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LearningTranscript
00:00Why I think so much about decisions. Shouldn't our decisions be spontaneous?
00:18I like to decide in a free flow.
00:20So the questioner is stressing on the spontaneity of decisions. He says that he likes to decide in
00:42a flow. It's a good thing. Your intention is good. But we have two flows within us. One is the flow
01:00of conditioning and the other is the flow of freedom. And both these flows in many ways can
01:18appear similar or identical. And when you are in a flow, a stream, then movement is effortless. You
01:40get carried away. So you have to be very careful which stream have you chosen to be in. The conditioned stream or the
01:57free stream. You see you are angry and you are saying a lot of things in that moment. Have you seen how the inner flow operates? In a
02:25sense you are quite spontaneous at that moment, aren't you? But is there freedom in that spontaneity or is it just a kind of
02:41conditioned inner reflex? You are standing at a barren place, barren and dark. And somebody approaches from behind and taps on your
03:00shoulder. And you respond with a jerk, shocked. You didn't have to think for this response, right? But is there freedom in this
03:25response or is this a totally conditioned response? The response was instantaneous, wasn't it? So that brings us to thought and time. Operating
03:45without thought, deciding without thought is a great objective to have. But you have to remember that there is a stream that flows above the zone of
04:09thought and there is a stream that flows below the zone of thought. Thought requires time. When you decide using time, when you decide thoughtfully,
04:26then that is one thing. Then you are in the middle zone. But your objective is to decide without using much thought. You don't want to bring time into the picture.
04:42Your objective, as you have mentioned in your question, is spontaneity. So that can happen in one of two ways. One, you become a totally conditioned machine, you start
05:08belonging to the stream below the zone of thought and there no time is needed. It's like switching on an electric bulb or a fan. The moment you switch it on, the
05:35response from the machine is instantaneous. It's like bringing together two reactive chemicals. You bring them together and the reaction is instantaneous. But there is no
05:55virtue in this kind of spontaneity because it is a totally conditioned spontaneity and to a great extent as human beings we are conditioned. We however have the freedom to
06:18choose whether we want to decide from the place of, from the stream of conditioning or whether we want to decide and operate from the zone and stream of freedom. So you have to be very careful. Remember, spontaneity by itself is not a virtue. In fact, it is better to be
06:47thoughtful. It is better to take your time. It is better to reflect, meditate, contemplate. However, if your thought process is honest, then there comes a point when there is no need to think any further. When your inner
07:14faculty is trained to an extent that the need to think keeps continuously diminishing and a point comes when the time required to think is so small that you could claim that you are spontaneous. However, without training yourself fully, if
07:43you are spontaneous, then it is a thing to be warned of. Spontaneity has to be earned. Otherwise, all that you'll have is the spontaneity of machines or animals. They don't have to earn their spontaneity.
08:11A machine really did nothing to be spontaneous. It was designed that way. Similarly, animals are quite spontaneous in many ways. They don't really have to think or reflect or introspect. But there is little worth in that kind of a spontaneity.
08:37Much better, therefore, is to be thoughtful. The faculty of thought is a very important part of the human mind. It must be utilized fully. However, that does not mean that one must keep thinking and thinking endlessly because, as you have mentioned in your question,
09:07a decision has to be made. And if a decision has to be made, you don't really have unending time. So, thought must have the objective to come to a completion. Thought must not become an end in itself. That is very important.
09:32When you are thinking, then you must continuously be aware whether thought is just a tool to come to an ultimate end or has thought become a self-serving machine.
09:53Remember, the possibility of thought becoming a self-serving machine is significant. It happens with many people, most people rather. We just keep thinking endlessly in some kind of a wasteful loop.
10:09You think about something and that induces fear or anxiety in you. And because it induces fear in you, so you are compelled to think more and you think more and that leads to more fear. And then this kind of a needless cycle continues.
10:26And you find that you are going over the same thoughts again and again. Going through the same kinds of imaginations and options and choices and logics again and again. And all of that is leading to nothing.
10:47When you find that you are caged in that kind of a circuit, then you should know that thought has become self-serving. Thought has to be a useful tool, a servant. Thought must be used to come to something beyond thought.
11:11Because thought is, you see, movement. Thought implies lack of settlement. Thought is like a journey. You have not yet come to the destination.
