The AI age- From Means to Meaning || Mantra House Los Angeles

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. So I’ll be speaking on the topic of awakening in the age of AI.
I’d like to start by asking all of you that if you consider AI, what changes has it brought in our life? It could travel from what you observe in your personal life or what you observe in the people around you. Now AI is an example of technology. We could go broad in technology in general.
But when we talk about AI and technology, they both represent outer power. That our power to say summon information, even now not just information, Google could have provided information, AI goes further. It provides information in integrated format.
It provides some analysis, some insights. So the broad thought is that how does AI change our life? Change our vision of what we are doing or how we are going about doing it? What is it that it says about ourselves, our humanity? There are lot of questions. I’ll just throw those questions so that you’ll have different directions in which.
I just want to start with a few thoughts about your thoughts on AI. Yes, please. Maybe you can just tell me your name and then you can speak.
I’m Misha. It makes routine tasks much faster so that we can focus on why are we doing and what do we want to achieve rather than doing some small, small, small steps manually. It makes routine tasks faster.
And one thing that it can, it can freeze us for higher tasks. Asking why question, why kind of questions. Anyone else? Yes, please.
I’m Sam. It helps me search for information very efficiently but also I heard that the North Korean government is using AI to spy on its citizens. Okay.
So in one sense it provides, it’s increasing information but it’s not just one way. On the other side, surveillance can be increased. So it’s fine.
Thank you. I work in the music and art industry so it’s useful for creativity but also it’s too easy in some ways. So it has an authenticity problem.
So it’s useful for people that have skill but also can be problematic for people who have not put in the appropriate training and skill to accelerate the use of something they don’t understand. Yeah, it’s a good point. Yeah, I’m also, one of my services is writing.
So it’s a good, you could say a kickstarter for creativity. But for many people, it can become a replacer for creativity. And then there it becomes a big problem.
And there can be over-dependence on it. We’ll come back to this at the end. Thank you, that’s a good point.
In the creative field, it has had a significant impact that we are still evaluating how the impact will be. Hi, my name is Cecilia. And AI is very, very broad.
It has a lot of information in it. For example, I work teaching and I introduce chat GPT. Just type one word, it will give you millions of prompts that you can choose from.
So I don’t even have to think about what I’m going to teach. I can just pick it up and go from there. And create a lesson from it.
So I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But it kind of created that sense of not thinking and just getting the robotic… So it makes it easy, but it can become unthinking. Oh yeah, totally.
It just becomes dependable on the technology. Yeah, true. It can lead to an over-dependence of its own kind.
That’s true. Thank you. I’m Jaya.
I use AI even for a complicated situation. Instead of going and asking my parents or my friends, I first type that in chat GPT and check. And try to get AI’s comments and what it thinks for the situation in my life.
I don’t know. Okay. So you can say insights on complex situations.
Yeah. Yeah. Chat GPT can be a place where we can reflect.
We can just share our problems and see what it provides. Exactly. It’s not exactly a therapist, but you could say… Yeah, use that as a therapist.
My first therapist. Yeah, so it’s not exactly a therapist, but a first step, a first level of reflection that is possible. Now, the point of this session is not to give you new ideas to use AI.
That might happen. It will take a while. Thank you, Jaya.
Wilson, so at the studio here, we sometimes… Sorry, who is this? My name is Wilson. I’m here. Okay, sorry.
So we give out, sometimes we’ll give free classes for people who leave a review. And we have had chat GPT reviews. So that’s like a thing where it’s like people are using AI, chat GPT in that way.
So that means you give free classes, but when you ask people for reviews, they take chat GPT to write the review. Exactly, yeah. Okay.
Yeah. So you could probably ease off writing, but then it leads to… You could write reviews. And then… It’s not authentic.
Sorry? Yeah, whether they’re authentic is a good question. One of our friends works in Amazon and he says that they have now tried to develop programmes and below products there are reviews. So whether those are actually written by people who have some experience, even the authentic purchaser is an authentic review.
That’s the question. Yeah, true. Thank you.
Yes? It’s Krishnamurari. And it seems like because it’s still created by humans, it’s not something that is like an independent origin, like evolved through natural selection or whatever. Like it is a natural formation.
And so it seems to imbibe like the biases that are human. It also… It kind of amplifies from what I’ve observed the human potential or even connections that weren’t, that people may not have thought about, but drawing upon the knowledge base that humans have generated, and then making new connections. But then it also amplifies and accelerates humanity’s darkest aspects as well.
