​Gita Leadership Sutras 2-4

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you, Krishna.
Kindly repeat after me. Om Adhyanati Nirandhasya Jnanam Jinishalakaya Chakshu Nirmalitam Jnana Vasmai Shri Gurave Namaha Namao Vishnupadaya Krishnapreshthaya Bhutale Shrimate Bhaktivedanta Swami Vinamine Namaste Saraswati Deve Gauravani Pracharine Nirvishesha Shunyavadi Ashyatya Deshatarine Vamsha Kalpataru Bhascha Krupasindhubhyae Vacha Patitanam Pavanibhyo Vaishnavibhyo Namo Namaha Jai Shri Krishna Chaitanya Prabhu Nityananda Shri Advaita Gadadhara Shri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Thank you all for coming. So I will quickly summarise what we discussed yesterday and then we will move forward.
In the introduction we discussed about how the Bhagavad Gita is a guide to personal leadership. It offers an inside out approach to leadership. It is a conversation between two leaders and it guides us about the essence of leadership which is decision making and what are the principles based on which we can make decisions.
And the first session which was the universe and the university we discussed how that things don’t happen just by chance. There is something to be learned in everything that happens in our life. And this faith that there is some underlying order below the apparent chaos that is the faith of science also.
And further we discussed how the Bhagavad Gita setting itself demonstrates how the universe and university. First the Arjun Krishna converts a battlefield into a classroom and then by having a Bhagavad Gita spoken on a battlefield the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates first of all a vision of spirituality that is socially responsible. We discussed that the Pandavas tried their best to avoid war and it was their duty to protect their citizens from a tyrannical ruler.
They fought not for property but for service to society. And we also discussed how the setting, the battlefield setting demonstrates the urgency of spiritual wisdom. So action without vision is nightmare.
And lastly the Bhagavad Gita is a historical war but its timeless relevance is because it guides us in our inner war against our negative thought patterns, our self-sabotaging thought patterns that are there and we discussed some of them. So when we say that there is something to learn in every situation the universe is a university, how does that work out practically? There are many times when we just get failures or we just get some adversity and there doesn’t seem to be any redeeming feature in that. So to recognise this we have to broaden our vision of success.
So the second sutra is redefine success. Second sutra. So actually if we see that is the definition of success that is present in today’s world what is the contemporary definition of success? It is quite often defined in terms of material goods and gadgets.
So it is defined in terms of material goods and gadgets and this is quite often an imposed definition of success. That means there is a social propaganda that if you have this, if you have this, if you have this then you are successful. There are trappings of success.
And if we don’t have these then whatever else we may have is thought as if it’s portrayed, it’s cultured as if we are not successful. So I have to have the latest phone, I have to have the latest car, I have to have the latest dress, whatever it means. And this is how quite often we are pushed to achieve things which we are, if we look at our deepest core, we are not really interested in them.
But we are pushed towards them. So one example of this, in the 19, towards the end of the 1920s the cigarette companies, they found in America that their market had reached a saturation. That all the young males who had enough money to smoke, they are already smoking.
So now how to expand their market? So one of them got a brain wave. They said actually 50% of the market is untapped because women don’t smoke. So at one particular point they decided to have targeted advertisement in the Independence Day parade of America in 1929 on 4th July.
They had some of the most prominent female icons being along in that parade. At the most visible point in that parade they had all been paid to flip out special customised thin sleek cigarettes made for women. They all picked it out and it flourished.
They lit it and started smoking it. I don’t know how the photo, journalists were all shooting photos and they asked what are you doing? And they had been paid to say we are lighting the torch of freedom. We are lighting the torch of freedom.
Now that was the time that the suffragette movement was gaining momentum and women had this conception that we have been exploited, we have been restricted by men for so long and now we are becoming free. So somehow by emotionally associating the cigarette with the symbolism of freedom it became a whole cultural wave. Within just a matter of month thousands of women started smoking.
And at that time the harmful effects of smoking were not known so much. And in general the reports that had come had been suppressed. Not to speak of the harmful effects for women especially women when they are pregnant for themselves and their child.
None of this was known. Only later when it came to be known. There was a heavy social cost of that.
So the point is that this is of course an extreme example of people being manipulated. But if we look at the world around us that advertisements they reflect our desires and they reinforce our desires. What people desire that is what is advertised.
But it is not only that. What people may have a little interest in that desire is reinforced. So quite often our definition of success whatever it may be we have to evaluate whether this is my own definition of success or is it something that externally has been foisted on.
The students may be told you have to become an engineer, you have to become a doctor. The student may have, the son or the daughter may have interest in some other field. But somehow the pressure comes and that’s what they choose.
And sometimes throughout their life they are caught in a career that they are not suited for. So when the definition of success is imposed it often becomes debilitating. Debilitating means it saps our morale.
We are labouring for a success which even if we achieve it does not satisfy us. And sometimes it can even become destructive. Destructive means when success is defined solely in terms of material aggrandisement, in terms of material expansion, material progress and not even material progress just specific markers of material progress.
Then we come to situation where it’s at the very least ecologically unstable. When India became independent some of the departing Britishers they asked Gandhiji will India follow the British model of development? So Gandhiji replied that actually for fuelling the British model of development one small country of Britain required the whole of earth’s resources. Now if India follows that model we have only one earth, we need many more earths.
So the point again is that everyone wants to be successful in life but we have to find out the definition of success that is innate to us. Now if we simply adopt the definition of success that is foisted on us by someone else not only we will not be fulfilled but we may even be frustrated. We may even harm ourselves or harm others.
So the Bhagavad Gita begins with the fundamental teaching that our destiny is not limited to our biology. That our destiny is not limited to our biology. That means that our biology is basically our body and we at our core have an identity that extends beyond our body.
We are spiritual beings and as spiritual beings we can be satisfied only when all aspects of our being are satisfied. So I will first classify our being into two levels material and spiritual and then later on I will classify the material also further into three levels. But at this stage one example to illustrate what it means.
We have two aspects to our being. We have physical bodies but at our core we are spiritual beings. And then we seek satisfaction only through material things.
We set ourselves up for frustration. You can see on the left the image of a Mercedes car being used for ploughing. Now suppose a person who has been a farmer who never knows anything more about only vehicles they know are tractors and the only use of vehicles they know is for ploughing.
So a friend comes from a city and gives them a Mercedes car and then they use it for ploughing. Now what is going to happen? Three things. First is the field is going to get spoiled.
The field is not going to be ploughed. Second is the car is going to get spoiled. The car is not meant for ploughing.
And third is the driver is going to get frustrated. So when we human beings actually live solely for materialistic pleasures then these same three things happen. Let’s see how.
So as I said materialistic definition that is imposed. So Oscar Wilde said that fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to change it every six months. Now when we consider fashion as a sign of beauty but the same thing when it goes out of fashion everybody starts frowning, yeah you are so old fashioned.
And not only do we not feel beautiful or good looking when we are wearing or having that particular fashionable thing we actually feel ugly and we have to give it up. So it becomes intolerable after every six months. So yes now when I said that you should not and I am talking against materialistic definition of happiness I am not talking about against material things first.
We all need material things in our life and their gadgets, cars whatever it is. But the problem is not buying the device. The problem is buying into the underlying definition of success.
I may get the greatest gadget but if I think getting this gadget and parading it before everyone else that is what is going to make me happy. I saw an advertisement which is a young man driving a car and then there is a girl with adoring eyes looking at him in this very attractive car and behind there is another young man glaring. So the advertisement’s caption was buy this car and enjoy the envy in your neighbour’s eyes.
Now what a pathetic level of enjoyment. Rather than enjoying something which we positively do constructively we look at the envy in other people’s eyes and think that is what will make me happy. So the problem is not buying the car.
The problem is buying into the underlying definition of success. Thinking this is what will make me happy. So now how is it debilitating? Leadership requires the ability to subordinate impulse to purpose.
We all have our impulses. Maybe somebody does something wrong and I get the impulse to lash out at them. And if I am in a leadership position I can lash out at them.
But quite often lashing out verbally at people, it alienates them, it does not serve the purpose and it often creates an atmosphere of resentment and insecurity in the team. And the whole situation becomes worse. So we all have impulses but we have a higher purpose.
And we need to subordinate our impulse to our purpose. So I feel like doing this but no. I will not do this because this will have harmful effects.
And actually at one level all of us need to do this. All of us whether we are leaders or not, whatever capacity of leaders we are, we all need to support an impulse to purpose. But it is all the more consequential for leaders because their actions affect not themselves alone but many other people.
So Daniel Goldman is an American psychologist and he has written a book called Emotional Intelligence. And there he states that there is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. Now why is that? Why is he talking about this as a fundamental psychological skill? He did some surveys.
So this is actually this is an experiment done in Stanford University. And basically they had some 5 year old children, less than 5, 3, 4, 5 year old children. And they asked these children, they were given two marshmallows, two sweets basically.
And they were told that you can have this sweet, if you want to have this sweet now, you can have one sweet now. But if you wait for 20 minutes, the researcher told him, I will go and come back, at that time you can have 20, both the sweets. You decide what you want.
And then they found that most of the kids just quickly, even before that researcher was going out, grabbed the sweet and ate it. So they are called the grabbers. So they divided them into two groups.
There were some others, they had a lot of difficulty. Somehow, you know, they started closing their eyes, you know, maybe playing with themselves, looking here. They told you, you cannot go out of the room.
So they were just touching it, bringing it to the mouth, putting it back again, waiting. Somehow they managed to wait, wait down to 20 minutes. And then finally got the two marshmallows.
And they took the both at that time. So this is a simple experiment. And they found that these two groups of students were divided into grabbers and resistors.
The researchers followed these children over the next 20 years. And how did they fare in various aspects of their lives? So it is found that overall there is a big difference between the two. The grabbers would get easily upset by frustrations.
Anything quickly, they would go wrong, they would get frustrated. Whereas the resistors were less rattled and less disorganised. But then whenever there were any challenges would come, whenever something would not work out for them, the grabbers would feel, oh, I am useless, I am unworthy.
The resistors would be able to more, able to pursue challenges. And even when there were no challenges, what to do? If I just have time, just waste time? No, they would set up some goals for themselves and move forward. They were more self-reliant and confident.
Whereas the grabbers were stubborn and indecisive. This is actually contrary things. They would just hold on to one thing and just hold on irrationally.
Otherwise, they would not be able to decide. And whenever there would be any problems, they would just blame others. They were mistrustful and resentful.
Whereas the resistors were trustworthy and dependable. And overall, they kept able of taking initiative. Whereas they just, oh, why is he doing that, why is he doing that? That is what the grabbers were.
They were jealous and envious. And even after 15 years down the line, they found that the resistors were still able to resist delay gratification in the pursuit of goals whereas the grabbers were not. And overall, they found that there was a, as there is almost consistently a 250 points difference in the SAT scores.
The resistors had a higher score by 250 points as compared to the grabbers. And otherwise, they were all equally endowed. This is a group of students.
Other factors were balanced out. So, now, what was the reason for this? It is a small thing whether one needs, one just grabs a marshmallow or one waits for 20 minutes. But what this small action reflects is one’s capacity to either delight in the short term or to pursue the long term.
And this capacity has a tremendous impact on life. So, in today’s world, quite often, the capacity to grab the short term, that is celebrated as success. Live in the moment, enjoy the moment.
Whatever you have right now, just enjoy it. And that notion, that locks us into a very short term vision of things. And that is often quite debilitating.
So, what is the imposed definition of success? That often people’s, wealth is a necessity of life. But it is not the purpose of life. What that means is we need wealth in life.
But if I get wealth, what do I do with it? If I am going by a vehicle, I need fuel for the vehicle. Without fuel, I will not be able to move. But having fuel doesn’t automatically tell me where I want to go with it.
What we live with can’t take the place of what we live for. Wealth is what we live with. So, we all need wealth.
But when what we live with is itself made into the definition of success. That means you have wealth, you are successful. Don’t have wealth, you are unsuccessful.
Then the result of this is there is a complete mismatch in the inner dimensions of our life. That means we, that which is meant to be a means, we make it into an end. And okay, we all need wealth.
And the more wealth we have, maybe that I have more conveniences in my life. That is fine. But what do I do with conveniences? Last year, I was in Ohio State University.
I was talking about mental health. So, thereafter, after I gave a talk, a professor, she was a psychology professor, she said that, she made an interesting statement. She said actually, she was writing a paper on anxiety.
And she said that what they have found, that although in the first world countries, the comforts and conveniences are relatively much more than what are there in third world countries. But it’s a peculiar statistic that in the first world countries, people in general are more anxious than in third world countries. And not only that, when people move from the third world to the first world, when Indians go to America, in general, the stress level of Indians goes up.
So, why is that? Although externally there is greater comfort, people are comfortable, but unfortunately, they are comfortably miserable. They are comfortably miserable. Why is that? Because it’s not just a matter of relocation from one country to another country.
That often is accompanied by a change in values, a change in priorities. If people become more and more materialistic, then the definition of success becomes more constricted. And if I think that material things alone will give me happiness, and in anything, the material things that I have, they may go away.
I may have a big bank balance, but if tomorrow the economy crashes, or the currency gets devalued, I may not have at the same level. There is always insecurity. So, what we live with can’t take the place of what we live for.
If we start living only for money, then we sentence ourselves to insecurity. The Bhagavad Gita says, chintam aparimeyam jiva pralayantam vashyatah. There is chintam, 16.11 Krishnas in the Bhagavad Gita.
There is chintam, anxiety, immeasurable. Till what point? Pralayantam. Throughout the life, up to the moment of death, there will be anxiety.
So now, this is a book, American Paradox, written by an American researcher, and what does he describe? So he found out, he actually took various social parameters of what all are the parameters by which even materially we can decide whether people are happy or not. So he just compared America 1950 to 2000. And he found in terms of technological gadgets and technological wizardry there has been tremendous progress.
But in terms of even material parameters, found that actually from 1950 to 2000, the depression rate had doubled. The divorce rate had tripled. The crime rate had quadrupled.
The number of children born outside marriage had sextupled. And the overall hazardous levels had gone down by 10 times. So there is a whole book he wrote about this.
And basic point is, he said that although we have progressed, we have not become happier. And what is the reason for that? The reason is that when we take a materialistic definition of happiness, then a materialistic definition of success, then whatever we achieve, it is never enough. And in trying to achieve that, we often neglect more important things in our life.
And thus we end up, this is materialism and there is fanatical materialism. Normally we talk about religious fanaticism. But even materialism can be fanatical.
Where materialistic fanaticism means that material things alone define a person. If you don’t have this, you are good for nothing. You are useless.
It is like salt is important in food. And if there is no salt, then no taste to the food. So wealth is very important in life.
But it is like salt. Now imagine if somebody gave us a full plate filled with only salt, we should not be able to eat it. That is what happens when we reduce success down only to material things.
We set ourselves up for frustration. So I gave all the statistics to illustrate one point here. The point was that actually I gave the example of Mercedes and I said that when a Mercedes is used for flowing, what happens is that the driver, the Mercedes gets spoiled.
The driver gets frustrated. So if you look at our society materially also, people are frustrated. People are not satisfied.
Not satisfied in what sense? We have a lot. But if we look at the suicide rates, this is one example. Never before in the history of the world so many people committed suicide.
According to WHO statistics, 1 million people commit suicide every year. This works out to be one suicide every 40 seconds. That means since we started this talk, almost 40 people have committed suicide.
And this figure of 1 million is actually more than the number of people killed every year in murderous crimes, in terrorist attacks and in violent conflicts combined together. That means more than number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves. Why is this? Why are so many people feeling that their life is so pointless that they are ready to end their life? That is because there are many reasons suicide is a complex issue, very complex subject in many ways.
But underlying it is people feel that there is nothing to live for. At that time let me end my life. So this feeling that there is nothing to live for comes when we have a wrong definition.
When we have a definition of success which we feel I cannot achieve or which is forever lost to me, then we feel there is no point to live. This is how the driver is frustrated, the car is getting damaged. And what about the field? The field gets spoilt when I use a Mercedes for driving.
Similarly we see that so much of the ecology is damaged in the world today. And it’s interesting there is a biologist, he is an atheist but he is a thoughtful person. So he did a survey by E.O. Wilson, he wrote in one of his books that every species on the earth contributes to the ecology of the planet in some way or the other.
If any one species gets extinct to some extent the earth’s biodiversity, the earth’s biosphere, its ecological balance gets affected. And this applies to every species except one and that is the human species. He said if tomorrow all humans become extinct there will be no problem for the ecology.
In fact most ecological problems will be solved if humans become extinct. This is not very flattering for us humans. Now it’s undeniable that humans are the most intelligent species among the planet, among all species of the planet.
Now if there is a classroom and we know a particular student is the most intelligent in that class, we would expect that student to make the most constructive contribution. So why is it that we humans, our contribution to the ecology is not constructive but it seems to be destructive. That if you look at the Bhagavad Gita it explains that our contribution to the ecology is meant to be spiritual not material.
That means we are here not just for a material purpose we are here for a spiritual purpose. When we don’t fulfil that spiritual purpose then the fulfilment that we get at the spiritual level we are seeking at the material level. And when we seek it at the material level the result is that we exploit material things disproportionately.
So man is the only animal who sleeps when he is not tired, who eats when he is not hungry and who fights without any provocation. So it’s unfortunate. Why is that? So when we have this materialistic definition of success then we disrupt the ecology because we exploit the ecology far beyond what is required for us.
We are seeking at the material level the fulfilment that is to be found at the spiritual level and that parts us. The result, this materialistic definition of success sets us up for frustration. And when leaders operate with this materialistic definition of success then they set not only themselves but everyone else also up for frustration.
So I’ll rush through this because I don’t want to take too much time on this subject. But this is something which has been scientifically also demonstrated. This is a book written, compiled by the Oxford University Press.
It’s a handbook of religion and health. And they studied, it’s not just one study, but they compiled 2000 public studies together to find out the correlation between religion and health. And that correlation was people who attended a spiritual programme at least once a week lived an average 7 years longer than those who didn’t attend at all.
Just by some spiritual connectedness, people’s longevity was more. And it was not just the length of the life that was more, but also the quantity of life was better. Religious youth showed significantly lower levels of drug and alcohol abuse, premature sexual development, criminal delinquency and suicidal tendencies than their non-religious counterparts.
Not only that, elderly people also. Elderly people with a deep personal religious faith had a stronger sense of well-being and life satisfaction than their less religious peers. So Ronald Koenig was the lead researcher on this.
And he said a high SQ faithfulness to God appears to benefit people of all means, education levels and ages. He said living spiritually benefits everyone. That essentially was his conclusion based on the study.
So now here, when we talk about redefining success, what do we actually mean by this? Means we have a spiritual side and a material side. And when we nourish ourselves spiritually, then we can be much more composed and satisfied even when things don’t work out at the material level. And when we are internally focused, when we are internally fulfilled, when we are internally secure, externally when ups and downs come, at that time we can be with them better also.
So redefining success means expanding our definition of success where we look for success not only in terms of physical well-being, material well-being but also in terms of spiritual well-being. And we will discuss about what spiritual well-being means little later. But we have a spiritual side and we nourish it through spiritual practises, we get an inner ease and strength that enables us to go through life’s ups and downs with greater maturity, with greater calmness.
So that brings us, so what I will do, yesterday I was stopping after one-one sutra and having question-answers. Today I will go ahead, I will take one more sutra and then we can have question-answers. Do you have any? So this leads gradually to the second point.
Third point is be concerned not disturbed. This is the third sutra. So the overview of this is what is the source of stress? I discussed that.
Then don’t change perception, change perspective. And then we will discuss about our identity. Intuitions, four intuitions we will discuss.
Then we will discuss about scientific pointers to our identity. Then we will talk about this Gita’s insights about who we are, the soul. And then we will talk about how we can harmonise the material and the spiritual.
So let’s move on. So what is the cause of stress? There are many causes. But a primary cause is that we are subjected to change by the world.
And this change is uncontrollable, unpredictable, unstoppable. Anytime change can come along. And when this change comes, it makes us insecure.
So the more things change, the more we need to hold on to the things that don’t change. And what is it that doesn’t change? That is what our spiritual side is all about. So now, often people talk about positive thinking.
Change your perception. Don’t look at the glass as half empty. Look at the glass as half full.
This is good. But what the Bhagavad Gita offers is something more. Perception is what we look at.
Perspective is where we look from. Perspective is where we look from. You know, if I am in an area where there is a volcano erupting, I will naturally be fearful.
You know, is the lava going to come and burn me? And at that time I will look, lava is coming this way, lava is not coming this way. That may give me some security. But if there is a helicopter which lifts me up, and from the airborne perspective I look down, still there is concern about what extent of damage the volcano is causing.
But there is no immediate sense of threat. Why? Because I am lifted above. So changing perspective means changing from where we see.
Not just what we see, but from where we see. So when we get spiritual knowledge, what changes is not just the perception, it changes the perspective. Because we realise that we at our core are spiritual.
And we understand our core spiritual identity. We recognise that I am indestructible. No matter what all things go wrong around me, because at my core I am indestructible, that itself gives me security.
The problem out there is still there. And I have to deal with the problem. But I don’t feel immediately threatened by it.
It’s like a person who is above a volcano, doesn’t feel immediately threatened. So when we conceive of ourselves as material beings, we become disturbed by things where we can internally be threatened. But when we understand ourselves as spiritual beings, we won’t be disturbed.
We are concerned but not disturbed. Because there is no immediate sense of threat to our core self. It’s our spiritual identity raises us above the world and its ups and downs.
Now somebody may wonder, Is this a mental conception that you have an indestructible core? Or is there any real basis to such an idea? Let’s look at that. Disturbed means to feel threatened. Concerned means being aware and active without being threatened.
As it will be for me when I am at a perspective above afflicted area. So now is there some spiritual core to us? We will discuss this in various ways. The unknown knower.
Unknown knower means that right now, this is my hand, this is my finger, this is my stomach. All this I can say, all this belongs to me. But who is the I who claims owner’s right to all these things? Who is that knower of all these things? This is not just semantic quibbling.
It’s an objective feeling. I am the owner of this. I can say that this is my pouch.
So the pouch is different from me. Like that I can say this is my finger. Finger is different from me.
But who is the I who sings? This I is someone’s state. Normally when some loved one passes away, we say they have gone. Now who has gone? The body is still there.
There is someone who has gone. Who is that? So now science will tell us that actually our body is made up of primarily water. But do we feel I am watery? I don’t feel that I am watery.
I have water in my body but there is something different. There are many chemicals in my body. But my identity is beyond the chemicals.
I am not carbon, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, all these things. There is something to me which is beyond all this. And it is interesting, actually all the cells in our body are constantly changing.
Constantly. And yet I remain the same. So who is the I that remains the same? It’s like an example.
Suppose I wrote some message on a paper and I gave it to you. And gradually I started changing all the molecules on the paper. All the molecules on the paper I changed.
And then I gave the paper to you. And you found the message is still there on it. How did the message come out? All the molecules have changed.
The message was on the paper. How could the message have stayed on the paper if all the molecules have changed? So if I were just my body and if all the cells of my body change, how would I remain the same? There is something to me which is beyond my body. And that is our spiritual side.
That spiritual side is our essential core. So Vinman Norman is a cardiologist. He says that our cells may be seen as the body’s physical building blocks.
Yet every day, every day, some 50 billion cells in our body are broken down and regenerated. This is the equivalent of 500,000 cells per second. Every two weeks all of the molecules and atoms in our body’s cells are replaced.
And yet we experience our body as a continuity. How can we explain this experience of continuity of the ever-changing body? Now xenoglossy and xenography. These are two interesting phenomena.
Xeno means foreign. You may have heard the word xenophobia. It’s fear of foreigners.
A lot of that in Europe because of the immigrants coming in from the Middle East. So xeno means foreign. Glossy is language, speaking.
Graphy is writing. So xenoglossy and xenography. To know languages that are foreign to oneself.
So Dr. Joel Baten is a researcher who wrote a book called Life Between Life. And that he talks about people who remember their past lives. And what does he do? So when people are put under hypnotic regression, that means they are told under hypnosis, Remember when you were 10 years old.
Remember when you were 5 years old. Remember when you were 3 years old. Remember when you were 1 year old.
Remember when you were just born. Remember before that. And as they are led backwards, they start remembering some life which is entirely different from their present life.
Now this could very well be imagination. They might just be imagining something. But many cases of hypnotic regression are indeed imagination.
But in some cases, they not only describe some visions, but they describe verifiable facts. And not only verifiable facts, in some cases, there was this subject Rinkar. What he did was, you know, when he was under hypnotic regression, he remembered that he was a Norse warrior.
The Norse warriors in Europe. And not only that, he spoke their language. Not only he spoke their language, he wrote down something in his script.
And when he wrote things down, Joel Witten himself couldn’t make anything out. What is this? It just seemed to be like a scribble. And not only that, even this person when he came out of hypnotic regression, at that time also he couldn’t figure out, What is this? What did I write? But when Dr. Witten presented this to experts in language, they found that what he had written, actually he had two hypnotic regression sessions.
And in these two, he remembered two different experiences, two different lifetimes. And one time he spoke in an old Norse tongue. And another time he spoke in a Mesopotamian tongue.
Both of these languages are today extinct. So, the only way anyone can learn these languages is if they actually go to experts. And for both these languages, there are less than a dozen experts who know these languages.
Only if they go to those people and take specialised training can they learn these languages. In the subject, Karl, he had not even heard of these languages in this life, what to speak of having learned these languages. And yet he wrote perfectly intelligible sentences in those languages.
How did he do this? He did this because the most reasonable explanation for this is that he himself had lived at that time. And having lived at that time, he had learned the language at that time. And the memory of that language was there in his subconscious.
And during hypnotic regression, that subconscious memory was activated. And this is very tangible because it was not just somebody recollecting something. He had actually written the script.
And the script, what he had written is available right now even to researchers who empirically verify it. So, these kind of past life memories, they offer the persuasive pointers towards a core of ourselves that has lived before. And there are many, many cases.
This is past life memories which are hypnotically induced. There are other cases where people have spontaneous past life memories wherein without any trigger by anyone, children remember their past lives. And there are many cases of these.
I won’t go into the cases because it will take a lot of time. And our purpose is not here to prove the existence of the soul. Our purpose is primarily to understand how understanding our spiritual identity can help us to expand our conception of leaders, to become better leaders.
The point is this is the notion that we have an indestructible spiritual self. This is not just an imagination. There is abundant empirical basis for it.
And intuitive basis of course also is there. So, when we understand our core to be spiritual, then that enables us to deal with life’s ups and downs with far greater calmness, far greater maturity. So, I will take one more example of this and then we will move on to the next point.
So, Dr. Jan Stevenson was a pioneer researcher. He actually went across six continents for six decades investigating over 15,000 cases of past life memories. And 3,000 were the reports which he confirmed.
He investigated 15,000 and 3,000 he said these are strong cases of people who have past life memories. And he started with research very early. This was four decades.
He was a full-time researcher. For two decades he was a part-time researcher and went across all the continents vertically. And what did he find? Four things.
That is okay to know. Maybe better. So, he found that not only were people able to give precise memories that do not think I was so-and-so person at so-and-so place.
But also when they were taken to that place, they were able to recognise, oh, you are my mother, you are my father, you are my so-and-so. And not only that, they had phobias and fears which were matching. So, for example, if in a previous life a person had died because of drowning, in this life they would have a phobia for water.
Or if in a previous life somebody, there is a Muslim to Hindu case of reincarnation of Mushir Ali Shah who became Narendra Kumar Verma. And this Narendra was born in a Hindu vegetative family. And he said, I was Mushir in my previous life.
And when he went to his, he forced his parents. This was in UP. And it is an area where there is a lot of religious tension.
So, when Narendra first said that, whenever he would be alone, he would start performing namaz. And anyone who noticed, he would stop doing it. At one particular point he said, you know, I live in that area, Raj Nagar, that was called, that particular area, take me there.
His parents said no. He forced them to go there. And he went there and he actually recognised his parents from his previous life, he recognised his sister, he recognised his brother.
And he recognised several places. You know, this was where I had kept this, this was where I had kept this, this was my trunk, this is how I used to play. And not only that, he had been hit by a cart in his previous life.
He was a fruit seller. And he had been hit by a cart. And he had been hit by a truck.
And he had died in that terrible accident. So, in this life, whenever he would see a cart or he would see a truck, both would cause him fear. So, there was matching phobias.
And again, then the last is the most empirically verifiable is, there were correlating birthmarks or birth defects. That means, you know, sometimes the children are born with some, some marks on their body right from birth. So, these can have various causes.
Primarily, the causes are three. First, it can be genetic or they can be because of certain conditions in the mother’s womb. You know, the mother has taken some substance that will damage the child, a child’s body.
Or third is, if there is some problem in the birthing process. So, if a child has birthmarks, they can have these three causes. Genetic or during the, during the process of gestation or in the process of birth.
Now, there are cases when there should not have been any birthmarks because of any of these three causes. And yet children have birthmarks. And for example, there was a, there is a case of one young boy, Kittu.
Now, he claimed to be Suresh Verma in his previous life. And Suresh Verma had been shot dead. He had been murdered at close range when he had come from his office.
And the bullet had entered from his right temple, come out of his left temple. And this Kittu, he had right from his childhood, birthmarks, swellings on the right side and the left side. And actually, there are swellings on both, but on the left side, the swelling was bigger.
Now, when the bullet enters, it enters at one point, when it comes out, it causes greater damage. And then because Suresh Verma’s case had been a police case, he had been murdered. So, there was the postmortem, detailed report was there.
And Dr. Ian Stevenson, he divided the body into 160 grids. If you have a coordinate system, we have XY coordinates. So, he divided the body into 160 grids, 160 parts.
And he correlated the location of the fatal wound in the previous life with the birthmark in this life. So, that means, if the body has 160 divisions, then for the two to come together, the probability is 1 upon 160. Now, if there are two birthmarks, then the probability becomes 1 upon 160 square.
Now, there was one Naseeb Buthwana in Turkey, who was murdered by being stabbed. And he had eight birthmarks. And these eight birthmarks correlated with the eight fatal wounds that Naseeb had in his previous life.
He had been stabbed to death and this young boy who claimed to be Naseeb in his previous life. He had eight birthmarks all in the exact locations where Naseeb had the wounds in his previous life. So, here the probability becomes 1 upon 160 raised to the power of 8. It’s an astronomically low probability.
So, the point is, if somebody has died somewhere and somebody else is born somewhere else, how do they get those birthmarks on their bodies? What is the common point? First of all, the memory itself is difficult enough to understand. But what about the birthmarks? What happens in this case is, actually, the same soul leaves one body and goes to another body. But along with the soul, I’ll discuss about the mind in a later session, the mind is also a subtle covering which goes from body to body.
And in that mind, whatever experiences we have, the impressions are created. So, when a person is wounded, there’s a wound on the body, but there is an impression on the mind also. Oh, I was wounded here.
I was wounded here. I was wounded here. And when the soul and the mind go into the next body, the impression from the mind creates a transformation in the body.
So, the feeling I was wounded here, that leads to an impediment in the biological development of the body. And that particular part of the body, either there is a birthmark or a birthmark. So, Dr. Jan Stevenson, after doing this research for almost four decades full time, two decades part time, he concluded that from the evidence itself, one can make a case that there is reincarnation.
There is a part of us that goes from this body to next body. And then we understand our core to be spiritual, to be indestructible. Then that understanding itself has the potential to bring an enormous level of security to our life.
Just like, you know, if I have two bank accounts and if I lose the money in one bank account, but I still know that I have some money in another bank account. Then although that loss of money in one bank account causes some anxiety, causes some grief, but at least I have the security that I have the money in the other bank account. So, like that when we understand I have a material side and I have a spiritual side.
And the material side things may go wrong, but the spiritual side things always remain secure. Things have never been destroyed. Then that brings a tremendous sense of security to ourselves.
And that security, that inner security becomes the basis by which we can act in a productive way in life. We can act in various capacities as leaders. So, we are talking here about leadership.
We started about talking about the universe is a university. That was what we concluded with the first session. I will summarise the two sessions, then you can have question answers.
Then I talked about how we discussed the secondary sutras redefine success. That had two main parts, that the materialistic definition of success is often imposed upon us. That does not lead to satisfaction.
And that is seen by the example of the Mercedes-Benz. And I gave statistics, statistics of depression, suicide, and statistics of ecological disruption that we are causing. That when we pursue the success only in material terms, we set ourselves up for frustration and we set our ecology for destruction.
On the other hand, if we pursue a spiritual dimension to our life, we become more peaceful, we become more healthy. I talked about the Cambridge University’s handbook of religion and health and their compilation of 300 health studies. And then I talked about how once we understand that we have this broader definition of success.
So even if material things go wrong, spiritually, we can still be composed and satisfied. Then when we discussed about the third sutras, be concerned, not disturbed. Therein we discussed, is this idea of a spiritual indestructible core, is this really real or is it just imagination? In that connection, I discussed about the intuitive understanding that I am not water, I am not carbon, I am who is the person who holds this body.
We discussed past life memories, both hypnotically induced and spontaneous. And how they point to a core to our being which goes from this body to the next body and it remains unchanged. And with this understanding of our indestructible core, we can be concerned without becoming disturbed.
So if I think of myself as a material creature, whatever material things go wrong in my life, I feel that it’s an immediate threat to me. It’s like if I am in a volcano affected area and I am down there on the ground, anytime the lava will scald and kill me. But if I am airlifted by a helicopter above, I am concerned but not disturbed.
So spiritual self-understanding, it doesn’t change our perception alone, it changes our perspective. It raises us to a higher level from which we perceive things. And that can change our life substantially.
The more things change in our life, the more we need to hold on to things that don’t change. And our spiritual core is that which never changes. And holding on to it can give us a tremendous sense of security and confidence moving forwards in our life.
Are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. You can ask the question and I’ll repeat it. Thank you for those comments.
How do you explain Deja Vu? Like sometimes you feel like it has happened before. Like the cars are moving the same way and the birds are flying the same way and you feel like this person is saying this right now and he says that only. So that’s Deja Vu to me.
So how do you explain that? So how do we explain feelings of Deja Vu? Actually, there are two different aspects to these feelings. I’ll talk about destiny more in a future talk here today itself. But broadly speaking, there is this principle of action and reaction.
It’s called as karma. And whatever actions we have done in our past, they determine some things in our present. That means that if I choose to go from here to New York by plane, then the ones I have sat in the plane for a certain amount of time, I will be in that plane.
And more or less what I’m going to experience is fixed. I can do various things inside the plane, but I have to be in that plane for the next 24 hours. So like that, certain things in our life are fixed.
And certain impressions are there in our mind, which are predictive of what is going to happen in the future. Just like there is weather forecast. Weather forecast, what does it do? It tells us what broad patterns, what kind of weather is going to happen.
So like that, within our consciousness, there are seeds of future events that are going to unfold. Now, how are they going? How are they correlated? Because it’s our own actions that are going to create certain circumstances in our life. That’s our own karma determining that.
So those seeds are there and when those then certain stimuli we are exposed to it. I have been here before. So it’s not necessary.
Most often we feel deja vu, we may not have been there at all. But because there are certain impressions in our life, which are based on the kind of action that we have done, which have created the settings that we are in right now. So that’s how we get this feeling.
Now, some people use the deja vu as a pointer towards reincarnation. You probably have been in this. I have been here before and in the previous life.
And that’s how I’m feeling this. That is a possibility, but there is no way to verify it. That’s why generally when I talk about reincarnation, I just completed a book on reincarnation.
I don’t use the deja vu as a pointer to reincarnation. Is it like we see these things in dreams and I heard somewhere that if the mind goes to certain level, we dream that it is in the future. Is that right? Okay.
So can we see certain things about the future in our dreams? And that’s how we get the things of the deja vu? That’s possible. At a certain level, the mind often perceives things which are completely imaginary. Sometimes it perceives things which are a combination of imagination and reality.
Sometimes it perceives things which are based on reality, but they may be a forecast of what is going to happen in the future. Now, in advance, we don’t come to know all that. So in general, we don’t have to take our dreams very seriously because at that time the mind is not deceptive.
Where it will go, we can’t see. But it is possible that sometimes we may experience something in a dream and that’s how we are able to perceive it again. Question here? Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Okay. So basically you are saying that I talked about religion and faith.
But sometimes in the name of religion or faith, there is violence that happens. So what is the cause of this? There are three different aspects to it. First of all, nowadays there is this whole idea that religion is the cause of violence and therefore the world would be better off without religion.
But if you look at recent history itself, last hundred years, The biggest wars were World War I and World War II. There is no religion involved at all in that. The Vietnam War, the Korean War, if you look at 90% of the wars that have taken place in the last century, religion was not even a factor in that.
So if religion was the cause of war, then all the places in the world that were atheistic, they should have been peaceful places in the world. But that’s not the case. In fact, if you consider USSR and China, they were ruled by communism which was atheistic.
And within these countries itself, the internal violence that is there, the internal killing that happened, in these 8 countries, actually that is 7 times more than the number of victims of World War I and World War II combined together. So it’s not that religion alone caused violence. Violence is caused by the desire for power.
And that desire for power can take on many masquerades. It can be racial, it can be race-based, class-based, caste-based and it can be religion-based also. So ultimately it is the self-centred hunger for power that is the cause of violence in any country.
Now having said that, as the first point, when people use their religious belief to cause violence, at that time the primary cause of that violence is they may be acting violently because of their religious belief. But what is, that’s what they see. But there is God who is the reality and there is a God who is the conception of one’s imagination.
What does that mean? There is a God who is a real God and there is a God as I conceive him to be. So when people conceive of God as a God who relies in the killing of others, as a God who will reward me if I kill others, that is not a God of revelation. That is a God of imagination.
So with that notion of God when people commit violence, that is actually, it may be violence in the name of God but it is not violence done for God’s sake. It is done for one’s own sake with God taken as a add-on to justify it. And lastly, even when people are motivated by religious belief in their acts of violence, there is the fundamental understanding of God which is lacking.
If we conceive of God, see God either he exists or he doesn’t exist. If he exists, if he is a reality that doesn’t depend on my belief. If God exists, he exists irrespective of whether I believe or not.
If he doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist irrespective of my belief or not. So our belief is primarily the determiner of our behaviour. Our belief is not the determiner of the reality of God’s existence.
So when people are brought up in a particular socio-cultural, socio-economic circumstance, they acquire a certain conception of God based on their situation. Now whether that conception is the reality, whether it is revealed in that tradition or any other tradition, whatever it may be, that is questionable. So when people do acts of violence, they are quite often, they say that they are motivated by religion.
And to say that they are not motivated by religion is false. But to say that religion is the cause of violence, that is mistaken. Why? Because religion is used as a justification for violence.
But the cause of violence is there is economic grievance, there is political grievance, there is hunger for power, there are hundred other factors that come up. So if we truly understand God, God is the God of all people. God is not the God of some people.
God exists, he is the source of everyone. If he is the source of everyone, he is connected to everyone, he cares for everyone. And how can he delight in the killing of some of his own people? So if we truly understand God then that will lead not to violence but to peace because we will see the connectedness of all living beings.
And if a particular conception of God makes us fragmented, makes us disconnected, then that conception of God itself is wrong. See religions are meant for God. God is not meant for religion.
Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita at the end is very non-sectarian. He says sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja. What he is saying is give up all conceptions of religion and focus on God.
So what happens is religion is a means to go to God. But when people make God a tool to religion, rather the religion as a means to God, then what is happening? When people make God as a tool to religion. So I want my religion to grow.
I want my religion to have power. I want my religion to be the biggest. And God becomes a tool to that.
Then such problems come up. So God is beyond all religions. And when we, rather than making God as a goal of religion, we make God as a tool to religion, then at that time religion becomes not a search for God, but rather religion becomes a search for political power in the name of God.
And when that happens, then there is abuse of power, there can be terrorism, there can be violence. So what we need to counter this is education. If people truly understand the conception of God, what it means and who God is, what it means to understand God, to devote oneself to God, then that will actually bring in peace and harmony.
That won’t cause violence. Does it answer your question? Any other questions? Yes. Okay.
Okay. Okay. Good question.
I understood. Okay. Okay.
So is that Bhagavad Gita is the proof of the existence of God? Or is Bhagavad Gita the basis for us to know God? If Bhagavad Gita would not have been there, how would you have known God? Before we go into the specifics, let’s focus on universals. Universals means that we see that for living in this world, we need certain things and those things are provided in nature. We feel thirst and water is provided in nature.
We feel hunger and food is there in nature. We may have to work to get it, but we don’t, we can’t create it from scratch. It is already there.
We just procure it. We need to breathe and air is there. So whatever fundamental needs are there for us, they are already there in nature.
How do they come about? One explanation for that could be that they are provided for us by God. Now, if God has provided us for the basic necessities of life, then one necessity of living is also knowledge. Okay, I eat, I breathe, I drink, but what am I meant to live for? So if God has provided me with the things to live with, he will also provide me with the knowledge by which to live.
And that knowledge is the revelation of God. So before we go into any specific book of revelation, we need to understand the principle of revelation. The same God who has provided us the necessities for living in terms of food, water, air.
That same God will also provide us knowledge for living. And that is the revealed scriptures. So by observing the world, we can broadly infer the existence of God.
We may not be able to know the specifics about who God is. How can we infer the existence of God? There are four broad arguments. I won’t go into all four of them.
There is a teleological argument, there is a cosmological argument, there is a moral argument and there is an ontological argument. Let me give one example of the cosmological argument. Cosmological argument is that, that things that exist, there are three parts to the argument, that the things that exist in this world, they have a beginning.
Whatever we see, nothing in this world we see is eternal. Whatever exists in this world has a beginning. So if whatever exists in this world has a beginning, the world itself must have a beginning.
And the beginning must have the potential to produce what exists now. The beginning must have the potential to produce what exists now. And that starting point with the potential to produce the things that exist now, that starting point is God.
I will explain this one by one. See, whatever exists now, it is temporary. So it has to have a beginning, some point or the other.
It’s like if I have a building, the 100th story, the 99th story, 98th story, there has to be a ground. Otherwise the building itself would not exist. So if everything is temporary, the cause of all temporary things cannot be temporary.
Because then we would have infinite regress. At some point it has to end. And even science tells us the universe has a beginning.
So there has to be a beginning from the point of view of logic and the starting point has to be there from the point of view of science also. So now what is that starting point? As I said that starting point should have the potential to produce everything. So now science talks about a singularity that exploded.
That is fine enough, but that is not a complete explanation. Why? Because if there is simply matter at the beginning, all that matter will produce is matter. That will not produce consciousness.
If there is a heap of cement at one place, that heap of cement may just roll over or spread over. That heap of cement, if it is to produce a building, there has to be a construction agent, a person who will do the construction. So right now in the world we see things which are unconscious and we see people who are conscious.
These two broad realities are there, the matter and there is consciousness. And for the world as it exists now to come from the beginning, at the beginning also there has to be matter and consciousness. So if that is not there, then atheism, it has to propose that everything has come from nothing.
How did everything come from? Ultimately at the beginning everything came from nothing. But there is no logic to that. How does nothing produce everything? We do not see any type happening.
What we see is one thing produces a second thing. Second thing produces a third thing. So like that if we go back, we need to have, when we say that everything came from nothing, it is completely illogical.
It is far more logical to say that the things that exist here, they have come from something originally which has the potential to produce everything. And if we conceive of God as an image in the temple or as a picture or as some person who was here historically at some time, then we may have a question, how can this be God? But before we look at God as a person, we have to understand God as a principle. God as a principle means that God is the one who is the source of everything.
Sarva Karana Karanam, the cause of all causes. The starting point from which everything came about. That point is God.
So everybody has to sooner or later understand this, accept this point that everything has come from something. Now what is that something? What is the most reasonable conception of that something which will produce everything? So if I say nothing produced everything, that’s illogical. If I say there was just a lump of matter that produced everything, that also is not very logical because how did that organise itself? How did everything come about from that? So if I say there is a conscious intelligent being with material energy associated with him, then that, just like if there is a construction, there is a building constructor and there is building material in the building, then the whole building can come about.
So if there is a supreme conscious being and there is the material energy within, from that potentiality everything can come about. So basically the cosmological argument states that, you know, the starting point of everything is God. So when somebody asks that, you know, does God exist? See, actually, yes, it’s a valid question at one level, but it is God’s existence that makes the existence of everything else possible.
If God did not exist, nothing else would exist. na tvasthi vināyātsyānmayā bhūtaṁ ca rācāraṁ yaccha api sarva-bhūtānāṁ bījaṁ tad dharmārjunaḥ Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita 10.13 that nothing could exist without Him. So this is a little complex argument, but another example to say is that to ask whether God exists, if we truly understand the definition of God as the source of everything, then to ask does God exist is like asking is a circle circular? A circle by definition has to be circular, cannot have any other thing.
Circle means circular. So God, if you understand the definition of God, God is the source of everything. So to ask whether God exists means we are asking, does the thing which ensures the existence of everything else exist or not? Without it existing, nothing else would exist.
So we learn about God, God’s existence by logical inference, but about God’s specific nature, God’s personal nature, who God is, that we learn from revelation. So in that way, our observation and our revelation, they combine together to give us knowledge of God. By our thoughtful observation, we can come to know basically about God’s existence.
But by revelation, we can come to know specifically about God. Does it address your question? So what do we mean by self-mastery? Self-mastery actually means that the self is the master of the self. What does that mean? I said earlier that there are different forces within us.
Some force which wants to be short term, some force which wants to be long term. Just wants to indulge in quick pleasures, some other part of us thinking of long term things. So self-mastery means that when we decide to do something, we don’t let our passing impulses or desires sabotage our purpose.
So I decide to go somewhere and then suddenly I see there is a movie over there. Let me go and watch the movie. And I forget where I want to go.
So what happens? There are stray desires that come within us and we often let them distract us from our purpose. Self-mastery means that once we decide a purpose that is what I am going to do, we don’t let various stray forces within us sabotage our purpose. We make sure that we move forward towards that purpose.
Thank you. So actually we have ten sutras to discuss and we have discussed till now three. So what I will be doing is I will be going through the remaining ones a little faster and we will move forwards and we will discuss some questions towards the end.
In the next 15 minutes, around 6 or 6.15 we will have a break. I will take one more sutra right now. This is a very important one about the mind.
Mind the mind. That’s the one. So what exactly is the mind? How does the mind act? How it misleads? And how can we mind the mind? These are the three parts of the talk.
So I talked first about the material and the spiritual as two dimensions of our being. I will take this analysis further and talk about what is the mind. It’s a very complex thing.
The mind is a universe as John Milton said and it can make heaven of hell and hell of heaven. The people by their mind they can make themselves miserable totally. They can make hell out of heaven.
And for the materialistic people, E.G. Harrow was a materialist philosopher. He said I won’t study the mind because it has no locus. We don’t know where the mind is.
But I will say that I won’t study the mind. The mind has no locus. But the mind has, mind effects are focus.
The mind does trouble us quite a bit. So what, so we will try to understand what the mind is. So basically our existence is three dimensional.
There is the body, there is the mind and the soul. So the body is the visible cell that we see around us as we feed and dress this. The mind is the interface between the soul and the body.
And the soul is the spiritual essence. Another example. So now if I have this computer here.
The computer has a hardware, the computer has a software and there is a user. So like that the hardware is the body. The software is the mind.
And the user is the soul. Sometimes say if our computer gets corrupted by a virus. The hardware may be perfectly functional.
But the computer is perfectly useless. It can’t do anything with it because the software is corrupted. Like that we will be perfectly healthy.
But if our mind is corrupted by a virus, say depression, say pessimism, say cynicism. It’s corrupted by negativity, we will become paralysed. We won’t be able to do anything.
So the software is essential for us to be able to access the hardware properly. So like that for us, we do take care of our body. We feed ourselves in time, we exercise, we rest.
But we need to take care of the software also. The software is the mind. Now the mind affects us in various ways.
So here sometimes, quite often, many times today if you talk about spiritual things. People equate the spiritual with the mental. When I went for a spiritual programme, it made me feel very good.
So anything that makes me feel very good, we think of it as spiritual. But yes, it can be but not necessary. So the mind and the soul, what is the difference? The mind is the root, it is the pathway through which consciousness goes.
Whereas the soul is the source or the root of consciousness. So for example, that if I have to work on a computer, if I want to take a printout, then it is I who am the desire of that, I am the source of that desire to take a printout. Then I need a proper software which will send the instruction to the computer and the printer that take the printout.
So the soul is the source and the mind is the pathway. It is the root and the root. Now, how to understand this mind? How does it work? I will talk about, I have given four or five examples over here, but I will talk about two examples simply to illustrate this.
So the mind has certain default programmes. Say, suppose we have many browsers in our computer. We may have Chrome, we may have Firefox, we may have Opera, whatever.
Now, if one particular browser is set as a default browser, and as soon as I click a link, I do not choose to open that browser. But just by clicking that link, that browser automatically opens. So this is the meaning of a default programme.
So like that, the mind has its default programmes. And those default programmes shape our function. So for example, if I have a default programme of cynicism.
Cynicism means that everything that happens, I always feel, I always think that things are going to be bad. So if somebody praises me, what does this person want to do? The first question that comes to mind. If I have a default programme of materialism, somebody on my birthday comes and very lovingly gives me a gift.
I look at it, 500 rupees. What happens? Everything I will evaluate in terms of money. So we all have certain default programmes which shape our perception of everything.
And these default programmes, if they are not healthy, then whatever we do, all of that is shaped negatively by an unhealthy programme. So basically the mind, as in the continuing metaphor of the default programme, say, we say in Sanskrit, the soul is sat, chit, ananda. So I used once a software for proofreading, and it had an autocorrect feature.
So whenever I would write, the soul is sat, chit, ananda. The software would make it, the soul is Saturday, chit, ananda. So for the computer, there is no concept of sat.
So sat is SAT, and SAT is a short form of Saturday. The soul is Saturday, chit, ananda. So what is happening? Here the computer has a default programme which is wrong.
I want to write SAT over there, sat. But the computer is telling me Saturday. So we all have default programmes like that which work in particular ways.
And through these default programmes, the mind shapes our perception and then shapes our destiny. So there is this force inside us. So the key in understanding the mind is to understand that it is different from us.
That means many of us, we may have observed that we do certain things, and then we wonder, why did I do that? Sometimes we make a resolution, you know, I will not overeat. I don’t want to become obese. And then suddenly something happens, and then we overeat, and then we wonder, why did I do that? Why did I eat so much? It will be about so many things.
I will spend hours watching television. Why did I waste my time like that? So there is something within us which makes us do things which actually we don’t want to do. So we may just simply say, I don’t have willpower.
That is true at one level, but there is something much deeper going on over there. So we have certain plans, we have certain intentions, we have certain aspirations. But there is something inside us which sabotages us.
So critical, why is it so important to understand the difference between the mind and the soul? It is critical because if you don’t understand this difference, then we do things which the mind wants us to do, rather than doing the thing which we want to do. So for example, now if I tell you to do something, now you understand clearly that you and I are different. You are a different person, I am a different person, and your desires and my desires are not necessarily the same.
So if I tell you to do something, you will evaluate, does this make sense? Is this important for me? Is this beneficial for me? And after evaluating that, you will decide whether to do it or not. Because I am separate from you, I am outside of you, distinct from you, so you will actually evaluate this. But when we say something is outside and something is inside, we choose this based on the understanding that I am the body.
So whatever is outside the body is external. Whatever is inside the body, I think is internal, I think that is mine. But it is not necessarily like that.
Because if I understand that I am the soul, then even the mind is external to me. Even the mind is external to me, and what the mind tells me is not necessarily my desire. To give a simple example, say I am working on a computer, and I am surfing some site, or I am reading something on a particular website.
And somebody comes along and says, hey, why don’t you look at that other site? Now I look at that, I will hear what that site is about, and afterwards I will decide whether I should visit that site or not. Now that is very clearly somebody from outside is telling me this. But sometimes what happens, while I am reading on the computer, suddenly a pop-up window comes up.
And if that pop-up window comes up very subtly, I am caught in the reading and I look here and I just click on the link. I click on the link and I go to that site, and I go to that site, and I go to that site, and sometimes for surfing, I spend hours. So net surfing becomes net suffering afterwards.
I spend hours and hours wasting my time, and I wonder why did I do that? So here what has happened, if somebody from outside had come and told me, to surf that site, I would have said no. But that pop-up just comes so subtly from there, I just get caught in it. So just like that pop-up can come on a computer, and I have myself opened the computer, I need to operate the computer, I need to go on the internet and look at a particular site.
But that does not mean I have to look at whatever link pops up over there. I understand this. So just as there is a pop-up window that comes up through the software of the computer, similarly there is a pop-up that comes up in our mind.
And just as normally if we are properly aware, then even if we are reading a particular page, and at that time our window pops up, so we won’t just click on it. We will think, should I do this or should I not do this? Is this important for me or is it not important for me? So like that, in our mind also things pop up. And when they pop up, if we are not careful enough in discerning the difference, everything inside me is not me.
Everything inside me, inside me there is a soul, I am the soul, but there is a mind. And the mind is not necessarily me. The mind’s desires are not necessarily my desires.
Just like, suppose, you know, if somebody has got, some people get addicted to reading news, breaking news, every five minutes they want to see what is the news, what is the news, what is the news. And afterwards they realise that, you know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to spend watching, reading the news every five minutes. But if there is a software or there is a programme, as soon as I, if I want to go to some site, but if I start typing a particular set of words, if I say T-I-M-E, what a computer does it? Autocomplete, Times of India.
So it does it autocomplete and takes me to that site. Why? Because in the past I have visited that site so many times, it does autocomplete. Even if I don’t want to go to that site, I may not even type the full.
I might want to go to some other site, which has T-I-M and some other spelling also. But it does this auto, default autocomplete. So like that, within our mind this pop-up comes up.
And this pop-up takes us in the wrong direction. So if I am not very careful, I just type T-I-M and I want to go, maybe I am going to some time in the world, I would look at which is the time in which part of the world, or whatever time and date I want to go. But I just type T-I-M, it comes Times of India, I go there and start watching also, reading also, and I spend time on that.
So like that, based on the kind of habits that we have done, based on the sites we have surfed earlier, the browser does autocomplete. Like that, based on the kind of desires we have had, based on the kind of actions that we have done, the mind does its autocomplete. So we start something and the mind just completes it off.
And that way, the mind makes us do certain things, which we don’t even want to do. We may decide I don’t want to do it, but then I sit down, and then without my conscious awareness, I start doing it. And then afterwards I wonder why did I do it.
So this is, that’s why it’s very important to mind the mind. To give another example, one example of the computer and various softwares associated with it. How many of you have heard of a ventriloquist? Ventriloquism is a form of entertainment.
You have probably seen it on TV, but you may not know the English word. Ventriloquism means what? Sometimes there are some people who have the skill to throw their voice. So there is a dummy, and that dummy, so if a ventriloquist, they are expert, and they throw their voice, it appears as if the dummy is speaking.
You have seen this in TVs or somewhere? You must have seen it. So basically, loquism means to speak, ventri means to at a distance or to throw. So ventriloquism means to project your voice to a greater distance.
So I am speaking from here, but it appears as if that dummy is speaking. So normally what a good ventriloquist does is, I said I won’t take all the examples, I can take this ventriloquist example. The ventriloquist, normally what happens? The ventriloquist makes a show.
That means, you know, there is a dummy, and the ventriloquist makes it appear as if the dummy is speaking. But the mind is also like a ventriloquist. But it makes as it shows.
That means the mind speaks something and makes us believe that it is I speaking. It means, if I am sitting right now, and say the student is sitting and studying, at the back of the mind, a thought comes. You know, some cricket match is going on somewhere.
Maybe, I think let’s watch the score, whatever it is. That desire is right now in the background. It’s like a pop-up window that has come over there.
But then, the student will study. Yeah, maybe I can just look at the score. One minute, I’ll look at it.
No, no, I’ve got to study. No. For one minute, I can study once again.
And then, as I start thinking about it, first, the idea is out there. And I am here. And that idea is coming.
But after some time, I accept that idea as my idea. And once I think that it is my idea, then I use all my intelligence, all my willpower, all my resources to no longer resist that idea, but to indulge in that idea. And that’s how we end up doing the things which we had planned not to do.
So, it’s all based on misidentification. So, if I just understand that there is something inside of me which is different from me, just like my computer has certain default programmes, it has certain bookmarked sites, it’s not that I have to visit those sites. If I have a homepage, as soon as I turn on the browser, it will automatically open.
So, like that, I have certain default settings. And those default settings are not necessarily the right settings. So, if we observe ourselves carefully, we can observe the functioning of our mind.
The functioning of our mind means, what is the way in which I think? None of us can stop thinking. We all are thinking constantly. But the way we think, if we can observe ourselves, we’ll know that, okay, every time whenever something happens, you know, some people just think negatively.
They say that, you know, those who are successful people, they find opportunities in every problem. Unsuccessful people, they find problems in every opportunity. So, whatever is there, just see negative.
This problem, this problem, this problem, this problem. Everywhere there is a problem. So, once there was an anti-alcohol campaigner, and he went and he would give talks, how people should not take alcohol.
And he decided, people would be influenced, but one time he decided to do a demonstration. So, he brought, he had a glass of alcohol, and then he took out a fly. He had caught a fly from a ball box, and he opened the box and threw that fly into that box, into that alcohol glass.
It was a transparent glass. The fly just went down, went down, went down, went down, fluttered a little bit. It sank to the bottom.
It’s clear that the fly had died. So, then he turned towards all the people and he said, so, what do you learn from this? So, now the lesson was, all the alcoholics are looking down. One alcoholic was very cheerful.
So, what do you learn from this? When we drink alcohol, all the germs and worms in our stomach will die. So, what happens here is that, we have certain default programmes, based on which we see things in particular ways. So, if somebody just wants to drink alcohol, then no matter what evidence they will be shown, they will interpret it in just the way to support their idea of drinking alcohol.
So, similarly with us, we have a mind which has certain default programmes. And to the extent we recognise those default programmes, to that extent we can evaluate whether these are right or these are wrong. And then we can go about changing those programmes.
But before we can do that, at the very first, we have to know that everything inside me is not me. That whatever thoughts come in me, whatever desires come in me, they are not necessarily my desires. They are actually a result of the programming that has happened inside me from my past.
Now, the Bhagavad Gita says that the mind can be our enemy and the mind can be our friend also. In 6.6 the Gita says that, for one who has controlled the mind, the mind is the best of friends. And for one who has failed to do so, the mind is the worst of enemies.
So, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita does acknowledge the mind can be a friend also. So, when I am saying that the mind has certain default programming, it is not necessary that all the programming is bad. Some of the programming may be good also.
We may all have good habits which work for our benefit also. But the point is we have to understand what is my programming. And to the extent I understand my programming, to that extent I can evaluate it and correct it when required.
So, earlier I talked about, the previous session was about, first we talked about redefine success and the next session was about be concerned not disturbed. And then we move onwards and we are talking about mind domain. So, the connection, the thought flow that is moving forward is that we often understand certain things intellectually.
But we are not able to apply them practically. So, I understand also this, I have a spiritual side, I should focus on my spirituality, I will get strength from that. But still our thoughts just go back to material things.
So, why does this happen? That is because of the programming of the mind. And to the extent we understand that this programming is not me, this programming is inside me, but I still have freedom. I will conclude with one example, then we can have few minute question answers, then we will have a break after that.
About how to understand this mind is different from me. Suppose we are driving a car, and then next to us is a very restless person, maybe a restless child. And the child, I say hey, we are driving a car and the child says, look at that, look at that, look at that, look at that.
Now, if the driver starts looking at everything the child points to, then there will be an accident. Now, the child is by nature excited. And the child will look at that, look at that, look at that.
Now, the child is going to say that, but if the mother or the father is driving, the mother or the father don’t have to look at that necessarily. Now, the child is not going to push the mother and father off the seat and take the wheel in one’s own hands. The car’s wheel is always in the hands of the mother or the father.
But the mother or the parent has to decide whether I let the child distract me or not. So, the mind is like that restless child. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita 6.35 that mind is, 6.34, mind is chanchala, it’s restless like a child.
So, the mind will think of this, think of this, think of this, watch this, read this, touch this, do this, do that. Now, if we listen to the mind, we get distracted. It’s like a car driver listens to the neighbour, he’ll get distracted.
But if I understand that this neighbour, this child can push me, but the child cannot force me. Hey, come on, look at this, look at this. The child cannot literally drag my head and make it look with it.
The child cannot forcibly take the car there. So, like that, this inner voice that is there, come look at this, touch this, go here, do this, all these impulses come. But it can push us, but it can’t force us.
So, we have, when the push comes, we have the capacity to counter-push, we have the capacity to resist. And spirituality develops that capacity to resist. How we develop the capacity to resist, that I’ll talk a little later, after the break.
But suffice it to say at this stage, that there is something within us which distracts us. And although it distracts us, it cannot force us. It will push us and we can counter-push.
And the more we can counter-push, the more we will be able to make choices that are the best for our interests. And the less we counter-push, the more we’ll make choices that will be short-term and it will often be self-destructive. So, mind-to-mind means, we understand that there is a force within me which is not me, and then we observe it and we decide, we consciously decide whether to accept the suggestions or not to accept the suggestions.
How to do that, we’ll discuss later. I’ll summarise what I talked about the mind. I talked about our existence is three-dimensional.
There is the body, there is the mind, there is the soul. That is like the hardware, the software and the user. So now the software, if it gets corrupt, the device can’t function.
Like that people become, because mind becomes filled with negativity. Then virus of negativity, then even if they’re physically healthy, they can’t function. And this mind, it’s software.
It’s a software programme. And by that programme, based on how we have functioned in the past, it has acquired certain default settings. And those default settings repeatedly make us act in certain ways.
And so, if somebody from outside suggested something to me, I would evaluate it, whether to do it or not. But when that same thought comes from inside, we identify with it very easily, because it’s coming from inside. And then we act on it and then we wonder, why did I do that? So similarly, this mind, if you understand, this is different from me.
There is some default programming by which it will keep proposing certain things to me, even when I don’t want to do them. But when it proposes, I can resist that proposal. I can resist that proposal if I am aware of that proposal.
So, I give two examples of ventriloquists. As the ventriloquist projects the voice and makes somebody think that this is I speaking. So it’s not, the mind is separate from us.
And sometimes the mind makes us believe that its idea is our idea. But it’s a programme separate from us. So the mind will give a certain idea, like pop-ups coming up on our computer.
But just as we won’t just click on any pop-up window that comes up, we don’t have to click on the mind’s pop-up window also. We can objectively evaluate. And for that, we need self-awareness.
So meditation, which we will discuss later, that actually creates the self-awareness by which we become aware of the mind. And although the mind can seem very forceful in terms of making us do certain things, but the mind cannot actually force us to do things. It can push us, but it can counter-push us.
Like a child can distract the parent, but the child cannot drag the wheels from the parent. So, this is the parents can neglect the distracting child. Similarly, we can neglect the distracting mind and pursue our higher interests.
Thank you. Are there any questions before we take a break? Yeah, please. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, fine. Yeah.
So, if somebody is going about making a startup, at that time, what could be the default programme for them? Yeah, one programme could be that I’ll become a millionaire in a year. And it’s possible, but it’s not probable. It takes years.
So if I just think in terms of… See, the problem is that if I think only in terms of money, I may earn money, but that may not be sustainable. I may cut ethical corners for that purpose. So, one programme is to eval… one default setting, which could be a wrong programme, is to evaluate success only in terms of money.
Money is a very important parameter in business, no doubt. It’s the most important parameter also, we could say. But that is not the only parameter.
And another could be that usually, we all have certain default settings about people. So, a famous Upanishadic saying, it is said that whenever you meet anyone, let your first thought about them be positive. Actually, it’s very nice to hear.
Actually, when we try to do it, then we become aware about how much negative thoughts we have about others. Once I start thinking that I should think positive about whoever I meet, then we start realising, as soon as we see someone, lazy, forgetful, short-tempered, not greedy, glutton. We have so many default comments, which as soon as we meet people, we start passing about them.
And even if this doesn’t happen consciously, at a subconscious level, the attitude that we have towards people percolates in our behaviour. And that alienates people. And that creates distance, that creates friction, and that alienates people.
So, if we are working in a team, and if we could challenge our own default attitudes about others, to become open-minded, give them a fair chance, give them a benefit of doubt, then we could minimise a lot of frictions. And then overall, the cooperation, the team spirit, and the productivity can increase enormously. So, evaluating our default settings about others can be very helpful in taking our relationships to a new level.
I just wanted to, the question is, how can we correlate all the three sutras you have narrated today to specifically leadership and basically leadership skills? Okay. Yeah. So, how can we correlate the three sutras of leadership? As I started, I was talking, I said that we will be focussing this course on primarily on personal leadership.
And the personal leadership is the foundation of public leadership. That means, if I have to lead others, if I am myself very clear, very purposeful, very focused, then I will be able to lead others more effectively. So, the first sutra that we discussed today, redefine success.
That basically, if a leader has a very unidimensional or restricted definition of success, then failure within that definition of success can devastate a person. That can demoralise and devastate a person. The person will not be able to move forward, not be able to recover, not be able to move on.
So, if we have a broader definition of success, then even if things go wrong, even if we have failures, Einstein said that, seek not to be a man of success, seek to be a man of value. If I am building myself as a person, even if I fail, if I have trained myself well while working in a job, even if I lose that job, that’s a failure. But, if I have been working and training and developing my skills, I can always get another job.
So, if I evaluate my success only in terms of that job, losing that job is a total failure. But, if I have a broader definition of success, in terms of the kind of skills that I am developing, even if I lose the job, that’s not the end of the world. So, like that when we have a broader definition of success, the broader our definition of success, the bigger the problems we can withstand.
If my definition of success is small, when a big problem comes, the success gets consumed by that problem. But, if I have a big definition of success, then even big problems can be withstood. So, that’s the second solution.
Third is related to that, be concerned, not disturbed. That is, while we are going through life, there will be ups and downs. And, there will be problems.
And, everybody is affected when there are problems. So, if a leader, it’s very important for a leader to have composure, to have confidence. The whole team’s morale depends on the leader’s morale.
If the team leader appears disheartened, appears defeated, then everybody else gives up more of this. They lose the zeal for fighting, zeal for striving. So, if the leader has an awareness of one’s spiritual core, and with that awareness there is security, then the leader will be concerned, but not disturbed.
Will not be excessively disturbed by reversals. And so, they will be able to move on purposefully, and lead the team. So, these two are talking more in terms of the negative events that come upon us, and how we can deal with them.
The fourth, mind the mind, talks about internals. I said, even leaders can have impulses. And, if they act impulsively, quite often they may damage the process.
So, to subordinate impulse to purpose, that’s what I talked about. So, that was as a matter of principle, I talked in the earlier session. But, when we talk about mind the mind, we analyse where does the impulse come from.
The impulse comes from the default programming of the mind. And, when I understand that there is something inside me that is not me, then I can separate myself from it. The impulse is coming, but I don’t have to listen to that impulse.
So, for example, if I am speaking right now, my mind may say to me, maybe someone will ask a question that you will not be able to answer. Now, if I just listen to that, and I keep listening to that, then that will make me insecure. That will make me fearful.
And, even if I get distracted, I will get worried. And, even if later on a question comes, which I can answer, I will not be able to answer that. So, there is a negative pattern that is there for everyone.
But, what is the difference is how much people listen to that negative pattern. And, the leaders are that sharp mentally, sharp internally, then they can avoid those negative impulses. And, then they can function more productively.
Thank you very much. We will have a break for around, how much? So, we will have a break for around 6.35. And, you can join after that.