Our intelligence is our security system – don’t let temptation disable it Gita 02.63

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
keep small things small by not giving them undue attention. When a particular temptation enters into our consciousness, at that time it often overwhelms us. It promises us pleasure and once the lure of promise, once the lure of pleasure is dangled, somebody is an alcohol addict and that person may have resolved to give up alcohol, that person may have been determined to live properly, to live in a focused productive way and while living thus, they may have also removed many sources of temptation.
But even one source remains and that one source is not taken care of properly, then that one source can ruin the person. Then that one source can make the person feel as if I need this absolutely and without this I will be ruined, as if my life will be, actually it is with this that the person will be ruined. But the nature of temptation is that it sabotages our thinking, it destroys our capacity to think properly.
If in a particular house there is an alarm system to alert the owners and others, if some authorized person tries to enter the house, to trespass into the house, then such trespassers, often the first thing they will do is that they find some way to disable that security system. They know once that security system is disabled, then they can move on with ease, with focus, with purpose and no one will be alerted to what is happening. Similarly, our intelligence is our security system.
It is what is meant to sound the alarm and some dangerous temptation, dangerous desire is trespassing into our consciousness. But if like a trained thief who disables the security system, sometimes what temptation does is that it disables our security system. And when our security system is disabled, then we do not even realize that something is seriously wrong, that something needs to be corrected, that there is an issue of concern, which if it is not addressed, will have grave implications.
When a desire enters into our consciousness, it might just be one thought among many other thoughts. But just like say, when we are reading a particular page on a browser, there might just be one link in a corner somewhere, which appears to be just a few set of a small set of texts, among many other sets of texts. But once it is clicked, then it starts zooming out.
And then it occupies the full screen. And then that becomes the only thing we can see. So like that, when desires enter into our consciousness, and when we desire the desire, Kama Kami, in 2.17 the Bhagavad Gita Krishna urges us to not become Kama Kami, not become the desirer of desire.
Kama Kami, that when, like a reverse notion, desires flow into the consciousness of a seeker, the seeker needs to protect oneself and protects oneself by not becoming a desirer of desire. So just as when we are on one page in a browser, and we are reading that, there are many other links, usually, and some of them may be of related content, which will be of some interest to us. Some of them just may be just advertisements which are targeted towards us.
And often the advertisements are targeted towards us based on what our interest is, based on what our weaknesses are, based on what we have shopped in the past. And we may well succumb to it completely, not knowing what to do in that situation, in that particular circumstance. Unless we are very purposeful, focused in our reading, we will get carried away by stray links and we may spend precious minutes, hours on things which are utterly unimportant.
So the point is that a desire in a consciousness is at one level just like another thought in the consciousness, but it has the capacity of driving out all other thought and taking over the consciousness. So, just as a thief can disable the security system, a thief may come in and plunder everything else. Sometimes a band of thieves may come and even kill the people inside the house and then plunder everything from there.
Similarly, we all need to be careful. We all need to be aware that our intelligence, the security system, it can get turned off by the sabotaging power of desires, of temptations. Krishna also cautions us that in 2.63 he says, buddhi nashat pranashyati.
When intelligence is lost, at that time everything else is lost. When intelligence falls, we fall. So, how do we protect our intelligence? How do we ensure the security system is not disabled? Just as we need proper vigilance so that an unauthorized person does not get access to the security code, we do the necessary updates so that if someone has cracked the security system somewhere else, they would not be able to gain access to our system.
So, there are necessary precautions which will vary from person to person, but these precautions need to be taken. So, similarly, with respect to our intelligence, the precaution we need to take is that we need to keep our intelligence, we could say, alert, active. And this alertness, activeness comes by regular study of scripture.
When we take care to diligently study scripture, then that ensures that nothing sabotages us, that whatever happens, we can see things properly, unsentimentally, in the light of reality and can take appropriate measures so that we can move onwards towards progress, towards success, towards doing the things that are important for us and towards avoiding the things that are not important for us, that are trivial for us. So, the security system needs to be kept updated, our intelligence needs to be kept updated. The updation in this case is not with the latest information, but it is with the timeless information that is given in scripture.
Because temptation is, the form may be new, but the principle is the same. And by recognizing the, by remembering, by rehearing the warnings about temptation that are there in our, that are there in scripture, we learn to keep our intelligence alert and then protect ourselves from getting carried away by dangerous temptations.