Well said. So we can have… The access to knowledge increases at one level, but we can have dark propensities and those can also be facilitated. And the biases that are already existing in human consciousness is kind of… And it appears to be a neutral thing, but actually it is embedded with… Yeah, that’s true.
The biases are still there, although they may become a little less evident and they may come in more sophisticated language. So they may not seem to be there, but they’re there, true. Thank you.
Yes, please. I just want to add one. The other day about music and creativity, my friend said, hey, I wrote you this song for your event, your birthday.
And she played the song and went, oh, that’s so cool, that’s so cute. And I said, yeah, that took me 30 seconds. And she put three or four words in and in a minute she had this song.
So it was kind of like, oh, that’s so cool, but really it’s not that cool. You didn’t really… When someone sat down and worked out a song on your guitar and it took a few hours and they played it for you, that’s one thing. But when she admitted it took her 30 seconds, that’s another thing.
It’s cute, but not special. So it’s hard to judge that, but it’s interesting. Yeah, it’s a good point.
The last two points you made, they were going to broadly draw towards a theme I was going to discuss today. Thank you for that. So broadly speaking, in our lives, there is two broad things we look for.
There are means and there is meaning. So as technology advances, we can get more and more sophisticated means for doing things. Now, means are basically tools.
They are a house. And meaning is more about why, what brings value to our life. So now, as technology has become more and more advanced, in the past, as when technology began, even a simple plough could be called as at one level technology.
A steam engine could be called a technology. A gun could be called technology. Those were means.
And you could clearly see that the difference between means and meaning, I’m going to talk in terms of desires. So means are, they are tools for fulfilling desires. And as the tools have become more and more sophisticated, sometimes they may not appear like tools.
Especially, in the history of technology, the machines were generally seen as subordinated to humans. Okay, if you may have a plough, you may have a sword, you may have a gun. They may be more powerful than humans.
Many times more powerful. But still humans were seen to be cleverer than them. So, it’s like the machines could be better than our hands.
They could be better than our legs. We have a car, we have a plane. But when the machines start becoming better than our brains, so it could be, it began from a calculator and it came to a computer.
Then, now, we came to AI, we have come to AI. So then, the fact that they are means, the capacity of the means is increasing. The means, they, they are better than our hands and legs.
Now, they have become better than our brains. At one level, they extend our hands and legs. After that, they exceed our hands and legs.
But still, the means are basically tools for fulfilling desire. And having tools is very helpful. At the same time, meaning, it’s a complex concept and it’s very difficult to give a very broad, very specific understanding of what brings meaning.
But in terms of desires, it comes from fulfilling worthwhile desires. So, if somebody goes and, we all eat food everyday. Now, okay, food is essential for survival.
But, okay, that is not really, it’s not very meaningful. If it’s our hand, it’s like you mentioned, if it’s our birthday, and somebody’s cooked a special delicacy that we like, just for us, then there is some meaning invested in it. So, from the biological perspective, all living beings look for things which have survival value.
It could be food, air and other things. But then we humans also look for things that bring value to our survival. Not just survival value, but value to our survival.
So, meaning comes by doing things that are of value, that are worthwhile. And, going back to this particular quadrant, now if a person has neither means nor meaning, that is a state of utter distress. They don’t know what to do, and they don’t have any resources to do anything.
It’s a very dark place to be. Now, on the other hand, if a person has means, but they don’t have meaning, then, it can initially seem to be stimulating because we have so many means. Oh, you know, I can read about this, I can watch this, I can do that.
But after some time, it becomes boring. It’s just, having too many means, what am I to do? What is really, what really matters? What is of value? And then, eventually, it can become degrading. Now, I’m not using degrading necessarily in a moral sense, although that can also be there.
When there’s too much means and no meaning, we can often start doing things that hurt us or hurt others. Because we just need some kind of stimulation. So, this can happen, say somebody wants to drink something and they start taking drinks or they start taking drugs, you know, it’s just for fun and stimulating.
But then it becomes addictive over a period of time. It can go down the downward chart. So, means are important, but meaning is even more important.
Now, of course, the other two quadrants are there. If there are meaning, if there is meaning in a person’s life but there are no means, then, that person remains to some extent suffocated or they are at least unexpressed. Say, somebody wants to compose music but they are so poor they don’t have any musical instrument at all.
They haven’t got any training. Then, it is not a happy state. Now, the best situation is where a person has means as well as meaning.
