What your phone can teach you about your mind seattle by Chaitanya Charan

1. What your phone
can teach you
about your mind

2. Phone
The most ubiquitous of external
devices
What we anyway think of, use
it to think of spiritual truths

3. Mind – many meanings
Attention
Intelligence
Intellectual person
Non-material side

4. What is the mind?
Gita’s tripartite model of the
self
Body – Hardware
Mind – Software
Soul – User

5. Distance for difference
The mind is inside us – and
outside us too
See from soul’s perspective,
not body’s perspective

6. Default setting
Eg auto-correct goes
incorrect
Look at the mind before you
look with the mind

7. Default setting
Change your browser’s
home page
Eg whatsapp message with
link

8. Delusion
Improving hardware can’t treat
corrupted software
Physical progress can’t bring
mental peace

9. Mind-brain
Mind – software
Brain – CPU
Heart – Soul – source of
emotions

10. Origin: Who is the inner activator?
“The brain is a computer . . .
But it is programmed by
something that is outside
itself.”
- Wilder Penfield The Mystery of the Mind,

11. Starting point for emotions
External / physical stimulus
Mental recollection
Spiritual inspiration

12. Brain & emotions
Every action has a physical
component
Every emotion has a
neurological component

13. Brain & emotions
Every action has a physical
component
Every emotion has a
neurological component

14. Chemical nirvana?
Pathologizing every human
problem
Eg. Cracked – Why Psychiatry
is doing more harm than good
by James Davies

15. The other extreme
Spiritual & material –
complement, not replacement
Eg Japa for fresh
breathStructural

16. Mental problems
Don’t position medication for
the mind & devotion as
competitors
Different minds have different
needs

17. Painkiller – Antibiotic
Don’t campaign for or against
the painkiller – focus on the
curative medicine

18. Bhakti = Anti-virus program
Grants
Higher wisdom
&
Higher happiness

19. Energy drainer apps
Energy draining thoughts,
emotions, habits

20. Willpower – Finite
Don’t waste willpower on
unnecessary battles

21. Gita 2.58
Don’t just battle over your
choices – choose your battles

22. External adjustment: valuable starting point
Out of sight is out of
mind provided the mind
is out of it

23. Redefining freedom
Freedom comes not by
having facility for unlimited
choices, but by ability to
make wise choices

24. Redefining freedom
Freedom for vs
Freedom from

25. Redefining freedom
Freedom comes by
respecting the right
restrictions, not by
rejecting all restrictions

26. Free love – self-contradiction
Love is the bond that
frees us to bring out
our best

27. Bhakti-yoga
Re-condition yourself by:
Repetition
Purification
Revelation

28. Accept yourself
Change begins with
acceptance
If God had wanted us to be
someone else, he would
have made someone else

29. Repetition
What we do, we
tend to do – the law
of inertia

30. Purification
Mind like wall with graffiti?
Scrub off?
Repaint?
Re-manifest

31. Revelation
Krishna’s glories
enlighten even the
enlightened (10.09)

32. First things first
Focus on the war for
devotion, not the
battle against
temptation

33. Spikes of desires
What happens during
the spikes doesn’t matter
as much as what
happens between them

34. Hope – fruit of faith
Seek counsel from
Krishna, not the mind
VSN: animish, nimish

35. The best you
What we are is God’s
gift to us; what we
become is our gift to
God

36. To know more
Questions
www.thespiritualscientist.com
Daily spiritual reflections:
www.gitadaily.com