How can we ensure that our conscience deters us but doesn’t discourage us?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Let me get your question. So how do we ensure that the conscience protects us from wrong but it doesn’t discourage us so much that we just become hopeless.
It’s again going to the physical pain example. Say if I am putting my hand in fire. Now that pain protects me.
But that doesn’t mean I should intentionally go and put my hand in fire. Isn’t it? That will protect me but the whole point of protection is that I don’t put my hand in fire. But if I start thinking of that pain itself as a virtue, the pain is a circumstantial virtue.
Pain is not an intrinsic virtue. Circumstantial means when my hand is caught in fire at that time that pain is a protector or my hand is nearing fire it’s a protector. But just being in pain or keeping myself in pain is not a virtue.
So at a physical level nobody will put their hand near fire or in fire. But at a psychological level we do that. That means there is some behavioural feature of us which may be unhealthy and which we want to give up but we are not able to give up.
And that discourages us. So it’s true that I have that issue and I have to deal with it. But if I keep thinking of it, if I identify myself with it then it becomes, it starts defining me.
What our bhakti philosophy tells us is that it’s not that I am angry, it’s not that I am lusty, it’s not that I am greedy. It is our mind which is conditioned like that. So the mind is lusty, the mind is greedy, the mind is angry, the mind is depressed, the mind is psychotic, whatever it is.
Now of course it’s our mind so it’s going to affect us. But it’s not we who are doing it. It’s not we.
So to the extent we can differentiate and whenever that behaviour comes up we deal with it. And before and after that behaviour, if you look at the graph of our consciousness versus time, there are some times when these unwanted desires surge up and they make us do something wrong. When these surges come at that time it will be very difficult to resist it.
But the surge doesn’t stay forever. It comes for some time, it stays, it goes after that. Now after that again the surge may come after some time.
But in between these two surges what do we do? If at that time we are beating ourselves that why did I do that, why did I do that, why did I do that, then we are not doing anything to strengthen ourselves or purify ourselves. So in between if we start engaging in healthy activities, that time we start practicing bhakti, read some wisdom literature, do something which will intellectually and spiritually strengthen us, then when the next time the urge comes, again we may succumb, but we are preparing ourselves to deal with it. Otherwise what happens when this urge comes, we are succumbing to it, the mind says do this, do this, do this, do this and we do it.
And after that the same mind tells us you fool, why did you do it, why did you do it, why did you do it. So we are in both cases actually hearing the voice of the mind itself. So one way you know this, so one way we can differentiate between if you want to say healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt is that if Krishna is here, the soul is here and the Anartha is here, the anger is there, greed is there, whatever is there, that’s here.
So now guilt is what comes here in between the two, between us and the Anartha. That is that is circumstantial guilt, that is good. But if this guilt comes here in between us and Krishna that means the guilt is not just saying you are bad because of this, the guilt is not just saying you are bad and therefore you cannot practice bhakti, you cannot do anything in your life.
So guilt is meant to stop us from going towards wrong doing, not stop us from going towards Krishna and the guilt is stopping us from that. Then you have to understand that is not guilt, that is simply pseudo guilt you could say. That is simply the mind masking itself as the voice of conscience.
The mind is very cunning like Ravana came in the garb of a sadhu but his motives were extremely unholy. So like that sometimes the mind may appear like the voice of conscience. Why did you do that? Why did you do that? But that is not the voice of conscience.
It is the same mind’s voice that is keeping us away from Krishna who will give us strength and wisdom and will help us to overcome it. So what we do is if there are urges we may not be able to resist at that time. That is the way we are right now.
But what do we do in between the urges? If during those times we are practicing bhakti diligently doing something constructive then over a period of time those urges will also become manageable.