Apr. 15th, 2021 01:06 pm
The Four Parts of Mind
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happypandaSadhguru Youtube
The Four Parts of Mind
13:21 minutes - uploaded: May 27, 2015
Partial video of a series of longer interviews always titled:
In Conversation with the Mystic
Interviewer: Vinita Bali
Transcript
Vinita Bali Q: So, Sadhguru, what is a creative mind?
Sadhguru A: Oh! How big an answer do you want? (Smiles at Interviewer)
Vinita Bali: As big as you want it.
Sadhguru A:
See the English word 'mind' doesn't say anything because it's just one generic word which does not describe different dimensions of what the mind is. Mind is not just one something sitting here (gestures) and doing something, ok? There really is no such thing as mind.
In the Yogic culture there is no mind. There is a physical body, there is a mental body because what you are calling as mind right now is a certain combination of memory and intelligence. There is memory in your body. More memory in your body than you can imagine. If I have to get at you again, it's ok. I'm picking on you.
You definitely don't remember how your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother looked like but her nose is sitting on your face right now. Yes?
Vinita Bali: Yes.
Sadhguru: You don't remember a thing consciously but your body remembers 100%. How 10 generations ago, your grandmother was, your body still remembers. A million years ago, how your forefathers were, your...still your body remembers, isn't it? It's not forgotten and it's not going to forget. Your mind is not capable of this kind of memory. Your body has a trillion times more memory than your so-called brain.
This whole shift towards the brain and intellectual process is a European malaise. They gave too much significance to thought. This has happened because they lived under a subjugated society, religiously subjugated society where you are not supposed to think anything except what's written in some book, otherwise you are dead. They lived like this for a long time. Because of this, when they got a little freedom to think and managed to live, they started celebrating their thought too much.
Let's understand the context of thought. You can only think from the data that you already have gathered. That means you can never think anything new. You can recycle it, you can rehash it, you can produce permutations and combinations of it but you can not think something absolutely new. It is not in the nature of the thought to come up with something new. It can only recycle the past. That means if you dedicate yourself to your thought process, if you enshrine your thought process, you are ensuring nothing new ever happens in your life.
So thought need not be celebrated like this. That's why in this culture, thought is never been given so much significance. What you think is your psychological drama. We don't think much about that because it's your drama. Your drama is important for you, somebody else's drama, it's important for them, everybody thinks their drama is the most important drama in the universe. This is everybody's experience because they are so identified with their own psychological drama. This psychological drama should not determine the nature of your life because this is just a small happening compared to the life process. Life is a much deeper intelligence than intellect.
We can look at....(pauses)
The Yogic system looks at mind as 16 parts. Those 16 parts are further broken and they're taken up to 84,000 parts. But now, if I talk about 84,000 already there's a segment which says no, (turns head away from Vida and looks at that audience segment) - so I will make it 4.
I'm taking away 80, ok? (looks again at that audience segment). I'm being fair to you - only 4! (Sadhguru smiles and turns back to Vida) Four fundamental parts.
One is the Intellect, which we have in modern world, in today's world, we are unnecessarily giving too much significance to intellect and we will pay an enormous price for this. You will come to a place where you will know everything but you'll know nothing of life significance, really.
Today, you will see this happening to children. For the first time, this generation you see - 10, 11 year-old or 12 year-old children, they look bored. (Looks at Vida - who looks to be in her late 50s or early 60s) When you were 10-11, you did not (know) what is boredom, it was not possible. It was too exciting to be alive and looking around. You will see 10, 12 year-old children, all looking bored because they've seen the cosmos through their phone screen.
[Camera cuts to Vida and she nods her head in agreement]
Sadhguru continues: They know it all and especially in the western countries, you will see this happening at 8-10, they are really bored. You will see in the school buses, they are all sitting like this. (Sadhguru gets bored look on face)
[audience laughs]
Sadhguru: Bored, because by the time you are 12, you already had one love affair, you know what is a break, you know how to ...all this recover from that, you tasted alcohol, you've seen this, probably you've gone into all kinds of physical things and you know the cosmos. What more?
[Sadhguru looks out questioningly to the audience]
By the time you're 15, there's really no purpose for you to exist, for many of them.
[Looks back to Vida then back to the audience]
You should not be surprised, if this culture continues. I'm not saying this as a prediction, it is something that I see beginning to happen - in another 50 or 100 years' time, if 25% to 50% of the people commit suicide, you should not be surprised. Because life needs some exuberance.
If too much information happens to you without experience, that exuberance will be gone and a sense of...(pauses)...false sense of knowing becomes so strong in you. This is the danger of intellect because intellect wants to dissect everything.
[video cuts to Vida and she nods in agreement. Camera pulls back to show both Sadhguru and Vida on the stage]
Sadhguru continues:
Intellect is like a scalpel - the sharper it is, the better it is. It wants to dissect and know. Dissection works with some things, not with all aspects of life. If you want to know....the poor frog, you know, [looks at audience]...you remember, tsk? The poor frog that you crucified and cut and great knowledge you acquired from all that torture is unbelievable. How much knowledge you know. For the torture that that frog went through, how much knowledge you have acquired is quite unbelievable. All that you got to know.
[Sadhguru looks out to audience again]
Now you've got interest...suddenly you got interested, the mother that you had ignored, you want to know your mother today. Please get yourself a sharp knife, start the dissection. You may know everything about her liver, kidney, heart but you won't have a mother left, that's all. So life cannot be known by breaking it up. You can know physical things by breaking it up. You cannot know life by breaking it into pieces but this is the nature of the intellect. [motions toward his head]. The whole modern science has evolved from human intellect. Because it's produced technological benefits, you can't argue against it because people, you know?
Vida: Yes.
Sadhguru: They think they are scientists, they know nothing about science. They're just enjoying their iPhone. They think they are scientists because they can do this [Sadhguru imitates punching out a text message on a cellphone].
No, technology is fine, it's brought much comfort and convenience but it'll not bring life to us. So intellect is like this. Intellect will be useful only depending upon what it is identified with and what is held, what holds this, how steadily.
[My Note: Now begins the part of the talk that covers the 4 over-arching parts of every human mind which can be further examined into 16 parts then into 84,000 parts]
So the next dimension of the mind. The first one is called as Buddhi, which is Intellect.
The 2nd is called as Ahankara. Ahankara does not mean ego, this, that - it means the identity. Whatever you're identified with, your intellect (Buddhi) functions only around that. Simple, if you just identify with a nation. If you say, "I'm an Indian.", everything Indian looks beautiful. If you cross the border and you say you are something else, all that looks beautiful. So, whatever you're identified with (Ahankara), it's only with that the intellect (Buddhi) functions.
So Ahankara is the identity. How consciously and how steadily your Ahankara has been created will determine the effectiveness of your intellect. Just because it's sharp, it does not mean it'll be effective because sharp intellect or a sharp knife can cause any amount of damage to you. If you have a sharp knife and you don't have a steady hand, you will cut yourself all over the place. That's all that's happening. Human suffering is just this - you don't know how to hold this intellect in your hand properly. Every day you're cutting yourself. All suffering is on self-help because you're own mind is causing this to you all the time. No matter what happens, people suffer, whichever way, they suffer, because they don't know how to hold this intellect. If you had the mind of an earthworm, you would be quite peaceful. Yes? You're trying to do it in so many ways to reduce the sharpness of the intellect - by drink, by drug, by overeating, by doing all kinds of things - somehow to take away the sharpness because the damn thing hurts. It hurts not because that's its nature, it hurts because you do not know how to hold it.
The next dimension of the mind is called as Manas, which is a huge volume of memory. It is not here or there (indicates head), entire body carries memory. So Manomayakosha, this is called, a huge sack of memory.
[my note: literally this is Sanskrit for the Manas-Body - the Manas-Sheath]
Sadhguru continues:
This memory is in various stacks, we'll not go into all these details considering some people have said a clear no.
**********
Sadhguru again indicates with his hands a certain section of the audience. I get the impression he has several important, close disciples seated there who've advised him against getting too in-depth in this interview about the yogic tradition's teachings on an ordinary human mind.
**********
Sadhguru continues:
They don't want to have a mind, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, they don't want to know anything about the mind.
[Audience and Interviewer laugh]
So the 4th dimension of the mind is called as Citta. (alt spelling Chitta)
***********
my note: it's pronounced like cheetah
***********
Sadhguru continues:
Citta means it's pure intelligence. It is unsullied by memory, it has no trace of any kind of memory, it's just pure intelligence.
If you touch this, then you have access to what you are referring as the source of creation because all kinds of things might have been fed to you...god is this, god is love, god is compassion, god is kind, what...whatever. [Sadhguru laughs]
Somebody come, stand on the edge of this stage, say all the prayer you want to say and fall. [Points to a section of the stage]. Let me see whether compassion happens to you or a cracked bone happens to you. I would like to check, alright? All these things have been made up because whatever somebody is deprived of, they will attribute that quality to their idea of god. You're ideas of god have come only because you do not know what...how this whole creation happened. Because you don't have an answer, you made it up. Because you are human being, you said, "A big human being sitting up there. (indicates upward) Oh, how can he do all this?"
If somebody asked, he has 10 hands, so he does a lot of things not like you, whatever. It's alright for children but essentially, because you do not know how creation happened, you are coming up with explanations. So that which is the source of creation - don't believe what I say, what anybody says - pay attention to one piece of creation.
[Sadhguru picks up a flower on the table next to him]
Just take a flower, pay attention to this. Pay an attention to a leaf or an atom or an ant. All you will see is phenomenal intelligence beyond anything you can imagine. Yes? [looks questioningly at the audience]
But nobody told you, "God is intelligence." But this culture (ie Indian subcontinent) has said this to you in many ways. They told you Chidakasha , Chidambara and so many things to tell you, if you touch your Citt(a) the whole existence becomes yours. Everything that's worth knowing is right here (gestures everywhere) because you have access to the source of creation.
So these are the 4 types of your - 4 dimensions of your mind. Unfortunately, the modern education thinks by just feeding information and keeping the intellect reasonably sharp everything is going to happen.
No!
You will rip this planet apart looking for well-being, you may lose the planet or you may manage to go to another planet and start your work again there (audience laughs) but well-being will not happen. If well-being has to happen, you have to dig a little deeper into this or to one's self, otherwise, no.
*****Edit: Oops. Linked to the wrong video originally. The correct video is now linked****
Since this video is free I'm linking to the original video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHvHMiPiKao
The Four Parts of Mind
13:21 minutes - uploaded: May 27, 2015
Partial video of a series of longer interviews always titled:
In Conversation with the Mystic
Interviewer: Vinita Bali
Transcript
Vinita Bali Q: So, Sadhguru, what is a creative mind?
Sadhguru A: Oh! How big an answer do you want? (Smiles at Interviewer)
Vinita Bali: As big as you want it.
Sadhguru A:
See the English word 'mind' doesn't say anything because it's just one generic word which does not describe different dimensions of what the mind is. Mind is not just one something sitting here (gestures) and doing something, ok? There really is no such thing as mind.
In the Yogic culture there is no mind. There is a physical body, there is a mental body because what you are calling as mind right now is a certain combination of memory and intelligence. There is memory in your body. More memory in your body than you can imagine. If I have to get at you again, it's ok. I'm picking on you.
You definitely don't remember how your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother looked like but her nose is sitting on your face right now. Yes?
Vinita Bali: Yes.
Sadhguru: You don't remember a thing consciously but your body remembers 100%. How 10 generations ago, your grandmother was, your body still remembers. A million years ago, how your forefathers were, your...still your body remembers, isn't it? It's not forgotten and it's not going to forget. Your mind is not capable of this kind of memory. Your body has a trillion times more memory than your so-called brain.
This whole shift towards the brain and intellectual process is a European malaise. They gave too much significance to thought. This has happened because they lived under a subjugated society, religiously subjugated society where you are not supposed to think anything except what's written in some book, otherwise you are dead. They lived like this for a long time. Because of this, when they got a little freedom to think and managed to live, they started celebrating their thought too much.
Let's understand the context of thought. You can only think from the data that you already have gathered. That means you can never think anything new. You can recycle it, you can rehash it, you can produce permutations and combinations of it but you can not think something absolutely new. It is not in the nature of the thought to come up with something new. It can only recycle the past. That means if you dedicate yourself to your thought process, if you enshrine your thought process, you are ensuring nothing new ever happens in your life.
So thought need not be celebrated like this. That's why in this culture, thought is never been given so much significance. What you think is your psychological drama. We don't think much about that because it's your drama. Your drama is important for you, somebody else's drama, it's important for them, everybody thinks their drama is the most important drama in the universe. This is everybody's experience because they are so identified with their own psychological drama. This psychological drama should not determine the nature of your life because this is just a small happening compared to the life process. Life is a much deeper intelligence than intellect.
