19. Spirituality helps Mind to excel from Lower to Higher Level.

http://www.speakingtree.in/public/spiritual-blogs/seekers/science-of-spirituality/spirituality-helps-mind-to-excel-from-lower-to-higher-level-31446

According to Upanishad mind is twofold, while one is higher filled with purity, the other is the lower filled with passion, emotion and desires. Spirituality is one of the means to make this twofold into one Sattvic mind so that it will let us have peace and allow us to meditate. It is through the higher mind that we will be able to control the lower mind which is engrossed with passion, emotion and desires.

Lower mind that is filled with desire, passion and emotion creates irrational resolve, impractical sense and ego and all these three forms a triangle and work in collaboration.  Mind is just a flow of uninterrupted thoughts and of all these thoughts “I” ness is the source and it if the first to develop in the mind. While the intellect is the one which forces us to identify our mind with our physical body.

Higher mind is one which is essentially very simple, bright, aware and enthusiastic. It usually observes and gives a response free from conditioning with truthfulness and frankness. By this approach it indicates that it is immense with peace within itself. Thus this mind enjoys the splendor & harmony of nature and goes deep into the problems of life and solves them.

Once our higher mind is awake then alone it can understand our problem and then it becomes easy for it to work and discover that the basic problem is baseless presumptions about oneself. It clearly visualizes that due to the ignorance of self there is presumptions about oneself & the world at large. This presumption in turn focuses to the single most effective cause to bring about various expectations and all the connected problems that we may experience in making a success or failure in the venture. True knowledge of oneself from the higher mind reveals that it is important to achieve something which is steady and not to go behind some transitory success which is subject to change at different time & place.

Higher mind brings bliss by making others happy without distinguishing between man and animals. It boosts the person not to miss any opportunity to serve others and rebukes him on transgressing the freedom of others and imposes his ideologies on others. The mind which works in this manner is called as a pure mind. It is indeed a great advantage to have such a mind as knowledge comes easily with least possible efforts to those who posses it. And also it is indeed a joy to tell or teach about any subject or topic to those people as they will pay their entire attention to the subject and would love to go deep & unfold the mysteries of the subject.

Just as a diamond cuts a diamond the higher mind of a person which is immersed in the virtuous path should correct and mould the lower mind. Lower mind can be rendered pure through right virtues, pure actions and constant association of the wise. Being truthful and practice of pure compassion work in purification of our lower mind.

Higher mind is always inclined to virtues, and crave for knowledge and is dispassionate towards unwanted and unrelated subjects. With these attributes it is plentiful, has sovereignty and freedom hence it has mastery over all.   

5. Intellect is a better option than Conditioned Mind!!!

Science says we all are evolved organisms and initially we were complex chemical combinations from which we became single-celled, went on to become multi-cellular creatures then fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals to ape-like ancestors and finally Homo sapiens that we are today. Accepted that we have evolved as the Darwin theory has explained. We need to know what is that which takes us to a level higher than animals. Man is considered a social animal. What made him be social animal???

We have many things in common with animals like the way we eating, commuting, reproducing, and protect ourselves. One more extraordinary trait is the fact that animals are conditioned by their environment and by experiences. Just imagine how an angry and vicious animal can be trained to be gentle at the hands of a ringmaster. Though the natural instinct of a few animals is to behave wild, man has conditioned them to be his slave. And while animals some have this adoptive mind which needs no one to interfere like for example it took thousands of years for the giraffe species to have long neck so that they can eat the acacia leaves on the tree tops. It was the adoptive mind at work. But having said that animals can use their conditioned and adoptive mind to better their live only in four features namely food, shelter, sleep and procreation. It does not and cannot use its mind to go beyond these.

We humans have intellect (Buddhi) along with mind (Manas) which can be used to change the way we live and excel from one position to the better. When I say to live a better life it is not life of comfort, an animal with conditioned mind is able to find means to make its life comfortable. The intellect has to be used to understand things in spiritual aspect. Intellect is an ability to choose Shreya (Beneficial) against Preya (Pleasant). If we can use our intellect to choose then we can strengthen it by having confidence on it when a choice has to be made. All we need is awareness to choose our intellect instead of our conditioned mind or adaptive mind.

Is Intellect different from mind then???? Yes, if intellect is the program the mind is the processor. Intellect is higher than mind if the intellect is the boss the mind is its secretary. Mind provides all the necessary inputs for the project that is imagined by intellect, suppose the intellect has decided to go to a place the mind provides the route and the means to reach the same.

Often conditioned mind is mistaken as intellect. When we see animals which behave extraordinary we say they are intelligent but they are either using their conditioned or adaptive mind. If they were intelligent they would have started to think like we human about emancipation. It is unfortunate to see some humans also use conditioned mind and adaptive mind instead of the unique faculty called intellect. Conditioned mind is limited and it is like uploaded non-writable files while intellect is infinite with lots of writable files which can be uploaded or downloaded. 

A conditioned mind is a small package of typical thoughts. When a conditioned mind seeks answer to questions it has to search for answers within that small package since it cannot go beyond it. Intellect can provide answers to any of the questions the mind puts to it simply because it is connected to something which the mind cannot comprehend to. Reading scriptures and knowing about them is in a way conditioning of mind but with those input if we use our intellect we will know the essence and significance of what the scriptures say, so that we can put those to use in our daily life. Intellect is sharpened by the unconditioned UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS.