Our defining power is the power to choose our thoughts

[Talk at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I thank all of you for coming here today evening. As is mentioned, I’ll speak on the topic of understanding what is our inner power and how we can tap it.
I’ll start with two different examples that we all have outer powers. We consider some people may be physically very powerful, some people may be financially very powerful, some people may be relationally very powerful, they have contacts with big people. These are all external powers and they are all important.
But if we take a broader perspective, we humans are one species among the many species on this planet. And in terms of external powers, actually there are many other species that are much more powerful than us. The elephants are much bigger in size than us.
Animals like deer or cheetah which can run much faster than us. So in terms of external powers, animals have far greater power than us. At the same time, we humans have in many ways arisen to the top of among all species and we are ruling the planet.
So there’s something which we have which raises us above the other species. And yet there’s something else. No other species is known to destroy themselves the way we humans do.
The destruction can be sudden and drastic as in suicide. Suicide according to estimates 1 million people commit suicide every year. That’s one suicide every 40 seconds.
Nowadays there’s so much concern about gunmen shooting at innocent people. But far more the number of people who are killed by gunmen are the number of people who kill themselves. So no other species is known to commit suicide the way humans do.
Sometimes the animals may die, pine away in grief or say one sheep walks up a cliff, others may walk off. But intentionally ending one’s life is something which no other species does. At least not at the scale at which we do.
And that is just one thing. We have self-destruction which may happen in a shorter way, in a slower way through self-destructive habits. Somebody may be smoking, drinking, drug addiction is now a big problem.
If we consider the animals, animals also get trapped by their own actions at times. A fish is caught by a bait. Mouse may be caught by cheese in a mice trap.
But neither the mouse or the fish know in advance that it’s a trap. And what they’re attracted to is food. For us humans when we smoke or drink or take drugs, by no stretch of imagination does the cigarette look like food to anyone.
And who doesn’t know in advance that it’s injurious to health. So there is something within us which can make us much more powerful than other species. At the same time there is something within us which can also make us dumber than other species.
We end up doing things which even they don’t do. So what is it that can be our inner power and which is also our inner weakness. At one level we could say it’s intelligence.
We humans have a more well-developed brain. We have a greater capacity of intelligence. And that is true.
But at the same time intelligence alone is not what really decides people’s lives. All of you probably know people around you who are, we could say, wasted talents. They are intelligent but somehow they’re not committed, they’re not focused.
In sports especially we may see some players are very good, they have very good skills, they have a lot of talent but they don’t have much temperament. And they cannot even tap their talent. In fact that was one of the defining, such was one of the defining experiences that made me seriously start looking for understanding the inner world.
When I was studying my engineering, one of my models was a student who was two years senior to me and he was outstanding. He was a university topper in all the eight semesters in our engineering which was four years, eight semesters. And he was brilliant.
I studied electronics and telecommunications engineering. He was brilliant in that. And yet, he was a chain smoker.
And I would ask him, why do you smoke? He says, it just feels good. I can think faster when I smoke. I was thinking at that time, he can solve sums, get electronics concepts, solve equations like nobody had known.
Why doesn’t he get this simple point that he’s hurting himself, he’s harming himself. When he passed out, at that time he got the highest-paying job in the history of our college. And yet, in six months when he was working at that job, he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and he succumbed.
That was a very sobering incident for me. Here, if we say intelligence is the power, he had intelligence, phenomenal intelligence. But there’s something which made him destroy himself.
So, we could say that intelligence can have two different aspects. One aspect of intelligence could just be talent. Some people are just good at math, some people are good at physics, some people are good at language, some people are good at music.
Now, talent we don’t normally equate with intelligence. But we could say talent is more of functional intelligence. If you’re talented in music, you just know which notes to press, how to combine different notes.
If you’re talented in language, you just have intelligence. How to combine this word with this word. What will rhyme over here? Just get it.
So, we all have by nature been endowed a certain amount of talents. And this specific intelligence with respect to talents is definitely a great power. But whether we’ll be able to use it or not properly, that is determined by our temperament.
Our temperament is our emotional stability, our emotional maturity, our capacity to make right decisions. Here we’re using right not in a moralistic sense, but simply right in the sense that which helps us to grow, that which is beneficial for our growth. So, we all have this tendency, something within us which sabotages us.
The British author Oscar Wilde, he said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it over a hundred times. I have done it over a hundred times.
Give up smoking, but smoking doesn’t give us up. It comes back, it proposes and it catches again. So, this capacity to choose our actions wisely and before that to process our emotions wisely.
Why would somebody smoke or drink or take drugs or at a lesser level, these we could say are very destructive habits, a lesser way we might destroy ourselves is by just getting hooked to entertainment. Entertainment is not bad. It can just be a refreshing break in life.
But for many people, they just become so hooked to entertainment that that becomes their real life. Everything else they want to finish so that they can get with entertainment. And it can become a severe amount of, it can cause a severe amount of inability to function in the real life because one is so caught in the digital world.
So, basically why would we not tap our talents? Why would we act injudiciously? Either say it could be suicide or addictive self-destruction or just simply endless distraction. We in today’s multimedia, social media, high-tech world, we often end up in a situation where we are distracted from distraction by distraction. We are supposed to do one thing, get caught in another thing.
And while doing that, we get caught in another thing and then another. So, that just goes on. So, why does this happen? Why do we get sabotage like this? Broadly, it is because we are unable to process our thoughts and our emotions.
I mean, I just want to feel good and whatever will make me feel good, I want to do it. And I want to do it right now. Or I’m feeling bad and I don’t want to feel bad.
So, in order to not feel bad, whatever it takes, I’ll do it. Many times when people smoke or drink, it’s not so much because the smoking or drinking is so enjoyable. It’s just that that has become a habitual pattern of seeking relief.
And not doing it causes some pain, causes some irritation, causes some discontent. Now, to understand what is happening, why we are making such imprudent choices. All of us, now how many of you have looked back at your life and said, why did I do that? Many of you felt like that? Why did I do that? Thank you for your honesty.
I’ll be the first to raise my hand. It happens to all of us. Why did I do that? Why did I speak like that? Why did I do like that? It just happens to us.
So, there is something within us which just overwhelms us. So, to understand what this is, I will use two metaphors. And I will do a thought experiment to illustrate this metaphor a little later.
But many years ago, maybe 15, 16 years ago, I had, I was supposed to go for a meeting and I was late. So, I had to catch a train. So, I took an auto, came to the train station and I knew the train was going to leave.
Just rushed into the train station, caught the train. I was relieved. And then because it was an important meeting, I was preparing for the meeting.
And then after half an hour in the train, I was just looking, when is my station going to come? And then suddenly at that time it struck me, I had caught the wrong train. So, I just came to the station and I knew this was the time of the train. So, whichever train was there in the station, I just ran into the train and caught the train and the train left.
And I was so happy that I had caught the train that I forgot to check which train it was. And then I was beating myself up. What a fool I am.
Then I had to do that meeting on 4 and it was a big mess. We know I have to do something but what exactly I am doing, we may not pay attention to the details. And that can harm us.
So, our inner world is like a train station. And in this inner world, there are many thought trains that are there. So, there are different thought trains that are parked over there.
And whichever thought train we get into, that train starts off. And it starts moving. And some thought trains may take us where we want to go.
And some may take us far away from where we want to go. So, we are like the person who gives energy to the thought train. When we enter into a thought train means that there is a particular stimulus, particular thought that is there and we start thinking about it.
As soon as we start thinking about it, this may lead to this, this may lead to this, this may lead to this. And then our thought can take us in many different directions. So, if I am working at a job and I come to office and I see a strange look in my boss’s eyes, the thought train of worry starts off.
Why was my boss looking at me like that? Are they trying to fire me? Oh, if they fire me, what will happen to me? Oh, if they fire me, I won’t have any money. If I don’t have any money, how will I pay for my mortgage? If I can’t pay for my mortgage, then I’ll be evicted from my house. If I’m evicted from my house, I’ll have to get a new house.
If I don’t get a new house, I’ll be on the streets. Oh, how will I live on the streets? It’s so cold. And we may be feeling cold there because it is air conditioning.
And we are worried, oh, it may be cold out there. So, what happened here in this case? The thought train of worry started off. That strange look might have been for any reason.
We don’t know that, what reason it is. But we just ascended the thought train. Similarly, our thought train may go off in another direction.
It could be resentment. It can be resentful or even revengeful. Say, we come to a party or a meeting and we greet someone.
And that person doesn’t greet us back. He’s nervous. Immediately, anger erupts.
What happens is, there’s a train of anger which is just waiting in our world. We just get into it and it just zooms off. It has some of these power engines.
Just press one clutch and it catches high speed. So, like that, how dare he does like that? I’m going to show them. Next time, in front of a hundred people, I’ll snap them.
We start thinking, I’ll do this, I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll do this over here, I’ll do that over here. And one moment, we are peaceful and purposeful.
And the next moment, we are wild. What happened is, thought train just went off. So, when the thought train starts off, it can go in any direction.
And we have to be careful to choose which thought train we are getting into. Mental health problems are a major issue in today’s world. Last year, when I had come to America, I was speaking at a mental health care centre in New Jersey.
So, there, one of the counsellors, I gave a talk in the hospital to the mental health care providers, the counsellors. So, one of the counsellors after the programme was telling me that, actually, when people need mental health care, basically, they need it because they are unable to process their impulses. See, all of us may get angry.
Now, some of us, when we get angry, we may just give the other person the silent treatment. Just don’t talk with them at all. Some of us may just become irritable and snap at them.
Some of us may just walk away in a huff. Some of us may just throw something down, disrupt some things. Some of us may become physical and hit out at the other person.
Some of us may take a gun and shoot the other person. So, all of anger is just a fact of life. Every one of us will get angry.
But, when the impulse of anger comes, what do we do after that? If the impulse starts making us behave in destructive ways, where we physically hurt others or we physically hurt ourselves, all of us, life will sometimes treat us badly and we will feel depressed. Now, when we feel depressed, what do we do? If some people say, I just want to be alone for some time. I just want to go and party.
Some people, when they feel depressed, they use retail therapy. Just go and buy, buy, buy, buy. I feel good when I buy things.
So, all of us will feel depressed and all of us will try to find different ways in which we deal with depression. But, if somebody, when they get depressed, they decide to commit suicide, then that is a destructive impulse. And then they need to be put on suicide watch.
They have to be monitored. They cannot be allowed to be alone. So, basically, all of us have impulses.
And if those impulses lead us to destructive directions, then that is where our mental health becomes very unstable. Now, among mental health problems, there are two broad categories of problems. One is depression.
The other is anxiety. If we consider what happens in depression and what happens in anxiety, in the light of this train station metaphor, we are right now sitting at this particular place and we are in the present. So, you are hearing what I am speaking and I am looking at you.
So, we are in the present. So, when anxiety happens, basically, there is some stimulus that comes in the present and that stimulus causes our attention, our consciousness to race off into the future. When the thought train rushes off untrammelled, unrestricted into the future, then that is when worry starts.
So, now, we do need to go into the future, but that is in a thoughtful way to plan and prepare for the future. The difference between worrying about the future and planning for the future. The difference between the two is who is in control.
When the thought train takes off against our will, okay, this may go wrong, this may go wrong, this may go wrong, this may go wrong, then the more we think, the more we feel disempowered. So, it’s like our thought train is going off somewhere into the future and the future seems to be just a series of horror movies. This, this, this, this, this.
And here the thought train is going so fast that when we see one negative scenario, before we think of, okay, what can I do to deal with this, how realistic is this, how can I prepare for this, before that can happen, the thought train goes off to another negative scenario. And then another negative scenario, another negative scenario and then it goes off in a loop. Now, suppose we have a fan and normally the fan goes round and round and round.
When the fan goes round and round, it has lot of kinetic energy, but because it is stuck to one place, it doesn’t move anywhere. Often our mind goes round and round and round like that. At least when the fan goes round and round, it cools the room down.
But when our mind goes round and round and round, it heats up. We just get agitated. So, when the thought train goes off uncontrolled into the future, then it causes worry.
This may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong, that may go wrong. And before we can analyse anything, again it goes, this will go wrong, this will go wrong, this will go wrong. We just feel extremely powerless.
And conversely, if the thought train goes back into the past, this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong, that causes depression. Depression is caused primarily when we obsess over the bad things that have happened to us in the past and we make ourselves feel bad and then we start thinking that the future is going to be more of the same old story. Now something may happen.
When I was talking with this mental health care provider, he was telling about one girl, he said that she attempted suicide and she was brought to the hospital and she somehow survived. And what was the reason she committed suicide? He said, she called up her partner and her partner did not pick up the phone. And because of that, she felt so rejected.
I’m unloved and this relationship didn’t work out, that didn’t work out, this happened like this, that happened like that. Oh, I’ll never be loved by anyone. I’ll always be alone throughout my life.
What is the use of such a life? Let me end my life. Now, if somebody has not responded to one phone call, it’s not such a big thing. There will be 100 reasons why they don’t pick up the phone call at that time.
But what happens? That phone call not being responded to, that started off a thought train. And that thought train was, this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong, therefore this is also going to go wrong. Everything is going to go wrong in my life.
So when our thought train goes into the past to all the wrongs that have happened, that causes depression. So basically, our inner weakness is that we don’t watch which thought train we are getting into. Like I thoughtlessly got into a particular train which was going away from my destination.
Similarly, we get into unwanted or unnecessary thought trains. And that is our great weakness. Conversely, our great strength is that even if a train is right in front of us, we can choose, I’m not going to get into this train.
We have greater capacity than all other species to resist our impulses. Many of us, we may fast. Some of us fast for religious purposes, some of us fast for health purposes.
We all have the capacity. Although hunger is a natural bodily stimulus, but we can say, I’m not going to eat. So some people can fast for 1 day, 2 days, some people can fast for 10 days, some people can fast for much longer time also.
So now hunger as a stimulus comes with it. It’s like in our inner world, I’m hungry, I’m hungry, give me food, give me food, give me food. It’s a very strong impulse.
If a cat sees a mouse, the cat can’t think, today I’m into fast. The cat doesn’t have that capacity. Once that food impulse comes within it, the food comes in front of it, the impulse comes, I’ll eat.
It just pounces on it and tries to eat it. So on one side, we actually have the capacity to resist our impulses far more than other species. But we need to exercise this capacity.
If we exercise the capacity to evaluate our impulses and then act, we can become stronger than many other species. But if we don’t, then our impulses can cause us greater destruction than other species also. Now to understand this point that we have the capacity to evaluate our impulses, to choose which thought train we get into, I would like to illustrate this, I would like to do a thought experiment.
So wherever you’re sitting, try to become relaxed over there and then you can close your eyes. And with me, you can take three deep breaths. One, try to take as much air in as possible and let it out.
Three, now with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you. Because your eyes are closed, you can’t see whatever is ahead of you. But still, there is something like an inner screen on which you may see various things.
You may see something in this room. You may see your own room at home. You may see a friend.
You may see your phone. You may see a garden which you have visited. You may see various images coming and going on that inner screen.
Or you may just see a colourless haze as the inner screen. Now as you’re watching this inner screen, observing the various images there, try to take a step back and look at who is observing that inner screen. You can see an inner screen but try to take a step back and see who is observing that inner screen.
Try once again. Just take a step back and instead of looking at the inner screen, try to look at the inner seer of that inner screen. No matter how many times you step back, the observer steps back with you.
What you are looking for is what you are looking with. You are the inner seer. Your mind is the inner screen.
You are a spiritual being, the soul, who is observing the mind. You can take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes. Thank you.
So right now when you open your eyes, the inner screen is still there. But that inner screen is acting like a window. Just like by this window I can see the trees outside.
Similarly, right now you are the inner seer. There is the inner screen and there is the outer scene. So the outer scene right now is this room and the outer scene gets projected on the inner screen and we respond to the inner screen, what is seen over there.
But this inner screen doesn’t always function only as a window. Sometimes it can start functioning as a TV monitor and suddenly something else starts coming. That’s when we get absent minded.
We are physically there but our mind has gone somewhere else. Mind has gone somewhere else means on the inner screen something else is being displayed. So going back to the earlier points about anxiety and depression, when this inner screen goes back to the past, when the inner screen starts displaying images from the past, that is when we get caught in anxiety.
And when the inner screen starts becoming a TV which starts showing a horror movie about what all may go wrong in the future, then we get anxiety. What appears on the inner screen is not always in our control. Just as sometimes people in the outer world may behave in uncontrollable ways and that will appear on our inner screen.
We can’t control that. But along with that suddenly, sometimes for no reason, we might just start feeling bored, we might start feeling gloomy. We all have our mood swings.
Suddenly something appears on the inner screen and we can’t always control what appears over there. But we can control whether we focus on it or not. Now to develop this metaphor a little further, if you consider the inner screen, imagine it’s a very big screen and on that screen there are multiple windows open.
Sometimes some people have very big monitors and on the monitors you can have two windows open or three windows open. So if say there is a high security building and there are many doors and from each of the doors there is a CCTV camera which is coming on the security room where there is a big monitor and what is going on in all the rooms is seen. Similarly for us, on our inner screen, multiple images appear at the same time and we choose to zoom on a particular image.
Say right now when I was speaking, somebody is coughing behind me. Now a cough is a familiar sound. So it pops up on our inner screen, yeah, somebody is coughing, that’s okay.
But if somebody instead of coughing starts screaming, what happens? We look back immediately. So what happens? There is much that appears on our inner screen but we evaluate, we process. This is not so important, let me put it aside.
It’s important, let me focus on this. So normally for our proper functioning, we need to be able to process what should be prominent on our inner screen and what should be pushed aside or what should be, we could say, minimised. Sometimes if you are working on a computer and suddenly the computer gives a notification, a software update is available.
Do you want to update now? Now that notification, we can’t stop it from coming. But we can evaluate. I am doing some urgent work, I can update this later.
So we say, remind me after an hour or remind me tomorrow. So we can’t control what pops up on the computer screen but we can control what we do with it. Similarly for us, thoughts, some things will just pop up.
Either they pop up because of some outer perception, like I said somebody is screaming, that’s alarming outer perception. Or it might pop up also because of some inner recollection. Suddenly we remember something.
Now when this pops up, if we are not careful, then we get carried away by it. It pops up and we identify with it and it’s like a movie starts over there and we get caught. Sometimes some softwares, they instal on their own.
Download something from a computer, from internet and do you want to instal this? Yes or no? Now normally the option would be no. But sometimes the default option is yes. Unless you change it to no, it will go on and instal itself.
And sometimes some softwares are so insistent that they say, if we don’t click no within the next 30 seconds, they will start installing. So like that, when we form a habit of something. When something is a habit means what? Habit means the space between stimulus and response becomes lesser and lesser and lesser.
If I am habituated to something, then when the stimulus comes and when the response happens, it’s almost instantaneous. Say imagine if there is some software which comes up, which is going to instal itself and it says, do you want to instal now? And it gives you only 5 seconds. If you don’t say no, it will start installing.
So like that, when we become habituated to something, the stimulus pops up and we do have the option to say no. But if it’s a habit, strong habit means the stimulus and the response are so tightly tied together that it’s almost impossible for us to respond and bring a wedge in between the two. So somebody is a worrier.
Some people just worry a lot. And for them, worry is just unavoidable in life. All of us have a lot dependent on things that are not in our control.
And when something is not in our control and that is important for us, it’s naturally going to cause worry. But for people who are habituated to worry, one uncertainty just comes and as soon as uncertainty comes, it starts a horror movie immediately. And before they can stop it, it’s just gone.
They are lost. So basically, our inner weakness is the shortness of the distance between the stimulus and the response. The lesser the distance, the weaker we become.
For somebody who is an alcoholic, as soon as they get the thought of drinking, immediately, I have to drink now. And that is how the shortness of the distance between the impulse and response, that is our weakness. And the capacity to lengthen this distance, that is our strength.
To lengthen the distance means, it’s not necessary that every impulse that comes, I have to say no to it. Some impulses may be natural, okay, I feel thirsty, I want to drink some water, let me drink. That’s fine.
But if I have to do some test for which I have to fast from water, I feel like drinking, no, I will not drink. So basically, the greater the distance between the impulse and the response, the greater will be our capacity to choose which thought train we enter into. So on that inner screen, this inner screen is another metaphor to the train station.
In the train station, there are many trains. Similarly, on the inner screen, there are many windows that are open. And some windows will just zoom up and unless we minimise them, they will stay zoomed up.
And they will start a movie over there which will just go on. But if we have developed that inner discernment, the inner capacity to observe and analyse, then we can evaluate whether this movie needs to be maximised, whether this window needs to be maximised and whether it needs to be maximised now. Now how do we develop this discernment? So how do we go about, say when something which causes me worry comes up in my mind.
Somebody does something which causes me anxiety. Something happens. Then how do I increase the distance between the impulse and the response? For that, first thing is intelligence.
Our intelligence, here I talk intelligence in terms of our capacity to know that we are different from our thoughts. The thoughts are coming in and I am different. To the extent we understand this, to an extent we will evaluate.
We tend to very uncritically accept our thoughts and believe those thoughts. And just go along with them. But when we learn to evaluate, okay, I am different from my thoughts.
Then who am I? So the Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text and it describes that we at our core are spiritual beings. To the extent we realise that we are spiritual, then to that extent we don’t get carried away by what happens at the level of our thoughts. So like I earlier said, the inner screen is the mind.
The inner seer is the soul. The first step is to understand that I am not the inner screen. I am not what is happening on the inner screen.
But then who am I? I am the inner seer. I am the soul. So the more we can situate ourselves at the spiritual level of understanding, the more we will become able to observe our thoughts and select our thoughts.
This I want to go along. This, maybe later. This, no need at all.
And this capacity to process our thoughts can dramatically transform our capacity to tap our talents and to make wise choices. So I will conclude with two points now. First is, how do we situate ourselves at the spiritual level? And lastly, how can we more promptly get off a train if we have somehow got into it? That will be the last point.
But situating ourselves on the spiritual level can help us evaluate. Last year, when I had come to America, I was in Florida when the Hurricane Irma hit. So I left Florida.
I came to New York to give some talks. One of my friends was on a retreat over there. He was on a writing retreat.
So he cut himself off from the world just to focus on writing. And then he just came out and looked out of the window and he saw water everywhere. Hey, what happened? He came back and he tried to search on the internet.
There was no internet connection available. He tried to call on the phone. There was no phone available.
Then as he was watching, the power also went off. And now he started getting alarmed. He went to the window again and saw the water was rising.
And he had just gone to another friend’s house, which was an isolated place, almost like a cave-in. And it was a retreat for him. But now he had nowhere to retreat.
The water was coming, coming. He was looking around, what to do? There was no way to go, no way to contact. And as he was looking around, the power had gone.
He turned on his flashlight of his phone and was looking around. And suddenly he noticed that there was a closet and behind that there seemed to be something like a door. So he just pulled the closet aside and then tugged at the door.
And then he saw a narrow fleet of stairs up. And he ran up and there was an attic. A small attic was there.
He had not noticed that it was existing also. So he ran up and he was there in the second level of the building. And then he was looking out.
The water rose, rose, rose. It inundated the first level. But he was safe on the second level.
And then after that the water level went down. And then the net came back and he was rescued. So he did not even know that the second level existed.
But because he found the second level and he found a way to the second level, he was saved amidst the danger. So similarly for us, our existence we can say has multiple levels. We normally live at the physical level of reality.
I want to do this, I want to achieve this, this is going wrong, let me fix this. But sometimes some problems come and they overwhelm us so much that no solution appears to be there. It’s like a flood that is coming and there is nothing that I can do.
If at that time we can discover that there is a second level also, I have a spiritual sight. And if I find a stairway by which I can get to that second level, then I can be safe. So that second level is the spiritual level.
Normally we live at the physical level but the spiritual level is also real. And processes like meditation are meant to take us to the spiritual level. So when, for example, before this talk we were doing kirtans, this is musical meditation.
And it is also one way by which we can raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. So if we practise meditation and we regularly habituate ourselves to raising ourselves to the spiritual level, then whenever some tribulation happens, something goes wrong, and negative thought is just about to take off, instead of getting carried away with it, we rise to the spiritual level. Okay, this is coming, let me see how to respond to it.
So we get inner security and stability at the spiritual level. And when the impulses come, the impulses, the whole point of impulses, you have to do this and you have to do this now. Like I came on the train station in a great haste.
And I was so anxious to catch the train that I was not thinking whether I was catching the right train. Similarly, when the impulses come, they just come up so fast. You have to do it and you have to do it now.
They don’t give us time to think. If we just get up and think, then, hey, I don’t need to do this. So that distancing from the impulse so that we can think, that happens by our spiritual practises.
So to the extent we can regularly practise meditation, the mantra acts like a spiritual elevator. When we repeat the mantra, it is like we are entering into the elevator. And the elevator takes us up.
That way we can experience the spiritual level and we can experience calmness and clarity by which you can respond maturely to the external impulses. And secondly, what can we do if a particular thought train has come? If I am very habituated, I mean, some person speaks badly to me, immediately I get depressed. Or something wrong happens, I get worried.
So if this has become very strong within me, the impulse and reaction has become very tightly bound, then what do I do at that time? There are basically two things which we can do. At that time, it may be very difficult to deal with it. But if you look back, okay, that time this person said this to me, and I became depressed.
What could I have done at that time? Could I have done anything? At that time, if I could have stopped that, I could have checked the depression. So in the heat of the moment, it is very difficult. But in retrospection, if you look back calmly, you can say, okay, if I could have stopped that thought train over there, I could have protected myself.
So we look back at our life and see what are the situations in which the unwanted thought train start off. A, if a particular person is important to us and that person speaks negatively to us, that’s what depresses us. Or A, if something about our career, that’s something which is very important for us, that is threatened, that causes anxiety.
Here when I am talking about depression and anxiety, I am talking about excess. Little depression, little anxiety is just natural in life’s course. So if we observe, then we can prepare.
If I am going on a particular road, first time I go, say there is a bump over there, I don’t notice it and I get jolted. But second time when I go, oh, there is a bump over there, let me slow down. So like that, we evaluate.
And when we evaluate, this is what happens. These are the situations when I get triggered. When I get the impulse, just get into a thought train and go off.
So if we understand those situations, then we can prepare for them. So how can we prepare? How do we create that distance between the impulse and the response? All of us have to devise our own pause buttons. We can’t say no at that time.
Stop or no is very difficult. Pause. So one simple way to pause is to take deep breaths.
When I am getting worried, when I am getting depressed, breathe in, breathe out. Now what happens by breathing in and breathing out, not just say breathe in, breathe out. Not just say breathe in and breathe out.
Actually get the consciousness focus. Breathe in. So the thoughts and the mind are going off here, going off there, going off there.
When I focus on breathing, what am I doing? I am getting the thoughts off the mental level. I am getting them to the physical level. Focus on breathing.
Focus on breathing. And you will find that if you just say, okay, before I respond to anything, I am going to take 5 deep breaths. I am going to take 10 deep breaths.
Just breathe in. Just do that. That will interrupt the train of thought.
Even if I have got it, okay, breathe in, breathe out. I don’t want to be in this train. Before it takes off, let me get out.
So that breathing itself is a simple way in which we can, we can disconnect from the images that are coming on the mental screen. Similarly, mantra chanting itself, as a regular practise, it can elevate us to spiritual consciousness. But mantra chanting can also help us, okay, just chant.
Start chanting the mantra. Slow down. Calm down.
That can break. For some of us who are more intellectual in nature, we can keep some wisdom quotes with us. When I get worried, there are some good quotes about how worry is unproductive, how worry hurts us, how worry is unhealthy.
And if you can just hear it at that time, read it at that time. I don’t need to do this. One of my favourite quotes is that, worry is like interest that we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken.
Worry is like interest that we pay on loans we haven’t yet taken. The problems are not yet come. So why worry about them? When they come, we’ll deal with them.
So like that, if you just have some, so either breathing or chanting mantras, or at an intellectual level having some wisdom quotes, by which we can just break that. We can create a gap between the impulse and the response. And if we just keep doing this regularly, we’ll find ourselves becoming increasingly empowered.
All of us have been given certain talents. We have been given some skills. And our education holds the talents, develops the skills.
But our education doesn’t help us much in developing our temperament. In developing our capacity to evaluate our thoughts and to choose the right thoughts. If we can develop this capacity, then whatever it is that we want to do externally, we’ll be able to do it with much greater effectiveness, with much greater success.
The capacity to choose the right thought train is our greatest power. And this is the power that will enable us to use all our other powers. Whatever talent I have, whatever skill I have, whatever money I have, whatever contacts I have, whatever looks I have, all these are valuable.
But to tap them on, I need to be able to choose the right thought train. And our inner development, our spiritual growth, can help us to choose the right thought train. And thereby tap all our other powers.
So I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on the topic of tapping our inner power. So what animals are physically more powerful than us.
And yet we have overpowered the animal world. So on one side, there’s something within us which makes us more powerful than animals. But something within us also makes us more foolish than animals.
We destroy ourselves through suicide, through self-destructive habits, which even animals don’t do. Smoking cigarettes or drugs or alcohol doesn’t look like food. A bait looks for a fish.
We still succumb for it. So what is it that makes us succumb like this? The metaphor of our inner world is like a train station in which there are many different trains that are there. And as soon as we invest our thought in any of them, invest our consciousness in them, the train shoots off.
Like I, in my haste, caught a wrong train and ended far away from where I wanted to go. Similarly, we, by our impulses, catch wrong thought trains and end up sabotaging ourselves. So two major ways in which the mind creates problems is through depression and anxiety.
So when the thought train goes off, unfettered into the future and starts worrying about all worst-case scenarios, that causes worry. When the thought train shoots off into the past and obsesses over all the bad things that have happened, that causes depression. To the extent we can pause and choose which thought train to get into, to that extent, we will be able to choose wisely and act wisely.
And for evaluating this, we took the other metaphor of an inner screen. So the mind is the inner screen. We as a soul are the inner seer.
And there is the outer scene. The inner screen, for proper functioning, should act as a window. But sometimes it acts like a TV monitor.
Goes off into the past or goes off into the future. And it’s not just one screen with one window. There are many windows open on it.
And we need to make sure that the important window is maximised and others are minimised. Sometimes, the unwanted window gets maximised and it starts displaying a movie and we get carried away. So, the more we develop a habit for something, that means that the window popping up and the action starting off.
There is very little time lag between them. So, the stronger the habit, the lesser the time lag. And then how do we break from this? Being caught by our habits, we need to use our intelligence to understand that I am not my thoughts.
We humans have a greater capacity than the animals to resist our impulses. Animals can’t fast. We can if we want to.
So, how do we train this intelligence? By spiritual knowledge. That I am different from my thoughts. I don’t have to fuse, identify with my thoughts.
And then second I talk about is rising to the spiritual level. So, just as this friend was trapped in the Irma and the flood that came, discovered the attic was saved. Similarly, if we amidst problems rise to the spiritual level, then we can get calmness and clarity.
And the way to rise to the spiritual level, there are many forms of meditation. We practise mantra meditation. Mantra is like an elevator that takes us up.
And this is a regular practise which we can do and that will help us to distance ourselves from our thoughts and evaluate them. And in emergencies when impulses hit us, at that time we may get carried away. But in retrospect if we see what are our triggers, then we will be better prepared to protect ourselves.
And the way to protect ourselves is by developing a pause button. So, something which, okay, slow down. Pause button can be deep breathing, it can be mantra chanting, it can be appropriate wisdom quotes.
When we pause, then we will be able to evaluate and then we will make the right decision. So, we have various talents, we have various skills which are, that I have got from birth or we have developed through education. But we need to develop the temperament to go with it.
And our capacity to choose the right thoughts will be our power that will enable us to tap all our other powers. And thus, by learning to ascend the right thought train, we can actually do justice to our talents and fulfil our destiny. Thank you very much.
I have a train station right here. And we actually have a choice to select which train we want to take. So, now I would like to open it up.
Yes, please. So, if I don’t want to get carried away by say drinking alcohol, but all my friends are alcoholics, then if I stay away from them, then I am being an escapist. Is it advisable to do that? So, there is avoidable dangers and there is unavoidable dangers.
So, in many ways, the best way to maintain self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control. That is the best way. So, for example, somebody has got diabetes and they are told not to eat sweet foods.
Now, if they keep sweet foods close to them, just keep it in the drawer below them, I am not going to eat it. Maybe I will just give it to friends when they come. I may normally think I will not eat.
But, suppose suddenly I am working on my computer, I am talking on my phone, at that time suddenly I get a snack attack. I get attacked by the desire for a snack. Now, at that time, if I have some healthy food, if I have some fruit or some carrot or some salad or something, I will take that.
But if that fatty food is there, that is where my hand will go and I will take it. That is simply unavoidable. I mentioned I was in Google a few weeks ago.
So, in Google they did an experiment. Because software companies, most of the work is sedentary. So, there people tend to become obese and people get health problems.
So, they wanted to cut down the amount of sweet foods that people eat. So, they, on the advice of some experts, all the, in their cafeteria, all the sweet items that were there, chocolates or candies or whatever, earlier they were in transparent boxes. Just get paper coverings on the transparent boxes.
And not paper coverings that advertise what is there. No, just paper coverings that cover. You can’t see what is there.
So, still if somebody wants to eat those sweets, they will order and they will be given that. They found just by covering those containers, almost 30% of the sales of candies went down. And they found correspondingly, people’s diabetes and other problems decreased.
So, many times, some temptations are simply circumstantial. If I am in that tempting situation, okay, let me enjoy it. If it is not easily available, I will not eat it.
Now, sometimes some desires can be very deep rooted also. If I have a strong desire to eat a candy, I will go to a shop and I will drink it. I will buy it and I will take it.
Psychologists call this propinquity. Propinquity means the effect of time and distance on behaviour. If some food item I want to eat, it is readily available, I will eat it.
If I have to put a lot of effort, okay, maybe later. So, in general, the best way to maintain self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control. Now, we can’t always avoid those situations.
But if it is possible to avoid them, it is best to avoid them. And that’s not escapism, that’s pragmatism. Pragmatism means, why waste my energy on this? See, our willpower is not an infinite resource.
Our willpower is a finite resource. And I resist temptation once, twice, thrice, four times, five times. My willpower resource is getting depleted.
And after some time, it will be over and the same temptation which I would have resisted, say, in the morning, by the evening, the temptation comes, I am already so tired, just let me take some rest. So, basically, if we put ourselves in tempting situations again and again, then our finite willpower resource will get depleted and we will succumb. So, if you are going, if it’s a formal occasion where there is a valedictory party or there is a professional celebration, and there you are expected to go, then going there and not taking drinks, that’s fine.
But if it’s just an occasion for hanging out with people, then there are healthier places to hang out. And we may, some friends may hold it against us, but there are others who will not. If our friends don’t allow us to be who we want to be, or who we are, then we have to rethink, are these the kind of friends I want to be with? We don’t want to force our friends, we don’t want to moralise and say that they are doing something wrong.
That’s not the forum for saying that. But our point is that we want to be who we are. So, there is nothing wrong in avoiding tempting situations, but we don’t have to depend only on avoidance.
We also need willpower, we also need intelligence, we also need strategies. If I am in that situation, how will I deal with it? But it’s not that, not going into that situation is escapism. It’s simply pragmatism.
We conserve our willpower, so that it can be used for better purposes. Yes, please. Okay, I understand your question, yeah.
Okay, good question. So if we become too analytical about evaluating our thoughts, we may get so caught in that situation that by that analysis itself that we may appear disconnected from people and we may not be able to function in the outer world. Yes, the Bhagavad Gita talks about three modes of material nature.
These are three broad ways in which we function. They are called as sattva, rajas, tamas and sanskrit. In English we call it goodness, passion and ignorance.
What does this mean? We could say that we function in three broad patterns. Basically in our functioning, there is the mental level or the inner level and there is the outer level. So when we are in the mode of goodness, there is contemplation first and action later.
I first think, should I do this, should I do that and then I act. In the mode of passion, there is first action and then 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, slip of tongue. So what happens? The action comes before the thinking. That’s passion.
However, there is a third mode which is ignorance where there is neither action nor contemplation, there is simply delusion. We just get lost in our head. We want to evaluate what is going on in our head but if we get too lost in that evaluation itself, that may lead to what we call as paralysis by analysis.
So when that is happening, then sometimes we have to go into our head to become a better observer. Better observer of what is happening. And sometimes we have to get out of our head to become a better actor, better function in the world.
So if I am too much doing action, that means I am in the mode of passion, then I have to rise up to goodness so that I can introspect and then I can act. But if I am living too much in my head, then I have to rise upward to the level of actions. So we could decide that there are certain situations which are important for us where we need to evaluate and observe.
But there are certain situations where more or less not so much at stake and where more or less we function reasonably well. So at that time we don’t have to get into evaluation. Just let’s act.
We all have, I talk about impulses, which are just act and often act self-destructive. But conversely we also have instincts. Instincts are considered like programmed intelligence.
Some things we just get it. Some people, they want to write a letter and agonising how to write this sentence for one hour. And somebody else, they just come.
In two minutes they get the sentence. You write it like this. So that’s very good intelligence, linguistic intelligence.
So there are some things which we are good at. If I am good at music, some players come, they pick up an instrument and they start playing it. Now if they start analysing at that time, that will affect their playing.
There is a story that there is a centipede, a creature with 100 legs, is dancing very gracefully. And then there was a crane which couldn’t dance much. And the crane became envious of the centipede.
Everybody is appreciating how with 100 legs you dance so well. So then the crane went and asked the centipede that you dance so beautifully. I want to ask you a question.
See when you dance, after you put your 96th foot down, how do you decide whether to put your 97th foot down or to put your 95th foot down? I never thought about it. And the centipede started dancing. Am I putting my 96th foot down? Which foot should I put down? And he started getting so caught in the thoughts that he stopped dancing nicely.
So, some things which we are doing nicely, as I say, don’t fix something if it is working well. So basically, if not much is at stake and something you do reasonably well, we don’t have to analyse so much. So that way, we just get into it.
Sometimes we have to get out of our head and into the world, start acting. And, secondly, we can also evaluate our evaluation. That means which evaluation of thoughts is important for you.
Because our inner world is also like a universe. See, if I come into this room right now, there are so many things I can observe. Right now, I can sit and start counting how many tube lights are there in this room.
Or I can count out how many people can sit in these chairs in this room. That may be useful in some other context. But for me, this is not important.
So just as when I come to a physical room, there could be so many stimuli I could take in, but I focus on the stimuli that are important for me. Similarly, in our inner thought world also, there are so many thoughts that may come in. One type of evaluation when I said is that is this the thought I want to go along or is this the thought I don’t want to go along.
That’s one kind of evaluation. But another is, among all these thoughts, I can’t spend my time observing all thoughts also. I need to zero in on a thought that is important and then act on it.
So we may decide that we can create a finite time limit. Psychologists have said there are two kinds of people. There are maximisers and there are optimisers.
Maximisers means, say they want to purchase a new cell phone. They want to get maximum value for their money. So they will look at all the cell phones available in the market.
And they will get the best value for their money. But sometimes you purchase a cell phone, they may spend three months. And they spend three months constantly looking, looking, looking.
Somebody else may say, I want to buy a new cell phone and next one week I will evaluate it. And then I will decide. Now generally, maximisers get a better bargain than the optimisers.
But the problem is, the maximisers, because they have invested so much time and energy, they have so much expectation from the product. And if any small thing goes wrong, they feel disappointed. On top of that, there is also always the regret.
What if there might be some better product? If I just investigate a little bit more, I would have found a better product. And sooner or later, a better product does come up. So they feel regretful at that time.
So they lose a lot of time and they don’t even get happiness through it all. So with respect to analysing our thoughts also, we have to become optimisers. So that means, okay, this is this important for me, so I will spend this much time on it.
And sometimes I may come to with the wrong decision. It’s okay, we all learn from life. We can never have a situation where, in life, we will always be making the right decisions.
So we use our best intelligence, make the best decision in the situation, and then we learn from that experience. So basically, three points in the answer. One is that we need to get out of the head sometimes, if we are living too much in the head.
We need to evaluate our evaluation. And in dealing with our thoughts, we need to be optimisers, not maximisers. Did I answer your question? You talked about sex.
Is it a bodily need or is it a part of the control? Similar is the case for a non-vegetarian food. So is it a bodily need? Okay. So, let me take the meat question first.
Is meat, eating meat, an impulse that is self-destructive? Is that going to obstruct us in our spiritual growth? Our spirituality is affected by what happens at the physical and the mental levels. Because spiritual consciousness is rooted presently through the body and the mind. So, we want to become more and more sensitised.
Sensitised to what is happening at the physical level, sensitised to what is happening at the mental level, and sensitised to what is happening at the spiritual level. When we eat meat at a conscious or a subconscious level, we are desensitising ourselves to the pain that other living beings are going through. It’s said that if slaughterhouses had glass windows, nobody would be a meat-eater.
If we just go and visit a slaughterhouse and see the amount of pain, hear the screams of the animals, we would agree to eat food, but why do I need to cause so much pain to other living beings? So basically, meat-eating requires a certain level of desensitisation. And that desensitisation is what obstructs our spirituality. Becoming spiritual means becoming more and more sensitised to both the physical reality around us and the spiritual reality around us.
But eating meat causes desensitisation. And that desensitisation, we shut off a particular aspect of reality. And at a subtle level also, when the meat is eaten, or when the animals are killed, they are filled with fear and anger.
Fear that they are going to die and anger at those who are killing them. So those emotions get invested at a subtle level in the food, and they come into us, and they may also affect our psychology that way. We become more fearful and more short-tempered by that.
So as much as possible, it is good that we avoid meat, and that will help our spiritual growth. I have a website called the spiritualscientist.com where I have an elaborate article giving scientific reasons for this. How your eating can help the world.
So help is an acronym, H-E-L-P, that actually eating vegetarian food is better for our health. All of you can start your food please. They are in front of you.
You can start. So you can help yourself. So H is health.
In many ways, vegetarian food is much better than non-vegetarian food. E is environment. When animals are produced for slaughter, for making into meat, the processing that goes in, the washing of their bodies, the washing of the meat, all that causes so much water pollution.
And the air pollution that happens when the animals are produced in mass, and then they give out the refuse which has to go into the environment, it causes air pollution. And land gets used also. So much of that.
So environment can actually decrease environmental pollution substantially by shifting to a vegetarian diet. L is livestock. Livestock is that all those animals that suffer so much pain and die, that can be avoided.
And P is poverty. Even poverty at the global level can actually be decreased. How? By poverty I primarily mean starvation or shortage of food.
Basically, the amount of land that is required for feeding one non-vegetarian person is almost 10 times more than the amount of land required to feed a vegetarian person. Because there is a whole bio-cycle. Because when animals eat food, they may eat this many grains and this much flesh will be formed, which a human being can eat.
But if that same land were used to raise grains for human beings, then that much grains would be available to feed human beings. So basically apart from the spiritual also there are several other reasons why meat would be preferable to avoid. And as far as sex is concerned, is sex a self-destructive act? It depends on the context and the purpose.
Sex is a natural biological function which is necessary for reproduction. So, it is a biological function, but in human society there is an enormous psychological obsession with it. It’s a biological function which is there.
And animals also mate and they reproduce. But in our human society, because there is so much sexual provocation around us, and our minds themselves are also provoked, so we don’t use it as a biological function. For us it has become a psychological obsession.
And so much so that often we artificially divorce the sexual act from its biological function. That we, animals engage in sex and they just procreate through that. We want to engage in sex but we don’t want procreation.
So basically it becomes a psychological obsession. As long as it is a biological function and it serves a biological purpose, then that can also actually be a spiritual act. Because we, in the Bhagavad Gita says that sex life can also be divine.
Because through the act of sex, we are becoming co-creators with the divine in bringing new life into the world. But when it becomes a psychological obsession that’s divorced from biological function, then it becomes a serious spiritual distraction. Because the mind, the consciousness, which is meant to be directed towards the spiritual, it gets caught in the sexual.
When can I get the next opportunity to enjoy? Where can I find the next partner? How can I enjoy? So when it becomes a psychological obsession, that is when it becomes spiritually harmful. Now of course when sexual desires can become excessive, that can lead to diseases, that can lead to people becoming violent, that can lead to the breakdown of marriages, if people have affairs, there are many other consequences also. But from the spiritual perspective, the main problem is that it can become a psychological obsession.
So sometimes unwanted pop-ups, they come and if they accumulate, then they overwhelm us. And they cause us to become stressed and to collapse. So they are just ongoing, not so much in the present or the future, just ongoing, then what to do? Yeah, it’s a tough situation.
I’ll say two main things for dealing with such accumulated pop-ups. That is that some things, they may be, as you said, not maximised, but they are there in the background. So now, if they are in the background, we can’t get rid of them.
In the physical world, I can decide not to do something. For example, if I touch this, I find an electric current over there, I can decide I won’t touch this. But in the mental world, I can’t decide not to think of something.
If I tell you, for the next 30 seconds, please don’t think of a pink monkey. You can think of whatever you want, but please don’t think of a pink monkey. In your life, you never thought of a pink monkey.
But now you’ll start thinking of it. So even if I say, I’m not going to think of a pink monkey, just the resolution to not think of it is already, thought energy is subtle. And if we consider thought energy as a subtle energy that goes out and reaches the object of thought, then our intention to not think of something has already caused our thought energy to go and touch that thing.
So, not thinking of something is not possible for us. But, we can choose to focus on something else. When these minimised, these pop-ups are there, which have been minimised, but they are still there.
So as they accumulate, they pop up. They just zoom up at that time. So we can’t not think of them.
But we need to have something constructive that we can think of that can increase our strength. So, if you like to say, read some books of wisdom, or hear some spiritual talks, or do something which increases the positive energy within you. Mantra chanting is also one activity like that.
When we do that, that increases the strength. Our own positive strength. This negative strength is building, building, building.
This is going on in our life, but we are not building our positive strength. So at one point, this negative strength will zoom up. But if we can do at least regularly some activities that build our positive energy, then even if this negative energy goes up, we will have the capacity to resist it.
And secondly, if, say, it’s irritation. One problem irritates me, second problem irritates me, third problem irritates me. But if ten problems come up, it just becomes too much.
So, if I have to carry a 1 kg weight, I can easily do that. Another kg, another kg, 10 kg, it’s going to be difficult. If it’s 50 kg, it’s almost impossible.
So, when we have found something which is irritating us, or which is depressing us, whatever it is, negative emotion that they are contributing, so we have to periodically let go of things. Letting go means that okay, this thing happened, I accept that it happened, it’s a mistake that I may have made, it may have been something which somebody did to me, it’s happened, I accept it, I let go of it. I let go of it so that I can go on with my life.
So, it is a conscious choice to disinvest our emotions from it. People have hurt us, that’s going to hurt us. But as long as our emotion is locked in it, that hurt will explode sometime.
But, if we disinvest our emotion from it, there is a higher plan to life, bad things happen, they may be for some good purpose, I don’t know at this stage, I just let go of this. Then, when the emotion is disinvested from it, then that creates a new way of remembering it. Sometimes, life just gives us a raw idea, it hurts.
Sometimes you may get a wound, and that wound may leave a scar, I have a scar over here. Now, when I have a scar, I can’t wish away the scar, but when the firecracker hit me, at that time it was very painful. But now, it is a healed wound.
The scar is there, but the wound is healed. So, it doesn’t cause much pain, any pain in fact. Similarly, as long as the wound is raw, the pain will be there.
Same applies at the emotional level also. If something has gone wrong and caused me irritation, then I need to have some time and process it, and release the emotional energy locked in it. Okay, this happened.
If we don’t release that emotional energy, we are accepting it, but it is a grudging acceptance. Why did this happen? It shouldn’t have happened. They shouldn’t have spoken like that.
They shouldn’t have done like that. So, it’s a grudging acceptance that is there, where we are fighting against it, but it’s building, building, building. But it’s okay, that chapter is over in my life.
I don’t want to revisit it anymore. It’s so much spilled milk. It’s water down the drain.
I accept it, and I move on with my life. This requires a conscious decision, and then when you do this, when you learn to release the emotional energy locked in it, then it won’t accumulate. One thing comes, it will be there.
We release the emotional energy, it goes off. Second thing comes up. I’m not saying the wound will not be there, the scar will be there, but it won’t hurt that much.
The releasing the emotional energy invested in, locked in bad things, that helps us to recollect, that helps us to have recollection without agitation. As long as the emotional energy is invested, locked in it, the recollection causes agitation. A simple example, a little subtle concept.
Let’s say you have a new car, and you’re proudly going in that car, and looking, who all is noticing your car? And you stop at a intersection, and somebody just bumps against the car. It gets so furious. My new car, what did you do to it? Now, imagine, say you had a car, and you sold the car.
And you’re going in some other car, and you see somebody riding your old car. And then somebody comes and hits the bumper of that car. How much agitation is there? It’s not your car.
Event is the same. But, because the emotions are not invested in it, the agitation is much lesser. So basically, as long as we are emotionally locked in that event, like, this car is mine, even a small scratch will hurt.
But when I release the emotions, I let go of it, then it is like a car, which is no longer mine. So whatever you say is a burden, you could envision it this way that, this particular event is burdening me, this particular event is burdening me, this particular event is burdening me. Now, you can chant some mantras, pray to the divine, and then, please, let me, I want to let go of this.
Please help me to just, whatever happened, it’s over. Let me let go of this. You can imagine, that thing stuck on your head, it’s falling off.
This one thing falls off, second thing falls off, third thing falls off, fourth thing falls off, I let go of it. If somebody has hurt me, I forgive them for it. This bad thing has happened, I accept it.
So this way, when the acceptance moves from grudging those replays won’t accumulate, those negativities won’t accumulate. They’ll stay for some time, you release, they’ll just become things which you recollect without getting agitated. Did I answer your question? Okay, good question.
So what are the levels of existence? Broadly, there are three. The physical, the mental and the spiritual. It’s like, if I have a computer system, there’s the hardware, the software and the user.
The physical level is like the hardware. The mental level is like the software. The spiritual level is like the user.
So, the most of our scientific progress has happened at the physical level, where we have been able to more and more avoid uncomfortable situations and create comfortable situations. It may be cold, but I can create air conditioning. I can, this way, we have progressed the physical level a lot in many ways.
But most of our progress has eluded at this mental level. At the mental level, we have decreased, the mental level is the level of thoughts, emotions, intentions. It’s also stimulated by recollections.
So the mental level, perceptions come in from outside, recollections come in from inside. And whatever comes in as a stimulus, either from perception or recollection, it starts off as a thought, then becomes the emotion, it becomes the intention. That’s how the thought train takes off.
At that level, the capacity to manage our thoughts has gone down substantially. We have not worked to deal with that. So, thoughts, emotions, intentions, recollections, perceptions, all these are integrated at the mental level.
And at this level, if we learn to function better, we can be much happier. Otherwise, we will be comfortable at the physical level, but miserable at the mental level. So we will be, you can say, comfortably miserable, which is sadly the state of many people today.
Now beyond this is the spiritual level. The spiritual level is the level at which we exist. So that means, like I earlier said, there is a seer, there is a screen, and there is a scene outside.
So the seer is who we are. The seer is the spiritual level of reality. And all of us have a longing for life eternal and love eternal.
Most of the movies and novels, majority of them are about romance. And most romance talks about love eternally ever after. That’s an innate longing of the human heart.
Now if we look around the world, there is nothing that is eternal. When the twin towers fell, it was not just the falling of a tower, it was the psychological impact, something which is a symbol of security and strength and prosperity that collapsed. So, nothing around us lasts forever.
Even the big, big mountains, they are not going to be there forever. So when nothing around us lasts forever, why do we have a longing to last forever? Where does it come from? If there is a child who is living in a remote African village or an African tribe with no connection with the rest of the world, and suddenly one day the child goes to his mother and says, I want a pizza. The mother will ask, where did you hear about a pizza? There is nowhere around in your environment you could have heard of a pizza.
Similarly, nothing around us lasts forever. Still, we have a desire to live forever. We have a desire to love forever.
Where does this desire come from? It doesn’t come from our externals. It comes from the deepest internal level within us. It comes from us as souls.
The soul by nature is eternal. But the soul’s consciousness is currently projected onto the physical and mental levels. Through the mental to the physical level.
That is why we are trying to seek the eternal at the physical level. We are trying to increase our lifespan. We try various ways to avoid death.
So, this longing for eternity stems from the spiritual level. And at the spiritual level, there is an infinite consciousness. And there is an infinite consciousness.
This infinite consciousness is known by different names and different traditions. But there is an eternal bond of love between the finite consciousness and the infinite consciousness. And realising and relishing that love is life’s ultimate perfection.
That is what will fulfil our longing for life forever and love forever. So, we are souls who are on a journey of spiritual evolution. We are meant to evolve so that we, our consciousness rises from the physical through the mental to the spiritual level.
And we become situated at the spiritual level. When we become situated at the spiritual level, then we attain eternal life. The spiritual is the level of reality where we belong.
And it is the level of reality for which we long. So, to the extent we live our life presently in a way that furthers our spiritual evolution. To that extent, we will have contentment during our life journey.
And we will also have the ultimate attainment at the end of this life journey. Does this answer your question? Thank you very much for your attentive participation and for your thoughtful questions. So, thank you so much, Chetan.
That was such an enlightening talk. And also the way like I was hearing Prabhupati answer all the questions. It was so profound yet so practical.
I was very impressed by the way you answered all the questions. Thank you so much for all the wonderful answers. And also as Chetan told us,