Evolve – Rising towards contribution and satisfaction
So, thank all of you for coming here today afternoon. Am I audible behind? Can you hear me? Thank you. So, today we'll be talking on the topic of evolve, the human initiative, the human instinct for improvement, and how we can tap it for finding fulfilment and achievement in our lives.
I'll talk this in three parts. First, I'll talk about some of my experiences that started me off on my journey of spiritual evolution. Then I'll talk something from what I learned from some wisdom texts, especially the Bhagavad Gita.
And then lastly, I'll talk about some of my experiences as I have been travelling all over the world, trying to share the spiritual wisdom. So, about 25 years ago, I was a student like all of you, and I was having a lot of faith in the power of education. The power of education not only to help us, help myself build a good career for myself, but also to make the world a better place.
So, when I was studying in my engineering, so at that time, one of my dreams was that I wanted to be the number one in my class. It's a common dream for all students have that, more or less. And somehow by a quirk of some quirk of destiny, I was always among the toppers, but I was never the topper.
I was second, third, joint first, but I was never the first. So, that was what I was craving for for a long time. And so, in my third year of engineering, when I was studying electronics and telecommunications at one of the premier institutes in India, at that time, I gave my GRE.
And I loved English since my childhood. So, when I gave the GRE, I got 2350 out of 2400, as mentioned in the introduction. And I was first, not just in my college, not just in the university, I was the first in the whole state.
I was first in the history of my college. I thought at that time, my dream is fulfilled now. I was typically gung-ho, jubilant about it.
But after the initial wave of euphoria went down, it struck me that just looking at the mark sheet, does not give much pleasure. It is only when people come and congratulate, at that time you feel happy. So, somehow it happened that three of my close friends, one after another, after another, forgot to congratulate.
So, the first time it happened, okay, I was a little annoyed. Second time it happened, I was just, how can you forget such a thing? They had no bad intention, but they thought the whole world knows about it. Everybody is appreciating.
Just overlook it. And the third time it happened, it was almost as if I had an out-of-body experience. Out-of-body experience means I look at myself from above, conceptually, and I felt, wait a minute, I thought that achieving this will give me satisfaction, will make me happy.
But here, it has actually made me more dependent on others for my happiness. Earlier, I could just interact with people, and I could be normal. But here, I'm so dependent on others to appreciate me.
And if they don't, it is causing me so much dissatisfaction. So, then I started thinking, that okay, tomorrow I can give another exam. I can crack that exam also.
I might again come first. But I'll always be dependent on externals for validation, for satisfaction. Is there some other way to gain satisfaction in life? That was the time when I started, I was always a wide reader of books, but that's the time I started reading a little bit more spiritual books.
Because I had heard and read, through spirituality, you can get happiness within yourself. So, I wanted to know what all this business was about. Now, parallel to that, I also, as I said, I had faith in the power of education.
It was firstly, that I could myself get satisfaction by it. And secondly, I could make a tangible contribution by it. So, while I was studying my engineering, I was also part of a social service organisation.
And we would go to the slums, or to the economically deprived sections of society, and we would conduct free tuition classes for the students. So, I used to teach maths, history, English. And so, when I used to go to the slums, many of those kids became friends.
And then I came to know that most of these kids, they're from totally dysfunctional families. Their fathers were alcohol abusers, there's domestic violence in their homes. And as they would tell their stories, it would be extremely distressing and even depressing.
And yet, when I would meet with their fathers, I saw that they're not bad people. They were appreciative that I was coming to them and teaching their kids. But then, the kids and their mothers would tell me that when they drink, they become a different person.
And they start breaking havoc in their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. So, at that time, our organisation decided to diversify into educating people and equipping people to break free from alcohol. So, one of my friends adopted a small village near Pune, where I was studying.
And we all started campaigning to help people break free from alcohol. And over a few months, as one village, it became completely free. Small village, it became dry.
So, that was considered a big success for us. But after that, one day, so I would go to the nearby slums and this friend would go to the village on those evenings. And he came back and he looked crestfallen.
I asked him what happened. He said, there have been the local municipality elections, the local government elections in the village. And one of the political candidates, in order to get votes, had brought three truckloads of liquor, free for everyone.
And not just the fathers, but even the kids had got drunk. So, at that time, I started thinking, you know, okay, I was working hard, I was going out of my way to make a contribution so that I could make a difference in people's lives. But was I really making a difference? So, I said, I'm trying to give them education, but there's something which is lacking over here.
And then, one of my models in my college, he was a student who had been a university topper throughout all his eight semesters. And when he passed out from the college, he got the highest paying job in the history of that college. And also, he was a chain smoker.
Now, whenever I would meet him, he was so brilliant. I studied electronics and telecommunications. So, whatever problem you just solve it so quickly, genius.
And yet, somehow, I couldn't figure out why he smoked so much, it's so dangerous. When I would talk with him, we were friends, he said, you know, I just enjoy this. This is what helps me to think fast.
So, I was thinking, are you thinking fast? You're not thinking at all. You're hurting yourself so badly. But then, tragically, soon after he got the job, within the first six months of working at that job, he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, and he died.
So, I saw from the uneducated strata of society, to the top educated students, I felt that there is something within us that causes us to destroy ourselves, to hurt ourselves. So, on one side, the fulfilling my dream did not give me satisfaction. On the other side, I found that whatever I was doing for making contribution to society, somehow, something was going wrong.
And it was not that I was free from this, I also had my self-destructive impulses. I was infamous for my short temper. And I was wondering what is it within us that makes us act in these ways.
So, that's the time when I read the Bhagavad Gita. And the Bhagavad Gita, the third chapter, 43rd verse, there's a question where the student, Arjuna, he asks the teacher there, Krishna, that, what is it that makes us act against our best interests? So, I felt this was the very question that I was having in my mind. Although I read the Gita, I couldn't figure out exactly what the answer was.
It took me some time to understand the answer. Then I met some teachers of the Gita that are discussing with them. And at that time, I understood that basically the Gita tells us that there are layers and levels to our personality.
We normally think of ourselves, we identify ourselves by our name, by our job, by our nationality, by our gender. And these all are parts of who we are. But along with these layers, there is something deeper.
So, for example, we may be, most of you may be students right now. But 10 years down the line, your identity won't be a student, you'll be a professional. Some of you may be from India or China or other countries.
Tomorrow, you might become nationals in Canada. So, your nationality can also change. So, all that we use to identify ourselves, that can change.
Sometimes people change names also. We were born before our name was born, before our name came in. We existed before our name.
So, all these are layers of who we are, but they are not who we are essentially. So, the Gita offers us a, Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text, and it offers broadly a three level conception of who we are. So, it says that there's a body, there's the mind, and there's the soul.
So, that is akin to, if you have a computer system, the hardware, the software and the user. And the tendency of human beings to want to improve things constantly. This is remarkably powerful.
And this ultimately comes from the essence of who we are, that is the soul. So, if we consider, we human beings and the rest of the world. So, there are human beings, there are non-human beings, and there is the insentient world around us.
Now, the insentient world lacks consciousness. Suppose I ask any of you, do you exist? What do you think? Do you exist? Say obviously yes. What kind of question is that? You say that if you're asking me, do you exist? You probably will get the question, does your intelligence exist? To ask a question like that.
Now, if I ask you, do you exist? You can answer yes. Now, if I ask, does this table exist? It also exists. But does it have awareness that it exists? No, it doesn't.
So, the difference between the living and the non-living is that living have consciousness. So, I talk about this, the physical, the mental and the spiritual. So, the spiritual side is present only in living beings.
It is not there in non-living beings. The symptom of the spiritual side within us is consciousness. We are all conscious.
And even animals have consciousness. But in animals, the consciousness is not developed much. And because the consciousness is not developed much, their efforts are driven primarily towards survival.
So, a cow will eat the same kind of grass day after day, month after month, year after year, generation after generation. We human beings, we have literally thousands of cuisines, thousands of items and each culture, each nationality has its own different kinds of foods. When we want to stay, animals also need some residence.
But birds will stay in the same kind of nest. But we human beings, we want to improve. So, we may have a small, some people may have a shack, but they want to have a bigger house.
They may want to have a row house. They may want to have a mansion. They might have a whole palace to themselves.
Or even if you don't increase size, you want to improve the quality. So, basically, this consciousness which we have, it's more developed in us human beings than in animals. And this consciousness makes us want to improve things constantly.
And this consciousness is what causes us to say, for example, investigate science and develop technology. A couple of years ago, I was invited to Cambridge University to speak on the topic of science and spirituality. So, I was going to the university.
We passed by the tree where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling. Now, imagine if instead of Newton, at that place, a monkey had been sitting and said the fruit fell down. What would the monkey have done? The monkey would have just picked up the fruit, eaten it and gone away.
Now, most humans might also have done the same thing. Just picked up the fruit, eaten it and gone away. But what did Newton do? He asked, hey, what made this fruit fall? And it was his brilliance that he, just from the simple everyday observation of a fruit falling, his questioning spirit led him to the postulation of the theory of gravity, which began the era of modern science.
So, basically, now in this case, what happened? As I said, we have a drive to improve. But how do we want to improve things? We all want to evolve, we can say. So, evolve and improve, they are similar.
I will just, in the later part of the talk, I will subtly differentiate between the two. But what is this drive? Where does it come from? So, I talked about the improvement urge in terms of you want better food, better place of staying. You want to have better understanding of things around us so that we can create better facilities.
So, once we understood the theory of gravity, we understood laws of motion, then we can have various forms of engineering, we can move faster and we can do various other things. So, there is urge to know more, this urge to do more and ultimately the urge to be happier more. Where does this urge come from? This urge, which is innate to us human beings, the way it is expressed may be different in different cultures, in different individuals, but everybody wants to improve things.
So, this, the Bhagavad Gita says, it comes from the soul. The soul, by nature, is in Sanskrit said, sat, chit, ananda. Sat is eternal.
Chit means conscious and ananda means joyful. So, we, because it is our nature, this is what we seek. We want to live forever, we want to know more and more and we want to enjoy, be happy more and more.
If we were simply products of matter with no spiritual side to us, then why would we have this urge to live forever? Suppose, there is a remote tribe in Africa, where the people are completely disconnected from the rest of the world. And one day, a child over there goes to his mother and says, mummy, mummy, I want a pizza. What would the mother ask first question? What is a pizza, isn't it? Or even if she knew what is a pizza, she would ask the child, how do you know about a pizza, isn't it? So, if there is nothing in the circumstance, which will give awareness of the pizza, where would that awareness come from? That is an actual question.
So, similarly, if we consider that nothing in the world around us lasts forever. Everything is perishing. Everything is temporary.
When the Twin Towers fell, it was not just a, I passed by the Twin Towers recently, when the place where the Twin Towers were, recently when I was in New York. So, when the Twin Towers fell, it was not just a fall of a structure. It represented the American, the Western dream of security and prosperity.
It symbolised that. So, it collapsed and caused a permanent scar on the American psyche. So, the point is that we implicitly know that nothing lasts forever, although we hope that things will last more and more.
So, when nothing around the world was going to last forever, why do we have within us the longing to live forever? Where does it come from? Most of the movies and novels are about romance and most of the romance stories are about H-E-A, happily ever after. Now, in real life, we know that nobody lives forever and yet millions of people watch this and love watching it. Why? Because this is an innate longing of the human heart.
So, where does it come from? It actually comes not from anything external. It comes from our core. The core is the soul and the soul by nature is eternal.
And the eternal soul is now trying to seek eternity at the physical level. Because the soul is currently identifying with the body. Soul is seeking eternity at the physical level.
