The Dark Side of Social Media: How It's Ruining Young Minds | Gurudev DSH #774
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Unfortunately, we have not learned anything to improve our vibration. So you may have all talents, but your vibrations are not, it's not in harmony. You hardly make friends. And even if you make friends, you're hardly able to sustain them. All right, guys, got Gurudev, Sri Sri, Ravi Shankari today. Thanks for having me at your facility. It's a beautiful place. I was speechless when I walked in that main room. Beautiful. Thanks so much for being here today.

So I have a very young audience and I wanted to ask you as youngsters, we have so many desires, so many distractions these days. How do we know which desire to pursue? Well, you don't have to make much effort to it. The strongest will always pop up. That will be the forefront, right? Your strongest desire will prevail.

two things you need to know when you are tackling desires. One is the short-term gain, another is a long-term goal. You know? If you're hungry today, you need to go for a takeaway. Right? You can't stay, you can't say, I will grow my food. Right. But sometimes we need to grow our food so that in the long run we get our own mangoes in our own garden, right? We get our own apples, we get our own peaches. So,

Life is always the balance between the long-term and short-term goal. Right. I think a lot of people these days are living with a short-term mindset because of many things, but I think social media, a lot of people compare themselves to each other, right? Do you see that issue with young people these days? Yes. I see young people are so anxious today. They are worried about their acceptance. They're worried about what to choose for the future.

what career to take on, worried about the relationship issues. Confusion prevails in the mind. So you need to get out of the confusion. For that, you know, you need to take the course into your own breath.

And that's why you developed a breathwork technique. Yeah. I'm going to try it out tonight. I'm excited. Meditation and breathwork have been... Meditation and breathwork brings a lot of clarity, and it makes life more purposeful. You know, today, nearly 45% of America is facing a loneliness crisis. Wow. That's what I hear. But this is a very big number. See?

And to fill the loneliness, people do all sorts of things, you know. They just want to go to the bar and drink and just forget about, try to forget about things that bother you. Right. And get out of the loneliness. I would say they should try meditation and breathing. It just helps one to come out of that low feeling and feel very vibrant and...

happy, you know, in one's interaction and how... See, obviously you would like to be with person who is happy, who is bubbling with enthusiasm, who is creative, right? Not someone who is very worried or depressed or angry or upset and restless, right? So, you know, we convey more through our own vibrations.

Unfortunately, we have not learned anything to improve our vibration. Neither in school, nor at home. We don't know how to make our vibration more positive, more attractive, more pleasant and palatable. Right. They never teach that. That's not taught. Yeah. So you may have all talents, but your vibrations are not, you know, conducive.

It's not in harmony with others. You hardly make friends. And even if you make friends, you're hardly able to sustain them. Right. I struggled with that majority of my life. I was very lonely, had trouble making friends, a lot of mental stuff, anxiety. And they put me on medication.

It was a really rough time, but meditation and breath work actually helped me get out of it. Really, this is a real answer for it. We have been teaching these programs in 130 campuses around the U.S., now in college campuses, university campuses, and young people have found such huge benefit. Yeah, that's beautiful because these young people, they feel a lot of pressure. College is super expensive. Yeah.

And you should see this, you know.

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Young people who come are so full of joy, and anyone would love to be around that. Yeah, I'd love to. And a lot of these young people also struggle to find that purpose too, right? And you help them go within themselves to find that. That's powerful. We call this Sky Campuses in universities. Sky Breath workshops we do and stuff.

a lot of, you know, knowledge and wisdom and exercises and a lot of fun too. Usually people think meditation, spirituality, all this is something very serious for people who are out there, you know, maybe art for people who are above 60 or 50s. Yeah, yeah. In the 50s and 60s who have nothing to do, but art of living is not like that. It's,

We are giving the programs for young people and for kids in the schools so that their intuitive ability becomes better. You know, you want to, of course, you want to do well with your academics. Just imagine you have an intuition and you know which questions are going to come in the exams and what questions will be asked. And you prepare just for that by the end.

It's much less load on your head, right? - Much less stressful, yeah. A lot of people freak out during tests. - Yeah. - So you can train your intuition to predict the questions? - Absolutely. - Wow. - You can guess what questions you get, but I only tell them, don't use your intuition in Las Vegas. - Why not? In Vegas? Oh, because gambling? Making money off it? - Yeah. - Yeah, that makes sense.

