Monkeys In Your Mind!🔗

2.60 O son of Kunti, the turbulent senses carry away the mind of a wise man,

Though he is striving to be in control.

2.61 Having restrained them all, he should sit steadfast, intent on Me.

Whose senses are under control, his mind is steady in the present.

2.62 When a man thinks of objects, it gives rise to attachment for them.

From attachment, desire arises; from desire, anger is born.

2.63 From anger arises delusion, from delusion, loss of memory, from loss of memory, the loss of discrimination, from loss of discrimination, he perishes.

2.64 The self-controlled man, moving among objects with his senses under control, free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace.

2.65 All pains are destroyed in that peace, for the intellect of the tranquil- minded soon becomes steady.

2.66 A person not in self awareness cannot be wise or happy or peaceful.

How can there be happiness to one without peace?

2.67 He loses his awareness of the present moment when his mind follows the wandering senses,

Just as the wind carries away a boat on the waters.

Krishna continues to explain to Arjuna how difficult it is to control the senses and what happens when one loses control of the senses.

It is like this: Once a monkey spotted a jar full of nuts. The jar was big and heavy with a long and narrow neck. The monkey put his hand into the jar and grabbed lots of nuts, but he was unable to withdraw his fist from the jar! He thought he was trapped with his hand in the jar!

He didn't realize that all he needed to do was to let go of the nuts, and he would be free.

This is the case with most of us. We all know very well how to kick off our senses into action by engaging them in gear and also accelerating into fantasies, but we have no idea how to slow down and stop the senses. We do not control our senses and the mind. Instead, our mind and senses control us.

Krishna says that our senses are turbulent, and however much we try to control them, they stay out of control. Some of the greatest sages, the ṛṣis, have been known to succumb to sensual pleasures. There is the legendary story of Vishwamitra, a great sage, who was seduced by the celestial maiden Menaka, in the midst of his intense penance.

Do you think the gods above have no other business than sending young women down to disturb people who meditate? In that case, I am sure that all men will start meditating from tonight without any compulsion from my side!

Nothing of that sort will happen, so don't start meditation for this reason. It was the suppressed fantasies of Vishwamitra's mind that took the shape of the celestial nymph. His senses were out of control. Hindu scriptures have referred to brahmacarya as a prerequisite to spiritual evolution and many misinterpret this to be celibacy. Brahmacarya is not merely celibacy; it is more than physical celibacy; it is living in reality without fantasies.

There are many people in the robes of monks and sanyāsis, trying to control their minds and trying to be celibate, and many of them fail because they cannot control their senses. Suppression does not work on the mind. Suppressed emotions explode when they get the chance. They just wait for the opportunity.

Krishna says that the only way is to focus one's mind on Him once the senses are under control and the mind is steady. The mind cannot be stopped. Thoughts cannot be stopped as long as the body exists. You can only focus your mind on something that transcends sensory pleasures and it will become quiet by itself. Once the mind discovers the bliss of this quietness, this solitude, it will never want to stray again. But remember, if you try to stop your thoughts you will only fail.

A small story:

A man who was intent on spiritual progress went to a master and begged him to teach him how to control his mind. The master tried to explain that the mind cannot be controlled in the manner he was seeking, by stopping his thoughts, but he wouldn't listen. Fed up, the master gave him a bottle of a liquid and told him to drink three drops three times a day.

The man asked, ‘That’s it? It will control my mind?’

The master said, ‘Just one thing, make sure you don’t think of a monkey when you drink the medicine.’

‘Oh, sure, quite simple!’ said the man as he walked out. At the door he turned and asked, ‘By the way, in case I do think of a monkey, what should I do?’

‘Take a shower,’ said the master, ‘and try again.’

As soon as the man went home, without wasting time, he took out the medicine and opened his mouth to drink it. Just then he remembered the master’s warning - and remembered the monkey!

‘Oh, my God!’ he said to himself, ‘Now I have to take a shower. What else to do!’

You can guess the rest of the story. Each time he opened his bottle of medicine, monkeys invaded his mind and all he did was keep taking showers.

It got to a point where as soon as he got out of the shower, thoughts of monkeys arose in his mind.

He ran to the master and pleaded, ‘Forget the medicine. Just get rid of the monkeys, please!’

You can never destroy thoughts or suppress them. You can only witness thoughts and not get involved in them, and gradually the mind will settle down. When you settle into the present moment with no expectations and no attachments, you will find that your mind becomes quiet and your senses slow down.

Krishna says that from attachment springs desire, from desire arises anger, from anger arises delusion, from delusion comes loss of memory, and from loss of memory develops loss of discrimination which then leads to one’s destruction. The

only way to stop this, the Lord says, is to control one's senses, center oneself in the present and surrender to Him, the universal energy, and achieve everlasting peace.

The map has been so clearly laid down by the greatest master of them all, not because He wants you to follow it, but because in His infinite grace and compassion He is making you aware of what is in store for you if you do. He teaches that if you do not control your senses, you will be destroyed.

Go through each of these stages laid down by the master. The path will be crystal clear. Each one of us develops attachment, liking, hatred and dislike for many things through our experiences. These likes and dislikes stay in our unconscious memory and even without any conscious awareness on our part drive us into actions through desires or into inaction through fears. When the desires are fulfilled, there is temporary satisfaction; then the desires grow. When the desires do not get fulfilled we are disappointed, we get angry.

We should be angry with our own selves for having had the desires or for not having worked wholeheartedly towards fulfilling the desire, but we actually get angry with other people who we think are responsible for our failures. Rarely do we admit that we are the cause of our failures. We normally say, 'Why admit our fault when there are literally millions out there who can carry it for us?' So we create fantasies and delusions about shifting responsibility and gradually erase the memory of our own responsibility for our actions.

The vicious cycle is now almost complete. The moment we fail to take responsibility for our actions, we lose all our powers of intellectual discrimination between right and wrong and resign ourselves to unawareness and unconscious behavior. This is a one-way road.

Observe a Hitler, a Mussolini, or any dictator, and you will note that their path to eventual destruction followed these lines. Lack of discrimination between right and wrong, because of imposed morality instead of conscious awareness, leads to self destruction and destruction of humanity. The vicious spiral that rapidly leads to such destruction of self and others arises always from desires for power, control, wealth, lust and other sensory pleasures which, when suppressed, lead through anger and delusion to this loss of discrimination.

Krishna reveals two very important truths here in the last two verses.

One is that you can never be peaceful unless you are aware and conscious. The other is that you cannot be aware if you are led by your senses.

Therefore, as long as your senses lead you into what you think is a pleasurable journey, you cannot really be happy or peaceful. It is just another trick your mind is playing on you.

There are many who come and ask me, ‘Swamiji, I am so happy just fantasizing. I fantasize about you. It is truly blissful. Yet you say not to do that. You ask me to drop your form. Why?’

Even fantasizing about me or fantasizing about your iṣṭadevatā, your favorite god, is not going to lead you to happiness. When you lose that form, you will be in depression.

Your happiness is not real happiness. It is just a gap between two periods of sorrow. All this happens when you fantasize about the master also. Imagine then, your plight when you fantasize about other material objects and desires that can only lead you into more greed.

Your senses are unreliable. What you hear, what you think you hear, what you see, what you think you see, and so on, all these sense inputs are unreliable. You only see and hear what you wish to see and hear, only what your mind, driven by that personal identity, ego, wants you to see and hear. Every single thing that you receive as your inputs through your senses is processed and colored by the filter of your mind and ego and you get to know only what they want you to know.

Your mind is constantly flitting between the future and the past in the form of thoughts; that is what thoughts really are, the journey of your mind between past and future and back, again and again.

This journey never stops all through your life unless you make a serious attempt to stop it. Your mind, on its own, would never want to stay in the present moment, which is the only moment of truth.

Your past is history. Your past is the dumping ground of all your regrets and guilt. There is no greater sin that you can commit than carrying these regrets and guilt. Committing an act labeled sinful by society and religion is less of a sin; carrying the guilt of having committed it is the real sin. That is what carries you into hell, even as you live in this world.

There is no hell in some afterlife. There is no Saint Peter or Yama (Lord of death) waiting at the Pearly Gates to consign you to hell. Those are stories woven into religion to control you through fear.

Do you think God has no other job except to chronicle each and every deed and thought you had in your life, mark them good and bad, give you marks and, like a schoolteacher, send you to suffer in hell because you had poor marks?

He has no time for all that! Hell for you is what you suffer in this life while living. You suffer with guilt, regret and remorse. You live in hell in this life, you don't go to hell after you die.

Or your mind dwells in the future, a future that does not exist. You speculate, you fantasize, you dream, you create stories and arguments, building a case for your future. If you are questioned, you would say, ‘I need to plan.’

How much of what you plan is based on present reality? There is nothing wrong at all if you are grounded in reality and plan to progress in that reality. That is what I call chronological planning. Chronological planning is necessary if you live in the material world. I do it too. It is just for example, planning the day ahead, with what time you will wake up, what time you will leave your house, what time you will have the meeting at the office, what work you will complete during the day, what time you will return home etc. It is planning just once so that you know the target for the day. But most of the time what you do has nothing to do with reality.

You either worry about things that you have no control over and plan how to escape such worries, or desire things not in your reach out of sheer greed. Just think honestly and carefully.

Our senses aid us very ably in these worries and desires. They make us believe that all this is real and make us react to situations as if they are real. It is the same way that we get up from a nightmare sweating profusely out of fear. Although just a dream, it makes us sweat. In the same manner, these projections of our mind, even when we are fully awake, appear real to us.

Krishna says, ‘Get away from your senses; escape from their control; ground yourself in the awareness of the present moment. Only then can you be at peace.’

What is this present moment? What is this awareness? When our mind is stopped from moving back and forth between the past and future, it will by itself land in the present moment. The present moment is what we are doing now. If you are reading this book, don’t half read this book and half listen to music; don’t half read this book and half watch television; don’t half read this book and half talk with someone.

Either focus completely on what you are reading or don’t read at all.

When did you really eat last? When I mean eat, I mean eat with full focus on the eating. When was the last time that you can remember each morsel that went into your mouth, without reading a book, watching television or talking to someone, without the food going into your mouth on auto pilot? If we treat food as junk, it turns into junk in our stomach. So instead of giving us the energy that it should, it makes us want to nap.

The next time you do anything, focus completely on what you are doing at that moment. If you are brushing your teeth, just focus on how the brush moves and how the paste tastes. Stop thinking about the meetings later at your office or getting your children ready for school, or whatever it is that you need to do a few minutes or hours later.

When you settle into the present moment, you are out of the clutches of your senses and mind. You will still see and hear, but none of what you see and hear will divert you from what you are focused on. You will be aware of only what you are doing in that present moment. This is what we call meditation. Meditation is nothing but being focused completely on what you are doing at a particular moment. This is what Buddha calls mindfulness.

This is what Krishna says will lead you into peace. When you are aware, your senses are in your control instead of you being under their control. You become peaceful, you are in bliss.