Do you mind

Continuing with the last blog, what makes the mind so difficult to control? To know that, we may need to know what mind is! This is a difficult task, for there is no such organ in the human body. Some branches of modern psychology, for instance the behaviorism, do not talk about mind at all. It operates with a theory of stimulus-response. All behavior, whether internal or external, are reactions to stimuli and these are linked to the brain. Their contentions are not disputed here. They may be right or they may be wrong. The real matter is whether, this new line of approach has helped people. To be frank I very much doubt it. Eric Fromm et.al may have done some good work in the field. But Transactional Analysis has its own drawbacks. The foremost being, this self analyzing tends to bog us down. Such constant internal activity could become a source of trouble itself, but more about it later. Let us only say that people fancy the old fashioned psychological counseling to TA because it’s reassuring. It hands over the responsibility of locating the trouble to the psychologist, leaving us free to be crazy! And the psychologist deals with the mind exclusively.

Adolf Hitler shrewdly said that most people are like women and are easily led. In essence it means that people are dependent on others to think for themselves. All great leaders are aware of this fact. Human mind can not create independent thought waves. It relays on others to do that. It constantly receives thought streams from others and obediently fashions its own activity to suit these thought structures. Call it the activity of the brain, mind or anything, unless these incoming streams of thoughts are controlled and corresponding internal thoughts are stilled achieving peace could be impossible.

It is to attempt this that the whole science of Yoga was developed in India. I would like to look more into it, whether it can teach us something about the real nature of the elusive phenomenon called the human mind.