Mind the mind

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you very much for coming today afternoon am I audible behind? so I am honoured to be here amongst all of you and as I mentioned I will speak on the topic of mind your mind this will be in two acronyms MIND which will talk about the problem and the second MIND will be the solution we have a powerpoint it might just get set up if it doesn’t we will start off so I will talk about how the mind can defeat us and how we can use the mind for attaining victory we live in a world where we have dazzling technological wizardry all around us and the sheer amount of technological achievements that we see in the last 50 years would have been inconceivable for most people just few decades ago and yet we see with all this enormous control over the outer world we find that there is something lacking in the inner world Martin Luther King put his finger on this when he said that we have guided missiles and misguided men our technological power has outrun our spiritual power when I came in 2015 to America I was speaking at the Ohio State University and I was speaking on a similar topic over the mind regulating our mental diet and after that a young science student came to me and he told me just before the talk he had been contemplating suicide he had been in a relationship and his partner had left him for someone else and he was shattered but somehow something within him told him he saw while going to this college leaflet about the programme let me just go for this programme and then after the talk he was telling me that now I have understood that this voice within me which was telling me to commit suicide it was not my voice it was the voice of something within me which is different from me the Bhagavad Gita which is an ancient yoga text calls this inner voice which often works against us as the mind the word mind can have different meanings in different contexts so if you consider a computer system there is the hardware there is the software and there is the user the yoga text explains that our existence is also similarly three dimensional there is the body, there is the mind and there is the soul the body is like the hardware the mind is like the software and the spiritual essence, the consciousness is the user so the hardware may be perfectly functioning but if the software is damaged then the machine can’t be used similarly in today’s world we see that there is tremendous amount of progress at the physical level we are having better and better hardware but the software is getting corrupted so the depression, the negativity the suicidal urge this is like a virus that is infecting the software and that virus which infects the software is that virus is what causes us to act in self injurious ways so if you don’t understand that this inner voice inside me is not me as I said we hit self goals if you are not self aware we hit self goals.
Nature is filled with examples of creatures which destroy themselves a fish is attracted by a bait a mice is attracted by a cheese in a mouse trap now these creatures have their excuses a fish doesn’t know in advance that the bait is a trap the mice do not know the cheese is inside a mice trap unfortunately we human beings rarely have these excuses quite often the things that trap us we know in advance that they are harmful it can be self defeating habits or it can be suicidal urges when say a person becomes addict of some undesirable behaviour now they know in advance the substance is addictive but something within them makes them cross the line it is not that the knowledge is lacking over here there is knowledge this is dangerous but somehow something pushes us from within and understanding that is vital for us to be able to not only combat the inner enemy but to bring out our best so I talked about this in my first slide 1 million people commit suicide every year now this figure of 1 million actually amounts to about 1 suicide every 40 seconds that means since I started talking almost 10 to 15 people have committed suicide it is a scary statistic another way to understand this is that this figure of 1 million is more than the number of people who are killed in murders, in wars and in violent crimes combined together it means more than the number of people who are killed by others are the people who are killing themselves so this inner sabotager that is there within us it is literally destroying people not just conceptually but literally it can make people kill themselves so as I said the Bhagavad Gita is a yoga text and it offers some insights about what is this inner force so two texts in the Gita 6.5 and 6.6 they talk about the inner dimensions of our life in enigmatic terms we should elevate ourselves with our mind and we should not degrade ourselves with our mind the mind is the friend of the self and the mind is also the enemy of the self that means the Gita is talking about a dichotomy over here within us there is the mind and there is the self and if we understand that this mind is different from the self then we can choose whether I have to act according to the mind or not act according to the mind going back to the starting example of this computer system many times our computer if we use it in a particular way it develops some default settings say if we visit a particular newspaper site regularly for checking news so as soon as I start typing N in my browser immediately it may complete a N by times if I type G it might complete Guardian whatever it is so based on the way we have used the machine there are certain default settings that come up like that our mind also gets programmed and then certain choices become default we don’t have to think about it or rather we don’t have to consciously decide to do it we just think about it and the thing happens afterwards just like we type N and N by times comes over there when something becomes a habit within us when the self-defeating behaviour becomes entrenched within us it just needs a slight stimulus and it starts off so when the Gita says elevate yourself with the mind and don’t degrade yourself