The Mysterious Role of Mind
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Swami Sivananda once said that the mind is a wall that separates man from God. You will have to break down the wall to attain the divine. Spiritual masters say that the mind is a wonderful gift by which one has to seek and find God. It is a mysterious instrument, and one has to find one's own formula to deal with it advantageously.
Big Storehouse
The normal human mind has deeply embedded impressions and tendencies called vasanas that are full of tamas (inertia) and rajas (activity). It has a distaste for higher divine principle, and such a mind becomes a barrier, particularly in spiritual progress. But a mind awakened by spiritual practices which is full of sattva reflects the inherent divinity and becomes a link with the divine. The mind thus stands in between the physical aspect of human nature and the higher spiritual state, and it has the potential to become a block or a passage.
On our part, we should thank the Supreme Power for giving a precious human life with a versatile body-mind intellect apparatus, and pray to Him to transform the mind from its dual nature into a purely positive factor to realise the lower and higher ends of life, referred to as dharma-artha-kama and moksha.
Conquering the Mind
The conquest of mind has been regarded as the greatest conquest by Spiritual quest lies in analysing our mind and its characteristics philosophers. Buddha once told his disciples that one who had conquered the mind had indeed conquered the world, and advised them to become light unto themselves - Atma deepo bhava. This is a reflection of the dhyana sloka in Bhagavad Gita that exhorts us to light the lamp of knowledge. The prerequisite for this is controlling the mind through repeated practice and dispassion as stressed in the Gita. Our scriptures proclaim that man is a spiritual entity (atma) with a gross physical body, a subtle body comprising vital, mental, and intellectual parts, and a subtler (causal) body that is the source of mind and mechanism of thought process. The mind is one of the cosmic principles that became projected as a phenomenal universe, and the human mind is an individualised nucleus of the cosmic universal mind. It becomes a medium to express all impressions accumulated deep within, through experiences over several births. Mind precedes the birth of the human body, and it cannot be equated with the brain.
Mind and body belong to different planes, and they are related only so long as the body lasts. The body is a receptacle through which the mind manifests in the form of thoughts, and feelings through different centres in the brain.
The objective of these perceptions should indeed be not just to deal with the phenomenal world outside, but to dive deep within and evolve. Mind is a supra-physical aspect of the human individual, subtler to the body, but grosser to the spirit (soul). Mind is a subtler matter that is intangible, invisible, and incomprehensible, and it pervades the whole body.
The mind-stuff has three characteristics: it has always the tendency to move outward, away from the centre; it readily objectifies itself, and it is ever restless in a state of fluctuation. Each human mind is unique and the seeker has to carry out a study of one's own mind to cleanse it from various afflictions. As the mind is cleansed, many new and higher aspects of one's own self emerge that usually remain latent. In the waking state, the mind is located in the astral body in the centre corresponding to the physical space between eyebrows (ajna chakra); in deep sleep state, it is located in the astral body in the centre corresponding to heart (anahata chakra); and in the dream state, it is located in the astral body in the centre corresponding to neck in the physical body (visuddhi chakra).
Dual Role
The mind plays a mysterious dual role, and it is both at the giving and receiving end. It is both the initiator of the activity and the recipient of all experiences. First, an idea arises in the mind, it transforms into thought, then intellect which is the determining faculty, decides and gives order through ego to the body senses, the sensory stimulation going to the brain as a perception. The ego then presents it to the intellect which makes a meaning out of perception, and formulates it into a concept. This is experienced either as a like or a dislike, and the mind stores it as a dormant seed deep within.
Our scriptures describe the process of perception and knowledge beyond mind and intellect, attributing to an entity as a thinker beyond thought. All experiences are deemed to be an educative process that truly brings inner transformation, taking one closer to one's true self beyond all adjuncts.
Our thoughts, feelings, sentiments, and emotions of the present are thus building blocks of the future.
Choosing the right type through our life is a process of spiritual unfoldment and evolution. We are in a state of self forgetfulness of submerged awareness. One can come out of this state of 'self dementia' through the righteous use of the physical body and the mind instrument gifted by God, so as to proceed to a state of self-awareness.
The mind is the key and the body is subservient to it. This is a Yoga pathway practice. Vedanta teaches the other extreme of renouncing the body and the mind apparatus at a certain point of spiritual practice, with the true self characterised by pure consciousness and bliss becoming self revealing. Both are complementary pathways.
- Jayant B Dave