So, sometimes when the means become extremely impressive, then we may start thinking that the means themselves will become the source of meaning. But the two are distinct. One basic way to explain what difference between means and meaning is that, say, we see a cold morning, we see a labour rushing out of their home and then, I say, where are you going? They are running into their car.
They sit in their car. I am going to put gas in my car. Okay.
Where are you going after that? I say, and after that I will go to the next station and put gas in my car. Okay. Where are you going? I am going to put gas in my car.
You see? Now, we can say, fuel, it is what we drive with. It is not what we drive for. The two are different things.
Sometimes, if the fuel is an acute shortage, then we may have to drive for fuel. But fuel is what we drive with, not what we drive for. And the same applies to various other resources.
Fuel is a means. So, even technology, no matter how sophisticated it may be, it is ultimately a means. And while means are important, and the means, when they become more and more impressive, we need to appreciate the intelligence of the people who have made it, the hard work, the creativity, at the same time, means and meaning are two separate things.
So, awakening in an age of AI, what it means, the way I’m going to talk about this briefly hereafter is that when the means become more and more impressive and we can be very excited initially about it, and it’s worth getting excited about the means, but still, it is for us to determine what brings meaning in our life. No matter how sophisticated technology might become, technology itself, it’s not going to bring meaning to our life. It is for us to take that responsibility.
And so, I’ll talk about three points about what can help us in our search for meaning. And then, once we have found out what is it that brings meaning to our life, then after that, AI can be used for good, for our own good and for others’ good. So, before I move to the direct part about means and meaning, any quick questions about this? We’ll have some time at the end of the questions also.
Any questions about it at this point? Okay. So, now, when we talk about a sense of meaning in our lives, different people will say, oh, no, different things give me meaning. And that’s true.
Each of us may find that maybe if I do something for someone else and I put a smile on their face, somebody is hungry and I give them food, I felt good about it. Yeah, that’s one way we get meaning. And no doubt about it, that’s there.
But we will talk about a broad trajectory by which we can look for meaning in our own lives. And then, to some extent, we could use technology like AI as a resource for that. So, I will use the acronym ORE, like we have a gold ore or any precious metal if we have an ore.
It is existing but not existing already. We have to detect it, we have to dig it and then we have to access it thereafter. So, let’s begin by… So, when we want to… when we are looking for meaning, it is not that the same thing brings meaning for everyone.
Because each individual is different. And the first step to meaning is observation. When I say observation, we are all, by nature, we are curious.
The newspapers, the social media feeds, they are all expressions of human curiosity. I want to know what who is doing, what is happening where, what are the latest developments. Now, this is good but when I am talking about observation, especially when we want to find meaning in our life, this is more of self-observation.
See, we are so caught in getting to know what is happening in which corner of the world that we may often neglect what is happening in our own hearts, what is happening in our own minds. So we need to observe ourselves. Now, to the extent we observe ourselves, to that extent, we can start exploring what is it that we have as a distinct gift.
When we explore what we have as gifts, this is where sometimes AI can or technology like that can become a distraction because there is so much information in the outer world as we know more about this and more about that and then we don’t look at ourselves sufficiently. So when we look at ourselves, what can we look at? I can use this, I’ve been using a lot of acronyms over here, something easy to make remember. When we look at ourselves, we can look at what are our abilities, what are our interests, and then what are our resources.
So, now, to some extent, when we use AI, that will be directed by our interests. But it’s like we can get a flashlight or we can get a telescope or we can get a microscope. Now, what we need here is more of a mirror, not just a mirror to look at ourselves physically, but a mirror to look at ourselves internally.
And this, so, it’s a mirror to look at ourselves, and this is where spiritual texts often play a very important role. They explain that our existence is multilevel. There is a physical side, there is a psychological side, there is a spiritual side.
And when we look at ourselves, that, okay, what gifts do I have? Now, even if we have intellectual ability, we just look outward to AI and say, there is so much information available, it’s so overwhelming. What do I have? But you look at what abilities you have. Sometimes you say, I don’t really know what my ability is.
Okay, then just look at what interests you. When we are seeking meaning in life, it has to resonate with something deep inside us. As soon as we can come, come from outside.
But there has to be something inside. So, somebody may like to write, somebody may like to compose music, somebody may be in medicine, somebody may be in some kind of service industry, somebody some kind somebody may be in some kind of job, somebody may be in some kind job, somebody may be in some something that resonates with our abilities, our interests, our resources, then that There is an area where we can move towards finding unique, that is the first point. What is that bigger acronym we are going to discuss? R. Yes, R. That is R. Now, R links with the previous topic, that is resourceful.
Now, when we say resourceful, it can mean many different things, but I am using a specific sense over here. When we are resourceful, we know when to adjust. In general in our life, we have expectations.
What do I want to do? How do I want my life to be? Say 5 years down the line, 10 years down the line, once I have observed myself, say if I have observed it, okay, I have some musical ability, I have some social skills, I have some managerial ability, okay, so then this is what I would like to do, 5 years down the line, 10 years down the line, not just a teenagerish fantasy, I want to be a billionaire or a trillionaire or I want to have something tangible, but we have expectations, but then we are also in certain situations. So, now these two can be at cross purposes. So, resourceful means to know when to adjust expectations to match situations on one side and secondly on the other side to know when to adjust situations to match expectations.
So, this means that, especially in today’s world quite often, those people are glamorised who say that, I can bend the world to my will, I never take no for an answer, those are very determined and they achieve what they set their dreams for and they consider glorious, they consider successful and yes, there is glory in that, in our life, our greatness is not defined only by taking the world to say yes to us, but it’s also about gracefully accepting a no when the world says no to us, so both of these are aspects of being resourceful. Now, if we don’t have this, let’s put it this way, if there is too much of this, then we will just become passive, we just put off our expectations and never do anything at all, but however, if there is too little of this, then we can become very resentful. If you are not ready to adjust expectations and they are constantly, you know, this person is like this, the job is like this, that is like that and eventually this self-resentfulness can go down even to self-loathing, where I can never do anything, nothing ever works out for me, maybe something is wrong with you, maybe I am a loser.
So, this capacity to adjust, we all go through different phases in our life, if you consider say a tennis match, now sometimes a person is returning and sometimes a person is serving, now when they are returning in a tennis match, if the opposite player is like an ace machine, he is bombarding the aces, all the player can do is somehow just get the racket onto the ball and try to get the ball back into the court, I am helpless, what can I do about this, even if they can’t do much at that time, it’s not that they have to keep returning all the time, eventually the time for serving is going to come, in a tennis metaphor, there is a time when we have to be returning, there is a time that means, okay, I adjust my expectations according to my situations, this is a very good tennis player, I can’t do much, but when they get the opportunity to serve, at that time they have initiative, they can decide whether I want to serve the forehand, the backhand of the opposite player, into the body, what speed, what height, they can take a lot of initiative, so at those times, when we have to adjust situations to match our expectations and if there is again, too little of this, we are not ready to adjust situations to match our expectations, then the results will be similarly negative, if there is too much, then we will become very fickle, like they say, a rolling stone gathers no moss, that means, every time a situation is not matched to expectations, I just leave it immediately, go, that won’t work, we have to, on the other hand, if it’s too little, then we will become stuck, we will not move forward, so we need a balance between these two, that this is where the spiritual concepts of that we have two things in our life, that is free will and that is destiny and both of these go together, so now, being resourceful means, recognising when am I in a place where I am serving, when am I in a place where I am retired, so to some extent, I could say, for me in my life, it has been, some of you may notice that I need crutches for walking, so when I was one, I got polio and polio is more or less an extinct disease now, but a set of circumstances happened because of which I ended up with the polio, so basically, my parents took me to doctor, the doctor gave a vaccine, but I was living in a remote place in India and the vaccine, the fridge in which the vaccine had been kept, the fridge had broken down, so the germs in the vaccine had multiplied, so the vaccine ended up giving the polio to me, I am not an anti-vaxxer, so that’s not my point over here, but the point I am making is something different over here, but the point is that irrespective of the vaccines, the point is because of that happened, now I don’t remember that, I was just one at that time, but now when I generally travel across the world and I give talks, sometimes I am asked to give talks to places where people have special needs and sometimes somebody, there are people with, somebody lost a limb, maybe they were on military duty, they were in an accident or whatever, somebody lost a hand, a leg, an eye, it’s terrible, it’s tragic, but when I talk with people after the talks, one of the things that strikes me is that they have, so many people are fighting battles that were lost long ago, it’s tragic that they lost a limb, but