Application of logic in everyday life

Application of logic in everyday life.

Let's speak about our lives in general, our daily activities: we wake up, wash, dress, go to work... It is strange, but this part of our everyday life falls out of logic. We are often guided by a habit, we copy others in our daily life. Or, as it is sometimes said, we unconsciously use behavior patterns of someone else. From the perspective of yoga, a man is a very strange creature. On the one hand, a man can be logical and on the other hand, it is prone to the herd instinct. A man acts as if he/she was in a herd: everybody is running and I am running; all buy and I buy; everyone likes and I like; all sell and I sell. And it is not perceived by the mind, but only by some instinctual manifestations.

It turns out, that it is only an illusion that we live according to the principle of logic, though, we reject all, that as we believe is illogical. But at the same time, some parts of our behavior is absolutely out of critic for us, where we do not use the logic. And there are a lot of examples. Example: I bought shares of the company. Everyone said, that it will go bankrupt, but my neighbor bought them, convinced me and I bought them. The question: Who is your neighbor? Is he/she a financial genius? No. We simply sometimes are not critical to judgments of others and follow someone’s advice.

So, first of all, Karma Yoga encourages us to be consistent. We can act logical in one area, but some areas are not covered. Why do not we apply logic to them? Why do we act halfheartedly? While we're at work for 8 hours we are in a sane state, and as soon as we come home, we like to wake schizophrenic tendencies, as if we would go mad and start to follow advice and instructions of someone else. And it applies to marginal things, for example, people truly believe in some soothsayers, fortune-tellers, healers, psychics and others. The gypsies roam the world, they say anything, and people believe, although it is not logical.

Example: There was a book, called «A collection of bad signs». I hope you will be saved from seeing such book. If you read it, your life will turn into hell the next day, I assure you. You will behave like a programmed robot: do not look back, it is a bad omen, do not go that way, it is a bad omen. It is full of illogic! Maybe, a publisher published this book after a heavy New Year rituals. And we begin to follow and believe it.

Another example about some preferences we are faced: we have never seen a work of art, but we have heard that it is bad, and we start to say the same thing, even though we had never seen it. This is a herd instinct. Yoga begins from the following statement: we live in the plane of the logic laws, we live in the plane of the Karma, we live in the plane of the cause and the consequence. So all of our results that we have, we have generated ourselves. Moreover, if we want a good result, we first need to make some actions to achieve it, and only then we will get it.

Example: I often hear from people: "I want to find a career, make my business, I am tired to do nonsense." I ask them: "Well, you want to find your profession, but what are you doing for it?" Answer: "I do nothing, sit and wait, and hope when it fall on me from the sky." I say: "Well, you would have to make and send some forms, some CVs, that you want to find such job. Maybe you yourself don’t even know what you want. Maybe a potential employer will look at your data and understand, that you are suitable to become the head of the company.» But we do nothing, we just sit and wait, but the result does not come, and we begin to say: "Oh, I have no luck!"

Well, we must expect it. We live in the plane of logicality, there are no results without a reason, there are no consequences without a cause. But for some reason we think that we are some kind of special. Frankly, many people have a mess in their heads, though they consider themselves very sane, very consistent and punctual. But they do nothing or do the opposite, and then they get the result that they do not like. Instead of considering the bad result and tracing why it arose, the person starts to blame some external forces in his or her misfortune.

What is the initial idea of Karma Yoga? Karma Yoga tries to bring to your mind that as long as you live in the plane of Karma (we still live in this plane!), if we want a result, we have to make some actions to get it. It does not happen another way. Unfortunately, this elementary truth does not reach us. It is elementary, it's like two times two. Why is it happening this way? Why such a simple truth does reach our minds? Karma Yoga explains that before we got the human body, we have lived in numerous bodies of animals. And the animals use their mind partially, but mostly they use their instinct of self-preservation, procreation and so forth. And now, we have already received the human body, but the habits of animal lifestyle have remained at a large extent.

Example: A dog or cat sometimes can act logically. If the dog buried the bone, then the dog will return to the place and dig out the bone, because it would be logical to look for it there. But a dog cannot think about few next few years. I can hardly imagine a dog that will think: "How am I going to live after five years, what will they feed me, what the weather will be? "

And we, unfortunately, need to understand that we bring much from the life in the bodies of animals. We do some unconscious actions, thoughts and motives. We are taken into different directions. Sometimes we turn out the glimmers of our mind at work because otherwise you will be fired. But many sides of our life are similar to the animal life. And we need to stop it and thoroughly review each our action, each our motivation, every our act. Yoga is not asking you to review everything and change everything starting from tomorrow. Yoga teaches us to go another way: acknowledge it, be conscious about it.

Example: Now I am doing something, I do not know why. It is not logical, but I usually do this way, I am not stopping, and it is bringing me in some direction. You do not need to resist, you need to mark inside: I did logical thing here, but here it was illogical. That is, you must constantly take this into account. Do not resist the illogic and permanently mark. Yoga says, that you need to be honest with yourself. I remember the words of the character of the film "Ordinary Miracle": "Yes, ancestor’s spirit of my mother’s line has woken up inside me, and I will splash out, break the dishes, kick up a row." He warned everybody to be ready. So something sometimes wakes up inside us. Some beast can wake inside us and we can be in a wild fit of rage, but we understand that it is bad, not logical to do so. We show our emotion now, and the result will be negative.

