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The NECESSITY of MIND
CONTROL
" We all know that, somehow or other, if we can learn to
control our mind, then we can ac-comp sh many things in our life. So naturally,
an of us are interested in controlling our mmd
. At the same time we are all well aware of the disastrous consequences
of an uncontrolled mind. If the mind of a person is uncontrolled, it will make
him miserable throughout his life and may harass him so much that he may even
go to the extent of committing suicide.
Every intelligent person should learn to control his mind and
lead a peaceful life. There are many institutions offering courses on Mind
Control, but most of them don't go to the root of the problem. They are based
on only a superficial knowledge of the mind and the way in which it works. Mind
control without proper understanding of oneself, God and the purpose of life is
just an eyewash; it can yield no tangible benefit. In this booklet however, we
will get a proper understanding of the mind, based on the timeless wisdom of
the Vedic philosophical masterpiece, the Bhagavad-gita.
The mind frequently causes us a variety of problems. And amateur
attempts to tackle these problems are bound to fail since the body-mind
mechanism is extremely complex. Therefore the first step in mind control is to
understand the answers to the following basic questions: What is this body?
Who am I? What is the purpose of this creation? In order to get authentic
answers to these questions, the best course of action is to approach the
super-intelligent Designer of this body, the Mastermind behind the creation,
namely, the Supreme Lord, and ask Him, "Why did You create all these
problems?" This approach involves tackling the problems of life by going
to their root cause and so it can provide a permanent solution. Just as when
we get a disease, we go to a doctor, an expert in that field, to diagnose the
root cause of the disease and get it cured, similarly we need the help of a
guru or a spiritual master, an expert in the knowledge of the essence of life,
who can teach us why our mind and body give us so much suffering in this world
and the way to permanently get rid of all suffering.
Krishna, the Supreme Lord, is universally acclaimed as the jagat
guru or the spiritual master of the whole universe. And He is teaching Arjuna
in Bhagavad-gita how to control one's mind and how to lead a pure life. Right
at the outset of the Bhagavad-gita, Lord Krishna explains to Arjuna that we are
not these material bodies; we are actually spirit souls. This body is simply
like a dress; it is just an external covering. The atma, the eternal being, who
is the eternal servant of God, is now trapped in this body exactly like a
parrot trapped in a cage. Being trapped in the body we are constantly suffering
due to the miseries caused by the body and the mind. It is not that we are suffering only now; our history
of suffering dates back to many, many lifetimes. Therefore according to all the
scriptures the ultimate goal of life, the only way to lasting happiness, is to
liberate oneself from the cycle of birth and death and to achieve the kingdom
of God. That is our original home and it is from there that we have come to
this foreign place, the material world.
Due to our stay in the material world, our mind has become the
storehouse of varieties of thoughts, impressions and unfulfilled desires.
These material impressions on the mind drag the atma from one body to another,
birth after birth. Until all these material impressions are wiped out from the
mind and pure spiritual consciousness is established, there is no possibility
of returning back to the kingdom of God. But as long as we are in this material
world, we are inescapably stuck up with the body and the mind. And the mind gives us a variety
of sufferings.
Herein we will try to learn a few tips, which can help us to
control the mind. But these tips have to be applied while a person simultaneously
engages in cultivating knowledge about God, the ultimate goal of life and about
himself. There is no overnight, short cut to control the mind; if it were so
easy, modern man would not talk so much about mind control. We request the
reader to refer to our previous book on 'Art of Mind Control' to get some
understanding of soul-body-mind-intelligence mechanism so that he can apply the
following tips more effectively: