How the mind tells its stories by inducing forgetfulness faith and feelings

[Sunday feast class at Los Angeles, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Very good. Hare Krishna. It is good to be here amongst all of you.
I get to speak of their Lordships. And today I will speak on the theme of how the mind is an expert storyteller. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that the mind can act as our worst enemy.
In 6.5, he states that that we should elevate ourselves to the mind and not degrade ourselves. Because the mind can be both our friend as well as our enemy. So, the mind acts as our enemy by spinning stories which are often untrue and they are unhealthy.
They have dangerous consequences. So, normally if a person is a very good storyteller, they have three characteristics. First is, when they start telling a story, they make us forget everything else.
They are so entertaining and captivating in narrating the story that the first thing they do is make us forget everything else. So, forgetfulness of everything else. That is one characteristic.
Second characteristic is that they make us put faith in what they are telling us. Sometimes they may just be spinning yarns. But the way they will tell it, we will just put faith.
This happened like this. In fact, whenever if we are watching a TV or reading some fiction story, we need to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy that story. So, one of my friends is a good movie director.
He is telling me that in movies, many sort of unrealistic things keep happening. But within that storyline, you feel that it may happen. So, suspending the sense of disbelief makes us put faith.
So, faith is the second thing. We just believe what the mind says. And third is, an expert storyteller makes us have the feelings that the story is inducing.
If there is a tragic movie going on, at that time, we should feel tears. We should have the same feelings that the movie is depicting. Similarly, we will talk about these three steps.
How the mind makes us forget everything else. How it makes us put faith in what it is saying. And how it induces within us the feelings which go along with the storyline.
And in that way, we just get lost. So, before I go into this, I would like to illustrate this with a story from the Ramayana. Many of you know the story of how Ram was exiled because of a conspiracy.
In the Ramayana, it is described that King Dashrath, who was the father of Ram, had three wives, Kaushalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi. Kaushalya was the senior-most wife. Kaikeyi was the youngest and most beautiful wife.
And when Ram was to be coronated as a king, at that time, Mantara, who was the maid servant of Kaikeyi, poisoned her mind. And once Kaikeyi’s mind got poisoned, then Kaikeyi went against Dashrath, went against Ram and forced the king to send her son on exile. The Ramayana is Itihas.
It is an ancient history where it describes, it is based on incidents that happened long, long ago. Along with that, Sripad Madhavacharya, is one of our prominent Acharyas, he explains that the Itihas can be understood at different levels. He says we can understand them at a historical or literal level.
This is what happened. Just hearing it will purify us. Second is, we can understand them at an ethical level.
That this was a decision made long ago. So we can learn ethical principles by hearing these. And then he says, the Puranas can also be understood at a metaphorical level.
But the metaphorical is in addition to the literal. It is not in substitute of the literal. So we can look at some deeper significances which can be drawn from the past times.
So for our discussion on the mind, Ayodhya represents our heart. We can say that Ayodhya is like our heart. Kaikeyi is the soul.
Mantara is the mind. And when the soul comes under the influence of the mind, then what happens? The soul pushes Krishna out of the heart. Just as Kaikeyi sent Ram out of Ayodhya.
God never goes out of our heart. He is always there in our heart. But his presence becomes inaccessible to us.
His presence becomes inaccessible to us. So how did this happen? Ram was the eldest son and he was supposed to become the king. So I will analyse this in terms of these three things.
How Kaikeyi did. Mantara made Kaikeyi forget everything else. And Mantara made Kaikeyi feel what she wanted her to feel.
So when the news of Ram’s coronation was announced, the whole kingdom erupted in celebration. Now Mantara, she was hunchbacked. And because of that sometimes she was teased by some people.
And by her queen, that is her Kaikeyi, she became the most powerful queen in the royal household. Then because she became the most favourite queen of the most influential, most favourite maid of the most favourite queen, she got a lot of power. And everybody stopped making fun of her.
Everybody started fearing her. And she didn’t want to lose that hold that she had. So when she heard that Ram is going to become the king, she became furious.
And she ran to Kaikeyi and told her, Oh foolish lady, what are you sitting here peacefully? Disaster is approaching you. She said, what happened? Kaikeyi knew that Mantara was a little irritable sometimes. Indulgently, what happened? Don’t you know Kaushalya’s son Ram is about to be coronated as the king? Kaikeyi was delighted.
She took out a jewel necklace which she had brought for me. Here, take this necklace as a gift. This was her genuine happiness because she loved Ram just like she loved her own son.
But, Mantara took that jewel necklace and hurled it on the ground. Foolish lady, you are a king’s wife. Do you not understand the political ways in which kings work? This whole thing is a conspiracy to take power away from you and your son.
What are you talking about? Ram is the eldest son. He is going to become the king. Ram and Bharat love each other.
Maybe after Ram, Bharat will become the king. Fool, you don’t understand. After Ram, Ram’s son will become the king.
And while Ram is the king, he will see Bharat as a threat. He may frame Ram and he may exile Ram. This was what she was planning to do to Ram.
But, she started ascribing that to Ram. And then, Kaushalya will take revenge against you. You were the favourite queen but she will become the queen mother and she will make you her minister.
What are you saying? I don’t believe this. By then, she had started hearing. Forget everything else.
If there is no conspiracy afoot, then why is this coronation being done in such haste? Why is it being done in the absence of Bharat and Shatrughna? This was the beginning of the planting of the seed of doubt. She started doubting. There is something wrong.
Why is it like that? Because, Ram doesn’t want Bharat to gain anything. Kaushalya also wants Bharat. They are speaking.
And Kaikeyi started hearing. Hearing. And as she kept hearing, her whole perspective changed.
As Kaikeyi was fed by Mantara, her own twist of the events that were happening, by the end of their discussion, Kaikeyi became ready. She started feeling that Ram is my biggest enemy. And Dashrath was her husband.
Dashrath is also acting as my enemy. And then, she became totally hard-hearted. So, how do I avoid this? So, by this time, when she had started putting faith in Kaikeyi, in Mantara, and then she started having the same feelings.
They are out to destroy me. They are out to dispossess. What is my right? Then, what Kaikeyi was told by Mantara, send Ram out to the forest for 14 years and have Ram coronated as the king.
So, I want Bharat coronated as the king. This would have been unconscionable for her a few hours ago. How can you do something like that to your own stepson who was like her own son for her? But, because the mind was speaking, speaking, speaking, because Mantara was speaking, speaking, speaking, her whole worldview got distorted.
So, the Ramayana describes that Kaikeyi was gentle, kind and wise. Gentle means in her speech. Kind was in her heart.
Wise is in her intelligence. So, we could say speech and behaviour, heart and mind. But, after hearing Mantara, what happened? She became harsh, cruel and foolish.
Her whole conduct changed. Completely opposite. And then, when she told Dashrath that I want my son to be coronated and I want Ram to be exalted.
Dashrath couldn’t believe it. Who is this woman who is talking like this? How could my wife even say such a thing? When we start believing the mind, the mind makes us unrecognisable. Who is this person who is saying this? Who is this person doing this? And, Dashrath said, he begged her.
He said, if you want Bharat to become the king, fine. But, don’t exile Ram. What crime has that boy done? How has he ever offended you? And, moreover, I will not be able to live without Ram.
He is begging her. Please don’t send Ram to the forest. But, her heart had become completely hard.
Kaikeyi had been told by Mantra that if Ram is in the kingdom, then Bharat will not accept the kingdom. And, even if Bharat accepts, the other citizens and courtiers will rise in opposition. So, he has to be sent out of the picture.
If it’s sent out for 14 years, then, in that time, Bharat will be able to consolidate his rule. And, even if Ram comes back, Bharat will have his kingdom in his hands. So, she became completely hard-hearted.
And, throughout it all, she was actually thinking that I am doing this to protect Bharat’s interests. She was thinking, Bharat will be so pleased that I have acted so expertly to protect Bharat’s interests. And, nobody’s words, nobody’s begging, nobody’s reproach, nothing could have any effect on her.
And, only when Bharat came back, the town which Bharat had left, the city which he had left, was a prosperous, joyful city. And, when Bharat came back, Ayodhya was like a ghost town. Everybody, it looked either deserted or depressed or desolated.
Then, he came back and he met his mother, Kaikeyi. And, she joyfully told him, there is a conspiracy to strip you of your kingdom. But, I have protected your kingdom.
And, he says, Dashrath has gone to the other world and Ram has gone to the forest. Now, the whole kingdom of Ayodhya awaits you. Bharat was shocked.
What is going on? And, he understood what his mother had done. He was sickened. When he saw that his mother was thinking that all this will make me happy, he was shattered.
He said, you are not my mother. He says, you are the goddess of destruction incarnated into our family to destroy our dynasty. He says, I reject you as my mother.
When she heard these words from Bharat, it was at that time that the bubble of the story that Mantara had told her burst. She had an imaginary Bharat who was egging her on, congratulating her for what she was doing. And, that imaginary Bharat came in conflict with the real Bharat.
Then, she says, what have I done? What have I done? How could I have done such a thing? By that time, it was too late. It was all over. Dashrath had already departed from this world.
He died with a broken heart in separation from Ram. And, Ram had gone to the forest with a vow that he would not return from what he was. So, as I said, this is a historical narrative and this also illustrates how our mind can affect us.
Our mind is like Mantara. And, when the mind starts speaking something, it just deludes us completely. So, when the mind starts telling the story, it makes us, first of all, forget everything else and just hear the story.
So, I’ll talk about how this may apply in our day-to-day lives. But, before that, let’s try to understand what exactly is the mind and how does it work. So, the word mind in the Bhagavad Gita refers to something specific.
In the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, in the 8th verse, Krishna says, śrotraṁ cakṣiho sparshanaṁ ca rasanaṁ ghrāṇameva ca adiṣṭhāya maniṣyāya viśayān upasevate So, this is the five senses. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the skin. All these take in inputs from the outer world.
And, those inputs come into the mind. So, if I have five fingers, the five fingers are centred on the palm. So, the mind is the centre where inputs from the senses come.
And, the soul observes those inputs. So, the mind is the integrator of information from the senses and it is presenter of that input to the soul. I was recently at a devotee’s shop.
He is a big jeweller. And, he has this control cabin where, because it is a jeweller’s shop, there is a lot of wealth over there. So, in that central cabin, he has a big monitor which gets inputs from the four doors that are there to the jewellery shop.
And, there are CCTV cameras over there. So, from all these four places, the inputs come on this. So, this monitor is divided into four sections.
So, similarly, we could imagine a monitor that is divided into five sections. So, like that, from the five senses, the inputs come on to the screen of the mind. And, normally, if the security in charge or the owner, they are sitting in front of the monitor and looking.
And, as soon as they see, all the windows will be there on that. But, in one particular door, somebody suspicious is coming. And, they will click on it and that zooms up.
And then, when it zooms up, all the other windows get minimised and you can see what is happening. So, like this, say, for all of us, all the senses are active right now. But, if you are hearing the class, then, what happens is, the sound window is zoomed up.
And, that is what we are able to hear. But, say, at this point, for the Lord, suppose, some delicious halwa is offered. And, the halwa’s fragrance comes in from the kitchen over there.
And, as this fragrance comes in, the fragrance, the smell window, zooms up. And then, it just blacks out or it minimises the sound window. Oh, it’s halwa.
And, it’s going to be offered to the Lord. When can I get it? How will it be tasting? It smells so good. It must be tasting also very good.
So, this sort of, constantly in the monitor of the mind, some windows are being minimised, some are being maximised. And, of course, in the mind’s window, they are not just five. So, there is one more window, which is the window that is activated simply by recollection.
It’s just some past memory comes up suddenly upon us. There may not be any external stimuli. But, the point is, not the number of windows, but the principle that one image can get maximised and others get minimised.
So, usually, which window gets maximised and which window gets minimised should be decided by the, say, in the shop, that should be decided by the person who is in charge so that they can see where there is attention required and focus attention over there. But, sometimes, there are thieves may attack by decoy. They may create a ruckus in one window, near one door, and they all look over there, and the thief sleeps in from somewhere else.
So, like that, similarly for us, in the mind, sometimes, a wrong window zooms up. A wrong window zooms up means, that’s it, we are talking with someone. We are walking along the road and talking with someone and we get so caught in talking with that person or, say, if we are driving a car and while driving the car, we are meant to look ahead.
But then, the passengers sitting next to us speak something shocking. We get so caught by that, just look there. And then, the eyes, ears, they are both caught.
And then, here, the car may go off track. That can be very dangerous. So, basically, if the wrong window gets maximised in the mind, then we can get misled.
So, by the conditioning of the mind, certain windows get maximised suddenly. If a person is alcoholic, if their home is here, their office is here, and there is a bar over here, as soon as they start passing by that, the window, drink alcohol, it just completely fills the screen. Drink, drink, drink, drink.
You just can’t think about anything else. So, it just fills them. So, depending on the attachment that we have, the particular attachment, when we say we are attached to something, what does it mean? That simply means that that window very forcefully gets maximised.
A few months ago, there was a cricket tournament in which India and Pakistan were arch rivals. They fought in the finals. And India was expected to win, but India lost very badly.
So, after that, one devotee, one boy was becoming a devotee, he told me that for three nights, I could not sleep. So, how could India lose like this? So, here what happened, actually, he was in India, the match happened in England, and due to the attachment to cricket, that window was constantly zoomed up. So, even when he wanted to sleep, he just couldn’t sleep.
How could India lose? Now, the players probably went to sleep, but the fan couldn’t sleep. So, this is how attachment causes certain windows to zoom up and stay zoomed up, stay maximised. And that’s how we tend to get misled in our perception.
Something which is unimportant becomes very important because that is what fills the screen of the mind. And something which is less important, which is more important, gets forgotten. The mind can distort our perception in terrible ways sometimes.
Last year, when I had come to America, I had gone to a college programme. So, I was talking with one boy over there, and he said that he grew up in a foster home. So, then I asked him, what happened? Is it that your parents passed away in an accident or something like that? He said, no, both my parents are alive.
Then, why did you grow up in a foster home? He said, when I was five years old, my parents divorced. And when they divorced, they both told me that this marriage of mine, this marriage was the biggest mistake And you remind me of the biggest mistake of my life. So, both parents said, I don’t want anything to do with you.
And despite having parents, the child became a ward of the state. So tragic! That means here, what happened that there is a natural affection, a natural sense of responsibility that parents have for a child. But, the aversion to the ex-spouse is so heavy that the aversion completely fills the mind.
And they just can’t think about anything else. It is a horrendous distortion of perception that can happen because aversion fills the mind. The mind says, this is a terrible thing.
And then that window fills up. It’s a natural affection that a parent has for the child, but it’s lost completely. So, similarly for us, when something may go wrong, say, we go to office and at that time, all of us have a tendency to worry that this may go wrong, that may go wrong.
So, what the mind does is, it just takes one stimulus. We go to office one day and then we see a strange look in our boss’ eyes. And when we see that, the mind says, oh, your boss is going to fire you.
Oh, your boss is going to fire you. And then, as the mind starts telling that, otherwise why would the boss look at you like that? We start forgetting everything else. The mind says, remember last time also your boss was upset with you.
And you know your friend, he also told you that your boss looked at you like that before he fired him. And then as the mind starts believing what it says, and then as the mind starts telling, if you are fired, how will you get money? How will you pay for your mortgage? If you can’t pay for your mortgage, you’ll be kicked out of your house. If you don’t get a new house, you’ll be on the streets.
It’s so cold, you’ll be trembling in cold in the streets. Right now, we may be trembling cold and I’ll tremble. So, what happens is that the mind, we may get a simple, somebody looking at us in a strange way, we might even get a panic attack.
So, actually nothing has happened, but the mind’s storytelling is so expert that it makes us, makes it seem as if what it is saying is a reality. So, in this way, once the mind starts telling something, it makes us forget everything else. It makes us, put faith in what it is saying, it makes us feel what it wants us to feel.
And then, it may be worry, it may be anger, we may just go into a room and we greet someone and a person snubs us. Or at least we think they snubbed us. But maybe they were just lost in their own thoughts and they didn’t notice us.
But, how dare this person snub me? Such an arrogant person. Next time, in front of everyone, I’ll snub them. Mind goes off in a revenge fantasy.
And we might have come to that meeting in a very pleasant mood and within two minutes, we are seething in anger. What has happened? The mind is telling a story, it completely has distorted our situation. Like, KK from gentle became harsh, we from happy become furious.
This is how the mind works in distortions. So, what happens in these cases? Some stimulus comes up, like something we see and from that the window zooms up. And it just consumes our consciousness completely.
We decide that worry is like interest we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken. Most of the things we worry about, most of them don’t happen. And they may not even happen.
What if this happens? We worry and we put ourselves in misery by that. So, we all have certain typical tendencies of the mind. Some of us may be more prone to anger, some of us may be more prone to worry, some of us may be more prone to self-pity, some of us may be more prone to loneliness.
We call someone and they don’t pick up the phone. And then we start thinking, nobody values me, they don’t pick up the phone, they don’t care for me, nobody loves me, I am so alone, I am so unloved, I am so miserable. So, all that happened was they may just have been busy and they didn’t pick up the phone.
But from that not picking up the phone, the mind tells the whole story. And then sometimes when somebody else has, we may have heard a particular story, now let’s turn this around and when it happens to us, let’s see if it happens to someone else. Sometimes we go and meet someone and that person seems to be very angry.
What happened? Dashrath, he came to meet Kaikeyi, he was in a very cheerful mood. And Kaikeyi was furious. What happened? Because Dashrath was not hearing that story at all.
So, the same person who behaves in a particular way suddenly ends up behaving in an entirely different way. Because they haven’t fed a particular story. So, now this can apply to our spiritual life also.
The mind can affect us in all walks of our life. It can affect us in our job, it can affect us in our relationships, it can affect us in our bhakti. The stories it tells can distort and even destroy our life if we believe the story.
So, what can we do to avoid this? How can we protect ourselves from the mind? If we go back to the story of Mantra and Kaikeyi, Kaikeyi made two mistakes. First is that she heard Mantra submissively. Whatever Mantra said, she just kept it.
And second is she did not consult anyone else. She could have consulted someone. She could have just gone and asked Dashrath.
Is it really true? Dashrath was after all her husband. They had lived together for many years. Or she could have gone and asked the royal sage over there, Vashishtha.
Is there a conspiracy over there? But she didn’t ask anyone else. And because of these two things, hearing the mind submissively and not consulting anyone else, she not only created misery for herself but for the whole kingdom of Ayodhya. So similarly for us, if we understand philosophically that we are different from our mind, then we won’t hear the mind submissively.
We cannot neglect the mind because the mind is inside us. But we can evaluate the mind. We don’t have to embrace whatever the mind is telling.
So for this, when we regularly hear Shastra, we hear scriptures regularly, they remind us actually this is the mind speaking. This is the mind speaking. I should not hear it.
And sometimes because the mind is inside us, it will keep speaking. But at least if we understand this is the mind speaking, then that itself creates a distance. So as I said, suppose somebody doesn’t pick up our phone call and we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we start feeling pity for ourselves.
So if we look at our mind objectively, when we are little calm, we can identify certain typical stories that the mind tells us. For some of us, it may be the anger story. People are just like this only.
For somebody else, it may be worry story. For somebody else, it may be self-pity story. So once we identify this, then we can catch it.
Instead of getting carried away, like some people like to tell stories. And if we know these people just spin yarns, then what happens? We are not going to tell the story. And I know what you are going to tell.
And we just switch off from there. We just continue our work. Somebody is new, oh tell the story.
I have heard it 100 times. We don’t take much care. So like that, instead of identifying with the story, we identify the story.
This is the self-pity story starting now. And then as soon as we can identify it, we can distance ourselves from it. Krishna talks about this.
He says, become an observer of your inner world. In the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about three modes of material nature. Goodness, passion and ignorance.
And these act on our mind. And they create different kinds of emotions within us. So when these emotions start happening, in 14.22 and 23, he says, how do we respond to it? He says, He says, different emotions, Prakash, illumination, clarity, that comes from the mode of goodness.
I have to do something right now. That is the mode of passion. So mode of goodness means, first there is contemplation Mode of passion means, first there is action and then there is contemplation.
Some people speak to express their thoughts. And some people speak to discover their thoughts. They speak, I didn’t mean to say that.
So there is action before contemplation. That is the mode of passion. And moha means, mode of ignorance means, there is neither action nor contemplation.
There is simply imagination. If this happens, what if that happens? So in this way, these three modes will induce different emotions within us. Krishna says, when they come, don’t welcome them.
When they go away, don’t resent them. Be situated as if detached. Be situated as if detached.
How can you do that? By remembering that you are the soul. You know that these emotions are being kindled by the modes, whereas you are different from the modes. You are spiritual.
You are the soul. So how can we stay as if detached? We could consider the example of a sports match. Say, if there is a cricket match or a baseball match, in which there is an umpire, a referee.
Now the players are going to appeal, how is that? This is out, this is out, this is out. Now, in English there are two words. There is disinterested and there is uninterested.
Disinterested means, one who has no vested interest. This is impartial. Uninterested means, one who has no interest at all.
One who doesn’t care for it. So, Krishna says, be situated as if detached. Suppose a sports match is going on, the umpire has to be disinterested.
The umpire should be partial to this, I want this team to win. So all the appeals of this team, I will say yes. But the umpire has to objectively value.
The umpire has to be disinterested. But suppose the players bowl and the players say, how is that? And the umpire says, I wasn’t watching the match. What? And what are you doing over there? You had to be there, you had to watch the match.
So the umpire cannot be uninterested. But the umpire can be disinterested. So similarly for us, when certain emotions come up in the mind, we are not just blind ourselves to them.
If somebody is feeling worried, that worry is there with it. We can’t do anything about it. In the sense that it is present.
But instead of going along with it, just because the players are feeling out, out, the umpire says out, out. No, the umpire has to evaluate. So similarly, if you understand, these emotions are just arising within us because of past impressions and present stimulations.
But they are not necessarily our emotions. Then we learn to evaluate them. So when we evaluate them, then it’s not that we reject all the emotions, nor do we accept all the emotions.
Normally, we think of emotions or desires only in two terms. Either we express ourselves or we repress ourselves. But actually, when we situate ourselves on the spiritual platform, we can do a third option.
Neither expressing nor repressing, but processing. Okay, this is what I’m feeling. Okay, I’m feeling worried right now.
Okay, what is the exact problem? Okay, my boss gave me a strange look. What? Was that about me or was my boss upset about something else? If I’m worried, aggravated, I can just go and ask my boss. Or I can go ask somebody in the management.
What is it? Can you help me? So when we objectively evaluate rather than identifying, then what are we doing is we challenge the mind’s narrative. Mind makes us forget everything else and makes us put faith in what it is saying. But when we become detached by situating ourselves on a spiritual platform, then we can evaluate what the mind is saying.
And for such evaluation, it is very important that we also have our intelligence should be strong internally, but our association should also be strong externally. Why association is required? Because the mind tells us a particular story. This person hates you.
This person wants to get you into trouble. It may be like that, it may not be like that. So we need at least someone in our life whom we trust as much as we trust our mind, if not more.
Normally, we evaluate everyone through our mind. That means, if somebody suddenly starts speaking nicely with us, they start speaking very sweetly, asking us how are you, this, that, our mind starts thinking, this person must want something from me. That’s why they are so nice to me.
So our mind immediately ascribes a motive and evaluates. It may be so, it may not be so. So if we have someone whom we are close to, someone whom we trust, someone who understands us, and we ask them, this thing happened and I am feeling that it may be like this.
So this devotee snubbed me and said, does this devotee hate me? I go and ask someone. He said, no, no, no, you know this person, they had this tragedy in their family, lost a loved one. He said, this is very upsetting.
I said, no, no, I am sorry about that. So then they tell us something else which is completely different from what our mind was telling us. So Kaikeyi’s two mistakes were, she heard mantras obviously and she did not consult anyone else.
So if we strengthen our intelligence by scriptural study, then our intelligence itself will challenge what the mind is saying. And sometimes the mind’s narrative will be so strong that it may be difficult for our intelligence alone to challenge it. Then if we have some good association, good association means not just we are associating with good people, but we are close enough to them and they are close enough to us that we can share our heart with them.
Tell us, this is what I am feeling. And they shouldn’t judge us. You think like this about a devotee? What kind of devotee are you? No, if they start judging us, then we can’t open our hearts.
They are non-judgemental. Yeah, I am feeling like this, but actually, no, it’s like this. So then the mind gets exposed.
So internally by strengthening our intelligence and externally by strengthening our association, we can challenge the mind’s narrative. And in this way, we can ensure that the mind doesn’t act as our enemy. When the mind starts telling its story, we don’t get carried away by its story, but we evaluate its story.
Sometimes what the mind says may be true or may have an element of truth to it. But we need to evaluate it. I conclude with one incident which I experienced.
I have been coming to America for a few years now. The first year when I came to America, I went to a university for a programme and after that I spoke at the Vegetarian Society. It is a vegetarian society and one boy had come for the first time, an American boy.
I spoke on regulating our mental diet and I spoke about how we need to be careful about what inputs we give to our mind. So then after this, this boy came and told me that just before this class, he was contemplating suicide. He said that he had been in a relationship with a girl and that girl had broken up with him and she was not ready to listen to anything what he was saying and he was so shattered about it that he was contemplating suicide.
But as he was walking along gloomily in the campus, he suddenly saw a notice about this programme, about the programme which I was doing. And he said something within me told me just come for this programme. He said now I am hearing this, after hearing the class, I understand it is not I who wants to commit suicide.
It is my mind which is telling me that nobody loves you, nobody will love you, you will always be lonely. It is all telling a story because of which I am thinking of committing suicide. I told him, yes you understood a very important point.
I gave him Bhagavad Gita and told him to read it regularly and to ask him to come for the programme. So every year when I come to America, I go to that university, I talk with him. And last year in fall when I had come, last year in spring I had come, at that time I met this boy Arvind and he told me exactly a similar situation happened to him again.
He was again in a relationship with a girl and she just sent a text that I am breaking up and she refused to pick up any phone also. So when he got that and he saw that she was not talking with him at all, he just went straight to his room, shut his door, pulled down his windows, covered the curtains, switched off all the lights and then he said he loved Kirtans. So he picked up a, he had a violin, and he said for 6 hours continuously I was just pouring out my heart singing Krishna’s names.
And he said that time which could have been the most depressing time of my life, it became one of the most uplifting moments of my life. So I could feel myself bathing in some kind of sublime light. I could feel some extraordinary loving presence.
I could feel as if I was in heaven. And he said that it was such an enriching experience for him. The same incident which had earlier made him almost suicidal.
Now by the practise of bhakti what happened? The mind’s story, he didn’t believe it. Rather, he heard from scripture and he took scripture’s story. Scripture’s story is what? Whatever happens is ultimately for our good.
If we take shelter of Krishna, then Krishna can bring good even out of the bad. So he took shelter of Krishna and a depressing moment turned into an uplifting moment. So that is the power of bhakti.
Krishna says, If you become conscious of me, you will pass over all obstacles by my grace. So ultimately, the way to challenge the mind’s story is to start focussing on Krishna’s story. We are parts of Krishna, we are meant to love Krishna.
And whatever is happening in our life is ultimately meant to help us grow in our devotion for Krishna. And if we focus on that story and try to see every situation as an opportunity to go closer to Krishna, then even when a bad thing happens and the mind starts to give even worse interpretation to it, we can challenge it, we can take shelter of Krishna something good has emerged from the bad. That is the wonderful transformational potency of Krishna bhakti.
So I’ll summarise what I spoke. I talked about how how the mind is an expert storyteller. And it tells a story, I took the story of Kalki poisoning mantra.
And an expert storyteller tells the story in such a way that we forget everything else. We start putting faith in whatever they are telling. And we start having the same feelings which they want us to want to induce within us.
So that’s what happened to Kalki because of mantra. She forgot all about the festivities that were happening in the kingdom. She started putting faith that there was a conspiracy to deprive her and started having the same feeling of anger and antipathy towards Dashrath and Ram Her imaginary Bharat confronted with the real Bharat that the falsity of mantra’s narrative became exposed to her.
But I think it was too late. Similarly for us, our mind tells some stories. So how does it tell a story? It takes some stimulus the mind is like a monitor on which many windows inputs are coming in.
It takes one input and maximises it obsessively. And we just can’t think about anything else. So for an alcoholic we just see a bottle of alcohol that’s what fills their mind.
If we have a habit of worrying one strange look by someone and that fills our mind and the mind starts telling a story which may send us down a panic attack or somebody neglects us and we start seething with anger at the perceived insult. So how do we avoid being carried away by the mind’s stories? Mantra’s two mistakes were that she heard mantras obsessively and she did not consult anyone else. So we can stop hearing our mantra-like minds obsessively.
How? By strengthening our intelligence. By making our intelligence not the rejector of the mind or the acceptor of the mind but making it the evaluator of the mind. So like an umpire who evaluates the appeals of the players.
The umpire is not uninterested but the umpire is discouraged by the mind’s interest. So we regularly study scripture then by understanding that we are different from the mind we can identify the mind’s stories. Oh this is the self-pity story this is the anger story and instead of identifying with it like some people who regularly tell some stories they will be telling a story but as soon as they identify this is a story we know what they are going to tell and we don’t take it very seriously thereafter.
And secondly there is some close association close enough that we don’t evaluate their words through the mind but rather we evaluate our mind through their words and then we can challenge the mind’s narrative internally and externally. And ultimately the process of bhakti is meant to equip us not just to stop hearing the mind’s story but to start hearing Krishna’s story. And Krishna’s story is that we are souls meant to love him everything that happens in our life is actually meant to help us grow in our devotion to Krishna if we just respond appropriately to it.
This boy who earlier on facing rejection had become suicidal second time on facing rejection became more spiritual and a depressing moment turned into an enriching moment for him. Similarly for us if we learn to hear Krishna’s story more and more then bad things may happen in life but by focussing on Krishna we will see Krishna’s expertise in bringing the good out of the bad and that is how we will move towards Krishna. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Do we have time for questions? Any questions? Yes. And you started the lecture by saying that the mind Oh, good question.
So we said the mind can be our friend as well as our enemy. So how can it be our friend? In the mind there are two kinds of impressions. In English we could call them impulses and instincts.
Our impulses are something which are anti-intelligent. We see some food and say I want to eat it more and more and more. So that is an impulse which makes us act unintelligently.
But we also have instincts. Instincts are like programmed intelligence. Some people they just eat some food and just by eating that food they can tell you you must have this item, this item, this item, this item.
How do you know this? Some people they have a good language instinct. Just give them some passage rewrite, use this word, reconstruct this sentence do this and the whole sentence sounds so much better. Some people come into a room and even without consciously thinking if you move this sofa here you put this photo here you change this colour of the curtain it will look much better.
Just get it immediately. So all of us have certain instincts in which we are good. In this case the mind tells us a story the mind I am using broadly the subtle body which is there between us and the physical body.
There sometimes ideas come which are good. Do this, do this, do this, it will be good. So in some ways we also have some good impressions.
Say if you have been brought up in a devotee family when we come in front of the temple come in front of the deities we usually bow down. We do not always consciously think oh this is Lord, I have to bow down. That is just a habit which has been cultivated.
So like that the mind based on the either the good impressions that have been cultivated or the instincts that we have been blessed with the mind sometimes tells us the right things also. So people who are good at observing and learning one thing has happened this is possible therefore take care of this. So some people just hear a little sound in a car you know your car’s carburetor is bad you have to replace it.
I also hear the same sound I do not get anything. So now they are not just imagining it they are not at knack they can make it up. So when the mind prompts us or mind tells us something which is actually right or which is in harmony with what is what is likely to happen then that is our instinct and instinct is like a programme in the head.
So in some cases our mind gets things right also. So in those cases what the mind says is for our benefit and especially when you start practising bhakti when as we keep practising bhakti more and more the mind will become our friend and then even if the world proposes come on eat this, watch this, enjoy this pardon, no like say some of us might have been eating meat before and then after we become devotees we understand why should I injure animals just for my tongue so then we give up we start taking prasadam and then if you are going on a train or a plane we may not even feel like eating is somebody, would you like to have this? No. So our mind even if somebody is eating we don’t look at it mind has lost that desire so what has happened the mind itself has become transformed the mind which is craving earlier for that food is no longer craving in fact it’s not good no need to take it so that’s why the mind can also be our friend okay any other questions or comments? Yes sir Can I, can we just wait for one minute I’ll take the mic We have a lot of people that want to eat Oh okay I just wanted to say that living out in the western world watching you at the end of the day has been a life-saving handout you identify a lot with the struggles that you talk about and I have been coming all the time and I was meeting and I was advised last week just to speak with a woman devotee which I definitely want to do but a lot of times when I read you know, practise bhakti practise bhakti and I actually asked this last week this is about seven months ago I did I feel like I know the answer associate, read, chant but I still wanted to go back to the first grade and ask when you say practise bhakti what that means to help us change our mind and deal with pain emotional and physical pain okay thank you so when emotional and physical pain comes how do we practise bhakti and how can bhakti give us shelter the first thing is that spiritualising ourselves doesn’t mean dehumanising ourselves that means at a human level pains come and it’s not that we have to deny the pain say if I get a fracture if I fall down and get a fracture I have the fracture now somebody else may fall down at the same situation and their bones may be tougher than mine they may not get a fracture so if I have a fracture then I have to deal with it so I may have to maybe rest for some time put the leg in a cast and I appropriately deal with it similarly for us just as some people’s bones may be more vulnerable to be breaking than others so similarly each of us has a different mind so sometimes our mind will be more prone to a particular kind of pain than others so if we are more sensitive and somebody just neglects us or somebody rejects us that may hurt us much more than it may hurt somebody else and that person will say why are you so sensitive don’t bother about it it isn’t worth it we have to work with the body and the mind that we have so if my mind is too sensitive to something it is not that just by practising bhakti it should happen that my mind should stop being sensitive but we can look at a higher purpose so that means that okay I got a fracture I may have to reduce my mobility for the next one week but then I after one week I will start again maybe there is a little pain when I put weight on the leg but gradually it will recover so if we are emotionally vulnerable and we get wounded easily then what we need to do is we have to acknowledge that we are wounded but we don’t have to perpetuate that wound perpetuate that wound means why did this person do this why did this person do this the wound is there sometimes as I said we go towards two extremes either we give in to the mind’s emotions or we completely deny the mind’s emotions but we can’t deny that they are there we don’t want to get carried away by them so it is if I just keep telling why did this person do like this why did this person do like this people are so bad nobody cares for me that way what we are doing is we are aggravating the wound it’s like the fractured leg is there and I am putting weight on the leg it’s going to get worse so what bhakti does for us is when the mind starts mind starts simply replaying the wrong that has happened and it keeps making us feel worse and worse and worse then bhakti is meant to give us an alternative object of thought so the process of bhakti is not just about associating with devotees or chanting the holy names or coming to the temple these are extremely important but they are meant to make an inner change inner change in our default object of contemplation so instead of replaying that wrong that person did we try to become attached to Krishna and think of Krishna within Krishna bhakti we find that like this boy he loved kirtans so at that time instead of replaying why did this girl do this to me he just started taking shelter of Krishna to kirtans so when we absorb our consciousness in Krishna in a way that works easily for us then the wound that is there it will be there but we won’t be aggravated and although the wound will be there but because we don’t think about it so much it won’t hurt us that much if I have fracture and I am constantly thinking oh I have fracture I have fracture I have fracture that simply aggravates the problem that we have so life determines our problems but we determine their size life determines our problems bad things happen to all of us but how big that problem will be its size will be determined by me somebody rejects me somebody hurts me that’s a problem but I can just take that as one incident in my life and move on or I must repeat it and think that oh I am unloved and I am unloveable and my life is unlivable and we make it into a catastrophe also so what Krishna Bhakti does is it gives us an alternative object of thought and when we cultivate that connection with Krishna and we develop attachment to Krishna in some manifestation then at that time we take our consciousness towards that manifestation we focus on that chant the holy names hear kirtans or come to the temple read some scriptures by that the aggravation of the injury doesn’t happen and even that injury it is there but we allow it to heal naturally another fundamental change is not just the default object of thought but bhakti also changes our defining identity we define ourselves in various ways based on our relationships and roles in this world say I think I am a software engineer I think I am NBL I think I am the wife of this person and the husband of this person now all these roles and relationships that we have they do define us in a functional way but they are not our fundamental identity our fundamental identity is that I am a servant of Krishna I am a part of Krishna I am a servant of Krishna and as a service to Krishna is I am the husband of someone I am the wife of someone I am a software engineer I am a nationalist I am a citizen of a particular country all these are roles which I am going to function work in and I will work in responsibly because through this I can do my service to Krishna my relationships can also be services to Krishna but if any relationship is our defining identity if I define myself as a spouse of someone and if I experience some problem in that relationship then I feel as if who am I what is my life worth so again the problem becomes maximised because we have invested inordinately our self identity in that relationship so bhakti gives us a secure sense of self identity I am a servant of Krishna so even if sometimes people treat us badly life treats us badly then ok I lost my job but I am not a software engineer I am a servant of Krishna I will find some other job and I will work so that both the default object of thought and the defining sense of identity they are meant to be changed by a practise of bhakti and the practises of bhakti are chanting coming to the temple to the extent they do these two things for us to that extent we will be shielded we will get a shield from outer problems whenever troubles come physical or mental hurts come we will be shielded internally so these this focus on the consciousness of Krishna focus on our identity as servants of Krishna this will act like a shock absorber our vehicle as a shock absorber gets jolt by going through a ditch the jolt is there but it is minimised so like that the jolts will be there when life’s problems come but they will be minimised because we are not too invested in that particular identity nor are we too fixated on that particular object so that way by focussing the consciousness on Krishna and our relationship with Krishna our problems in life can be minimised so I put it this way that sometimes because of our karma or whatever situation bad things happen in our life but whatever karma may get us to whatever karma may get us to Krishna will get us through we take shelter of Krishna Krishna will get us through ok thank you Hare Krishna Hare Krishna so we can thank Krishna Prasad good job thank you Krishna is not the book happy to get