Healing the mind – Chaitanya Charan on Wisdom of the Sages podcast

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Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya Come on! Live from Supersoul Farm, this is Wisdom of the Sages, a daily yoga podcast with your host Raghunath and co-host and senior educator at the Bhakti Centre in New York City, Kostuba Das. Welcome to the show and welcome to Sleep and Sunday. I slept in.
I slept into a late five o’clock today. It’s inexcusable. It’s inexcusable.
But Sunday is our special guest day. First of all, before we announce our special guest, we want to welcome everybody from our Facebook community. Welcome.
We do this every day, seven days a week, hardly taking a break, but this is what we do. It’s what we love to do. It’s yoga philosophy and how to live it and how to apply it Monday through Friday at 5 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can join us live on Zoom. To get those magical Zoom codes, you must email our executive producer, Mara at wisdomofthesages108 at gmail.com and then she will give you the codes and you can enter our forum. Otherwise, we do this.
You can hear us anywhere you get podcasts. Monday through Friday, we study sacred literature, how to apply it. The book we’re going through right now, 18,000 Sanskrit verses.
It’s called the Srimad Bhagavatam, the cream of the crop of all Vedic literatures of how to apply bhakti yoga to your life. We go through it. We study it.
We try to apply it and live it. It’s an interesting ride how to apply this stuff. On Saturday and Sunday, we do something very special.
We sleep in a little. We start at 8 o’clock. At 8 o’clock, we answer our questions because questions come up naturally on this path.
Then on Sunday, so yesterday was question day. On Sunday, we bring in a person we think is sort of cool. Today, we have someone very, very, very cool.
We bring in Chaitanya Charan. Welcome, Chaitanya Charan from you’re a Mumbai boy, right? Is that correct? Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here.
Originally from Mumbai or originally from Pune? I am from Nasik, which is about three hours from both of the places. Nasik is a holy place, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s the holy place of Lord Ram.
This is the place of Lord Ram. This is where, what happened there? What happened in Nasik? Has to do with the nose. Am I correct? Yeah, that is the place where Ram lived while he was in exile.
And then when the demoness attacked Sita, Ram’s consort, so her nose was cut off. So the nose in Sanskrit is called as Nasika. That’s how the name came, Nasik.
Someday, we won’t get into it now, but someday in your very analytical way, you will explain how that’s not a terrible thing. Okay. You mean it’s not good to cut people’s noses off? What’s wrong with that? That’s how we used to do it.
Okay, I’m going to read your official bio, then we want to speak from our heart. Chaitanya Charan is a renowned international speaker, mentor, monk, spiritual author, and life coach. He travels all over the world, from Australia to the USA and beyond, and has given talks at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cambridge, and he also has given a talk at the United Nations Educational Organisation as well as multinational organisations such as Microsoft, Google, and Intel.
Wow, I’m pretty impressed with that. An engineer by education, he’s the author of 25 books. He also blogs daily on the Bhagavad Gita at GitaDaily.com, where he has written well over, I kid you not, 4,000 articles.
He writes one every day. That are read by thousands through daily feeds worldwide. That’s quite an impressive resume.
I think that’s just scratching the surface, actually. You know what’s interesting? I knew nothing about that. I just loved you because I would have lunch with him at the GEV.
He would be there, sitting there, and me and my wife would come and sit with him and we’d ask him questions and I thought, what a learned, sweet man. I knew nothing of your accolades, of all your accomplishments. That’s quite impressive.
He also has a YouTube channel. Is it Chaitanya Charan? Is that what it is? Yeah, Chaitanya Charan, yes. Can you spell Chaitanya with a C-H or C-A? C-H.
C-H-A-I-T-A-N-Y-A Charan. C-H-A-R-A-N. Chaitanya Charan.
You can find that on YouTube. That is like a gold mine. It’s a mine of gems, let’s say.
There’s so much information. This is just what I would like to share. We’re all different in different ways and we all have different types of minds, or you could say brains in a sense, the way that we look at the world and analyse the world.
Of all the people that I’ve met in my life, there are a few people that I really think they have just an intellect that can break things down like it’s a superior computer that they have. Yeah, I think his computer is much more superior. It’s way better than mine.
It can very quickly grasp the essence of complex issues and then break them down. This is where he’s really got the mind of an engineer. He can take philosophical concepts, social concepts, all different kinds of concepts and just categorise them, break them down in his own mind and then communicate them very clearly so that they’re understandable and also commonly with a lot of humour too.
The topics that he can speak on are so vast. That’s like if you go to his YouTube channel or to his written articles, there’s so many topics and you can throw one out there and he’ll have this in-depth analysis of it, breaking it down into different bits. It’s all there.
I don’t know how you do, Prabhu, but I’m in awe. Well, after that introduction, whatever I speak is going to be an anticlimax now. No, no, no.
It will fulfil it. But on top of that, you’re part of a community that’s so dear to Raghunath and myself and to many of our listeners. Well, you live now, I think you travel all around the world, but your base would be, I think the Govardhan Eco Village now more so than the Radha Gopinath Temple in Mumbai, but they’re both kind of sister projects or in a sense one project.
True? Yeah, that’s true. So you’re living at the Eco Village. I don’t even think we got into his books.
He’s a prolific author. He’s got over 25 books. He’s got over 25 books.
How do you have time to do this? He doesn’t waste time. He doesn’t waste time. That’s the thing.
I waste time. We waste time. He doesn’t waste time.
Anyway, there’s one more thing I really want to mention. This is important and this is something that doesn’t often come up in conversations about Chaitanya Charan, but actually when Chaitanya Charan was one years old, he contracted polio and he’s lived with that now for the rest of his life. So when you walk, you walk with crutches, right? It’s not easy for you to get around.
But meanwhile, he still travels the world like nonstop speaking, you know, the whole globe and writing all these books and writing all these hearts can do so much. It’s really quite, quite something. Thank you for doing all that you do.
Were you born a devotee of Krishna? Well, I have not yet become a devotee. So I’m still struggling. I was born in a Brahmin family, which is pious but not religious.
So I knew the stories of and the general concepts of the Bhagavad Gita, the stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. But we were more into education and more of westernisation. That was the atmosphere in our culture, in our home.
So definitely religious, but not spiritual, you could say. It almost seems like religion or spirituality has taken a backseat in sophisticated, well-to-do and even pious families in India. Is that correct? Yes and no.
Religion in the conventional sense has definitely taken a backseat. But spirituality in the sense of the wanting to explore something that will offer peace of mind, that will help one to find fulfilment. So that is something which is, even in the progressive part of India, it is growing.
So often the places like Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, where we have lot of software engineers, that is the places where a good number of people are also turning towards spirituality. So I feel it’s just a matter of a different way of accessing the spiritual wisdom. So more of religious rituals are not what people are attracted to.
But if the wisdom is presented in a way that can help people make their lives more meaningful, manage their emotions better, connect with each other more deeply, then definitely spirituality is, in that sense, I would say rising. Although religion is declining. As a bunch of Westerners, mainly, we have some people from India and some people in India listening to the show, but as a bunch of Westerners, mainly, we find ourselves to be what we call dented cans, a little bit broken.
We say that, when you say, I came from a pious Brahmin family, me and Kastubha, a few of us, a handful of us know what that means. That means you grow up worshipping deities. You grow up from childhood chanting the Bhagavad Gita.
You grow up from childhood hearing the pastimes of Ram Leela and Krishna Leela. You worship, you understand the Brahmins and you have a family priest, etc. You’re not going to the prom or going to pep rallies or dating when you’re 12.
It’s hard for even an American to even grasp that. A lot of us don’t have cohesive family units. We didn’t grow up in that.
We grew up in broken families. A lot of times, there’s been a lot of trauma growing up in the West. We come off.
We present very well in the West. We’ve got wrinkle-free lawns. Our highways are together.
We have guardrails on cliffs. We present great, but that real family unit has been cracked. There’s been a crack in the seal.
Because of it, we grew up with a lot of trauma, a lot of issues. We grew up with either overbearing parents or missing parents. It’s driven us to drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, sex addiction, drug addiction, running away from home.
No regard for our parents. Matter of fact, getting out of the parents, giving our parents the finger, running away from home. Ask your question.
I’m just trying to give him what he’s dealing with, what you’re about to do. We grow up with a lot of trauma. We grew up our face ground to the dirt.
Now, broken, we’re looking towards light. What do you do in Bhakti when you’re coming from so much baggage, when you’re coming in where you can’t trust, where you feel a little, where you have a lot of self-loathing? How do you deal with a mind like that where we don’t trust? There’s a lot of self-hatred going on. There’s a lot of voices in our mind telling us, we can’t do that.
You’ll never be as good as that. How do you bring that into a Bhakti circle without making tonnes of offences? Sometimes it seems very simplistic. Oh, you just chant the holy name.
Please let him talk. I just want to make sure he gets the understanding here. Yeah.
Firstly, I would like to say that the grass always seems greener on the other side. So after I have spent some time travelling in the Western world, I would say that whichever devotees or spiritual aspirants I have met from America, from UK, from Australia, I have seen an enormous level of earnestness. It is true that, actually, the first person who I met who was from a divorced family was after I came to ISKCON at the age of 24.
That is the first person I met. As you said, the family unit was at least very stable at least two decades ago. But I would say that if we consider, there are two ways to look at spirituality.
See, one is that how we have been living in the past. So if we put our fingers vertically, then the way we have been living in the past, some of us may be living in, as you said, well-established family units with a good sense of connection and responsibility and some of us may not be living that way, may be opposite. And we could say spirituality is above that.
So this is one way of looking at spirituality that it’s a progression. But another way of looking at spirituality is it’s like this. It’s like this means whatever our material level is, it’s like horizontal.
It doesn’t matter. From wherever we are materially, we can access life’s spiritual side. So I find that the most important thing for growing spiritually is that sense of earnestness and that sense of wanting to grow spiritually, wanting to explore spiritually.
And that I have seen in whoever I have interacted with. So I would say that that sense of earnestness sometimes gets lost in India because of complacency. Oh, this is just a part of our culture.
We have grown up with this. So it’s always there. One of the teachers in our tradition, Bhakti Siddhanta would say that the people who miss the train the most are the people who stay next to the train station.
Because they’re right next to the train station. I just go and catch it. But those who stay far away from the train station, they make it a plan.
I have to come here in time. Right. Take it for granted.
They take it for granted maybe. Yeah. So now having said that, with respect to your specific question, I’d say that spirituality, the way I usually talk about it is that there is the inner world and there is the outer world.
And technology in which the Western world has progressed enormously, technology makes things better. And spirituality makes people better. So technology helps us to transform the outer world.
And by that, in the Western world that has been done enormously. Now spirituality helps us to better organise and improve our inner world. And that is where if the two can come together, then we can actually be a part of not only making our own lives better, but also the world better.
So the spiritual wisdom of the Eastern world, especially the way you have created a congenial spiritual support community, if you get a community like that, we all can go beyond whatever wounds we have from the past. We are all, in some ways, we are products of our past. But we are not prisoners of our past.
I like that. We are products of our past, but we are not prisoners of our past. Tattoo! Tattoo time! I’m going to tattoo that right on my back.
What do you think? Sorry about that. Continue, please. Yeah.
So spiritual growth helps us to whatever wounds we may have from the past, we can always grow from there. So I often like to use the example of the software. If we have a computer system with a hardware, software, and user, so that’s like our body, mind, and soul.
The body is like the hardware, the mind is the software, and the soul is the user. So if we consider, say, like Google, if I search something on Google and you search something on Google, we will not get the same find, same hits, because Google tracks what all history we have searched before, and it customises the results. I didn’t know that.
No, like when you plug a URL into, you know, it starts to fill it out for you, like automated. Okay. So our mind is also like that.
So whatever we have thought of before, whatever we have dwelt on before, that becomes stored, and that comes back as an auto prompt. Wow. So if, say, somebody has, I suppose, in India, many of you know the movie industry is called Bollywood.
Yeah. So like we have Hollywood. So if somebody has, say, visited Bollywood.com repeatedly, then they come to a spiritual talk, they hear about the Bhagavad Gita, and they want to find out what is this Bhagavad Gita.
As soon as they type B in their Google, their browser, immediately it gives Bollywood.com. They wanted to go toward Bhagavad Gita, but Bollywood.com comes along. So that’s like the product of the past. Yeah, that’s the product of the past.
So what comes up in our mind, what kind of actions we are prompted toward, that will be determined by our past. But just because Bollywood.com has come on my browser, that doesn’t mean I have to select it and go ahead. For somebody who has, say, selected Bhagavad Gita before, as soon as they type B, Bhagavad Gita will come, and immediately they will go there.
For somebody who had typed Bollywood.com before, they’ll have to put in more effort. B has come, Bollywood, no, I don’t want to go there. I’ll type Bhagavad Gita, and then I can go to Bhagavad Gita.com. So, you know, certain promptings will come to us from our past, but we always have the free will to choose now.
Now that choosing may require a little more effort, based on the kind of choices we have made or the impressions we have got from the past. But the Bhagavad Gita tells us that we always have free will. And that free will, it is something which we can either increase by choosing properly or decrease by not choosing properly.
But that free will is always there. So, and the spiritual resources provided by the Gita help us to expand the ambit of our free will. So that’s how, whatever be the past, the spiritual wisdom of the Gita can help us create a bright future for ourselves.
You know, a lot of times when I’m typing stuff on the computer, that auto-suggestion is like so strong, that it’s making actually more difficult to just write what I want to write. Yeah. And then you actually have to make, sometimes I go two or three times, and I get the same wrong word before I click.
Right. And choose not to use the suggested word that they put, the suggested spelling of the suggested word. Especially when you’re doing a lot of Sanskrit stuff, right? Because the things aren’t programmed for that.
So you’re saying that our minds, you said that we’re a product but not a prisoner of our past. And so, in a sense, we’re a product of our past because our mind has been exposed to so much that when we hear of a topic or we have a particular experience, then there’s an automated mental response that comes up. Yes.
And then we have the ability to say, no, that’s not what I want. That’s not the way I want my mind to respond, what to speak of my body to respond to this. I will make the conscious effort to choose not to go with the automated response and go with the chosen response based on my own free will.
Now, I love that analogy. But let me ask you this. And Raghunath, he began this with his extended talk.
I know. I know. He was talking about, he brought up.
No, it was great. Thank you. But he brought up the idea of self-loathing, like these difficult emotions that we have in life.
I think it’s kind of rampant in our society now, that negative loops that go on in the mind, different emotional experiences that you’re saying that we have the opportunity, like I might be exposed to a particular vision or a particular sound or a particular place or whatever it may be, and there may be an automated response coming, rising in my mind, even emotionally rising in my mind, and you’re telling us we have the opportunity to choose not to accept that. But it seems that that automated response can be so powerful, it’s like that we actually don’t have any choice. It seems like I don’t want to think this way and I don’t want to feel this way, but I do feel like I’m not just only a product of my past, but I do feel like I’m a prisoner of my past.
