How can we clear our subconscious mind?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Get rid of that… So how do we clear the subconscious mind? It’s basically, I usually talk about three levels. There is, if the floor, if this floor is inclined like this and if water falls on it, naturally the water will flow in this direction.
Now, if you want the water to flow that way, do three things. First is restriction. Create some kind of wall.
If there is some electronic equipment here, we don’t want it to be touched, create some restriction. Second is push the water in the other direction, forcibly. That’s redirection.
And third is reconstruct the floor. That becomes inclined that way. So for us, in the process of bhakti, also we do these three things.
So whatever habits we have, they are like inclinations on our mental floor. Inclinations of our mental floor, of our inner floor. So if somebody is, say, alcoholic, then as soon as they have idle movement, just like water falls on the floor which is inclined, water naturally flows in that direction.
If somebody is alcoholic, as soon as they have idle movement, their thoughts will flow towards alcohol. So the floor is inclined like that. For somebody it might be money, for somebody it might be power, somebody it might be whatever.
Different things. Now the first thing we need to do is some restriction. That means have some barrier.
That, okay, say somebody is alcoholic, then they don’t keep any alcohol readily accessible to them. So to create some restriction like that, what it is will vary. Second is, consciously try to direct the thoughts elsewhere.
We can’t tell the water don’t flow in this direction. We can create a barrier, but we have to push the water in another direction. Similarly, we have to find some other constructive direction in which we can push our thoughts.
So if you find something which attracts us in bhakti, when we feel angry with someone, anger makes us explode, at that time if you can think of something devotional which calms us down, which charms us, then we direct our thoughts. That’s pushing. Consciously we direct our thoughts in that direction.
But over a period of time, these bhakti impressions, if we keep practicing bhakti, they will go deep into our subconscious. And when they go deep into subconscious, that’s when the mental flow changes. So if we keep practicing bhakti conscientiously, then we will come to a time when we start practicing bhakti spontaneously.
So instead of somebody keeps chanting, keeps reading, keeps hearing, keeps doing Krishna conscious activities, and over a period of time, as soon as they have idle movement, their thoughts will go towards Krishna. Instead of going towards that unwanted thing. So that’s how the inclination of the flower will change.
So by consistent bhakti practice, it’s very difficult for some people try to probe through psychotherapy or through hypnotic regression or whatever, try to find out what is there in the subconscious. That’s okay, in some specific cases, if somebody has strong phobias that are interfering with the quality of their life, or somebody has some behavioral issues, serious behavioral issues that are just not rationally explainable, then occasionally probing into the subconscious might be helpful. But again, we don’t know whether that probing is actually genuine or it’s just when somebody is trying to probe the subconscious, whether what is coming in is from the subconscious or is coming from the suggestion of the psychotherapist or whatever, it’s very difficult to know.
So then Prabhupada’s whole philosophy was that, there’s a conversation between Prabhupada and his disciple, and his disciple is presenting Sigmund Freud, who was the pioneer of the idea of subconscious. So Prabhupada says that even if we try to find out what shocks or traumas we went through in our childhood, or whatever earlier, no, we can, life is filled with shocks, future shocks are going to come. So rather than going so much into the past, we can try to change the nature of the subconscious.
In some cases, we might have to discover what is the subconscious to change it. But in many cases, we just fill the conscious mind with Krishna conscious stimuli, and they will percolate down to the subconscious level. And then the mental floor will change.