Hurry, Worry, Sorry

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna. Thank you for coming to this today's news program. So, I'll be speaking on the topic of Hari, Wari, Sauri.

So, Hari, Wari, Sauri. At the turn of the last century, there was a famous essay written by a European thinker. And he said, the last century, I mean not the 20th century, towards the end of the 18th century or more than 100 years ago.

He said that with machines doing most of the work, now the biggest crisis, the biggest problem for humanity in the future century will be what to do with all the time that we have. Machines will do most of the work and the presumption was that we humans will be free. And what to do with the time? Now, many of the expectations that were coming from technological progress, they have been foiled.

But this has been probably foiled the most. People are busier than ever before. Now, practically, hardly anyone has time.

Nobody has time for leisure. And even the time that we have leisure, that also is filled, crowded with so many options that we become busy in just exploring the various options for leisure. So, there is an American psychologist, David Mayhem, he has written a book called the Paradox of Choice.

Now, how too much becomes too little. So, the Paradox of Choice, what he says is that when people have too many choices, then that itself causes anxiety. So, for example, if we have to go to a, if we have fuel, if I have to go to a doctor, then we go to a doctor, doctor does take this medicine, we take the medicine and we get cured.

But if every time, in every single thing that we do, we have to choose, then things become unnecessarily complicated. So, to give you a simple example, say many of us use text messaging. So, now suppose we want to send a text message.

And each time our device, the phone, asks us all the default settings. What font do you want to use? What font size do you want to use? Whether you want italics, whether you want bold? Now, what gradient do you want in the color? What density do you want? And every time we have to enter each of these details, then that itself will take so much time and we'll have no time left for actually sending the message. So, a certain level, normally when we use a device, there are certain default settings that are needed.

And those default settings save us the time so that we can get on with the real business of life. Okay, we want to communicate with someone. Now take the situation even further, and if not just every time we send a message, if every time we type a letter in our device, we had to, at that time, enter the default settings at each time, then we would, we just, our whole time would get consumed in just getting to the message.

So, a certain level of default settings, the value of that is very easy to understand. Most of us, no, we probably know the concept of default settings, but we are not even, probably most of us are not even fiddled with the default settings. Whatever they come, we use them and we get on with the real business of life.

Just communicating with our loved ones, communicating with our colleagues, whatever it may be. So, there is a real business to life. And there are many other things on the way to the real business to life.

And then we get caught in those things. And also get caught in those things when there is a multiplicity of options in those things. Then that consumes our mental energy.

It consumes our time and that causes enormous anxiety. So, for example, if I have, right now I have a little common cold. So, now, suppose I go to a doctor and the doctor tells me, see, this common cold can be caused by this or this or this or this.

And if it is caused by this, then this, this, this or this can be the treatment. If it is caused by this, this, this, this can be treatment. And like that, the doctor gives me four possible diagnosis and four possible treatments for those diagnosis.

And then after presenting the 16 choices, the doctor tells me, okay, what do you want to take? Now, if I had to choose like that, how would I choose? You know, along with the common cold, I will get a headache. So, when there are too many choices in our life, then there is, we get, the choice seems to give freedom. Oh, I can choose what I want.

But often, that freedom, so I talk about two different situations. One is of the medical example and the other is the device setting. And the two are different contexts.

The medical example is talking about a context when we necessarily have to make a choice, but we don't have enough knowledge to make the choice. How can a patient choose the medicine? It is the doctor who has to prescribe the medicine. And the second is the default settings of the device where actually that choice is not very important.

That choice is just something which has to be done so that we can get along with the real thing. So, in this way, if there is too much choice, then although choosing seems to provide freedom, but all choosing does not necessarily enhance our freedom. And when we have too many choices about everything, that can cause an excessive cognitive load that can burden our head and we feel stressed by that.

So, choosing is important. We all have a responsibility. We all have to choose.

See, every single day, when we wake up, there are possibly a million things that we could do. And we have some structure in our life. Okay, I have a job.

I have a family. I have studies. And then, that structure makes sure that something gets done.

If at every moment, we had to choose what to do in life, at every moment, we have to choose in a general sense. Should I do this or should I do that? But if every moment, we are a completely open choice to do anything, then we would get into paralysis by analysis. We would just not be able to choose.

What do I do? So, one of the reasons why there is so much hurry, so much excessive demand on our time is because we are burdened with too many choices. So, if I have to watch a movie, there may be a hundred options among which to choose the movie. And this psychologist found one more interesting feature.

He said there are two kinds of choosers. There are maximizers and there are optimizers. I'll explain this concept and then I'll talk about how it correlates with the Gita.

Maximizer means these are the people who with every choice they make, they want to make the absolutely best choice. Now, if I have to purchase a new phone, I will make sure that I'll get the best value for my money. And this seems to be a good thing to do.

But the problem is that there are 500 different models. And I started comparing this model, this model, this model, this model, this model. And in general, what the psychological study found is that maximizers do get the maximum value for their money.

He contrasted the maximizers with the optimizers. Optimizers are those who decide, okay, this much time I have to purchase this particular thing. And I'll spend this much time in choosing it.

And then whatever I get, I'll be fine with it. I can't spend too much time on this. Even if it's not the best choice, it's the optimum.

The difference between optimum and maximum. Maximum is the highest. Optimum is the best within the circumstances.

So, in general, maximizers get better value for their money. But maximizers suffer from two main problems. First is, they spend a disproportionate amount of time in choosing things.

Second is, that because they have invested so much time in choosing something, so they have a huge amount of expectation from that thing. And naturally, no matter how good that thing may be, it doesn't live up to their expectation. So, suppose I have spent, say, three months just searching a good smartphone model.

And after three months, I find a smartphone. And within three months, it becomes outdated. A new model comes up.

And then what happens is, it's not only a new model of that smartphone has come, other models have also got new smartphones. So then I have to again go through the process of choosing which is the next model to pick. So, they face acute disappointment when what they choose doesn't live up to their expectations.

And then thirdly, is that they still, even after making the right choice, they always have this haunting regret or haunting doubt. Maybe if I had researched more, I might have found a better choice. So, no matter how well their choice may be, still, they get caught in worry.

There might have been just something better, a better deal somewhere out there. A better deal out there. So, now, as a brahmachari, I practically don't purchase anything.

Everything is provided by the temple. But when I had to come to America, I had to book a flight. And then I just went and searched on the net.

I had such an overload. I told them, you book the flight, I don't care about it. I just realized that it can become a whole universe.

And I don't have any education, any prior experience to book the flight. But just a small example, there are so many options. And though these options may seem to give freedom, but quite often, the word freedom has a charm.

Yes, I am free to choose. But there are two things in this. You know, is this choice really very important? And am I educated enough to make this choice? Often that, we don't think about.

There are several countries where advertisements to small children are banned. Because the understanding is that small children do not have the capacity to discern what is factual and what is counterfactual. And because they don't have the capacity to discern, they can be very easily captivated and manipulated.

So, to ensure that the children are not manipulated thus, advertisements below a particular age are banned, targeted specifically to those children. Now, of course, while this is a healthy measure, it remains open to question whether people above that age can also discern advertisements or not. In India, one of the most popular advertisements showed a Bollywood star.

A young man is walking along the road, and he sees a Bollywood star coming from the other side. And there is a bevy of beautiful young girls. And they see this Bollywood star, and they call out his name, squeal in delight, and rush to him and hug him and kiss him.

And this young man is noticing, looking at it dolefully. Oh, nobody notices me. Nobody cares for me.

And then that Bollywood star comes to this young man, pulls him in an embrace and he says, I will tell you my secret. He says, my secret is, some hair shampoo. And then, the next scene is, he applies that hair shampoo, and then he comes out, and as soon as he comes there, a similar bevy of girls comes and hugs him and kisses him and embraces him, squeals his name in delight.

Now, such an advertisement is an insult to both male and female intelligence. Now, to portray that, to say that women will fall for a man just because he has applied the hair shampoo, it's an insult to female intelligence. And that men will believe such fairy tales, that is an insult to male intelligence.

But somehow, the advertisements can captivate us so much. So, Oscar Wilde said that, fashion is a form of ugliness, so intolerable, that we have to change it every six months. Fashion is a form of ugliness.

To be fashionable is to be beautiful, to be smart, to be cool, to be trendy. But, what is considered trendy, just at one time, a few months later, is old fashioned. So, what is considered beautiful becomes ugly.

And not only is it ugly, it becomes so intolerably ugly, we just have to give it up. We have to change it. So, in this way, the culture that we live in today, subjects us to an overload of choices.

And we go about pursuing many things. And in the process of pursuing many things, I said, hurry, because we are busy. Modern materialistic life can be summarized in three words.

W.W.S. W.W.S. First is work. Everybody has to work. We have to earn a living.

Now, after we come back home, after working, we feel tired, exhausted. I want to relax. So, we turn on television.

And we watch television. Television has many different forms of entertainment. But the most aggressively marketed segments on television are the advertisements, the commercials.

No matter how popular, how expensive a serial or a program may be, no program spends as much money in its manufacture as a 10-second advertisement or a 30-second advertisement, whatever. So, now, what happens when you watch these advertisements? Essentially, advertisements are telling us your hairstyle is wrong. Your clothes are wrong.

Your shoes are wrong. Your watch is wrong. You have to get a better one.

So, now, we come. We work, work, work. We are tired.

So, we come and watch. And when we watch, we see all these things. अनेक चित्त विद्ध्रान्थ मोह जाल समावृता प्रसंता काम भोगेशु पतंति नरकेशु जो अनेक चित्त विद्ध्रान्थ The consciousness gets dragged in various directions.

Oh, I watched this and I want this. I want this. So, what happens is we go and shop.

So, we go and shop. Now, shopping is not free. So, when we shop and shop, what we have to do is we have to work more.

So, we work more, we get tired more, we want more relaxation. So, again we come home and watch more TV. We watch more TV.

What happens is, we see more commercials and we get more desire and we shop more. So, alcoholism is a well-known form of addiction. And similar, in fact, a more widespread form of addiction is called as shopaholism.

Shopaholism means people just have a shop, shop, shop. It's a shop till you drop. So, people just can't resist the urge to shop.

And, this form of, the problem with, see there are some addictions, like somebody drinks too much or somebody smokes too much. Somebody, say, takes drugs. There are forms of addictions which are socially also disapproved.

The problem with shopaholism is that it is a socially glamorized form of addiction. The more we shop, I saw an advertisement, it said that, it was an advertisement of a car. A smart young man was riding the car and a beautiful girl was looking at him.

And there's another young man glaring at him. He says, purchase this car and enjoy the envy in your neighbor's eyes. Now, what a pathetic standard of enjoyment.

To think that our enjoyment depends on killing envy in others eyes. So, it is unfortunate that the culture today glamorizes this kind of enjoyment. So, shopaholism is glamorized.

You have this also, you have this also, you have this also. People think that it is very glamorous to have such things. So, this is work, watch, shop.

WWS. This worldwide stupidity. It's unfortunate.

But unfortunately, it is spreading all over the world. Increasingly. Now hurry, as I said, we are in a hurry because we are caught up quite often in making choices that either we don't have to make or that we are not equipped to make.

So, people spend so much time choosing something which is quite trivial or sometimes they have to make such choices, something is important. But they may not have the resources to make it. They may not have the knowledge or the resources to make the choices.

So then, this causes worry. Now worry is a very it's in one sense paradoxical. The World Health Organization has said that the current century the biggest health challenge is going to be mental health.

they have found, researchers have studied anxiety patterns globally. And they have found that the anxiety levels in the developed countries are consistently higher than the anxiety levels in the developing countries. Now, this is counterintuitive.

Normally, anxiety is caused by outer uncertainty. Now, suppose we have to catch a bus or we have to catch a flight and we are not sure whether we will reach on time. That uncertainty causes anxiety.

Relatively speaking, things are much better organized in the developed world as compared to the developing world. In many parts of the developing world, you turn on a tap, you don't know whether water will come or not. That kind of problems are not there in the developed world.

So, when there is external, there is greater external certainty in the developed world as compared to in the developing world. Why is it that there is greater anxiety in the developed world? And not only that, another feature that research has found is when people come from the developing world, people emigrate from the developing world to the developed world, their anxiety levels also go up. So, why is that? So, anxiety, one cause of it is outer uncertainty.

But another more important cause of anxiety is inner instability. Inner instability. That means, when our world view is largely materialistic, then there is nothing internal that we can get shelter in.

So, the nature of material things is that they are changing. They are perishing. And then we, we all need, just as we need a shelter for our body, we have a home where we go.

Similarly, we need a shelter for our consciousness. Somewhere, we can rest our consciousness. And when we have materialistic world view, we have practically no rest for our consciousness.

Modern society offers us enormous amounts of entertainment. And some entertainment can be uplifting, it can be refreshing. But quite often, entertainment is permeated with the same stimuli that agitate us further.

What we do for entertainment can often increase the greed within us, increase the lust within us, increase the tendency for violence within us. So, then we get into entertainment for relaxation. There may be some relief from the world's agitation.

But often, during the entertainment, we get stimuli which again further our agitation. So, in a materialistic world view, there is no inner stability. And I'll come back to the point of inner stability a little later.

But hurry, worry, and sorry. Sorry means that ultimately, nothing material is going to last. It is that people in their youth, they lose their health to gain wealth.

Then, in their middle age, they lose their wealth to regain their health. I'll spend so much on this and that. And then, they lose both their health and their wealth.

So, this is very unfortunate. So, there is regret. Sorry.

We end up, one of the paradoxes, one of the ironies of the mind, the human mind is expert in making the human being miserable. The mind will, for example, say if there is a feast, and the mind will say, eat more. It's delicious.

Eat a little more. And a little more. And some more.

It's delicious. You don't know when you'll get it next time. Eat it.

And then, after the stomach starts feeling bloated, then that same mind, you know, takes on a high moral ground. You fool! When will you learn? How many times have you experienced that by overeating, you feel miserable? You are a fool! Now, you tell, you only told me. You are a fool.

It doesn't, it completely, you know, like you hear the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So, you know, the same person takes a completely opposite role. So, the mind initially makes us do the wrong thing.

And then, afterwards, that mind makes us wallow in self-pity. Oh, I made such a foolish choice. I am so this.

I am so miserable. I am so bad. And self-pity is not humility.

Self-pity is where we are just self-centered. Thinking about ourselves more and more. This is wrong there.

That is wrong there. That is wrong there. That is where we will feel sorry for ourselves.

Now, feeling sorry for ourselves is not necessarily bad. If it inspires us to do, if it can inspire us to do the right thing. But quite often, when we are caught in the clutches of the mind, we go into a mode of self-pity where we do nothing constructive to resolve the issue.

We only end up wallowing in feelings of negativity. So, sorrow, grief, disappointment, frustration are all just different degrees of the same emotion. And these come when we make unhealthy choices.

So, the spiritual path, the Bhagavad Gita explains to us, is ultimately about choices. The Bhagavad Gita concludes in 18.73 by stating, बिर्परिशेइ ततः शेषेण यधे इच्छसी तथा कुरू Celebrate deeply and then decide what you want to do. So, now after going over this analysis, I will go over the same points from the Bhagavad Gita's perspective.

So, we all have to make choices and as I said, Dr. Maya and other researchers I found talked about optimizers and maximizers. So, our life has two, the Bhagavad Gita explains, our life has two dimensions. The material dimension and the spiritual dimension.

And both these dimensions are important. Success in one dimension of life, even outstanding success cannot compensate for failure in another dimension. It's like a person may become a great success professional but if the family life is ruptured, they are on the verge of a divorce, if their children are turning out to be bad, then no matter how high a person rises the corporate ladder, that doesn't compensate for the lack of success in family life.

So, to be successful you need to balance the various aspects of our life and it is better to achieve moderate success in all walks of life than to have great success in one walk and be a terrible disappointment or failure in another walk of life. So, just as success in professional life cannot compensate for failure in personal life, similarly success in material life cannot compensate for deficiency in our spiritual life. Our spiritual side also needs to be acknowledged.

So, what do we mean by our spiritual side? Bhagavad Gita explains that we are at our core source. Atma is what it's called and Atma is the source of consciousness. Researchers have been probing the human brain to try to find out where exactly is consciousness.

Many interesting experiments have been done. So, I'll talk about the experiments done by a Nobel laureate brain surgeon, Dr. Benfield. He probed the human brain and he along with many other researchers have correlated which part of the human brain correlates with what function.

So, he wrote a book called The Mystery of the Mind. I'll talk about one experiment from that book. So, he had a subject and he told the subject, raise your hand.

So, then he asked the subject to describe what happened. He said, I raised my hand. And he found out that when he had raised the hand, a particular part of the brain got activated.

I'm avoiding all scientific terminology over here. It's a simple concept. So, then he asked the subject, put your hand down.

He put the hand down. That particular part of the brain got deactivated. Then, using external electrical probes, he activated that part of the brain and the hand went down.

He asked the subject, what happened? He said, my hand went down. Did you raise your hand? The subject said, I didn't raise, you raised it. Dr. Benfield then deactivated the electrode and the hand fell down.

He said, what happened? He said, my hand fell down. Did you put your hand down? He said, no, I didn't, you did. So, now, to understand the implication of this, suppose I have a computer.

It has a print button. And there's a printer connected to it. And I have the printer hand.

So, when the print button is activated, the printer hand starts moving. So, the brain region which is activated, then the hand goes up. That's like, you could say, roughly, the print button in the brain.

So, when the print button is pressed, the hand goes up or comes down. Now, in the second case, it was Dr. Benfield who was pressing the print button. Who was pressing it in the first case? There was someone different who was saying, I'm not doing it in the second case.

It is you who are doing it. So, no matter how much Dr. Benfield broke the human brain, there was no one place which corresponded with the activator. When actions were initiated, certain parts of the brain were activated.

But nowhere in the brain could he find the activator. After four decades of brain research, he concluded that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. The source of consciousness is extra cerebral.

Extra cerebral is outside the brain. So, in modern science, it is increasingly pointing to this irreducibility of human consciousness. So, we have a spiritual side, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us.

And this spiritual side also needs to be nourished. And how is the spiritual side nourished? The soul is a part of God. … … … … … Krishna says in chapter 7 verse that all living beings are my parts.

And he says, if they do not act in relationship with me, then they struggle with their mind and senses. So, we are a part of God. We are a and part.

But presently, we are apart from God. We are a part, but we are now apart. And, what happens is, when we are a part of God, when we are connected with Him, as a part is connected with the whole, then we experience inner satisfaction in that connection.

And that inner satisfaction gives us a stable foundation by which we can make healthy choices in the outer world. So, when we are internally satisfied, then, what do I actually need? What is a necessity? And what is a luxury? What is something to be important for me? What is something not so important for me? We can make these choices without being subjected to undue anxiety over them. How is that? Suppose, we had only $1.00 and $1.00 falls out of our pocket.

We will be in anxiety. Oh, where is that $1.00 gone? But suppose we had a million dollars and then $1.00 falls off. At that time also, we may have some anxiety, but that time may not be that level of anxiety.

Okay, I will find another. I don't want it to be wasted. I don't get worked up about it.

It's not the end of the world. So, when we are internally satisfied, it's like we are having $1.00 million internally. And then, whatever we have to choose, whatever ups and downs happen in life, we can deal with them calmly without getting unduly affected.

So, nourishing our spiritual side essentially means having a regular connection with God. So, for example, we chant the holy names. When we come to temple, when we study scripture, all this is not just a cultural ritual.

Yes, it can be done as a cultural ritual and that may make us feel good sometimes. But it can be underutilizing its potential. It can actually offer us much more.

It can offer us much higher fulfillment. So, for example, if we come to a temple and pray to God, if we chant the holy names, if we participate in kirtas, we expose our consciousness to the sound of the holy name. Not just expose our consciousness, but absorb our consciousness in the sound of the holy name.

We experience an upliftment. Whatever anxiety we may have, whatever agitation we may have, we find it decreasing. Now, this is something which anyone from any part of the world, from any cultural background can experience.

This is the universal potency of spiritual sound. So, if we have philosophical education, then we can move forward from this experience to the implication of that experience. Suppose, there is a small baby.

Infants are very small. At that time, their hole for the infant, they are practically in what is called as annamayikosh. All of existence is potential womb.

So, they get milk from their mother's breast and they suck their fingers. If they can get some toy, they put it in their mouth. So, initially, they don't even have a sense that there are things outside.

They may be drinking, infant may be drinking milk from the mother's breast, but the infant may not even understand oh, this is my mother and she loves me and she is providing milk. That development has not taken place. So, as I say that, it's an infant at a very preliminary level of cognitive development that infant falls, is sleeping and is shivering because of the cold.

Now, the mother sees that and mother puts a blanket. Now, the child, the infant experiences relief from the cold, but infant is too small to understand anything. However, as the infant grows, gradually, even if the eyes are closed, the trembling is felt and then a comforting warmth is felt.

The infant understands, oh, this is my mother putting a blanket on me. Although, there is no conscious direct awareness, but still there is an understanding. So, that connection between the warmth of the blanket and the love of the mother, that is made as the infant grows.

Similarly, for us, we are at present in a stage of spiritual infancy and when we chant the holy names, when we subject our consciousness to spiritual sound, we experience a comfortably warm blanket on our consciousness. We get relief. But, we don't at present make the connection.

How is the sound giving such relief? It is because the sound manifests, expresses Krishna's love for me. For the infant, the growth is automatic and by that growth, the connection between the mother's love and the blanket's warmth happens automatically. But, for us, we need philosophical education to make that connection.

Make the connection between the experience of devotional warmth and the reality of Krishna's love. राजविध्या राजविध्यम् पवित्रमिदमुत्तमं रत्यक्षावगमं धर्म्यं सुसुखं कर्थम अव्ययं So, Krishna says, the knowledge he is giving is Rajavidya, the king of knowledge and रत्यक्षावगमं धर्म्यं It is something which we can ourselves experience. So, now the experience is something which we may have.

But, to make the leap from the experience to the inference, what it implies, that requires intelligence. Newton saw the fruit falling. Millions of people before him had seen fruit falling.

Most of them just picked up the fruit and went away. It was Newton who asked, why did this fruit fall? And that gave him the answer which led to the development of the whole theory of gravity. Similarly, many people may experience some spiritual joy and some relief in Kirtan.

But a few thoughtful people will ask, why am I experiencing this? And those who are intellectually enterprising enough to ask this, they will become spiritual pioneers. They can grow spiritually. That experience which we get in Kirtans, it is not just an experience which is meant to be reserved there.

The more we become aware of Krishna, we have become aware of his presence in our heart, the more that experience can become a constant reality for us. And thus, we can move closer and closer to Krishna. So, now talking about the optimizers and maximizers.

Now, we have to live in this world and the Bhagavad Gita was spoken to Arjuna who was also king in this world. Royal prince. So, it's not that the Bhagavad Gita asks us to reject our material self.

But, the Bhagavad Gita rejects, asks us to reject giving our material side monopoly on our life. Don't let the material side take monopoly on your life. So, we need to balance.

And, one point about balance is in our material life, there are so many choices which are irrelevant. So, if we try to become maximizers, trying to get the best in everything materially, we will dissipate much of our valuable time and energy. On the other hand, we decide a particular standard and accept that.

Not let the world impose desires on us. You have to get this to be successful. You have to get that to be successful.

You have to get that to be successful. No. We can pursue a definition of success that is true to our self.

Not that which is touted on us, imposed on us by the world. And, by pursuing our spiritual side, by giving it due time, we will find lasting fulfillment. And, by that lasting fulfillment, we will be able to move onwards steady in all walks of our life.

So, last point I will take is that we all feel that there is not enough time. Okay. I may want to practice spirituality, but I don't have time.

Now, yes, it is true that as I said, we are all busy. In a hurry. So, because of hurry, we don't have time for hurry.

So, we don't have time for a lot of hurry. But, the problem is that we often think of our time in terms of activities. Okay.

I have to do this at this time. Then, I have to do this. Then, I have to do this.

Then, I have to do this. And, such a calculation, such a reasoning is understandable. But, our time is taken not just by activities.

It is also taken by thoughts. If, say, a student is going to college and at that time, the student sees a very attractive new gadget and thinks, I must get it. And then, the student is sitting in the classroom or that employee is sitting in the office and one full hour has passed and the mind is thinking, how can I get this? How can I get this? And now, in our schedule, that's an invisible time consumed.

We don't realize it but our time has been consumed. So, our time is consumed not just by our activities but also by our thoughts. And, to the extent our thoughts are unregulated, to the extent more and more time is consumed.

So, worry, how many of us have a daily worry time? 7 to 7.30 in the evening is my worry time. Now, worry takes our time throughout just like a background noise, which is sapping, which is distracting us and sucking our energy. Now, if, so, both these examples, stray desires and worries, both are examples of how our thoughts consume our time.

When we do meditation, when meditation brings order to our inner world. Meditation brings order to our inner world. Meditation enables us to streamline our thoughts.

We can also say, this thought, it's not very important, I'll put it aside. This thought, this is important. So, when we try to meditate, when we try to chant the holy names, in that process, we become more observant of our mind.

And, an increasing observant nature we carry throughout the rest of our day also. Right? This mind is going like this. Our thoughts are being dissipated.

So, when our mental energy is conserved, we will be able to actually function better. So, although spirituality, doing something spiritual may seem to be an additional commitment in our already busy lives, but actually this additional commitment will optimize our other usage of time. Because that time will not get dissipated in stray thoughts, will not be consumed by stray thoughts.

And in that way, spirituality will not take our time, rather it will give us time. It will give us the time which is stolen away by stray thoughts and desires. Krishna concludes in the Bhagavad Gita by saying, Become conscious of me, we will pass over all obstacles by my grace.

I'll summarize. I started by talking about Hari-Vari-Sauri. So, how although we have machines which do so much of our work, still we don't seem to have time.

And the reason for that is many reasons, but one reason is that we are overloaded with choices. And these choices are often about things which are not very important. Akin to the SMS choosing and all the default settings for SMS, or about things which we are not equipped to choose.

Like choosing which treatment to take. So, through the culture and the advertisement in that culture, we are overloaded with choices. Choices can bring freedom, but they can also bring burden if we are unequipped for those choices or if they are unnecessary choices.

And the advertising industry often makes us fills us with desires for unnecessities as if fashion is a form of ugliness. And then, when you want to make these choices, I talked about optimizers and maximizers. Some people go out to make the best choices, they make the best choice, but still they spend too much time, they have too much expectations, they are frustrated, and they have a growing sense of regret that still I made a better choice.

And they end up wasting, they will get more for their money, but they lose far more in terms of mental energy. So, we subject ourselves to worry not just when there is outer uncertainty, but also when there is inner instability. And inner instability comes when we have a materialistic world view.

There is no shelter, no pacifying, uplifting shelter for our consciousness. And sorry is, when material things inevitably go away, we are subjected to misery. And even before that happens, or while that is happening, we get subjected to self-pity, which drains us and disempowers us.

And we talked about from the Bhagavad Gita's perspective that we are spiritual beings. I talked about Dr. Benfield's experiment and the source of consciousness is extraordinary. And success in one's aspect of life does not compensate for failure in another.

We need to balancely nourish our spiritual and material sides. So, we are parts of God and we connect ourselves with God. We become, we get spiritual peace and satisfaction.

And that inner satisfaction gives us the foundation by which we can make healthy outer choices. And this inner satisfaction I said, just as a mother, just as a baby needs to make the connection between the blanket's warmth and the mother's love, similarly, the relief that we experience in remembrance of Krishna, from there, with philosophical education, we can make the connection between that relief and Krishna's love. And when we get this experience, then we can become optimisers in all aspects of our material life.

Give due time for our material life, but give due time for our spiritual life also. Without getting anything, but you consume unwarranted time and energy. And to give time for our spiritual life, you should know that that will not take away our time, rather it will add to our time.

Because it will save the time that is dissipated in stray thoughts and unfounded anxieties. Thank you very much. Are there any questions?