QA at Bhakti Lounge, Wellington, New Zealand

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, where does our personality come? Actually, what we call as our personality, has two aspects to it.
One is, our spirituality, and then, there is, our, psychophysical nature. So, consciousness, comes, from the soul. It’s like this, light is there, that light, is giving out a beam.
The bulb, is giving out a beam. Now, that beam comes out, and depending on, what kind of covering is there on the beam. Say, if, that bulb, or that lamp, has a red film around it, then red light will come out of it.
Now, it could be that the light itself, originally is red, and then I have a reddish tint, it will become even more red. So, our personality, comes from both these things. The soul, is individual.
So, we all have our individuality. And, around the soul, there is a mind and the body. Each of us is, psychologically, and physically, also different.
So, the consciousness, of the soul, comes out from the mind, body, to the outer world. And when it is expressed in the outer world, that is what we call as a personality. And, so, within this personality, there is the individuality at the spiritual level, the individuality at the psychological level, and individuality at the physical level.
And, all aspects of our personality, may not be healthy. So, what is at the mental level, sometimes we may have some, anger issues, somebody may have, trust issues, somebody may have, various kinds of issues. So, those are all present, in the covering on the mind.
And, as we practise, have spiritual practises, they get cleansed. And then our, pure personality comes out. So, spirituality brings out the best within us.
Thank you. When I see people in distress, at that time to think, a lot of things, or think philosophically, think deeply. Say somebody is in distress, you want to help them.
Yeah, that’s a natural, it’s a, it’s the instinct of a, sensitive, compassionate heart. You want to help people. At the same time, we have to see, how best can we help someone.
So, we all have limited resources. And with those limited resources, what is the best contribution we can make? Suppose, as a medical hospital, and next to that medical hospital, there is a medical college. So now, there are people in the emergency department, in the medical hospital, and somebody needs to treat them.
And say, some relative or person, who is in the emergency department, comes running, to the medical college. And he says, what are you all students sitting there, in this classroom? Somebody is dying over there, go and help them. Somebody is sick over there, go and help them.
Now, from the practical point of view, it may appear, these students are just sitting for hours and hours, just reading something. So many people are dying, go and do something practical there. But, for them to do something practical, this is what they need to do.
They need to learn. They need to learn medical science. So now, it may appear as if they are being stone hearted, people are dying there, you are doing nothing.
But, the medical knowledge that they get, it equips them, to help people, in a more effective way. Now, if they just run over there, they might just be able to do some basic bandaging, or some first aid. But if they become doctors, they can offer much better help.
So we all have to think, what is the most effective way, in which we can help others. When I was in India, when I was in college, 20-25 years ago, I was a part of a social service organisation, where I would go to the slums near my college, and I would offer, free tuitions to the children over there. And, I found that most of these, kids came from, dysfunctional families.
Fathers were alcoholics, there was domestic violence, and as they started opening up to me, I felt that, my teaching them maths, or history, or English, how much is really going to help them, when their lives are in such a mess. So then after talking with other organisation leaders, we decided that we will go into, helping people break free from alcohol. So, I used to go to the slums, one of my friends used to go to a nearby village, a very small village.
And then we worked together, and we succeeded in making one village dry, free from alcohol. And, at that time it was a big achievement for us. But then, one evening my friend came back from that village, and he looked shattered.
What happened? He said that, the previous, in the intervening week, he would go once a week, in the intervening week there was a local, political elections. And one of the candidates, in order to be, one of the candidates in order to be elected, he had brought three truck loads of free alcohol, for giving to everyone. And not just the fathers, but even the kids are drunk.
And then, at that time, we felt that, it is, first through education, we need to open doors for people. Now, after helping people to get off alcohol, it is like, we are giving them the ability to walk through those doors. Or at least we are removing the obstacles so that they could walk through the doors, to create a better life for themselves.
But then we realised that, there is something within people, which sabotages them. And not just those people out there. I realised there is something within me also.
I was very short-tempered at that time. I was infamous for my anger. So, I realised there is something within me which makes me, work against my best interests.
So, what is that? And how can that be combated? That’s when I studied the Bhagavad Gita. And in the Bhagavad Gita, third chapter, this precise question is asked. Now, what makes us act self-destructively? And the Bhagavad Gita gives a whole psychological and spiritual analysis, which explains that there are self-destructive forces within us.
