Gita insights for managing the mind – Chapter Ten Analysis

[Talk at University of Cincinnati, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you for coming today evening.
Am I audible behind? So today I’ll speak on the topic of the mind and spirituality based on the Bhagavad Gita and the mind in a bind. So basically I’ll take this in three parts. First, we’ll try to understand what is the mind.
Then we’ll talk about what it is that attracts and distracts the mind and then we will see how that relates with spirituality and that I’ll talk primarily based on the 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. Broadly, there are two kinds of people in the world. Some are wise and some are otherwise.
And it is not just that some people are wise and some are otherwise. We ourselves are sometimes wise and sometimes otherwise. And we sometimes are, especially in giving advice to others, we can be brilliant in the kind of insights that we can come up with.
But when it comes to applying or doing something, we sometimes think, what kind of dumb thing did I do? Why did I do like that? So what is it that makes us oscillate like this? It is what goes on inside us. What science has discovered about our outer world in the last few hundred years is amazing. But simultaneously, what we have forgotten about our inner world is equally amazing.
And what we have forgotten about our inner world, that we can understand through wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita. So basically, psychologists and thinkers across the world have noticed that there is something inside us that works against us, that makes us misled. So what exactly is that? So the Bhagavad Gita offers a model of the self, body, mind and soul, the three levels of our existence.
And these are like the hardware, the software and user in a computer system. The body is like the hardware, the mind the software, and the consciousness of the soul is the user. Now, in this setup, the mind is the software and the software is very restless.
This is like if I have a phone screen, I might be reading something on the phone, but then suddenly something else comes up. That means some other notification comes up. And some notifications are very intrusive.
They don’t just pop up, they just keep small pop up, but they consume the full screen. And when that happens, then we get, what we were doing, we get distracted from that. Because suddenly something else has popped up.
So like that, we can envision our mind to be like a screen inside us. So right now you’re looking at me. So, say I am there in the outer physical world.
I’m also there on the inner screen. But when you’re absent minded, our mind starts showing something else. And Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that, बन्धुरात्मात्मनस्थस्य येनात्मईवात्मनाजितः He says, नात्मनस्थुशत्रत्वेवर्तेतात्मईवशत्रवर्त् And in this mind, it shows us what we need to see.
Then it is a friend. And when it starts showing things that we don’t need to see, then it becomes our enemy. To make this example a little more complicated, suppose you are driving a car and the screen in front of you, the front window, which is meant to show us the road ahead.
Sometimes some people have their phones and they have some entertainment system on their phones or they have mixed monitors inside the car itself, where they have entertainment system. They start watching a movie or start watching some cricket or baseball or something that can be distracting. But imagine if the front mirror itself, front window, which is meant to show them the road ahead, if that itself converted suddenly into a TV screen.
And they are driving, but at that time, instead of seeing the road ahead, they started thinking of something else, watching something else. It could be dangerous, it could be disastrous. So our mind is like that.
We are functioning in life and sometimes, when we are talking with someone, instead of hearing and processing what they are doing, on our mind, some other notification pops up. And then we start, we start processing that. And somebody says, somebody may want to, may be persuading us to do something, which we are reluctant to do.
But then they speak something and then we in our head are then, yeah, okay, I’ll do it. Oh, thank you very much. What, what happened? No, no, I didn’t want to say yes, but you already said yes.
It happens to us sometimes we are caught unawares because we are not attentive to what the other person is saying. So the mind getting distracted can be very dangerous. So if you consider, say, now a car, a simple control system, but it’s a complicated plane.
And the plane has a front window. Now you don’t really see much with the plane’s front window. Actually, you see some things, but the plane to operate it, it’s more all the control panels.
But if the plane’s control panel starts showing something, which is misleading, they start showing us something other than what we want to see, what we need to see rather. It can be very dangerous. So our mind often shows us things, which are not really needed for us to see.
And it diverts us from the things we need to see. At a simple level, it causes absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness, the classic example is that somebody is living on a ranch and they climb on a horse and they start searching all over the ranch for the horse on which they are riding.
That is absent-mindedness. So this is the mind. Basically, it’s the inner screen, which is meant to act like a window while we are navigating through life.
But sometimes it becomes like a TV screen and starts showing anything and everything. So now that is the first part I’m going to talk about. The second part is, okay, what determines what will be seen over there? What pops up over there? What doesn’t pop up over there? So that largely is determined by what is attractive for us.
Now it is said, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. What that means is, it’s said that different people find different things attractive. And this doesn’t mean entirely beauty is subjective.
So there is objectively, some things are beautiful, some people are beautiful. But apart from that, we all have our individual things which we are attracted to. So whatever is our conception of attractiveness, based on that, that pops up on our inner screen.
Say if most of us, many of us are from India. So if we are mad about cricket, and as soon as we hear some news about cricket, oh, what happened about cricket? Now, if somebody is from, say whenever I do talks in American universities, often the organisers told me, tell me, don’t use cricket examples. So because for many Americans, they say cricket reminds them of an insect, not a game.
