What is the Mind & Consciousness – solving the mysteries

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Haribol.

So, I don’t know what your degree of interest is in the topic or not, but what I was asked to speak on is fundamentally the mind and consciousness and solving the mysteries of the mind and consciousness.

Everybody is aware that they’re conscious. Or not? Yeah. We’re experiencing awareness, consciousness, all the time.  It’s not like—but we don’t often think very deeply about what what that means. So it’s a really big subject to discuss in a short period of time. (Just checking the time here. I’ll try not to run over time.) So it’s actually a really, really deep subject, so we’re going to be just jumping over things quite, quite quickly.

I think there’s a need for everybody to appreciate from the onset when we begin a conversation, that all of us, we have these filters on. The way in which we see the world, the way in which we look at ourself, the way in which we look at each other, the way in which we experience things is deeply influenced by what I’ll describe as like filters. We have our own paradigms. Like for instance you can have 20 people in a room, and somebody can speak for five minutes on a subject, and then you ask each of the people what they understood about the subject, and if you did it in isolation you might get 20 different perspectives. Right? And that’s because of, like I say, we have a way of, kind of a framework of seeing things. We have a state of consciousness that we exist in.

So because of some of the things that we’ll go over quite quickly tonight, they may be challenging for some people. Like, “What!?” And my kind request of you is not to just—if you hear something that’s sort of like you’re not familiar with or—not to just disregard it out of hand, but take it on board and thoughtfully consider it. In other words, be patient with me, please.

Fundamentally the word consciousness, there’s two ways that people understand consciousness. One is the act of knowing or of being aware. Right? Like, this [pointing to an artificial plant] is not conscious. It may look like it is, but it’s actually plastic. Looks like a real—I mean there’s a massive distinction between this and something we could find outside in the in the surroundings where there’s an actual bush, because even with plants they manifest a form of consciousness. They respond.

If I break the branch of a plant it immediately seeks to protect itself. It moves sap into that area to seal off the exposed broken part so it doesn’t get infected with fungus or molds or viruses or bacteria, or other insects don’t come and start gnawing on it and feeding it. So it has the mechanism of making sap rise and come out of that area to form a protection.

And so, when we’re when we’re talking about consciousness here, you can see just from that example, we’re going to look at it in a very broad way.

Of course, the other way in which people understand the word consciousness, it’s kind of like your state of mind, your state of thinking, your state of being, whatever’s going on mentally is often described as your consciousness. Like somebody can be, young people hormones raising raging, it’s girl conscious or boy conscious; somebody else can be rugby racing and beer conscious; somebody else is whatever, this person that they follow, this influencer, they have that consciousness. It’s when you apply yourself and are drawn to and contemplating upon something you’re in a state of consciousness.

One of the big problems that many scientists and deeply philosophical people have, they consider consciousness—and I’m talking about the ability to know and to be aware of something—as something hugely problematic. What exactly is it, and how is it arising? And of course, their big—the foundation of their big problem is they are trying to understand how atomic particles, which form different chemical chains, proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA and all kinds of things, how does consciousness arise from atomic particles? Because the view is, we are nothing but a combination of chemicals, that’s what’s making up the body. But then the question is that if that is the case, then I must consider how can consciousness arise from atomic particles. And that’s just like, we have no idea.

So, there’s a well-known personality John—I’m sorry, David John Chalmers, he’s a philosopher and a cognitive scientist, and he specializes in the areas of the philosophy of mind. So he’s a leading scientist in this field, and this is what he has stated about consciousness, and you can see how they find it so troubling.

“Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind.”

I mean we don’t even think like that, because we just get on with stuff. Every day we’re experiencing conscious but we don’t think about what’s going on, where is it really coming from.

“There is nothing that we know more intimately about than conscious experience.”

So we’re intimately experiencing conscious connections and things every day. Even when I stub my toe, that intense pain, it’s kind of like I’m deeply involved consciously in that  experience.

“… but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to propose that the problem is intractable and that there is no good explanation that can be given.”