Similarly, with respect to knowledge. Knowledge means we all want to know more and more and more. So, the whole of science is developed because of the human urge to know.
So, again, where does this urge to know come from? This table exists, but it has no urge to know. Animals also exist. They have some urge to know, but humans have a far greater urge to know than everybody, all other species.
So, this comes because the soul's consciousness is by nature knowledge seeking. They're conscious and the consciousness is well developed. So, Einstein said that the sciences, the arts and the religions, they're all products of the same tree.
When we try to enquire about the world around us, that leads to development of science. When we try to represent the world around us using our creativity, that leads to arts. When we try to understand or connect with what exists beyond the world, that leads to religion.
In today's world, the word religion has got somewhat negative connotation. But in Einstein's time, when he used the word religion, he essentially meant what we would call a spirituality. So, the same human urge to know.
What exists? What is this world all about? How can I understand and replicate it? And does anything exist beyond this? So, this is what leads to the development of knowledge. And then we all want happiness. Sat, chit, ananda.
Innumerable are the ways in which we seek happiness. And since time immemorial, people have been trying to expand the human capacity for happiness. One of the favourite activities that we do for seeking happiness is eating.
Now, our bodies have limited capacity to eat. Many of you may have seen the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs. So, they tried to expand the human capacity to enjoy by eating.
What did they do? They had their physicians design painless vomiting pills. So, they would have their big plates with feast to eat, they would eat it, and they would get this vomiting pill, take it, vomit everything out, and then eat again, and enjoy, and then again vomit it out, and eat again. In this way, they tried to enjoy.
But what was the result of this? It's the eating, our eating capacity is not just determined by our stomach capacity. The very time food goes in and comes out, it causes the whole alimentary canal gets exerted. And those pharaohs who tried this, they all died young.
And after they stopped trying it. The point is, we all want happiness. And in fact, most of the entertainment industry in today's world is for the purpose of happiness.
Our real life doesn't seem so stimulating. So, we want some enjoyment. In entertainment, how do we get the enjoyment? We all want more enjoyment than what is naturally available to us in the world around us.
And we seek it through entertainment. So, now, when we seek it through entertainment also, what are we doing? Say, a hero is beating up some villains. And people in the audience, they identify, come on, I'm beating you.
They identify with that and they get some pleasure. So, the hero and heroine are hugging, people start whistling at that. Why? Because they think, oh, if only I was there, I'd be enjoying so much.
So, you are projecting over there in order to increase our enjoyment. And that's why many times when people go to watch movies, they have something to eat, popcorn or something like that. Now, why? Because everything is imaginary, something has to be real.
So, all the other enjoyment is actually secondhand. Somebody else is doing the enjoyable things and we are imagining. If I were there, I would enjoy.
So, our whole entertainment industry is an example of how we humans seek pleasure. And in seeking pleasure, we want more pleasure than what our bodies and our world naturally gives us. So, we seek it through entertainment and we use our technology to get more and more entertainment by which we hope to get more and more enjoyment.
So, this urge to evolve, to want to live longer, to know more and to enjoy more. This is what we see universally. And this is what has led to the development of science.
And science and its application technology has transformed the world like an unprecedented way. If we consider the past few hundred years, luxuries which were unimaginable even for royalty a few hundred years ago are now commonplace. Air conditioning is an example.
Aeroplane travel is another example. So, we have unprecedented levels of comforts. Certainly, we have evolved significantly and yet we don't seem to be becoming happier.
How can we know that? One major evidence for this is the sheer amount of mental health problems that people have. So, 1 million people commit suicide every year. This 1 million figure is more than the number of people who are killed in wars and murders combined together.
I just came from America, there is a big concern that now there is free guns available and some mad gunmen may just go and shoot innocent kids. It's a major concern. But far more number of people who are killed by gunmen or by gangsters or in wars, far more than that are the number of people who are killing themselves.
So, what is happening? All living beings struggle for life but some of us are so distressed that we want to end our lives and it's not just one or two. The figure of 1 million means that it's one suicide every 40 seconds. That means since we started this talk almost 45 to 50 people have committed suicide.
Suicide is just the last of a whole epidemic of mental health problems. So, if we are seeking happiness and we have made so much technological progress then why is there so much distress? Where has our urge to evolve and improve things gone wrong because of which instead of getting happiness we are getting distress? Certainly in many ways we are more comfortable than people in the past. But we could say we are today comfortably distressed.
Our bodies are comfortable, not too hot, not too cold, comfortable, cosy. But the mind is distressed. So, going back to the earlier model I talked about, the Gita talks about model of body, mind and soul.
The hardware, the software and the user. So, the Gita explains that it is the software that has become corrupted and I might have a brand new iPhone and externally it will look wonderful but the software is corrupted and I can do nothing with it. Similarly, when the mind is disturbed, the mind is distressed, person may be young, healthy, attractive but they become incapable of doing much.
So, the whole of scientific progress has focused on improving the hardware, improving things at the physical level but we have neglected the mental and the spiritual side. So, we have got tremendous progress, the urge to evolve, the urge to improve has been phenomenally channelled at one level of reality. But another level of reality has been neglected and the result of that is we have comfort at the physical level but we have distress at the mental level.
So, we need a more balanced sense for progressing, balanced sense of progress, a more holistic understanding of evolution. So, when you talk about evolution, the evolution is ultimately not of the body, it is not even of the mind. Evolution is of the consciousness coming from the soul.
To the extent our consciousness evolves, to that extent satisfaction will be found within us and then we will become channels for sharing satisfaction with others. To the extent our consciousness is not evolved, to that extent we will use our energy, our intelligence in a way that will not give us satisfaction, rather that will cause us frustration and will cause others frustration. Just like sometimes a virus in a system, it will just stop that computer from functioning.