So a lot of humans are pretty negative if we're being bluntly honest, right? I grew up in that environment and it was really tough getting out of it. What's your advice to reframe the mindset from negativity to positivity? Suppose you are given 10 compliments and one insult. What would you hold on to? The insult. The insult. Good. We don't know how to train our minds.

You know, when there are ten compliments, so what if one negativity mark comes our way? Right? So seeing life from a bigger context helps us. Again, here I would say we teach many technique and personality development programs and train the mind so that the mind does not latch on to the negativity, does not hang on to the past or worry about the future.

And it helps one to be in the present moment, vibrant, happy, and spread the happiness around. So it's all just vibrations, see? They're all vibrations. Right. And that needs to be attended. So just stay in the present. Yeah, that's good to know because I get thousands of comments every day and I just focus on the negative ones and it eats at me, you know? I should just focus on the present.

You, the hand breath work will help you. The breathing exercise that we say, Sudarshan Kriya, sky workshop, is tremendously helpful. See, many times you know this is good for you and simply you are unable to do it. Why?

Simply say habits also, you have some habits. You know that these habits are not good for you or healthy for you, but you continue those habits because you feel sort of helpless somewhere, you know? Right. This is the same with emotions. You're upset, you don't know how to get out of it. Grandmothers used to say, go to a corner and count ten. Today, even if you count one thousand, it doesn't seem to work. Yeah.

So, in all these situations, you need to see how your meditation, your breathing, all this can completely flip you around. From that negative, helpless, desperate, despondent mindset,

to empowered mindsets. Right. What is your process to control your emotions? A lot of people don't have full control over their anger or their sadness. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You know, your emotions, it's like they come like a storm. And you are just lost in it for some time. But if you do the breathing technique, the Sudarshan Kriya and meditation, it just takes hardly 10 minutes a day.

It just keeps you so centered. Wow. You are able to, you know, see all those emotions and just not get affected by them for that. We'll put the link below. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That really helps. Yeah. So I was watching your video just now and there was a quote that caught my eye. It said, stress is the cause of violence. Do you really believe that stress is what's causing all these wars and everything?

Of course. And one is stress, another is mistrust. And the third thing is about perceived threat from the others. You know, suddenly you feel that someone is your enemy and then you overreact. That is also one of the cause, you know. One of the cause, I would say, breaking down of communication.

You know, if people sit across the table, there's nothing that can, they cannot sort it out, right? Right. When that is missing, conflicts happen. Yeah, there's some big wars going on right now. They need you to step in there. Yeah. Yeah, of course, you know, the leaders who take big decisions, they have to have clarity in mind. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, they are,

I understand the leaders do have concern. They have to protect their territory, their people and all that. That is necessary. But, you know, I believe that dialogues should never be abandoned. Conflicts are come. It's natural for conflicts to come up in a society, in a family.

You see, you get into a tiff with your parents sometimes, with your pa's sometimes. All the time. Siblings sometimes. But, you know, there is always a way to, but when your connection is stronger than these conflicts, then, you know, you move on. Yeah. So we can raise everyone's vibration. There could be a time where there's no wars perhaps, right? Correct. That would be beautiful. Correct.

I wonder if that's ever happened in the existence of humans. Do you think there's a time there was? Oh yeah, yeah, we know. We have done several such peace initiatives in the world. We have done some work with the Colombian peace. Like 52-year war, right? Yeah, 52-year war stopped. Like that, we have many incidences we have done. How were you able to stop that 52-year war? Was it just a misunderstanding?

It's a nice story. I would like you also to look into that. The Falk and the Guru, there was a small documentary done by people and one more is coming now. But it's a very interesting moment we had, dialogue with those people, with the Falk and the terrorists, the so-called terrorists.

You see, inside every culprit, there is a victim crying for help. I look at that person, you know, if you talk to them, we have been working in prisons in Mustafa, there are more than 800,000 people in the prisons who have gotten in there because they could not control their emotions or they have erroneous understanding. They got into this prison

They did something which they shouldn't be doing. And when they got into the prison, then, you know, either they are regretting or they are preparing themselves to take a revenge when they come out. Right.

All these programs in the prisons, we have taught many for prison smart programs. It has tremendously helped them. That is much needed. Yeah. Because a lot of prisoners, I think it's almost 80% when they get out, they return. Yeah. And these people, I tell you, you must watch the changes that has happened in them. They're like kids. They're like children. They're like young people. Yeah.

And such a good heart they have, you see. Lack of education in these, on peace, on managing the emotions, managing the mind, has led people into such situations. That's incredible. Yeah, because a lot of people look down on prisoners. They don't give them a second chance, right? They should see that there is a good person hiding in them. And we have to bring that up, bring them up. Love it.