So this is problematic when you want to explore something but you become closed to all possibilities. And what I what I mean by that, if you do not accept the idea that there is more in this world that we’re experiencing, than just atomic particles and chemicals, that there is in fact something else, there is another form of energy whose quality is consciousness. And we’re talking about spiritual energy as opposed to just the idea of there only being one form of energy, material energy in general.

So in more recent times, in the mid ’90s, there was one guy that’s doing massive amounts of research, and he’s considered a leading authority, he came up with the term “the hard problem of consciousness” explaining it and understanding it, and how it can arise from chemicals and atomic reactions. It’s sort of like it’s a—for them a really, really hard problem, and that’s because it is a really hard problem. It’s so hard that it’s impossible. So he said:

“The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than unconscious.”

So in his mind, me sitting here, this body moving, it’s manifesting consciousness, but if you just look at the body alone it’s just made of chemicals and atoms; but over here I’ve got a glass with something in it, it’s also made of similar chemicals and atoms. How come this thing [pointing at his body] is manifesting consciousness, but this thing [pointing at the glass] is not? They find that hugely problematic, and so they call it the hard problem of consciousness.

So, some early philosophers in this field have proposed that consciousness arises from the mind, which they would describe as non-material. Again from the Vedic and yogic perspective we have a problem with that, because the understanding—and we’ll get to this shortly—the mind is actually considered, in yogic philosophy, as a form of material energy. But these group of scientists, people in this school of thinking, they think that, yeah, the gross physical body is material, but the mind which cannot be seen, it cannot be touched, it—you can’t measure it, you can’t do any of these things with it, therefore they consider it as non-material, and they would refer to the mind as non-material.

Another quote I have here from a leading authority:

“Consciousness remains one of the hardest mental phenomena to pin down precisely.”

So right away, it’s just like they’re closing the doors on possibility, because they’re defining consciousness as being a mental phenomena, whereas we are going to learn tonight that actually it’s not a mental phenomena, that the mind can function because there is another influence a spiritual influence that gives it, I will say, life.  It doesn’t really have life but it’s as if it has life.

So he goes on:

“Yet consciousness is an extremely familiar mental phenomena given that we all know directly what it is like to be conscious.”

Anybody here ever had hardcore heavy-duty general anesthesia? It’s amazing when you wake up from general anesthesia. They—whatever they’re going to administer, when they do it, it’s like one moment you’re talking to the nurse, and you’re all conscious, and the next minute there’s nothing, I mean like nothing. It’s just black, and you’re not even aware that you’re not perceiving.  You’ve—it’s like you’ve gone. And then after every—procedure is finished and everything, and you’re back in bed, they want to check that you’re okay, so they will actually get you to wake up to make sure everything is okay, and everything’s fine. And so they’re shaking you, telling you it’s “Sir, sir, hello, hello, hello?” And it’s like all of a sudden you start—it’s like you can hardly open your eyes. It’s like you’ve been buried in cement or something, and it’s like you’re struggling, and then all of a sudden you’re aware. And it’s like, “Oh my God, what was that? What was that?”

I don’t know whether to make a little detour here or not. Is this interesting so far? We’re on board with this? Okay.

In ancient yogic teachings they would describe that there is a state of consciousness apart from wake—being awake, wakefulness, asleep dreaming, and dreamless sleep, when you’re deeply in sleep, and it’s like having anaesthesia. And then you wake up, and it’s like, “Oh!” This is what the yogis would say, the fact that you are aware that you weren’t dreaming, and your mind wasn’t active, indicates that some conscious part of you is completely different than your mind and your body, and it is experiencing these things. So they use that as a form of proof. And I think that that’s incredibly convincing, that there’s something more to it than just the mind completely blacking out and no longer functioning.

So, as I mentioned, he keeps referring to consciousness as a mental phenomena. This word phenomena, it means, “an observable fact or event. It is an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition.” So the point I’m just trying to make here is that they consider the mind to be non-material, that it can go into these states where things aren’t traced??

So some people, and I’ll quote their own words, suggest that “consciousness is the result of activity in the brain that we don’t yet fully understand” that’s the fundamental thought they have. And because of this you will see, before AI became really big, like in the last 6, 9 months, prior to that the people that were involved in machine learning and the development of AI and the early stages, they were using terms like “machine consciousness,” meaning that if you have a powerful enough computer it can actually become conscious.

Our proposition, of course, is that, no, a machine cannot become conscious, that consciousness is a quality of the spiritual being temporarily residing within the body. So the Vedic, or the yogic perspective, understanding is this: You are an eternal spiritual being. You have taken up residence in this body, for whatever reason. You are residing within the body for a limited period of time. In due course of time that body will experience death. You do not die, you cannot die. You leave the body and go somewhere else. The body and what you witness now manifests as death and there is no consciousness.

So the Vedic term for consciousness, and I’m talking about the ability to know and to be aware, it’s called cit, C I T.  Sometimes they will use the word citta, C I T T A, but that term can also be used for the mind in certain circumstance, but the term fundamentally means to know or to be aware. And the spiritual being, in Sanskrit the terminology for the spiritual being is atma. This word atma literally means the self.

And it is described that the self, the spiritual entity, the spiritual being, spiritual person, it has a number of qualities, but three important ones, in Sanskrit is sat cit ananda. So sat means that it is eternal, it can never be destroyed. There will be no time when it doesn’t exist.

Cit is often translated as knowledge, but when we use knowledge in this way it’s not like—most people think of knowledge as kind of like having an encyclopedia in your head, and knowledge, the stuff I know, and I reach for it somewhere in the recesses of my memory, and I pull it out and repeat it, and so it is said I have knowledge. But the way the word is being used here in reference to the living being, it references the capacity to know, the fact that you can know things, that you can be aware of things. So this is what cit is, knowledge,

And the third quality that was mentioned is ananda. Ananda means a great and profound experience of divine blissfulness and happiness which is the natural condition of the soul.

This spiritual being, meaning you and I, we actually have two bodies. We are covered by this gross physical body you can see, and another subtle body. Both of them are considered material. So you’ve got a material gross physical body and a material subtle body.

So just to, sort of—when I put the talk out I’ll probably have a few graphics there to make it simple, and what you would have is kind of like a kid’s drawing of a head and arms and legs, you know, a body, and that’s the gross physical body. The Sanskrit term for this is sthula-sarira. And if we want to do it graphically, and just to try and help in appreciation, that external form, within it there is a spiritual being. That is the atma, or the self. That spiritual being though has this second and invisible covering. This invisible covering is called the subtle body. In Sanskrit this is linga-sarira.

This subtle body and I’m just—we won’t get into detail but I’ll just let you know, is comprised of three things. The first covering of the soul, or the spirit soul, the spiritual being, is what is called the ahankara. The ahankara means the false ego, the false ideas of self.

And when we say that, think about this for a second, if we ask the average person to identify themself, “Tell me who you are,” they will instantly rattle off labels for the body: I am male, or I am female, or something else, these days. I am of this age, which is the age of the body; I am from this racial group, this racial extraction, again a label on the body. I am tall, short, thin, fat, whatever. I rattle off all these labels that describe the body, and I say that’s who I am, and I’m utterly convinced of that.

And my whole life is dedicated to looking for happiness, for looking for love, for looking for permanence, everything only in relation to the body. And of course, that’s a disaster, because as soon as you leave that body behind then all those relationships and all those assets that were acquired and all the comfort of the home that you had is all gone; and you move on and start all over again.

So, this idea of false identity is profound, and it really affects us and is the foundation for all— not some or most—all suffering and unhappiness in this world. Again we’re just passing over things very quickly, so this is the first kind of like subtle covering of the spirit soul.

The second one is called buddhi. Buddhi means, like in the name Buddha buddhi. Buddhi means intelligence, but it’s like this higher faculty that’s actually higher than the mind. And what do we mean by that? Like you get into some argument with someone or you have a fearful experience or whatever, you get into a situation. Let’s do an anger thing, and you’re confronted, and immediately you feel all of the emotions rise in your mind just like, “Eyaaah!!” and you’re going to respond, and you’re going to react, and you’re going to say things that hurt. And you hear a little voice almost, that goes “Don’t do it, don’t say it, don’t do it,” but it’s like, you do it anyway. The fact that even in a moment of heightened emotions, positive or negative, that there is some faculty that can actually still direct you and has not been swept away by the emotions, indicates that it is different from and is superior to the mind.

Then the third part of the subtle body is comprised primarily of the mind.

Consciousness is the quality of the atma. It is not the quality of atoms and chemicals. Consciousness is the quality of the spiritual being. The symptom by which we can know that a spiritual being is present is when we see life. Life doesn’t arise from material elements. This microphone is never going to come to life. It can’t come to life. It’s just material energy.

When we witness the presence of life, even in lower life forms, insects, birds, animals, plants, it means there is an atma, a spiritual being, present. And we know that because life is manifest, the quality, or the symptom of life; and the quality that all atmas have is consciousness. That’s why even insects resist. They resist heat. You try to harm them they will resist. An animal will resist any attempt to harm because there is consciousness there.

So—I mean this is a series on the Bhagavad-gita, but the Bhagavad-gita actually doesn’t say very much about consciousness. And part of the reason it doesn’t say very much is because in the time that it was spoken, 5,000 years ago, everybody, practically everybody knew this to be a fact. So it was not something you had to—like now I’m going through all of the things, we’re talking about examples and everything because we don’t have that knowledge. And in that time that the Bhagwat Gita was spoken, 5,000 years ago, all the people in that society, or pretty much all of them, had this awareness.

So, the statements that are made, we have Lord Krishna speaking to Arjuna, who he addresses as the son of Bharata,

“…as the sun alone illuminates all this universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness.”  [Bhagavad-gītā 13.34]

Okay? And then that’s it. There’s no more major discussions about it. He was, Krishna was just reminding Arjuna of this truth because he was losing the plot. He was overwhelmed with this massive war that was going to take place, and he was there on a battlefield.

So, in another verse that supports this also:

“Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable soul.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.17]

He is just making this statement that the spiritual being is imperishable; it cannot be killed; it cannot die; it does not become transformed; and it pervades the entire body. The reason that you can feel a pin prick in your toe, or if you stub your toe or—and feel something touching you in the top of your head is because the living being, the consciousness is lent to the body and pervades the entire body.

So, while the Bhagavad-gita doesn’t deal with consciousness per se in any great detail, there are multiple, many hundreds of other texts that speak about it. One example, this is from the, what’s called the Mundaka Upanisad

“The soul (or the atma, or self) is atomic in size and can be perceived by perfect intelligence. [If a person cultivates spiritual intelligence, they can directly perceive the atma.] This atomic soul is floating in the five kinds of air (prāṇa, apāna, vyāna, samāna and udāna), and is situated within the heart, and spreads its influence all over the body of the embodied living entities. When the soul is purified from the contamination of the five kinds of material air, the spiritual influence is exhibited.”   [Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.1.9]

So I’m not going to get into that. It’s kind of quite technical but it just describes—you know in Chinese medicine, anybody here familiar, a little bit? You know they, like with acupuncture, they talk about meridians? So also in Ayurvedic, the ancient Indian form of, Vedic form of medicine, they refer to these subtle channels through the body. They call them nadi. Nadi can mean a river, or it can mean a stream also, and it talks about how they had knowledge that there are five principle like channels, where there is a subtle air moving, and there are many hundreds of thousands and even millions of smaller and smaller things. And the living being is described as being situated in the region of the heart, and it manifests its influence through these subtle airs or subtle energies. That’s just like a little bit of a brief technical description. There’s much more detail but we’re not going to get into that.

So now we’ll just touch on—so, we okay with that? Consciousness is a quality of the spiritual being, the atma, and when the spiritual being, or atma, resides within a body, it projects or lends that consciousness to the entire, it permeates the entire body that’s being occupied.

In relation to the mind—oh I tell you what, if you read scientific literature, it’s just like these guys are pulling their hair out. It’s so complex, people trying to understand what exactly is the mind, and where is it? Is it in my cranium? Is—you know, and of course, everybody’s experience is that it’s not like that. And of the assumption is that the mind is a function of the brain: when there is brain activity the mind is manifest. That’s one idea that’s broadly accepted. But people at the very top of this field reject this idea. They say that while there is an intimate connection between the brain and the mind, the mind is not a product of just brain activity. There’s something else going on. And people that are neurosurgeons are intimately aware of this.

You’ve—I’ve read so many accounts, when they do brain surgery where they take off like a big chunk of the skull, and they usually have a cloth like here [indicating eyebrow level] going up and they—so the person here they can’t see anything behind them, they’ve got— and they have to be conscious, many times when you do brain surgery, so they use local anesthetics. And you imagine all this grinding and sawing to get through the bone. They slice through the thing, and they peel off the skin, and then they get in there and drill and cut and chisel, and they remove a chunk of the bone. And now they’re in there removing a tumors, removing a blood clot, doing some sort of surgery. And they know from all of their testing that when you have certain types of speech, certain types of remembrance, certain types of emotions that certain areas in the brain are activated. They can check that with different scans. They know that it’s firing.

So they say like little kids, kids that are, like we’re talking about under 6 kind of thing, you give them a device with a screen and moving things, they say it messes up the development of their brain and their mind, and what’s going off in the kids, it’s the same parts of the brain that are stimulated when somebody snorts cocaine. It’s exactly the same centers, and you’re teaching them certain behaviors and types of thinking and everything. So they say it’s really, really bad to be giving little kids devices so…

But the thing is they can correlate different areas of the brain becoming active when certain things are happening.

So there was one neurosurgeon in one account I read, he said he was removing a part of this woman’s brain, and they talked to the patient, you know, “Everything okay? What did you do yesterday? How did the holiday go?” They just constantly engage. And the person’s talking. And they’ll sometimes ask, “Do you feel anything?” And, “No, I can’t feel anything, but I can hear these noises and stuff. But, no, I’m okay,” and they’re talking away. And he said he’s had these experience where he’s removing a part of the brain that is said to be responsible for a certain type of thinking or response and it’s gone, and the person’s still talking about something that and dealing with something that’s not meant to be there anymore ‘cause that part of the brain is gone. And he said, he’s had so many of these experiences he utterly is convinced that the mind is different from the brain.

A very famous neuroscientist says,

“Neuroscientists have identified a number of neural correlates of consciousness…”

So that’s what I’m talking about how when you experience something and remember something or do something, how it how there’s a correlation with some part of your brain doing something, brain states associated with specific mental states.

“…but they have not explained how matter forms minds in the first place.”

So they say the scientists can figure out that, yes, when your mind is in a certain state or doing something, it correlates to certain activity in the brain. They know there’s a correlation, but they have not yet been able to explain how matter, that gray matter in your head, that material energy, how it forms the mind in the first place. No idea. No idea.

So we take a lot of things in relation to the mind for granted. You’re sitting there looking at me right now, right? At least I take it you are. When I ask the question, “How is it that you are seeing?” Almost everyone will say. “Well, because I’ve got my eyes open, stupid. My eyes are open, so I’m seeing.”

What if I tell you that your eyes don’t actually see? Your eyes are like lenses, and there is light hitting my body. When there’s no light, it’s pitch dark. If you can see something it’s because light is hitting it, and it’s hitting your eye, it’s going into your eye. When that light enters your eye, it goes through a focusing mechanism, and then it hits at the back of the eyeball, photosensitive cells. Those photosensitive cells are then agitated by the light and give off an electrical impulse. That electrical impulse travels down the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain, and when it reaches the visual cortex it sends out all of these electrical and chemical reactions in that part of your brain, and that is what’s called seeing. So my question is, “Where is the picture?”

And if you—it’s—we use the example, like in a movie house which is probably—this is difficult because it’s 3D, and everybody’s—we’re operating in this zone all the time. But if you go and sit in a movie house, and you get engaged in a movie, it can be so intense that sometimes people scream, if it’s frightened, “Aaaaah!” like they’re really afraid, something—or something terrible happened, the heart beats fast, something very violent goes on, and people have all these reactions. People have had heart attacks and died in movie houses because it’s been so scary and so heavy for them, and they weren’t in good shape anyway. And it’s kind of like, but why are you experiencing that? Nothing’s happening to you. You’re just sitting in a chair. You’re just sitting in a chair in a dark room, and then there’s this reflective cloth, the screen, then you’ve got a projector that’s shining light that’s hitting the screen, and that light’s bouncing back into your eye, and it’s going through that process, and it’s setting off all this reaction in your visual cortex. And it’s like, so where’s the picture in that process? If I look at the—if I look at a butterfly and it registers in my visual cortex, where is the picture and who is seeing it? Who is looking at that picture?

Wow! Is that far out or not? Sorry, this is probably going to mess up your night. You go home and think about this, it’s kind of like whoa! What’s this!? We’re just used to operating in a certain way. We take so much for granted. We don’t understand how things are working. It’s not necessary to understand this, but there can be great value in understanding it.

So in yogic teaching and practice one of the big things that was always asked is, where is or who is the seer? Who is the seer? It’s not your eyes, they’re just globs of gelatinous stuff that’s allowing light to pass through. That’s stimulating the optic nerve, the optic nerve is stimulating the visual cortex. Where is the picture, and who’s seeing it? Who’s the actual seer? They would get really into meditating upon this process to discover the actual seer. In in Sanskrit this is called drsha or drshta. They have different variations of this word.

So in the Yoga Sutra there is a famous verse that states:

“The seer (or the atma) is pure [and that means it is transcendental] even though it perceives this world through the mind.” [Yoga-sūtra 2.20]

Your perception of the world, whether it’s tasting something, it’s smelling something, hearing something, seeing something, whatever, that information is all going to the mind, stimulating, and you come to know your environment because of that process. But the one that’s actually seeing and witnessing is you, the spiritual being within.

Is this hard work? [Audience: No] No? For some it is. And it may or may not be that interesting, but it’s—you know what? It’s so amazing that these great teachers of transcendental—of knowledge of the soul, they had such a deep awareness and perception of things.

So, a deeper understanding of the mind—and I’ll just read a few verses

“The mind is not self-illuminating being itself an object of perception (or that which is knowable).” [Yoga-sūtra 4.19]

So, if you want to see something in this world, you need a light source. You have to shine light on it. If there is no illumination it’s not perceivable. The mind is not self-illuminating. It is able to perceive, and there is a reason for it.

“Not being self-luminous, the mind cannot be aware of an object and itself (as perceiver and perceived) at the same time.” [Yoga-sūtra 4.20]

Okay, this is a little deep. I probably shouldn’t have gone there, but just more or less—no, I I’m not going to go into that because it’s a bit technical. I’ll read another verse

“The pure and transcendental consciousness of the atma (or the self) is unchangeable. When the mind receives the reflection of that consciousness it is able to perceive and appears like the seer.” [Yoga-sūtra 4.22]

So this basic statement is this: You are the spiritual being. In your current state you may have no awareness of your true spiritual—who you are. Like I said, everybody is completely lost in the body, relating to that as being who they truly are, but when a living being is present within a body it lends consciousness to the mind, and it lends consciousness to the body, so that the body appears as if it’s alive on its own, and the mind appears to be active and able to comprehend things and do things, because of the energy, in the form of consciousness that has been lent to it by the atma.