So maybe it’s a baseball then. So what happens? Once stimulus comes up, and if we already have some, if you consider that attractive, for conception already is that it is attractive, then immediately that consumes our full screen. So each one of us, based on what we were attracted to in the past, based on what we have indulged in, enjoyed, those particular notifications will zoom up within us.
It’s like, again, a software. Suppose somebody has visited a particular website, say sports.com, repeatedly, and they come for a spiritual talk, and it’s interesting, I want to find out a little bit more about spirituality. And they go on their browser, and they want to type spirituality, S-P-I-R-I.
As soon as they type SP, what happens? Sports.com comes up. Why? Because that’s stored as a preference. So similarly, for each one of us, we can say in our mind, certain things are stored as preferences.
And they pop up quickly. And we get attracted to them, and sometimes we get distracted by them. Depending, if that’s not what we want to focus on, we get distracted by them.
So based on our interests, our desires, our definitions of attractiveness, basically, we get attracted to certain things. So when we talk about controlling the mind, or everyone’s mind gets distracted, but not everyone’s mind gets distracted by the same things. Each person’s mind, based on their experiences, they’ll have certain things to distract them.
So this is a universal principle. Now, how do we relate this with the Bhagavad Gita? And especially the Bhagavad Gita’s 10th chapter is a very interesting chapter. It is called as Vibhuti Yoga.
So I’m going to the third part now, which is the major part of the talk. The first part was, what is the mind? Second is, how does the mind attract or distract us? And the third part is, how can the Bhagavad Gita’s knowledge help us to manage the mind better? So the Bhagavad Gita’s 10th chapter is called as Vibhuti Yoga. Vibhuti is a special manifestation.
Bhuta means existence. Vi means special. So some special existence.
That means anything that is special in the world. So the idea of Vibhuti is, the one above the many manifests as the one among the many. I repeat this.
The one above the many manifests as the one among the many. What this means is, that the one above the many is the divine, is Krishna. And he’s all attractive supreme person.
And he manifests in this world in various attractive things. So what the Bhagavad Gita gives is a universal principle that it says, that whatever is attractive in this world, it manifests a spark of my splendour. So some people say, for example, in sports, some baseball player, some cricket player, some athlete, they all seem to have almost superhuman abilities.
And when they start performing, everybody’s stunned. Everybody’s spellbound. Everybody’s astounded.
What’s happening? How do they perform so well? So their ability is not something which they programmed in their mother’s womb. In many ways, they’re born with that ability. They may, of course, develop that ability by their practise.
But in many ways, talent is something which we come with. So most of you are students in Eminent University now. So almost all of us do well academically.
We are, in a sense, winners in a genetic lottery. Most of us have reasonably high IQs and that’s how we are able to study and do well. And we didn’t determine this IQ when we were born.
Just got it. So where does this attractive ability, the intelligence of intelligent people, the skill of skilled people, the talent of talented people, where does it come from? The Bhagavad Gita says, this is a gift of God. It’s not just a gift of God.
It is a manifestation of the divine in this world. That means that at one level, everything comes from the divine. Aham sarvasya prabho as the Bhagavad Gita says.
The divine, the ultimate reality is defined as the source of everything. But additionally, now when you come into this room, it’s not that everything attracts your attention. Okay, the walls, the air conditioning, the projector, these things may not attract your attention.
When we consider the whole world, within that world, there are certain things which attract our attention. So Krishna is saying, whatever attracts our attention, its attractiveness is a spark of his supreme attractiveness. So this principle, if you understand it, whatever we are attracted to, ultimately we are attracted to God.
That thing which is attracting us to somebody, actually that thing is a manifestation of the divine. Suppose somebody is, maybe you are not into say, rap music or pop music or whatever. But in that particular genre of music, there are superstars.
And people see them, some people swoon. People just become so fascinated. We say, what’s there about this person? Say, this hairstyle is strange, the way they start, the music also doesn’t make much sense to me.
I don’t find appealing. What are you attracted? What are they attracted to? Actually, it’s a spark of the divine that is manifesting through them. So everything attractive in the world manifests the spark of the divine.
And that’s how we see that there are incredibly different kinds of attractions in this world and what captivates them. William Wurtz was a prominent writer and writer-poet. So he wrote in a letter to his friend, say, I spent my morning very productively today.
I was working on one of my new poems and after breakfast, I added a comma in a poem, in a line. And before lunch, I deleted that comma. And that was his idea of a very productive morning.
Now when you say, two, three, four hours, you’re just thinking whether to put a comma or not. What’s there in that? Yeah, he was singing it, reciting it, whether the comma fits, slow down. So now, you see, putting one comma, not putting a comma, what’s there in it? But actually, some people get some juice in that.
Now, what is there? Actually, whatever is our deepest experience is our experience of God. Whatever is anyone’s deepest experience, that is their experience of God. Suppose somebody is a physicist and they study physics, and they go into this theory, that theory, this model, that experiment, and people can forget everything.
You probably, when you’re in the field of research, you can see people like that. Some of you may also be like that. You get into a field, just forget everything else.
So whatever is our deepest experience is our experience of the deepest reality, that is God, Krishna. However, you may say that, but this, maybe this William Wordsworth, he was not really a devotee, or some physicists, they might even be atheists. So how can what they are experiencing be the divine, if they themselves don’t believe in the divine? Yeah, that’s fine.
This is where an important principle comes up. Now, to understand this, let’s take a metaphor. See, this is an ocean over here.
The ocean is filled with almost unlimited drops of water. Hmm. Or let’s, ocean water is not drinkable, but let’s presume that there’s a huge lake, or a smooth, almost infinite lake, just filled with lots and lots of water.
It’s an oasis, but it’s like a giant oasis. And all over here, there is a desert. Now, from that lake, because of, say some wind or whatever, drops of water have sprinkled across the desert.
So, somebody is over here. The water is over here. The water bodies over here.
Now some drops are sprinkled over here. Some drop is sprinkled over here. Some drop is sprinkled over here.
That means, some drops point the way to the lake. Some drops is point away from the lake. And some, some drops are just in the same distance from the lake.
some drops actually point away from the lake. Now all those drops in a sense have come from the lake but all those drops won’t take you to the lake. If somebody is thirsty all the drops have come from the lake but all the drops won’t take the thirsty person to the lake.
So similarly everything attractive comes from God but everything attractive doesn’t take us to God. So somebody might be doing as I said atheistic mood of study of science and they get absorbed in it. The absorption, the complete transcendence to the world that they get into when they’re doing their research.
That is their experience of the divine but they don’t know it. So when basically our day-to-day life is humdrum it’s mundane, it’s monotonous. As one survey done about the mental states of most people in the Western world basically people are young reasonably healthy, reasonably well to do financially.
They found that 5% of the time of their life people are happy, 5% of the time they’re unhappy and 90% they’re bored. 90% people are bored because life at a day-to-day level is not always stimulating, exciting. There are so many things which you just have to do because they need to be done.
That can be quite boring. So basically while we are if right now as I said if you come into this room if you are hungry maybe the food is interesting for you. If you want to learn philosophy maybe the talk is interesting for you or maybe you have a friend who will come to meet primarily to socialise.
That’s interesting for you. If you consider the totality of this room how much of this room is really of interest to you? It’s only one small portion of the room. One small thing in the room and the same applies to life itself.
It’s not that everything in life is interesting. We can we can try to create interest in everything but there’s something which naturally attract us. So the point I was making is that when in so this that’s why because most things in life are not very stimulating.
So we could say our experience of life is like largely a sensory desert. At a sensory level it’s not that everything that we see is attractive. It’s boring.
So it’s like a desert and within this sensory desert sensory desert means at the level of the senses what we experience appears barren, boring. Within that there are some things which are very attractive and they are like the drops of water. So when somebody looks very attractive somebody is very smart somebody is very charismatic whatever then that is like a drop of water and you get captivated by that.
So we are looking for these attractive manifestations whatever it is and mostly entertainment is all about concentrating more and more attractive manifestations in one screen or in one episode and then try to keep us riveted to it. The idea over here essentially is that whatever is attractive that is like a drop of water. Now we may find a lot of stimulation a lot of excitement a lot of a lot of anticipation in in these drops.
So when we find somebody attractive you want to people forget everything I just want to spend time with this person because they’re attracted and there is attractiveness in this. However, all the attractiveness of attractive things is temporary. It is there for some time and after that it is it deteriorates.
It doesn’t stay for very long. Beauty is short-lived. If we come to a new place you’re stimulated I want to see this place I want to see this place I want to see this place.
I had gone to the Niagara Falls about a couple of years ago when I was in Canada and wanted to give a talk in a university nearby. The organiser said let’s go to Niagara Falls. So then we went there and then there was another friend of mine who was staying over there and he told me that when I came here he’s been there for 10 years so he said in the first year when I came I went he was about half an hour away from Niagara Falls.
He said I went six times. In the next nine years I have only gone three times when some relatives have come to show the Niagara Falls. So I don’t find anything interesting in it.
What happened? The captivation is there but after some time unless somebody has a deep love for nature or special appreciation for water bodies something like that that charm goes down. So all the attractive things in the world are like drops. When we are in a desert even a drop of water seems huge and in the sensory desert that is around us anything attractive captivates our attention.
However the drops are not enough. So the back to retrace what we are where we are going in this talk is that the mind gets attracted and distracted by various things. So what it gets attracted and distracted by are those drops of attractiveness and all these drops of attractiveness are coming from the ocean of a huge water body of attractiveness.
That is that is a divine that is all attractive supreme there is ultimate reality Krishna. So everything attractive comes from the divine but everything attractive doesn’t take us to the divine. All drops of water are coming from the water body but some water if I am here and some water drops are here and following them will take us away from the water body.
I was in Australia I gave a seminar and after that a student asked me this question that if the divine if God whatever name we use if God wants us to do good things why are the good choices so few and the bad choices so many. The allurement the distraction in the world are so many and the right choice they are so few. So I said that’s how it always is in any multiple-choice exam.
Any multiple-choice exam if there are five options four are wrong only one is right. Now if we are going only on probability then the student could blame the teacher student could even sue the teacher. You set me up for failure if four wrong means my probability of getting right is only 20% and passing is 40% you are causing me to fail but the choice is not meant to be done on probability.
It is meant to be based on intelligence on education on assimilation of the knowledge. So similarly there are many attractive things in the world and you can get attracted to any of these things but we need to choose what do I want to get attracted to. So if I get attracted to the drops of water that take me away from the divine as I can choosing the option that is wrong it will keep me in illusion it will make my mind more and more agitated.
Now if we focus on those attractive manifestations that take us towards the divine they take us towards the all-attractive source then the result of that would be and gradually we are moving with following the drops we are moving towards the ocean. Here we can assume this ocean of drinking water water delicious delicious schooling drinking water we are going closer and closer to that so the mind has become so restless because it has found some pleasure but after finding that pleasure it’s lost it that means it’s a drop I get some pleasure and after that I know this drop so I have to look for something else. One of my friends in the TV industry and he told me that and they try to make promos for any episodes or any programmes on TV it’s found that people when they are watching a TV watching TV they are most absorbed when they are surfing channels surfing programmes not when they are watching a particular programme because what happens when you’re surfing a programme that is somewhere something will be interesting it’s not this this this this this this constant change somewhere something will be interesting but once you start watching a programme well it’s not going to be constantly interesting it becomes boring after some time so that’s how for us our mind so imagine if you are sitting down to watch TV and there is a the remote has been put in a permanent surf mode so you try to watch something and just as you’re getting into the programme the channel changes and the channel changes channel changes channel changes and you can’t watch anything properly so our mind is like that like a TV in permanent surf mode our mind has become like that so we just keep shifting 1 2 3 4 5 just jumping chanchalam hi manah krishna krishna says in the bhagavad-gita the mind is chanchal it is restless incredibly restless it doesn’t restlessly focus on any one thing at all so it’s got into this habit because it is always excited about finding some new drop I want this I want that I want that and each of these drops that it seeks they give some pleasure but the mind knows this drop is a drop it’s not going to last for long and therefore while it is experiencing one drop it is also looking for some other drop now for most people it’s found that most of their pleasures are more in anticipation than experience now I’m going to go this I want to watch this I want to eat this I anticipate the excitement is there wouldn’t actually experience it okay what next it’s anticlimax quite often so we if you understand this principle and the mind is in a perpetual surf mode and because of that it’s restless and it’s searching for something attractive so what do we what do we do what is the solution if you want to keep our mind get our mind to rest what do we do I’ll conclude this talk with three points of as a part of the solution and then if you have some questions we can discuss so broadly speaking to when the mind is in perpetual restless mode what can we do about it it is three things education regulation purification education means understand that what is the nature of the mind I need to educate myself to understand how exactly the mind works so that I’m not I’m not disappointed or frustrated when the mind goes off because that is the way the mind is the mind is a perpetual restless mode I sit down to study I make a resolution I’m not going to do this I’m going to do that whatever but then the mind goes off then expect it it’s just like if you have some sibling who is maybe small for three four five years old and you are told to look after the sibling sit down and study as you come back after 15 minutes you don’t expect the sibling to study you expect the sibling will be restless and you’ll have to get them back come back and study so we education means understand the nature of the mind education we also understand that although the mind is restless we need education to understand there is this ultimate reality there is there is God there is Krishna and the mind is ultimately searching for that ultimate reality and we need to try to recognise although I might not find the ultimate reality attractive right now because even when I come to the ultimate reality the mind comes there stays for some time goes off and you can’t experience the ultimate reality also and that’s why the mind stays like this so education means understand the nature of the mind understand the nature of reality okay these drops are going to take me away from the ocean these drops will take me toward the ocean education that is important the second is what did I say regulation regulation means that the less the structure in our life the more the rupture the mind can cause in our life structure and rupture what do I mean by this suppose you wake up in the morning and you know plan for the whole day you know okay I have to do some lab I have to do some studies for my future exam I have to prepare for some job interviews I have to do this but there’s no structure for that then maybe in the morning you wake up and them and my decision let’s let’s let’s watch some YouTube videos and you start watching and anything I watch for two minutes two minutes becomes five minutes five minutes become one hour one hour becomes three hours and you may find that is it’s evening and the whole day what did I do so what happens now if the same thing started you started it and you may spend half an hour one hour but suppose you have to go for a class suppose you have to go for some engagement some work then that structure forces us to get out of the head forces to get out of the mind so we need to create some regulation our life some structure regulation broadly means it’s some kind of obligation commitment which is not just dependent on our minds moves you to create this structure the structure is not there the mindlessness will take us far away here there and everywhere and many ways you see the structures that guided people’s lives in the past they are disrupted and a structure can be jobs and careers structure can be relationships structures can be various things structure means something which is a pattern or order a regulation to our life now if we are if we have a committed job if you have a committed career if I have a committed relationship then that creates some structure now in the past what would happen if you see in the last 50 to 100 years mental health problems have increased enormously there are many reasons for this but one reason is that the structures and people’s lives have gone down it’s not a structures are not there but the structures have become less obligatory in the past for most people maybe a hundred two hundred three hundred years ago in the past more or less people’s life trajectory was determined by their birth if you’re born in a particular family and this is the kind of job you’re going to do this is the kind of life you’re going to have what we call as upward mobility was not much there in the past whether it was in India where there’s a caste system or than the West which had its own class system whatever it is now that was in some ways restrictive but in some ways it is also protect it also protect protective you had a structure so in the past people had their duties socially ordained duties and that gives some structure to their lives now today’s mode is we don’t like the socially ordained duties today there is much more individualistic culture and of course the advantage of this is that we have we have greater opportunities for upward mobility for acting according to our talents but the problem with that is that when there is too much freedom it also becomes a burden so imagine if you want to send a message to your friend on your phone and each time you have to send a message the phone starts asking you what font do you want to use what font size do you want to use do you want to underline do you want to highlight what background do you want I just want to send a message this set some default and get on with the message there are too many options navigating through the option itself will exhaust us so we create a regular we need some structure some basic framework within which you can exercise our choices the framework is itself open for choice when the mind gets overwhelmed by it and when the mind gets overwhelmed usually the mind chooses the path of least resistance so when there is no structure to guide the mind then the mind chooses the path of least resistance and today entertainment offers so many shortcuts for the mind addictions they offer so many shortcuts for the mind and as we get ourselves into more and more trouble so how do we create some kind of regulation some structure by taking responsibility for ourselves that means you look at yourself from objective perspective and think treat yourself like you are someone you care for okay this person is here right now if this person is to create a better life what should what do they need to do this ABC and it should not do ABC this is can do this these things on a daily basis this person’s life can become better so don’t see regulation as something which is imposed by others regulation you we see rules not as impositions but rules as routes to a better life if I if I set this rule for myself but do this this is going to create a better life for me if once we start regulation seeing regulation as a friend as an entire as empower as a director not as a restrictor then we find that it will create structure in our life regulation is good means some simply something you decide every day I’ll wake up at this time every day I will take my meals at this time every day for five minutes ten minutes I’ll meditate every day I’ll read some wisdom text for a few minutes see now we cannot possibly regulate our entire life life is too unpredictable for that but some regulation will help everything the mind starts oscillating bring some structure to it that the second and the third is purification purification means that the mind gravitates based on the impressions within it towards certain things so the bhagavad-gita actually talks about all these things the first point which I said education the bhagavad-gita itself is offering us education it’s spiritual education on nature of reality regulation the bhagavad-gita talks use wisdom texts as guidebooks to regulate your life and purification comes based on what we expose our mind to whatever like I said earlier if you are repeatedly visit a sports.com even if I want to go to spirituality I go to sports because that is stored as a preference in our software in our browser so similarly for us based on what we have done in the past certain impressions are stored in the mind so you could say that every action that we do it creates an impression within us and that impression comes up as a proposition action impression proposition so if somebody takes drugs and then they take it once then that is told as impression next time and if there is situation with those friends or in that atmosphere let’s take it again somebody has never taken drugs that impression is not there that proposition will not come so action impression proposition so purification means we change the impressions within us by exposing ourselves to purest stimuli the most the purest of all stimuli is the all-pure divine so bhakti yoga is a process by which we expose ourselves to the divine whether it is to studying the bhagavad-gita whether is to worshipping Krishna as you might do or whether chanting his holy names we are exposing ourselves to the divine and the more we expose ourselves to one who is all-pure we become purified so purification means it’s a change of preference a change of taste when we are impure we naturally gravitate towards impure things when we are pure we gravitate towards pure things so right now we may have some degree of impurity some degree of purity you may like some pure things some impure things so we need to the more we expose ourselves to the pure our preferences our tastes will change and when the tastes change so the the mind will move toward the pure the mind as I said earlier based on the impressions it pops up certain things on its inner screen so as we become purified we’ll find that the mind will while will gravitate toward that which is good that is uplifting and as it moves closer and closer to the ocean from this place where there are drops all around it moves toward this drops that take us toward the ocean as it moves toward the ocean it starts experiencing the richness the sweetness of the ocean then it starts coming to rest it starts becoming peaceful it starts becoming joyful so the mind in this way when it rests in that which is good for us when it is attracted to that which is beneficial for us that is when it becomes our friend and bhakti yoga is the process by which we purify our mind and thus make it our friend so Krishna in the 10th chapter tells us there are many attractive things in the world get attracted to those things which link you with the all attractive we might like music there are many different kinds of music but if we get attracted to spiritual music then that spiritual music will take us toward the spiritual reality so we like to read books and see if you can find attractive spiritual books like we all like to socialise we want friends see if you can have friends who are spiritually made so it’s not that we give up but it’s more that we choose more carefully whatever are our natural needs we have we need we need a social we need social circle we need some reading material we need stimulation through music art whatever it is we find that in a way that is harmonious with our ultimate good and bhakti yoga is that inclusive process which can connect us with the ultimate reality and thus it can help equip each one of us to manage our mind till it becomes our friend and once the mind becomes our friend then life becomes joyful and fruitful so I’ll summarise what I spoke today I spoke on this theme of managing the mind based on the bhagavad-gita especially 10th chapter I talked three main points what is the mind the mind is like the software inside us the body is the hardware the mind is software the soul is the user and the software various notifications keep coming up and maybe if you are driving a car or a plane and the front window or the front control panel if suddenly starts showing something else it’s very dangerous so the mind is similarly dangerous and can be destructive so what makes the what makes the mind restless what causes different things to pop up on the inner screen of the mind that is based on its definition of what is attractive and that’s why we all may get distracted by different things based on what we have experienced and enjoyed and what we have envisaged as attractive and what does the bhagavad-gita offer us for managing the mind that last part I talked about three main things the first insight in the bhagavad-gita is that everything attractive is a manifestation of the divine that whatever is attractive its attractiveness comes from God it’s like all drops of water come from the ocean so everybody’s deepest experience is their experience of Krishna whether it is artist or whether it’s a scientist whether it is a writer whatever it is what captivate them so much in that particular thing it is manifestation of the divine then the second point is everything attractive comes from the from God but everything attractive doesn’t take us to God so we have to be naturally attracted to the drops of water because we live in a world which is like a sensory desert 90% of the time it’s boring so we get caught by anything which looks attractive but it’s like a drop it doesn’t last for long and some drops may take us away from the ocean some towards the ocean so when the mind gets attracted by these drops it gets distracted so the way to manage the mind is through three things.
Do you remember three things? Education, Relationship and Purification so education is understand the nature of the mind and nature of reality so that we know which drops getting attracted to is healthy which drops getting attracted to is unhealthy and the regulation means because the mind is so restless we create some structure in our lives so that even if the mind gets distracted it won’t get excessively distracted have some obligations and see the rules not as restrictions but as routes to a better life and I mean the last part of purification is connect your consciousness expose yourself to the all-pure and that we gradually change the taste of the mind change the preferences in the mind and then the mind will be naturally attracted to good and constructive things and that will make the mind our friend and our life will become joyful and fruitful thank you very much keep on chanting something so that my mind becomes one-pointed but I’ve noticed like there are three levels or something like that one is like one one aspect of one one aspect of my mind is chanting one aspect of my mind is thinking something else and one aspect of my mind is having some visuals so can you tell me like how many aspects of minds are there okay yeah so when we are chanting our mind may go in different different tracks I mean it’s not going on different I noticed like I was chanting continuously but I was also thinking something else continuously that’s okay see okay see let me elaborate on this further if you see some important building where they have a high security that they may have a security centre and all the entrances in the building they may have cameras over there and all those cameras they are the inputs come on one big screen and the security in charge sits over there so you may have this big monitor with maybe five windows and it shows each entrance so similarly you could say the mind is inside us and the mind has this five windows come five inputs coming in those are the five senses the eyes the ears the nose the skin and the tongue these are called the Gyan Indriyas the knowledge acquiring senses we take input from the outer world through the senses now apart from this now actually what comes in the mind is not just this five this five perceptions you could say and there’s another window of imagination sometimes the imagination has got nothing to do with what we have been doing before sometimes the imagination is stimulated by something we perceive and what eventually appears in the screen is an unpredictable combination of perception and imagination perception is what is there in the outer world imagination is what is projected what is conceived what is what is you could say imagined so the both of them come together and then we see something on the screen so at that time we need to just redirect those channels towards the divine how many channels will be there it depends on person to person some people are more verbal than visual some people are more visual than verbal some people are more sonic some people are more tactile that mean those channels are very active for them so when that happens then we have to see which channels are the most active for us and try to make sure that those channels we try to spiritualise so if we are more visual then try to have some visual stimuli that are connected with the with the process of meditation with chanting say maybe keep some picture of the divine you keep some maybe print out of the mantra keep some spiritual stimulus which is visual for you so then the number of channels are not necessarily fixed how many there will be in our inner screen but whatever it is we try to spiritualise those which are prominent and we just focus on those and as we focus on those the others will go in the background so it’s a it’s a matter of say as I said if there are these five windows on the security camera and somebody who is the security in charge they see something suspicious then they’ll click on it and that will zoom out and once that zooms out then everything else goes into the background so similarly for us we want that what we are doing if you’re meditating we want to have the meditation channel zooming out but something else is also captivating us then we try to have on that channel something which will connect us with the spiritual with the spiritual focus does it answer your question yes yes something else on your mind thank you see as I said the five gyanendriyas are there but then it also says so all these five senses are centred around the mind so they consider the palm the five fingers and the palm is connected with all the five fingers so the mind is like the palm and there are five fingers on it but so I could say what is coming on the hand my hand can come through the five fingers but like something can come directly on the hand also so the mind can have perceptions coming from the outer world but mind can have also its own imaginations coming in that’s why the channels which are there they’re not they’re not fixed but oddly we categorise them on the five sensory channels and the mental channel but the mental channel itself can have many courses of channels within them multiple imaginations can happen okay thank you yes I would like to know how you stop excessive worrying and they talk talk about people being worry warts and that’s one thing I’ve always been my okay yeah so how do we deal with that yeah how do we stop worrying I have a whole seminar on this but I’ll quickly summarise the early is fear sacronym F E A R four steps for dealing with fear focus engage arise and release basically if you consider this three level of reality body mind and soul then fear occurs primarily when something which is which is threatening we perceive and that triggers our mind’s imagination this may go wrong that may go wrong that may go wrong that may go wrong so then what do we do it’s the fear now there can be some danger outside which needs to be dealt with but the mind exaggerates that danger so the way to deal with it is to get out of the mind the body mind and soul so the way you can get out of the mind in two ways one is go down to the body other is go up to the soul so in this focus engage arise and release the first two are get out of the mind and get to the body focus means what is the exact problem right now ask yourself this question oh you know this person is upset with me okay what is the exact problem right what okay this person may obstruct my work this person may not approve what I’m doing okay what is the exact problem right now now I have to complete this work and not completed this time okay let me get down to completing so fear often gets us fighting against an invisible enemy so focus makes that enemy tangible what is the exact problem right now that’s F focus then E is engage engages what can I do about it right now right now what can I do about it okay right now let me take a few deep breaths let me start doing this ABC generally it is during our idle time that our mind works over time so fear catches us when we don’t have anything to do just get out of the head get out of the mind a focus and engage and as soon as you start doing something fear will not go away but the fears grip on us decreases we’re in a mind and we are the mind is showing us a horror movie and then we get horrified by it just get stop watching the horror movie the way to stop watching is get out start doing something focus on something physical and engage yourself in something physical not just something trivial to distract yourself but something which is tangible which you know is dealing with the issue then third is now the first two are you get out of the mind by going below the mind the second is to our get out of the mind by going above the mind arise arise means then understand that you are a spiritual being you are indestructible that you have gone through many many situations in the past and you will weather this storm also our circumstances should be like carpets the carpet should be below us not above us the carpet is above us it will be suffocating and blinding and that’s what happens in our circumstances go above us so get the circumstances below remember remind yourself now I’m a soul I am a spiritual being and you can look at this maybe if you think about one year ago you might have had some cause of fear some crisis at that time but that crisis is now gone you don’t feel in a crisis mode because of that so similarly this will also go so arise raise yourself above this is where practises like meditation if you have done them regularly meditation can raise our consciousness upwards mantra chanting can help us to realise that okay this this thing is there but I am its observer I am different from this arise and last hour is release release means that that which is not in our control is not out of control that which is not in our control is under some higher control that there is a there is a higher plan and order to life and everything that happens is not good but everything that happened in the apples can be for good so we focus on that which is in our control and let go of the things that are not in our control once you release then you will finally get a lot of relief now this release is not a responsibility because we are not just releasing and abandoning everything we are releasing that which is not in our control so that you can focus on that which is not control so you do these four things focus engage arise and release it’s a simple but a powerful way of managing our fears fears may not go away immediately but the grip of fear on us will substantially decrease does answer your question the other questions how do we regulate ourselves when we don’t have obligations well broadly it is good to start with SSS that is small simple steps for all of us we need encouragement life can be very discouraging and especially when we try to do something to improve ourselves we try so many times and most of the times we don’t succeed and then you become discouraged so I give it a new I was on a TV show on New Year resolutions a couple of years ago I had done some study at that time I found that 90% of the New Year resolutions that people make the New Year resolutions are not new and made them we probably make them a previous year we can’t keep them and next year as I’m going to do it now so basically with respect to our inner inner and change inner empowerment it’s very easy to get discouraged because it’s not easy to make a change so that’s why make this small simple steps rather than setting up something very difficult to do okay I’ll do this for five minutes every day and just stick to that five minutes and if five minutes you can’t do in one day maybe do ten minutes the next day but just take something small and after doing it don’t the mind is very cunning the mind will say that what is five minutes going to make a difference no actually if you want to say what difference is going to make you can always take a context and say even if I do a five years and I stop doing it what is it for what did it five years do we can always take a time frame in such a way that everything that we do can be trivialised but during those five minutes it makes a difference during those five minutes if we do it we are creating a new habit for ourselves so if you’re doing on a small thing don’t let the mind trivialise or minimise it so appreciate yourself good job not in the egoistic sense but yeah good job you did it for five minutes good now maybe next time do it for five minutes whatever so small simple steps are the way to change ourselves sometimes we set up huge goals for ourselves and then we can’t do it and then just feel I’ll never be able to do it and so set up something which is small and manageable and in general it is good to start with especially on the inner journey to start with something which can be an anchor for us that means that say if there is a circle of things which we like to do and a circle of things that are good for us now if these two circles were identical life would be wonderful now unfortunately these two circles are not identical but nor are they completely non-intersecting so find out something which is the intersection of the two and make a result to do that so there may be hundred things which are good for us but maybe 95 of them are something which you don’t like to do at all but five of them are something which you like to do then focus on that result okay let me do these things so as we start because we like to do them doing them will be relatively easier and as we start doing that we will gain more confidence so basically small simple steps in the circle of intersection between what we like to do and what is good for us that’s the way to start working does it answer your question thank you anyone last question there’s something on your mind yeah please why do we feel insecurity in life because life is insecure yeah it’s just see fear or insecurity is not a bad thing fear is what stops us from doing foolish things if say a small child in the peering down from a hundred level behind a story building and a child feels no fear and the parents will feel great fear what’s wrong with you so fear or insecurity itself is not a bad thing fear can protect can warn us about danger and protect us from danger however insecurity is not just the same as fear if fear is useful when it it keeps us cautious and with respect to a particular danger but when that fear becomes disconnected from any specific danger it becomes diffused that’s when it becomes insecurity so fear when it is associated some specific danger it is it is constructive it is protecting but when it is disconnected then it’s it’s general fear oh what if I get up what if I get some get cancer what if I lose my job what if this happens what if that happens what if that happens so then when it is diffused from a disconnected from any specific stimulus then it causes insecurity so now if you want to consider what all things can go wrong well anything can go wrong in life right now we are sitting the roof can cave in on us and we all can be crushed and we can die but there is there is a difference between probability and possibility anything is possible but how probable is it right now this phone in front of me that might blow up and burn my face well it’s it’s possible but it’s not probable so we couldn’t we can then our minds are coming up with fears it’s it’s basically what happens is it’s just big sense of maybe possible danger coming up so then we try to make it more concrete analysis is a possibility is a probability what is the probability of this I mean sometimes things which are improbable also happen yeah that happens but then the improbable it’s not just a bad thing that happened in improbable good things also happen for us if now most of you will probably be around 20 25 30 something like that means a few or more feel less but there are millions of people who die before they come to the age of 20 so if we are alive that means there is more right than wrong in others so if you want to go into probability of all that may go wrong well let’s look at the probabilities of what has gone right in our lives so insecurity it is caused by the fear divorced from any specific source of fear so then what do we do that we try to link that fear to a specific source and then address that source it’s okay what is making me feel insecure don’t blame yourself I am so insecure no this okay maybe what okay this is what I make me insecure and then you can apply this fear acronym what I said focus engage arise and release but um there’s no need we all have particular kinds of minds and some mind is maybe more prone to fear than others so there’s no need to feel guilty about it because that’s the way your mind our mind is we do work with it that means that’s a some people they feel much more than one more vulnerable to cold than others so if somebody says I am feeling cold and somebody else else then don’t feel cold what do you mean don’t feel cool I’m feeling cold that’s involuntary but if somebody says because I am feeling cold I’ll not get out of my comforter itself I’ll not go out for work I’ll not do anything no you put on some warm coats you have particular need that you have to take care of and then you work so similarly we don’t have to deny or fear so so just as we when it’s at the level of the body we understand it easily but the body is one level of reality the mind is another level of reality so just as some people are more vulnerable to cold at the level of the body some people are maybe more vulnerable to fear the level of the mind just accept this is the way my mind is that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to let that fear control that is not some people may feel more fear some people may feel less fear so just as people who feel more cold need more warm clothes so people who have more fear they may need a little more planning a little more organisation but you cannot get caught in perpetual planning because you can’t plan all possible things that may go wrong we may need to do a little more planning so learn to accept this is the way my mind is and then accept and persist not accept and give up accept and persist yeah I’ll feel fear but let’s move on and say for many people public speaking is a great fear I had talked with many public speakers and I have been speaking for 20-25 years there are times when even now I do feel sometimes unnerved when I have to speak especially in a big gathering or important gathering but then once I get into that act I push myself a little bit get into it and it goes away so actually for us fear is just natural some people have too much stage fright some people have less stage fright that’s okay but I know there are speakers who are very good speakers and they still have stage fright but then what they do is they prepare notes some people who don’t have that much stage fright then my thoughts will be organised I can speak based on my thoughts but somebody else sometimes this when the stage fright overcomes and they might just read for a few minutes you read and okay thought you’re organised and then again start speaking so if you need a more preparation don’t feel bad about that if you need more organisation don’t feel bad about that just accept yourself and work with yourself okay thank you so thank you very much for your attention participation Hare Krishna so thank you very much for