But sometimes the virus in one computer can not only stop the computer from functioning, it can just delete the whole data and it may be connected to other systems in the network and it can destroy the whole network. Sometimes there is malware which infects and then there can be chaos. So, the corruption of the software of the mind is a problem that we all need to address.
So, to understand what do I mean by this corruption, I invite all of you to do a simple thought experiment. So, wherever you are seated, you can sit comfortably and you can close your eyes with me. And after closing your eyes, now you can take three deep breaths.
One, two. Now with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you. Because your eyes are closed, you can't see what is physically in front of you.
But still there is something like an inner screen on which you may see various things. You may see an image of this room. You may see an image of your room where you stay.
You may see an image of your classroom. You may see a friend. You may see a book that you are reading.
You may see your phone. You may see various images coming and going on that inner screen. Or you may just see a dull haze of various colours.
But whatever be specific that you see on that inner screen, there is some screen on which you see it. Now as you are looking at the inner screen, try to take a step back and catch sight of who it is that is looking at that inner screen. There is the inner screen and there is a seer of that inner screen.
So try to take a step back and look at the inner seer. Try once again. Take a step back and try to look at the inner seer.
No matter how many steps you take, the inner seer steps back with you. You are the inner seer. What you are looking for is what you are looking with.
So you, the inner seer, is the soul. The inner screen is the mind. And what you see outside is the physical world.
Now you can take one deep breath and you can open your eyes. Thank you. So the normal perception happens when the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer seeing, they are all in line.
So I am looking at you, so you are looking at me. So if the inner screen acts like a window and it shows what is out there, then we can perceive clearly. So we have focused in our evolution, attempt at evolution, to improve the outer seeing, to make things better and better.
But unfortunately, the inner screen is very volatile. It is very restless. It doesn't always show what is there in the outer seeing.
The inner screen wanders here, there and everywhere. It's not just a static screen. It is actually, it can also act like a TV.
While we are talking, sometimes you are talking with someone and the person just gets lost. Earth to you! Earth to you! Come back! What happened to you? So what has happened? The inner screen at that time starts acting like a TV. You just go off somewhere.
No, this happened, that happened. What about this? What about that? Sometimes we get lost in our thoughts. So now, this model, if we consider the inner seeing, the outer seeing, the inner screen and the inner seer.
So Martin Luther King said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Our technological power has outrun our spiritual power. What has happened is, when we have mental health problems, when we have mental distress, essentially what is happening is the inner screen is going off in a direction or it is showing images which causes distress.
When people become suicidal, it is not that they are suffering so much at a physical level. Yes, they may be having some distress at the physical level. But the mind keeps replaying whatever is the bad thing that has happened again and again and again and again.
So basically people have two major categories of mental health problems. One is anxiety and the other is depression. So when the inner screen goes off into the past and starts replaying all the bad things that have happened and then we start thinking the future is going to be the same again, then we get depressed.
So when the inner screen goes into the past and repeats, replays the negativities of the past, that causes depression. When the inner screen goes into the future and starts depicting all the terrible things that may happen in the future, that causes anxiety. So if the inner screen could just stay in the present and focus on what we can do, our distress would go down substantially.
Now this inner screen, what makes it go here, there, everywhere? It is what are the impressions present within it. So the inner screen is like a software. Say if you have a browser and say on that browser you have visited a particular site.
Say I come from India. India's movie industry is very famous. It is called say Bollywood.
So now if someone has visited Bollywood.com repeatedly, now they come to a spiritual programme and they hear, oh there is a spiritual book called Bhagavad Gita. I want to know more about this. So they go in the browser and type Bhagavad Gita.
So as soon as they type B, what gets completed over there? Bollywood. So now when Bollywood gets completed, if they don't change anything, they just go to Bollywood.com. So that has happened because that is the preference that is stored in the software, in the browser. Similarly, our mind has its preferences stored, its impressions are there and the impressions that are stored in the mind become its propositions.
Come on, eat this, watch this, do this, touch this, go there. And in today's world, we have improved the physical reality so much that so many impressions get stored in the mind. And they say, come on, do this, do that, do that, do that.
And because we have so much technological progress, so the result of that is we start feeling that we should be able to control things in my mind. Because if I feel hot, I can just turn on the AC. If I feel cold, I can turn on a heater.
So we have got so much more control on the externals that we feel that we should be able to control everything. And when we are not able to control anything, then that just drives us wild. So because of the increased capacity to control in the mind, the impression is stored that I should be able to control things.
And when something I am not able to control, I just cannot reconcile it. So I earlier talked about the virus that has contaminated the software of the mind. The primary virus is the notion that we can be the sole controllers or we can be the full controllers.
We certainly have some level of control. But when we expect more control than what we can have, then the lack of control or the failure to control causes us frustration. And that causes us to go wild.
So we just can't reconcile. How could this go wrong? How could this go wrong? How could this person do this? How could this happen to me? The whole world creates an illusion, especially the outer world's progress, creates an illusion that life is meant to be enjoyable. Yes, life has its good parts, life has its bad parts.
But this expectation that we should be the controllers, when we are not able to control, we just can't digest it. And that's why the mind gets wild. The greater the expectation of control, the greater is the agitation when there is inability to control.
So the urge to evolve that is there, that has led to the physical progress, just created an impression that we should be able to control. And when something doesn't work out right, say I give an exam and I'm not able to pass it, I try to go into a relationship and it doesn't work out. We tend to see it not just as that one exam not working out or that relationship not working out.
It challenges our self-conception itself. It challenges our self-worth. So I'm meant to be controlled, I'm not able to control.
Maybe something is wrong with me. Failure is an event in our life and it will happen in everyone's life. But when the software has this contamination that I'm meant to be the controller, that failure becomes not an event in our life, failure becomes a defining event of our life.
We start thinking, oh, not that I failed, we start thinking I am a failure. Not that this relationship, this won't work out, there must be something wrong with me because of this relationship not working out. And this creates enormous amount of negativity.
So for us to cleanse this virus, you know, this inner virus that is there, the mind has its own propositions, its own expectations and which are basically the results of what we have stored over there. This causes enormous agitation when things don't work out the way we want them to. So I'll conclude with two metaphors to illustrate how this can be corrected.
So when we try to control and when we are not able to control, we just go to the other extreme and we try to escape from the reality of life. We may escape by entertainment, we may escape by addiction or we may escape even by self-destruction, suicide. All these are the default responses of a frustrated mind unable to cope with the reality that I can't be a controller.
Or at a lesser level, we might just take anxiety medicines, tranquillizers, we might take antidepressants. So we are not able to reconcile with the reality that yeah, how can I not be the controller? I must be able to control, I must be able to do this. So actually, we have some control.
We don't have full control. But to the extent we expect that we will have full control, not having control just makes us overwhelmed. Suppose we are swimming in an ocean and while swimming, we have certain energy to swim and we can move in the desired direction.
But if the waves become very strong, then we may not be able to move in the desired direction. Now if at that time, oh, I can't move in this direction, so I just quit. And then the waves will carry me anywhere and everywhere.
So in ocean, we have some control, but there are times when we may have no control. At that time, okay, the waves have come, now I can't control. Let me just tolerate these waves.
They may take me off course, but eventually the waves will subside, then I can start moving again. So we have to recognise that just because I can't control some things doesn't mean that nothing is in my control. Just because I'm not able to control something doesn't mean that I'm a failure.
So this capacity to learn to let go of things, that is a great power. So similarly, another example like the ocean would be the example of, say, when you're doing public speaking. Most people have a great fear of public speaking.
Even 25 years ago, when I started, I made a complete mess of the first public talk, first talk that I gave. So now when we speak in public, at that time, we have control over some things. We don't have control over some things.
We have control over how we prepare the content and how we prepare to deliver that content. We don't have control over the audience's reaction. Many times people get fearful and paralysed thinking of speaking in public because they are visualising the audience's reaction.
Now what if people laugh at me? No, we want people to laugh with us, not laugh at us. What if people laugh at me? What if people mock me? What if this happens? What if that happens? So the more we think of what is not in our control, the more we lose our capacity to do what is in our control. So I can prepare for my class and I can give my best presentation.
In public speaking, the audience is never against us. What do I mean the audience is never against us? It's not that the audience will agree with what we are saying, but the audience is not against us in the sense that the audience wants us to give a good presentation. They have spent their time to come and hear, so that means that they are interested.
They want us to make our case properly so that they can evaluate whether they want to agree with what we are saying or not agree. So they are with us in the sense that they want us to make a good case. But the more we think of their reaction, the more that is something which we can't control that may cause us to panic.
So I'll conclude with an acronym F.E.A.R. Fear is a big problem which all of us have and to learn to counter this virus which is there within our minds which makes us malfunction. This is an acronym that we can use. So F is focus.
Focus means, I feel this is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong. Focus means ask yourself the question, what is the exact problem right now? I go to my office and I see a strange look in my boss's eyes and immediately my mind starts moving. You are going to be fired.
You are going to lose your job. Oh, where will you stay? How will you pay your mortgage? You'll be on the streets. You'll be distressed.
You'll be disgraced. Wait a minute, wait a minute. What is the exact problem right now? So when we ask, we interact with the world in two ways.
We take in information and we do some action. So focus means what is the exact problem? Okay, the problem is when my boss looks at me strangely. Okay, but what is the exact problem right now? Is the boss look itself a problem? My exact problem is, you know, I have this assignment to complete, but I'm lagging behind in it.
Okay, so now the exact problem is that I have to, I have not done this assignment. So from the whole fog that the mind creates, this is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong. To the extent the problem appears very generic, we can't do much about it.
It's like if there is fog everywhere, how can you fight the fog? We can't fight it. But suppose some person, sometimes when you want to, there is some disruptive crowd is there, then they may just, the police or whoever, they may create a fog. People just can't see anything.
People have to become paralysed. So if you go beyond the fog, the source from which the gas that is creating the fog is coming, switch it off. So what exactly is the problem that causes us to focus? Not here.
Okay, this is the problem. Then E is engage. Engage means what can I do about it right now? What can I do about it? Okay, this is the problem, this is the problem, this is the problem.
Okay, but this problem is right now, what can I do about it? Now, when suppose say we are given a full watermelon to eat. You know, we can't eat it. Our mouth, how much can we widen it? So we cut the watermelon into small pieces.
Then we can take one one piece. So what can I do about it right now? Some things we can do something about right now, something will be later. Okay, I have got to do this assignment, let me do it right now.
See, usually when we are not doing anything right now, that is when the mind starts agitating us. So during our leisure time, the mind works over time. Hey, this will go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong.
Okay, engage. Do something constructive. That doesn't mean we have to be running around doing work, but even if you are relaxing, do it in a focused way.
So what can I do about it right now? These two questions, I told you the mental health problems come when the inner screen goes off into the past or the future and start showing a horror movie. These two questions get the inner screen back to the present. What is the exact problem? Focus on that.
And what can I do about it right now? Engage in that. Third is A. A is arise. Arise means that we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level.
We understand that I am not directly affected by whatever goes on in this world. I am a non-physical being. I am beyond this world.
I had a friend who last year when I had come to America, the hurricane Irma hit Florida. So I left Irma to go to New York to do some talks, but he was staying in Florida on a writing retreat and he cut himself off from the world. So when he had cut himself off from the world, one morning he came up and he saw there's water all around.
He just became a little alarmed. He turned on his internet. He had blocked that.
He started surfing. There was no internet. He tried to call.
He couldn't make any phone call. Then as he was dismayed, suddenly the power went off. And he could see that the rain was coming and the water level was rising, rising, rising.
So then he became more and more panicky. Not knowing what can I do. So then finally, looking around here and there, he found that something seemed to be like a door behind a closet.
He pulled the closet aside. He saw there was a door. And he just pulled the door open.
There was a narrow fleet of stairs which he led up to an attic. He raced up to the attic and he stayed over there. The water level rose.
It inundated the ground level, but he was safe. And eventually the rains went down and then he was rescued. So similarly for us, we normally live on the ground level of reality, the physical level of reality.
But we have a spiritual side that is eternal, that is indestructible. That is the reality of who we are. So to the extent we arise, that means there are various practises.
We can do meditation. We did some mantra meditation at the start of the session. These are all practises by which we can raise our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And when we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level, we experience security within ourselves. Although there is uncertainty outside, but we experience security within. So A is Arise.
We need to have some kind of spiritual understanding and spiritual practises by which we can raise our consciousness upwards. And R is Release. Release means let go of that which is not in our control.
So the more we try to hold on to the things that are not in our control, the more we agitate ourselves because that is not in our control. Now suppose, I am from India. India-Pakistan often has some rivalry going on or India-China has a rivalry going on.
So if we are from a country and from that country had a battle with some other country war and they say that country lost the war battle. India is a cricket mad country. So a few months ago there was a India-Pakistan Champions Trophy Finals and India was expected to win, but India lost terribly.
So after that one boy told me, at three nights I could not sleep. I told him, if the cricketers went to sleep, you could not sleep. What was happening? He was replaying.
How could India play like this? How could this batsman play like this? How could this bowler bowl like this? How could this fielder drop this catch? So if we keep spending our time in replaying a battle that is already lost, that is something of no use. We just have to let go. Just because a battle is lost does not mean the war is lost.
So let go means things that are not in our control, just let go of them. And spiritual understanding makes it easier for us to let go because we understand that there is a bigger plan to life. There is a bigger plan to life and there is a higher power that is controlling things.
So even things that appear to be bad for us, good can come out of them. So rather than stewing on the bad, let's focus on the good. Now there is the higher power was known by different names in different traditions.
Some tradition they call it infinite, some call it god. In our bhakti yoga tradition, we call that ultimate reality by the name Krishna. So we can only see finitely.
So we say that now we look at the present and plan the future. No, Krishna looks at the future and plans the present. So sometimes things which may appear very wrong, terrible from our present perspective, why did this have to happen? But in the future, something good might come out of it.
So if it is let go, I don't know why this happened, but whatever it is, I accept it and move on in my life. Let go of it. So I was last year in Fort in Florida.
I was giving this talk and after that a Ukrainian girl, she came and told me she had a real life experience of this, how you let go of things. So she said that we have a spiritual retreat centre in West Virginia on top of a mountain called New Vrindavan and she had gone there for a retreat and she was working in a cruise ship. So suddenly her boss called her, you have to come back, our ship is leaving.
Now that was a remote place, so she did not have any easy way to go from there. So she asked around if anybody was going to the airport and she came to know one boy was leaving next morning. She said I'm going to leave at 10 o'clock, I can drop you to the airport.
So she came there at 9.45, ready, 10, 10.15, 10.30, 10.45, 11. She was calling, trying to call this boy, but there's a remote place, so there's no range also. And finally 11.30 she got some range and this boy said, oh, I'm sorry, I completely forgot.
And he says, I also have to catch a flight. I can't come back now. He was furious.
How could you forget like this? And he was mad with anger. So that evening somehow she went back and she stayed in her room. That evening she just came out to a garden and we had a spiritual centre over there.
She was just socialising with other people. So another lady, she told her, did you know about this boy? Yes. He says his car met with a terrible accident.
He says he was driving down the road and a drunk driver hit him. And then she showed the photos. This drunk driver had hit straight on the passenger side.
So although the car was battered, he had been uninjured. And his trucker at that time, she had been driving, she would have been sitting on the passenger, she had been driving with that boy, she would have been sitting on the passenger side. And she would have died.
So why did that boy forget? Who knows. But through that, it was not that that boy knew there's going to be an accident and that's why I forgot. But even through people's mistakes, even through our mistakes, there is a higher plan that is working.
And if we just keep doing the best that we can, then eventually good will come out of it. Just like if you're driving with Google, if you take a Google says, okay, take a left turn and you take a right turn. Then what happens, eventually Google recalibrates, okay, take a right, take this turn from here.
If you take another wrong turn, again Google recalibrates and take a right turn from here. So sometimes in our life, bad things may happen, wrong turns may be taken, either because of our mistakes, other's mistakes. But you should know that we don't have to agitate or stew over the wrong turns.
Let go. That's happened in the higher plan. From here, let me do the course correction.
Let me move on. So if we have this spiritual understanding, we'll find that the mind's agitations will go down substantially. And we will be able to work much more positively with all the technology that we have, all the resources we have, we will be able to make a positive contribution in our own lives, to our satisfaction and to other's satisfaction.
So I'll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on the topic of evolve and how to find more fulfilment and achievement in our lives. I talked about how all living beings live, but we want to seek improvement.
So I've started with my story about how I wanted a greater happiness, which I sought through education and achievement in education, but it led not to happiness, but dependence on others for happiness. I wanted to make a greater contribution, but I found that attempt to help people don't work because there's something self destructive within them and not just within them, within me also. So then I understood from the Bhagavad Gita that the self destructive impulse is lodged in the intermediate level of reality.
There are multiple levels of being for us. So the body, the mind and the soul. It's like the hardware, software and user.
So the software of the mind is corrupted by a virus. And to understand what that virus is, I talked about first what the soul is. The soul is Sat Chit Anand.
It is eternal, knowledge filled and joyful. And we are seeking that eternity, greater life, longer life, greater knowledge and greater joy at the physical level through the advancement of science and technology. And we have succeeded to a large extent in many ways improving the physical reality.
But still at the mental level, there is unprecedented amount of distress. So why do we have psychological distress amidst technological progress? That's because the more the outer world is improved, the more we have developed the notion that we are meant to be the controllers. And when we are not able to control, that causes unbearable frustration for us.
And then I did a thought experiment of the inner screen and the inner seer and the outer sea. So when we are unable to control, the inner screen misfires and goes off into the past and causes depression. It goes off into the future and causes anxiety.
So in order to avoid this distress, in order to evolve holistically, not just at the physical level, but at a mental and spiritual level, we need to gain a proper perspective that we have some control, we don't have full control. So when we are swimming, sometimes the waves are so strong that we may take in another direction. But once the waves subside, we can move on.
So instead of oscillating between the idea of full control and no control, we realistically act according to our capacity. And for that, I talked about the acronym FEAR. F is, does anyone remember? Focus.
Thank you. E is? Engage. A is? Rise.
And R is? Release. Yeah. Focus means what is the exact problem right now? Instead of trying to fight with mist, go to the source from which the misty gas is coming.
Catch that. What can I do about right now? Instead of find something tangible to do, the mind will calm down. Arise means I have a spiritual core within me which is indestructible.
Like in a flood, my friend went to a higher level and was safe like that. By realising our spirituality through practises like meditation, we can experience security internally. And release means even if things are going wrong, there is a higher plan.
So even from the bad, good can come. So what appears bad in the present may turn out to be good in the future. So therefore, let go of the things that are not in our control.
Instead of fighting battles that are already lost, we focus on fighting the battles that we can fight. And in this way, when our inner screen starts aligning with the outer world, we all can avoid unnecessary distress at the mental level and tap the power of progress for our as well as others good. Thank you very much.
So are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. So you said that we have self-control and not full control. And we struggle for that.
So how do we know exactly? And is it the ego that wants full control and the soul that has full control? Okay, yeah. So we have some control, but we want full control. So is it the ego that wants or the soul have full control? Full control is there with the infinite consciousness.
We are finite consciousness, and we have some amount of control. So the tendency to overestimate our capacity to control is present because of the ego. Now, the soul itself is pure.
And when the soul is pure, then the soul can realistically estimate. This is what I can do. This is what I can't do.
But when the soul's conceptions are contaminated, as I said, by the virus, then we are not able to perceive properly. And with respect to the inner world, it is very difficult to specifically point out this is caused by this or this is caused by this. So where something is coming from is much more difficult to discern.
Much easier is where is it taking? That means if, okay, I'm not able to deal with the situation, I want to control this. And we do need to control certain things in our life. So as a student, say we have to study.
As a public speaker, I had to prepare my class. We all need a certain level of control. But the key is that we need to be able to respond to reality.
That means sometimes the same thing which I was able to control yesterday, I may not be able to control today. Yesterday, I had a good throat. I could speak fluently.
Today, I don't have a good throat. I can't speak fluently. So then the dynamic capacity to respond to reality, this is the sphere of control I have today.
Let me do the best that I can. This requires active intelligence. Usually when we get too involved in things, too caught in things, then we can't distance ourselves and gain perspective.
That's why if we regularly have some time for spiritual rejuvenation, either reading wisdom texts or doing some meditation, then that creates a distance. That period of connecting with ourselves helps us distance ourselves from our situations and our emotions. And then we can gain proper perspective.
Life is like a tennis match. In a tennis match, sometimes the player is serving. And the player is serving, they have control whether to put the ball in the forehand or the backhand or into the body at what height.
But sometimes the players are returning. In returning, all that they can do is just get the ball back into the court. If the player's returner is good at the forehand, but if the player is going to play at the backhand, you hit at the forehand, you just hit air to play at the backhand.
So sometimes in our life, we are serving and sometimes we are returning. So even those who are returning also can become expert returners. Even in the limited control, many players have won tennis championships just by their returning skills.
So even in constricted control also we have some control. So understanding which situation in life I'm serving and which situation I'm returning, that we can understand if we have periodic times of withdrawal, of connecting with ourselves, of spiritual rejuvenation, then we can discern the outer reality better. And then we can respond to it in the most effective way.
Does that answer your question? Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Maybe a few of you could just speak. Yeah.
Okay. Let me answer the second question first. Are we humans wired to look for meaning? But what if there is just no meaning? Yes, that is a possibility that there is no meaning.
But actually the whole of scientific progress is based on the assumption that there is some order in nature. As Newton saw the fruit fall, he asked, what made this fruit fall? Now that question implies that fruits don't fall by chance. There is some pattern behind it.
And then he tried to discern that pattern. Newtonian physics worked for almost 200-300 years. But in the 20th century, as science expanded into the realm of the subatomic and the cosmic, the Newtonian physics stopped working.
The subatomic particles of the cosmic bodies didn't seem to be obeying the laws of physics as understood by Newton. So scientists did not give up the idea. Oh, there is no order to it.
Maybe there is a deeper order. And that is how they came up with the theory of quantum physics for exploring subatomic particles motion and relativity for explaining the order at the cosmic level. So the basic point is science itself will stop working if there were no order or pattern in things.
Albert Einstein is attributed to have said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. What this means is, say suppose we go to sleep and we wake up and we find I don't know where I am.
We seem to be in a lost place. And then suddenly some paper floats by the bed. And we see that paper has something written in it.
It is written in a language that we can understand and it is giving the message that we need. Okay, go left, go here, we'll get back to the room. The full direction is back.
Now, would such a paper just be there by chance? If you consider the world around us, Eugene Wigner wrote a paper called, he is a Nobel laureate scientist, a paper called Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Study of the Natural World. So he said, maths is basically a construct of our mind. We consider triple integral calculus or imaginary numbers.
There is nothing directly correlating with that in the outer world. So maths is a construct of our mind. If there were no higher plan, then why would it be that the way our mind is structured internally, the way the world is structured externally, that there is a correlation between the two.
