Mind’s Activity and Development

How does the real knowledge come? Can it descend even though the mind is not prepared?

In some it does, others need a mental preparation.

How shall I obtain mental development? Can it be had only by reading?

A man may have read much and yet be mentally undeveloped. It is by thinking, understanding, receiving mental influences from his intellectual superiors that a man’s mind develops.

Where does the discriminating power of the mind or the psychic come from?

It belongs to them by nature — only the mind can err, the psychic does not.

You once said: “You have to become conscious entirely and not only in your mind.” I fail to catch the exact meaning of these words.

The mind is not the whole of you, there is also the vital and physical. If the mind is conscious and rejects but the vital or the physical do not, then you cannot get free.

The mind can be easily conscious of a wrong movement. But I don’t know how the vital and the physical can be conscious of it and reject it.

There is a vital mind and a physical mind and there is too a power of feeling and a consciousness. If there is a consciousness, why should it be impossible for it to be conscious?

Sometimes the mind feels the pressure and wants to be free from mental work and to remain at rest. Should I let it do that?

If it did that, it might get the habit of inertia. You can do less mental work, if you like.

How is the lower mind to be transformed or thrown away in order to awake the faculties of the higher mental ranges?

How can you throw away the mind unless you want to disappear from manifested existence? It has first to be made quiet and open to the higher consciousness and transformed by the descent of the higher consciousness.

Does a quiet mind mean focusing attention one-pointedly on a particular subject? As for instance, while aspiring one should not allow any other thoughts than of the Divine in the quiet mind.

A quiet mind is a mind that does not get disturbed, is not restless and always vibrating with the need of mental action.

What you are talking about is a concentrated mind, concentrated on something or on a subject. That is quite different.

Does one build the vital world for oneself just like the mental world?

It is the mind that builds, the vital tries to enjoy and possess the world of its desires.

Does each human being live and move in a world of his own? Has it any relation with the world of another being?

As he lives in a separative consciousness, he makes a mental world of his own out of his experience of the common world in which all here live. It is built in the same way as that of others and he receives into it the thoughts, feelings of others, without knowing it most often, and uses that too as material for his separate world.

Everyone carries around him an environmental consciousness or atmosphere through which he is in relation with others — or with the universal forces. It is through this that there [enter] forces or thoughts or feelings of others.

It can become silent when there is the wideness. One can become conscious of it and deal with what passes through it. A man without it would be without contact with the rest of the world.

Can the hostile forces attack us on the mental plane as they do on the vital plane?

Yes — the physical mind especially can be made easily their prey — they can also invade the thinking mind.

Our sense mind is active all the time and leaping out. How is one to make it sit down for some time? How to hold it in one’s hands, so to speak?

It is not the sense mind that has to sit down; it is the mind that has to stop paying attention.

What would be the true activity of the senses which at present are so subject to material things and cause all sorts of dualities of emotion (like, dislike etc.)?

It is to record the divine or true appearance of things and return to them the reaction of an equal Ananda without dislike or desire.

What does the mental physical contain?

Habitual thoughts and thoughts that are reflexes to the touch of external things.

The physical mind can deal only with outward things. One has to think and decide in other things with the mind itself (buddhi), not with the physical part of it.

This morning the mind — the physical mind, most probably — became very obstinate and refused to concentrate or to receive light. Any reason for its being thus headstrong?

That part of the being has no reason except its whims, its habits or an inclination to be tamasic.

If the mechanical mind goes on in its rounds, it does not matter much. But when the thinking mind seems to get caught into them and identifies itself with them one feels troubled. What exactly is it that gets caught?

That is the physical mind. The physical and the mechanical mind are closely connected.

Repetition is the habit of the mental physical — it is not the true thinking mind that does like that, it is the mental physical or else the lowest part of the physical mind.

From this morning to this evening, I was in a somewhat passive condition — one part of me receiving all sorts of thoughts, the other part observing and sometimes rejecting but not very effectively. What is it in us that receives thoughts like this?

It is usually the mechanical mind if the thoughts are random — the physical mind, if they are connected.

From where does the mechanical mind obtain its food?

From things and impressions and old habitual thoughts or ways of thinking and feeling.

The mechanical mind is a sort of engine — whatever comes to it puts into the machine and goes on turning it round and round no matter what it is.

Is it not the function of the mechanical mind to be mechanical, just as it is that of the mind proper to perceive and conceive?

Certainly not — it is mechanical because it has no light in it and goes on like a machine. If there were light, it would not be like that.

When the higher consciousness takes hold of the mechanical mind, it ceases to be mechanical.

When the thinking mind and the physical mind become quiet, does not the mechanical mind cease by itself to be mechanical?

No. It has to be separately transformed.

Is it natural that old impressions from the subconscient should come up or does it happen because some part of the being opens to them?

The human like the animal mind lives largely in impressions rising up from the subconscient.