Mysteries of Mind

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency

Page 35

THE MYSTERIES OF MIND
which the machine does not have. And that is also the difference between the living and non-living beings. Mahāvīra was asked if the soul breathed and he replied that it did not. Then he was asked if the soul thought and he replied that it did not. Then again he was asked if the soul ate and drank and he replied that it did not. Then the question was raised : “How can you say that man has a soul ?" If the soul did not do any one of the things mentioned above, no human being can be said to possess a soul. If there were no soul, nobody could practise self-discipline and purify the depths of his being wherein reside the substantial causes of his actions. The mechanical conception will have to be given up. Mechanical activities are of a peripheral nature. They are in no way connected with consciousness. They happen on the outer circles of consciousness. In order to understand the dividing line between living and non-living beings, we will have to descend deep into our being where we neither eat nor drink, neither think nor analyse and where we are simply seers and knowers and nothing else. It is there that we will come across the substantial causes of our actions. When we have arrived at this depth our mechanical life comes to an end and we will come face to face with the essence of self-discipline. Selfdiscipline implies that state of the soul in which it is a spectator and knower par excellence. It is the awareness of this fact which keeps us self-disciplined. Self-discipline and selfrestaint will suffer a set-back if we lost this awareness.
There are two theatres of the operation of consciousness: objects of sense-satisfaction and soul-perception and selfknowledge. Consciousness sometimes operates in the first theatre and at other times in the second. During the mechanical process of life, consciousness tries to seek and enjoy objects which provide sense-pleasures. This is the external orientation of consciousness.
The operation of consciousness in its own realm means its being engaged in its own substantial basis or its being selfabsorbed. It means its arriving at the state of self-perception and self-knowledge after breaking through the network of mechanical processes, thinking and breathing. The state of self-perception and self-knowledge is the native operational field of consciousness.