“Even though the mind has accumulated various impressions (and desires) of various types it is always at the disposal of the atma (or the self), and this is because the mind cannot function without the power of the perceiver.” [Yoga-sūtra 4.24]

—the perceiver being the spiritual being. In Vedic or yogic teachings the mind was actually counted as being amongst the senses. You know, the sense of touch, smell, taste, hearing, you have five senses, but all of the information that’s coming through the senses—and it is literally gigabytes of information every second is pouring in, and it all pours into the mind. And so the mind, because it is the repository of all information coming from the senses, was considered to be the sixth sense.

In yogic teaching it was considered really important to become the one that’s directing your mind. If you are not in the driver’s seat, it means your mind is just going to be constantly stimulated and agitated by all this information, all this experience, all this remembrance and everything; and it’s going to be coming up with all kinds of stuff and inducing you, that you need this, you want that, you desire this, this will make you happy, this is where you’ll find perfection, this is what you need, everything you’re looking for. The mind is constantly giving these kind of messages. And so it is understood the mind is in a constant state of agitation.

When the spiritual being is forgetful of itself and is simply absorbed in the mind and everything that’s happening and all the desires of the body, it’s like you’re being dragged around. You’ve lost control of your life. So in a verse from the Bhagavad Gita:

The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal, fragmental parts, and due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.” [Bhagavad-gītā 15.7]

So the question may be, why “struggling very hard”? Let’s look at our life. All you got to do is go home and go to bed, lie there, and what’s going on in your mind?

Yes?

Audience member: So I’m thinking now, people who are blind [Acd: Yeah], will they be, will the conscious, will they be more conscious of their mind because they…?”

Acd: They—it’s individual and personal. People that have lost physical eyesight, their other senses become heightened and sharpened, but it doesn’t make them necessarily more perceptive of their mind. They are experiencing things, just in a— [Audience member: Different way] a different way.

So our experience in this world—I’ll just give you an interesting example. In ancient times they were really into astrology, not like the Sunday newspaper kind of stuff, it was like a really deep, deep science, and one of the reasons they were into it and it was used for important decisions in life, like when you get married to someone.

You know, in this world that we live, we’re very shallow, we look at the package, and if the package looks nice, and it’s got a beautiful ribbon on it, then we conclude the content is going to be amazing. The problem is you can open the package, there might be a dog doodoo in there. Just because the package is beautiful, it doesn’t mean the content is.

And so, they were very aware that what you’re dealing with when you get into relationships is not bodies, that has a role, but you’re dealing with now people’s minds and their desires, and the way they’ve been conditioned, and what they like and don’t like, and how they view things, what they consider to be important. Now, it’s kind of like all of that stuff has got nothing very much to do with the body. It’s all what goes on in the mental realm. Okay? You guys can relate to that? Yeah? So—Huh?

Audience member: I can relate.

Acd: You can relate! Well, I mean—

Audience member: …definitely.

Acd: the classic thing is this, and I mentioned in the weekend at the retreat, I do some counselling sometimes, and it’s always very distressing when you—or distressful when you’re dealing with a married couple or people that are committed, and then they’re going through a rough period, and they’re all angry at each other. And one of the most common things that you hear is, “If I knew you were like that I wouldn’t have married you.” And it’s just like, how dumb are you? Really! Isn’t it your job to know? Isn’t it your job to know what you’re getting into before you make a commitment? But we’re not trained like that, especially in the Western world you’re not trained to process things in that way. But what we’re speaking about is pretty much, it’s like the clash of minds.

It was considered in the yoga system to—you need to be the one in charge of your mind. You need to be in charge of what it’s going to be thinking about, what it’s going to be focused on, what is desirable for it to be doing, and what is not. And you avoid the stuff that’s detrimental and harmful, and you focus on the stuff that brings value.

So, the relationship between the mind and the living being was considered really, really important. And they knew, the yogis knew unless your mind can be peaceful it is impossible to become happy. We’re talking about big happy, not like a fleeting moment, but really happy. It’s not possible unless you can be peaceful.

