Mind is not a machine🔗

According to vedic^\* psychology, we are not disturbed. We are indeed the source of that disturbance. Understand this well, you are not tensed but you are tension. You are not stressed but you are the source of stress. There is a big difference between the two. Let us look deeply into it. Then you will understand. You are not in tension. You are the tension. There is a very big difference between ‘you are disturbed’ and ‘you are the disturbance’.

A group of reputed and experienced scientists, after doing research for many years, have now come up to say this. They say: We cannot make man responsible for his actions unless we teach him how to manage his emotions by managing what is happening inside him.

Whatever the vedic* scriptures said five thousand years ago is the same thing that the modern scientists are saying now. These scriptures also provide the solution and answer for this age-old problem. They can bridge the gap between the Western psychology and the vedic psychology.

Western psychology continuously gives us the hope that we can be brought back to normalcy, retaining I as I. For example, if we are feeling hot in this room, we can fix the air conditioning and make it cool to be comfortable. But we forget an important factor. The moment we bring air conditioning into this room, we need to maintain that. That brings additional tension. That brings additional problems. Now we need electricity, we need to pay the bills and for all these facilities we need money. When you go out to work, you no longer enjoy this room. The room and its air conditioning exist, but you are elsewhere working to pay the bills for the air conditioner!

We forget an important factor. You as you are, is a disease. The concept of mind, according to Western psychology, is a machine. According to vedic psychology, it is a process. Mind is not a machine but a process. It is constantly happening. The word ‘manas’, which is the Sanskrit word for mind, means a constant happening, something that is not passive and dead but something that is dynamic and alive.

Western psychology insists on this one idea that the mind is a biomechanical machine. We all believe unconsciously that mind is matter, a thing or a machine. That is why constantly we connect all the past happenings of the mind as a chain, and start believing our mind is a solid thing.

Let me give you an example. The low mood that you experienced ten years ago, the low mood that you experienced nine years ago, the low mood that you experienced eight years ago, the low mood that you experienced seven years ago and the low mood that you experienced yesterday are completely unconnected and independent incidents. All these happened for different purposes, different reasons, at different times and situations. You connect all these unconnected incidents and say, ‘My life itself is a depression.’

The low mood that you experienced years ago, months ago, weeks ago or days ago are all unconnected and independent incidents. Fifteen years ago, you would have felt the low mood and felt depressed because your toys were lost. Nine years ago, you would have felt depressed because your girlfriend was lost. Few years ago you would have felt depressed or disturbed because your son was not listening to you. The reasons were different, situations were different, and the cause was totally different. However, when you connect all these low moods and decide, ‘My life is full of depression,’ you have created hell for yourself!

The moment you start believing that your life is depressed, your life indeed becomes depression. Please understand that it is only what you believe to be your past that you will reproduce in future. We all know that we can’t fly from our past experience. How can we believe that we can start flying from tomorrow onwards? No, we can’t. Whatever we believe to be our past, only that we will believe can be our future. So once we start believing that our past was filled with depression, we have created the unconscious faith that our future will also be depression.

When we believe that the mind is just a thing, a bio-machine, we have created hell for ourselves. Fortunately for us, the mind is not a thing. There is hope. The truth is that mind is not a thing as we all have been taught; it is a process. It is not a noun but a verb.

When we believe the mind is a thing, be very clear, we create problems that do not exist.

A small story:

A man goes to a psychiatric doctor and says, ‘Doctor, my life is full of problems’. The doctor says, ‘Everybody’s life is a problem. Don’t worry. Every week we will have three sessions and you will be charged hundred dollars.’

The man says, ‘Doctor, three sessions per week each at hundred dollars will solve your problem. What about my problem!’

Understand, the moment we start believing that the mind is only a machine, we become helpless. No psychiatrist can help. No psychoanalyst can help. No other method can help, because the basic belief is wrong. The moment we bring a wrong belief, whatever is built on that has to go wrong. It cannot be the truth. We need to understand the basic truth that the mind is a process; we are not in tension but we are tension.

Only about ten percent of what we perceive through our senses gets recorded in our conscious mind. Everything else goes directly into our unconscious mind. This is why many times we do not even remember a place that we pass every day. So long as this sensory perception does not interest us in some way it does not get recorded.

Let us now see what happens to those sensory perceptions that do get recorded in our conscious mind. These impressions are sorted out by parts of our mind and identified. Your conscious mind records whether the person you see in front of you is known to you or whether he is an unknown stranger. How you would like to interact with him is no longer a decision made at the conscious level. In case you know him, your attitude towards him and your action would be based on the engraved memories that are grooved in your mind. In case he is unknown to you also, the very appearance of that person would trigger unconscious responses. Either way the file moves into your unconscious for a decision about what you should do.

For most of us, less than ten percent of the mind is conscious. Less than ten percent of what you perceive through your senses gets recorded consciously. It is possible that less than one percent of what you decide is a rational decision!

There are two ways we can regain control. The first is to reduce the conditioning that binds us. In our meditation programs, we work on the removal and dissolution of these samskaras^\* that bind us. The second way is to be in the present moment, in total awareness and control.

Your thoughts are always about your past or your future. You can only think about what happened in the past or what will happen in the future. Your thoughts of the past are usually regrets about what you did not do or guilt about what you did. Thoughts of the future are about what you wish to do.

Please understand, neither the past nor the future is real. The past is dead and gone. Most often we do not even learn from the past. All we try to do is use our past to steer the future. It is like driving a car looking only at the rear view mirror! You know for sure where you will end up!

The future is even more unreal. It has not happened. You have very little control over your future the way you are, because all your actions are steered by the unconscious mind. You are driven by the embedded memories of your past. Your thoughts are nothing but the movement of your mind between past and future. Your mind never wants to rest. If it rested you will know you can do without it!

If only you allowed the mind to rest or even persuaded your mind to rest, you will

find that you reach a blissful state. That state is the present moment. All your future has to happen in this present moment. It is what you decide now in this present moment that makes your future. Once you take care of the present moment, once you live this present moment consciously, you no longer will have cause to regret your past or feel guilty about it.

The shaft in the center represents ‘time’. At any given time, the greater your TPS or Thoughts Per Second, the more far-flung you are from consciousness of the present moment. You are simply worrying about the future thus allowing it to slip into the past, without ever getting a glimpse of the present.

When your TPS comes down, you enter more and more into the present and when this happens, you have a clearer vision of the past and the future. You may wonder what is there to be clear about the past. One can understand that the future may not be clear, but why the past? I have lived it, so why should it be unclear! You need to understand that what you now remember of the past is your judgment of the past, not the way it happened. How many times do we talk about the golden past? How much has been written about the ‘golden past’! There is nothing golden about the past. We just choose to remember the good parts, so it looks golden.

When you are in the intuitive state, be very clear: for those few moments, your TPS has dropped and you are more in the present. When your TPS is zero, you can clearly see the entire past and future.

The point where the future meets the past is the present. This is where your thought frequency is zero and you are in a no-mind state. You have not merely controlled or suppressed the mind, which is impossible. You have transcended the mind, which is possible.

Meditation brings the mind to rest. Meditation disengages the mind so that the mind cannot play games. We can also reach this state in the master’s presence. The master is always in a no-mind state, which is the zero TPS state. When you are in his awareness, whether physically or otherwise, your own

TPS also drops. You can reach zero TPS just by being in the master's presence. The presence of the master is meditation. Awareness of the master is meditation.