Are you Slave to your mind or Is mind your Slave
तो जगत् वशीभूत
Are you a slave of your mind
Or
Is your mind your slave….
Control of Mind -> Victory over the world
The literal meaning of the word Enlightenment means “Discover the Self” You don’t need to tread outside to discover your own self.. You need to transcend into your own self to make this discovery. We can find our true nature only by travelling inside our own self. Meditating into a forest, leaving your own family is not required to achieve this. Instead, you need to travel into your own inner mind.
This is a journey in which you strive to understand the true nature of God who is hidden inside your own mind and is driving this creation.
In the external physical world, before starting on any trip, we generally make plans and try to get some basic background information to ease our journey. Similarly, it is necessary to obtain some prior information before starting to tread into our inner mind. Inner mind means inside our own mind.
Although we have been told innumerable times since our childhood to apply our mind to work or to study, have you ever tried to find out how to actually apply our mind? The funny thing is that the mind itself poses the biggest resistance at the onset of this particular journey. We desire to enter our mind, but our mind does not allow us to proceed.
The mind is such a major obstacle that most people find it almost impossible to control it. The mind does not stay still even for a single moment. The real truth is that we spend all our life under the control of our mind. We do not feel bad in publicly stating the desires of our mind. We feel very happy if work gets done according to our mind, and any contrary action makes us sad.
We dance to the tunes of our mind
This mind treats us as its slave and makes us dance to its wishes like a stage monkey. We do feel our specific existence somewhere within us, but we allow the mind to beat us like a slave. We spend our entire life dancing to its tunes, but this mind does not allow us to rest even for a single moment.
It is faster than the speed of light, and its depth is deeper than the ocean abyss. One end of our mind is connected to our senses, while the other end is connected to our memory. Whatever we see from our eyes, listen from our ears, speak from our mouths, smell from our nose or touch from our skin, passes through our subconscious and continue to accumulate in the form of memories and experience in the mind.
If we pay a little attention, we will certainly find our mind roaming around our experiences and memories. Or we will find it transcending around the results of our senses eg some specific scenes, sound, smell or touch. Our mind will not focus on anything which we have never seen, heard, smelt or touched.
Actions germinate in mind
For example, if we utter the name of “Rose” flower, then immediately a picture of rose flower flashes through our mind, and we can recall all the information details which are already registered in our memory conscience. However, if someone utters the name “Twase”, then our mind will be absolutely blank since our memory does not contain any information about any details or experience about these Japanese flower. So your mind will not be able to focus on “Twase”.
In summary, our mind revolves around just two items – first is the name and second is the picture. We store every object, substance or person in our memory either as a visual image or as a named item. Thus our mind can easily recall the visual upon hearing the name , or recall the name upon viewing the visual.
Now, as this principle becomes more clear, we realize that the first obstacle in the journey to inner mind is our “mind” itself. Our mind is a very complex entity. We are slave to this mind of ours. However, if we enslave this mind, then nothing in this whole wide world will be out of our reach. Upon enslaving, we can also force our mind to become our friend. However it is important to free oneself from the slavery of the mind, and to enslave this mind itself.
We cannot start our journey to the inner mind without accomplishing this. But how to achieve this? Is it possible to enslave our mind within a day?
Our senses are the servants of the mind. They want to do whatever the mind wants to do. The mind is like the Indra. It keeps on sending wishes-desires like “Menaka” to disturb the penance of Sage Vishwamitra. Have you ever wondered why a God like Indra needed to disturb the penance of a sage like Vishwamitra? The demons do such deeds. Indra was the king of Gods. Why did he need to do all this?
The Indra i.e. our mind wishes to establish its control over our conscience-intellect. It does not want the intellect to attain freedom and control it. Therefore it sends desires like Menaka. Menaka was a servant of Indra and Vishwamitra became a subject of her desires.
These stories are true, mysterious facts are encapsulated within them. This mind does not let us concentrate or focus on a particular point for a long duration. It releases new kinds of desires and wishes. Our excessive desires hinder our progress. There is a difference between our basic needs and infinite desires. The cause of our sorrow is non-fulfillment of desires. The mind germinates the desires, and it also causes us to feel sad on non-fulfillment of them. The more desires one has, the more dissatisfied and sad that person will be.
Control Desires – Through Will-Power
The purpose of stating the above facts does not imply that we should not have any desire or that it is a bad habit to have a desire. However, we should control ourselves from having excessive desires. Creation of too many desires weakens our “will-power”. A strong will-power can easily enable us to accomplish even impossible-looking tasks. We can achieve any goal through a combination of strong will-power and high motivation.
The ever wondering mind makes us waste lot of energy. The force which can be generated by focusing this energy is called as Motivation.
The motivation of a person automatically increases manifold in special circumstances of intense desires.
Under normal circumstances, it is complex to concentrate the mind to a single point. However, it is not that difficult, if we decide to accomplish it. Some people can control their mind easily. Curiosity and inquisitive nature is enough to accomplish it. The curiosity leads us to every type of information, the absence of which, causes an illusion of “ignorance”.
Light – Termination of Darkness
The real truth is that there is nothing called ignorance. We generally consider darkness and light as two separate entities. However, in reality the darkness has no existence. We feel darkness only in the absence of light. Darkness does not exist. The place which does not receive light, is known as a dark place. Similarly there is nothing called “ignorance”.
“Knowledge” i.e. the absence of information about any topic causes us to feel ignorant. The ignorance vanishes immediately upon receipt of correct knowledge, as darkness vanishes upon lighting a lamp.
This is also the principle of keeping detailed information in the mind. Control over mind is mandatory for journey into the inner mind. It is possible only when we have enough knowledge about the mind i.e. when we become aware of all information related to the mind.
Mind-Intellect-Memory-Ego
Our inner-mind is divided into four parts – Mind, Intellect, Memory and Ego.
All of these four entities are extremely subtle. They are interconnected so intricately that it is difficult to differentiate between them in absence of “knowledge”. Generally mind controls our intellect. It utilizes the intellect to get the senses to perform various actions. Our senses do not perform any action which has not been instructed by the intellect knowingly-unknowingly. Here we have used the term “knowingly-unknowingly” because we perform a number of actions without involving the intellect. We act directly on instructions from the mind.
The intellect is very powerful. It can easily distinguish between right and wrong. It can easily decide between “What to do” and “what not to do”. The intellect can immediately analyze a situation within a fraction of a moment to provide accurate information about the future implications and consequences. However our mind does not let it operate properly. The mind generates and transmits so many thoughts to the intellect that it gets confused about which thought to choose to act upon.
The Intellect is Yours. The Mind is yours too
In such cases, the intellect instructs the senses to perform actions without doing any analysis. Obviously every action results in corresponding consequences. The mind knows that the intellect will not act on some thoughts, and therefore it does not invoke those thoughts. For example, generally nobody’s mind will generate a thought to jump into a well. However, if the mind becomes very sad, then it can suspend the analyzing capability of the intellect. In such cases, the intellect also becomes a slave of the mind, and can force a person to jump into the well.
Ego is the best friend of mind. On one hand, the mind generates unnecessary thoughts in excessive amounts, to tire out the intellect. Secondly, the ego suppresses the intellect to such an extent that the intelligence forgets its own existence. The person starts thinking only about “I, Me and Myself”. The memory is linked to the mind, intellect and ego. However, it has a totally different function. Whatever we do, the memory records the action in a subtle form.
The function of the memory is to record each and every action. Everything gets recorded in a subtle form of name, visual or cognitive-experience. Whenever our mind, intellect or arrogance express requirement for a particular recollection, our memory provides a vivid illustration within a moment, like a movie.
During slumber, when our senses are inactive, these memories express as dreams. Whatever task we repeatedly perform, it gets sharply impressed within our memory, like a deep engraving on a stone. The memory repeatedly sends this impression to the mind, or rather the mind keeps obtaining these impressions from the mind, and gets them converted into actions through the intellect. Such actions are termed as the habit.
Retain control with yourself –
Thus the combination of mind-intellect-memory and ego act as the two wheels of a bicycle, which continue to perform actions by working in tandem. We should learn to control the pace of our mind to recognize and comprehend this pace. We can easily ride on this bicycle through our intellect, once we learn how to control it. The human species is the most excellent of all creatures, since no other animal species possess such a strong intellect. This intellect serves as a slave to the mind in absence of knowledge. However, we can enslave the mind through the intellect after acquiring the knowledge. We can even peer into the intriguing mysteries of inner mind through this process.
Perform Kriya Yoga Sadhana to control your mind.