11:23Journeying obviously cannot be the objective. It cannot be the objective because in your heart you want to settle down, reach a destination. And that destination is a decision. You cannot feel relaxed unless the several options have been closed.
11:43And when thought proceeds, obviously it has several options to choose from and all the mental activity is going on continuously. Thought feels empowered when there are options. But you feel discontented as long as there are options.
12:08For thought to continue, there must be uncertainty. For you to be relaxed, there must be certainty. Therefore, in a position of uncertainty, in a situation of decision making, use thought to come to certainty, to closure.
12:32Obviously, it should not be a forced closure, an artificial closure. It has to be an honest closure. Thought has to be diligently applied so that natural closure is attained. But the intention has to be clear.
12:53You just won't want to keep thinking. When you apply thought this way, honestly, then the tendency of the mind to keep ruminating, to keep thinking, keeps diminishing over time.
13:11And slowly you come to a stage where decision making starts consuming progressively less and less time.
13:24You find that certain options don't appeal to you anymore. So you don't have to think about them. Since you don't have to think about them, the time that would have been spent in thinking about them and considering them and accepting or rejecting them, that time is saved.
13:43Because the time is saved, so the net time consumed by you in coming to the decision is small. Do you see what is happening? You are approaching spontaneity. And then a point can come when you are truly spontaneous.
14:00So it's great to feel in control. It's great not to have to go through the time consuming and laborious process of thought and decision making.
14:17But that kind of luxury, I repeat, has to be earned. You have to earn your spontaneity. If you do not earn your spontaneity, then, I again repeat, your spontaneity is of the machine or animal type.
14:38They too are spontaneous. We want spontaneity that is associated with freedom. In complete freedom, there is complete spontaneity.
14:52But at the same time, in complete bondage also, because there is no freedom, so things are instantaneous.
15:07A slave has no option to disobey. Therefore, when the master calls or commands, he has to instantaneously obey.
15:27Looking from a distance, you could call this as spontaneity. But is this the kind of spontaneity we want? Not really.
15:39So have the spontaneity of a free person, not the spontaneity of a slave.
15:50Right. Now in this context, another question has arrived related to the current one. It says, what bondage are we talking of if we are indeed enslaved, who is our master?
16:17Good question. It would clarify a lot of things.
16:24Our own innate physical primordial tendencies are our slave drivers. They command us.
16:39We talked about the machine and the animal. Let's take it forward from there.
16:51Who commands the animal? The animal is commanded by its own physical constitution.
17:03The animal really has no free will. The animal hardly has even any possibility of thought.
17:14The animal is not given that luxury or freedom. The animal does as the physical instincts of his self command him to do.
17:39If the physical instincts say run, he runs. If the instincts say eat, it eats. Sleep, it sleeps.
17:54It does not really think over anything. So that's the first kind of bondage, the physical bondage, the very inner bondage.
18:15And then there is the machine. We said the animal and the machine. The animal we have seen is commanded by its physical instincts.
18:28And the machine, who commands it? The machine is commanded by the persons who designed it, who made it.
18:39The machine is commanded by a force outside of its physical self.
18:46In that sense, you could say that the machine is commanded by the society.
18:51The machine has no free center within itself. The machine in fact does not even have its commanding master, its slave driver within itself.
19:06Who or rather where is the master of the machine situated? Somewhere else, outside of the machine.
19:21The master of the machine stands at a distance from the machine and holds the remote control.
19:27In the case of the animal, the master of the animal is situated within the body of the animal.
19:38Though the animal is a slave, it is a slave to its own body.
19:43The machine is worse. The master of the machine is situated at a distance from the machine.
19:54Nevertheless, both the animal and the machine are enslaved.
20:02This is the condition of every human being.
20:06We have two masters.
20:12One is our own body. Second is the society outside of us.
20:19Our body rules us from within and the society rules us from outside.
20:27We do not want either of these slaveries.
20:32Neither do we want to be ruled by our body nor do we want to be ruled by the society. That is freedom.
20:41So when we talked of the conditioned flow and the free flow, the conditioned flow includes two currents.
20:51The physical, biological current and the social current.
20:57The free flow includes none of this.
21:02In the free flow, there is just freedom. There is true spontaneity.
21:07Are you getting it?
21:12So that's the aim of living.
21:18That is the aim in all genuine decision making.
21:25Decide in a way that your decision is uninfluenced by your physical tendencies and your social conditioning.
21:42Only then would your decision bring joy and liberation to you.
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