Sherlock Holmes

Welcome to Mohanji Speaks. Hello friends, hope you are doing well.

Today, I want to share with you a couple of thoughts. I’ll come to the point straight away without much ado. Before I start, a story that came to my mind. I read this when I was in my teens, but it stayed with me. This is from the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m sure most of you would have read most of his work. Here we have the super-intelligent Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson who is always fascinated by the intelligence of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes has the ability to see what others don’t see usually, which helps in solving mysteries effortlessly. This always fascinated. Dr. Watson.

One day in that story Watson is asking Sherlock Holmes, “How do you have this clarity, this intelligence? How do you manage this?” Sherlock Holmes answered quite matter-of-factly. He said to Watson, “My mind is uncluttered. What information I need, that’s the only one that I store. In other words, I only store information that I can use, that I need. I do not store anything random in my mind, so I can retrieve it effortlessly.”

Now you consider your mind – how much of information have you collected and stored in your mind, which is pretty much useless, or pretty much irrelevant when time passes by. The information that I have in my mind is always fresh and usable. We have so many different information entering our system, entering our minds every day. Politics, sports, various things of life we are interested in, and we collect that information, and we store them without our knowledge. While the information that is essential for us to remember gets mixed up with the information that we have collected and stored unconsciously, or spontaneously. What happens eventually, everything gets mixed up and to retrieve something at the right time becomes impossible, you don’t remember. The lack of memory in most cases is because of the clutter in our minds. It’s because we have stored too much. Just like Sherlock Holmes said, if you store only what you really need in your life, what is essential in your life, you can prevent memory loss. Memory loss is usually connected to an over-burdened mind, too much data, too much information that causes clutter.

This was the thought which came to me this morning, which I thought I’ll share with you, and it continued to another dimension. This is a thought about the wastage of time. How much time do we waste in life, chasing rainbows, illusions, and illusory things? Quite a lot. If we can avoid chasing rainbows and stay with the reality of everyday existence, life will be uncluttered.

We get fascinated by others’ stories, opinions, concepts, temptations. We chase them, and we deviate, taking detours to chase them, to find them, or to experience them. And often we don’t get there because they don’t exist. Rainbows are beautiful from a distance. But you try going towards it, when you reach closer it’s just water vapour, pretty much invisible. Many things that you see from a distance do not have value when you come closer to it. Like when we do not have something, we attach a lot of value to that thing. But when you really get it, it loses value. This is our life. This is how we live every moment.

This understanding might help you to reposition yourself to choose what is relevant and what is not so relevant in life. If we choose what is relevant in life, based on practical, realistic criteria, we can ignore the irrelevant things spontaneously. We are what occupies our mind. What occupies our mind holds us, molds us. So, we are what occupies our mind. This is our choice. We can occupy our mind with high elevated thoughts, thoughts of grandeur, thoughts of higher elevation, thoughts of super-conscious states connected to a Master, thoughts of the Masters. We can occupy our minds with great things, but there will be struggles, struggles because of our desires, our native laziness, our tendencies, and inclinations. They will all try to pull left and right, up and down. We have got to tackle them because they are living with us. They are like family members who have an interest in you, who believe that this is what you’re born for. Or these tendencies are a part of your system and you can’t avoid them.

What occupies your mind makes you. If this understanding is clear, you can choose to fill your mind with the right thoughts. In fact, you don’t have control over thoughts, thoughts just happen spontaneously with time. But we can choose to occupy our mind, engage to apply our mind on the positive, regenerative, and rejuvenating matter. Such information will enhance you and enhance the world around you; so that the world reciprocates that back to you. What you give to the world, you get from the world. When you give yourself to the world, the world gives itself to you. This control is in everybody, you can all choose to do this. You can control these factors. It’s an attitude. So we can definitely choose to be different, to be ourselves. Connect to our highest possibilities and express that to the world. Our value always is what we give to the world.
Today I would like to tell you about one aspect of our life. Just throw some light on it, so that you could ponder on it.

We have so many people around us who love us unconditionally, who care for us, who respect us, those who have value for us, or we have value for them, and those to whom we have a value, they value us. Often, we ignore those people in life, and we try to impress or chase people who do not really care about us, who are indifferent towards us. I’m sure all of you have experienced that. There are people, who really love you, care for you, but they’re insignificant in your life, or you don’t care, you’re indifferent towards them. And there are people who really don’t care about you, they don’t love you, but you really want their affection and you do everything possible so that they love you, they accept you, which won’t happen. And the result is a disappointment. Usually or sometimes, it so happens that we’ve hurt the people who love us because our mind is occupied on what we do not have. We totally ignore what we have. This is one of the tragedies of existence.

All of us have some people who really care for us. And all of us have people whom we love and want them to care for us. But due to whatever reason, they are indifferent towards us. What should you do, ideally, what is the right thing to do? Ignore those who are indifferent, even if you love them. If you would like them to love you, or like them to be affectionate towards you, but if they are indifferent towards you, ignore them completely. Respect them, love them, but ignore them. And ignore their impact in your life so that you won’t get hurt by their indifference, which will help your self-esteem. Meanwhile, focus on those who really love you, care for you, and give them back, reciprocate the same. If we live our lives in this manner, that means, love those who love us. That means you reciprocate love and we ignore those who do not love us or those who are indifferent towards us. And don’t analyze the reason; it could be simply unmatched frequency. Frequency is not matching, that’s why they can’t communicate with you. That’s probably why they don’t understand your love, care, or your need for their attention. So, ignore them. Accept, respect, and deeply love those who really care for you. Do not hurt them ever so that your life will be stable, you will have a better balance in life, and you will feel good because you are reciprocating evenly, the emotions that you receive. Imagine you are getting love from somebody, but you are giving back hatred – that is already an imbalance. If you get love, give love, reciprocate evenly, and that will stabilize you.

I leave you with these thoughts, how to unclutter your mind, how to prioritize, and how to balance yourself in society. Think it over. Share it if you liked it. And we’ll meet again later.

This is Mohanji for you.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

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Hello friends, this is Mohanji.

Welcome to the podcast channel. Hope you’re doing well and hope you like the podcasts, of the past. If you like it, or if you do not like it, do let us know, and also tell us what you’d like to hear, so I can prepare those talks for you.

Today we are talking about knowledge. It is a very important subject because our life is dependent on our knowledge. One of the major factors of life is knowledge. And where does knowledge come from? Knowledge comes from experience, knowledge comes from information, and knowledge comes from other people as well. So, what knowledge is good for you? The knowledge, which you have ascertained is good for you; means, it should not be assumptions. Assumptions are not good for you, because you do not know whether it’s real or not. You’re just assuming because somebody, whom you love told it, somebody, whom you trust told it, etc. But we must always verify the source, very clearly, so that you do not get misled. It’s very important.

Information processed is knowledge, and knowledge experienced is wisdom. So, there is plenty of information, we all know. Thousands of information; millions of information. They just get bombarded onto us because we live in a world where there is no dearth of information; the internet brings information, television brings information. Many are not so positive information but we process them because they are available, and a lot of information that we process is totally useless for us. We don’t even need them, but we collect them, we process them because they are available, they have just been given to us free. But we must always remember; if our mind is cluttered with information, we must be careful. If our mind is cluttered with information, what we lose is our clarity in life.

So, to have clarity in life, the information that we process, the knowledge that we assimilate should be simple and clear and it should have a proper space in our system; means we assimilate, we put in order the knowledge that we have and that will bring forth a good roadmap for life.

Dr Watson asked this question to Sherlock Holmes, “How are you so intelligent? How do you know these things? And how do you know all these things so spontaneously?” And you know what Sherlock Holmes said? “I have no clutter in my brain, the information that I have processed is kept clean, I can withdraw them as I like, effortlessly; while in your case, you have put in all sorts of information – the soccer scores, the football scores, the cricket match scores, all the various different politicians’ proposals and their opinions and stuff, and your mind is cluttered. That’s why you can’t retrieve, what you really need at the right time.”

So, this is a very fundamental thing to remember. Understand that we all have a similar capacity in the brain. Nobody has something higher or lower. But the utilization of that capacity depends on how well we have arranged the knowledge in our brain. That means, we only collect the information that we need. We do not even look at the information that we don’t need. All things which are given free are not good information for you. We don’t need them. So just discard them. We only collect what is needed. We assimilate them, ascertain them, making sure that this is correct information and store them properly, so that we can retrieve them when we need.

So, knowledge is a very vital thing. And knowledge plus experience is wisdom. So, we must try to experience this knowledge, we must try to understand it in a practical way so that we know that it’s real. But all information, we can’t process, or all the knowledge we can’t experience. That’s fine, but then it should be very close to reality, we must ascertain that it’s real.

Many times, we have failures in relationships or we fall out in relationships, just because of one reason; that we take the opinion of others, and we make decisions based on that. So, first of all, when somebody talks about somebody, we should not take it as it is. We should not take it on face value, because we do not know whether this is true information, we must ascertain it. Has this person who told you really experienced it? If they have experienced it, in what context, have they experienced it? And in what mindset have they taken or formed this opinion, which they’re telling you, because many times what seems to be, may not be real. When you see a thing from your angle, it may have a certain effect in you, and you say it is so, that thing is so, that experience is like that. It may not hold water in real life because that might be the wrong information.

Various situations, various court cases have been biased by such wrong information. And the innocent people have been accused of wrong things. We have seen that in history. Sometimes, people have been assassinated, because of wrong opinions, the wrong understanding. Everything that everybody tells you may not be true. We form opinions about certain politicians because of certain news coverage, news on the television. Do we really know for sure that the television channel is not biased? We have to ascertain, we have to be clear, otherwise, we will have a problem in our life. If we accuse somebody wrongly, we also lose a lot in our integrity. Our integrity is compromised. Instead, we should look at everything objectively. And if the information has to be processed, make sure it has a reality based on it. Never assume, but ascertain. And knowledge is a very important thing in life, especially knowledge about the law of the country of the state. And that is essential for us to lead our life. But knowledge of that nature, we do not even get involved, until and unless we have, or there is a necessity. And once you enter into that state where you have to know the law for taking an action, we assimilate that law, and then we use it. Then we tell somebody else about this law, you have the authority, it’s authentic because you have understood the law, you have used it well and then you say it’s authentic.

So, authenticity is very important for integrity to be stable; stable integrity. This is very important. For authenticity, a thing should be experienceable, and you should have experienced it. So, the information processed becomes thoughts, and thoughts experienced become wisdom. To convey the wisdom, it should be authentic because you should have actually felt it, experienced it, and you are able to tell it with clarity because you know it very well.

I leave you with this thought, I put this thought on your plate. Process it at your time and wish you a great day ahead. Talk to you soon.

Until then, this is Mohanji signing off.