Mind

  Mind in its Purity     All that we know to be good today is the creation of the Mind. The Mind has its ranges. It is good for us to know the Mind fully. The capacity of the Mind to create illusions is the philosophy of Shankara who is hailed as a greater intellect than Buddha. The film, The Matrix depicts forcefully the physical aspect of the Mind. The Mind is not defined by Man as he is not outside it. He is inside Mind, a part of it. He is a function of the Mind. He is really identified with his Mind.  To understand the Mind, one needs to be outside of it, having given up his identification with it. The first step is to know he is identified with the Mind. All philosophies are the exertions of the human Mind. Sri Aurobindo has given us a description of the constitution of the Mind, its origin, as well as the process by which it is constituted. Even to appreciate that description one needs to be outside the Mind. The Mind, He says, is an instrument of division. Wh...

   CONCENTRATION Some  have control over their minds. Others don’t have that control because, apart from other reasons, physical and psychological, they have not been trained to concentrate. With concentration a person understands a subject better. We somehow cannot get hold of all the aspects of things, whereas another person can. One person at once sees all the different bearings of a certain situation; another person cannot. What is the matter with the second person? His mind is not concentrated; he is not trained in attention. When you concentrate the mind, there is something that produces knowledge. Concentration will not produce the machine you are inventing, but it will produce knowledge, which afterwards you can set down on paper, or make a model of. It is concentration which suddenly brings out an explanation of a mysterious phenomenon. You have to worry over it, hold the mind there, hold it, hold it, and then suddenly something comes out.  Swami Vivekananda...

    Where Do Our Thoughts Come From?   Yohan John, Neuroscience PhD, on Quora: Thoughts come from nowhere and from everywhere! I think both contain an element of truth. Subjectively, our thoughts come from nowhere: they just pop into our heads, or emerge in the form of words leaving our mouths. Objectively, we can say that thoughts emerge from neural processes, and that neural processes come from everywhere; the forms and dynamics of thought  influenced by everything that has a causal connection with you, your society, and your species. We don't know exactly how thoughts emerge from the activity of neurons, or even how to define what a thought is in biological terms, but there is plenty of indirect evidence to support the general claim that the brain is where thoughts emerge. The neuronal patterns that mediate and enable thought and behavior have proximal and distal causes. The proximal causes are the stimuli and circumstances we experience. These experiences ha...

  Back Intentionally Inviting Thoughts: Being a Ticket Taker For Yoga meditation, one learns to let the thoughts “flow without interruption.” However, something comes first, before we can neutrally witness the entire stream of thoughts flowing. (See the page on witnessing) First we need to practice with individual thoughts, consciously practicing allowing some single thought to arise, just so we can observe the way in which it naturally drifts away, returning to the still, silent place from which it arose. There is a strong temptation to just block all of the thoughts by focusing on some object, or by chanting a mantra. This is a serious mistake for a meditator to make. It puts a veil, or maybe better to say a wall between our conscious state and the deeper parts of our being, including the bliss we are seeking and the center of consciousness. What can start out as an effort to meditate ends up just another method of suppressing thoughts and emotions, and this is definitely not use...