Q: Can you please talk in a little detail about the Mind and intellect, and how are they related?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  So what is mind? Are you listening? Are you aware that you are reading right now?  If your eyes are open and your ears are of course open, sound anyways goes into your ears but if your mind is elsewhere, can you listen? No! Isn’t it? So this mind is that through which you perceive, you feel, correct! That, which goes out through the five senses and experiences, is mind.
Okay! So if you experience through mind then what is intellect? As you experience you say, ‘oh, this is good, this is not good, I want this, I don’t want that’. You know intellect is the judging or discriminating aspect. As you are reading this, your mind is saying, ‘well, I don’t like it’ or ‘I believe it’ or ‘I don’t believe it’, you are going into a dialogue, this is intellect; Whether you agree with me or you disagree with me, it doesn’t matter – but are you aware, you are agreeing or disagreeing? This matters a lot.

INTELLECT:

Have ever observed, you listen to some word, and your mind like a google search presents so many thoughts in front of you, and you react according to the strongest impulse. E.g. just observe your mind right now when you read FIVE - A digit, five star hotel, five star chocolate, 5 PM, 5 AM, 5 million...That which makes you chose how you react out of so many options is your intellect. From where all those options rain in the mind is the storehouse of information or events, called memory. To be little more aware of what information goes in the mind can take one long way ahead. 

MEMORY:

What is recognizing the experiences? Where are the experiences stored? 
Have you noticed the nature of the memory? Having got ten compliments and one insult, what will you hold on to? It clings on to the negative. Life gives you hundred choices to be happy, and some 20 sad instances. But what does memory cling on to? Those few negative instances here and there! The memory is very strange!
The very remembrance of this nature of memory liberates you, makes you light at that very moment.
You listen to a word and all that which has been stored in the memory comes as a flash. Which is the faculty which chooses and makes you respond?


Science of Breadth


Have you noticed how you breathe when you are angry, or excited, or sad or very relaxed? As you are reading, just observe how you are breathing? There is certain rhythm to our breath. And if one cannot handle mind directly, one can do that through the breath.

The way you breathe when you are angry - fast and short.
A sigh comes up when sad or depressed.
When you are fearful or anxious  - there is a flatter in the breath.
When you are relaxed and calm - the breath also becomes harmonious.

Nature has already given us this release system. The proper use of breath can open up such an amazing control on our mind and emotions.

 

A little more on the Mind

Mind exists on more, and it needs a direction to flow. What that direction of wanting more is the deciding factor of one’s future.   
Q: Mind – in want of new!
What is the nature of the mind?
The mind needs something new constantly, every minute, every second… It wants something today, something else tomorrow or an entirely different thing the day after tomorrow. You get bored if you have to eat the same vegetable everyday. You want to taste different varieties of food everyday. Why? Mind wants something new all the time. But how much newness can exist? Is there any stop to this more of the mind?

Continued from the series - Seven Levels of existence

Q: I was wondering what exactly the mind is? Is it a little space in our brain or is it universal?
Answer: Mind is energy which is all over the body. See, every cell in your body is emitting some energy and the totality of all that energy around you is what you call the mind. What happens in mind reflects in the body, what you put in the body, reflects in the mind. Mind is not present at some point in the brain, but mind is all over the body. There is so much deep knowledge about consciousness; The more you understand, the more wonder-struck you are. Wow!

Do you know about phantom hand? People who have lost their hand or leg in a war or accident, later sometimes, they feel they have a phantom hand or a leg. They feel sensations like itching or paining in that hand. That explains or gives a clue that the mind is not just in one spot, it is all around the body. The aura of body is mind. We think that mind is inside the body, it is the other way around - Body is inside the mind.

On a more gross level, Mind has got two dimensions. One is open mind and one is closed mind. An open mind is receptive, ready to learn, ready to catch the moment. A closed mind says, “I know it all”. Mind that has confined itself under the boundary of ‘I know it all’ doesn’t let one’s personality to blossom fully. In one of the traditions in East, the name given to a religion is Sikh. Sikh means one who is always ready to learn, and the knowledge of the self is so vast that there cannot be end to learning.

Series on seven levels of our existence!

We often spend our lives comforting this body, and one day this body leaves us. Is there anything beyond this body, understanding and experiencing about which you can make your life an eternal celebration.
Here we go: Your existence that you don’t know:
Body is the most gross, and then comes, in order of subtlety, the mind, breath, intellect, memory, ego and the self. SEVEN LEVELS OF OUR EXISTENCE:
BODY – MIND Complex
1. Your body is a precious gift to you by Mother Nature. Respect your body. Your body is capable of inviting Narayana. Your body is a temple in which divinity can enter and reside. Therefore, keep it healthy, transform it and just light a lamp in it. That is enough for Divine to come and reside in it.
Body is Narayana’s most precious abode.

What is there in your body? It is Narayana’s altar. Spread the altar of smile and light the lamp of knowledge and invite “anandakanda”, the child of bliss in your body. If the son of Nanda has to come to you, light is necessary, the altar of smile is necessary.

Catch more in the next post...

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