it’s lost, fortunately for me, I don’t remember feeling that kind of resentment and I wonder why it was, somehow a few years ago, it struck me, a memory from my childhood came back, it came back like a very fresh and vivid memory, so it was some neighbours, neighbours were related, someone had come to our home and they were consoling my mother, oh, it’s so sad that your son got polio and I remember mother’s voice, clear, confident and she says, whatever he, whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually, I don’t know how old I was, I don’t know at that particular age, maybe two and a half, three, three and a half, whatever it was, I don’t know what signs of intellectual ability I had shown at that time, but somehow when my mother spoke that and those words went deep into me and because of that, overall, I identify much more with my intellectual side than my physical side, so that’s why, okay, that particular battle, I can’t fight, although my parents tried to heal my leg, it never really worked much, but it is not a big issue occupying my mental space or burning me mental, so for me, my glasses, sorry, my crutches are like my glasses, like I can’t see without my glasses, so I need to make sure that I have glasses with me, but put on glasses and move on with life, so I have glasses, I’ve got glasses, I’ve got glasses, that doesn’t bother me mentally, like that, crutches don’t bother me mentally, but I’ll give you this example of, not so much that I am resourceful, but I was gifted, blessed to have a mother, with that vision and just because some battles are lost, doesn’t mean that all battles are lost, so sometimes we have to adjust that, okay, certain expectations, they’re not going to change, so sorry, certain situations are not going to change, so we have to adjust our expectations to match with our situations, but there are other areas where we can, we can change, we can work on adjusting our situations, so that we match our expectations, let me say, so each one of us, when we are seeking meaning in our life, this is where technology can help us provide means, where say previously means were not available, say if you’re physically at a place far away from where a particular university is or a particular education is being offered, I want to learn it, now virtually we can do it, now the knowledge is available much more easily, but if we are ourselves not resourceful, then we can get caught in fighting battles that are already lost, so in one sense when you’re talking about meaning, I talk about say what do I have, that’s the first question, that is we observe further, then the next is what can I do with what I have, that is where we have to be resourceful, where somebody might have a particular passion for a particular field in life, but maybe they have some financial constraints, they have some family obligations, they can’t do it right now, okay, it doesn’t have to be resentful, okay, let’s bide our time, sometimes we wait and then situations change, so meaning comes by being observant, by observing and then being resourceful, so then I’ll give you the last part, so these are in one sense timeless principles, the universal principles in search for meaning and AI can either distract us from that search for meaning or technology like AI can provide us tools in now how can we observe ourselves better, how can we within our situations do certain things, that’s the third part and then third, what was the acronym, R is why do I do what I do, so here it’s elevate, elevate our motivations, so meaning doesn’t just come from having abilities, meaning doesn’t come from just having avenues to express our abilities, if somebody has, if I say musical ability or linguistic ability, writing ability and somebody gets a big international competition, somebody gets a big international publisher to write a book, so okay, now they’ve got the ability, they’ve got avenue to move forward, but meaning in life does not come only by being able to do what we deeply long to do, it also comes by elevation of motivation, so initially our motivation may be recreation, feeling, and it is understandable because the world is so big and we can feel so small as to feel utterly insignificant, does my existence even count, but from there gradually our motivation moves towards, it becomes contribution, that why am I doing what I’m doing, we all go through a difficult world, but while we are going through this journey, each one of us, we can make even at least one person’s life journey slightly easier, we ease, we give them some support, some solace, some assistance, and the more our motivation in using our talents, using our gifts, we may have great gifts, we may have small gifts, but whatever gifts we have, the more our motivation becomes higher, the more the meaning we find, what we do will become deeper, somebody may be phenomenal at music, and they may become even world famous, maybe they release one video, and within a few hours it gets a million views, that’s extraordinary, that’s impressive, but if they don’t elevate their motives, all that they will be looking at is, oh, my video got 1 million views, that person’s video got 1.5 million views, why, and they will still be satisfied, so no matter how much we have, if we are too focused on cognition, we will not find the meaning, so this awakening, that elevating our motivation, that comes from a spiritual vision of life, a spiritual vision means that, see, I am here, and the world is here, but above the world is the divine, the source of all of us, and we are not just contributing to the world, we are not just doing something in the world, through the world, we are actually linking with the divine, and when we link with the divine in a mood of service, then that is where we get enduring meaning, so it’s like, what we have, that’s a gift to us, and what we do with what we have is a gift from us, so we all have been given gifts, so that we can give gifts, and when we have