Mind And Brain

The point represents the mind through which one may go downward on the ladder of evolution to the grosser level of existence or upward to the higher rungs that represent the higher levels of consciousness. Each triangle represents the number three. The inverted triangle represents the downward pull of matter while the other represents the upward pull towards the Divine.
This article aims to show how stress, tension and many illnesses are formed. The mind can be compared to a bucket of water in the depth of which there are mud and litter. When the water is calm and undisturbed, the mud and the litter remain at the bottom. There is neither any ripple nor dirty water and everything seems calm, cool and clean. However, if a single pebble or any object is thrown into the water, ripples will be created. If the ripples are big, depending on the size of the object thrown, the deposited mud and litter will be disturbed and will emerge on the surface. The water, which was cool, calm and placid, no longer appears so. Similarly is the mind of man. The mud and litter are the unconscious layers and the evil that they conceal in their depth. Let it be noted that when I say ‘evil’, I am not being moralist or religious, but simply bearing in mind the damage it causes to the body, heart and mind.

We experience the world mentally through our ten senses. These are firstly the five motor senses comprising of hands, feet, sexual organ, anus and mouth, and secondly, the five sensory organs through which we acquire knowledge, namely feeling, vision, taste, hearing and smell. Messages from the outer world have as media these senses. Once they reach the mind, our intelligence uses its discriminative power to react. For example, if I see a beautiful car, the image goes to my mind via the sight instrument, which consists of the eyes. The mind or the intellect will start reasoning using past knowledge: “This is a car, it is beautiful and runs fast.” In this way, daily events enter the mind through the senses and create impulses, which in turn do not touch the brain directly, but pass through the astral nerves of the astral body to affect the astral brain, and from there to the etheric body then to the brain. The impulse or the message that the mind sends to the physical brain is too powerful to be received directly. This could cause great damage to it.

Psychological as well as physical illnesses arise when impulses that emanate from the mind as feelings or thought-waves are not transformed or expressed. In such cases, the feelings or thought-waves, which are electrical and powerful impulses, are blocked in the nerves of the physical or subtle (etheric and astral) bodies, thereby causing much damage. Thus, the psychic layer of the person becomes blocked or suppressed and the latter will know a very difficult evolution or none at all. Most of the problems of the world today are based on that science. Sexual obsession, schizophrenia and many other illnesses are a result of suppressed emotions and thoughts. It has been proved scientifically that if a child who is plucking a flower is suddenly prevented from doing so (and this type of foolishness is normally done by parents!), that may result in cancer at a later age. This may appear foolish and ridiculous. In fact, by performing such a simple action, the child may have deployed much energy in the form of love, enthusiasm and other feelings. If all these are suppressed, then the impulses triggered for performing the action will not return to their source, but will be blocked in the physical or the subtle bodies. Try to imagine how many feelings, thoughts and desires have been suppressed in us from birth! And mystics say that we have been carrying the burden of these blockages since many births.

This has made our body, mind and heart sensitive from one angle. If much anger has been suppressed, at the least touch or wrong word, one may go berserk. There are many people who get angry at very small things. Others suffer from stomach diseases such as ulcer and gastric simply because they have not expressed or transcended; instead they have suppressed feelings of hate, anger or have lacked courage to reason against injustice or other things.

The mind will always be in our body. The events of the world will never stop naturally. The mind associates itself with the external events to produce electrical impulses, which in turn affect both our physical and psychical life. Logically, there are two ways to deal with the situation. Either we give full expression to our thoughts and feelings or we suppress them. The difficulty is that we are not always in a position to express all our feelings and thoughts. We have many ambitions that give rise to innumerable thoughts and emotions and we are not always master of our destiny because not all our desires can be fulfilled. The result is greed, anger, lust, hatred, jealousy, stress, tension and so many damaging qualities.

Furthermore, we can choose to suppress our ambitions and feelings in which case we may become neurotic because that will definitely affect our physical nerves and psychic centres. Some people say, “I have consulted so many doctors, yet nothing has been found to be wrong. Then why do I continue to suffer?” Many people who suffer from nervous problems manifest strange symptoms, which lead people to say that they are possessed by a spirit. The cause is subtle. Psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can and are helping much, but it is not enough. These types of therapy and analysis help to cure only to a certain extent. There are specific mental and physical exercises that may help substantially in curing stress, tension and the illnesses connected to the mind and body. They are yoga, catharsis, jogging, breathing exercises, gibberish and others. However, all these should be done under the guidance of a competent master, otherwise the result can be very bad.

Hypnosis also can be of much help, but meditation, the science of all sciences, is the ultimate remedy. This will not only cure the symptoms, but will eliminate the causes that create these ambitions and feelings out of the 95.5% of unconsciousness and impressions found at the depth of the subconscious mind. Meditation will lead to transcendence, while expression and suppression have failed. Through transcendence, one becomes a master. Meditation, which is to live as Pure Consciousness, dissolves feelings and thoughts, which are useless and come as a cascade of energy from the depth of our being. A meditative mind acts as a check for any feelings or thoughts that come in and go out. A meditative mind is an enlightened mind. An enlightened mind is free from the mud of unconsciousness.

External stimuli may stir the inner consciousness of a meditative mind, but that does not cause any damage to his physical body and psyche as pure energy is released, while in the case of a non-meditative person, waves of emotions and thoughts are released in toto. Therefore, a meditative or a spiritual person remains completely unaffected in the midst of worldly affairs. Moreover, he knows the result of unfulfilled desires and feelings, therefore he remains awake and rests content in the bliss of his own self. This is the reason why a spiritual person is never affected by stress, tension and other illnesses created by the ignorant mind. In Hindi, ‘swasthya’ means good health. In fact, the word literally means to be established in oneself or in the centre. ‘Swa’ means self and ‘stha’ means to be established. Man is off his centre. He is living on the periphery of his mind, which is a bundle of thoughts, emotions, and basically a very thick layer of past impressions. The centre is the soul, the state of pure mind or Pure Consciousness, which is also the meditative state. This is the reason why I say that meditation means to live in one’s natural state. We are said to be in good health only if we are meditative or else everybody is sick. We are like a spiral - we are off the centre. We shall have to return back to the centre, back to the soul - back to Godhead, if you prefer the expression.