Inner Engineering # 5 — The Miracle of Mind
Human perceptions and emotions are self-generated, meaning you only have the ability to guide your experiences of life. In order to achieve enlightenment, you must align your body, mind, emotions, and energy where your MIND plays the most important role which you need to understand. The focus of this session is understanding the role of your mind and how to control it. Your Mind can give you pleasure or suffering, the choice is yours.
It’s probably been clear to us since childhood that teamwork is the key to success. The same rule applies when it comes to individuals. In order to function properly, each part of our body needs to work together. In order to reach enlightenment, we need to work on a tight communication system between our body, our mind, our emotions, and our energy.
Besides, Our happiness in the world depends essentially on how well we harness the prowess of the
Mind.
BECOME A BUDDAH
You have heard of the “Buddha”. His name was Siddhartha Gautama, and he became a Buddha. But
Gautama was not the only Buddha. Any human being who has transcended his intellect, the discriminatory and logical dimensions of his life, is a Buddha. Human beings have invented millions of ways to suffer. For all this the manufacturing unit is just in your mind. Once you are no longer identified with your mind, you are free to experience life beyond limitations. Being a Buddha means that you have become a witness to your own intellect.
When everybody was talking about going to heaven, Gautama the Buddha said, “You say everything is so well and fine in heaven, so what will I do there? Let me go to hell and do something to help others, because anyway I cannot suffer.”
As long as the fear of suffering persists, you will not dare to explore the deeper dimensions of life. Only this body needs to be protected; nothing else within you needs protection. If you are willing to drop the ideas, philosophies, and belief systems you are currently attached to, you can re-create your entire life with the very next moment.
Above all, there is substantial medical and scientific evidence today that your body and mind function
at their best when you are in a pleasant state. It is said that if you can remain blissful for twenty-four
hours, your intellectual capabilities can be almost doubled if your mind is mainly in your control.
Your destiny is written by you unconsciously. If you have mastery over your physical body, 15–20% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, 50–60% percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your life energies, a hundred percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands.
Even now you are choosing your life, but you are choosing it in total unawareness. But whatever you do in unawareness, you can also do in awareness. That makes a world of a difference. It is the difference between ignorance and enlightenment. Unpleasantness is happening to you, in the form of anger, fear, anxiety, ego, hatred, jealousy and stress, because your basic faculty — your mind — is doing its own thing.
ALIGNMENT OF body, mind, emotions, and energy : YOGA
This exact idea is beautifully unpacked through a traditional Indian story. The story begins with four yogis walking through a forest. One believed firmly in the power of physical yoga, the second in yoga of the mind, the third in the yoga of prayer, and the fourth in the yoga of the chakras, which are bodily centers of energy. Each believed that his method was supreme. Suddenly, as they were walking, it began to rain, leading to all of the yogis seeking shelter inside an ancient temple. The temple had no walls: it was simply a roof supported by pillars sheltering a deity at its center. The storm continued to worsen, causing the rain to beat the roof of the temple, the yogis clustering around the deity and finally embracing it as a group. As soon as this happened, God appeared to them, however, this was puzzling to the yogis. They were confused to God appeared in this particular moment when they’d each spent their entire lives working for and praying to him. God laughed and said it was because the four of them had finally joined forces. This is the same unity that is required of a single person on the path toward enlightenment. Yoga is a tool that can help a person to achieve this connection to their higher self, as it brings together their body, mind, emotions, and energy. According to ancient yogic philosophies, if the body is balanced, yet the mind is craving food or sex, the body will quickly become unbalanced. The exact same goes for emotions and energy. In order to truly become balanced, you need to meditate, practice the physical aspects of yoga, pray, and work on exercising your energy centers.
BE IN THE MOMENT
Right now your problem is that you suffer what happened ten years ago and you suffer what may happen the day after tomorrow. Both are not living truths. They are simply a play of your memory and
imagination, which is the function of your MIND. Does this mean that in order to find peace you must annihilate your mind? Not at all. It simply means you need to take charge of it. Your mind carries the enormous reserves of memory and the incredible possibilities of the imagination that are the result of an evolutionary process of millions of years. If you can use it when you want and put it aside when you don’t, the mind can be a fantastic tool.
Love — Problem of Youth
And what about love? Is there such a thing as unconditional love? Can it truly exist between two human beings? Sadhguru explains it with a story. One day Shankaran Pillai went to a park. He saw an attractive woman seated on a stone bench. He sat down on the same bench. After a few minutes he moved a little closer. She moved away. He waited for a few minutes, then moved a little closer; she moved away. When he did this again, she moved to the very end of the bench. He went very close and put his arm around her. She shoved him away. Then he went down on his knees, plucked a flower, handed it to her, and said, “I love you like I have never loved anybody in my life.” The sun was setting. He had a flower in his hand. He looked at her with a melting gaze. Above all, the ambience was right. She thawed. Nature took over and they had their way with each other. The dusk deepened into night. Shankaran Pillai suddenly sprang to his feet and said, “It’s eight o’clock. I need to go.” She said, “What? Now? You just said you loved me more than anyone else!” “Yes, yes, of course, but I have an exam tomorrow/my wife would be waiting.” Generally, we have made relationships within frameworks that are comfortable and profitable for us. People have physical, psychological, emotional, financial, and social needs to fulfill. To fulfil these needs, one of the best ways is to tell someone, “I love you.” This so-called love has become something of an “open sesame” mantra. You can get what you want by saying it.
Love is a quality, not something to do with somebody else. Every action that we do is in some way to
fulfill certain needs. If you see this, then there is a possibility that you can grow into love as your natural quality. But you can go on fooling yourself into believing that the relationships you have made for convenience, comfort, and well-being are actually relationships of love. I am not saying there is no
experience of love at all in these associations, but it is within certain limitations. It does not matter how
many times true love has been proclaimed; if a few expectations and requirements are not fulfilled, things fall apart. Love is essentially a mutual benefit scheme these days.
Should you mediate for all rest of the life sitting in a Samadhi? NO!
Most enlightened beings never stayed in samadhi states. Gautama Buddha never sat and meditated for
years on end after his enlightenment. Many of his disciples went into very very long meditations for years. But Gautama himself never did this because he must have seen it was not necessary for him He practiced and experienced all the eight kinds of samadhis before his enlightenment, and he discarded them He said, “This is not it.” He knew this was not going to take him to realization. Samadhi is just a heightened level of experience, a kind of inner LSD without any external input, which causes altered levels of perception. Today, the priorities and fundamentals of life have changed, you cant sit in samadhi leaving your children and family as we are living in a world controlled by money, they will if you left them. So, what should you do. Use your mind, explore all of its capabilities, work and become conscious at the same time. Your mind has no limitations.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT DESCRIBING THE PATH OF SPIRITUALITY AND THE SEVEN LAYERS OF MIND.
The Path of Spirituality
Transformation of the mind
The soulfully-elevated Shri Guru understands the basic difference behind the functioning of the mind and the structure of the brain, and then treats a spiritually-inclined person at the level of his mind. Under a Guru’s guidance, our brain’s capability of logical reasoning and emotional dedication cooperate in their support and our single focused mind and brain makes it possible for us to enter the infiniteness of our Creator and our Creation, all lying within us and from us !
Our Mind — deep levels of possibilities
The seven-levels of mind have been explained by Upanishads by comparing them with the ‘ Seven Horses of the Sun ‘. In the deep layers of our mind, as proposed by our Sages, the first layer connects us with the outer world, whereas the deepest layer makes us One with our own Godly Existence. A general understanding of these layers of our mind can be considered from under :
First Layer : Conscious Mind
Every thought, choice, planning etc that arises in our brain is only because of the support of our Conscious Mind. In fact, every action, thought or desire that is arising in us in this very present moment is also getting possible due to our Conscious Mind.
Second Layer : Subconscious Mind
The thoughts we have in this present moment get stored in our Subconscious Mind even after this moment passes. For example, if someone cheated us, our reaction to it will be in the present moment. But even after that moment passes and even if we get busy in other actions, our reaction to that instance of cheating gets stored in our Subconscious Mind.
Third Layer : Unconscious Mind
When our reaction towards others or their actions gets repeated by us in our thoughts or in our words in talking with others or if we continue to feel emotions of anger, sadness etc towards them, then these reactions and feelings of ours gets stored in our Unconscious Mind. The feelings gathered by us in our subconscious mind undergo a change in character and intensity at the level of our Unconscious Mind — our feelings of anger and sadness are transformed into hate and our lust, affection and wanting get transformed into desire.
Fourth Layer : Super Conscious Mind
When we are born, our birth is in a grand stage of a Super Conscious Mind. The whole of consciousness here has a loving character and that is why we find that a child understands the language of love only. He wants only the basic requirements of his life like food, milk etc but if he does not get them, then the vices of crying, anger etc get raised as they are already stored in him from his past lives. Nobody has taught anger to a child but once this stored anger gets out, it again leaves its negative mark and again gets stored in the conscious, subconscious and unconscious minds. In this way, we have continued this process from this birth also.
Fifth Layer : Collective Conscious Mind
At this layer of our mind, there is an intensity of the ethos, moral norms, values etc collected by us over our various births and their intensity literally makes them imprinted around the different chakras located in our spinal cord. When these chakras are empowered and activated by yogic practices like Swaraj Kriya, etc., then their intensity starts decreasing and these imprints may even get erased. In this way, our Collective Conscious Mind gets awakened and helps us to make a connection with the further deeper layers of our mind.
Our Collective Conscious Mind also awakens in the divine presence of a Living Sadguru, and enables us to penetrate the deeper layers of our mind and experience the secrets of Our Infinite Existence.
Sixth Layer : Spontaneous Mind
In spirituality, heart is not a biological part of our body; it is our Spontaneous Mind which is our Heart ! When this layer of our mind is awakened then it is said in spirituality that ‘our heart is formed’. Spiritual heart is formed only on the foundation of unselfish deeds and actions, and it is only now that we can experience the final and last layer of our mind.
Seventh Layer : Ultimate Mind
It is this last layer of our mind that has been called by the Enlightened Beings as our Ultimate Mind — Our ‘Soul’. The purest state of Our Soul is the real ‘God’ and can be experienced at this level of our Ultimate Mind only. The ultimate goal of all spiritual practices is to experience our own Godly Existence and here lies the value of reaching inside to our state of our Ultimate Mind.
