Got Questions on Your Mind?

Got Questions on Your Mind?

[00:45] Q – What’s the best way to control your subconscious mind?

What’s the best way to control your subconscious mind?

[00:49] A – Avoid it Like the Plague

The Vedic worldview is to avoid it like the plague. That’s the Vedic worldview: mastering and controlling the subconscious mind. Who is this master who’s wanting to control and master something that’s subconscious? 

This little individuality up on the surface that went to kindergarten, went to high school, and maybe did a year or two at university, or maybe 20 years of university, or whatever. And then I, this grandiose self, want to dive into the depths of my subconscious mind and reform it. It’s like a child. 

I did have this interesting conversation with one of my children who was about seven, a very bright girl. And she said to me one day over breakfast, “Dad, I’ve been having some thoughts.”

I said, “Yes, what are they?” She said, “I think it would be good for you to continue to do whatever you have to do to provide for us.” I stopped eating my oatmeal and listened very carefully. “Oh, continue to provide for you? Good? Yes. Anything else?”

She said, “Yes, because we,” meaning her and her siblings, “all need to continue to be fed.” I said, “What an amazing thought. What else?” “And it would be good if all of us were properly educated and you guided us to proper kinds of books to read and, you know, good teachers and things.” “Wow. Okay, I’m in. Count me in.” “And, it would be good…” and she gave me another five or six different pointers.

Now, I’m the subconscious mind. I’m the source of this girl. And, of course, all the things she mentioned to me already were in place. When the conscious thinking level wants to dive into the subconscious and guide the subconscious into what the subconscious should be doing for the conscious thinking level, this is like a little child telling their parent, “I think you should do this, I think you should do that, I think you should do that.”

[03:01] Become One with the Home of All the Laws of Nature

The subconscious is far more powerful, far wiser, far more connected to the Unified Field than the measly little mere conscious thinking level that’s trying to figure out what to tell the subconscious to do. 

Mastering the subconscious. It’s like some of the kindergarten students all getting around and say, “We’re having a kindergartner’s course on how to master your parents. How to master your teachers, how to master your professors, and how to master your parents. Everyone rally in. The prerequisite is, you have to have turned five. If you’re not five, you can’t come. Those four-year-olds, forget about it. This isn’t you. It’s only for five-year-olds. How to master your parents. Okay, we’re having a seminar on it. How to control them, how to master them.”

The main field of great amusement, if they could somehow watch this remotely, would be the parents themselves. They’d be having the most hilarious time in another room somewhere if they could hear all of this mastering the parents, controlling the parents.

The subconscious is parental to the conscious. The subconscious is deeper and more connected to the laws of Nature. We mustn’t attempt to master or control the subconscious. What we need to do is to become that which is the source of the subconscious. The subconscious, closer to the Unified Field value.

Deeper than that, Absolute Unified Field value, Cosmic Consciousness. The Cosmic Conscious part of you. And so, rather than attempting to master it and control it with the little individual puny conscious thinking level, we need to let go of all of that on the surface and allow ourselves to dive deep into those deeper layers, identify with them, get into the Unified Field value, beyond the source subconscious, and identify with it.

Awaken that layer of us which is unified with it, have that revealed and unify with it and identify with it. And then our individuality, our conscious mind will naturally be reformed and rehabilitated, and it no longer will be a little puny, childish conscious thinking level that’s trying to control the whole ship.

So it’s the other way around. It’s the other way around. The conscious mind shouldn’t be attempting to master and control something deeper than it. The conscious mind should see to what extent it can stop being that superficial value and settle into the deep unboundedness. Make contact with the home of all the laws of Nature deep within you.

Become one with that. Let that guide the individuality rather than the individuality trying to boss around the Universality. It’s almost like someone saying to me, “I really want to master and control God. So can you give me some techniques for mastering and controlling God?” It’s actually, it’s the other way around.

There’s some way I can have sweet surrender to that Cosmic Intelligence and have that Cosmic Intelligence agreeing to operate through my individuality, to give my individuality the dignity and the grace for which it was designed.

[06:39] Q – Do Affirmations Make a Difference?

Do affirmations make a difference?

[06:42] A – The Opposite is True and I’m Trying to Make it True

See, an affirmation means something like, “I’m feeling kind of lousy. I spent the last three years living in my auntie’s basement, playing video games, but now I need to pull myself together. I’m a king. I’m a king. I’m a king. I affirm. I’m a king. I’m king.”

Or, “I’m a queen,” or whatever. “I’m a divine being. I’m a goddess. I am a goddess. I’m a goddess, okay. I’m going to drink coffee the goddess way. I’m going to drive my car the goddess way. I deserve, I deserve, I’m this, I’m that, I’m worth everything. I’m it.”

The problem with affirmations is what I call the backside of it. And the backside of an affirmation is we have to ask ourselves, does a king actually think to himself, or a queen think to herself, “I’m a queen, I’m a queen, I’m a king, I’m a king?” They don’t ever think those thoughts.

They discover that this is the reality; they just naturally are living it without a thought. Does a goddess have to think, “I’m a goddess,” or write it down on their Instagram feed over and over again? “I’m a goddess. Here I’m drinking my goddess nectar.”

I know some goddesses, the real ones, and I haven’t noticed them printing out goddess nectar things on Instagram.

The point I’m making is, how can I put this very nicely—self-conscious. It’s almost as if, “The opposite is true, and I’m trying to make this true.”

[08:18] Internalized Locus of Control

I discovered this when I studied, many, many years ago, the phenomenology of hypnosis. People who are hypnotizable are people who have a function known as an externalized locus of control—L-O-C-U-S, locus.

That means the place from which you consider your experiences to be governed: external. External includes thinking, by the way, interestingly. So thinking is external, the reactions and comments of other people are external. Externalized locus of control, as opposed to an internal locus of control.

Internal means my inner core, my sense of Being without thinking. Without thinking, I have a sense of what I am. Internalized locus of control. 

And then someone who has an externalized locus of control is field-dependent. That means they radiate a message to the world, and they need to have reflection back from the world about the status that they have radiated to the world.

And only when the reflection comes back do they feel satisfied that they must be okay. It’s a kind of a mirror thing. I need the mirror to bounce back to me, an image that I approve of and agree with.

Whereas an internalized locus of control is field-independent. So someone internally has a fundamental sense of their okay-ness, or even full capability, but they don’t ever have thoughts about it.

They spontaneously are that way. And they are field-independent. They’re not reliant on anything coming from the world around them to confirm, to verify, to validate their status.

People who have an externalized locus of control and who are field-dependent are easily hypnotized. Easily hypnotized means that they adopt a suggestion, but there’s the backside of it. “You’re relaxed, you’re relaxed, you’re relaxed.” Well, a relaxed person doesn’t have to think, “I’m relaxed.” Only a person who is not relaxed has to ever think, “I’m relaxed.”

[10:43] Aham Brahmasmi – I am Totality

Someone who is constantly having to think, “I’m great, I’m great, I’m great.” Great people don’t actually have to think to themselves, “I’m great.” It’s only people who, in themselves, don’t feel all that great who have to think to themselves, “I’m great.”

And so, affirmation has this kind of entanglement with whatever its opposite is. “I’m wealthy, I’m this, I’m that, I’m a king, I’m a queen, I’m a whatever.” All right, beautiful thoughts, but they’re thoughts. And they’re not on the level of Beingness, not yet.

Now, we do use a technique in Vedic Meditation which has to do with an assessment of oneself as Totality. And Vedic meditators frequently will fall back on the phraseology of “Aham Brahmasmi—I’m Totality.”

But Aham Brahmasmi is actually a technique. The sound of it produces the experience. It’s not an “as if,” or a kind of “wannabe,” or a desperate form of hopefulness. It’s just an innocent inner verification, a validation of a baseline status of someone who’s experiencing this regularly every day.

If on a daily basis, twice you meditate, twice a day, and you experience directly—not as a thought, not as a verbal sentence, but you experience directly—Oneness with a deep, underlying, unbounded field, and you keep experiencing that every time you meditate.

During Vedic Meditation, this is what happens. You sit comfortably in a chair, you close your eyes, you practice the effortless technique, the mind settles down into a condition of Oneness with Totality. There is a moment where all thoughts evaporate, and so you’re not thinking a thought; you’re actually having the direct experience of it.

And something like “Aham Brahmasmi—I am Totality,” the translation of that, might bring about a reminder of an experience you’ve already had. You’re not trying to create the experience by thinking the words. You’re reminding yourself of an already pre-existing state.