We can look at....(pauses)
The Yogic system looks at mind as 16 parts. Those 16 parts are further broken and they're taken up to 84,000 parts. But now, if I talk about 84,000 already there's a segment which says no, (turns head away from Vida and looks at that audience segment) - so I will make it 4.
I'm taking away 80, ok? (looks again at that audience segment). I'm being fair to you - only 4! (Sadhguru smiles and turns back to Vida) Four fundamental parts.
One is the Intellect, which we have in modern world, in today's world, we are unnecessarily giving too much significance to intellect and we will pay an enormous price for this. You will come to a place where you will know everything but you'll know nothing of life significance, really.
Today, you will see this happening to children. For the first time, this generation you see - 10, 11 year-old or 12 year-old children, they look bored. (Looks at Vida - who looks to be in her late 50s or early 60s) When you were 10-11, you did not (know) what is boredom, it was not possible. It was too exciting to be alive and looking around. You will see 10, 12 year-old children, all looking bored because they've seen the cosmos through their phone screen.
[Camera cuts to Vida and she nods her head in agreement]
Sadhguru continues: They know it all and especially in the western countries, you will see this happening at 8-10, they are really bored. You will see in the school buses, they are all sitting like this. (Sadhguru gets bored look on face)
[audience laughs]
Sadhguru: Bored, because by the time you are 12, you already had one love affair, you know what is a break, you know how to ...all this recover from that, you tasted alcohol, you've seen this, probably you've gone into all kinds of physical things and you know the cosmos. What more?
[Sadhguru looks out questioningly to the audience]
By the time you're 15, there's really no purpose for you to exist, for many of them.
[Looks back to Vida then back to the audience]
You should not be surprised, if this culture continues. I'm not saying this as a prediction, it is something that I see beginning to happen - in another 50 or 100 years' time, if 25% to 50% of the people commit suicide, you should not be surprised. Because life needs some exuberance.
If too much information happens to you without experience, that exuberance will be gone and a sense of...(pauses)...false sense of knowing becomes so strong in you. This is the danger of intellect because intellect wants to dissect everything.
[video cuts to Vida and she nods in agreement. Camera pulls back to show both Sadhguru and Vida on the stage]
Sadhguru continues:
Intellect is like a scalpel - the sharper it is, the better it is. It wants to dissect and know. Dissection works with some things, not with all aspects of life. If you want to know....the poor frog, you know, [looks at audience]...you remember, tsk? The poor frog that you crucified and cut and great knowledge you acquired from all that torture is unbelievable. How much knowledge you know. For the torture that that frog went through, how much knowledge you have acquired is quite unbelievable. All that you got to know.
[Sadhguru looks out to audience again]
Now you've got interest...suddenly you got interested, the mother that you had ignored, you want to know your mother today. Please get yourself a sharp knife, start the dissection. You may know everything about her liver, kidney, heart but you won't have a mother left, that's all. So life cannot be known by breaking it up. You can know physical things by breaking it up. You cannot know life by breaking it into pieces but this is the nature of the intellect. [motions toward his head]. The whole modern science has evolved from human intellect. Because it's produced technological benefits, you can't argue against it because people, you know?
Vida: Yes.
Sadhguru: They think they are scientists, they know nothing about science. They're just enjoying their iPhone. They think they are scientists because they can do this [Sadhguru imitates punching out a text message on a cellphone].
No, technology is fine, it's brought much comfort and convenience but it'll not bring life to us. So intellect is like this. Intellect will be useful only depending upon what it is identified with and what is held, what holds this, how steadily.
[My Note: Now begins the part of the talk that covers the 4 over-arching parts of every human mind which can be further examined into 16 parts then into 84,000 parts]
So the next dimension of the mind. The first one is called as Buddhi, which is Intellect.
The 2nd is called as Ahankara. Ahankara does not mean ego, this, that - it means the identity. Whatever you're identified with, your intellect (Buddhi) functions only around that. Simple, if you just identify with a nation. If you say, "I'm an Indian.", everything Indian looks beautiful. If you cross the border and you say you are something else, all that looks beautiful. So, whatever you're identified with (Ahankara), it's only with that the intellect (Buddhi) functions.