And they also understood that in their journey to—inward journey to discover who they truly were as a eternal spiritual being, it was necessary to bring the mind under some control. To this end, a statement from Bhagavad Gita—this is amazing and shocking. The mind—I’m sorry, start again:

“One must deliver themself with the help of one’s mind, and not degrade themself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well. For one who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, the mind will remain the greatest enemy.” [Bhagavad-gītā 6.5-6]

That’s a shocking statement, the idea that your own mind, that thing that you cuddle up to and you dive into, and you believe—whatever’s going on in your mind, you believe it, you embrace it, just because your mind’s telling you that. And it may not even be true. And one that falls victim to their mind, the mind is considered the greatest enemy.

And we know this from people that suffer deep and profound depression, or have suicidal type thoughts and things, that the mind, if it becomes controlled by envy, by jealousy, by anger, by all of these negative traits, it can completely destroy your life, just by following your mind. And we know this also with drug addiction and alcohol dependency. It’s like people feel I don’t have control, just because my mind is demanding that I take the next drink or smoke the next hit of, what do they call it here? What do they call meth? [Audience: P] Huh? P. Yeah. Where I used to live they called shabu, so I was in another world there for a minute. The dependency—and when you just continue—yeah, there’s a physical addiction aspect to it, but it’s primarily mental. And when one be falls victim to their mind, they can become completely destroyed; and actually being in charge of the mind is the key to finding peace, fulfillment and happiness.

In another text from another source (and I’m almost done, just letting you know) called the Bhagavat Purana, it states:

“The uncontrolled mind is the greatest enemy of the living entity. If one neglects it [meaning you don’t try to control it] …when one neglects if or gives it a chance, it will grow more and more powerful and become victorious. Although it is not factual, it is very strong and it covers the constitutional position of the ātmā.” [Bhagavat Purana 5.11.17]

That’s a deep idea. I’ll just throw that one out there for your consideration.

In one part of the Bhagavad-gita Krishna had been describing to Arjuna all the different types of yoga practices that were tied to and in different ways used to try and bring the mind under control. Arjuna was not a yogi, he was a warrior. He was a prince and a powerful warrior, and it’s not like he was unintelligent or didn’t have determination and was really filled with vigour and firmness, and he was, but when he heard about this, he said that:

“…O Madhusudana, [that’s another name that was given to Krishna] the system of yoga which You have summarized appears impractical and unendurable to me, for the mind is restless and unsteady. For the mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate and very strong, O Krsna, and to subdue it, I think, is more difficult than controlling the wind.” [Bhagavad-gītā 6:33-34]

That’s depressing. Really!? But we all know in our own life the reality of this.

“Lord Sri Krsna said: O mighty-armed son of Kunti, it is undoubtedly very difficult to curb the restless mind, but it is possible by suitable practice and by detachment. For one whose mind is unbridled, self-realization is difficult work. But he whose mind is controlled and who strives by appropriate means is assured of success. That is My opinion.” [Bhagavad-gītā 6:35-36]

So, closing out, there’s so many areas, there’s probably going to be so many questions. After we have a little chant, if you—over dinner if you have questions, and I’ll try to address them.

Very simply, when you take up the practice of meditation using spiritual sound, one of the things that will automatically happen is the mind will become increasingly peaceful, less demanding, less crazy, and you will feel inspired, you will begin to taste something that begins to awaken in your heart, something that is very wonderful and pleasant, a beginning of something very sweet, of wonderful spiritual happiness. And simply by engaging in this process, without separate effort, automatically the mind will tend to fall into line.

And I use the example, it’s like when you’ve got a really foggy morning, and you can’t even see the sun when it comes up, the fog is so thick, this sun is powerful, and the rays of the sun dissipate the fog, becomes thinner and thinner, you can see more, you can see further then eventually it lifts. In a similar manner, exposing yourself to these spiritual sounds will have this effect on our state of mind, on our state of consciousness, and we will be awakened to wonderful spiritual experience, to self-realization, and God realization.

Thank you very much.

Was that reasonably understandable or…?

Audience: Yes

So I will chant the mantra, that one up there, Aum Hari Aum. So I’ll chant it, I’ll chant it twice, and then you can follow: