In our daily encounters with people, some seem mentally resilient, receptive, confident and cheerful. Others resist new associations and ways, or feel burdened by the world. Some remain serene amidst difficulties and face them with constructive attitudes; others are fearful of the unexpected, bored, cynical or bitter. By what power does the mind color our vision and govern our personality? Is the mind an entity which, once set in motion, proceeds of its own will to be the final authority to our consciousness?
The mind builds its own patterns of certainty, expectancy, security of its own interests. Self-interest, attachment, makes the mind petty. Shallowness brings deterioration or weakness. Carried away into worldliness or not giving thought to enduring and universal or uplifting things of beauty and truth brings decay or restlessness to the mind and body. If we lead a life inattentive to the cultivation of the mind, towards the end of our days on earth we wonder why the mind is negative or unhappy, yet we will be unable to arrest the process. The mind needs nourishment by the pure food of noble thoughts. Right thinking is necessary for right living. Right thinking is right awareness and right evaluation which come only with the light of the Self.
In our desire to solve the mysteries of the universe we cannot and should not stop the quest of the mind. By its nature, the intellect seeks to know, to explore. That “knowledge is the key,” is universally acclaimed, but what will be unlocked by the mind is disputable. As the key, knowledge itself is (as implied) a mere instrument; it is not the end. Philosophically, it secures our introduction to the realm of Truth, but it is not Truth. Truth can be realized, but is beyond the limits of knowledge. Knowledge, with its words and mind-forms and analytic comprehension, cannot comprehend reality. That reality empowers the mind to know, yet is all-knowing and self-existent. It does not require form or time or association to see.
Put in another way, by the mind’s authority we cannot fully comprehend life. The authority of the intellect is complete only when enlightened by intuition, soul’s direct apprehension of Truth. The ordinary intellect works analytically, piecing together the elements of the large puzzle of experience—comparing, measuring, predicting, analyzing—but reality remains veiled from linear programs of thought. The mind cannot see the nature of the whole because the reality is more than the sum of time, space and relation.
Swami Kamalananda
Frontiers of the Spirit