So I want to talk about death because there's a lot of questions there. I've lost a few ones, loved ones recently, and just a lot of mystery there. But you've done a lot of studying on death. So what happens after death? Death is a longer sleep. See, when you go to sleep and you don't know what, deep sleep, when you wake up, you know, you feel fresh again, right? The same way death, our body goes to sleep,

Our mind wakes up somewhere else in some other womb. So you're in a new body? Yeah, you get a new body. So reincarnation, right? Yeah. Got it. That'd be cool. And I've heard you mention that the soul can leave from multiple parts of the body. Yeah. And then, you know, the deepest impression in the soul becomes the cause for next birth. What do you mean by that? Okay, I can give you...

An exercise to do. If you can notice what's the last thought you have before falling asleep, and then notice what's the first thought you get when you wake up, you will find that it is the same one. Wow. Yeah. The last thought before you fall asleep and the first one you get in the morning. That means your mind holds on to those thoughts.

desires, your emotions, your thoughts, and then it just becomes dormant. And death also, same thing happens. And then when you're born, all these things again come up. That's why I'm so much against suicide. Suicidal tendency is lack of understanding about life force. You should never commit suicide. Really? Yeah.

You know, that's not going to solve you, solve anything at all for you. Wow. It doesn't solve. It's only magnifies and enhances your problems in the next lifetime. So whenever you get such tendency, I would say you need to empower your subtle body. You know, we all have three bodies, the physical body and the emotion and thoughts body that is a subtle body.

which is about one foot bigger than the current body. And then we have the causal body that's even bigger. So waking state, dreaming state, and sleeping state, we experience these three aspects of ourselves. So when our energy, our prana shrinks, that's when we get depressed. And this vibration shrinks further down, then you get suicidal tendencies. Right.

So what you need to do is increase your energy level, prana level. And that happens through breathing, a little bit of yoga, meditation, this thing. Then you feel very robust.

a subtle body and happy work. Such a simple shift because instead they're putting people on medication, which costs way more money. And they don't work afterwards. They seem to work in the beginning. The antidepressants stop working after some time. And they have a lot of side effects. Oh, tons. Yeah, I've lost a few really close people to suicide. So this hits deep with me.

No, I would tell them, please, whenever you have this tendency, just knock on the door of any one of the Art of Living centers or teachers nearby, and they'll fix you right away. Wow. How many locations do you have? We have all over. These days, you have also online, you can go and find out.

We have more than 2,000 teachers here in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, we have 35,000 art of living teachers, instructors. They will be by your side and help you. Powerful. I also saw you have the World Culture Festival. A million people live.

1.1 million. That's the biggest amount. Right as a national ball. Crazy. I'll be at the next one. 2028, right? Yeah, you must. Did you plan city yet? Yeah, we'll see where we should do it. Okay. Wow, that's beautiful. Why did you want to start that up, having those events? See, for me, the whole world is one family.

I feel that we have to bring people from all over the world. Most of the conflicts is because we don't know each other. And when there is a sense of belonging and bonding, then, you know, there is more celebration in life. Right.

So World Culture Festival creates that much-needed bonding. That's much-needed, yeah. I'm on social media a lot because of my job, and I see a lot of conflict, whether it's religion, genders, male versus female. So I love that you do that event. Yeah. You know, a few things bind people. One is music, another is food. There's cultural dance and programs like this, and science. So I say we should have a scientific mindset

and an artistic heart. Well done. What's next for you? What have you got working on? Oh, I have a lot of projects, you know. I will work on environments. I work on... There were rejuvenations in many parts of the world. Very conflict resolution. And I want to train more and more young people, youth, to be the teachers, to be instructors, to help others.

to get over the negative feelings and create more positivity in society. What do you think? I love it. Yeah. I welcome youths to come and have internship. We have academies here in North Carolina in the move where we time to time, twice or thrice a year, we invite interns. They can come, stay 15 days, 20 days, one month and

And they just get trained to bring more happiness and positivity in society. I love that. I love your mission. Final message for the millions of people, young people watching this? You know, you have the whole world in front of you. You own the world. You own it right away now. The future is very bright for you. Don't worry about the future. And you can make what you want to.

You are in an age of technology and science and also an age of humanism and spirituality where you can blossom from within and flourish and prosper from outside. All the best to everyone. Beautiful. I'm with you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for watching, guys. See you tomorrow. Bye.