Self Control: Forcible or Gradual

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Some people say we should not control our impulses, that self-

expression is best. This is the Freudian, Adlerian approach. They say

that any form of control is unhealthy, unnatural. It makes a person

false. One should have expression. Any control creates neurosis. That

means you eat whatever you like, do whatever you feel like doing,

think whatever you like to think. Control creates inhibition and

inhibition can lead to exhibition.

 

Others say that the human being has become what it is today by

exercising control. In the animal stage of development, both mind and

soul are lost in the body. In the human stage the mind begins to

assert control over the body - that's why it is human. In the

spiritual stage, the soul is trying to free itself of the mind.

Through prayer, austerity, penance and pilgrimage you are trying to

extricate yourself from the bondage of the mind. Instinct used by the

sub-human makes raw impulse. Reason is advanced by controlling the

raw impulse and purifying it, and intuition appears after you have

overcome reason by purifying it. So therefore control is necessary.

 

In any walk of life you need control. When you drive you need speed

control. When you talk you need control. In every field this is true.

When you stand up you need control. So there is nothing wrong with

control. It is a natural instinct to exercise control. But why

control? Both Vedanta and Yoga say: giving in does not work; giving

up creates neurosis. Reason tells us: face the mind, the restless

mind. The mind is material. It does not have its own consciousness.

It is activated by the consciousness borrowed from the Self, the only

conscious entity whose presence or absence makes us either living or

dead. The body is an extension of the mind. The mental body is just

like the physical body. The face is the index of the mind, it is very

true. Physical features may indicate the texture of the mind. In The

Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna you may read that each person is born with

a blueprint of his or her own mind and each incarnation is to give

expression to some urgent desires for that.

 

The mind has a big shopping list. It is always turbulent like the

ocean, constantly breaking into waves. All the time it is moving and

changing. It never becomes controlled unless you control it. Many

people think that it will become controlled when we get old. However,

when you are young you can keep the mind down by exercising your

nerves and muscles. When you get old, you are done for. You are

tormented. All the desires are there but they have not been trained.

The cobras are there but their fangs have not been taken out. It is

an illusion, an untruth that with age turbulence goes away.

 

Both Vedanta and Yoga think that the stuff of the mind is a Sanskrit

word called samskara. Samskara is thought potency. This works in the

following way: when you think a thought repeatedly, it first affects

the intellect, then the emotion, then the biochemistry. Then it goes

deep down to the glands and hormones. It therefore alters the

biochemistry and remains lying deep down there. Running away cannot

obliterate these samskaras. Distance cannot annihilate them, old age

cannot reduce them, and reason cannot uproot them. Reason requires

pure mind, which is very rare. Analysis does not help, nor does

expression.

 

to be continued...