4. Preconceived Notions

 

The Gita emphasizes the need to understand our indriyas (senses) as they are the bridge between our inner and outer worlds. Krishna says that the meeting of the senses with the sense-objects causes polarities of pleasure and pain. He tells Arjuna to learn to tolerate them, as they are transient.

From a scientific point of view, our brain has about a hundred billion neurons. Some of them are wired by DNA to take care of automatic functions of the body while others are wired by us over the course of our lives. On our first day behind the wheel, we all found driving difficult. We slowly got used to it with practice. This is because of the hard wiring done by the brain, with unutilised neurons, to coordinate all the activities involved in driving.

This kind of hard wiring happens with all skills, from simple walking to complex tasks like sports and performing surgeries. Hardwiring leading to the formation of new neural patterns, saves a lot of energy for the brain and makes our lives easy.

 A newborn is a ‘universal baby’ capable of many things.  The conditioning done by family, peers and society leads to the formation of many neural patterns. These patterns compel us to look for a particular type of impulses and sensations from the external world through our senses. Our lives revolve around working hard to get these sensations.  For example, we all expect to hear praise about ourselves as our neural patterns enjoy the same. These neural patterns are foundations for perceived notions, expectations, prejudices and judgements.

The combination of these patterns and the efforts made is nothing but ahankaar. In today’s world, success and happiness are defined as getting sensations matching our neural patterns. We become centered in the Self when we overcome the limitations of neural patterns. As a result, joy flows as we are no more dependent on external sensations which Krishna calls ‘atma-raman’.

We can break these neural patterns by using various instructions and instruments given in the Gita to lead a joyful life.


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