And we need to deal with them by purification. The purification comes by the spiritualization of our consciousness. So, if we look at the world today, the major problems, there is corruption.
Corruption is primarily caused by greed. There is so much sexual violence in the world. That’s caused by lust.
And there is so much violence in general. That’s caused by anger. So, lust, anger and greed are the three forces, which are the primary causes of most of the problems.
If we say the environment is a mess today, that’s primarily because of greed. So, if we could help ourselves and help others do inner cleansing, by which lust, anger, greed would decrease. Then, that way, we can significantly help others.
We can significantly change the world for a better place. Yes, when people are starving, we may give them some food. Somebody is sick, we may give them some medicine.
These are all very good things. If we have the capacity and the inclination to do that, we can do that. But, is that a lasting solution? If somebody has certain habits which are self-destructive.
When I was going and teaching English and other languages, other subjects over there, I felt that the help I was offering was like putting water in a leaking bucket. I was exerting to put the water, but people couldn’t really benefit from it. So, if we can empower people internally to ward off, to push back the negative powers within them, negative influences within them, then they can help themselves.
We can help anyone to a finite degree. But, if we can equip someone to help themselves, that is a far greater help. So, by ourselves becoming spiritual and by sharing spirituality with others, we are actually equipping people to become the best that they can be.
Equipping people to fight the negativities within them. Like I told in the class the story about the suicidal boy, by spiritual knowledge, earlier he was suicidal, now he became spiritual and he fought back that self-destructive tendency. So, that’s how we want to help.
It’s very good that we have that desire to help and that burning concern. People are suffering, people are in distress. But, we also need to use our intelligence to see what is the best way we can contribute.
What is the most effective way to combat anger? It happens at three broad levels. At a physical level, at a psychological level and at a spiritual level. At a spiritual level, if we are not having spiritual awareness, we think that we are meant to be the controllers.
This is my plan, this is how this should work, this is how you should be doing things. So, as long as we think that we are controllers, then when we are not able to control, anger is just a natural response. But, with spiritual wisdom we understand that in the broader scheme of things, we are not controllers, we are cooperators.
There is a higher plan in which we are meant to play our part. So, this is what my plan was, this is how I was going to play my part. But, this person did like this, this happened, and now my plan is no longer working.
So, if I understand that I am the cooperator, this is how things are, let me recalibrate and see how I can function. So, that redefinition of ourselves as cooperators, not controllers, that substantially decreases anger. Because anger comes not just because of what someone does or what happens.
It comes based on how we process what has happened. And how we process what has happened depends on how we conceive ourselves. If somebody shouts at us, how dare you be so ill-mannered, how dare you shout at me.
That is a natural response. Naturally, if somebody shouts at us, we will feel hurt. But, if that person is someone whom we have a good relationship with, we will not expect them to do such a thing.
Somebody is a stranger who is just drunk and they shout at us. They are just lost in their world. I don’t care what they say.
So, the event of shouting is the same. But, how we react to somebody yelling at us, it is depending on how we are processing it. And how we process it depends on how we conceive ourselves in relationship with that person.
This person, I expect them to love me, to respect me, to care for me. Why are they doing like this? That upsets me. This person is a stranger in their own world.
I don’t care much. So, basically, at a spiritual level, spirituality helps us to reconceptualise ourselves from being controllers to being cooperators. And the more we do spiritual practises, at both the conscious and subconscious level, anger will go down.
Means, consciously, okay, I am not the controller. Let me see what I can do in this situation. We will be able to think like that also, but at the subconscious level itself, we will find, you know, if you do meditation, if you come in spiritual association regularly, you will find that in a few months of practise, earlier, this would have driven me, made me mad.
But now, it is not affecting me so much. It is not that we don’t care. We care, but it is not that we are caught in that thing.
You can see a bigger picture. So, that is the spiritual level. Then at the psychological level, basically, each of us needs at some level to express ourselves.
Broadly, we think of emotions in two ways. Either we express them or we repress them. But when we have spiritual knowledge, we can open a third option for ourselves.
Not expressing or repressing, but processing. Processing means, okay, when I get angry about something, that means I care about it. So, what is it exactly I care about? And how can I best deal with it? So, as I said, I used to get angry very much earlier.
Now also, I get anger. But now, because I keep travelling, so most of the time, the person whom I get angry with is not in front of me. So, that person is off in some other part of the world.
So, what I do is, I write an email. And then I write a mail. But I have made a policy that if I have written a mail in anger, I will not press the send button for 24 hours.
And now, if I don’t write it at that time, that anger will burn me. But if I write and send it, the anger will burn that person. So, what I do is, I have the intermediate.
I express it, but I don’t send it. By writing it down, what happens? Whatever is that anger that is there, when thoughts are held inside us, they just congest and choke us. Just get them out.
Just writing it down releases the inner pressure. And then, many times it happens that within those 24 hours, that person only writes and either apologises or clarifies, and then the situation gets resolved. But sometimes, after 24 hours, it’s not resolved, then I revisit it.
Then, I’m much calmer at that time. This is a reasonable point, but I’m expressing it in a very harsh way. Here, I’m making a lot of assumptions about that person’s motivation.
I need more information about this. This is a sensible point. So, like that, I go over the whole thing.
And almost never have I sent that mail, which was written on the first day, on the second day, without editing. Substantial editing. And when I do this, I find that things move towards a resolution much better.
So, what is happening is, there is expressing, but in a finite range. To myself, or on a computer, I express it. And then there is processing.
So, when we process our emotions, then we can know what to deal with. Sometimes, I may decide, oh, this whole issue is not such a big deal. Maybe when I meet him, I’ll talk with him.
So, I don’t have to deal with that. So, we work it out, whatever it is. So, this is processing, which we can do at the subtle level.
And in the physical level, all of us have certain triggers. Things which make us angry. And we have to learn to be cautious about it.
So, there are sometimes two people, when they come together, they bring out the best within each other. And that relationship is symbiotic. But some people, they come together and both bring out the worst in each other.
You know, you just make me wild. Just being in your presence, talking with you, just makes me angry. So, we all may have people like that, with whom when we are, we go wild.
They may be doing something to provoke us consciously, they may not be doing it consciously. But just being with them agitates us. So, if we know that, then we have to prepare.
We can’t just rush into a meeting with them. If we had a long day, 10 things we have dealt with, 10 things have gone wrong, and this person becomes the 11th thing. Even if they do a small thing, it will be a big explosion from our side.
So, when we are aware of our triggers, then we can be cautious. So, at a physical level, not giving ourselves the opportunity to express the anger. At a physical level, keeping ourselves at a distance from the stimuli that will trigger anger or from the actions that we can do in anger.
That helps quite a bit. So, in fact, having things or having objects by which we can express our anger can make things much worse. You know, in America, you may have heard that during the school shootings, and there was a… I was in a school, I was in a college in America, I was giving a talk, and suddenly they said, you know, duck under the desk.
I said, what happened? So, I said, duck under the desk, there’s a shooter in the school. And just all ducked under the desk. And then it went off.
Then they said, this was actually a trial drill. So, train people. So, there’s a great fear of that.
And many of these occasions, when these shooters, you know, they just come and randomly kill people. And at the end of it, there are of course different people of different psychologies, but most of them at the end of it kill themselves. Now, why is it that? One is they don’t want to be persecuted or whatever, but there was some study done which found that these people, after they kill, they are so horrified.
What have they done? Although at that time, under the spell of the anger, they may be very cold-blooded in planning and executing. But after that anger is expressed, what do you do? They are so horrified with themselves that they kill themselves. So, the point I am making is, anger is something which everyone has.
But if with an angry person you give a gun, then it makes things much worse. So, if we could minimise our access to the, exposure to the triggers of our anger, or minimise our access to the channels by which we express our anger, then that will decrease the consequences of the anger. So, that’s how at the spiritual, psychological and physical level, we can deal with anger.
Thank you. So, thank you. We see that so many terrible things, like the climate is changing, and throughout history we have seen humanity is capable of doing terrible things.
So, what can we do about it? Basically, whatever actions we do are reflections of the consciousness that we have. See, different people, their consciousness is directed in different ways. Suppose, say, I am walking on the road and I step on someone.
As soon as I realise I have stepped on them, I say, sorry, sorry, sorry, I hurt you. So, normally, if a person is basically sensitive, when we cause some pain to others, we feel sorry, we apologise. But sometimes, some people may deliberately stamp on someone.
You know, they cause pain to others and when they see the person, they feel pleasure. So, at extreme level, we can have people who are sadistic, people who are psychopaths. They feel pleasure in causing pain to others.
Psychopaths, they feel no lack or no remorse, they have no conscience left. This is all at different levels of awareness. So, basically, when wars happen, when people kill, when people damage the ecology, it’s because their consciousness is at a particular level.
Our consciousness is directed at the level where we find pleasure. So, somebody who is compassionate, who is kind-hearted, they get pleasure in bringing joy to others. Somebody who is very self-centred, who is sadistic, they get pleasure in causing pain to others.
Somebody who is just too, say, materialistic or technologically infatuated, they might just get pleasure in watching TV and playing video games. Just let the world go where it is going. I don’t care.
So, what we need to do is, the more our consciousness evolves upwards, the more we will become a part of the solution. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. So, when we practise spirituality at an individual level, we are raising our consciousness upwards.
And when we raise our consciousness upwards, then we become parts of the solution. We may be in particular fields, some of us may be more environmental conscious, some of us may be in finance, some of us may be in engineering, some of us may be in politics, some of us may be in education. Wherever we are, the consciousness that we bring into that area, that will make us either a positive contributor or a negative contributor.
And if we spiritualise our consciousness, then we can bring in more of a positive contribution. The world is a big place and sometimes we say, we should do like this, we should do like that. We don’t have control over how people act.
Gandhi said that be the change that you want to see in the world. So each of us, if we try to raise our consciousness, then we can become a part of that change. And when there is darkness, say right now we are sitting in this room, the power goes off.
We will be annoyed, some of us may rant, some of us may complain, some of us may yell. But we can just turn on our flashlight, the phone. The flashlight doesn’t replace the room light.
But the flashlight gives enough illumination for us to take a few steps forward. Similarly for us, when the world is a dark place, it’s easy to curse the darkness. This problem is there, that problem is there, that problem is there, that problem is there.
Yes, there are many problems. But it is much more productive to light one light, light one candle, to light one flashlight. And that is the light of our own consciousness.
So if we can spiritualise our consciousness, then whichever area we are in, we will be able to contribute. And who knows, we may start a change reaction, by which others elevate their consciousness. And then small changes can lead to a big change over a period of time.
When all rivers, if you go to the mountain tops, they start as small trickles of water. But this trickle of water accumulates, accumulates, accumulates, and eventually it becomes a forceful river. So yes, there are many things wrong, but we can become like that trickle of water, which is flowing in the right direction.
And gradually we can be a part of the positive change. So what we are trying to do here is to raise people’s consciousness. And I was at a United Nations conference in India.
It was the 60th anniversary they were celebrating. And they had the United Nations in charge for India. He told that over the last 60 years, we have worked very hard.
We’ve got thousands of volunteers, billions of dollars have been spent. And he said when the United Nations was started, they had like 60 different gradually forums, like World Trade Organisation, World Health Organisation, UNESCO. He said in all these 60 areas, things have become worse.
Not one of the areas things have tangibly improved. So he was quoting, UNESCO charter says that, just as war begins in the minds of people, similarly, peace also has to begin in the minds of people. So he says now we are recognising that social activism is important, but we need something to change consciousness of people.
It is the change has to happen inside out. In the world, a lot of focus is on bringing outside change, which is required. But for the change to be sustainable and transformational, it has to be inside out.
So what we are doing is, by raising our consciousness, is try to be a part of that inside out change. I’m asking about how do we deal with people, old people who are having dementia. So basically I talked about this three level model, that is the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer scene.
So basically, the soul is never affected by age. And the mind itself is also beyond physical age. But the body ages.
And the brain is the means by which the soul’s consciousness comes to the physical level. So when there are brain degenerative diseases which affect people, then the person as a soul is still there. But the person’s capacity to connect with the outer world is diminished.
So that means the way we interacted with them earlier, we will not be able to have that kind of interactions with them now. It’s just that their capacity to connect with the outer world is no longer there now. But still we can expose them to stimuli which can soothe and strengthen them at their level.
So for example, we have found that in mental health care centres, if we expose people to spiritual stimuli, say like mantras, peaceful music, some divine sounds, that calms them. It may not heal them because it’s a physical structure that is degenerated. But it still calms them.
