her mother is there, and she's horrified watching the movie. She somehow just turns around and sees her mother. The mother catches her.
She turns around, goes on her mother's lap, and then her fears will go away. So like that, we as souls are there in our body. The soul is there inside the body.
And next to the soul is the super soul, is the absolute truth. And we have an eternal bond of love between us and the supreme soul. The supreme being or the supreme consciousness is known by various names in various traditions.
And the bhakti yoga tradition, he is known as Krishna. Krishna is both the power and the person combined together as the one absolute truth. He's not just a person.
He's not just a power. He is both integrated together. And he is both the destination in the process of yoga, and he's also the companion in the process of yoga.
What does this mean, destination and companion? Say, suppose you are going to go to New York to meet some friend, and not meet a friend, to meet some very big VIP, who you have never met before. Then you're sitting in your flight and eagerly waiting, when will I get to meet him, meet them. And then finally, we get out of the flight, we go to their place, the big palace, and we go there, and they open the door, and then we see, this was the same person who was sitting next to me throughout my flight.
But because we had never seen them before, so we did not recognise them. So like that, the supreme consciousness is the source of the supreme power that is there right within our hearts. So Krishna is present within our hearts, and when we connect with him, we get phenomenal power.
Actually, we say that, okay, I have to work hard, I have to study hard to achieve things in life. Yes, we have to. But below our level of awareness, lots of things keep happening.
And they happen by the benevolence of an unknown power. Now, every time we eat food, we don't even think about how the food gets digested. Actually, nowadays, if people have their hand fractured, then you can have an artificial hand, the heart doesn't work properly, you can have a pacemaker.
So researchers tried to find out, if people can't digest their food, then can we put an artificial digesting machine in the stomach? No. So, now when they tried that, they realised the digestion is such a complicated process, that we would not need a machine, we would need a factory. And not just a factory, but a factory that would run miles and miles long.
If we consider work as force into displacement in physics, work is force into displacement. The sheer amount of work that is done, when we take one morsel of food, and when it goes down, there is all the movement of the alimentary canal, and by which the food gets digested. So the amount of work that is required to digest one morsel of food, now that work is much more than the amount of work that an average human being does throughout the day.
That means, just digesting one morsel of food, who is doing all that work? That is done without our conscious awareness, that is done within, that is done by this inner power. So our inner power is the capacity to connect with the supreme power, who is all along caring for us. We may not realise that care constantly, but without that benedictory arrangement, we would not be able to do anything.
And to the extent we connect with that inner power, to the extent we become powerful. So spiritual power changes not just our perception, but also our perspective. Sometimes people say, change your perception.
Now say if this glass, say if this glass were half empty, and I look, it is half empty. Now you look, it is half full. It's good.
Be positive, be optimistic, don't be pessimistic. This is good. But at the same time, if this glass is empty, suppose the glass is empty, and I say, no, the glass is full.
Now that is not optimism. That is stupidism. So, you know, we can't simply wish away the negative realities of life.
But spirituality enables us to rise above them. That means, say if there is a flood, or if there is a fire, or there's some calamity, and if we are caught in that, we will be in great anxiety. But if a helicopter came along, and airlifted us above, we would be still seeing that, but we would not be disturbed by that.
Because we have been, the immediate threat for us is gone. We have risen above the situation. So spirituality is not just about changing our perception.
Changing our perception means what we focus on. But changing our perspective means changing where we look from. The spirituality raises our consciousness.
So when we practise yoga, especially in yoga, there is yoga that is centred on sound, mantra yoga. So you're doing the kirtan just now. This is actually a practise of yoga.
And this such practise of yoga raises our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level. And when our consciousness rises, we start experiencing peace, we start experiencing clarity, we start experiencing a better capacity to focus. And in this way, we not only become elevated higher, but in this world, whatever we have to do, whatever we want to achieve in life, we can actually achieve it better.
So spirituality complements our spiritual connection, which comes through the practise of yoga that complements our talent with temperament. Talent is the capacity, the ability to do things. But that alone is not enough for success.
We need to have a cool, calm mind by which we can use our talent properly. That is the temperament. So sometimes, say if in a sports night, there is a sports player.
And so the opposing team sports player, they come and sledge. And suppose this player just blows off and becoming short tempered, just shouts back and loses temper and say if it's a cricket match gets out, trying to hit a big shot. Now that temperament, the temperament is weak, even good talent will not be of much use.
So talent has to be complemented by temperament. And temperament comes how? Temperament is essentially our capacity for inner discipline, for inner regulation that comes through meditation, that comes through the elevation of consciousness. I'll conclude with one last point in this point also, how our temperament is enhanced by spirituality.
