Controlling Anger
This conversation focuses on how to control anger. Swamiji shares insights about this from the Vedas and Gita. He explains that the outside world is not your enemy at all, it is your inner world.
“Yes people are tooting their horns, shouting get out of my way, I’m coming through. Come on, get with the program! But if you learn to remain calm, and you can do that by understanding how the mind functions, what the importance of the mind is. Because, in a sense, your mind is your world. If you want to mirror everyone’s stress and anger, and fill your mind up with that – then that’s what you will be.
It takes practice, and it takes understanding. That’s why when my Guru, Shri Maharajji, said that he has decided to teach me, he made it clear that it was going to take a long time for me to assimilate this knowledge and become wise. So, eventually you realise that when a person in a motor car upsets you, you can either come down to their level, fill your mind with the same manic energy, lose your control, lose your peace, lose your spiritual perspective. OR you can say to yourself, ‘hang on a minute. I’m not going to play that game, my mind is too precious. I don’t want to spike up and spike down with too much elation and too much misery. I’m going to keep my eye on the ball.’ And the ball is that we are a human being, having a human experience, yes, but when you start to understand about the atma, the soul within the body and the importance of the mind to enable this energy to manifest – then you won’t, you simply won’t want to waste that wondrous nature of the mind and the soul, being absorbed in this nonsense. When that decision is made, then the world can do what it likes, but you will remain calm.”
Carmen then asks about how to control anger.
Swamiji replies, “Concerning anger, you just have to cast your mind forward a few minutes and see what destruction it can cause. For example, supposing the hem of your dress catches on fire, but you choose to ignore it. Then it comes up to your knees, your waist … and now of course, you are in deep trouble. Similarly, when a spark of anger comes to your mind, most people, just through practice and habit I suppose, don’t put out that spark, they allow it to become a bush fire and it rages. And then, the very person you are critiquing, you come down to their level, and now you have totally lost it. So, you have to respect anger in the same way you respect electricity. You have to learn to use your mind in such a way that it doesn’t harm you – as you have to learn to use electricity so that it doesn’t harm you. But the benefits of electricity, and the benefits of thought – how amazing are they! What you can achieve with thought! It’s extraordinary! That’s what the Vedas, the Gita, and the great Sages talk about.
Really, I think that this is the final frontier for human beings to understand – what is the nature of the mind, and how do I use it in such a way that I benefit? And of course, by association, so will planet Earth.