And even for people with dementia, they go through phases. Sometimes they have phases of lucidity where they actually interact with people. And sometimes they just are in their own world.
So whichever way they are, if there are spiritual stimuli around them, and we may not be able to, because we can’t get much reciprocation from them, so we can’t have the same kind of interaction. But if we speak to them, we express our affection, gratitude, our positive emotions, they affect at a subtle level. There is cognitive processing that is done by the brain.
The cognitive processing doesn’t happen. But still the affection is sensed. In the brain there are different parts of the brain and different things are sensed in different ways.
So basically if they can be kept in a loving environment or at least whenever possible, wherever they are kept, there are some love words of loving affection that are spoken to them and spiritual stimulus is given to them. That means what happens? At the physical level the capacity is degenerated. But still at the mental level and at the spiritual level we can give them positivity.
And that can make their existence much more comforting for them. And then eventually because of the spiritual stimulus that they are exposed to, when they transit to another level of reality, they will carry those spiritual impressions with them. And that will benefit them eventually.
Can we change the screen mentally? Yeah, definitely. Basically there are three broad ways in which what is on the screen can be changed. One is just force yourself to focus on physical reality.
Say for example, we are driving a car and we are lost in thoughts. And then suddenly we see another car just charging towards us. So if at the physical level of reality something demands our attention, then we snap out of our thoughts.
And in some ways deep breathing also does that. We just try to breathe deeply and become aware of the breath. So the chain of thoughts in which we are getting caught, as we become aware of the breath, it brings us down to the physical level.
So generally people also say that I want to get out of my head. I go out for a walk, go out for a jog. So forcing ourselves to become aware of our physical reality, that is one way of getting out of the head.
The other way is analysing at the level of the thoughts itself. You said that the screen is coming, change the screen. Now that is possible if we have something which is either important for us or something which is attractive for us.
Say for example, I am worrying about this, I am angry about this, resentful about that. The thought chain is going on within me. Now to change that, I need at that time something which is more attractive.
So if somebody is watching a movie, then they need to see something else which is more attractive than that. Only then they will give up that movie and watch something else. So if we have something like that, that means we have developed some healthy mental habit, not just healthy in terms of it being good, but developed it in the sense that we have become attached to it.
Then that can redirect our thoughts. So through intellectual analysis it is possible. If I am convinced this is very important for me, then I am going to think about this right now.
But otherwise it is something which we are attracted to. Then that is the way to combat the level of the thoughts itself. And the third level is the level of the spiritual level.
So the spiritual level, if we become aware that I am different from these thoughts, like I am the inner seer, then in general the thoughts are, we could say they are like pop-up windows. If we don’t click on it, it will stay for some time, it will just go down. Or like there are some kids who make all kinds of strange faces and they want to catch attention.
Now if nobody pays attention to them, they will make more and more faces. But after sometime when they see nobody is paying attention, then they will just stop. So like that, if we just understand I am different from this, and then we neglect by situating at the spiritual level, so that is also possible.
So I would say that the physical level is the easiest, but it is not always effective. Because unless we really get involved in the physical activity, I may try to think, I will breathe deeply, I am breathing once, twice, thrice, but then I again get caught in my thoughts. So the most effective is at the spiritual level itself.
But it will take time. The more we gain that knowledge and become situated at the spiritual level, then when these thoughts come, we can, ok, this is not important for me. That’s how we can change it.
Thank you. So is it possible to be fully conscious and are there some disadvantages of being fully conscious, say if other people are not so conscious? Yeah, I would say that yes. When we talk about being fully conscious, it also means being conscious of the level that people are at.
So, say if everyone’s consciousness is here, and our consciousness is elevated, that elevation is not just, it doesn’t mean we become disconnected from this level. Rather we become aware of more things. It’s not, let’s say, if there is a person on the ground and there is a person in the helicopter.
That person in the helicopter is not on the ground. But when we, when our consciousness becomes elevated, it is, we are aware of physical reality, we are aware of mental reality, but we are also aware of something more. We are aware of spiritual reality.
So, we can understand what level people are at. Just to give a simple example, say, you know four languages and you learn a fifth language. Now, you see someone else who doesn’t know that fifth language.
So, you know more than that person. When you are going to talk with that person, you are not going to talk in that fifth language. You will talk in the language which they understand.
So, similarly, when we become spiritually conscious, that doesn’t mean we become materially unconscious. We are materially conscious, but our consciousness is not limited to material things. So, we can connect with others at the level they are at.
And we can become agents if they are receptive to elevating their consciousness upwards. So, the disadvantage could be if we disconnect from ordinary consciousness. The idea of spiritual consciousness is adding to our present consciousness.
It is not rejecting our present consciousness. So, we may have a career, we may have a family, we may have friends and we bring spirituality into all of these. It’s not that we reject all of them.
So, that’s why if we have proper guidance and proper understanding of what spirituality is, then we can be with all kinds of people and we will be able to connect with them as is necessary. Some organisms that are more developed, what about their actions? See, the body is a tool for the soul and different bodies have different capacities. So, objectively speaking, the level of consciousness of an ant and the level of consciousness of a pet dog, it’s quite different.
Animals, different animals are quite, dogs sometimes can be trained to do a lot of things. So, they can perceive reality in a much broader way. But they don’t have free will in the sense that they will act according to their instincts.
Now, for all of us, there are instincts which come up. Okay, come on, do this. Instincts are like programmed intelligence.
And some instincts we just get from birth. Like even birds, when they migrate from one place to another, it’s one of the mysteries of nature. Now, birds can go thousands of miles and they go to distant land, they just know where they are meant to go.
How do they have a compass? What do they actually go there? And they may go and live in another distant continent and when their descendant flies back from there, the descendant comes back and makes a nest on the same tree in which the ancestor was living. Now, how do they know that? So, there is definitely, there are lower species also which have advanced intelligence. And in some ways, the advanced intelligence of some of the lower species can supersede human intelligence also.
The way, say, spiders can make a web. We can’t make that kind of thing with our mouth or without our hands or anything like that. We need complicated machines to do that.
So, for specific skills, animals can have specific intelligences which may supersede human intelligences. But there is the capacity of conscious moral choice, which animals don’t have. This action, they’ll understand.
Now, when a lion sees a deer, for the lion, the deer is just food. And the lion will pounce on the deer and eat the food. For us, human beings, we can choose various kinds of food.
This food is a violent food. I don’t want to eat this. And this food is not violent.
I can take this food. So, that kind of the ethical dimension of our actions, the conscious perception of that, that is something which is distinctively human. So, broadly speaking, you could say that there are four, in the cognitive level, there are four differences.
One is self-awareness. Self-awareness means, say, right now I’m talking to you. I can conceptually place myself where you are and look at myself.
How am I talking? I can become aware of myself and I can become aware of my thoughts. This capacity to conceptually make oneself the object of our consciousness, not the subject of our consciousness. That is self-awareness.
That is distinctively human. Then along with self-awareness comes creative imagination. Okay, I’m doing things this way.
I can do things in a different way. All living beings eat food, but it is humans who cook their food and create hundreds and thousands of cuisines. We are all going to eat, but we see the food in nature, but from there we have creative imagination.
The food can be like this. The food can be like this. So, this is how things are, but this is how things can be.
That capacity to visualise is there. And then, before that creative imagination comes conscience. Conscience means in our ethical sense.
Hey, this is not right. This is right. That ethical sense is not just guided by survival instinct.
There is a part of us which is driven by survival instinct, but there is something more. Somebody sees a child drowning. They themselves may not know swimming also, but they will jump in and somehow try to save that child.
And when they do risk their life to save somebody who is drowning, we consider it noble. We consider it heroic. So, this innate sense of right and wrong, which transcends our sense of what is good and bad for my survival.
That is also distinctively human. So, self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination and then last is willpower. Willpower means this is what I am doing, but I want to change.
I want to do like this. So, that’s why for example humans can fast. Animals, they may fast because there is starvation and there is no food.
But for them to consciously choose to fast, that level of self-reflection they don’t have. So, these four capacities, being aware of ourselves, having an ethical compass to see whether I am right or wrong, to have a creative imagination to create a better, to envision a better future and then the willpower to work towards getting that future. That’s what differentiates humans from animals.
So, animals may have specific intelligences which are more than us. But this four set of cognitive abilities, that places us at a different degree of consciousness.