Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

53. Managing the Mind

(Darshan given on October 20th, 1997)

A visitor: I don't know my mind enough as to know how to manage it properly.

Swamiji: Why do you want to manage the mind? You manage the whole world. [Laughter] That is better than this. The mind is a little puny nothing. Why are you worrying about that?

Mind is an epistemological medium. It is an instrument. It is not a reality by itself. It is an individualised projection in the context of space and time of the universal light inside, which is the supreme Absolute, you call it Atman, peeping through the sense organs in the direction of objects outside. This is the mind. It is a conduit pipe, as it were. If you connect the end of a pipe to the ocean, though the ocean has so much of water, through the pipe only so much will pass as is the opening in the tube or the pipe. So though there is a reservoir of light and consciousness inside in the Atman, only that much of it will be allowed to pass through the mind as the comprehending capacity of the mental structure.

The function of the mind is to project this limited conduit pipe-like consciousness towards the objects outside, through the sense organs. So there is no great value in knowing this process of the mind. It is an agent of the intellect, which judges the value of things according to its appreciation of the nature of objects outside.

The mind is concerned with only indeterminate perception, and the intellect is determinate perception. Suppose you are walking on the road in twilight. You see something standing. The mind says there is something in front of you. It may be an electrical pole or a human being, or it may be a stump of a tree; it may be anything. The mind has indeterminately conceived the presence of something as existing, but when you go near you will find it is a tree only. This is the judgment of the intellect. It is called determinate perception. And then, having perceived something, you keep the memory of it in the subconscious.

If you see a thing through this process that I have described, an impression is formed in the mind which it carries with it, provided that the object that has been perceived has some value for you. If it is a valueless thing, you will not remember it at all. If it is an electrical pole, it has no meaning for you. Let it be there or let it not be there. But if it is a mango tree full of fruits, or something else which delights you, you will keep a memory of it. So indeterminate perception through the mind leads to determinate perception by judgment of the intellect, which, finally, congeals into a memory of that experience in the subconscious. So we may say the mind has several levels: the conscious level, the subconscious level, and even an unconscious level where the deep-seated memories lodge themselves for a long time when they have no opportunity to come out in actual experience.

This is briefly the analysis of the mental structure. Are you satisfied? Then what else you want to know? But this is not of any use to you. This kind of analysis is not going to benefit you. It is only a scientist's curiosity. If I say this cloth is made up of so many threads, the threads are made up of little fibres, fibres are made up of still finer things, how are you benefiting by hearing all this? This is the analysis of the cloth, and similarly I have made an analysis of the mind. The purpose of the question that you are raising evidently is to know why the mind is functioning like that. What is the purpose? That is a metaphysical question. It is more than psychology.

Another visitor: There is a conflict between traditional people and secular people taking place all the time.

Swamiji: What is the conflict?

Visitor: The conflict is that people want to impose their own views upon other people, the religious views they believe are right and given from God, and other people believe they have the right not to believe in certain things; and this gives rise to conflict.

Swamiji: So it is a religious conflict, religious?

Visitor: Theoretically it is religious. I think it is just an ego trip, most of it.

Swamiji: So theoretically it is religious. What is the actual reason?

Visitor: I think people have a tendency to try to make other people like themselves, believing that their way is always right, and other people think the same thing, which automatically gives rise to conflict.

Swamiji: So you mean religion is not a good thing.

Visitor: I think the essence of religion is good. I think religion as it is applied today is not very good.

Swamiji: So why not go to the religion in its essence? Why do you want the outer form of it?

Visitor: I personally don't, Swamiji. I don't follow the outer form.

Swamiji: Because the form attracts, the essence repels, so nobody goes for the essence. Form always attracts. We always go for appearances, and not for the essences. Everybody in public appears to be an important person. Nobody in public will present himself or herself as an unimportant person: “I'm an important person.” But when you are alone in your house, you look like a very small, unimportant person. You never feel that you are a big man in your house. What do you say? When you are in your kitchen, in your bathroom, and when you are sleeping, where is your importance? You go to sleep like an animal sleeping. All the importance vanishes when you go to sleep. In your bathroom, what is your importance?

So the essence is that no one is important. When everything is taken away, they look funny and like a nobody, but in public they put on an air of importance. Everybody commands respect from other people, but who is going to respect you when you are in the bathroom, when you are your real self? That is your real nature. When nobody sees you, when you are literally alone to yourself, you look like a nobody with no importance. But when others are there you say, “I am an important man.” So is the case with religion also. When you make it a public affair, and a question of performance and doing, there are conflicts. But the essence of it is simple.

Religion is a very simple thing, and very easy to understand, but people want to complicate everything, and then unnecessary conflict arises.