The mind is so objective and restlessly outwardly looking that it does never see inside itself.

I feel that the most mysterious and complicated thing in this universe is our mind and more importantly how the mind functions. Since the prehistoric times when the man began to think rationally and start searching the answers of life’s mysteries, mind has been in the center stage of man’s thinking domain. Earliest recorded views/concepts about mind and its relationship with soul and divine forces were given by the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Adi Shankara and many other ancient Indian, Greek and later Islamic Philosophers. David Hume (1711-1776), a Scottish philosopher, historian and a very important figure in the history of western philosophy has also explained mind very impressively in these following words:

Mind is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement. The mind is a kind of theater where several perceptions successively make their appearances, pass, repass, glide away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is no simplicity in it at one time, no identity in different times.

We all can very easily notice that we capture only the scenes of perceptions of physical objects and not the mind where they are presented. According to David Hume, we are not sure about the location of this theatre or even about the fact whether such theatre i.e. minds really exist. All this shows the helplessness of capturing our inner subjectivity with objective intellect. This has also been reinforced by the fact that mind engages our real consciousness with so much of fleeting data of gross existence that our consciousness forgets to acknowledge itself. To know the self is self-realization. For this we are required to disengage our core consciousness from the flow of data and ideas processed and presented by mind. This can easily be achieved through meditation. I have explained this phenomenon in great detail in my previous blog entry posted on .

It’s therefore well said that God resides within each of us with all the secrets and mysteries of life but due to our mind’s total preoccupation with worldly affairs we don’t get time to look inside for their answers. The real peace and tranquility and the resultant happiness doesn’t come from outside world but from one’s inner self. I am reproducing a story as narrated by Kartikey Singh in his book titled ‘Physics of God’ (2009) which very beautifully conveys this very point.

When God created the universe and human being, he made the human mind very intelligent, inquisitive and probing, even more than what He had initially planned for. It had huge capacity to discover truths, create ideas and connect things. God did not want that human mind should ever know the master plan of His creation. But He was unable to find any place where human mind could not reach to hide His master plan. An angel then came to God and asked the reason for His worry. God told him that He had mistakenly made the human mind very intelligent and there was no place in universe where human mind could not reach in due course of time. He wanted to hide all the secret truths of His creations from man. The angle advised God that the best place to keep the secret of universe is the inside of man himself – deep inside the human mind. The mind is so objective and restlessly outwardly looking that it does never see inside itself. God then put all the treasure of cosmic secret in the depth of human consciousness. He also realizes that this was also a very good hide for Himself too. So the God too along with His heavenly paraphernalia slipped into the deepest layers of human consciousness. And the intelligent and silly human mind is still searching the God and the secret. The best-kept is kept just inside.

Ramesh S Baleskar , a well known Indian spiritual guru, in ‘A Net of Jewels’ says that ‘Self enquiry is the direct path to self- realization or enlightenment. The only way to make the mind cease its outward activities is to turn it inward. By steady and continuous investigation into the nature of the mind, the mind itself gets transformed into That to which it owes its own existence’. Initially Self-enquiry usually requires considerable effort in order to counteract the mind’s conditioned tendency to go outwards towards the object rather than inward to the Awareness of the object. With experience, however, the required effort diminishes as the mind is drawn towards the peace resulting from focusing on Self. When we are inward, the activities of the body-mind and of the rest of the world may continue but they will not affect us. The more time we spend inward, the more we realize our true nature and better we feel.