How Do We Decide the Right Thing to Do?

0:00 In a simple world, in a simple situation, decision making is generally fast and easy. The consequences, whatever they turn out to be, are usually not considered to be related to some past action we have may have made. We reach a path in a forest that branches off in 2 directions. We choose one and come to whatever the end point of that path happens to be. Choices are limited, decisions are somewhat random, and the results are whatever they turn out to be. As our lives become more complex, as we are inundated with all kinds of facts, factors, concerns, and potential consequences, the choices become harder. The ability to make the right decision gets clouded over by the magnitude of choices.

1:00 For example, in the game of chess, with a board of 64 squares alternating light and dark, and each person having 16 pieces starting from a set position, it has been calculated that there are only 20 moves for the white pieces at the outset of the game. However, after each side has made one move, there now can be up to 400 possible moves. After two moves each 197,742 possible moves, and after three moves each there are 121 million possible positions.

1:47 A game between beginners obviously does not see this many options, and clearly even for chess masters the options narrow down considerably as some of the moves are nonsensical to anyone versed in the game. This example illustrates, however, the increasing complexity of decision making in our lives as we get more and more factual input and get bombarded with the ideas and opinions of others, as well as the context of our own past experience. How then, can we possibly know what is the right decision?

2:28 In the game of chess? There is a winner and a loser, or else the players reach a stalemate where neither side can win. The result becomes clear as the game progressives, but the correctness of any specific move or series of moves along the way is subject to second guessing and doubt. Could things have turned out differently? Could there have been a better sequence of moves to win the game more quickly or easily avoid a loss or a draw? The more complex the system, the less certain we can be of the outcome. An individual told of his own experience facing a serious case of amoebic dysentery during his travels.

3:14 He asked local associates for advice about getting medical care. Should he go to the allopathic Dr. He was a Westerner, trained in dealing with health issues through a Western lens. Or should he try something else? Ayurveda, homeopathy, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, Western herbalism, special diets, sound healing, red light therapy. Eventually an individual he highly respected advised him to go to the local homeopathic Doctor Who had a reputation for curing such illnesses quickly.

3:55 He had always heard that homeopathy had no active ingredients, that it was just tiny sugar pills, and he was suffering from a severe, real and unceasing, extremely painful and relentless disease condition. He was assured that what he had heard was not the case, rather that homeopathy was in many cases the best choice, working on a subtle vibrational level that other forms of medicine could not reach. He went to the homeopath and after answering dozens of seemingly random questions, the doctor gave him a specific remedy and a tiny sugar pellet and told him to dissolve it under his tongue and that within about 15 minutes the intestinal motions would cease completely.

4:47 He was amazed when he found that the doctor was right. We have little or no understanding about the real complexity of our body, our lives, our relationships, our society, the economy, the environment, and we tend to make decisions based on our own short term understanding and our limited information set. This occurs in small things and big things in our lives and we wind up with a decidedly mixed result, the mother notes quote. In the other case, if you have made it a habit to study and observe, you have before you all the little things of life which recur constantly.

5:35 You don't want to live mechanically by a kind of habit. You want to live consciously, making use of your will. Well, at every minute you are facing a problem which you can't solve. I mean purely physically. Take a certain difficulty you have in your body what we call a disorder, which is expressed by an uneasiness or an indisposition. It is not an illness, it is an indisposition. It is an uneasiness. There's something that's not working very well. Then if you don't have the psychic knowledge which makes you directly do the thing which ought to be done, and without any argument, if you want to refer the thing to your mind and to what you consider to be the knowledge you have, then take a case which lies in the field of medicine.

6:28 That is, should I do this or that, take this medicine or that, change the diet, take this food or that, then you look, if you have never known more than a certain number of primary principles, your choice is very easy. But if by chance you have studied a little and know if it be only the different medical systems of treatment, they're the systems of different countries, the different systems of medicines, there are, you know, allopathy, homeopathy, this one and that. So one tells you one thing, another tells you another. You know, people who have told you don't do this, do that, others who say above all, don't do this, do that, and so on. And so you find yourself facing the problem and ask yourself, well, with all that, what do I know myself? What am I going to decide?

7:28 I know nothing. End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the psychic being soul, its nature, mission and evolution. Section 2. Role, function and action of the psychic. Page 63.