what does it mean? it’s like if I am visiting I am using my browser to check out a particular link so I have some purpose in going and looking at that link but while I open that link say some other pop-up window comes up if I am not very cautious I click on that and I go somewhere else and I go somewhere else and we may waste hours in reading something which we never intended to read so the same software the same browser either we can use it to do our work or it can prompt us to waste our time so that’s what the Gita is saying the mind I am comparing here to the browser to the software in the computer so we can use the browser or the browser can use us or those who are advertising and marketing through the browser they can use us so the onus is on us to raise ourselves with the mind mind has self-supporting self-sabotaging programmes like viruses so I will talk about four ways in which the mind can sabotage us M, I and D is the mind it magnifies problems I is it imagines pleasures N is it neglects opportunities and D is that it denies reality let’s look at this one by one magnifies problems there is the a particular physiological and psychological condition called delusional parasitosis there is one anecdote to illustrate this this happened in India there was a woman who would go to a doctor and tell the doctor doctor doctor there is a frog in my stomach please remove it and the doctor told her no there cannot be a frog in the stomach there is no frog don’t worry there is a frog in my stomach when the doctor did not listen to her she went to another doctor a third doctor I can feel the frog in please do something and she went to the tenth doctor and the tenth doctor heard that she has gone through so many doctors he decided that he will try to deal with this problem in a different way he told her let us do some check up and he did some sonography actually there is a frog in your stomach and we need to do a surgery to remove it please do it immediately right away get the frog out of my stomach and then he gave her anaesthesia and just did some small incisions on the belly and while she was unconscious he asked a nurse to go to nearby pond and get a frog from there and when she came back to consciousness he told her there is a frog which you found in your stomach oh doctor thank you thank you you saved my life I was in so much misery now I am relieved thank you she was profusely grateful and profoundly relieved as she left now all the medical staff thought this is a very clever solution she is happy and now they are also not going to be burdened by her coming again and one week later she came back in great anxiety is doctor doctor help me the frog had babies and the babies are there inside please remove them now so actually here the problem is once the mind starts imagining something actually there is illusion and there is hallucination illusion means there is something outside which we perceive wrong so a mirage is an illusion there is sand but we perceive it as water hallucination means there is nothing outside and still we imagine something is there so the mind can have various ways in which it can either magnify existing problems or it can imagine problems to be far far bigger than what they actually are so in this case it applies practically to us in terms of stress, worry, anxiety we live in an age of competition uncertainty and some amount of stress is unavoidable but often worry is the interest we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken that means that quite often if we look at the things that we worry about we find more than 90% of those things 95% of those things rarely if ever happen in life there are possibilities and there are probabilities so if you start worrying about every single possibility that may happen so right now we are sitting here it’s possible that the roof may cave and we may all die but this is a well constructed building many people have sat here before nothing has happened so it’s not a probability when the mind starts magnifying problems it loses the rational capacity to differentiate between what is the possibility and what is the probability and that’s how we become inordinately fearful and if a future problem comes, when the problem comes we can deal with it the life becomes an unbearable burden when along with the problems of today we also have to worry about the problems of tomorrow or rather the problems of today we expand them in all the future tomorrows that we can conceive of just like if I have to carry a suitcase with me I can carry the suitcase but if I think that oh I’ll have to carry the suitcase for the rest of my life and I will lose the energy to pick it up even right now so worry often burdens us and cripples our spirit by making us obsess over situations that have not even actualised and that’s how our problems get magnified and I’ll be talking about the solutions in the later part but first part is just understanding how the mind deludes us just whenever we are feeling troubled by any problem okay what is the real problem right now? our mind starts fantasising this has gone wrong, this may go wrong, that may go wrong so basically when we face any problem the mind sees that problem as a trigger for a horror movie and it shows a horror movie in which we are not the spectators, we are the victims and if you just say okay what is the problem right now? what is the exact problem right now? if you ask this question that is like turning off the horror movie this is the situation right now let me face the situation now if you just turn off that horror movie switch by asking what is the real problem from here other problems may come if they come I will deal with them but if we get caught in this problem and imagine how it will go further then we get overwhelmed conversely the mind imagines pleasures imagines pleasures means that we are all naturally pleasure seeking but pleasure can deviate, the allure of pleasure can deviate us from important things in life and thereby complicate our life so many of you know about Alexander Pavlov and he studied the human mind and he talked