When we are telling ourselves to concentrate, who is telling this – the soul or the intelligence – and to whom?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna So where does the intelligence stand? Is it between the mind and the soul? and if I am saying that focus on Krishna what is speaking? Is that intelligence speaking? Ultimately consciousness comes only from the soul the soul’s energy is consciousness Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that the sun illumines the whole world similarly the soul illumines the body so everything that happens in the body the power for that is consciousness and that consciousness comes from the soul so you can say that light source like a flashlight and light is coming out from it so the flashlight or the light source is the soul and the light coming from that is the consciousness now this consciousness can sometimes identify with the mind which is impulsive eat this, watch this, touch this, do this or the consciousness can identify with the intelligence which is not impulsive but reflective look before you eat just don’t do this think what will be the consequence so now depending on which is stronger when if you have heard a very inspiring, thought provoking class that class has nourished our intelligence and after the mind wants to wind up, the intelligence is strong it doesn’t take advantage that means the consciousness is coming out from the soul the intelligence takes the consciousness and then the intelligence says don’t do this but if you have not been eating regularly or if you have exposed our consciousness to a lot of mundane stimuli then the mundane desire will become very strong and then the mind becomes strong so the mind catches the consciousness and then I am going to do this, who cares so basically the consciousness is coming out on the soul through the subtle body to the gross body and outwards now in the subtle body there is both the mind and the intelligence and at different times different things are stronger and it is not that only one acts at a time actually both act even when the mind is stronger the mind doesn’t just sideline the intelligence the mind misuses the intelligence that means if I desire to do something which is not very good for me I may do it and then I will use my intelligence to plan how to cover up so that nobody will come to know about it so Prabhupada says in lecture we are meant to use our intelligence to control our enjoying mentality but our problem is that we are used to enjoying intelligently that means we give in to the mind but the mind plans I will do this and I will give this reason I will do this secretly so that’s what happens when we rationalize rationalize means that we give up some intellectual reasoning for justifying something which is wrong so rationalize can have two spellings rationalize R A T I O N A L I Z E it can also be R A T I O N A L L I E S rationalize so we use rationality to tell ourselves lies and tell the world lies so that’s why if the intelligence is stronger then the intelligence uses the mind the mind is stronger the mind uses the intelligence so whichever is stronger will channel the consciousness and direct it accordingly so when we are saying that oh my god that time the intelligence is using the consciousness and the intelligence is studying the mind