So the difference between an affirmation and a verification validation of a pre-existing state is a big difference. 

Affirmation has become a real buzzword. I thought, frankly, it was over with about 10 years ago, but evidently, it still has some currency, that you keep thinking stuff to yourself over and over again and eventually you buy in, and your psyche buys into it.

I think it is functional, but we also have to look at, and with great care, what’s the appropriate thought to have? Who’s coming up with this thought that you’re hypnotizing yourself about? Who’s coming up with it?

Is it the needy human intellect? Well, that’s a rhetorical question, obviously. Is it the desperate, needy human intellect that’s trying to create something that it knows it’s not? And if that thing does get created, and you get buy-in from the psyche, is that actually the very best thing?

[14:23] Go Beyond Thought Entirely

I mean, using a few extremes to prove points. I’m sure that Attila the Hun was convinced that he was entitled to kill the 30 million people who reputedly he killed during his reign of terror. I’m sure that there are many other, mostly men, who felt absolutely and perfectly entitled to cut across all of the interests of anyone in the community who didn’t particularly want them to be the leader and who brought an end by death to millions.

Well, affirmation seemed to work in their case. Their psyche had bought in entirely to the idea of their even divine right to be the absolute ruler and controller of all other human beings. I’m using an extreme to prove a point, and that is, what is it that we’re turning ourselves into?

And I’d suggest to you that rather than using the puny little human intellect to come up with some kind of a concept about what it would be better to be, I think it’s best to simply transcend thought altogether.

Go beyond thought entirely. Have a direct experience of your deepest, most fundamental inner reality, and let that inner cosmic field gently, gently bring into you all of those qualities, talents, and capabilities that are going to make you and equip you with the ability to meet the demands interactively of daily life. That’s a much better approach, rather than this kind of slightly phony thing of, “I’ll just make something up and start to become that by thinking it a lot.” I think it’s a little bit phony.

Jai Guru Deva.

[16:22] Q – How can I overcome motivational blocks?

How can I overcome motivational blocks?

[16:26] A – Choicelessness is the Hallmark of Cosmic Motivation

Well, what’s stopping you, really? I mean, you know what it is that you’d like to experience, and the fact that you want it so much must be coming from deep inside you, right? Maybe this is the question you need to ask: where is this drive coming from?

If it’s coming from you having sat down and done some version of a pros and cons list—“I really should be a doctor, because doctors earn a lot of money. And then if I’m a specialist, I can earn double the amount of money. And if I have lots of money, I’ll be able to make my parents happy because they want me to support them when they retire. And yes, it’s going to be gory, yes, it’s going to be difficult, yes, there’s a lot of competition. I’ve got to get myself motivated. I have to get myself motivated”—if that’s what you’re doing, then the lack of motivation is Nature saying to you, “Forget about all this. Maybe you need to be someone who makes kites for a living.”

Maybe your parents need to figure out some other way of getting self-sufficient rather than asking the little person who they had in diapers, “Oh, we’ve got somebody in diapers here. Here’s our future, someone in diapers, grow up and become a doctor and support us.”

So we have to try to figure out what is the origin of the thought we’re having about what it is that we consider we “should” be doing. If it’s coming from deep within you, if it’s coming up out of the Unified Field, you find yourself choiceless. And it’s choicelessness that is the hallmark of Cosmic motivation, Cosmic purpose.

Cosmic purpose playing itself through our individual status and structure arranges all the levers inside of us, the desiring mechanisms, to make a particular set of actions and activities desirable. If it’s Cosmos that’s desiring through me, I’m going to find myself delightedly choiceless. The sweet, sweet surrender to the choicelessness. And even what other people would consider to be hard work, night and day, to you it feels like playing. To you, it feels like you’re just enjoying yourself.

[19:26] Tidings of Comfort and Joy

If you have to drum up motivation—drum it up—probably the drudgery of that itself is a message. Anytime you want to use a little technique, a Vedic technique, for assessing whether or not Nature’s supporting a particular motivation, you just do like this: you don’t have to go anywhere, don’t have to write anything, throw your pen away, put the paper back in the drawer, don’t look at your phone.

Just consider doing the thing that it is you’re considering doing, and listen to your body talk. If, when you consider doing the thing that you’re considering, you get what we call the Christmas card function, the tidings of comfort and joy, this is Nature saying to you, “Go ahead.”