that higher motivation, we may have small gifts, and even the gifts that we can give are very small, but if we have that mood of that contribution, making a contribution, then we find that there will be a sublime meaning in our life, which does not depend on external source, and the need for meaning is not something which can be supplanted or done away with by the development of technology, so the science, the search for meaning, this is what I talked about, spirituality is a very powerful tool in that, so science can make things better, spirituality can make people better, that means science can provide us better means in life, spirituality can provide us greater meaning in life, and together we can make the world better, so AI can become a very powerful tool, if we don’t become too infatuated with AI, but rather we spend sufficient time to define meaning in our lives, and once we have that meaning, at least on the path towards finding meaning in our lives, then AI can become a powerful tool for us to share that meaning with others, to go deeper into that contribution that we make according to our motivation, so I’ll summarise what I discussed today, broadly I discussed four points, the topic was awakening in the age of AI, so the first point we discussed was about, we discussed about various aspects about how AI has affected our life, so AI basically provides us means, but at the same time we need meaning in our life, so when there is a, discuss this four quadrants, when there is, this is total distress, there is no meaning in our life, it can be exciting, stimulating, but eventually it becomes boring, and then even degrading, if somebody has only means, but no meaning, so from whichever quadrant we are in, we would like to go toward this quadrant, where we have society and technology to provide us means, but we want meaning also, and then I discussed three broad guidelines for finding meaning, what was the acronym for that, O was observation, so observe, so we observe ourselves, to see, to be able to better take aim, you want to find meaning in our life, how do I find meaning, we look at what gifts we, I have, I look at my, not aim, it was sorry, air, I look for abilities, interests and resources, so the first stage is, the first stage in finding meaning is, what do I have, in the second stage in finding meaning would be, be resourceful, that means what can I do with what I have, and that involves two aspects, we adjust expectations to situations, and then we adjust situations to expectations, so each of these, which one when, that is where we have to resourcefully to be intelligent, take the example of a tennis match, various other examples, so here, it is what can I do with what I have, and sometimes, even when we have certain abilities, we will not be able to act immediately on it, so AI can be a tool for us to observe ourselves, but AI can also become a tool by which we get caught in looking at external and we forget to observe ourselves, AI can help us to be resourceful in some ways, it can also lead us to become resentful when we start just looking and seeing what I do not have in my life, and just only look at situations where we cannot adjust or rather we cannot change the situations, the last part was elevate, elevate is, it is why we do what we do, so initially we all may seek recognition and fame, but eventually we start looking for making a contribution, so the size of our gifts do not matter as much as the way we are using those gifts or rather why we are using our gifts, so we have this spirituality offers us this divine vision of life that we have been given gifts, so that we can ourselves prepare gifts and offer to the world, and for all of these, we could say technology like AI can provide us some tools, but ultimately it is we who have to find that meaning, so science can make things better, spirituality can make people better, it can help us find greater meaning in our lives, and together we can help make the world better. Thank you very much. Do we have a few minutes for questions? Yes.
Anyone have any question or comments? My name is Karad, thank you for this really interesting talk, just one comment on the very last thing, that science can make things better and spirituality can make people better, but it is also true the opposite, that science can make things worse and spirituality can make people worse, which is nice to know. Yes, of course, they are also tools, so when I say science can make things better, we are looking more at the affirmative way of looking at things here, science can help, we want to move in the direction of positivity, when I talk about, see I spoke in terms of elevate our motives, motivation, so it is understood that we want to go in a positive direction, but now can people use it to go in a negative direction, of course we can, there are dangers of AI, there are dangers of every technology, but the point I am making is, we can have tools by which, we can have means by which we can make things better in the outer world, so somebody can, if it is too cold or too hot through technology, we can have a more comfortable situation, but then in a more comfortable situation, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to make a contribution or am I trying to scheme in, oh, this person is happier than me, I am going to pull this person down, I am going to do this to that person, do that to that person, so spirituality elevates our thoughts, now can it be used for ulterior, for counter-productive, of course it can, but what you are saying is, if both of these resources are used constructively, and they can be complementary. Thank you.
Yes, please. Thank you for a very thoughtful presentation, which puts the picture in place, and becomes really vivid. My question is, I was looking at it verbally, and I did better, but I still doubt myself to estimate which bottles I lost, and which bottles are, I could step outside of the box, and think about something else.
