PARTICIPATING in a meditation programme and listening to Satsanghs have most often proved inspiring and triggered further contemplations on any given topic. It was one such opportunity that I had recently after a meditation session on thoughts by Swami Akshara. I was inspired to watch my mind coughing up and purging itself of all thoughts.
The activities of four parts of the mind called the Antah Karana enacted itself as if it were a live drama going on before me. Seeing a situation or person, thoughts enter the mind. The thoughts simply enter, that’s all. But when a thought disturbs us, it is because of the second layer of the mind called Chitta which has all the memories of the thoughts - pleasant and unpleasant stored in its file cabinets.
This Chitta is energised when it recognises the presence of the fresh inflow of thoughts and reminds the past.
There is another layer of the mind called Buddhi.
The Buddhi is the boss and acts upon the files that the manas - mind and chitta - memory, place before it. It plays a discriminative role and takes decisions based on the thoughts like a Secretary decides upon the files brought before him by his subordinates.
The fourth layer of the mind is the Ahamkara or the individual human being, who is trying to do this or that work or be this way or that or experience joy or sorrow. Ahamkara or ego is often used in a degraded connotation. But Ego means the individual mind. It refers to every individual person with a name and distinct physical form and characteristics.
So we have good egos, bad egos, humble egos, proud egos, victim egos, victor egos, doormat egos or aggressor egos. They are all different shades of the mind, none good or bad but just that - an ego.
So the end of the contemplation made me understand the complexity of the human mind which is nothing but Manas which allows the thoughts to enter as if it were a door or window, the Chitta which entertains the thoughts based on its stock files of past memories, likes and dislikes. These thoughts are tempered or tampered by the Buddhi - the intellect and either accepted as it is or distorted by the Ahamkara.
Thoughts and memories that are exposed in meditation get purified in the detergent and water of consciousness.