When we talk about temperament, it essentially means that say, if I go to my workplace or go to my college, and when we go there, somebody snubs us. That snub may happen within 10 seconds. But after that for 10 hours, I may be seething in rage, thinking about revenge fantasies.
Now, when will I get back at them? Now, suppose if somebody is a student and they are going to class, they may be sitting in class for six hours, but nothing is going inside. Why? Because the inner world is in disorder. So often when we hear about some spiritual wisdom, we may think, all this sounds good, but I don't have time for this.
I have so many things to do in my life. Yes, it's true. We all have many things to do in life.
But our time is not taken by our activities alone. Our time is also taken by our thoughts. We think of our time in terms of, okay, morning, I will do this afternoon, I have to do this evening, I have to do this.
But if our thoughts are not focused, it's like in this case, the student felt insulted. And after thoughts were not focused, all the external they might be in class, they did not do anything in the class. So if we could have some means by which we could make our thoughts calmer, more focused, and whatever we would be doing, we would be able to do it better.
We would be able to do it better. So spirituality, actually, by increasing our focus, by increasing our capacity to bring our inner world in control, meditation, which we do on spiritual sound, that acts like the antivirus. The antivirus which counters the virus.
Because of the virus, because of the default programme that is there inside me, somebody insults me, I just go off on a programme of revenge fantasy. Just can't check myself. But our spiritual connections, they will change the programming, they will give us better control, and they will enable us to focus more productively.
And that way, by our spirituality, we will move from activity to productivity. We have activity, but from our activity, if there is spirituality, then we'll move towards productivity. Otherwise, we'll be active.
We're running here, running there, running there, running there. We do 10 things, and out of that, after we do 10 things, we realise that 9 of them I did not do right. So then I go back and do all of them again.
And then we end up wasting far more time than what we need to. So if we invest some time in developing ourselves spiritually, then we will find that whatever time we invest therein, that will empower us to use our remaining time better and to become more productive. So I'll summarise.
I talked about discover your inner power. Discover. I mentioned that all discovery happens when we move from visible specifics to invisible universe.
That's how science progressed. That's how Newton discovered gravity. And the same principle we need to apply in the spiritual direction to discover who you is and what our inner power is.
So Einstein said that all religions, arts and sciences, they are basically the same human quest for knowledge. Science permanently directs that quest in the material direction, whereas the other field especially, they direct it in the inner or the spiritual direction. I will discuss how science, the same thing which gives it strength, looking for material explanations, that becomes its weakness when it looks for something non-material, and that is our sense of self.
We discussed how the self is not just reducible to brain chemicals, how the source of consciousness is extra cerebral, as Dr. Penfield concluded, how our anger or somebody's upset, we cannot just find that by doing a brain scan. That there is correlation between the brain chemicals and our emotion, but correlation is not causation. Just as a smile is itself not the cause of happiness, just as tickling is not equivalent to happiness.
So we discussed how materialism reduces our sense of I-ness to a biochemical illusion, and it makes the conception of free will an illusion. And by that, even the Nazis who murdered millions, they would just be acting out in their programming. There is no meaning to any moral or legal responsibility or accountability.
And more importantly, if the materialism would also mean all efforts for self-improvement are meaningless, because we are simply a programming. We can't improve ourselves in any way. And nobody can live like this.
No mother, if she thinks that, oh, some brain chemicals are secreted in my brain when I see my baby. The emotions have a fundamental reality to us, and we need to, so we are not programme machines, we are the possessors of programmable machines. So science is to be separated from scientism.
Science is a map, and it offers us a very useful tool for navigating reality. But there are things which are not shown in the map, and they are also real. And that one of the most important things is our own self, our consciousness.
We discussed how neglecting the self can have disastrous consequences. We may be able to guide missiles, but we may not be able to guide ourselves. And we discussed two consequences of the darkness about the inner world.
One is anxiety, and the other is self-destruction, which can happen through addictions and which can also happen much more distressingly through suicides. And then we discussed what is this inner world. For that, we can look at the yoga traditions.
And the Bhagavad Gita explains that our existence is three-dimensional, physical, mental, spiritual, which are akin to the hardware, software, and the user. So the problems that come are at the mental level, they basically are because of the viruses corrupting our software. There are undesirable programmes that are running in our mind, and we need to observe them and correct them.
So alone we are powerfully powerless. We have a very powerful body-mind machine, but because it is running on its own programming, it is actually sabotaging us, it is restricting us. And that's like a person who gets consumed in whatever is being shown on a high-definition video, a horror movie, or just surfing so many sites and not being in control.
