Man always wanted to think. So the mind was bred. Mind is bred to survive. Mind was bred to fight fear, anxieties, anger, conflicts, despair, and suffering. But today, the mind causes fear, anxieties, anger, conflicts, despair, and suffering. Buddha says the mind is a disease when you make the mind your master. In fact, the mind ought to be a servant. But Sigmund Freud does not call it a disease even when you have made the mind your master. He is a father of psychology in the western world. But the eastern world had been known to the psychology of the mind for 5000 years. Two major reasons for fast-growing psychological diseases. One, the basic flaw in the western psychology model that considers disease-free a patient when he does not question or deviate from a rat race the world is engaged in. Two, the new age of information bombardment.
Buddha has said ‘Gate gate paragate. Parasamgate. Bodhi swaha’ which means gone, gone, gone to the other shore. Completely gone to the other shore and awakened. The Hindi word ‘gati’ means motion. World in Hindi is called Jagat (Ja-gat) Ja means go. Jagat means that which goes in motion. This world is here. I am here you are here. Birds are singing here. One is saying and one is listening. Lots of sounds are being heard. The entire earth is teeming with activity. Activity is all around. Nothing is static. Nothing stops here.
From gati (motion) we need to go Paragate beyond motion (gone to the other shore) and then Parasamgate (completely gone to the other shore). We need to go beyond motion into motionlessness. That which is the motion of life is the flow of life. In that flow, one has to be flown into. Life is a flow. You are a pure flow. You are the flow of life. You are flowing into the flow of life and you are the flowing. The world is flowing. One breath is flowing to another. Everything is flowing and renewing. Everything is flowing and transforming. Trees are flowing breeding seeds. Seeds are flowing into the new earth, spouting to flowing into a big tree. Birds are laying eggs. A mystical presence is flowing into the mother’s womb. Mother is impregnating. A newborn is opening his new eyes to see the mesmerising wonderful flow of the world around. River is flowing. Air is blowing. Clouds are flowing creating a huge deluge in the air. Torrents are roaring. Rains are pouring. Clouds are flowing far. Whatever that is coming is going. Whatever that is going on is coming back. Man is also coming and going and going and coming. Gate gate paragate. Parasamgate.
The world is in motion around an axis. To be in motion, the world needs to have a central axis point. If you look at yourself, inside you, you have a central axis point around which your life is moving in motion. You are moving not in one direction but circular direction. Your world is circling around your axis. If there is no central point there is no revolving. Because how could your world revolve around in the absence of the axis. Like you are sitting and eating. You are consuming food. You are made of food. You are part of the food chain. You think you consume the food. No, your body consumes the food to give strength to your body. The body is an instrument to ensure that you keep revolving around your axis. Your body is forming on you.
So you are and you are sitting. One can see you in body form. But that which is your mind is an entity that is rotating ahead of you. Look inside you. Sit inside you. You just let the mind think what it thinks. You are eating and your mind is thinking of myriad cumbersome thoughts, ideas, schemes, and plans breeding anxieties, fears, and conflicts. Just sit for some time and find by yourself what is going on in your mind and why all this is going on in your mind. In fact, your mind is running constantly by fears, conflicts, anxieties, plans, greed, anger, etc. That running is what is revolving around you. One, this world is running and two, your mind is running. Your mind is revolving around an axis. But your mind does not have a real axis but it has created an illusion of an axis. An illusion called the ego.
Your body is forming around you constantly taking a new shape. Your mind is forming around the ego because you have made your mind your master.
The mind runs fastest than any speed in the world. The mind runs faster than the speed of light. You are sitting ‘here’ or you are walking ‘here’ but this mind is running afar. Far into the worlds that have not even been formed or fathomed. Mind is making you worrisome here and now of those plans which have never existed and are non-existent. Mind is making you die for such plans which you have never lived which never existed or executed. You are dying of such a type of burdensome psychosis. On one hand, you are dying for such non-existent things and on the other hand, your mind is expanding. And you are dying. Your mind is expanding. Your plans are expanding your desires are expanding your greed is expanding. All these are making you die for them here and now. You are here to live but your mind is making you die of some kind of neurosis.
Humanity is innately in deep neurosis because we live in a neurotic society that breeds abnormalities. Your mind works on its own. Your body works on its own. Neither do you have any say in your mind nor do you have a say in your body? So if one asks Freud why one lives, Freud might answer—to be one in the rat race of humanity to be a normal being.
In fact, we are living in the age of information bombardment. Our senses are bombarded by billions of bits of information every day. Information bombardment is growing every moment. Information is either to learn and the information that we are not able to blend in has to be discarded. But we are not learning to either learn or discard. Our greed, anger, anxieties, conflicts, and fears are growing into paranoia, anxieties, phobias, schizophrenia, bipolarities, panic, and stress disorders.
When you are not able to learn by what comes to you. It is thrown into the dark corners of consciousness. Greed, anger, conflicts, fears, and anxieties are thus formed and are played out in dreams. A lifetime spent with greed, anger, conflicts, fears, and anxieties is an abnormal life.
Life in cities and villages has become the same thanks to new tools for information that stimulate you 24 hours. Most of the information is not paid attention to and is repressed. Humanity has made life the most complex. Your mind has to cope with it. Your mind has to be ready to confront the new age of information bombardment. You have to learn how to learn and what to learn. What to discard. If you just receive information and don’t make a decision on it whether to learn or discard it, information piles up and will breed anxiety, fears, and suffering.
The information bombardment age is driving you crazy and mad. Be silent at least once a day for a few minutes. Switch off your phones, TVs, and laptops. Don’t speak to anyone. Don’t give commentary from the back of your mind. Just be what you are. Be totally relaxed. Let all the sounds come to you. Don’t interpret them in your mind. Be unto yourself. Sit silently wherever you are. Think nothing. Don’t think that you have to sit and be silent. Simply be silent and don’t think anything. That’s how you will be near your axis. Let the world revolve around you. Be yourself. Go out of it. Go to the other shore. Gate gate paragate.
The author is a spiritual teacher. He can be reached at arunavlokitta@gmail.com