Thursday, 27 January 2011 19:23

Mirages of Mind

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The Oxford Dictionary meaning of mirage is an illusory thing such as an appearance of a sheet of water in a desert. The first and foremost mirage of mind is that it has no existence in the present. It wanders into the dead past or walks into the unforeseen future. It lives in dreams. It is made of dream-stuff. In the day you call these dreams thoughts; in the night you call these thoughts dreams but it is all the same flow, the same energy.

The mind feels very much attracted to the false. The mind has a tendency to be attracted to the false. Why? The mind-stuff is false. It feeds on false. There is no reality in its existence. It is very much attracted towards the fleeting pleasures and endless desires of this ephemeral world. So wherever your mind is attracted, beware something false, something illusory, something of this outer world, something of dreams is attracting you.

Mind spins around us cobwebs of numerous cravings of lust and anger, wealth and possessions. Once we are caught in its cobweb, it works as a powerful wild beast to reckon with. Like an elephant it tramples under foot whatever comes its way. Even the Rishis and Munis who denounced the world who lives on bark and leaves of trees, could not escape the gruesome clutches of the mind. They came to grief at its hands.

The mind keeps us away from the goal of Self-Realization and never lets us uncover the Reality which lies hidden within all of us. That Reality is Divinity, a source of ever-lasting BLISS. Mind is the great slayer of the Real and remains engulfed in the unreal glamour of this external world. Real, the vision of God lies within our own heart beyond the mind – the slayer of the Real.

We must slay the slayer. “The mind must awake that the God may be brought to life.” Mind is in the hands of senses and is being constantly dragged by them in different directions. Mind has its wanderings from hope to despair, pleasure to pain, success to failure, distant past to uncertain future and so on. PEACE is not all its nature because in itself it is in pieces and fragments.

It has got several layers underneath which lies the ever-lasting PEACE & BLISS. One layer is memory or past. The forest is gone, we are not yet forgetting the heat. Past is like the skin of a serpent which it takes off. Actually the skin has been taken off, yet it is in our minds and it haunts us and keeps us away from PRESENT.

Another layer is that of jealousy. He is more healthier, more happier and more wealthier. This mind does not let us enjoy the present. We must remember that we are we and wherever we have been placed by the All-merciful Almighty there are infinite ways to be happy.

This mind always plays tricks with us. It puts labels on us as Germans, French, Englishmen. We take pride in calling ourselves Mohammadans or Christians or Hindus. The fact is that we are pure consciousness and need no labels. The same Divinity runs in all of us.

Due to mirages of mind, we are inclined to trust in future which is yet to come. We shall be happy tomorrow. We shall do good service to fellow-beings tomorrow but we never realize that tomorrow never comes.

When tomorrow comes it will again today and our habit of putting it off till tomorrow will again postpone it. So in order not to deluded with the mirage of the mind, we should say, “Now, now is the moment I have at hand. I must make the most of it.”

The moment, the Present is too small for the mind to stay; Mind is stuffed with the thoughts and present, the moment is too small for thoughts to move. Thoughts need a lot of space to fly either into the dead past or the unknown future. They don’t have any existence in PRESENT.

The search for truth without is truly a mirage. Mind runs and runs wildly in the outer world unceasingly and persistently and it is to commit suicide for it to turn inwards towards the reality, the truth.

Mind is fond of pleasure but no single pleasure can tie it down for all time to come. Toys of childhood are of no use when the child become a young boy. Long cherished company of school days lose charm when married and the priorities change. New worries arise and perhaps sometimes no end in sight of them.

Mind’s mirages are numerous and the way to get over them is not at all to control the mind which is like covering a viper with lid. As soon as the lid is removed, viper (a very poisonous snake) attacks with a greater force. Meditation is the means of getting rid of mirage of mind. Meditation is seeing the mind, understanding the mind, witnessing the mind and going beyond the mind.

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