But we become powerful by connecting with the supreme power within us. So connecting with the supreme power that we discussed, what is the supreme power? That is what digests the food within us. That is what maintains it in so many ways that we are not aware of.
And yoga is the means to connect with that supreme power. And that supreme power is revealed in the yoga tradition, the bhakti yoga tradition, to be absolute truth who is both a person and a power combined. He is known as the name Krishna, and he is both our destination and our companion.
Just as we travel to, say, New York to meet someone, and after meeting them we realise, oh, they were my neighbour in my flight. So like that, the supreme absolute truth is right now with us. We just have to tune our consciousness.
And that tuning happens through spiritual growth. So spiritual growth doesn't just change our perspective, doesn't just change our perception, making us more positive, but changes our perspective, raising our consciousness so that we can see problems without being disturbed by them, and we can respond more maturely. And in that way, whatever talents we have, talents, the capacity, two things.
The temperament is our inner self-mastery by which we can use those talents effectively. That comes by our spiritual connection. So from activity to productivity, a transition will happen through spirituality because our time is wasted in random thoughts, such as revenge fantasy, that will be curtailed.
The wrong programmes which consume our time, we can stop that consumption and act much more productively in our lives. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, I have a question.
I listen about the, you give an example about the animals, when they digest, sorry, us, when we digest the food, it's kind of the power, our higher power as well. But it is kind of confusing because we are consciousness about that power, but the same animals also have this power. Any animal we see, or maybe everything.
And that confuses us because we think we are like higher or superior to the other species, and we don't respect the other life, because we think of this higher power that also confuses us with ourselves, with who is me, and it's me, it's like identity and all this. So, if this is higher power within us which maintains us through digestion, but then is this higher power present in animals also? Sometimes thinking of this higher power may make us more proud and we disrespect and we neglect animals because of that. So, how does this understanding of spirituality, say, correlate with awareness of animal rights or sensitivity towards animals? The Bhagavad Gita explains that we are not that higher power.
We are parts of that higher power. And just as we are part of that higher power, all life is also part of that higher power. It says a wise person sees all life forms, be it human, be it a dog, be an elephant, be a cow, all animals, all living beings, they see equally because they see the spark of spirit within them.
That's why those who actually are of spiritually advanced consciousness, they abstain from causing harm to animals. At the very least, that means we strive to be vegetarians. Vegetarianism is just one part of it.
A whole spiritual worldview where we understand that we and all living beings are essentially, whether the human or the non-human, we are all members of the same one family. Now, are we superior? We are not superior in essence. We are all souls who are all similar.
But we are different in that we have a body and a mind which is more equipped. That means we can think existential questions. Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? These are fundamental questions that animals cannot ask.
But that doesn't mean they are permanently deprived. Their souls are there in animal bodies also. And there is transmigration that happens by which the souls will also come to human bodies in future.
And they will also be having the capacity to enquire spiritually. So in that sense, the spiritual worldview is a worldview of egalitarianism. We understand that everybody is spiritually similar.
With the animals as well, we are kind of going through the same way. Are we similar with the animals? Yes. As far as the body is concerned, we are similar.
As far as the body is concerned, the body functions for eating, sleeping, mating, defending. Their biological drive to survive, to reproduce. All this is common in humans and animals.
So in that sense, the basic bodily functions are similar. But we humans want to do something more than what the body offers. A cow will keep eating grass year after year after year.
We human beings try to improve our food. We have so many hundreds of cuisines we have. We do not keep eating the same food again day after day after day.
Cow may sleep under the same tree. We create so many different kinds of houses in which we want to live. So the tendency towards improvement that is there we see in the human beings.
This is an undeniable difference between humans and animals. That is why we humans have developed science, we have developed art, we have developed literature, we have developed language. So many areas we have developed that is because we have the capacity for improving things, which is meant to be directed spiritually.
So if we direct it materially, then we make certain improvements in some fields like say science or arts or something like that. If we direct it spiritually, then we make the maximum improvement. So we do not in any way disrespect animals.
And if there is a sense of superiority that comes, thinking that we are spiritual and animals are not, that is a misunderstanding. So we have certain gifts right now in the human body, which we should use. But while using them, we do not think that we are superior to other animals.
We understand that they are also at their core spiritual beings and they also need to be respected. Does this answer your question? Yes. Thank you.
Any other questions? There is something else on your mind? Yes, because about the power, I think all human beings or all life have this power, this movement. And the confusing point you found was that we are part of this and if I think that I am this, only this I get confused because I am like the centre of the universe or I have a mission or I am in the flow of the energy because all that is happening around the world, around everything, it comes just to me and it like I told you, I am confused with identity because identity gets confused. Correct, yeah.
So what exactly is our identity? Are we that power or are we a part of that power? If you are that power, then is everything centred on us? Actually, yeah, we are part of that power. Now the notion that we are ourselves that power, that is easily refutable by any daily experience. If we were that supreme power, we should be able to do anything and everything.
We can't fly in the sky. We can't stop our growing old. We can't stop even when nature calls us, we can't stop it for very long.
So we are surely not the supreme power. And just as there can be misconceptions which come from misunderstanding material level. It's like to think that matter is completely everything.
So that is misunderstanding, to think that we are materialistic creatures. But when you come to the spiritual realm also, there can be a misunderstanding where we think that I am that supreme power. So we are parts of that supreme power.
If we think that we are the supreme power, then we should not be an illusion. If I am the supreme power, then why am I powerless right now? If we say it is because of I am an illusion, and when I become enlightened, then I will realise I am the supreme power. But still, that means illusion is so powerful that it has made the supreme under illusion.
That means illusion is more powerful than the supreme, which doesn't make sense. The supreme has to be supreme. So we are parts of the supreme.
We are not that supreme power. We are parts of that supreme. And our connection with that supreme, when we say it's part, it's a connection of affection.
There's mutual affection between the part and the whole. And in this reciprocation of affection, there is a supreme satisfaction. Yes, I had a question.
So you mentioned about how we have three levels of existence, mind, body and soul. And you told us how computers have default settings, which may take us somewhere we don't want to go. Yeah.
So what determines those default settings? Is it the same in all of us? Okay, good question. So what determines the default settings in all of us? There are broadly five factors. There is our, what science would tell us is our genes.
Now genes, they determine certain physical features within us. Certain behavioural features are also, patterns are determined. Now if we understand the spiritual worldview, there is the soul, which goes from one body to another body.
So whatever we are right now, that is by the result of our past karma. We have had previous lives. In our previous lives, what we have done, that determines to a large extent what we get as a starting point in this life.
So even our genetic disposition, that comes from our past life karma. So the first factor that determines our programme is our past life karma, which may manifest through our genetic disposition. Second is our upbringing.
Now what kind of influences were there for us during our formative years? This is primarily determined by our parents. Then there is our association, our social circle. So our social circle refers to the kind of people we stay with, that also shapes our behaviour.
Now there are different schools of thought, which take each of these factors alone as final. So there is genetic determinism, which says we are determined only by our genes. Or there is what is called a social determinism.
Social determinism means that we are determined just by the social circumstances we are in. But these are all contributive causes. They are not decisive causes.
So apart from these three, there is a fourth factor is our own free will. So just like there may be certain programmes that pop up in my computer, still I have the capacity to choose. So we have free will.
So somebody may be born in a very financially and socially deprived situation. And because of that, some people may become criminals. They say, I hate the world which put me like this.
But some other people from that same situation may choose to become mature, responsible citizens, and they make a positive difference in the world. So we all have free will, which, so that means these three factors are upbringing, our association, and our past life karma manifesting as our genes. They push us, but they don't force us.
We can push back. They push us, but they don't force us. And our capacity to push back is our free will.
And this capacity to push back increases by the fifth factor. And the fifth factor is divine grace, is the connection through yoga that we establish that gives us access to the supreme power. And by that, our capacity to choose our responses increases.
So we have a certain amount of power, just like, say, there is a iron filing which is attracted to a magnet. Now, or we consider, say, sometimes in sound, there is a resonance effect that happens. So there's certain sound flowing in a particular direction, but when there's resonance, sound volume suddenly increases.
So like that, we have a certain amount of power. But when we align with the supreme, then by the divine grace, our power increases. And that's why when we practise yoga, especially when we practise bhakti yoga, we'll find that our capacity to choose increases.
So for all of us, this combination of factors is all different. So all this combination is different means that the past life, past life karma, this life's upbringing, our present association, all these are different. Now, among these five factors, the first two are more or less not changeable for us.
We have certain kind of genes, we have had a certain kind of upbringing. But the third factor, we can change. The kind of social circle we hang out with, if we change that, we'll find that our choices will also be shaped by that.
The fourth, of course, we have free will. And the more we become aware of our own thoughts, the more we become aware of our own actions, we can choose to change them. And especially yoga, the practise of yoga can empower us to connect with that inner power.
And by that we can maximise our capacity to reprogram ourselves to reprogram actually our body, mind, machines. Does that answer your question? So we'll stop here. Thank you very much for your kind attention.
And if any of you have any further questions, I'll be available for discussion after that. Thank you.