CAUSE OF UNHAPPINESS AND THE FORMULA FOR HAPPINESS

 

The Vedic scriptures explain that the soul is constitutionally a resident of an eternal realm, the spiritual world. It is explained in the Upanishads, 'nityo nityanam, cetanas cetananam, eko bahunam, yo vidadhati kaman'lhe Supreme Personality of Godhead is one amongst many, many souls who are all subordinate to Him. Every soul is endowed with a minute independence. He can choose either to love and serve God, or to be independent of God and struggle for the so-called illusory enjoyment in this material world. The souls in this world have chosen the second option.

 

BODY-SENSES-MIND-INTELLIGENCE MECHANISM

 

The knowledge about the soul is quite ex­haustive and is beyond the scope of this book. (You may refer to our pocket book publica­tion: 'Can I live forever ?' for further informa­tion about the soul). If one can understand the body-senses-mind-intelligence mecha­nism, how it works, then one can learn to control the mind perfectly.

 

The soul, when he comes to this material world, is awarded a gross and subtle covering to acclimatize him to the material surroundings. The false ego is the connection or bond be­tween the material body and the soul. Every­one exhibits this as bodily consciousness. Ev­eryone thinks in terms of T and 'mine'. To think 'I am fair', 'I am black', 'I am tall', 'I am short', 'I am a brahman', 'I am an Indian', etc., is false ego. True ego is to realize oneself to be an eternal servant of God.

 

Intelligence is the decision-maker. It is sup­posed to discriminate between good and bad, and give proper direction and guidance to the mind, to know what to do and what not to do. The mind is the centre of all activities of the senses, and is  the reservoir of all ideas of sense enjoyment. The mind is the storehouse of thoughts, unfulfilled desires and previous experiences. The functions of the mind are thinking, feeling and willing. Mind is the com­mon centre for all knowledge-acquiring senses - eyes, nose, ears, tongue and skin.

 

The senses (indriyas) are the direct link with the external world. Infor­mation is gathered by the  five knowledge -acquiring senses   (jnanendriyas) viz. the eyes, nose, ears, tongue (taste) and skin (touch), and the body acts with the help of the  five   working   senses (karmendriyas) namely- voice, legs, hands, anus and genitals. This activity of the body is always related to the five object of the senses, namely -form smell, sound, taste and touch. Everything we perceive in the world falls into one of the five categories of sense objects. Now we can illustrate with an example how. the body-mind-intelligence mechanism works.

 

When you are walking along the road and you see a gulab jamun in a sweetmeat shop, first your eyes (one of the jnanendriyas) are attracted by the gulab jamuns. This informa­tion is passed on to the mind. The mind has two things: the previous experience of the sweet taste of gulab jamun and the input of seeing gulab jamun. The mind consults the intelligence and the intelligence dictates to your hands and legs (karmendriyas) to go to the shop and purchase the gulab jamuns. In this way co-ordination takes place between the jnanendriyas, karmendriyas, the mind and intelligence.