That our mind can find patterns out there. If this were a result, if our brains were a result of unguided natural processes, if the world were a result of unguided natural processes, then why is it that there is a correlation between the way we think and the way the world works? Okay, why is it that the messages kept floating by and it is a language that I can understand and it has a meaning that I need to understand? These three correlations, the brain's capacity to think rationally, the world's having an order which is present and these two correlating in a way that we can understand. Like I am lost somewhere and I come to a door, come to a house and I find a key over there and the key exactly fits the door and I go inside and I find shelter over there.
But how did the key come from? How did the key exactly fit that door? How did that door come over there? These are serious questions. So the very basis of science is that there is an order in nature. Without that no science will be able to do any scientist.
So somehow we want to fragment the natural world from the human world. And we say that in the natural world there is order, but in the human world there is no order. That means, why do planets move in their orbits? It is because of the law of gravity.
Why does this happen? It is because of this law. Why does this happen? It is because of this law. But why does life exist? It has no purpose.
It is like saying that we have islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness. This makes sense, this makes sense, but life, it doesn't make any sense. So that doesn't make any sense.
If the islands of meaning are there, then maybe the ocean also has a meaning. I just need to go deeper to find it. So the very fact of science, the functional assumption of science is that there is some order.
And as science is discovering more and more knowledge, it indicates that that assumption that there is an order in nature is being vindicated. To understand how that order encompasses the human beings, we need to expand our conceptions. To take in not only the physical world, but the non-physical world also.
That way we can understand that order. Thank you. Thank you.
Any last question? It is very wonderful. There are many things which I have observed. Once you speak to us, it is more of a one-to-one connection.
So I am very happy that it is possible. Thank you very much for coming. So one last question and we will stop.
Anyone else? Not asked till now. We can talk later. Yeah, last question.
So science has seen evolution in terms of competition. That is because the organisms compete and do have a survival advantage that they seem to have more resources. So it isn't the same opportunity to us.
Can it be that the spiritual reason is itself embedded in science? Because say for the case of humans, people try to have more pleasure and entertainment so that they have an advantage over other human beings, so that they have a satisfaction that they have acquired more than others. So isn't this scientific situation embedded in the spiritual reason? Okay. So what you are saying is that just as nature has given us all living beings some abilities by which they can survive.
So isn't the spiritual ability is also present in us so that we can survive, we can get advantage over other living beings? There are two different points over here. There is the effect and there is the source. So we can say that A has the effect B. But that A has the effect B, which is desirable, doesn't explain why A is present.
That A has the effect B, that explains why A should be present. But that doesn't tell where A came from. The need for the presence of something doesn't explain its origin.
The two are different things. The same way, if I need food and food is there, why is the food here? Because why is the food here? Now we are going to have some food after this. So why is the food here? Because people will be hungry at lunch time.
Yeah, that's true. But that doesn't explain where the food came from. You are getting the reason why something is present, doesn't necessarily explain where it came from.
So similarly, we all living beings, we have been given certain attributes. And those attributes may serve certain functional purposes. But still, where do those attributes come from? That is the fundamental question.
See, science may be able to explain more and more. And as science is advancing, it is explaining more and more. But we are not talking about specific explanations here.
The very explainability of science requires an explanation. What do you mean by the explainability of science requires an explanation? That means, this happens because of this. Because this happens, we need this feature or this feature is there.
Because this happens, this feature is there. Because this happens, this feature is there. But where exactly does this feature come from? If we consider, okay, we human beings have a spiritual faculty, by which we can in some ways be better than others.
That still doesn't explain where does the spiritual faculty come from? The source is something which is very mysterious. There's a Nobel laureate physicist, Dr. Wilder Penfield. He tried to find out inside the human brain, where does the consciousness come from? He did almost 40 years of study.
And he wrote many books. One of the last books he wrote was called The Mystery of the Mind. And in that, he did various experiments.
One experiment, he had a subject. We know that different areas of the brain are connected with different bodily functions. So he had a subject raise his hand, and he observed the corresponding area of the brain was activated.
And he asked the subject to lower his hand, that area got deactivated. Then he used electrodes, external probes, to activate that area of the brain. And then the hand went up.
He asked the subject, what happened? He said, my hand went up. He said, did you raise your hand? He said, I didn't raise my hand, you did. Then he deactivated that area of the brain.
The hand went down. He said, what happened? He said, my hand went down. Did you put your hand down? No, I did, you did.
To understand the implication of this, say we can consider if there is a printer next to my computer here. And here is a print button. So if I press the print button, the print hand will start moving.
If I stop, raise the finger from there, the printer will stop. So now, later, you can come and you can press the print button. And again, the printer hand will start moving and stop moving, and I release it.
So the area of the brain, which is connected with the motor function of raising and lowering of the hand, that is like the print button. In the second case, this is Dr. Penfield's reasoning. In the second case, it was he, Penfield, who pressed the button and caused the hand to go up and down.
In the first case, who pressed it? In the second case, the subject said, I am not doing it, you are doing it. In the first case, he said, I was doing it. So who is that I, who is saying this? Then while repeating this experiment, Penfield activated different other areas of the brain.
And when he activated different areas of the brain, what happened was, still, no matter which area of the brain is activated, never did the subject get the sensation that, get the, that I am doing things. Things were happening. We activated the area of the brain and suddenly the subject will remember some phone conversation they had 20 years ago.
They will remember some smell that they had smelt many years ago, whatever. But it was just an event happening. It was not what they were doing.
Who is the initiator of the action? So after years of study, Dr. Penfield, who incidentally is a Canadian neurosurgeon, is considered to be the father of neurosurgery, Nobel laureate from Canada. So he said that, the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. The brain is like a computer, but it is programmed by something outside of itself.
So we do have consciousness, but the survival advantage or the functional advantage of having spirituality does not in itself explain the source of spirituality. That source is something which we are concerned about, not just the functional advantage. So thank all of you very much for your kind attention and participation.
Thank you very much. So I have a few books here.