If, on the other hand, when you consider doing the thing, your body feels tired, it feels like drudgery, it feels tedious—this is Nature talking to you and saying this is not the direction of evolution for you.

Now there are some people who hear this and go, “Oh, but what if, what if…” 

There was one of my students who was a United States Navy SEAL, reputedly, by the Navy SEALs themselves admittedly, one of the most difficult and challenging training programs ever.

And one of his protégés was sitting with the two of us, the Navy SEAL was a meditator, and one of his protégés said, “Yes, but Colonel so-and-so,” mentioning the man’s name, “went through all that Navy SEAL training and if I think about doing that, to me it does feel like drudgery, it does feel like tedium, it does feel like that.”

And I said to the Colonel, “How did it feel to you?” And he said, “I woke every day and I couldn’t wait. I could not wait to run down to the beach and be sprayed with fire hoses with freezing cold water, or to be thrown off of a boat carrying metal weights that are designed to sink you to the bottom, or someone throwing an anvil overboard in a lake and telling me to go down to the bottom of the lake and rescue it and bring it back up to the boat again.”

He said, “I couldn’t wait. It just felt fantastic to me.” And I said, “Well, was it hard?” He goes, “Oh, it was the hardest thing ever. Really hard.” And I said, “But did it feel like drudgery?” He goes, “Nope. Felt Christmas card to me. Tidings of comfort and joy. I wanted it more than I wanted anything. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. I really wanted it.”

There’s the distinction for you. It’s not that we are in any way averse to doing what people call hard work or engaging in exertion, but something about it is made frictionless if in fact it is your dharma. D-H-A-R-M-A, dharma, means your personal role in the evolution of things.

So let’s examine this and see if you have to drum up motivation, why it is that you’re having to drum it up. Are we really asking all the right questions? Listen again to this recording and examine your motivation from this perspective.

[23:03] Q – How can I overcome a lack of compassion for myself and feelings of low self-worth?

How can I overcome a lack of compassion for myself and feelings of low self-worth?

[23:10] A – Think Like a Scientist

I’m sure I heard your question, but I think what you really mean is to stop feeling sorry for yourself over the idea that you’ve developed that you’re not worthy of anything. Self-compassion means, let’s get really compassionate about yourself and the idea that you’re not worthy—none of this makes any sense.

I’m a scientist, and I like to think about these things scientifically. You have the same brain that Albert Einstein had. There’s no difference between your brain and his. Did you know that Princeton University, who received Albert Einstein’s brain—by his wishes, he bequeathed his brain—had a look at it, opened up his cranium, and examined it?

It turns out his brain was exactly the same as everybody else’s brain. They were kind of thinking, “Maybe we’ll go in there and find there’s an extra node or something like that.” There was no extra node at all. Just a regular human brain. And you have that same brain in your head that Albert Einstein had. The same brain Leonardo da Vinci had, and so on and so forth.

So, “I’m not worthy”—there’s no physical evidence that you’re not worthy. You could say, “I’m not worthy,” if you had a little pinhead or the head of an ant stuck on a human body. I might listen if you said you weren’t worthy.

I want to teach you a little bit of biological evolution. All forms—brains, toes, fingers, nose—anything about you, all forms are adaptations to function. This is a standard thing taught in biology. All forms are adaptations to function. What does that mean?

If it’s not functional, you don’t have it. If it’s not functional, you do not have it. If you have it, it’s functional. Now, the cranial brain that you have contains 12 billion neurons, and if we count all the nerves everywhere in the central nervous system and the brain, you have 100 billion neurons. You have that. It must be functional because you have it.

[25:32] Support of the Bank of Goodwill

It may be that you feel a little low because you’ve used up a lot of time. I’m not going to say wasted time because if you’ve enjoyed yourself, it’s not a waste of time. Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time doing things that were not all that relevant socially or perhaps not financially productive. Maybe that’s the case.

But if you’ve enjoyed yourself, enjoyment is a very important thing to look at and say, “That was an investment. I enjoyed myself.” Alright, now let’s see if you can use that massive brain of yours to become relevant socially.

People who make themselves relevant socially end up being supported by the bank of goodwill. The bank of goodwill doesn’t always deliver money. It delivers, sometimes money, and other times every other kind of thing: support. But you have to have that desire to make yourself relevant socially. 

You have some funny little thought about a breakup—look what Taylor Swift did with that. Every time she broke up with somebody, she wrote a song about it. Bob Dylan did the same thing. It wasn’t just Swifty.

So, can you take your experiences and make them socially relevant? “Oh, but I don’t have any skills.” Well, get the skills. Nobody had the skills until they decided to get the skills. You have to go out and get the skills.

[27:14] “But, but…”

Now, if in all of this you’re thinking, “Yes, but, but, but.” Whenever I would say that, my master would say to me, “You sound like a motorboat. But, but, but, but, but. Stop saying ‘but.’”

Learn Vedic Meditation. Get rid of the fatigue. Get rid of the accumulated stress. Vedic Meditation will cleanse your nervous system of all of that. You practice it twice every day, and within a few weeks, you’re a completely new person. Or if you’re already practicing it, now you really don’t have an excuse.

You’ve got the giant brain, and you might be thinking, “But, but, my mother wasn’t nice to me.” Alright, let’s transcend the mother and go out and make ourselves relevant socially.

“Yes, but, but, but, but.” Stop sounding like a motorboat. Practice Vedic Meditation twice a day, and find something—anything—that you can do. You don’t know what it is?

One woman said to me, “I’ve got no idea where to place myself.” And I said, “Alright, what is it that breaks your heart when you hear about it?” She said there were some hundreds of children in a hospital in Africa whose parents had died of AIDS, and the children were born with congenital AIDS, wasting away in hospices that were just tents, with very little medical care in Africa.

And I said, “What are you doing here? Go there.” And she said, “What do you mean, go there?” I said, “Just get up and go.” And she said, “But I have to sell corn nuts at the temple convenience store tomorrow.” I said, “No, you don’t.”

She scraped together a few funds, off she went to Kenya, and now she’s the head of a United Nations non-governmental organization program that’s bringing enormous benefits and aid to people suffering from every kind of condition on the African continent. From, “I’m selling corn nuts at the convenience store,” to, “I’m making a difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.”

[29:29] You Have Infinite Potential

You have to make a decision. At what point in your life are you going to go radical? So rather than thinking, “How can I get self-compassion?” forget about self-compassion.

You don’t have to have self-compassion. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Realize that you have infinite potential, and go get the world. Put yourself in front of the world. The world needs you.

“I don’t feel worthy.” You are worthy; otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking to me. If you’ve somehow come in contact with my body of knowledge, you’re worthy because millions haven’t, and you have.

So, stop self-declaring that you’re unworthy. Stop looking for ways to be compassionate with yourself. A little bit too much self-obsession going on here, I think. What we need to do is get out into the needs field.

There’s a needs field out there where the need of the time is greater. Go out, put yourself in front of that, and make yourself a servant of it.

There was a great man, many people these days have never heard of him, but once upon a time, he was very famous—Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller was a friend of mine. I can’t say that I spent a lot of time with him—maybe, altogether, 15 or 20 hours. But we became very close friends in the first 15 minutes.

He was somebody who, at quite an advanced age, had decided that his life was worthless, and he was contemplating throwing himself off a bridge. But instead of doing that, he decided to dedicate his brain, his thoughts, and his body to the needs of humankind.

And he said that in a certain peculiar way, he did commit suicide because he gave up ownership of himself. He completely let go of the idea that he owned himself, but that the collective consciousness owned him. It owned his brain, it owned his body, and it owned his best thoughts. And he put all of that in the aid of humanity and ended up becoming one of the most wonderful people you could ever meet.

Look his name up—Buckminster Fuller. Very easy to spell and remember. Buckminster Fuller. He was someone who was a much closer friend with my master, Maharishi, than he was with me. I just got to meet him obliquely on occasions when he was waiting to meet Maharishi.

[32:04] Equip Yourself Properly with Vedic Meditation

Be like that. Get inspired. So, let’s stop looking for self-compassion. Forget about that. Let’s stop looking for, “I’m unworthy, I’m unworthy.” Forget about that too. Plant yourself and that body and brain of yours in the needs field, hand yourself over to the need of the time, and make a difference in the world.

Then you’re not going to be wondering about self-compassion or worthiness. You’ll just get active.

But practice Vedic Meditation. If you haven’t learned that yet, this is essential. Equip yourself properly and then go.