Analysis of the Mind -1

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Analysis of Mind-1

 

Introduction: Mind has been the subject of analysis

both by psychologists as well as philosophers. There

are books and books dealing with the mind, trying to

unravel the mysteries of the mind. Here I present my

understanding, examining the mind from various angels

along with how Vedanta looks at the mind. Those who

are exposed to J. Krishnamurthy’s lectures are

familiar with his statement that one’s ‘mind is

conditioned’ by one’s culture, tradition, religion,

up-bringing or, so to say parental or society’s

‘brain-washing’. One is a believer or non-believer,

Hindu, Muslim, Christian or any other denomination,

one is a dvaitin, advaitin, or vishiShTaadvaitin,

either by default or by choice, all due to one’s

mental conditionings brought out by where, when or to

whom he is born, and the environment or surroundings

he grow up. There is no truth in any of these

conditionings, since they are conditionings that take

one away from the truth. The mind gets cocooned in a

shell or move from one shell to the other. Even if one

makes a choice of selecting a path or system to

follow, say, advaita philosophy, even that choice is

influenced by the value system that is grown out of

some conditioning. Subjectivity gets involved in and

through conditioning. My beliefs or my conditionings

become integral part of ‘i’, the individual. All

systems of philosophies that essentially relay on

‘belief’ systems will eventually lead to

reconditioning of the mind. The biggest problem that

arises as a result of conditioning is that pure

knowledge cannot takes place in a conditioned state of

mind – mind is not free to learn. Mind can learn only

when it surrenders all its beliefs.

 

The essence of this teaching is ‘any process used to

uncondition the mind, itself conditions the mind’,

since there cannot be any ‘process’ that is free from

conditioning. Hence Krishnamurthy declares ‘truth is a

path-less land’. Truth is not a belief; it is a fact.

– Hence his famous statement – ‘truth is not an

understanding as an understanding as thought, but an

understanding as an understanding as a fact’. In other

words, ‘truth’ is not conceptualization as a thought,

but need to be assimilated as a fact. Let me

illustrate this by a simple example. If I say ‘I am

man and not a dog or horse or a floor mat to step on’

– is this a thought or a concept or an ‘idea’ that I

have to repeat many times until it sinks into my

belief system? – It is the truth, whether I belief it

or not- is it not? That is the understanding as a fact

and not a thought. Once understood, there will never

be a confusion regarding my identity as a man,even if

hundred theroes try to disprove that I am not a man!

That firm abidance in the knowledge of the truth

happens since it is the truth.

 

Science deals with facts or truths and therefore do

not relay on ‘beliefs’; even it questions the basis

for beliefs. It is purely objective and therefore

independent of whether one believes it or not. No

physics teacher need to come or will come to my house

on Sunday mornings, like some of religious fanatics

do, to say that I should belief in Newtons laws of

motion, otherwise I will go to eternal hell.

Scientific facts are revealed though deductive or

inductive reasoning based on observed experimental

data. Here we are dealing with objectifiable facts

that are distinct from the subject, who is

investigating. Scientific truths are verifiable by

controlled experimentation.

 

However, philosophies as well as religions are

concerned with the ultimate truth that cannot be

objectively verifiable. For example, the existence of

heaven or hell or is there life after death or life

before the birth, is there a God who is the ruler of

this world, etc, can not be established by objective

experimentation. Objective scientific investigation

that relays on perception and inference as the basis

for establishing scientific truths, cannot be relayed

upon to establish the ultimate truth. Hence ‘truth is

a pathless land’ sounds good to be true. In adition,

that any truth that is established based on

conditioned mind cannot necessarily be true is also

understandable. How to discover this ultimate truth,

using the mind that is free from any conditioning?

That ‘how’ question itself becomes invalid, if one is

seeking a methodology to discover that truth that is

pathless.

 

‘That the truth is pathless land’ can be true only if

that truth is absolute and infinite and not relative.

There cannot be any path for the infinite. Infinite

includes all paths and cannot be reached by any path.

Hence Vedanta calls the truth as

‘agraahyam(incomprehensible), adRiShTam(impercetable),

avyapadesyam (indescribable),

avyavahaaryam(non-transactable), achintyam

(unthinkable), aparameyam (unknowable), etc’.

Examples, such as removing a thorn by a thorn or

removing the poison in the body by controlled

medicine, which by itself is harmful for the body,

etc., are provided to show how unconditioning of the

mind can occur with proper saadhana or process, which

is nothing but a judicious controlled conditioning.

If the truth cannot be known by any means, since all

means are finite, then it must be self-revealing and

self-existing entity. However, from Vedanta

perspective, even though the truth is self-evident,

and self-revealing, conditioned mind cannot recognize

the truth due to its conditioning. Therefore the mind

should be processed or prepared to ‘absorb’ that

revelation. A ‘Hare-Krishna’ devotee remarked,

‘brains need to be brain-washed, since it is muddled

with wrong concepts, which obstructs the freedom of

the mind’. However that processes that cleanses and

purifies the mind should be such that it should free

the mind rather than recondition it. It should not

take the mind from ‘iron shackles to gold shackles’.

In essence, the process that unconditions the mind

should be self-destructive without conditioning the

mind again by that very process. In addition, if the

truth is infinite and absolute, the mind that

discovers the truth cannot itself be away from the

truth, since nothing can be away from the

absolute-infinite. That is, mind itself should be part

of the truth, since truth being infinite cannot

exclude anything. Finally, infinite cannot be made of

parts (infinite plus, minus infinite is infinite

only). Therefore, mind cannot be part of the infinite

either. Thus we have a peculiar situation, where mind

need to discover the truth, and that truth cannot be

discovered by any means since it is not an ‘object’,

for discovery, conceptually or other wise, and

therefore cannot become a subject of discovery. In

addition, since the mind being part of the truth which

has no parts, the very realization of the truth should

dissolve the notion of separateness of the mind from

the truth. Hence the truth is sometime called ‘of

transcendental nature’ implying that is not of the

kind that objective scientists are familiar.

 

Hence, the realization of the truth involves a

delicate process of unconditioning the mind which is

called yoga, requiring a guide or a teacher or guru

(gu stands of ignorance and ru stands for the one who

removes it), as emphasized by Vedanta. It is well

accepted that a guide is required to do advanced

research in any field of science. It is therefore

understandable why Vedanta insists a guidance by a

teacher who is well qualified. Qualifications

obviously require a teacher to be well established in

the truth (brahma niShTa), and also gone through the

mental disciple needed to guide the others to proceed

in the pathless path. For insurance, Vedanta insists

on particular time-tested methodology (called

sampradaayam, a system of teaching) so that process of

unconditioning the mind occurs slowly in steps without

getting locked up in the process itself. This is

technically called as adhyaaropa apavaada, adhyaaropa

is the conditionings of the mind and apavaada involves

deconditioning the mind in stages. Conditions or

adhyaaropa are superimposions that distract the mind

from seeing the truth as the truth. Since a student

comes with pre-conceived notions (or conditioned

mind), the teaching involves removal of those notions

(deconditioning) in steps. When the mind is pure, the

self-evident and self-existing truth gets

self-revealed. Not only the truth is the pathless

land, as Krishnamurthy declared, Vedanta goes even one

step further to indicate that the self-existent

self-conscious and infinite entity is nothing but your

own self, where the seeker and the sought or the

subject and the object merge into one infinite

existent-conscious entity. That is nirvana, that is

liberation, that is moksha, this is the Kingdom of

Heaven in ones own heart, and that is what all the

religions sing and glorify in various ways and is the

absolute freedom from all limitations and therefore

infinite eternal happiness that one is longing for,

consciously or unconsciously, through various pursuits

in life, whether religious or irreligious, whether

holy or unholy, knowingly or unknowingly. In essence,

human mind is always seeking freedom from limitations,

always wanting and desiring to reach that infinite

absolute happiness, without knowing that it cannot be

gained by any path or pursuit. If one examines one’s

mind carefully we find that our wanting mind is not

happy in having what it wanted, since ‘the want to

have more’ always remains, however much one has. Thus

it always wants to want than wants to have. That is

the reflection of the conditioned state of mind.

 

The mind wants to be free from wanting and that desire

for eternal freedom is intrinsic or in born with the

mind. It cannot but seek that unlimited happiness and

it cannot find that by any seeking. Longing for

limitless freedom is inherent in all beings, but

expressed more vividly in the human form, where

‘conceptual thought’ has reached its pinnacle by

evolutionary process. Thus three is a fundamental

human problem or dichotomy– he cannot but pursue a

path to gain absolute inexhaustible happiness or

freedom from all limitations, and he can never gain

that happiness through any pursuit, since it is a path

less land. This is where understanding the mind, its

conditioning and how to transcend that conditionings

so that the mind is ever free from all conditionings

become important and this forms the fundamental or

essential pursuits of human life.

 

It is interesting to note that any process of

unconditioning the mind, itself involves the mind or

mental activity. That is, mind itself conditions the

mind, and it is also capable of unconditioning itself.

Hence, Vedanta says ‘mind is the problem and mind is

the solution’ (mana eva manushyaanaam kaaraNam bandha

mokshayOH – amRitabindu Up). ‘How a mind be both the

problem as well as solution to the problem’ requires

both analysis of the problem and along with the

analysis of the mind that creates the problem. We

shall examine first the mind from various angles and

addresses the problem of its conditioning and solution

to uncondition itself to be free from its problems.

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Hari Om!

Sadananda