A.Death is
nothing but the separation of the subtle body from the gross body. The subtle
body, consisting of the flow of thoughts constituting mind, intellect, ego and
memory, gathers all its faculties – the faculties of senses, etc - and moves to
different fields of experiences (lokas). It takes a new gross body by entering
into the womb of a mother which we call ‘birth’. Birth and death are therefore
the association and disassociation of the subtle body with a gross body. In the
gross body, the consciousness reflects as existence – as ‘the body is’. In the
subtle body, the consciousness is reflected as a being with notions of ‘I am
this’.
B.If the truth
cannot be known by any means, since all means are finite, then it must be a
self-revealing and self-existing entity.Not only the
truth is the pathless land, as Krishnamurthi declared, Vedanta goes one step
further to indicate that the self-existent, self-conscious and infinite entity
is nothing but your own self, where the seeker and the sought, or the subject
and the object, merge into one infinite-existent-conscious entity.
If one
examines one's mind carefully we find that our wanting mind is not happy in
having what it wanted, since 'the want to have more' always remains, however
much one has. Thus it rather wants to want than wants to have. That is the
reflection of the conditioned state of mind.
C.The mind
wants to be free from wanting and that desire for eternal freedom is intrinsic
or inborn with the mind. It cannot but seek that unlimited happiness, though it
cannot find it by any seeking. Longing for limitless freedom is inherent in all
beings, but expressed more vividly in the human form, where 'conceptual
thought' has reached its pinnacle by evolutionary process. Thus there is a
fundamental human problem or dichotomy: he cannot but pursue a path to gain
absolute inexhaustible happiness or freedom from all limitations, and he can
never gain that happiness through any pursuit, since it is a path less land.
This is where understanding the mind, its conditioning and how to transcend
those conditionings so that the mind is ever free from all conditionings
becomes important and this forms the fundamental or essential pursuit of human
life.
It is
interesting to note that any process of deconditioning the mind itself involves
the mind or mental activity. That is, the mind itself conditions the mind, and
it is also capable of deconditioning itself. Hence, Vedanta says 'mind is the
problem and mind is the solution'.
D.From a
Vedantic perspective (philosophical truths discussed in the end part of the
Vedas called Upanishads), mind is considered to be subtle matter different from
gross physical matter
Science can
never prove or disprove the truth about myself, since its field of enquiry is
limited to objective analysis or analysis of 'this' and not about the subject,
I.
There is also
confusion in that mapping of the brain is equated to mapping of the mind - it
is like investigation of the hardware to find out about the problems in the
software. Experience of pleasures and pains, emotions of love, compassion,
fear, anxiety, hatred, etc are not easily quantifiable to determine
cause-effect relations since they are subjective.
E.'Mind' is a
general term used to designate the thinking aspect involved. In computer
terminology it can be thought of as software in contrast to the hardware,
namely the brain. In Vedanta, mind is considered as 'flow of thoughts' (vRRitti
dhAra) or more correctly the basis on which the thoughts flow, rather than the
flow itself. Just as a flow of water is called ‘river’, a flow of thoughts is
the ‘mind’. We can have stagnant water but we cannot have stagnant thought,
since thought itself involves a movement, although we could have regurgitated
thoughts or a whirlpool of thoughts, when we are intensely attached to a
particular theme. Mind can only think one thought at a time, but it can jump
from one thought to the next like a monkey jumping from one branch to the
other, without coming down to the ground. These are interconnected thoughts.
F.Death is
defined as the separation of this subtle body from the gross body. The process
of death involves mind collecting all its 19 physiological functions and
exiting the body. According to
Vedanta, death occurs when this subtle body finds the gross body no more
conducive for its residence.
G.Parents give
birth only to the physical body and not to the subtle body. The subtle body is
considered to be made up of subtle matter, which is not perceptible to the
sense organs.
Reference & Courtesy: An introduction to Vedanta - Dr.Sadananda
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