Why Should We Follow Our Conscience?

Kaikeyi listening to Manthara

We have to control the five senses. First we should control our words. When you control your words, your ears will automatically come under control. Good words will give us good friends and relatives. Excess talk leads to bondage. By talk we may invite death itself. Our words can become the cause of our death. They remove our prestige in society. Even the son would not respect a mother with inappropriate words. Kaikeyi had brought up Bharata with great love and affection. Because of listening to Manthara, she sent Rama to the exile and also lost her husband. She also lost the love of her son. Bharata said, “I don’t want to have such a mother.” When we listen to bad advice, we may lose our relatives also. It is not good to listen to bad words, speak bad words or have bad thoughts. When a thought arises in your mind, discriminate whether the thought is good or bad, whether it is right or wrong? If it is satisfactory to your conscience, you can follow it. You should not do wrong things due to the encouragement of others. When you know that something is wrong you should not enter into that activity.

The cause of man’s restlessness, dissatisfaction and failure are bad thoughts, words and actions. First and foremost, we have to control our talk. You should be single minded. Eyes have only one power, the power of sight. The eyes do not have thoughts. The nose can only smell, it doesn’t have any other power. But the tongue has two powers. What are those? It can hurt others through the power of speech, and it can taste all the food because of the sense of taste. It has two powers – talking and tasting. It has a double degree! We have to cut down this double degree. We should try to control our tongue. While in the Hostel, students should not go from room to room like cats and rats and keep talking unnecessarily! This unnecessary talk can even reduce their grades in the examination. They can’t achieve the purpose for which we have come here. Even a college student who wants to get more marks fails to get them because of talking. We can get first class in everything, if we control our words and our looks. These are very important. When we see, we have the feeling. That is why in Vedanta they say that the first and foremost thing is Shravanam (listening). It starts with listening about someone or something, then you think about that and finally you want to see that. All this starts with wrong friendship.

Control Your Senses

Students! This age is a very sacred age. This is a very valuable age. It is a golden age. You should not pass on as useless material. Your age and life is very valuable. You should not convert it into valueless charcoal. They change firewood into charcoal. Will anybody convert sandalwood into charcoal? Our life is like sandalwood. We should not change this valuable sandalwood into valueless charcoal. 

Suppose you are walking in front of a Girl’s College. Once you know that it is Girls College, you should look down and walk. Walk on the road with attention on your walking and not other things. Looking somewhere else and walking may cause you to lose your life in an accident. Even if you don’t lose your life, a bad thought may enter your mind. You have to be ever vigilant. In colleges outside, there is co-education. Boys and girls move about together. In such a situation, one should control one’s vision. The boy’s think, “What do we lose, if we look?” Let me narrate a short story.

There was a person who yearned for Goddess Lakshmi. He did penance to win the grace of Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. She manifested Herself and said, “My son, I will follow you. But you have to go till your house without looking at Me. If you look at Me, then I will not follow you. This is My condition.” He was very happy that Lakshmi was following him. Goddess Lakshmi was very gorgeous with lot of jewels. The sound of the jewels tingled in his ears. His desire and agitation increased thinking whether Lakshmi would leave these jewels in his house or not? To see these jewels of Lakshmi, he looked back. At that very moment, She disappeared! She didn’t come to his home. The Goddess had told him not to look at Her, and that if he looked, She wouldn’t come to his house.

Today’s students think, “What is wrong, if we look at others?” Let Me tell you – It starts with looking, moves onto a smile and then to talking with each other. The first step is looking, the second is laughing, the third step is talking, the fourth is writing, the fifth step is friendship and the sixth is relationship. Because of unnecessary looking, one gets into all these troubles. Thus, there is danger for him as well as her family members. The society will accuse them of bad behaviour. 

Students should have ideal thoughts and ideal senses. In order to control our senses first and foremost, we must control our looks. If somebody is coming from the opposite side, we should change the direction of our looks. Many people, even if they don’t come across anyone, they start looking at cinema wall posters! The laziest types of people have such looks. Laziness is rust and dust. We must not accumulate rust and dust. 

In many parts of the country, many students go to college in cycle, scooters or even cars.  The trucks and the vehicles coming in the opposite direction are dangerous for us. We must concentrate on the activity of riding/driving in which we are involved. When you are walking, your vision should be on the road. When we concentrate on the activity we are doing, we will achieve success. If you have a book in front of you, the eyes are on the letters, but the mind is somewhere else; what is the use of such studies? We will not understand anything through such reading. We will neither understand nor know anything that we read. Thus, when we are studying, we must concentrate on the letters. Walking, talking, reading, writing, and everything else must be done with concentration. That is the way of life. If we follow the sacred path of control of senses, then we can conquer anything. You can attain great name in the society. You can also give great bliss and joy to your parents. The happiness and joy of getting a son doesn’t come to the parents when the son is born. In the Kali age, as soon as a son is born, the parents distribute sweets. This is not correct. That type of joy should not come just because a son is born. The parents should feel very happy only when the son gets a very good name in the society. That is the son’s real birthday. If one distributes sweets when a son is born, one should be able to give a feast when one has ten or twelve babies!! Begetting children is not something great. It is great only when the children get a good name. That is the greatest value that students can ever earn. You should become an ideal boy and an ideal man and do ideal work. It is not enough if you get good marks in your subject. There should be no negative remarks. 

Today, schools and colleges are filled with negativity. If you have negative thoughts inside, how can you get positive ones outside? When the negative gets overpowered by the positive, you will get good results. Take a bulb. Without the positive current can it shine? It cannot. Both the negative and positive currents are required for the bulb to shine. The worldly education can be compared to the negative current. The spiritual education can be compared to the positive current. Both of them are required in the right balance.

Many thousands of boys have gone back with disappointment after not being able to get admission in our Institute. Fortunately, you all have got admission. For having come here, you should lead a very ideal life. You should also see to it that all spiritual and religious values enter your heart. The moral thoughts are very important. Money comes and goes, but Morality comes and grows. That is what we have to develop. Without morality, man is not man. A student should develop good manners. If you have learnt good ‘manners’ then you are a ‘man’. Without manners you cannot call yourself a man. If you don’t have manners, then you are an animal, as animals don’t have manners.  

Source: Discourse 17, Watch Your Thoughts, Words and Vision, My Dear Students Volume 5; Divine Discourse on June 14, 1997