San Jose Webinar Discussion - Lesson 3

[Padmaja]

Hari Om. Salutations.

Please post your thoughts on any of the following -

- Bringing Peace to the world
- Variable factor in human beings
- Integrating four personalities
- Mind vs Intellect

All those who are currently enrolled for Foundation Vedanta course or have completed Foundation Vedanta course are welcome to post to this thread.

Thanks !

[Padmaja]

Hari Om.

Bringing over Question and Answer on Lesson 3 posted in a Lesson 1 thread
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Hari Om

I would like to get further clarity on the Q&A question on distinction between Intellectual personality and Spiritual personality (Section 3.2)

Given : Animals have intellect but lack spiritual personality. This also means that spiritual personality is different for each individual (right?)
Section 3.3 : All creatures have Body, Mind, Intellect and Consciousness. This Consciousness is the same in all creatures.

How does the consciousness relate to the spiritual personality? Are these same? If so, there is contradiction with my first statement.

Thanks
Varsha Clare
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Hari Om Varsha

Consciousness is the illuminator and enlivener of four personalities (physical, emotional, intellectual and the spiritual). Four Personalities take part in each experience. Consciousness does not take part in any experience. It just illumines experiences (just like how a theater light illumines singing and dancing on the stage when the play is on, and also an empty stage before and after the play; but never takes part in the play.)

Spiritual Personality is "Subtle Intellect" which has capacity to discriminate between spirit and matter. It is not same as Consciousness.

- Padmaja

[RamChinchali]

A discussion by Ram Chinchali

We must realize that it is much more difficult to change the external world. That is, we cannot expect everyone or everything to behave or act to our accordance. On the contrary, we can very well strive to re-engineer our internal traits and develop our inner personality. We can attempt to align the four personality traits (1) physical 2) emotional 3) intellectual and 4) spiritual) so that they are perfectly integrated in an increasing order of importance and try to focus more on attaining the highest trait (spiritual) in everything we experience in life. Such a concentrated aspiration and focus on attaining the spiritual aspect in the relationship associated with each of our life experiences results an uncluttered and positively oriented calm mind. Such a still and tranquil mind devoid of worldly pleasures and desires brings a sense of calmness and peace to the mind allowing us to focus on the permanent joy or Truth. It is only when all of our personality traits are perfectly aligned do we truly observe and appreciate the Divinity in all living beings and nature. The pursuit of the ultimate Truth is the only way to increase the quantum of happiness as such joy is permanent and everlasting.

[RamChinchali]

Hari Om Varsha-ji,

In your post you say that "Animals have intellect but lack spiritual personality" - I am of the opinion that only human beings have the intellectual capacity to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, etc. I do not think that animals have this capability. They react purely based on their instincts and operate from what has been programmed in their minds.
Animals are victims of their inherent tendencies or vasanas; they cannot act independently. Only human beings posses this Divine gift of deciphering what is good from bad or right from wrong and can exercise this self-effort trait to correct oneself in the right path.
I would like to see Padmaja-ji's opinion on this.
Thank you.

[giraspandya]

Hari Om.
Each experience goes thru four personalities of human being. These are the physical, the mind, the intellect, the spiritual personalities. In these four personalities, the mind and the intellect play important roles in making decision. Mind is the one who feels and enjoys all the experiences from worldly objects.
Mind thinks based on individuals tendencies or vasanas. These vasanas are coming from the results of previously done one's karmas. Based on tendencies, Mind will crave for certain desires. To fulfilled these desires, mind creates thoughts. Once the thoughts are formed, the body starts working hard to get those objects, people, etc. However, intellect can help making the decision whether the action should be done or not. The intellect does have that power to put the mind think back and not let body to do that action. To illustrate this, we can take the example of piece of chocolate. Let us think that I have tendencies to eat that piece of chocolate. My mind creates the thought that "I want", tells hand to go for it. However, for a second if I pause and tell intellect to get up, and tells hand, "no" you should not eat that. Hands come back and the body feels good because it does not need that piece of chocolate because the individual is diabetic.

so, basically, mind thinks whatever the tendencies wants, but intellect let us react what the body should be doing. Sometimes people's minds create thoughts based on the previous experience, but not giving time to take the intellect to react. This is the main reason, individuals are not making right decisions. In the end, they suffer because of the wrong decisions, bad actions, bad results....

In short, we should not entertain the desires what mind wants, but let the intellect decide what is right and what is not right. Based on this activity, we should act, the result will most likely be reasonable and benefited for us!!

Love and Om.

Gira Pandya-Webinar student.

[11510NW32]

Hari OM,
Mind is like a continuous flow of thoughts which are activated by the vasanas, and reacted upon the external stimuli of the outside world based on these thoughts. Hence mind is the equipment to fulfill the demand of vasanas, where as intellect is like the bank of river guides and directs the flow of thoughts towards the Sreyash direction and instead of listening to the demands of Senses it discriminates between right and wrong (real/unreal, sat/mithya) and directs the mind to take right action.

Peace is nothing but tranquil mind which has mind and intellect integrated together before doing any action.

About the Personality , life is a better place to experience , and each experiences teaches us something whether we did the action influenced by mind, intellect or our spirituality. We need to do all the actions with complete awareness and analyzing at the end of day which action got done without using the intellect can help eliminate our so called bad action of the day in future actions.

Jai Gurudev and have a very very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2016.