00:00I would like to ask your advice for decision making. How rational should we be and exactly
00:08in how the consequences of our actions? And for instance, when we need to make important
00:14decisions in our life, like between work-life balance, how much weight or how much importance
00:20should we give to our career or financial stability incomes in comparison to a family,
00:28for instance. So if you could give some advice and also if you have written or if you could
00:34recommend us one of your books on this topic. If I have understood, then the question is asking
00:42about the role of rationality in decision making. Is that so? And then there was an add-on.
00:52We will take that later on. How important is it to be rational while making decisions?
00:59There is no other way. I am assuming that when you say that we need to be rational, you are
01:13emphasizing the role of discretion over instinct, reason over emotion. Is that what we broadly
01:30mean by rationality? Right? Reason over emotion and discretion over instinct. There is no other
01:41way to decide. One has to be not quite rational but completely rational. Let the intellect go all the
01:55distance. Let the mind exercise itself to its fullest potential when you are deciding. Let no decision come
02:08from the blind wave and the primitive momentum of physical and mental tendencies, intuitions, instincts, etc.
02:24It's just that the reasonability has to be honest. And if one is honest, honestly intellectual, then the
02:46intellect will come to see its own limits. Exercise your intellect, your reasoning capability, your analytical
02:58capability fully. And when you apply these fully, then the very application of the mind brings the mind to its own
03:10boundary. And that is what brings some humility into us. And that is what leaves the space open for a higher
03:24kind of decision making in which the mind has done everything that the mind can. Now the mind has nothing more to
03:36offer. And after that, if a decision comes from somewhere else, then there is nobody left to contest that decision.
03:49You see, only two possibilities are there. One, one applies the intellect.
03:55And the decision is to be taken very much within the zone of the intellect. Is X greater than Y? You do not need to
04:10transcend your intellect to decide on such a thing. Right? You need no mystical powers or spiritual insight
04:23to solve an equation in mathematics or a question that just involves material factors.
04:35So that would be one kind of mistake where that which needs to be addressed purely materially
04:43is addressed by way of intuition or emotion. And we often make that mistake.
04:47If one is designing a machine or a flyover or anything material, then why should there be
05:01a role for anything other than reason in the entire process? The whole thing has to be utterly and
05:11absolutely reasonable. Anything else that comes into the decision making process will only dilute it and corrupt it.
05:24And on the other hand, there are matters that involve stuff that is not quite material.
05:32For example, contentment. Now contentment is not something three-dimensional.
05:43Contentment is not something that you can assign a color or weight
05:53or situate in a place
05:55or know by its material properties. Therefore, when it comes to contentment,
06:05then reason has to be transcended. Transcended, not avoided. There is a difference between transcending
06:16reason and keeping reason aside. Transcending reason implies using reason to its fullest capacity
06:30only to see that in certain matters in life, reason does not suffice.
06:36Matters like contentment, I said. Matters like joy. Matters like love. Matters like rightness.
06:54But even in these matters, you have to be first of all, as reasonable as you can.
07:08Which means you must know the facts of the case. You must know how one thing relates to the other.
07:16And after all that was possible to be done intellectually has been done.
07:27Then you let the decision come from a place probably beyond the mind or the intellect.
07:37But in any kind of decision making, first of all,
07:40my submission is that the mind has to be respected and the respect to the mind
07:53connotes nothing other than complete utilization of the mind.
08:10So,
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