So Ahankara is the identity. How consciously and how steadily your Ahankara has been created will determine the effectiveness of your intellect. Just because it's sharp, it does not mean it'll be effective because sharp intellect or a sharp knife can cause any amount of damage to you. If you have a sharp knife and you don't have a steady hand, you will cut yourself all over the place. That's all that's happening. Human suffering is just this - you don't know how to hold this intellect in your hand properly. Every day you're cutting yourself. All suffering is on self-help because you're own mind is causing this to you all the time. No matter what happens, people suffer, whichever way, they suffer, because they don't know how to hold this intellect. If you had the mind of an earthworm, you would be quite peaceful. Yes? You're trying to do it in so many ways to reduce the sharpness of the intellect - by drink, by drug, by overeating, by doing all kinds of things - somehow to take away the sharpness because the damn thing hurts. It hurts not because that's its nature, it hurts because you do not know how to hold it.
The next dimension of the mind is called as Manas, which is a huge volume of memory. It is not here or there (indicates head), entire body carries memory. So Manomayakosha, this is called, a huge sack of memory.
[my note: literally this is Sanskrit for the Manas-Body - the Manas-Sheath]
Sadhguru continues:
This memory is in various stacks, we'll not go into all these details considering some people have said a clear no.
**********
Sadhguru again indicates with his hands a certain section of the audience. I get the impression he has several important, close disciples seated there who've advised him against getting too in-depth in this interview about the yogic tradition's teachings on an ordinary human mind.
**********
Sadhguru continues:
They don't want to have a mind, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, they don't want to know anything about the mind.
[Audience and Interviewer laugh]
So the 4th dimension of the mind is called as Citta. (alt spelling Chitta)
***********
my note: it's pronounced like cheetah
***********
Sadhguru continues:
Citta means it's pure intelligence. It is unsullied by memory, it has no trace of any kind of memory, it's just pure intelligence.
If you touch this, then you have access to what you are referring as the source of creation because all kinds of things might have been fed to you...god is this, god is love, god is compassion, god is kind, what...whatever. [Sadhguru laughs]
Somebody come, stand on the edge of this stage, say all the prayer you want to say and fall. [Points to a section of the stage]. Let me see whether compassion happens to you or a cracked bone happens to you. I would like to check, alright? All these things have been made up because whatever somebody is deprived of, they will attribute that quality to their idea of god. You're ideas of god have come only because you do not know what...how this whole creation happened. Because you don't have an answer, you made it up. Because you are human being, you said, "A big human being sitting up there. (indicates upward) Oh, how can he do all this?"
If somebody asked, he has 10 hands, so he does a lot of things not like you, whatever. It's alright for children but essentially, because you do not know how creation happened, you are coming up with explanations. So that which is the source of creation - don't believe what I say, what anybody says - pay attention to one piece of creation.
[Sadhguru picks up a flower on the table next to him]
Just take a flower, pay attention to this. Pay an attention to a leaf or an atom or an ant. All you will see is phenomenal intelligence beyond anything you can imagine. Yes? [looks questioningly at the audience]
But nobody told you, "God is intelligence." But this culture (ie Indian subcontinent) has said this to you in many ways. They told you Chidakasha , Chidambara and so many things to tell you, if you touch your Citt(a) the whole existence becomes yours. Everything that's worth knowing is right here (gestures everywhere) because you have access to the source of creation.
So these are the 4 types of your - 4 dimensions of your mind. Unfortunately, the modern education thinks by just feeding information and keeping the intellect reasonably sharp everything is going to happen.
No!
You will rip this planet apart looking for well-being, you may lose the planet or you may manage to go to another planet and start your work again there (audience laughs) but well-being will not happen. If well-being has to happen, you have to dig a little deeper into this or to one's self, otherwise, no.
*****Edit: Oops. Linked to the wrong video originally. The correct video is now linked****
Since this video is free I'm linking to the original video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHvHMiPiKao
Tags:
no subject
I've been trying to figure out "identity" for just about forever—it's never made the slightest bit of sense to me. But of course, when I say "figure out," I'm using what is referred to here as the intellect. The above implies that such a scheme is doomed to failure, since you can't use one kind of intelligence to make meaningful sense of another... just like the frog, if you dissect it, it's gone. So I've been barking up the wrong tree.