So kind of like, when to estimate, when I adjust my expectations to a situation, where I adjust the situation to a different one. Yes, it’s every analytical frame, like I gave these two categories, every system of categorisation is like a map, and the map, if you consider, say, here there is California, there’s USA, and here Mexico begins, and if you go actually to the border, it’s not always a neat line drawn, if you go towards Canada, there’s not a neat line drawn, so actual categories in real life, they are a little fuzzy, but still, maps help us. So I would say that, this broad understanding that we have to do these two things, adjust our situations to expectations, and sometimes adjust our expectations to situations.
There’s a broad conceptual map that we have. Now, we could say that, every situation can be changed to match our expectations. And maybe it is possible, maybe, if I consider the example of my leg, maybe there is some treatment available in some corner of the world that I have not explored, that my parents did explore.
But then, we also have to consider whether it’s, is that what I want to spend my whole life doing? Searching for a particular treatment somewhere which may or may not be work. I was just in Silicon Valley, Stanford, just talking with a mother and a daughter, they had come to offer my talk. And this girl, she has been eight years in Stanford.
And she got into Stanford, she’s brilliant. He says for eight years, she has been changing her major, and for eight years, she has just been in the first year, like 15 different majors. And he says, I want to find what is my calling in life? What is my passion in life? Well, okay, you don’t necessarily have to spend eight years in that direction.
Okay, sometimes we may, we may graduate in an area which may not really be our calling or passion. But later on, we can move in that area. Graduation is not like a life sentence.
It’s a starting point for our life journey. So sometimes, we might be able to, be able to, we can say a particular battle might be winnable. But the sheer amount of effort required may just make it not really worth it.
So in that sense, you could put in other ways that we need to, in life, we need to keep big things big, and small things small. So when we do some self observation, when I talk about say, we have some ability, we have some interests, we may all have a spectrum of interests. But which interests are more? Which abilities are more? Which abilities are more important for us? So based on that, we can decide which battles to fight.
Is this really important for you? How important is it for you? And generally, how do we decide which are big things for us? There are, you can look at it from a positive way and a negative way. See, when I talk about the self observation, there’s one point which the, much of what is focused on the Bhagavad Gita, the 6.5, it says that we humans have the capacity almost to treat ourselves like another person. So this is the observer me, or this is the observing me, and this is the doing me.
Because we are spiritual beings, and we have a body mind machine with which we do things. So there is my spiritual side, the soul, the mind and the body. So I have a capacity to observe myself.
So when we observe ourselves, say, if you want to understand what is important for, say, a person, we have a relationship. Now, one way, how would we know what is important for that person? We look at what is it that if we do for them, they express great joy and gratitude. Oh, you did this for me, I’m so grateful, thank you so much.
They express great joy. On the other hand, what is it that if we fail to do, they express great anger and pain. So similarly, when we look at ourselves, which are the things when we do, we feel a great sense of joy, we feel wonderful, we feel our life is blessed, we feel our life is enriched.
And what are the things that when we are unable to do, we feel unbearably suffocated in our lives. So by looking at ourselves, we can understand what are the big things, and what are the small things, and then we can choose which battles we have to fight, which battles we need to, okay, it’s not worth fighting now. Thank you.
Yes, last question. Yeah, very useful. Thank you again for presenting it that way.
And I was thinking, as long as you go through this process, observe, think, reflect, you can’t really make a right or wrong decision, because your intuition and your wisdom will be enhanced. So whoever decision you make by following this will inform the next time you have to make a decision in the next time. So you’re getting wiser, the best you’re making progress, whatever choices you make, so long as you’re reflecting on them.
Yes, because of what you’re saying, you’re naturally progressing. So you can’t really go wrong. Yeah, so it’s that it’s in life, no one can have the guarantee that they always make all the decisions right.
But we can make our decision making process better. And as we make our decision making process better, so basically, another aspect of being resourceful is we, one is we make right decisions. Sometimes we make the right decisions.
And sometimes we make the decisions right. That means, okay, I made this decision. Now, how can I make the best out of this? And that also means to accept because I’m a finite being, I may sometimes not get it right all the time.
So I accept that say, I wanted to go in this direction. But now I’ve gone off over here. It doesn’t mean that I have to go back over here and start again.
I can go from here. And who knows what was a detour for me, maybe I learned something valuable that can help me later in the detours later what I learned on the detour. So, if we are more reflective, more observant, more resourceful, we more elevate our motives, then we will be able to get our decision making process more and more likely to point us in the right direction.
So thank you so much for your thoughtful participation. And we also have special segments.