We all have an inner enemy within us – some mysterious presence that impels us to act against our best interests. Different traditions refer to it as the bad dog, the lower self, the inner Devil and so forth.
Gita wisdom identifies it as the mind.
How does the mind act inimically?
By deluding us about the value and importance of things.
It distracts us from important things and then deluges us with desires for unimportant and even undesirable things.
When faced with the mind’s insidious delusions, we may feel sorry for ourselves that we are stuck with such a mind and wonder how we will ever succeed against it.
Thankfully though, we have been given the necessary resources. The most important among those resources is our intelligence. Of course, our most powerful resource is our devotion, for it gives us access to the omnipotence of Krishna. But the mind’s delusion is so sinister that it can eradicate even our desire for tapping that devotional resource.
Pertinently, the Gita (06.25) urges us to use our intelligence to restrain the mind. When we fortify our intelligence with Gita wisdom, it becomes sharp enough to at least recognize the mind’s delusions – to realize how it is diverting us from the desirable to the undesirable. This recognition is not always sufficient to counter the mind’s delusion, but it is usually necessary to trigger our inner alarm. That trigger makes us fervently seek Krishna’s help with whatever devotion we have. Merciful Krishna rescues us from the mind’s delusion by providing higher taste and wisdom.
By the resulting illumination and purification, we can over time not only free ourselves from the mind’s delusion, but also free the mind from its delusions, thereby making it our friend.
By definition pure consciousness is consciousness that is conscious of itself. That’s where the impersonalist experiences the ceiling of his reality. But this state of consciousness is merely a portal to the transcendental variety of consciousness. Although in pure consciousness the subject is identical to the object, in its seed the subject is rather longing for a relationship with the object. In the experience with the material sense objects it only finds limited satisfaction. But through the portal of pure consciousness this transcendental seed is naturally drawn to sprout and grow within and towards the Supreme Object of unlimited Love, Lord Sri Krishna, and to interrelate with all the varieties of His Divine manifestation. The drop is not only one with the ocean; it is in love with the ocean and in response the ocean overwhelmingly overflows the tiny drop with its oceanic Love. Thus the infinitesimal soul that is as such touched by the infinite Supreme Loving Lord Sri Krishna experiences unlimited Love without comparison.
Hare krishna prabhuji,
What a excellent article.
Thank you for this wonderful seva.
Ys,
Kiran