Can you speak to that a little bit? I fully agree with that. So that I’ll use two metaphors for this to explain this point. If you consider a sine wave, it goes up and down, a sine wave, it goes up and down and up and like electricity wave.
So when we have times, let’s take another example. The electricity level is here and then there’s a sudden pulse in the electricity. So when the pulse is there, it shoots up.
So similarly for us, we may have a particular level of say craving for some things and sometimes that craving just shoots. So when the craving just rises at that time to say no seems very difficult. So the best way to begin is to not worry so much what happens when the urges have surges.
Now we all have urges and sometimes those urges have surges. So instead of focussing at the times when the urges have surges, we can focus on the between times. It’s not that these urges surge constantly.
And if we define ourselves solely by the times when those urges surge, I decided I will not do this. And still I ended up doing it. And we will end up beating ourselves more and more.
So instead of focussing on those surges, focus on between the surges. That’s when we do our work. In other words, that’s where we reprogram or that auto response.
We can make two kinds of resolutions. Now New Year is coming. So we all will probably make some resolutions.
So there are negative resolutions of what I will not do. And there are affirmative resolutions of what I will do. In some ways both are important.
But it’s much more productive to focus on affirmative resolutions of what I will do and not so much on negative resolutions of what I will not do. Because in a sense, negative resolutions, actually a dead person can keep them better than us. They don’t do anything.
So they won’t do anything undesirable also, unhealthy also. So when we focus on positive resolutions, then that slowly starts strengthening us. Yes, I can decide to do something and I can do it.
And as we keep doing that, so instead of say, if somebody has some unhealthy habit, I will not do this. So if we spend a lot of time on social media and if I decide I’m not going to go on social media, I will not spend time watching movies on Netflix or whatever. So instead of that, focus on, OK, every day, say, I’m going to attend Wisdom of the Sages podcast.
Every day I’m going to read some wisdom text for this much time. So as we start doing the positive, that starts giving us strength. And that strength will eventually make us strong enough so that when the surges happen, we’ll be able to resist them.
But unfortunately, like you talk about self-loathing, Raghunath Prabhu earlier, that self-loathing usually happens when we set goals and we fail to achieve them, then we start beating ourselves up. And that usually happens when we set negative resolutions. This is what I will not do.
So instead if we set positive resolutions, affirmative resolutions, and start with that, then slowly we also start feeling better about ourselves. We start feeling more confident. And then over a period of time, so this was one metaphor I used about the surges of the urges.
And second is even when those urges come up, we could compare them to like an arm wrestling match. Sometimes I’m saying, I won’t do this. And the urge is, do it, do it, do it.
So at that time, the key thing to know is that this is an arm wrestling match, but it is like a timed arm wrestling match. It’s like, say, a three minute round. Now my hand might be just on the table, but if three minutes gets over, a person can’t push anymore.
The round is over. So what happens when the urge starts coming up? At that time, we start feeling, OK, I can resist it now. I can resist it.
How long? If this is how I have to keep resisting for the rest of my life, forget it. But actually, our fight against temptations is like a timed arm wrestling match. So if you keep that in mind, yes, this surge has happened and it seems irresistible, but it is not going to be at this intensity all the time.
So if you can just hold on for a little time, the surge will subside. That must be why the 12 step group say one day at a time. Yeah, that is where you get the one day at a time.
Yeah, very true. Beautiful, beautiful answer. Good stuff.
You know, you’ve now we’ve kind of wandered into the topic of addiction. Right. Yeah.
And is addiction an issue in India? Is it is a popular is it popular like it is popular? We really got to go. We really haven’t dialled in well. We’ve mastered it over here.
Yeah. We’re really addiction masters. What’s it like in India with addiction? Oh, it is becoming big.
You know, in fact, there are some places, especially in the colleges and the younger generation, drugs are becoming big. You want American culture, you want American movies, you want American lifestyle. Welcome to the downside.
American addiction. That’s true. And some ways, you know, Indian modern India, especially the metropolitan cities like Mumbai and Delhi, in some ways, actually, they are getting the worst of the West and the worst of India.
The worst of the West means we don’t we get the technology, we get all that, but we don’t have all the progress corresponding with it. And these cities, the spirituality is also lost because it’s so, so urbanised. So it is a problem.
Delhi is out of control. It’s like a massive urban sprawl. Yeah.
And compared to when you grew up, were you in a village or were you in the city? I was in a town. So I was in various places in Maharashtra. And it was relatively very peaceful, very serene.
So it was very natural. We had a temple just near our home. So the main entertainment was going to the temple and doing some kind of hearing some talks.
Did everybody hear that? Hold on a second. Freeze the show. The main entertainment was to go to the temple and hear some talks.
That was it. That’s entertainment, people. There’s no Netflix.
There’s no blockbuster video. There’s no, you know, morning cartoons. You go to the temple.
Well, the temple is a variety show, right? There’s music. Well, yeah, I know. There’s discussion.
It’s a cultural. There’s dance sometimes in theatre and there’s food and there’s. Yeah, it’s a variety show.
Now, Kostuba and me went to India in the 80s, in 1988. So I think that for us, we are fortunate to visit India when there were no roads. You know, the roads stunk.
But the upside of that was there were villages. There were people driving ox carts and, you know, people herding goats around and blocking traffic. And so now with these urban sprawls and the real westernisation of India, you miss out.
You got to dig deep to find those places. So you have a taste of both those worlds. But now you’re situated in the eco village.
So you’re sort of safe. Yeah, the eco village is kind of the like you’re describing how some Indian places in India have the kind of the worst of the Western and the worst of the Indian. But eco village is kind of the best of both.
Yeah. Yeah, very true. So now now back to the topic of addiction.
From your perspective, which is, you know, drawing from Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam and Upanishads and Vedic texts, yogic teachings. How do you understand addiction? Is it something that is is it a chemical thing? Is it is it a is it a problem of is it a functional problem that certain people have and they’re just unlucky that they were born with it? Is it a moral issue? You know, is it is it just a weakness of moral strength? How do you understand addiction in the let’s say in like an addictive mentality or addictive personality? Yeah. You know, it is both.
Let me start with a metaphor. Consider a snowball. When a snowball is on top of a hill, it’s basically it’s a small snow pebble.
That time you can just flick it with your toe and it’ll crack apart. But as the snowball keeps coming down the hill, it starts gaining mass and momentum. And as it starts coming down, down, down, the same person who could have flipped it with their toe might now be completely knocked down by it.
So similarly, we could say all of us have cravings within us. So for some of us, those cravings are at the snow pebble level. So you could say the snow pebble at the top, it becomes a snowball along the way.
By the time it comes down, it’s a snow boulder. So for some of us, the craving is at a snow pebble level. And we can easily resist it.
So say somebody who has never taken alcohol or has never taken drugs, and they see somebody succumbing to the drugs use again and again, say, I’ll not do it. And they relapse and they say no. And they relapse.
Why can’t you just give it up? So what happens for them? It’s a snow pebble. So they can easily say no to it. But for somebody who has got hooked to it, that’s in their consciousness, that snow pebble has rolled down, rolled down, rolled down.
It has come to the level of being a snow boulder. So for them, it’s not just a matter of having less willpower. No matter how much willpower a person has, a snow boulder will still overpower them.
So yes, every addiction starts as a wrong choice. But as we start, as if we keep choosing it, then more and more that choice starts controlling us. So it’s so we could say that what happens is the scope.
I talked earlier about how we always have free will. So I would like to differentiate between two words, free will and freedom. So if a person is in a jail, in a jail also they have free will, but they don’t have freedom.
In a jail, their physical movement is restricted, that technological access will be restricted. So free will is something which is there even in a jail. But the area over which that free will can be exercised, that becomes lesser and lesser if a person keeps doing wrongs and then in a jail, it’s curtailed.
So even in a jail, if a person keeps, say, being abusive, offensive, then they might be put in solitary confinement. So where their freedom becomes further reduced. So I would say same way with respect to addiction, even an addict has free will, but their freedom is significantly curtailed.
That’s because the snow pebble has become such a snowball that when it comes, they just can’t overpower it. So now is it chemical? Yes, definitely it is chemical, but it is not just chemical. By chemical, what do we mean? The more scientists have studied the brain, they found that the brain is made up of what is called as brain cells or neurones.
The brain cells, when they connect with each other, let’s say the synapse, the brain cells fire. And the popular saying in neuroscience is that the brain cells that fire together, wire together. That means if I act in a particular way, then the brain cells that enable me to act in that way, they get connected.
And next time when I have to act, it becomes easier and easier. So, yes, somebody who is addicted, their brain cells are formed in a particular way, have become formed in a particular way. And that action becomes habitual for them.
It becomes even without their thinking, it happens. Conditioned. So it is.
But the fortunate thing is that the brain is actually not, it is not frozen. It is changeable. So the brain has been wired in a particular way, but it can be rewired.
So we could say addiction starts as a wrong choice, as a thoughtless choice, we could say. But then it becomes almost impossible to give up that choice. So eventually it becomes not a, it becomes not a, it becomes like a disease.
So disease means we don’t blame a person. Why have you got this disease? So and so when a person is facing the snow boulder at that time, just telling them, you know, why don’t you have more willpower? That is not very helpful. So that time it’s a disease and it needs to be supported appropriately.
And then gradually willpower will always be required. Even when somebody has a disease, they need willpower to take the treatment. But when a disease is there, willpower alone is not enough to cure the disease.
So if somebody has got, is coughing very severely and they are in a class and their cough is disturbing the class, just use your willpower and suppress your cough. Well, you can’t do that for very long. So when it becomes a disease, that’s the time when willpower has to be complemented with the appropriate process.
So that’s how gradually can come out of our addictive cravings. Fascinating. Yeah.
That’s why these the first bad choice is problematic. That first bad choice. And for those who have never done drugs or never done alcohol or never like cross that threshold into a Dharma, they’re better off.
But if we have and I think a lot of us here in the West have, we just sort of like we experiment, you know, and there’s that famous idea of first class behaviour. First class behaviour means you hear something for the first time. Do not put your hand on the stove and and you listen and you don’t burn your hand.
But in second class intelligence is where someone says, do not put your hand on the stove. But they say, well, I want to test it out. And we touch the stove, we burn our hand.
And third class intelligence is don’t put your hand on the stove and we repeatedly touch the stove. You’re dealing with a bunch of people who have repeatedly burned their hand doing the same thing again and again. And so it’s very difficult.
We’re creating we’re living with that giant snowball. A lot of us and a lot of people are just really new to the show and they’re dealing with these things. Meat eating.
We’re attached to meat eating. We grew up on it. It’s it seems like, well, what’s the big deal? It’s the big deal because it’s it’s it’s integrating to every facet of our life.
It’s a very big deal for a lot of us or alcohol or drugs or marijuana and things like that. Anyway, I’m just I’m just rambling here. That’s OK.
I have a further question. If I may add, please, please. Example.
So you see what I talk about neuroscience, that is something which we can find in even in the books of material self-help teachers or material de-addiction counsellors. Now, the significant thing that spirituality as spiritual wisdom adds is if we have only a materialistic worldview, then we are our brain. So basically, I am programmed in a particular way.
And in a sense, it’s there is no I beyond the brain. Yes. So what spirituality tells us is the materialistic worldview implies that ultimately we don’t have free will.
If I am product of my brain programme, if I am nothing, my consciousness, nothing more than my brain, then that is what that is who I am. So it implies that we are basically programmed machines. But that’s what materialistic worldview implies.
Whereas spiritual worldview tells us this, we are not programmed machines. We are possessors of those machines. And we are different from that machine.
So we are possessors of programmable machines. And all these urges, they are coming within me. So another example, if I can use for this is, say, if I’m driving a car and say, there’s somebody sitting next to me, maybe it’s a small child and the child is super excited.
Hey, look at that mall, look at that toy, look at that garden, look at that park, look at that. Now, if I keep looking everywhere, I won’t go anywhere. I probably meet with an accident.
But the key is that the wheels are in my hands. The wheels are not in the hand of the child. Child may be very noisy, maybe disruptive, but the child is not in control of the car.
So what spirituality tells us is that, yes, there is this noisy child in our car. That noisy child is our, you could say, our brain with its particular neuronal patterns or our mind with its particular conditionings. It is there and it is real.
But you could say that the mind can only propose, it can’t impose. The child can say, look at that, watch at this, look at that. But it is for me.
It may be very difficult if the child is calling out very loudly. I may be inclined to look at that. But I am in the driver’s seat.
So this is what spiritual wisdom gives us this understanding that we are different from our brain, we are different from our mind. So our past actions have affected our brain, they have affected our mind, but they haven’t affected us at our core. The soul is always pure.
The soul is always a part of God. And the soul is beyond all the conditionings of the mind and the conditions of the body. That’s why the more we learn to connect with spiritual practises, more we practise spirituality, when we practise bhakti, the more we start realising our spirituality.
So yes, I’ll conclude with another metaphor over there. If I am in the ocean and the waves come in that ocean, no matter how much willpower I have, I will be swept away by the waves. But if I am lifted above that ocean, say by a helicopter with a rope, or if I get an anchor which I can hold on to, then the waves will come, but they won’t sweep me away.
So if we do not have a spiritual worldview, then it’s like we are caught in the ocean and we get swept away, no matter how much we try. But the more we understand spirituality, the more we get an anchor to hold on to. Just spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding, serious spiritual practises, they are like the anchor.
The more we hold on to our spiritual practises, still we are in the ocean and the waves will hit us. But the waves won’t sweep us away. If you just hold on to the anchor, the waves won’t sweep us away.
And as we grow spiritually, it’s not just we hold on to the anchor, but actually we start rising above the water. Like we get a rope and start rising. And then we get affected less and less.
So spiritual wisdom and spiritual practises can be extremely empowering in overcoming whatever past habits or addictions we might be having. I have a big question now. You were mentioning how we have certain programming in the brain and we have certain conditioning in the mind, and that can lead to different emotional states.
And sometimes those emotional states can seem overwhelming. I would like for you, for us, to apply your very analytical thinking to the idea of how emotions… Let me put it this way. When you look at bhakti practitioners, yogis, bhakti yogis, and how emotions, maybe how negative… What are the problems or what are the issues, the emotional issues that you see playing out and becoming problematic in people’s practise of bhakti yoga? Does that make sense? Yeah.
How do our emotions prevent us from… Because we all struggle with different things in our practise, and sometimes there are emotional issues that are disconnecting us in some way or slowing us down. Are there certain patterns that you see in bhakti practitioners? Yes. So let’s say that unrealistic expectations.
That is, I think, the biggest challenge on the spiritual path. And I’ll explain this with another metaphor. You know, you could talk about, say, there is digital logic and there is analogue logic.
Digital is either 1 or 0. And analogue is like a gradual progression. So quite often, if we come to spirituality, especially if we come to a serious spiritual path, where there is a serious commitment and there is a genuine aspiration to grow, then quite often we acquire like a digital conception of spirituality. That if I am doing this, if I’m able to do this, then I’m spiritual.
And if I fail to do this, then I am fallen. I’m materialistic. I’m lost.
So when we have this 1-0 understanding, then that can lead to a lot of inner turmoil, guilt. See, I come in front and I go to a temple and I look at the deities. I go to a holy place and I’m supposed to feel spiritual, but I don’t feel anything.
What’s wrong with me? Or, you know, I’ve been practising spirituality. I should have been able to give up these temptations, but still I feel tempted. What’s wrong with me? So what happens if I start, if I fail to feel devotional emotions, or if I feel any non-anti-devotional emotions, sensual emotions, then I start thinking that I am not at 1, I am at 0. And then that sense of failure can affect us very badly.
So in the Bhagavad Gita, in the 12th chapter, Krishna talks about, Krishna actually categorically rejects this digital idea of spirituality. And in the 12th chapter from verses 8 to 12, he gives multiple levels. Now, just try to naturally fix your mind on me and then you will live in me right now.
If you can’t do that, try to fix your mind on me. So if you can’t do that, then you work for me, you do some seva, do some service for me. If you can’t do that, then you just do something for some good cause.
And gradually by this, develop some level of selflessness. So Krishna offers multiple levels at which one can grow spiritually. So I find that, you know, I am preparing a series of talks based on, you know, I am titling that talk as Things I Wish I Had Known 20 Years Ago about Bhakti Yoga.
About my own understanding of, I have been practising for 25 years, so about Bhakti 10-20 years ago. So we all are burdened by some of our conceptions. Just like you talked earlier about, we bring certain conceptions or certain wounds from our past.
But we also have our conceptions about Bhakti and they can also burden us. So I find this 1-0 understanding of spirituality. If I fail to do this, then I am worthless.
Or if I do this, then I am useless. So that has to be avoided. So there is, if we often say we should love Krishna, we should love God.
But how can we love Krishna if we don’t love his parts? And the part of Krishna for which we have the most responsibility is this part. So if I don’t love myself, how can I love Krishna? Because if I am hating one part of Krishna, where is my love for Krishna? So when I am talking about love for Krishna, it’s not in the narcissistic sense that I am great. But it’s just in a sense that I understand that I am also part of Krishna.
And Krishna will never reject us. No matter how many mistakes we have committed, no matter how many mistakes we may commit in the future, Krishna is still there in our hearts. He never leaves us and goes away.
In fact, we never have the power to do anything that will make Krishna stop loving us. So Krishna will never stop loving us. So why should we? Yes, we all have defects, we all make mistakes.
But if we truly love Krishna, then we need to love this part of Krishna also. So we often talk about self-realisation, but self-realisation cannot begin without self-acceptance. This is where I am and I accept myself.
So sometimes we commit some mistakes and it requires courage to accept our mistakes, to accept our weaknesses. But another part of courage which we don’t talk about is it requires courage to also accept ourselves with our weaknesses. To accepting our weaknesses to someone else, I made this mistake, that requires courage.
But accepting ourselves with our weaknesses also requires courage. And that is that aspect of bhakti where to love Krishna, we need to accept ourselves as we are. And we need to love ourselves, not in a narcissistic sense, but in a devotional sense.
I feel that can lead to a lot of expulsion of unhealthy emotions on the path of bhakti yoga. Fascinating. You kind of ended up where Raghunath kind of began with this, dealing with the idea of self-loathing.
And I brought up emotionally what slows people down on their bhakti path. And this is right where you went. So I’m assuming that you feel this is a major issue.
Oh, yes, very much. Because to some extent, I have studied psychology and many of my friends are in, are either psychologists or they’re psychiatrists. So they told something very striking.
One of my friends told me that in today’s world, loneliness is a big problem in general. And as our city, as we start society become more urbanised, it’s understandable. But what he told is that quite often in religious groups with high moral standards, loneliness is more than what is in the secular society also.
Because what happens is that if we are expected to follow high moral standards, and if I’m struggling to do that, then I can’t tell anyone because what will others think of me? Sure, we’ve created a culture where we have to live maybe two different lives. It creates duplicity, actually. And that’s one reason I’m really grateful for the, maybe for the first time that there’s been this marriage that we have going on our show between the bhakti path and the recovery group.
We have a 12-step bhakti recovery group where people can really just be vulnerable. Because sometimes that’s a big hard thing for people to do is share their dark side with anybody. If you’re not part of that, you can ask how to be a part of that 12-step recovery group.
It’s a really great thing and I’m grateful for all the people leading it. But yeah, I think this is the next step in our bhakti for us dented cans. It seems like, you know, Chaitanya Charn’s identifying that is such a key thing.
That it’s something that any bhakti community, any spiritual community has to address somehow. Sure. Has to have some strategy how to deal with it.
Yeah, the ideal and then what’s real. And that’s what there’s a struggle with. The ideal, we heard the ideal, we heard the pure devotee thing thrown around so much.
Now what’s real? What’s real with my situation, with my background, with my history, with my present issues, with my family, with my relationships? What’s real for me and how do I apply that? And how do I make progress and stop like being obsessed with perfection? By the way, on a side note, someone asked this question. Chaitanya Charan, do you have a lecture explaining this in Hindi? My nephew is having some addiction problems. We really don’t appreciate you looking at the message board.
But Stupa, tell him. Tell him. He can look at the message board and still be 100% present.
That’s the difference. I’m the only one banned from the message board. That’s because you live entirely there.
And it’s too obvious when you’re there. They’re having fun. We didn’t even notice.
You do it as like it’s so obvious. They’re having fun. You know what I do? I drag the message board right under my camera.
You never know anymore. No, I know. I know.
I always know. I resist. I resist bringing it up.
Do you have a drone in my room? So anyway, did you read that message? How can people find it? I’ll have to search. I have a talk. I will maybe send it to Kaustubha Prabhu and you can share it afterward.
Sure. Sure. Okay, great.
Or they’ll look on your… Do you speak in English on your YouTube channel or Hindi? I’ve seen some in English, obviously, but you have Hindi? Yeah. Yeah. It’s mostly English.
But if you just search for on my channel for Hindi, whatever talks are in Hindi, you will find that all the talks in Hindi will also come. So they have the label Hindi over there. So Chaitanya Charan, you know, you’ve seen our chat board is blowing up.
People want you back. And I’m hoping, I know Raghunath’s hoping, maybe before we spoke to you this morning, I was thinking, you know, maybe Chaitanya Charan is a person that we could bring on, like, I don’t know, every couple of months or something like that. Could you check in? Would you be part of our community here? Certainly.
It’s my honour to be a part of the Japanese service. I think you have so much, you know, I feel like you’re this huge iceberg of, you know, understanding and knowledge and an ability to explain that knowledge. And we just, we didn’t even, you know, there’s a tip of the iceberg.
We’re at the very tip, tip, tip of the iceberg. You know, we just, just got just a little bit, but there’s so much that you have to share on so much, so many relevant topics. We want the entire iceberg, please.
We want the whole iceberg. Yeah. And so we’ll be inviting you back.
I want to mention that very soon you’re going to be doing a programme with the Bhakti Centre. Could you tell us about that? Yeah. So I am, my main services is writing.
So one aspect of writing is journaling. So I developed a course on the yoga of writing, which is more for writing can be for sharing with the world, but writing can also be for connecting with ourselves. So writing as yoga for self-understanding, self-awareness.
So it’s a three session course from the Bhakti Centre. It is next month. So I think I shared the link with you.
Okay. But people can go to bhakticenter.org and there look for it. I’ll be broadly talking about how by using words, we can not only express our thoughts, but we can also discover our thoughts.
We can use words as torch lights to understand our inner world. So I’ll be talking about the spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedic texts combined with the strategies of journaling. Journaling is itself quite well developed as a means of therapy.
Even for de-addiction, journaling therapy is quite often talked about. But using journaling therapy, journaling as a therapy and integrating it with the spiritual wisdom of the Gita, I haven’t seen that done till now. So I’ll be, I try to do that.
And you’re most welcome if you like to join. So go to bhakticenter.org and then look for the yoga of writing. It’s probably on their homepage and on their culture page.
You can find it in both these places, I would assume. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Prabhu.
That was awesome. I don’t know if you know that, but we dance now. We have a thing.
Now we dance. Thank you, Chaitanya Charamprabhu. And we’re looking forward to having you back.
You are an ocean of devotion and an ocean of great transcendental wisdom. I want to thank everybody for joining us on Facebook today. And anyone, if there was something that stuck out, some little nugget of wisdom, write it down on your phone, take a snapshot of it and post it and tag us, Wisdom of the Sages or Raghunath Yogi and then we’ll repost it.
Because in sending out these little nuggets of wisdom that could really change somebody’s day, someone’s week or someone’s life, my takeaway is we are not… Wait. We are… Wait a second. We are… Wait a second.
We’re products. What? What was it? We’re products of the past. We’re products of the past, but we’re not prisoners of the past.
That’s going to be my little nugget of wisdom takeaway. Maybe a neck tattoo perhaps. Thanks everybody for joining us.
Make sure you go to Apple Podcasts and you write us a review and you tell us your story, how you got here. We love to read them. We love to get to know you.
And thanks so much for everybody joining us on a regular basis. Really inspired. Chaitanya Sharan, some of these people are listening to Bhagavatam every day.
It’s quite impressive. And you were here. You actually were here with us last year.
Remember? Before we were Wisdom of the Sages, you came on. Thank you for this opportunity. And the podcast which you are doing is phenomenal.
I’m grateful to be having the opportunity to be with all of you. Thank you. Thank you.
We wish you were with you at the Goverdhan Echo Village. Now, don’t tune off. We need you to put your hands in the air like this, if you don’t mind.
And then I want you to dance.