GEMS FROM THE
VISION AND PRACTICE
BEACH 10: HINDUISM FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Wave 10:
Empire of the Mind
Man versus Mind :
Mind is the meeting point of science, religion
and philosophy. It is the human mind that understands scientific phenomena of
nature and coordinates with nature to work out man’s ‘conquests’ of natural
phenomena. It is in Man’s mind that religion is born, when he needs internal solace
and satisfaction. It is with the same mind that man is able to abstract the
concrete world before him and go into speculations of philosophy. But with all this it is the mind itself that
is man’s greatest enemy,
[‘mana
eva manuShyANAM sharIrastho mahAripuH’
probably from
Manu-smRRiti]
because Man can never say with finality that he is in
control of his mind. Hindu Vedanta therefore, placing a great emphasis on the need
to control the mind, dwells repeatedly
on efforts and strategies for controlling it, even partially. Any effort made
in this direction, says the Gita, saves one from great disaster.
[‘svalpam-apyasya dharmasya trAyate mahato
bhayAt’
B.G. II – 40]
Intellect versus Ego :
Mind is
made up of four
constituents:
·
The first is the receiving mind, which receives all
impulses and impacts from the external world. It just receives, like an
antenna.
·
What sifts these pieces of
information and analyses them is the buddhi, the intellect. It is the discerning function
of the mind.
·
There is cittaM, the storage part of the mind,
·
The agent of all these
activities is the ahamkAra part of the mind, which by
its very nature possesses authority over all actions of the other parts of the
mind and therefore constitutes the EGO of man.
These four parts are together called the mind,
very often in the literature, without care being taken to distinguish the
different functions. The physical framework through which all of them work is
of course the brain. B ut just as the body is the physical basis for the soul
which is a subtle entity ‘residing’ in it, so also the brain is only a physical
basis for the mind. Mind is too subtle to be put into any physical
framework. But the mind has a power, just as Godhead has a power which is
generally called Shakti. This power of the mind is mostly the power of the
intellect to decide on a course of action, to fight within itself its own pulls
and pushes, mostly prompted, influenced and monitored by the other part of the
mind, viz., ahamkAra. This power is Will-power. It is the power of
the will of Man.
Will versus Fate :
At a crucial point in the discourse of the Bhagavat-Gita,
Arjuna wails, (cf. VI – 34): ‘Restless indeed is the mind, O
CanchalamM hi manaH krishna pramAthi balavad-dRRiDhaM /
tasyAhaM nigrahaM manye vAyoriva
suduShkaraM //
Arjuna has spoken for all of us. And
asamshayam mahAbAho mano durnigrahaM
chalaM /
abhyAsena tu kaunteya vairAgyeNa ca
gRRihyate //
The Will of man must be made more supreme
than the mind. Everywhere
in the Upanishads the ultimate appeal is to the will and not to the intellect. They
would have us not only understand, but do, that is, realize God. This requires
an action by one’s own will, to start making the effort. The sensations,
thoughts, images and facies are all in the mind; but if the will-power is
exercised properly with discrimination, all of them can be monitored and
channelised. It is not as if man is a helpless creature as a leaf in the storm
or a feather in the wind. Man’s will has an element of
complete freedom. It is the power which enables him to act in directions
opposite to his spontaneous tendencies (VasanAs).
In other words, he can pilot the ship of his personality against his
accumulated character and thus control his own future. In this sense Man is the architect of his own fate. Inevitably and ultimately man’s will must
prove stronger than fate, because it is his own past will which created his present
fate.
Restraint versus Resistance
It is not enough to just observe the mind in
its normal planes of consciousness. Our will-power is capable of controlling
the pulls of the sub-conscious mind also. The normal mind must be taught to
restrain (through the intellect) its own vagaries, with the aim of gaining
supreme mastery oiver itself and of ultimately rising above itself to the
superconscious state. The villain of the piece is of course the ahamkaara part of the mind.
There is a general misconception that control
of the mind, exercise of dispassion etc. are austere and forbidding.
