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SELF CONTROL
Dr. Swami Shankardevananda Saraswati
Control of mind is the biggest problem that we face today; humanity has to find a way to face mental turmoil. How do we deal with our fear? How do we deal with our anger? How do we deal with our desires when they are not fulfilled and also when they are fulfilled? How do we deal with the worry of what might happen tomorrow or the insecurity when we face having to look after families and friends or when we suffer from illness? Until today this problem has not been fully dealt with.
Medical science has opened the doors to a logical, concrete approach and we, as doctors and scientists, realize our limitations. Therefore, having studied for six or seven or ten or even twenty years as doctors and scientists, we have recognized that we will never find the answer completely in medicine, and that is why we are sitting on the stage here together. We have realized that, for us as human beings, as people with minds that we need to look after, or as people who are in the role of helpers, it is necessary to try somehow to give guidance to our patients or to people who ask us for advice.
The best advice comes from the practice of yoga because yoga provides us with self help. It allows us to help ourselves and it gives us a concrete way of balancing body and mind. If we think that we can deal with the mind alone and ignore the physical body, we are mistaken. If we think the mind is an entity separate from the body, we will never find the answer and this has been the great mistake of modern science, of the materialists who say the mind is an extension of the brain, or is an organ on its own.
We have not as scientists, fully understood the connection of mind and consciousness. We have not understood that consciousness is the root, consciousness is the capacity to know, the capacity to awaken, to directly experience the mind as a function of ourselves, as an integral part of our body. We as scientists have not seen this. We have not been able to
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