From Stress Management to Self Management
So I am grateful to be here at SMA.
And thank you for coming. And I will be speaking on the topic of from stress management to self-management. So I will speak this in four parts, as is mentioned over here, in the four broad parts of the talk.
And after each part of the talk, if you have any reflections or any questions, you could speak that. And then we can move forwards. So let me start with the anecdote.
Once a group of ten friends came from a village to a city. Their first visit to a metropolitan city. They wanted to go to the highest place there.
And there was a hotel that was a hundred-storey skyscraper. So they got a room on top. And while they went there, enjoyed the view from there, they came down, travelled across the city.
And in the evening when they came back, they found, to their dismay, that the elevator was not working. They had to climb up a hundred levels. So one of them got an idea.
Let's tell each other stories, so that we can get our mind off the ardour of the climb. And the first person started a story, which went up to ten levels. Second started, which went to twenty levels.
Some of them told little longer stories. So by the time it was the turn of the tenth person, they were at the ninety-fifth level. And they all turned.
Now you tell your story. He said, no, I can't tell. He says, why? My story is a tragedy.
If I tell you the story, it will break your hearts. He says, no, come on, tell. He says, no, I can't tell.
The two and four were going and they were climbing up. Finally they passed by the ninety-ninth level, came to the hundredth level, and the tenth person said, now I have to tell you the story. He says, I have forgotten the key downstairs.
So sometimes we get so caught in climbing up the ladder of success, going to the top level, that we may forget the key. That key is the key to self-management. To a happy mind and a happy life.
So we see that today our society has made technological progress and provides comforts which were unimaginable even for royalty a few hundred years ago. We have air conditioning, we have heating, we have telecommunications, internet. So we have far more comforts than what were there a few hundred years ago.
And yet we seem to have far greater distress, especially at the mental level. Whereby something within us seems to work against us. Something within us seems to act like our enemy.
And unless we manage the inner world, we can't really manage the outer world. So for me this recognition that something fascinating is going on inside us came about 30-35 years ago. At that time I was a student, I was into science and my hobby was astronomy.
So I had my own telescope. I was living in India at that time. So I would go on the terrace of my house and look at the stars.
So once there was going to be a much publicised solar eclipse. Lunar eclipse actually. So it was at night.
I was eager to see it. I planned for days and days. We got several friends together and we were going to look through our telescopes.
And then just before the time of the eclipse, somebody spoke something to me. I was very angry with that person. And then I went and I was looking through the telescope and then after a few minutes my friend said to me, Hey, wasn't that beautiful? I said, What? And then I realised that the eclipse had come and gone.
And I was so caught in my thoughts that I didn't even notice it. That time it struck me that what happens inside us. I was very interested in astronomy.
I was looking forward to that eclipse. And yet something inside me has the power to catch my attention so much that it can distract me from something which is outside which is very interesting for me. So from that time onwards I started exploring the inner world.
What is it? What goes on inside us? So, because I was a student of science, I did my engineering, so I studied science to understand the self. And I got a lot of enriching insights. But still I couldn't get a coherent understanding some kind of model of the self which could help me make sense of what was happening in my life and what was happening in the lives of others.
So while I was studying my engineering, one of my models, a brilliant student, he had been the first in the university in all the eight semesters of his engineering. And he was so brilliant that issues which would take all of us hours to figure out, he would just do it in minutes. And at that time when he graduated from his engineering, so he got the highest paying job in the history of our college.
He was a celebrity. But along with that, he happened to be a chain smoker. And at that time I couldn't figure it out.
He was so brilliant that he can figure out engineering issues so fast. Why can't he figure out that the smoking can harm him? He said, no, actually this helps me to think better. Somehow within the first six months of his job, he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.
And he perished. So when he succumbed to that, that was the time I started feeling that this, what is inside us can not only distract us, it can even destroy us. So then my search became much more insistent.
That's when I came across the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is a book of wisdom from India. And it offers a model of the self which can help us better understand ourselves and how things happen within us.
So this is the first part I'm going to talk about, education. This is how I learned about it. So as Martin Luther King said that our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men. So we have, through technology we have gained phenomenal control on the outer world, but our control on our inner world seems to have decreased to an alarming degree. So I was, go ahead please.
So yeah. So this is the, the Gita is a book in Sanskrit, but this is a simple metaphor to illustrate what it teaches. The model of the self that it offers.
It's a three level model of the self. That there is, our existence is not just physical. There's the body, the mind and the soul.
And these are like in a computer system, the hardware, the software and the user. The body is physical. And similarly the hardware is something physical and tangible for us.
We can touch it. The mind is like the software. Now the software plays a very significant role in how the computer system functions.
But we can't tangibly touch the software. Similarly the mind is something which we can't tangibly touch. In fact a prominent scientist said that I refuse to study the mind because it has no locus standi.
We can't locate it. So, in some cases, psychology is redefined by some people not as a study of the human mind, but study of human behaviour. What is the mind? Now, within the materialistic framework through which most modern science operates, the concept of the mind is just reduced to an epiphenomenon, something that emerges somehow.
This model is a little more inclusive where the mind is considered to be a software. Now, if we have got a brand new computer or phone, the hardware is in great shape, but if the software gets corrupted, then the device won't function. Similarly, if for us the mind gets corrupted with negative emotions, then stress could be a corruption of the mind software, depression could be a corruption, anxiety could be a corruption, addiction could be a corruption.
When the software of the mind gets corrupted in this way, infected by these viruses, then even when we are physically healthy, we will not be able to function. It's interesting that this model of the self differentiates between the mind and the self. We could call it soul, we could call it consciousness, we could call it, I've used two words over here, lower self and higher self.
I'll explain what I mean by these in due course. But the idea is that the mind and the self are considered to be different in the sense that the software is not the user. The software is different from the user.
And when somebody is having any problem, any behavioural disorder, any behavioural need, we understand that the person at the core is still unaffected. In this model, the person's need is acknowledged as a corruption of the software of the mind. But the person is still considered whole.
The person is still considered strong and pure. And this way we can distance ourselves from what may be wrong with us at a behavioural level. Just because my software is corrupted, my device doesn't function, doesn't mean I can't function.
I can't function with the device, but still I am safe. Can you go ahead? So, to get a better sense of this, I would like to move on to the next stage of experimentation. But before that, does anyone have any comment or question? We could take one at this stage.
Anything that struck you, resonated with you, something which you felt interesting, you could just speak that. You don't have to be a question also. Or if it's too early, I can move on.
So, this is a thought experiment we will do now to get a sense of this three-level model of the self. So, wherever you are, you can sit comfortably and you can close your eyes and with your eyes closed, take three deep breaths. One.
Breathe in as deeply as you can and then exhale as fully as you can. Two. As you exhale, feel all the stress and the tension from your body going out.
Once more. Now, with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you. Because the eyes are closed, you can't see physically what is in front of you.
Yet, you will see something on an inner screen. You might see a replica of this room. There is something like a screen inside you on which either you may see this room, you may see a loud one, you may see your car, you may see your home, you may see a series of images coming and going or you might just see a dull haze of colours.
Whatever it is that you see, you see on some kind of screen. Now, while you are observing that screen, try to take a step back and catch sight of the observer of that screen. I repeat, there is an inner screen and there is a seer of that screen.
So, try to step back and spot the seer of that screen. No matter how many times you step back, you will notice that the seer steps back with you. What you are looking for, what you are looking for is what you are looking with.
You are the seer, you are the self, you are the consciousness and the screen is your mind. You can take one deep breath and you can open your eyes. So, can you go ahead? Go ahead, just skip this.
So, a further way to functionally understand this experiment is that normal perception, when it happens, the three things, the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer scene, all of them come together in one line. And that is when… Oh! I think it got discharged. It's discharged.
Okay. Sure. Am I audible right now? Or is it difficult? Okay, I'll speak.
If you get something, I'll speak. I'll continue till then. Thank you.
So, let me know if I'm too soft. I'll try to speak loudly now. So, in this model, we see that there is the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer scene.
All three need to be in a right line, aligned together for perception to take place. Say, for example, right now, you are looking at me and I'm looking at you. So, suddenly, if we hear a shriek from someone behind, then, immediately, our inner screen, even if we don't turn around to look behind, our inner screen starts displaying various scenarios.
Or maybe somebody is in some trouble. Maybe this has happened. Maybe there's a child who's having some fun.
Maybe somebody is just trying to distract us. We could have various scenarios playing on the inner screen. And when they're playing on the inner screen, then, whatever is in the outer scene where we are focussing, we'll not be able to perceive.
Or at this moment, say, if you suddenly remember, Hey, when I came out of my house, did I lock my house? Oh, if I didn't lock, where is the key? I can't remember where I locked it. What if somebody comes and drops? So, immediately, on the inner screen, something else starts playing. And when something else starts playing on the inner screen, then, whatever is in the outer scene, we can't perceive.
So, for us, when we are talking about mental health issues, and, basically, what happens? This inner screen, it can malfunction. And when it malfunctions, not necessarily malfunction, it doesn't function at all, instead of acting as a instead of acting as a window to the outer world, it starts becoming like a TV screen. Is that working? Sure.
Sure, thank you. Am I on? Is it on? Hello? Is it on? Okay. I think I'll hold it.
Okay, thank you. So, for normal perception to take place, the inner, here, the inner screen and the outer scene all have to be in one line. When we sometimes find that somebody is absent-minded.
So, when they are absent-minded, what is happening exactly is that their mind is displaying something apart from where they are physically present. So, we are talking with someone, and then we see their eyes glazing, say, Earth to you, Earth to you. So, it's as if they've gone to some other planet, maybe a dream world.
So, basically, the screen is vital for us to perceive things properly. And the screen can sometimes work as a window to the outer world. But sometimes it can function as a TV screen.
And it starts displaying all kinds of things which are disconnected or unconnected with where we are physically. So, to understand this, let's move to the third part, that is, evaluation. So, here, not every thought deserves our thought.
Now, what I mean by this is that we use the word thought often in two distinct senses. I got a thought. And I have given this a lot of thought.
When I say, I got a thought, what we refer to is just some, something popped up on our inner screen. Some idea, some stimulus came up. Whereas, I have given this a lot of thought means we have systematically sustained, in a sustained way, given our attention and done deliberation of that subject.
So, with these two ideas of the word thought in mind, let's look at this inner screen. So, if you consider the inner screen to be like a computer screen. And, in the computer screen, we have a browser.
Say, somebody has visited a particular site repeatedly. Say, somebody has visited sports.com repeatedly. And now, they come for a spiritual programme and they want to know about spirituality.
So, they decide to go to, they decide to Google spirituality. They want to go to spirituality.com. But they type SP. And what comes up? Yeah, sports.com comes up.
Why? Because that is the choice which was made previously and that has been stored as a preference. And that will come as an auto complete. So, just as in the computer software, our previous choices get stored and they come up as auto completes.
Similarly, every action that we do, that gets stored as an impression within our mind. And that impression comes up as a proposition. It comes up as a proposition.
Do this. Why not do this? So, now when something comes up as an auto complete on our browser, that does not necessarily mean that we need to visit that site. Although it has come inside us, it's not our desire.
It's not our intention right now. So, many times when a particular thought, a particular desire, a particular emotion comes up within us, we get carried away by it. Oh, I am feeling like this.
But everything inside me is not me. Everything on my computer that is being displayed is not necessarily what I want to see. Every notification that comes on my phone is not necessarily something that I need to take notice of.
Or at least take notice of right now. So, although it is coming on my computer or my screen, it is not necessarily what I need to pay attention to. In fact, if we start paying attention, nowadays we get so many spam messages.
If we start paying attention to every single notification that comes, we will be overwhelmed. So, more than the number of notifications that we might get on our devices or our phone, that much, far more are thoughts that pop up inside us. And, when a particular notification comes up, it might just come up as a small pop-up.
And as soon as we click on it, it opens up and occupies our full screen. So, similarly for us, I talked about this inner screen. Now, this inner screen, right now, for example, when you are hearing this talk, so the focus may be on what you are seeing and what you are hearing.
But suddenly, if the temperature goes down, you start feeling cold. Now, you may notice it. It is not uncomfortably cold.
I tolerate it. But, if it becomes very uncomfortably cold, then what will happen? That will occupy the inner screen. And then, you will not be able to focus on whatever is being discussed.
You may want to put on a sweater or you may want to increase the heating. And then, you will be able to focus. So, basically, on our inner screen, continuously, something is popping up and either that is being minimised or that is being maximised.
And some of these pop-ups are essential for our functioning. But, some of the pop-ups are harmful for our functioning. And evaluation means that we need to decide which thought needs our thought, which pop-up needs our attention.
So, once something pops up, say, if we are reading some article and then a notice comes up, say, some channel that we have subscribed to, a new video has popped up over there, new video has been uploaded over there. And we click on it and then immediately, that video will start. And we will get caught in playing that.
And by the time that video gets over, there will be a suggested video, maybe 10 more videos will be there. And sometimes, we just get caught one after another, after another, after another. So, at least, with our computer, we need to click the link so that it will open up.
But imagine if there were a computer which could notice where our eyes are focussing. Say, we are reading an article and we see some other link somewhere. We just look at it and the computer notices that and the computer opens that up.
And then we are watching that and another link is there. We notice that and it opens up. Now, if just our vision could open links, then we would get trapped.
One after another, after another. But our mind is like that. It is a sophisticated software like that.
Whatever we give attention to, it starts popping up. It starts expanding. So, if we consider say, two major mental health problems that are there in today's world.
One is depression and the other is anxiety. Now, in terms of this inner screen model, we can understand that the inner screen which is meant to be like a window, when it starts becoming like a TV and it starts showing whatever bad things have happened to us in the past. This person did like this.
That person did like that. I made a mess of things over there. That terrible thing happened to me.
All the bad things that have happened to us in the past, as those start playing on our inner screen and we start feeling deflated. We start feeling defeated. We start feeling depressed.
So, depression, of course, it can be a clinical condition where it may require medical attention. At the same time, it is also essentially the mind replaying all the bad things that have happened to us and making us feel that the future is going to be more of the same. And thus, even when nothing tangibly is gravely wrong right now, a person may sink into depression.
So, evaluation means we need to recognise when that inner screen is functioning constructively for us, when it is displaying something useful for us and when it is displaying something harmful for us. When it is displaying something which is real and something which is just delusional. So, I was in California last year and I was at a friend's place and his beautiful greenery behind his house and we were sitting in his big window and we were looking at the greenery and we were talking.
And suddenly, I noticed that out of that green forest, a huge ape appeared. Kind of ape you might see in Planet of the Apes. And then, that ape started charging towards the house.
And then, that ape raised his fist and was about to smash the window. And he has come in where we were sitting. And as I was looking at my friend, little alarm, I saw he was grinning.
And I looked at him again and noticed that he had something in his hands. It looked like a remote. He just pressed the remote and the ape disappeared.
What is that? I asked him. So, he said that he had designed the window in such a way that the window could double as a TV screen. And just for fun, he had made a video of an animated ape appearing in the same background that was seen through the window.
So, if somebody doesn't know in advance that this is no longer functioning as a window. This is actually functioning as a TV screen. If they don't understand this, then they may just get completely carried away.
Get overwhelmed. So, evaluation is vital for us to recognise when the inner screen is functioning in what mode? As the window or as a TV? Now, conversely, if this inner screen starts going into the future and starts displaying, this may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong. The more it starts displaying this, this, this, this, we become fearful and become worried.
And we become overwhelmed completely. When I counsel and I help students in India also in mental health. So, in one of the most prominent medical colleges there, there was a girl in Mumbai, in the medical college.
She was the best in her class. Throughout her medical career, she had been the first. And she is doing very well in her studies.
She was well on course to come first in the final exam also. But somehow, a few days before her exam, a thought popped up within her. Within her.
What if I don't come first? What if somebody scores better than me? And as that thought started growing, growing, growing, Oh, I've got such a reputation. Everybody considers me to be first. If I don't come first, it will be a disgrace.
What face will I show to anyone? And she was well prepared, but somehow that thought ate her up so much that the night before the exam, she committed suicide. She committed suicide for no reason other than just the fear what if I don't come first? Now we may say this is ridiculous. Yes, it is ridiculous if we are observing from our outside perspective.
But for somebody who is watching the screen and seeing the movie, they get completely overwhelmed by that. It's like, say, if you have a child and your child is watching a horror movie. Now you are sitting, you are maybe doing some work in the same room.
You are not watching the horror movie. So the child may be screaming, may be trembling, may be crying and you are unaffected. The child also is actually safe.
But as long as the child's consciousness is caught on that screen where the horror movie is going on, child will experience all kinds of emotions. So those emotions are real although their cause is not real. So most of the times when we have fear, when we worry, worry is like the tax that we pay on loans that we haven't yet taken.
It is something, the problem may not be there at all right now. But this inner screen's functioning can hurt us in very serious ways. Now evaluation means that we need to develop the capacity to recognise that this, our mind, the inner screen can function in various different ways.
And I gave two different sets of examples. One was the inner screen becoming like a TV and the other thing is a computer browser giving certain auto-completes. So for us, if we have become habituated to a particular way of thinking or acting or feeling, then that is the kind of imagery that will come on our inner screen repeatedly.
And when that imagery, that kind of movie starts playing on our inner screen, if we just keep passively watching, we will get overwhelmed. But if we recognise, like if you are seeing your child seeing the horror movie and then you know this is a horror movie. Now as soon as you know that it is a horror movie, although the child is disturbed, you will not be that, you will not be scared, you will be concerned about the child but you will not be scared.
So similarly for us, we need to distance ourselves from what appears on the inner screen so that we can evaluate it. So this is our important point, our thoughts do not have any power to harm us till we give them our thought. A thought is simply a stimulus inside us.
Now when we pay attention to it, it starts growing. Say, let's do a simple experiment to illustrate this. If you have your phone, can you take out your phone? Don't see it and don't read the notification on it.
But just keep the phone maybe on your lap somewhere and say to, keep it on your lap, don't carry it, don't lift it up. And say to yourself that I can't lift this phone. Just say to yourself, I can't lift this phone.
And while you are thinking I can't lift this phone, just pick up the phone. I can't lift this phone. Now you are having the thought, I can't lift this phone but that doesn't impede your ability to lift the phone.
Isn't it? So a thought doesn't have to be true. A thought doesn't have to be wise. A thought doesn't have to be listened to.
Now, this is of course a very readily understood to be a counterfactual thought. But just by giving this example, what I am trying to say is that our thoughts, we tend to take them too seriously. Now yes, they need to be taken seriously in the sense that they can pose a serious distraction to us.
It's like a pop-up on our screen. Now if we click on the pop-up, it may distract us for hours. There is a boy in Thailand, it seems that he started surfing, watching some videos and he was watching videos continuously for 72 hours.
And he forgot to eat, he forgot to drink and finally fell unconscious. Banged on his desk and there is a friend nearby who came running in and they took him to hospital and he survived. So the point is it all began with one click.
So thoughts can have serious consequences, but they can have serious consequences only when we attend to them, only when we give them our attention. It's like when the pop-up comes up, if we click on it, we might lose hours clicking one thing, another thing, another thing, another thing. But if we don't click on it, the pop-up cannot automatically take over our computer.
The pop-up is there as one phenomena, one stimulus, one window on our screen. So for us, if we can learn to distance ourselves from our thoughts, then much of the mental health problems that we get, we can decrease them. Now how do we do this distancing? How do we do this distancing? Broadly speaking, I'll talk about three means, two I'll talk in this evaluation itself, and the last I'll talk in the elevation, last part.
So going back to that earlier example, if somebody has visited sports.com repeatedly, then naturally they will visit, the sports will come as auto-complete. So similarly for us, our mind tends to be habituated to certain kinds of thoughts. So if somebody doesn't, if we call someone, and they don't pick up the phone, and say we have grown up always feeling lonely, and then just somebody doesn't pick up our phone, our mind may start, nobody cares for you, nobody responds to you, you've always been lonely, and you'll always be lonely.
Now that person might really be busy, and they cared for us, but they're just not able to pick up the phone right now. But, that stimulus can start off the loneliness movie inside us, where we start feeling sorry for ourselves for being so lonely. Now, if to deal with the mind, it's helpful to treat the mind like another person.
It's like, if your child is alarmed and crying while watching a horror movie, the child is someone different from you. So, if you can treat the child like a mind, the mind has started its loneliness story now. So, sometimes we just feel depressed about something, so the mind has started its depression story.
Sometimes we have our relatives or friends, some people they are expert at autobiographical hearing. We speak something to them, I had flu yesterday, oh you know, 20 years ago, I had a flu like this. And it was such a terrible flu, and this happened and that happened.
Anything we tell them, they start a story. And we may have heard that story 50 times till now. But, they all start the story.
Do any of you know people like that? Yeah. So now, when somebody starts telling a story which they have told 100 times before, we know, oh, the same old story is going to start now. So, we sort of tune off at that time.
So, just as, now we don't necessarily consider that person to be a bad person, but we just know this is their habit. So, like that, our mind may start off certain stories. May start off certain stories.
And when the stories start off, if we identify, this is the story. Okay, this is the anger story. This is the fear story.
So, I remember the first time, about 20, about 25, 30 years ago, I gave my first public talk. So, at that time, just before I went to the dais to speak, something within me said, you are going to make a fool of yourself. You are going to be, I just looked around, who spoke that? There's no one around.
And my tendency is that, when I am nervous, I speak fast. And the more nervous I become, the faster I speak. So, I was supposed to give something like an 8 minute talk, and I started speaking, and because of that voice, which had come inside, you are going to make a fool of yourself.
That had made me nervous. So, I just picked up the mic, and I started shooting off. Sometimes, we get into a car, and even before we have sat, see, the person just starts, zooms the car.
So, it was like that for the audience. They could understand what I was speaking, where I was coming from. And actually, they started looking at their watch, looking at the door, looking at each other, with blank faces.
And all that made me even more nervous. And I became even faster. And they still couldn't, they couldn't conduct anything.
So, by the end, I finished my 8 minute speech in less than 4 minutes. And I had nothing to do after that. So, after that, I was thinking, what happened? When I prepared the speech well, this is, you are going to make a fool of yourself.
So, even now, there are times, I have given thousands of talks across the world, but even now, there are times when I am about to start a talk, and there's something, you are going to make a fool of yourself today. Now, when that voice comes up, I just try to identify this. This is the fear, voice of fear speaking.
This is the mind telling its fear story. And just thinking like that creates a little bit of a distance. So, another way to do this evaluation is, when we feel angry about something.
I am feeling angry. Just precede that with, the mind is saying. The mind is saying, I am feeling angry.
I am feeling hurt. The mind is saying, I am feeling hurt. Now, this doesn't mean, we deny the anger, we deny the hurt, we distance ourselves from it.
So that, we can process it. Just as, a notification has come on our screen. Now, sometimes a notification, we do have to take notice of it.
But we decide consciously, should I pay attention to it, or should I not pay attention to it. So similarly, when our thoughts come in, when our emotions come in, when our feelings start rising within us, at that time, we normally try to deal with them in two ways. Either express them, or repress them.
So, I am feeling lonely, just start feeling sorry for myself. Or, let's deny it. If I am feeling angry, we express it, or we repress it.
But by distancing ourselves, we open a third option for ourselves. That is not express, not repress, but process. Process.
Just as, when a pop-up comes on my computer screen, I process it. Do I need to pay attention to it? Or do I need to neglect it? Or can I pay attention to this later? So, if we can learn to evaluate our thoughts, then we can give attention to those thoughts which need attention, and we can neglect those thoughts which don't need attention. And we will find that a lot of our mental energy will be conserved by this.
For our screen, many windows might be open, but we need to focus on those windows which we need to work with. Like that, in our mind, there are many links that are there. So, if we learn to evaluate, then we can focus on those which need our attention.
So, any comments or questions at this point? So, let me move on to the last part now. That is, elevation. And then we can have the questions.
Now, elevation means that spirituality raises us above our situations and above our emotions. Now, I talked about this model of the outer scene, inner screen and the inner seer. This was more or less horizontal.
We could turn it vertical. Vertical means that it's like a three-level building where there is the ground level is the physical reality, the first level is the mental reality, the second level is the spiritual reality. So, if we are caught and if we are caught at something at the physical level, if our consciousness, if our thoughts are caught at the physical level, then we could visualise, say, an ocean.
In an ocean, if a wave comes, now, fighting against the wave is almost impossible. If we are going in this direction, but the wave is coming in this direction, we'll just get swept away. So, like that, within us, sometimes thoughts, emotions, desires, they come up like waves and just sweep us away.
So, at one level, we may try to fight harder. The wave is taking us in this direction, we want to go in that direction. We can fight harder, but sometimes the thoughts, they come so forcefully, it's almost impossible to go against them.
But, while we are in the ocean, there's a rescue helicopter above and the rescue helicopter throws a rescue rope and we catch hold of the rope. Now, although we are still in the ocean, we are not entirely at the mercy of the waves. The waves will come, they will hit us and they will push us, but if we hold on to that rope, then, we will not get as thrown away by the waves as we would be otherwise.
If we caught hold of that rope and rose up, then, although the waves would be there below, we would not be shaken by those waves. So, spirituality, there are different spiritual traditions in the world and they have different specifics, but the overall universal purpose of spirituality is to raise our consciousness upwards. So, there are different traditions, these are like different paths up a mountain.
There's one mountain, at the top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness, at the bottom of the mountain is physical consciousness. So, we can go up this mountain by different paths, but the important thing is to rise up. So, the more we rise up, the more we realise that, okay, this thing is happening, but it doesn't hurt me immediately.
We talked about the inner seer in that thought experiment. So, whatever happens in the world, whatever happens in the mind, we are beyond it all. Through it all, we are always safe because we are spiritual.
We are indestructible. Now, what happens in the world and what happens in the mind, it matters to us. We need to respond appropriately to it, but we don't have to be personally threatened by it.
Last year, there was this terrible hurricane, Irene, in Florida. So, one of my friends was in Florida on a writing retreat and he was staying at another friend's house and he just cut himself off from the rest of the world, no internet, no phone, just focused on writing. He was alone in that house.
And then one morning, he woke up, he just pulled up the drapes in the window and he saw there's water everywhere. He's alarmed. Hey, what's happening? And he tried to check on his phone.
On his computer, there was no internet there. And then as he looked out of the window, he saw the water level rising, rising, rising. And he could see that soon he would become inundated.
He became alarmed. He started looking around. He tried to call someone, tried to yell out.
There was absolutely no one anywhere. He was in a cabin where there was not many people around. And he became more and more alarmed.
He started looking around and suddenly the electric power also went off. He just took out the flashlight of his phone and was looking around, panicking, seeing the water rising. And as he looked around, he had been staying in that house, but he saw he had not really explored the house because he was busy writing.
So he explored and he suddenly saw that behind the cupboard, there seemed to be something like a door. So he pulled the cupboard aside and he opened the door. And when he opened the door, he found there was a stair, a narrow stair, and it led up to the attic.
He had not even noticed that the house had an attic. So he ran up the attic and he waited there. And the water rose, rose, rose.
The first level was inundated, but he on the second level was safe. And then after some time the water level went down and he was rescued. So if he had not discovered that there was this attic, he would have been drowned.
But that discovery, there was a higher level to that building that saved him. Similarly for us, sometimes the force of the situations or the force of the emotions comes upon us so much that we can't fight it. But by spiritual practises we can rise above it.
There is an untapped core to us which we are not even aware of. Just like the house had an attic, like that we have a spiritual side which is indestructible, which is above our situations, above our emotions. And if we can realise it, then we can have inner strength and security.
In our tradition, we practise meditation guided by sound. We call it sonic meditation. So we chant mantras.
Mantras are special sounds which help to raise one's consciousness. So we especially chant the mantra Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram Ram Ram, Hare Hare. So this mantra, the repeated hypnotic uttering of the mantra acts like an elevator for the consciousness.
So as we repeat the sound, it's like we are entering into an elevator and the elevator takes us up. And by that raising of the consciousness upwards, thereafter the emotions may come, situations may come, but we are above them. And we respond to them naturally.
So the mind may not change immediately. The inner screen may keep displaying unwanted things. But if we understand that I am beyond this inner screen, we can decide what we wish to focus on.
So elevation helps us to see, since it's Thanksgiving now, coming up. So bad things happen in the lives of all of us. And we can't be grateful for the bad things.
But even if we can't be grateful for all situations, we can be grateful in all situations. Grateful in all situations means yes, we may have a mind that is corrupted, we may have a life that has gone wrong, we may have so many things wrong in our life, but we can look at what is right in our life. And ultimately our spirituality is something that is right always with us.
So if we raise ourselves with that higher consciousness, then we can distance ourselves from our situations and our emotions. We may have to live with pain, but we don't have to live in pain. Live with pain means yes, there is some unpleasant notice, unpleasant notification that is there on my screen.
But live in pain means I click on it and I let it fill my screen. So it may be somebody has hurt us, somebody has betrayed us, somebody has abused us, we ourselves have abused ourselves, we ourselves have got into some habits that we didn't want to get into. That's a part of us, that's not the whole of us.
So that is there, we have to live with it, but we don't have to live in it. So our spirituality helps us to understand that we are bigger than our habits, we are bigger than our emotions, we are bigger than our situations, we exist at a higher level of reality. So life determines our problems, we determine their size.
It means what will appear on our inner screen, what notification will come, we can't change that. Yes, bad things will happen to us, but when that something, notification has come on our screen, we have to process it. But if we obsess with it, then we make the problem bigger than it needs to be.
But by distancing ourselves from it, by rising above it, we can deal with it maturely. And thus, for each one of us, the path to self-improvement, the path to self-realisation, the path to understanding our core self, to tapping the best side of us, it is open for each one of us at every moment. And when we learn to manage ourselves thus, then whatever stresses might be there in our life, whatever distresses might be there within, when we realise our spirituality, we can deal with them much more maturely.
So I'll summarise what I spoke. I talked about from stress management to self-management. I started by several incidents.
First was of the missing key among the people who went up. So like that, we have progressed enormously in terms of controlling externals. But internally, things seem to be out of control.
The key to a happy mind and a happy life seems to be missing, seems to be forgotten. How something inside us can distract us, even if you want to look at something attractive outside, like an eclipse, or it can even destroy us. As somebody with an addiction may succumb to a disease and succumb to some behaviours which cause their death.
I talked about four E's. Does anyone remember what are the four E's? Education, experimentation, evaluation, and elevation. Thank you very much.
In education, I talked about a three-level model of the self, the body, mind, and soul, which is hardware, software, and user. The software gets corrupted when the mind gets filled with negativities. We did a thought experiment of how we can't see the inner seer.
We can see the inner screen. The inner seer is the self, the consciousness, the soul, and the inner screen is the mind. This inner screen can become like a TV screen instead of a window.
When it starts showing all the bad things that have happened in the past, we get into depression. When it starts showing all the bad things that may happen in the future, we get fear. What appears on the inner screen doesn't depend only on what is there in the outer scene.
It also depends on what we have had repeatedly appear there. Just like somebody has visited sports.com, so then even if they want to go to spirituality.com, sports.com will come as autocomplete. For us, if we can evaluate what is appearing, is the mind right now functioning as a TV screen or as a window? If we evaluate, not every thought deserves our thought.
Our thoughts have no power till we give them power. So a thought is like a pop-up on our inner screen. And it's only when we click on it, it distracts us.
But if we distance ourselves from it, we can distance ourselves by identifying it. Oh, this is the mind telling the lonely little story, the mind telling the fear story. Or when we feel an emotion, we can precede it.
I am feeling angry. The mind is saying, I am feeling angry. And then, by such evaluation, we can minimise the distraction or disruption that our thoughts may cause to us.
So we can't, we don't have to repress our emotions, we don't have to express our emotions. Before doing either, we can first process them. And evaluation enables us to process them.
And last was elevation, where I talked about how we are in an ocean where thoughts and emotions are like waves that come in. So we can fight harder or we can rise higher. Rise higher means, by spiritual practise, we realise that we as the inner seer exist beyond the emotions that come on the inner screen or the scenes that, the situations that come in the outer scene.
So, I talked about this friend who was trapped in the flood caused by the hurricane, but by discovering the attic above, was able to stay safe. Similarly, by raising our consciousness to the spiritual level, we may have to live with pain, but we don't have to live in pain. Life may determine our problems, they may determine what appears on our screen, but we can determine what we click.
We may have to, that way, life determines our problems, but we determine their size. By realising our spirituality, we can be grateful in all situations, even if we can't be grateful for all situations. Thank you very much.
Any comments or questions? Yes, please. I have a friend who is actually a software involvement and I want to tell him this to the best of my ability. Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I think anybody with software background can connect with this very easily. But even somebody not from software background also can connect with it. So, I have, in case you would like to give him a talk of this, I have a website called The Spiritual Scientist.
So, The Spiritual Scientist. So, if you go to the website, the talk will appear in a few days over there. Thank you.
Anyone else? Yes, please. Is ignoring a part of the process? Yes, certainly. As I said that, once we process something, we can decide whether to ignore it or whether to attend to it.
So, ignoring something needs to be an intentional decision. Broadly speaking, when we face any unpleasant situation in our life or any unpleasant that time, when I said ignore, that doesn't mean we deny the problem. It's just that we decide not to obsess over it.
So, when we face any unpleasant situation in our life, we have three broad options. I call them as tolerate, mitigate or immigrate. So, if we are in a place where it's extremely cold, I come from India, this season is very cold for me.
So, if it's very cold, then, okay, but this is where my job is, this is where my family is. So, I'll tolerate it. I'll learn to tolerate it.
But sometimes it may be that, it's just so difficult. Then we decide I'll mitigate it. I will make sure that I get as many warm clothes as possible.
I'll get good heat conditioning for my room, for my car, for my office. I'll try to counter the situation. Sometimes, this is just not working.
I'm always falling sick, I'm getting cold, I'm getting flu. I can't live here. We may immigrate.
So, we can do all those three things. So, ignore would be a part of tolerate. It's a small thing, I can tolerate it.
So, when do we tolerate and when do we mitigate or immigrate? It depends on how much that thing is interfering with our purpose. Say, suppose we are going in a metro train. India has a huge population.
So, often in the metro trains, it's for 50 people and there are 250 people in the train. All squeezed together. And like everywhere, some people like to show off their strength.
Some people like to be bullies. Suppose we are standing in a train and somebody starts pushing us. And if we think, who do you think you are? I'll push you back.
And we push them back. They push us, we push them back. And we keep pushing each other and our station comes and goes.
And still we are pushing. That would be stupid. So, whether to push back or not, that person pushing is a small thing.
Just move aside. So, we can ignore or we can say we can tolerate something. We can tolerate some things.
That means, simply we keep small things small so that we can focus on big things. Something might be unpleasant. But, I can manage.
I can live with it. So, we keep small things small so that we can focus on the big things. The big thing is to get to our destination.
So, usually when, if we don't have the big thing in mind, then the small thing becomes big. It's said that if we don't have anything to fight for, it's not that we'll stop fighting. If we don't have anything to fight for, we will fight for anything.
That means, if we don't have anything to live for, anything really to dedicate our life to, then we'll take something trivial and make it into a big thing. So, ignoring that simply means that something we understand by processing it as small and we keep it as small. But, if somebody is pushing it out of the train itself, then we can't tolerate that.
Because, they are interfering with our purpose, the big thing, which is to get to our destination. So, there are some times when we can't ignore and we shouldn't ignore. So, if something is interfering with our big purpose, then we need to mitigate it.
Or, we may decide, this person is pushing me out of the train, we may protest against it, complain to someone, or we might just go to another bogie, another compartment in the train. So, you might immigrate. So, we need to process.
So, ignoring or tolerating is also one part of the process. But, the process requires processing, basically. Thank you.
Yeah? Okay, yeah, good. That's true, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
It's a good question. How does our wiring affect us? So, yeah, our brain is a very responsive device. The way we think, the way we feel, the way we act, it all keeps rewiring our brain.
And that's why, for certain people, certain things, certain behaviours, become just, they become the default behaviours for them. So, that's why, whenever somebody starts, say, indulging in a particular thing, I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it over a hundred times.
So, what does that mean? That means that we may decide to give it up, but it doesn't give us up. So, when we get wired in a particular way, then that sort of behaviour becomes habitual and natural to us. So, one metaphor that I like to use for this is, say, if this is the floor.
Now, if the floor is inclined in this way, if water falls on the floor, the water will naturally flow in this direction. Now, if we don't want the water to flow in that direction, just willpower, oh, water, don't flow this way, that's not going to work, because the floor has become inclined in that way. So, naturally it will flow that way.
Similarly, when we behave in a particular way repeatedly, our brain becomes wired that way. And that's why our thoughts, our emotions, our consciousness will naturally flow in that direction. At the same time, just because the water is flowing in this way, doesn't necessarily mean we have to let it flow that way.
So, if, say, on this side, we have some expensive electronic equipment, and we don't want water to touch that, but the floor is inclined, then we will do three things. First is restriction. Restriction means maybe create some protective wall, protective fence over here, so that the water doesn't flow this way.
So, similarly, if we find that we are wired in a particular way, then some amount of external regulation in terms of that behaviour is required. If somebody is an alcoholic, and they are determined to recover from alcoholism, but they have a house that is right next to a bar, then it's going to be very difficult for them. So, some amount of physical regulation helps.
Now, that is not enough. The water will accumulate and can break down even the best of fences eventually, but that is the beginning. Then, after that is redirection.
Redirection means we might take some mop or some other device and push the water back in the other direction. So, when thoughts start flowing in a particular direction, the wiring of the brain is real, but it is not irreversible. By our wiring, thoughts will flow in particular directions, but that doesn't mean that is the only way we can think.
That will be the default way we think, but we can change that. But it requires conscientious effort. So, like push the water in the other direction.
So, that means, oh, this thought has popped up. No, I don't want to think of this. Now, we can't not think of something.
We have to have something positive to think of. Say, if I have this phone and sometimes some phones say, they get spoiled or they have some electric current in them. Say, if I touch it, I get a shock.
I don't want to touch this phone. If I decide I don't want to touch this phone, I can decide I can not touch it. But with respect to our thoughts, it is not like that.
If I decide, I will not think of this. Say, a common experiment is that if I tell you for the next 30 seconds, please don't think of a pink monkey. You can think of whatever you want, just don't think of a pink monkey.
You may never have thought of a pink monkey, but as soon as you are told, don't think of a pink monkey. Pink monkey? How would a monkey be pink? Would somebody paint it? Would somebody genetically mutate it? What would happen? So, we can't not think of something. So, here, when we say push the water in the other direction, redirection, that means we give ourselves something else to think of.
So, if we like something to do, say if somebody has a somebody is addicted to something, but if they also like music, they like reading, then they have something else to which they can direct their thoughts. And once they direct their thoughts in that direction, then the water flow in this direction will stop. And the best solution for that is reconstruction.
We reconstruct the floor in such a way that the floor is not inclined this way. The floor is flat, or if you want the water to flow that way, the floor is inclined that way. So, our brain can also be rewired.
So, if we keep doing an activity repeatedly, even though initially we don't feel like doing it, then that repeated action will rewire the brain. So, the brain wiring determines, if you talk about the two meanings of the word thought, I got a thought, and I have given this a lot of thought. So, our brain wiring will determine what thoughts we get.
But by choosing what we give thought to, we can change the wiring of the brain. We can rewire it. Does it answer your question? Thank you.
Yes, please. So, if somebody is resistant to spirituality, then how do we present, how do we help them to get past the mind? The spirituality, the spiritual side of us, is at one level a matter of personal choice. Some people may want to be spiritual, some people may not want to be spiritual.
But it's not so much that whether somebody is spiritual or not, it's just that whether people are open or not. It's not necessary that we have to use the word spiritual. We could just, whether we believe in spirituality or not, we all believe in consciousness.
We have consciousness. Isn't it? And we're just talking about principles or methods by which we can channel the energy of our consciousness. And if somebody says that, okay, I don't believe in anything higher except my brain.
The brain is all that there is. Well, that is at one level logically itself not very sound. Einstein was probably the greatest scientist of the last century.
And he himself was conflicted about the implications of radical materialism. Radical materialism means the idea that matter is all that exists and there's nothing beyond that. So he said, if that were true, then that would mean that all of us are simply programmed by our brains to behave in particular ways.
Then the Nazis who in the Holocaust killed millions of people, you couldn't blame them at all because their brains were programmed in that way. In our day-to-day life, we don't function that way at all. If somebody suddenly comes and slaps us, why do you do that? My brain programming told me to do it.
We would probably slap them. My brain programming told me to slap you now. So, all conceptions of all justice, all accountability, all relationships would collapse if we did not acknowledge that we had something to us which is beyond the programming of our brain.
Einstein himself famously said, humorously said that gravity can explain the falling of objects but it can't explain people's falling in love. So, the materialistic model has value to it because there is a material side to us but there is also a non-material side to us because actually speaking, nobody truly functions as a materialist. If we take materialism to its complete logical conclusion, then we would be forced to conclude that there is no free will.
Not only is there no free will, all emotions are illusion. Even our sense of consciousness, that is also an illusion. There is no I at all.
But we don't function like that. What do I mean there is no I at all? We look at our body, our whole physical body, all the cells in the body change every 7 years. If you look at our skin, normally we look at people and we get attracted by their appearance.
So now if you look at the skin, the whole skin, depending on the person's body, every fortnight to a month, all the cells in our skin change. So what is it that is unchanging? Even if you say the idea of something unchanging is just an illusion. There is no unchanging.
But then, using the word illusion itself is misleading over here. Because when we say something is an illusion, there is someone who is perceiving it wrong and that is an illusion. If in a desert, we see a mirage, then the mirage is an illusion.
The mirage is an illusion, that means the observation is an illusion. But the observer is not the illusion. There has to be somebody who is observing and their observation is going wrong.
So the idea of self can't be an illusion. There has to be someone who is saying that this is an illusion. Otherwise, who is there? The idea that there is no conscious self is self-contradictory.
It's like saying, if I tell you right now, I can't speak a single word of English. I have already spoken 8 words. So, it's like saying I don't exist.
Well, I have to exist to say I don't exist. So that sense, that I, where is that I? There has to be something non-material within. Otherwise, we won't have any consciousness.
We won't have any sense of I-ness. So I think a little introspection will open people to spirituality. Most often, when people talk, everybody has their conceptions about spirituality.
And people associate spirituality with a lot of mushy sentimentality. The idea that whatever you desire, it will all come real. Or people may associate spirituality with certain religious dogmas or certain new age fads.
So, if we look at what it is that people have reservations when they think of, when they say, I don't believe in spirituality. And when we address that, then we'll find that actually they are open. So, it's not that people are not interested in spirituality.
It's rather people are not interested in what their conceptions of spirituality are. So, if you address those conceptions, then at a basic level, nobody denies that they exist. So, then that itself is the beginning point.
So, that inner seer is a reality in the sense that we are all observing right now. So, we could use this simply as a functional model without necessarily making any ontological claims about the nature of reality. Even if somebody says there is no such thing as a self, at a functional level, they do act as if there is a self.
I make a decision, I want to do this and I don't want him to do this. So, we could just see this as a functional model, not as a philosophical model. Okay? Thank you.
So, shall we stop here? Thank you very much for your attention and participation.