Yoga does not dictate you to restrain at any cost. Yoga says that you need to notice: "Yes, indeed, I cannot stop myself". Or vice versa: "Here I succumbed to the opinion of the crowd and agree with idea that I don’t know at all. And there is the first part of Karma Yoga. It is not possible to go further without this part. We all need to reach a level of logic.

The logic may be veiled.

And there is another point in this aspect, and it is purely emotional moment: the more we begin to understand this law of logic, the more dreary and mechanistic will be the world in our mind. And we will think that we are robots ourselves. And do you know who often faced such situation? - Very successful businessmen.

Example: I had a chance to talk to quite interesting people. If you remember there were no rich people officially in the USSR. And when new trends started to rise, some people got very rich. It was in the early 90-ties, it was a time of chaos and disorder. I spoke with a gentleman who had already managed to climb financially. And he did not steal, he did not privatize, he came up with the idea. He told me one thing: "You know, everything is logical in our country." I said: "But how is it? You see, a judge does not judge, law enforcement agencies cover bandits… It is nonsense." When we look from the outside, we see nonsense and chaos in our country, we see that people elect people who have nothing to do with responsibility and ability to be in power. But this person looks from other side, from the position of the financial instruments. He sees what we do not see, and all the events presented themselves extremely logical for him. Why do we see the same artist on TV all the time? Because there is a financial flow behind this artist. And I said: "Lord, what a mess we have!" And he said: "No, we have the order." I said: "What illogical situation!" And he said: "No, it is very logical!" Everything is logical, but logic is hidden. Example: There is brawl, fight on the street. Is it a manifestation of illogic? No, it is the logic, it is simply veiled.

That is, if you know that everything is logical, you know how to manage it. Everybody has a button, we just need to find it. There is a button in each situation. We must know where "to oil" somebody, where to press and push to get the result. And indeed, if we do so everything, it works. But a man gets cynic as a flip side of this process. Suddenly a man begins to believe that there is nothing spiritual. If the person knows how to get much money, then things are going smoothly. But Yoga says that it is not true. Although yoga agrees that everything is logical and the vast number of problems can be solved by rigid and soulless methods.

The laws of logic are the first thing to apply.

Sometimes thick pocket of money can solve these kinds of problems, which cannot be solved by the other ways during a lifetime. And this situation generates cynicism, it is a very dangerous trend, and we will discuss later why. It is a typical American approach. The Americans one day understood that many things can be solved with the help of financial policy, with money.

Example: Americans had no a science, but a science was in the old Europe. The war began, atomic bombs appeared. The America suddenly realized that it needed a bomb for security. But to get the bomb, there is need for science. What did they do? They did not have their own scientists, they simply bought them worldwide. And really, we admire what a good medicine in America is now, what a strong science... Indeed, all outstanding scientists work in America, and half of them are foreigners, even more. America has solved this question very simply and evidenced such logic: if there is a goal, then there is a plan to achieve the goal, and there is money for it. And for them things work like that. And in this aspect, we should try to learn from them.

There is a lot of things to be learned from America. Some problems can be solved easily with the money, even if it seems to us that some problems cannot be solved. I want to emphasize this. So some people see yogis as Santa Claus, who talks about something spiritual, sublime, smiling, keeping the garlands on their necks, doing nothing, because everything will come by itself. No, my friends, the yogis primarily are people who see reality. And the first reality is knowing that many problems can be solved without referring to a higher power, nor to divination, or to predictions, but to a very specific and logic actions. And it is the funny thing, that ninety-eight percent of the problems that we face in our life, we can solve by logic quite easily and elegantly. But at the same time Yoga says that there are problems that cannot be solved by the approach of logic. There are problems that never will be solved with help of money, but very little of them. This is a very special things and a man has to think about them later. But most of the problems that make the person suffers, can be solved by the logic or consistency.

So, Karma Yoga encourages us to realize that we still live in the plane of the logic the first of all, we live in the plane of Karma, where the cause goes first, and then the consequences go. Karma Yoga encourages us to be guided primarily the laws of logic in our decision making, and only then to be guided by some other laws. For example, sometimes I hear: my intuition told me or it opened to me, or forecasters predicted to me. Yoga says that this is a very slippery way. Yoga does not say that there is no other ways except the logic. There is still Super Logic that does not contradict the logic on one hand, but on the other hand, it may appear as if this logic was broken. This is the case with a sheet of paper and a fan. The laws of logic should make a sheet of paper to fall down, it's one law. But if we have two laws banging their heads, then we get the result, what we want. By analogy, there are laws of the Super Logic, and our laws of logic are just a special case of these Super Logic laws. And when laws of the Super Logic interfere in the game of the life, they play the dominant role, but they do not violate the laws of logic, but merely complement them. For example, you ask the person: "Why have you done this?" And get a reply: "Because I had a revelation from above." And you see that this revelation of higher directly contradicts the logic, and also leads to the quite terrible result, that was not predicted. So it was not a revelation from above. Therefore, Yoga primarily teaches us not to flirt with such things, which we do not understand. And only when we analyze everything by the logic, only then the second stage of our mind may be turned and we act by the Super Logic laws. But Super Logic, revelations from above or any miraculous manifestations never contradict the logic, but complement them.

Therefore, we must be guided by logic first of all.