When intelligence is the sitting place of lust, how can it point us to our long-term interest?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question when the intelligence is a sitting place of lust in the Gita how can it guide us to overcome lust how can it guide us towards our long term interest answer me the intelligence is the sitting place of lust but it is not dominated by lust at least not always just like if there is a dispute in a territory in a country it may be occupied by terrorists but it is not that it is dominated by terrorists it is not the terrorists are ruling that place our intelligence is completely overwhelmed dominated then we would not even be able to consult scripture at all we would not normally we would not be able to understand scripture but we would not be able to consult it so just as terrorists who are present in a particular territory they sometimes launch attacks in which they overwhelm the opposing forces in which they make strikes and they wound and even kill similarly with respect to the intelligence within the intelligence we could say a selfish desire, lust is situated and sometimes it rises and strikes us so whenever the desire so just as terrorists may sometimes strike and overpower so like that lust sometimes rises and overpowers takes over our intelligence and makes us do wrong things and not only do wrong things but also it may make us rationalize those things it may justify that this was the right thing to do this time so however if we have an overall sense of morality if we are basically living a life trying to guide it by scripture then just as the government may be temporarily stunned by a terrorist attack if the government regains control and the terrorists even if they are not eliminated they withdraw, they attack they devastate and they flee so like that lust is present in intelligence and sometimes it strikes but then our good sense our conscience or the positive side of our intelligence which is based on morality and scripture that rises so it’s not that we keep doing wrong 24 hours a day 24 by 7 for the rest of our life we do wrongs occasionally now as the government becomes vigilant and stronger then it can prevent those terrorist attacks also decrease and prevent similarly as we strengthen our intelligence by studying scriptures by becoming more alert about the nature of the dangers within our inner world then we can combat the disruptive desires within us so rather than thinking of intelligence being in a state of 0 and 1 like digital logic either it is dominated by lust or it is the guide for or it points us towards our long term choices we can see that depending on the kind of attachments we have or we don’t have the intelligence is molded accordingly so for example a person may be very intelligent with respect to making say strategic decisions in business a person may be a financial advisor a stock broker and may be very expert at deciding how to, which stock to invest in, which stock to invest from but at the same time a person may be alcoholic and may find it almost impossible to give up alcohol so what has happened here is the intelligence is able to show the long term in particular situations but not in other situations because with respect to finance there is skill there is training, there is natural talent but with respect to alcoholism there is attachment that means with respect to that particular activity of alcohol the terrorist are much stronger this is terrorist may disrupt particular things depending on their interests terrorists may not want to break down the whole structural society they may attack politicians they may attack certain points which they feel they can attack and get away with so like that our intelligence is long term in certain things is very insightful in certain things but may be very short sighted in other things depending on what we are attached to or not so with whatever intelligence we have even in the thing that we are attached to it’s not that we are constantly being allured in that particular area it is there are times when we are making these people involved with this and we can make better decisions to the extent we make those decisions to that extent we can connect with Krishna study scripture, internalize scripture and thus we can make better decisions and through that our intelligence will become stronger in the sense that our moral fabric our spiritual perception will become stronger and we will be able to overcome the influence of the disruptive desires thank you