It is not so. There is a certain joy and freedom in all these disciplines. The
more we master our lower instincts the more we will find ourselves lions of
happiness. There is a resistance, no doubt, by the mind. In fact, this
resistance itself is nothing but will. To meet this is a challenge, indeed, the challenge. It is necessary to take the challenge at some
point of time, if not in this life, in one of our human lives. The sooner the
challenge is met, the better, for the spiritual journey of the soul.
To thus change oneself, one has to look at oneself, observe and
experiment. This is what is called enquiry followed by practice. That this is
possible is what has been taught by all the great spiritual and religious
teachers of the world. All self-help books dwell on this in great detail. We
shall look at it in the context of religion, particularly, Hinduism.
Do it yourself
The mind is certainly meshed up with all other
components of the self, like ahamkaara but fortunately the mind itself has the
capacity and the role to take the lead in changing the lower self into the
higher self. By overcomin g desire, vanity, violence and untruth, by its own
efforts, the normal mind with discretion as master, and an exercise of
will-power, can train the lower self to rise above its barbarian nature and
rise in spirituality. Purity of mind is nothing but the state of being filled
with divine consciousness. This is
where Vedanta helps us to
approach the problems of life with clarity and firmness. It helps us loosen our
spiritual ignorance and ultimately destroy it. This is what exactly the word
‘upanishat’ stands for.
For more on Upanishads, go to
The Gita also lays emphasis on self-exertion
for the sake of self-improvement.
uddhared-Atman-AtmAnaM
B.G. VI – 5
Divine sight does not mean seeing God in flesh
and blood but seeing the One Divinity as both the material and the efficient
cause of the world. A logical consequence of this would be to be able to see in
every other person a reflection of one’s own self.
Atmaupamyena sarvatra samaM
pashyati yo’rjuna
sukhaM vA yadi vA dukhaM sa yogI
paramo mataH
B.G. VI -32
He who sees with equality everything in the image of the self
Whether it be grief or it be happiness, him
I hold, O Arjuna, to be the supreme Yogi
This equanimity is the goal. To move towards
the goal individuals have to adjust themselves to one another. The process of
adjustment, the changing of habits, begins with the family and gradually
expands comprising the community, the nation, and finally the whole of
humanity.
Die, mind
Habits can be changed only by creating new
habits. These new habits have to come from a spiritual discipline. The usual reaction to the imposition of a spiritual discipline is
to say: ‘I am not in a mood to practise them. I will do them only on my own
terms, not when told by somebody or forced by circumstances’. But the very
moment you say this you have sacrificed your will to be dictated by moods and
desires.
To live in subservience to the calls and appetites of othe
outer world is the origin of all sins.
Such
subservience contributes to 'inhuman' and 'undivine' vAsanAs piling up in the mind. From vAsanAs to
thoughts and from thoughts to actions is a very familiar chain. To break it,
one has to substitute the evil vAsanAs by divine
vAsanAs . When we
keep on pouring
the clear water of the thought of God in to the reservoir of the mind, we
naturally dilute the impurities in it. Eventually the divine thoughts will
completely fill up the mind, hopefully. This is the spiritual self-discipline
needed. This is what strengthens the will.
When once the attachment to the thought of God
sets in, in stead of thinking about our own weaknesses, our heritage, our
environment, our training, we start integrating our personality by means of a
process that exploits the lessons of religion, philosophy and psychology. It is
the conviction of all religions that the only way to overcome the vagaries,
pulls and pushes of the subconscious mind is to obey the psychology of
religion. A complete transformation of the mind in all its awareness levels,
including the subconscious zone is what is taught by the psychology of
religion. The lessons from the psychology of Hinduism, for instance, would
require one to
have the
intellect as the
driver of this horse-drawn vehicle,
the body,
with the
senses being the
horses,
to hold the
reins of the
horses
with the mind as the whip and pilot of the vehicle,
not where the horses would go,
but where discretion would want to go.
This is
the meaning of the famous quote from Katha Upanishat (3.3):
AtmAnaM rathinaM viddhi sharIraM ratham-eva tu
/
buddhiM to sArathiM viddhi manaH pragrahaM eva ca //
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© Copyright V. Krishnamurthy 15 April 2005