The Characteristics of the Mind

 Without giving up sloth, how can Truth be known? Without giving up passion, how can devotion take root? Be serene and calm in stress and storm - that is the Satwic or pious path to win the Lord, the Truth. The mind is a wonder, its antics are even more surprising. It has no distinct form or shape. It assumes the shape or form of what it is involved in. Wandering from wish to wish, flitting from one desire to another is its nature. It causes loss and grief, elation and depression. Its effects are both positive and negative. The mind will gather experiences and store them in the memory forever. It does not know the art of giving up! As a consequence, grief, anxiety and misery continue simmering in it. It is worthwhile to know the characteristics of your mind and the ways to master it, for you will ultimately benefit! Teach it sacrifice (tyaga), and you will become spiritually wise (yogi)! 

If we see it in our own life, we wonder what is sloth, how did we experience it. And what about passion? In these words is the characteristics of the three gunas, but not just as principle, but the experience. We experience the stress and the storm and how it is to keep inside calm and in sathva to get to truth.

And we go on seeing the wandering mind and that we wonder about it and we also wonder why lots of people seem to have not even a feeling for the mind yet and the reason is, we don't listen enough, if we listen we have to get a feeling for it, because with his words it gets alive.

We can see in our inner vision the mind that it has not distinct form and shape and it takes the shape or form of our life and therefore, we always should see it in our life. It is in our life we have to face the patterns of a mind that experiences things and makes out a memory forever.

We Don't Know that we Don't Know

To divest oneself of all contacts with others, and tread a lonely path is a sign of weakness, of fear and not of courage. Lively association alone produces morality, justice, compassion, sympathy, love, tolerance, equanimity and many other qualities that toughen and train the character, and mould the personality of an individual. Culture is the consequence of the co-mingling of hearts and heads. A group of individuals, who are charged with hatred or contempt towards each other, cannot produce any beneficial effect on any in the group; Sama-chintha, that is, a common outlook or rather a common inward-vision is the essential factor. Common belief systems, opinions and attitudes is key. This Sama-chintha must result in a flood of divine bliss that envelops and brightens an entire community. The consciousness that one is Divine and that everyone else is equally so, is the best bond for a community, that bliss is the best atmosphere to nurture and sustain communities.

Here Baba tells us that we should be in company and not just on a lonely path.  Some time ago I took a Baba quote, I began to think it over and that is how I realized that by thinking it over and most of all seeing it in our own life, we get answers, not only Baba dreams, but insights. 

He said in a dream that I should use his words, it doesn't mean we repeat it, but we think it over, there is nothing wrong about repeating it, we get a feeling for it and we have to find that feeling in our own life. When we read it we think, right all understood. But that is not right. It is not absorbed. 

He is on all three levels, we are only in the mind. To be on all three levels as well we have to listen, think it over and absorb. That happens by thinking it over and in writing about it, we have a means to think it over.