about Pavlovian response, so basically what he did, he got some dogs and he trained them that whenever he was giving them food while giving them food he had a bell ring so whenever the bell would ring the dogs would understand now food is going to come normally whenever we see food in front of us or we smell food around us we start salivating, that’s how it is for dogs also, so the sight of food would lead to salivation but over a period of time he started ringing the bell without providing any food and just the sound of the bell started causing the dogs to salivate so this is a, that means the stimulus is actually not there there is no pleasure there is no food available just by the ringing of the bell but the dogs associated pleasure with the ringing of the bell, associate food with the ringing of the bell so like that we also can look in our lives we all have our conceptions of the things that are enjoyable and for those enjoyable things we often give up important things I often do programmes for students in universities and say for students there might be a very important exam coming up but then there is also a say a soccer match coming up and then they just lose the sense of perspective and think oh I have to watch this match and they neglect the studies and that affects the career okay match is nice but the sense of perspective is lost when one gets caught in the imagining oh this match will be so exciting I will enjoy it so much and actually speaking yes sports is enjoyable as a recreation but it cannot be used to divert us, we cannot let it divert us from more important things in our life so when we imagine pleasure then in the past we may have experienced some pleasure in that activity but over a period of time all pleasurable activities have a law of diminishing returns we experience some pleasure initially but afterwards the pleasure keeps going down most people who get addicted whether it is alcohol or to drugs they tell when they try to get de-addicted they tell their de-addicted counsellors that actually we don’t drink to get high that was initially now we drink just to feel normal just to feel normal what has happened is earlier there was a pleasure over there but as the addiction becomes stronger and stronger the craving is so unbearable that the indulgence is not for pleasure the indulgence is simply for relief so in our mind we think if I don’t do this I will lose so much pleasure but actually you will see that there is not all that much pleasure over there so like this our mind gets conditioned to certain Pavlovian responses something which in the past we thought gave us pleasure we are ready to give up important things for that purpose and that’s how we sometimes act as our own enemies we sabotage ourselves and is neglects opportunities when the mind is uncontrolled we are present everywhere except in the present that means that we are sitting in one place but we are thinking about the past, we are thinking about the future, we are thinking about what that person said, we are thinking about what this person said and we just are unable to function usually we think of our day and our time in terms of activities ok in the morning I will do this, in the afternoon I have this meeting, in the evening I will do this work and that’s one way of looking at our time this kind of scheduling neglects is that our time is taken not just by our activities it is also taken by our thoughts so if we come for a meeting and we greet someone and that person snubs us the uncontrolled mind starts going into a spree of revenge fantasies next time I will show this guy and the whole meeting next one hour we are in fantasy land thinking of what we will do, so what has happened in terms of our external schedule we attended meeting for one hour but not one minute of that one hour was used so we plan our time very well but in terms of the activities that we are going to do but thoughts can suck away our time so when the mind is uncontrolled the present is the opportunity for us to make any difference either it is for bringing a better future or solving some problem from the past but when the mind is uncontrolled it goes to the past, it goes to the future it just doesn’t stay in the present and when it doesn’t stay in the present then we neglect the opportunity of the present and the future we all worry will it be bright for me, the future will be brighter if we just brighten the present brighten the present means in the moment right now what can I do if we focus on that then we will find that much of the mind’s imagination whether of the past or of the future basically the mind imagines in two ways it goes to the past, it becomes fretful, oh this went wrong that went wrong, oh I did something so stupid it goes to the future it becomes fearful, what if this goes wrong what if that goes wrong and in that way it dissipates our energies so if we can become aware of the present then we can become much more effective in terms of whatever we are trying to achieve then the mind denies reality so in the yoga text there is a yoga text called the Mahabharata where there is an infamous character a villain who tried to rob his cousins, who tried to dishonour their wife, who tried to burn them alive and after doing this all, when he was his culpability was pointed out, he said his name was Duryodhana, he said I can’t see even the slightest fault in whatever I have done now he typifies the human mentality of trying to deny one’s own responsibility as long as we think the problem is out there we disempower ourselves in solving the problem because if the problem is out there I don’t have control on what is out there I have control on what is in here. Now it is definitely possible that the problem is out there but even if the problem is out there, the response has to begin from in here as long as we do not recognise our own agency our own responsibility when we deny the reality that okay, even if the problem is out there the responsibility is with me the reality is that the problem out there is not going to be solved automatically either I have to solve the problem or I have to live with the problem or I have to walk away from the problem whatever it is, all three options there are basically three options either we get the problematic situation rectified or we just learn to tolerate it or we walk away from that situation now whichever of these is going to work, the initiative has to begin with us so the wound denied is the wound worsened if I got a cut and I don’t want to show it to the doctor then what is going to happen? it is going to be worse so like that, when we accept the reality that there are problems in my life but the problem solver has to begin from here the more we think the problem is out there the more we deny responsibility I am not talking about responsibility in terms of I have caused all the problems rather the responsibility for dealing with whatever situation comes in my life, it is not going to be for someone else, it is for me so we accept this reality actually this reality is empowering because it again shifts the focus to what is in our control I talked about these four as generic patterns of how the mind misleads us and how it makes us defeat ourselves and how do we deal with this at one level we could say that as soon as I start seeing the mind magnify your problem I will stop that I will not let it magnify yes we can analyse and try to correct ourselves that is good at the same time we need we need certain support systems say if this floor is inclined towards the right and if say water falls on it I may say I want the water to flow towards the left but as long as the floor is inclined towards the right automatically the water will flow towards the right if I want the water to flow towards the left either each time the water starts flowing towards the right, I will have to push it up and make it go towards the left or I will have to change the flooring so that the flooring becomes inclined towards the left so just as we can say that there will be inclination of the floor like that there is inclination of the mind inclination of the mind means the mind becomes habituated to thinking in particular ways so even if I decide I am going to live in the present I am not going to neglect the opportunities of the present but still you find the mind just goes off here, mind goes off there and if we don’t understand the mind to be a real being which needs to be managed, sometimes we just start blaming ourselves I just don’t have enough will power okay, somebody tells you don’t think negative I will not think negative but then again I start going towards negative and when we are unable to deal with our mental issues we start thinking oh I lack will power but if you understand that the mind is a real thing and it needs real rectification it’s not just a matter of will power now suppose say I have got a stomach upset, I can’t cure a stomach upset merely by will power that will power has to be used to take a medicine to follow a diet so will power alone will not cure so if we think that will power is definitely required to regulate the diet during the treatment will power is required to take the medicine on time but will power alone is not the cure so similarly for dealing with the mind’s issues, will power is important but along with will power there are principles by which we can empower ourselves to change the flowering of our mind the mind is inclined in a particular way we can change the inclination of the mind how we can do that that I will discuss now in four parts how we can stop defeating ourselves so this is the second part of the talk MIND another acronym meditate, illuminate, navigate and do it with others let’s look at meditation now meditation has many forms but it has one essence the essence of meditation is to shift the mind from the changing to the unchanging from changing external reality to the unchanging inner reality if a boat is in a ocean there are going to be waves and the waves are going to make it oscillate up and down, up and down, up and down like that we are in this world where there are ups and downs we are sometimes honoured and sometimes dishonoured we sometimes feel happy sometimes we feel miserable sometimes we are healthy sometimes we are sickly these are waves which come and go so the waves in an ocean can’t be stopped the boat is to not shake so much then the boat needs to be anchored to something heavier so meditation is the process that anchors us to spiritual reality meditation is the process by which we direct our thoughts from the outer world to the inner world to our own spiritual core and there are different forms of meditation their essential purpose is to redirect our mind so that our mind gets anchored to something bigger so the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the yoga tradition which is called as Bhakti Yoga the Bhagavad Gita talks about many yogas it primarily focusses on Bhakti Yoga and within that it said that there are many different ways in which we can meditate one of the most powerful ways is Mantra Yoga Mantra is special spiritual sound that helps us to raise our consciousness to shift our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level and when we utter these mantras, the mantra acts like an elevator for our consciousness so we could consider our self to be like a 2 story building or 3 story building, I talked about body, mind and soul earlier I said hardware, software and self, so like that the body, mind and soul we could conceive this as a 3 story building as long as our consciousness is at the level of the body and external things will be shaken even when it is at the level of the mind because the mind also is unpredictable it is unsteady but when our consciousness rises to the level of the soul, there we find stability and when we are rested, stabilised over there then we can act at the mental and the physical level so if you consider 3 story building all forms of meditation are basically meant to raise our consciousness from the physical and the mental level to the spiritual level and mantra acts like an elevator when we utter the mantra, it is like as the mantra enters into us we enter into the mantra and the mantra elevates our consciousness and we start feeling peaceful so the essential point is by meditation we experience the calm within and the calm within empowers us to cope with whatever storms come without I refers to illuminate so we need to illuminate our inner terrain say if we came into this room and it was dark, completely we don’t know what to do now we hear someone moving somewhere we don’t know whether that person is a friend or that person is an enemy we don’t know anything if at that time we just had a torch with the torch we look around and say oh this person is this one this person is this one we get to know, so in darkness we are basically groping and stumbling but once light comes we can move confidently so we need a torch for illuminating our inner territory what are the forces within us one of the fundamental insights in the yoga text is that everything inside us is not us just because a desire comes inside me that does not mean it is my desire just because a thought has come inside me that does not necessarily mean it is my thought what does it mean that just like if a pop-up window has come up on my browser that does not mean that is a link which I want to go to it might pop up because of something else, maybe somebody has done some programming by which they are targeting us with their advertisements, whatever so once we start illuminating our inner territory, we can start understanding which of the thoughts and desires within us are our thoughts and desires and which are just peripheral things which come and go our mind is very complex like a universe just like if you consider the mind to be like a room in which we are sitting now in this room there may be many people who come and go not everyone who is coming into this room is coming to meet us some of them may be coming to meet us or some of them may be people whom we want to meet but others may just be coming and going so once our inner territory becomes illumined we start understanding that there are many thoughts many desires inside us and not everything inside me is me and this inner torch light which can help us illuminate our inner territory that is spiritual wisdom now science illuminates the outer world in terms of the mechanisms how the outer world works science can help us to make things better we can have faster cars, we can have better phones, we can have more and more technological advances which make the outer things better spirituality can make people better because spirituality helps us to understand our inner territory and then we can understand which desires are which desires, which thoughts which intentions are our friends and which are not and by differentiating we can choose wisely so presently, if we are not spiritually connected here when I talk about spiritual, I talk primarily about spiritual wisdom texts spiritual wisdom texts, if we study them they become like a mirror for our inner world just like a mirror can show us how we look at a facial or physical level the wisdom texts they become like a mirror which shows us our inner world and there we can recognise this is like this, this is not meant to be like this, this can be like this and that way we can know what is what in our inner world and then third N is navigate so after I understand this room was dark and I got light, after I get the light and I have to move, here is a chair I should not move here, there is a wall here, I should not move here I should move like this so we need to navigate through our inner territory, that means we choose the desires that are important for us and then move forward along that so one of the very valuable tools for navigating our inner territory is self-reflection, self-reflection means right now I am sitting here and we humans have the capacity of looking at ourselves so I can, through a concept I am the, right now a speaker and you are the hearers but it is possible for us through reflection I can conceive myself from here I can look at myself what is this guy doing, how is he speaking, so we can look at ourselves through self-reflection and one tangible way to do this is through journaling when certain decisions are important for us, when certain desires are troubling us very much then if we just get them out we get them out that actually reduces the mental congestion within us it reduces the inner as long as thoughts are just inside they keep going round and round and round and they just don’t allow us to think clearly, as soon as we get the thought out, that distance between us and the thought that itself brings some amount of objectivity and with that objectivity we can then evaluate what should I do so when I get angry with someone and I want to shoot off an angry email, now normally we think of emotions in two terms either I express it or I repress it now if I express my anger probably it is going to make things worse that person will get angry and just have a nasty altercation but if I repress it I feel choked this person did something wrong to me, how can I just how can I stay silent so actually through journaling we can get a third option, besides expressing and repressing, we can do processing processing of our emotions means that say if I get angry with someone if I just don’t give a vent to it I feel choked, so I just write it down but I don’t send that email I write it down and keep it for 24 hours and after 24 hours I look at that email once again this point is too harsh, this point is this makes sense, maybe I just word it softly and I will send it now here I am making just a big judgement, value judgement how do I know whether this is really true so basically when the emotions are there within us they just agitate us and we need to give some vent for them but the emotions are not always the best ways of perceiving reality, so when we process the emotions means we give them a vent by expressing themselves but we don’t send it out journaling becomes a safe place for a private expression and then afterwards we look back again and say oh ok I was thinking like this, we have to make major decisions in our life, we journal our thoughts and keep revisiting them after 1 week, 2 week after 1 month, after 3 months and if the thoughts remain overall the same this is like a snapshot of my mind and this is how I have been consistently thinking this is important for me and I will do it so this is how by journaling we can navigate our inner territory that means the emotions that are there we can process them and those emotions that are worth acting on, we act on them those emotions which are knee jerk which are impulsive we can restrain them and lastly is do it with others we are actually social beings and our desires are not just linear, they are also triangular linear desire means say you are coming for talk and along the cafeteria you see a nice snack you see the snack, you see it and get the desire, I want to eat it, that’s simply linear, we see the object and we desire it now some desires work this way but many desires don’t work simply linear, for example if say a company makes a new product they may tell about how good the product is, but usually that doesn’t sell the product as much as getting a celebrity endorsement of that product because when the celebrity endorsement comes then what is happening, oh this person, this Hollywood star this sports star, this person he or she is using it I want to try it out so what happens, when we see them doing something so the desire becomes triangular if I myself see that product I may or may not get attracted to it but if I see someone else who is attracted to it oh let me try this out so our desires grow triangularly and especially in terms of inner growth outer possessions outer enjoyment there the object to which we are attracted is very visible and that’s how our desires towards that develop very easily because we can see them whereas in respect to inner growth the things are not visible that’s why our desire for inner growth may not grow naturally just by understanding the concepts or contemplating the concepts, when we see others doing it then we get attracted and this happens, in India cricket is a very big game in India soccer is not all that big India does not have any soccer team worth of the name but say when Indians come to America and here there is a lot of soccer mania Indians also see that and they become they become cheerleader, they become passionate about some soccer team so how does that happen they could have been watching soccer in India also, it comes on TV in India also, it comes in America also, but what attracted them was the other people who were mad for soccer, so same way when we understand that our desires are triangular, we recognise that spiritual growth is something which we, which will also happen triangularly not just linearly that means if we associate with other spiritually minded people, that will become the stimulant for our spiritual growth and when we do this I’ll conclude with one theme from the Bhagavad Gita which is Yogatics, it tells us that whatever we are, with whoever we are, whatever we are we can attain transcendence that means we don’t have to become someone else, if the source had wanted us to be someone else the source would have made someone else now we have been made we for a particular reason we can make our own contribution and all that we need to do is we need to become the best we I don’t have to become someone else I have to just become the best me and to become the best me I need to understand my inner territory and navigate it and once I find out that there are inimical forces within me which I deal with then we go to the core and the core is where our deepest potentials lie, when we bring out those potentials then we become the best me and with that we can ourselves find satisfaction internally and we can make contributions externally so I’ll summarise I talked today about mind the mind, how we defeat ourselves and how we can stop doing so in that I talked about defeating ourselves if we are not self-aware we hit self-goals just as fish and mice they get caught by baits, we also get caught by things which destroy us and our situation is in one sense worse because we know these are dangerous but still we indulge in say addictive habits, so what is it that makes us act in self-defeating ways, the Bhagavad Gita refers to that inner inimical force within us by the generic word the mind and not just the mind, this force is within the mind, so it offers us a three level model of the self there is a hardware, software and user, like that there is the body there is the mind and the soul so today’s technological progress has in a dazzling ways improved the hardware has provided us physical comforts but in terms of the mind there is a lot of deficiency and we saw self-sabotaging softwares in the mind, which people they want to destroy themselves, literally a million people commit suicide every year so what are these self-sabotaging softwares, we analyse them into four broad categories there is M, I and D remember the first M the mind magnifies problems, so yeah I talked about how delusional parasitosis, how somebody has some discomfort in the stomach and they imagine that there is a magnified thing there is a frog in there and worry is the interest we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken, so if we just focus on what is the problem right now, then we can turn off the horror movie of the mind with which it will paralyse us so we need to focus on the present and on the probability, not on every single dreary possibility then I, I talked about was illusion or imagine, imagines pleasures so we often have some important things in life to do but we get deviated by the lure of pleasure, and quite often those things may have given us pleasure in the past, but with the law of diminishing returns, those things don’t give us much pleasure, but still, because we are conditioned to it, we keep doing that I talked about the Pavlovian response how dogs, when they heard a bell, although there was no food coming, they started surviving it, so if you understand I’m getting so excited about this particular thing, but it’s not really all that exciting, let me focus on that which is important, a student needed to give up studies for an important exam just to watch a match so N was yeah, neglects opportunities so the mind is present everywhere except in the present worries about the past it regrets about the past, it worries about the future just goes here and there all over the place and again, if we can just be in the present, we brighten the present, the future will become brighter so we often think of our time availability in terms of activities, but our time is consumed also by our thoughts so if one thought if somebody snubs us and we go into a paroxysm of revenge fantasies, we can consume hours, so we recognise let me be present right now, what can I do right now, that can check the mind’s tendencies, then B was denies reality so as long as we think the problem is out there, we disempower ourselves, now it can be true the problem is out there but the solutions initiative has to begin from in here whether I’m going to attack and solve the problem, whether I’m going to live with the problem or whether I’m going to walk away from the problem, whatever it is the initiative is with us so the world can never make us helpless we can make ourselves helpless by going into a blaming mode, thinking nothing is wrong with me, everything is wrong out there so we deny the reality of our agency, we disempower ourselves when I talk about how, at one level, we can analyse these negative mental patterns and try to correct them but it is not just a matter of analysis of willpower because if say the flower is inclined in a particular way, then we cannot just by willpower get the water to flow in the opposite direction, we need to change the flowering so along with willpower, we need to change our mental flowering and for changing the mental flowering we need to understand the mind is a real thing which needs real changes which real activities to change it just like if I have a disease, the disease cannot be cured simply by willpower my stomach is upset, my willpower is important, but that willpower is meant to restrain, regulate my diet and take the medicine by which I will be cured so those medicinal practises for the mind, we discussed four of them, M, I and D the first M was meditate so meditation essentially means shifting the mind from the changing to the unchanging, so if we consider ourselves to be like a three story building, meditation takes us from the physical ground first level, mental second level to the spiritual top level there are many ways to raise our consciousness top level the Gita which is a yoga text on which we are discussing, that recommends mantra yoga mantra is like an elevator which takes our consciousness to the spiritual level and I was you remember, illuminate yaar, our inner world is shrouded in darkness the room is dark, we don’t know who is there so spiritual wisdom text they act like a mirror they act like a torch light which shows us what is inside or they act like a mirror by which we can understand that everything inside me is not me so certain desire, certain emotions which will be there, they are just passing, just like on our computer, every window that pops up, every single thing that we see on our browser, that’s not necessarily what we wanted to go and see so it’s come on the browser, if we neglect it, it will go away so we understand which of our desires are ours and which are just external impositions and then N was navigate so navigating our inner territory, one powerful tool could be journaling basically we need self reflection that means we look at ourselves and one way to look at ourselves is by writing out our thoughts or emotions so journaling opens as a third option apart from expressing emotions and repressing emotions, what is the third option? processing emotions so we write it down so that we don’t feel repressed but we don’t express it to others, it’s a private expression and afterwards, after having expressed that mental congestion goes down we feel some relief and then when our rational intelligence is restored then we can look at it once again and evaluate and then act accordingly and last D was do it with others, yeah it is there so our desires are not just linear, they are triangular, that we are attracted to things not just by seeing those things but also by seeing others do those things and especially in the inner world this is important because the things in the inner growth are not tangibly visible, so if we have spiritual association, people who are trying to grow internally then that will inspire us also to grow internally and we, in order to make better contributions we don’t have to become someone else we just have to become the best we and when we understand our inner territory then we can remove the forces within us that are stopping us from becoming the best that we can be and when those forces are removed then the potentiality that lie at our core, they start manifesting and we march forward on the path to self improvement. Thank you very much Does anyone have any comments or questions? Yes please In your image of a boat in rough seas do you suggest having an anchor on the boat within the rough seas or thinking more of a boat on calm seas Okay, good question So when you talk about an anchor for a boat, are you talking about taking the boat itself to a calm territory where there will be an anchor or the anchor can be there within the stormy sea also Both are true Our spiritual essence is something which is at our core.
So whether we are in an external stormy situation or whether we are in an external calm situation that anchor the source lies inside us So in that sense it’s accessible everywhere But at the same time, although the spiritual core within us is accessible everywhere in principle in practise it’s not so easy to connect with ourselves spiritually because our mind just gets gravitates towards externals So that’s why those who are serious about spiritual growth, they take time out on a regular basis, preferably on a daily basis for connecting with their spiritual core So if we take time out on a daily basis to meditate that’s like I intentionally take my boat to a calm territory So when we have a time a place where we can, where the external things are calm and we can go inwards Through that regular practise of meditation when we get habituated to connecting with our spiritual side, then even when we are in a stormy situation externally we will be able to connect ourselves So we do need we do need peaceful time by which we connect ourselves with that habit then even in stormy times we will be able to withdraw to our spiritual core get strength and then re-emerge strengthened to face the stormy situation Any other questions? Yes please So we have a consciousness, I think you referred to the mind, conscience we have a conscience which tells us what is right and what is wrong, but we also have a mind which is telling us wrong things, so is there a stage when the conscience becomes stronger than the mind? Yes, even now if we consider the mind it is not that the mind is like a permanent villain The mind the Gita says can be our friend also it can be our enemy also, so if we consider there are certain habits or certain temptations certain behaviours which we will just not do because we strongly feel this is wrong there are certain other things which we may do which we may not do there are certain other things which we may just unthinkingly do although we may know that it is wrong so it is not so what has happened is the conscience is always there, but the conscience can become numbed when the mind gets habituated to some things so for example if we know this thing if I do it is harmful for me and I am not going to do it I will give a simple example, say if this is the home of a person, this is the office and there is a person who is a alcoholic addict, alcohol addict and another person who is not having that addiction, now both of them may have to pass through the same area to get to the office the person who is not an alcoholic addict, the person just passed by not even noticing the bar now everybody notices the bar I don’t want to get involved in this the conscience is very strong now the person who is an alcohol addict that person what happens, because they are indulged again and again the desire is very strong especially that person who is a recovering addict there is a voice inside them don’t indulge in this right now but the conditioning that is there that has become too strong so the Gita explains that our desires can become like shackles and when we repeatedly indulge in a particular activity then that shackle becomes thicker and tighter, so for a person who is a compulsive alcohol addict, as soon as that person comes out of the house their mind has already gone into the bar I am going to drink or even in the office I want to drink, they just leave the office and go to the bar so what has happened craving has become so strong that the conscience doesn’t have any voice, it is there but it has become muted so now the solution is two fold for this first is that the more we spiritually connect ourselves, we spiritually reorient ourselves the conscience becomes stronger and all of us have a conscience, as I said there are certain things which we will not do there the conscience is strong, but in some other areas it has become weaker so overall by spiritual practises our conscience overall becomes stronger and specifically we need to if we have a particular area in which our conscience has become weak, we need two things intelligence and vigilance intelligence means specifically with respect to that particular weakness we need to read, we need to contemplate maybe write down and convince ourselves with our intelligence that this is something which I don’t want to do this is harmful for me and rather than thinking, when we get into morality is this right, is this wrong it may seem like moralising we can focus on wisdom is this wise, is this unwise there are certain things which you can see by the consequences they are dangerous they are harmful these are the reasons why this is unwise and that’s why I will not do this so that way, intelligence the second is vigilance vigilance means if we know that we have certain weaknesses then it is our responsibility to protect ourselves see our will power is not an infinite resource our will power is a finite resource and we need to use it wisely that means if say again going back to the example of alcoholic if a person wants to recover from alcoholism and if they have a house that is just above a bar now you see I will go to my house, I will not go to the bar it’s very difficult because if the temptation is so close and our will power, sometimes it’s very strong but will power is like a muscle if I keep lifting weights for a long time my muscles get tired at a particular point, I just can’t lift any weight so what we need is that we can’t rely only on will power vigilance means, we definitely have to be vigilant so that if some undesirable things are tempting us we say no to that but because our will power is not infinite vigilance means also we don’t put ourselves in the danger zone unnecessarily so whatever be our particular area where we want to strengthen our conscience then we can use our intelligence to convince ourselves why this is not good and also we become vigilant that means we minimise that particular tempting situation and that way as we keep avoiding doing that the rope that is pulling us towards that becomes weaker and weaker and as the rope becomes weaker and weaker that means the mind is not going to push us towards that wrong thing and conversely by our overall spiritual practises our conscience is becoming stronger so definitely by steady spiritual growth we can come to a stage where the voice within us which guides us towards wiser choices, that becomes much stronger in the voice which guides us towards unwise choices which pushes us towards unwise choices that definitely happens by the practise of inner growth we are here to appreciate your time and letting us know so thank you all for coming on and spending your time from your busy schedule so we have a few books that we want to run specifically for you